Fox News Radio’s Todd Starnes writes about his battle to lose weight after being diagnosed with a nearly fatal heart condition…

I was lucky to be alive, that’s what my doctor said. The Starnes family gene pool and my proclivity to fried chicken had almost sent me to an early grave. I was 37-years-old, weighed almost 300 pounds, and I had just survived open heart surgery. My doctor suggested I needed to radically reevaluate my life. And he was absolutely right.

I love food —- never met an all-you-can-eat buffet that I didn’t like. I grew up in the South, where my mother managed to fry the entire food pyramid. I like my tea sweet, my chicken fried and my biscuits buttered. It’s just the way things are done in Dixie. But years of good-eating had put me in a precarious situation. My doctor told me I had been given a second chance at life. It was my job to make sure I didn’t screw it up.

About 24 hours after surgery, a physical therapist walked into my hospital room. He told me it was time to get out of bed. I told him he was nuts. After much cajoling (and a few choice words on my part), I managed to take what would become my very first step on the journey. It was all I could muster before collapsing back into the bed. I was convinced that my life was officially over. But my therapist smiled and reassured me that I had just overcome the most difficult obstacle on my road to recovery —- I had taken the first step.