Chest pains — plus a concern for his weight and health — prompted a Rhode Island man to take a wellness journey that he said saved his life. The unlikely rescuer? A Chick-fil-A salad.
“I knew I needed to make a change,” Tom Carroll, 32, a digital content producer from Lincoln, Rhode Island, told Fox News Digital.
At 360 pounds, Carroll had tried and failed to change his diet and lifestyle. But after Thanksgiving 2023, he had “the most serious chest pain” he’d ever experienced.
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“I knew that was a moment where I couldn’t mess around anymore,” he said.
“I needed to buckle down and take this seriously.”
A few days later, Carroll’s wife, Morgan, decided to pick up Chick-fil-A for dinner and asked her husband for his order. His surprising answer was a Spicy Southwest Salad.
“Unbeknownst to her, I had made this promise to myself that I was going to go on this health journey and take it seriously,” Carroll said. “I hadn’t talked to anyone about my chest pains or my desire to lose weight, which, in hindsight, I regret. I just asked her to pick me up one of those salads.”
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Something clicked.
“This salad was delicious,” he said. “I’ve always liked something a little spicier and I love Mexican food. This has all those Tex-Mex elements.”
The salad has grilled spicy chicken breast on mixed greens and is served with tomatoes, cheese, roasted corn, black beans and peppers, topped with pepitas and a creamy salsa dressing.
It’s 680 calories with 49 grams of fat, 27 carbs and 33 grams protein, according to Chick-fil-A.
“I thought, if I [could] eat this salad every single day, I wouldn’t get bored eating a salad,” Carroll recalled.
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Because there’s no Chick-fil-A in Lincoln, Carroll began making the 4-mile trek to the nearest one in Attleboro, Massachusetts, every single day. Chick-fil-A is closed on Sundays, so he’d pick up an extra salad on Saturdays to help him stay on track.
Carroll also gave up drinking alcohol – initially just on weekdays.
“But when I would drink on the weekends, it would always just lead to bad food decisions.”
Still, he “wasn’t stepping on the scale” to know how much weight he’d lost – until one night when he had a relapse.
Carroll ate an entire pizza by himself while watching football and started to feel chest pains again.
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“They were persistent that night,” he said.
After waking up his wife in the middle of the night to take him to the emergency room, Carroll weighed himself. He’d seen “a video of a nurse saying it’s good to know how much you weigh before you show up to a hospital, in case they need to administer medicine as soon as you get [there].”
“So, I got on the scale.”
He had lost more than 60 pounds.
“I was elated,” he said. “It was the weirdest feeling ever to go from thinking I was going to die to then being so happy I had lost so much weight by eating the salads.”
At the ER, Carroll said he saw people in much worse shape than he was — and after finding out that he was not having a heart attack, he became even more motivated to not end up there again.
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He made a doctor’s appointment, joined a gym and continued eating a daily salad, eventually developing a homemade version to eat for dinner.
Carroll credits the staff of Chick-fil-A for his weight-loss success. They were some of the first people to know he was trying to lose weight and improve his health, he said.
“They became my support system,” he said. He called them his “biggest cheerleaders.”
Carroll said he felt safe sharing his weight loss with the employees.
“It was a no-judgment zone,” he said, “and I knew they were going to be positive regardless of what I told them.”
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Kelly Springer, a registered dietitian based in Skaneateles, New York, said Carroll seems to be getting protein, vegetables, nutrients and vitamins and “knows exactly what his calories are.”
She added, “With that consistency, he could see that change over time.”
Springer said she normally recommends more varieties of fruits and vegetables to help diversify gut bacteria.
But “it was [healthier] for him to get into a weight range that doesn’t put him at risk [of] chronic disease,” she said.
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Carroll has lost 132 pounds. He said he’s in “maintenance mode” now, feeling better than ever at 228 pounds.
“I’ve been able to maintain that by sticking to my salads every day, making homemade salads for dinner, eating a light breakfast and working out an hour in the gym almost every day,” he said.
A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A declined to comment.