Sean has loved food for as long as he can remember. Growing up, he ate everything his dad put on the table, and then some. By the time he was a teenager, he weighed 200 pounds. "That was just from overeating," he says. "I love to eat."
His love for food carried into adulthood, and forty years of long work shifts inspired a love for convenience. "You may work a 12 or a 15-hour shift. You're not wanting to come home to cook. So your vehicle automatically makes that turn to McDonald's, Hardee's, Wendy's." He knew, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he wasn't eating right. "Eating the right foods was very hard," he says. "Didn't know better."
By 60, the consequences had caught up with him. A Type 2 diabetes diagnosis came first, followed by a severe inflammatory arthritis that could seize his joints so completely that some mornings it took an hour or two just to get moving. His father and mother both had diabetes. He watched his father give himself an insulin injection every single morning until the end of his life.
"Watching them do that was like the end of the world," Sean says, "because I knew that my dad wasn't going to be around long enough. And that happened. I want to walk a whole different path."
That's when NourishedRx called. The first time, he didn't pick up. "I thought it was just a fluke thing, somebody wanting some money.” The second time, something made him listen. What the caller described was a food and nutrition program, fully covered by his insurance, built around helping people get healthier through what they eat.
This time, he stayed on the line.
A Personalized Approach
When the deliveries from NourishedRx showed up, Sean was surprised by what he saw.
The groceries contained fresh vegetables, dairy products, chicken, and fish. Even foods that he’d never tried before. "It really blew me away," he said. He also loved the meal kits with recipe cards in each box, each listing exactly what to make. Every ingredient was already there. "If the card said you need three garlic cloves, there was a little baggie full of garlic cloves right there."
The carrots still had their tails on. "You can't get any fresher than that. Like they pulled it right out of the ground. Somewhere down the line, people care."
His dietitian, Kadeshia, began calling regularly, and she made something clear from the start: she wasn't going to treat just one problem. She knew about his diabetes and arthritis and that the wrong foods could trigger flare-ups so painful they'd leave Sean unable to move for the rest of the day.
"She said, 'We're not just going to deal with one thing. We're going to fight your sugar problem and we're going to fight the arthritis, too.’”
"This program probably saved my life," Sean says, "because every week you were able to talk to somebody and they want to know how everything's going. That was a really big push—knowing that I had someone behind me going step by step."
It’s a Lifestyle, Not a Diet
A few weeks into the program, Kadeshia introduced an idea he didn't initially embrace: a Mediterranean way of eating. Like most people, his first reaction was skepticism.
"When you say 'diet,' people freak out," he says. "'Oh my god, I'm going to eat rabbit food the rest of my life.'"
But as he talked with Kadeshia and paid closer attention to what had been arriving in those boxes — the fresh produce, the lean proteins, the whole ingredients — he started to recognize that he'd already been living it. The program had been quietly building the foundation all along.
The day he made the connection, Sean went to the bookstore and bought three Mediterranean cookbooks.
He read. He cooked. He learned which foods triggered his arthritis and which ones calmed it. He discovered that a meal didn't need to fill a turkey platter to be satisfying. With the right foods, a small plate was plenty, and it left him feeling great.
"It is a lifestyle change. I look at it like you're a teacher. Once you teach somebody that routine, once you get them in gear, they're not going to want to change. And for me, I don't want to change. You've got me on a path."
A Whole New Routine
Today, Sean is up at 4:00am daily, walking a mile with his dog before the neighborhood stirs. He shops at the farmers market so he can see and touch what he's buying. At the grocery store, he flips every package over and reads the label. "What's going in your mouth is going to affect you," he says.
The fast food is entirely gone. This change happened not through willpower, but because his body had simply stopped wanting it. "It feels heavy on my body. The greasy taste… I just cannot do it anymore. Now my body is programmed to the foods I want to eat. And I want to eat healthy foods."
When friends offered him pizza at the boat dock one evening, he passed without a second thought. He knew exactly what the dough would do to his joints by morning. At restaurants, he reads the menu carefully and asks questions about how things are prepared.
"Now I'm in that habit. I'm on that train. And for me, that thing has to keep going forward. There's no going backwards."
His doctors have noticed. He's seeing them far less frequently than before. Before the arthritis took hold, he was in the gym regularly. He’s just been cleared to return to the gym, and he’s eager to start working out again.
What the Program Meant
Sean is candid about what almost stood in the way. After losing his job of 40 years, he lost the private insurance that came with it. He now has government coverage. NourishedRx explained that the program was fully covered.
"That is just so surprising that an insurance company reached out like that because they're saying, 'We want you healthy.' And NourishedRx is saying, 'We want you healthy. We want to get you back on track. We want you as physically strong as you possibly can be.' That was two companies that went on my back and carried me. And it's just a monster of a change in life."
When the program ended, Sean found himself missing the weekly calls, the food deliveries, the steady presence of someone in his corner. But the path it set him on is his to keep now.
"You got to make the time if you want to live. That's the bottom line. NourishedRx has walked a mile with me. And I just want people to know that there are real people out there that care. Do the program 110%. It's going to put you on a whole different path. It's going to make you stronger than you ever thought you could be."
He thinks about his dad every time he's tempted to slip. Sean is determined to walk a different path.
"NourishedRx is a lifesaver," he says. “And I would have been truly lost if I hadn't answered that phone."
