He’s no stranger to making big life changes.
Ernie Rodriguez has been a Venice Family Clinic patient for over a decade. But one visit in 2024 with his doctor Gilmore Chung, MD stands out most in all those years. It was the appointment that inspired him to change his life.
In 2017, Rodriguez had a workplace accident that required a knee replacement. The injury and recovery decreased his mobility and eventually led to a sedentary lifestyle, even after his knee had healed. His weight crept up as he swapped his bike rides to the grocery store for car trips to the drive-thru.
It turned out that the way he was living his life was impacting his heart health. And that visit with Dr. Chung was his wake-up call. “It’s your weight that’s going to eventually kill you,” Rodriguez recalls Dr. Chung telling him.
A high weight is not always an indicator of overall health, since everyone’s body type is different and weight does not reflect a person’s muscle mass, lung capacity, and other indicators of health. But Rodriguez had high blood pressure, which can be influenced by a high weight, imbalanced diet and lack of exercise.
High blood pressure, also called hypertension, happens when your heart is working too hard just to manage your body’s day-to-day functioning. It can be a vicious cycle: that overexerted heart causes blood to put too much pressure on your arteries, which in turn makes the heart need to work even harder to pump blood. The condition is known as a “silent killer” because there are rarely any symptoms of hypertension until the condition is so extreme that it can cause a heart attack or stroke.
“Keeping your heart healthy and strong is essential for your whole body’s health, but hypertension compromises the heart’s ability to do its many important jobs” Venice Family Clinic health educator David Estevez says.
Rodriguez knew he wanted to make a change. He worked with a Venice Family Clinic health educator and external nutritionist, but implementing changes outside of the one-on-one meetings didn’t work for him. But then in 2025, he got a call from Estevez inviting him to join a heart health education group.
“It’s more interesting in a group, and it’s fun,” Rodriguez says. “We get to talk and taste food I’ve never tasted before. That’s why it’s been working for me.”
Rodriguez has been an eager student, but it’s not his first time learning to make a change. In the 2000s after a dark period of drug use and incarceration, he got sober in a rehab facility. During his recovery, he got his college degree so he could work in sober living facilities to help others.
Now, to address his heart health, he’s put that same determination and energy into making lifestyle changes. He’s learned how diet and exercise connect directly with his health, how to create a balanced plate and the sneaky harms of sugar in soda. Cooking demonstrations showed him how to prepare vegetables in a way he’d actually like, and the classes exposed him to a greater variety of produce.
“I always liked bananas and apples and pears, but the classes introduced us to kiwi, cherries, blueberries, all kinds of other stuff that I really never bought,” Rodriguez said. “I started buying that just to try it out. And now I put it in my oatmeal.”
Ernie prioritizes eating multiple servings of fruit and vegetables every day and swaps out fast food burgers for lean, nutrient-rich protein like fish. He attends Venice Family Clinic’s free food markets to get fresh produce. When he needs to pick something up from the corner store, he walks instead of drives. And rather than turning on the TV when he needs to relax, he listens to classical music while walking.
The changes Rodriguez has been making are working. His weight and blood pressure are down, and he has a reinvigorated interest in making the most out of his life.
“I’m not afraid to go to the park and take a few laps right there just walking,” Rodriguez said. “It’s enjoyable, you know? Life is life is more enjoyable now.”