The cardiologist who saved two men during a half marathon is a plant-based evangelist.

It’s still a bit mind-boggling to realize that Steven Lome, a cardiologist with Montage Medical Group, helped save not one but two men during the Monterey Bay Half Marathon on Nov. 13, 2022. First Greg Gonzales fell to the ground during the race in front of Lome, who immediately began chest compressions until paramedics arrived minutes later. Lome continued to the finish line, only to discover another man had collapsed.

“Obviously it’s an urgent situation – you can’t take too long to have a reaction – but it was a, ‘This is ridiculous, I can’t believe it’s happening again,’” he remembers thinking. “It was exactly the same, it was uncanny.”

Lome dropped to the ground again to perform CPR on Michael Heilemann until a race volunteer arrived with a defibrillator within moments. Lome administered a jolt to the runner, followed by more chest compressions. Heilemann quickly woke up, surprised and confused, taking the time to stop the app recording his run.

News of the rescues spread through media around the world, including a story in December on NBC’s Today, bringing all three together for the first time. Both Gonzales and Heilemann have fully recovered, Lome says. “They both plan on running the race this year with me, which is going to be quite a moment. We’re going to run nice and slow; I may run with a defibrillator on my back,” he jokes.

Promoting lifestyle changes is something Lome has been doing for several years now, ever since he watched the documentary Forks Over Knives and took its message of switching to eating plant-based foods to heart. He quickly embraced the change, and his wife Helen Jeong – also a doctor, with Doctors on Duty – along with their six children (ages 4-16) joined in. He founded the nonprofit group Plant Based Nutrition Movement, and HeartStrong.com.

Weekly: What clicked for you when you watched Forks Over Knives?

Lome: I had already had the lifestyle medicine approach in my mind, having lost some weight, and eliminated processed foods to some extent, and started to exercise. But I knew something wasn’t quite right. I hadn’t lost as much as I wanted to, my cholesterol numbers were still high, my energy level wasn’t great, and I didn’t know why. When I watched Forks Over Knives it was a concept that had never been introduced in my mind, the fact that we don’t physiologically require animal-based foods – we can get everything we need from plant-based sources.

Will small changes make a difference, like practicing ‘Meatless Monday,’ for example?

No question, the higher percentage of calories you get from unprocessed, plant-based foods, the healthier you’re going to be. The ultimate goal is trying to reach what the Blue Zones have [areas of the world identified as where the healthiest people live]. When you average the percentage of calories they get from plant-based foods it’s 93, 95 percent. The average American is at 12 percent. [Try] oatmeal for breakfast with fruit on it, bean burgers, bean burritos. When you have a salad, put beans on there instead of chicken and use a vinegar-based dressing. Those simple changes can be very powerful.

Running works for you as an exercise, but obviously it’s not for everyone. What do you tell your patients?

Three important things that are absolute keys to success. When you start exercising, you have to really ease yourself into it. You have to start very slow and increase by no more than 10 percent per week. So if you walk a mile a day, five days out of the week, the next week only walk 1.1 miles per day. If you go too hard and progress too fast, not only will you mentally burn out from it, but physically your body doesn’t have enough time to adapt and you’re much more prone to injury.

Number two is you must choose an activity you absolutely love and you must focus on making it as enjoyable as you can.

The third thing is exercise is great for your health, but in regards to heart health it’s 20 percent of the picture. Eighty percent is diet. Universally experts agree, you can never out-exercise your diet if it’s an unhealthy diet.

Do you miss ice cream?

I eat ice cream all the time! It’s just made out of bananas. That’s what a lot of people don’t realize, that essentially everything that is eaten now on a standard American diet could be made in a healthy, plant-based form. There’s this thing called a Yonanas machine. It’s kind of like a specialized blender. [It] comes out smooth and creamy and you can put any frozen fruit in there. We have banana ice cream a couple of times a week and our kids think we’re the greatest parents.