He stood frozen, staring grimly, even fearfully at the monster that was glaring and snarling at him from its lair in the corner of the room. This ritualistic and contentious game of intimidating and threatening stare down had worn on for some three years now, a domestic "Cold War" of sorts. The cream-colored beast, flat and almost squarish, with foreboding and frightening figures on the left of its face counterbalanced by ridiculous, seemingly pointless sums to the right, had hissed at him and mocked him each and every time he had passed within its proximity, feigning to ignore it, since their last encounter. The daily taunting and terror had to come to an end. Today. Flinching with each halting step, he ever so gingerly approached the fiendish creature, as though he were a house cat, rather than a lion, stalking a white rhino from the cover of the savanna grass. With the grace and speed of a hulking pachyderm rather than the nimbleness of the jungle's king, he finally sprung into action, pouncing upon his prey with both feet, angrily, as though he wished to stomp the very life from it. A plume of dust bellowed into the air above the now convulsing contrivance. The beast that had haunted and taunted him so groaned beneath his girth. He teetered to and fro, trying to achieve vertical equilibrium atop his small, yet terrifying nemesis of a perch. When the whirring of the pesky prism's ghoulish countenance finally slowed and fluttered to a shaky and strained stop, he gathered the courage to look down. And what he saw? Well, it caused him to gasp aloud. Tears welled up in his eyes as he gazed in disbelief bred of denial. The dreaded day of reckoning, of coming to grips with ugly reality, had finally and ever so painfully befallen him. There was no way, no place (literally, no place big enough) that he could hide from the truth any longer. How in the world did he ever reach this point?
Why it is there at all, I do not really know. But there it is, recorded neatly in blue, hand-written ink on my first grade report card for all of posterity. Six year-old me tipped the scales at 74 pounds. When Mama bought clothes for me as a child, she found them in that most ridiculed of all size classifications...you know, the dreaded, the infamous "Husky" (this, of course, is code for "fat" would be an incredibly politically incorrect and insensitive to put on the label of a child's clothing today). You see, I have battled weight, with all of its concomitant physical, psychological and social baggage, as long as I can remember. What baggage, you may say? Fat people are all jolly, aren't they? Well, let me inventory just a little bit of it for you. "Fatty", "Fatso", "Fat Boy" - all scarring names that were routinely thrown my way in childhood, names that affected my psyche and self-esteem for life. As a boy, I wasn't allowed to play Pee Wee football, because I was over the weight limit. I was so humiliated that I never really wanted to play again. In my neighborhood, there was a kid that taunted me mercilessly with those names and always tried to pick a fight with me in front of the other children. I have beaten myself up ever since for not defending myself. In high school, I didn't attract tons of girls. In adulthood, not only am I the oldest father among my daughter's classmates, I'm also the "fat daddy". She came home crying one day because another child had so cruelly felt the need to point that out to her. And while I have always counted myself blessed (and lucky as hell) that such a beautiful, special woman chose me to be her husband, I have never understood why or felt that I was worthy of her. And I have seen, on occasion, those dubious looks from others who clearly were wondering the same thing. And in the inner recesses of my psyche, I have reached that place that many obese people do when you feel that, because you are obese, you are insignificant, less important than other people. You begin to recognize, or at least imagine, that people often seem to look right through you, and you begin to feel...well, invisible. Are those enough issues for you? Well, good, but just keep in mind, they are really but a sampling of the baggage that being fat can encumber a person with. To top it off, fat and aging is a really bad combination. And the former seems to exacerbate the latter.
Only once in my life I have known what it's like to be thin. That was when, at the end of a fierce campaign to shed my "freshman twenty" (or thirty) in college, I whittled my way all the way down to a twig-like 159 pounds (for a dude at any age, a 32-inch waist is skinny) on a diet consisting largely of yogurt, salad, ground beef patties (old school diet food) and, of course, Tab, the nectar of the diet gods . Other than that single fleeting time in life, my "battle of the bulge" has pretty much been an erratic series of ups and downs, with many more and larger ups than downs. During much of my twenties, the vanity and virility of youth was somewhat my ally, and I managed not to balloon out of control. However, as youthfulness faded, metabolism slowed, time ate away at my testosterone levels, and the stresses of adult and career life mounted, "the enemy" rallied, and increasingly, I sought refuge and solace in beer, big steaks, big portions and Blizzards. At the end of the day, it just all boiled down to the simple, cold fact that "big boy just like to eat"...a lot...and often.
The tell tale signs of some impending climax (or calamity) to this lifelong struggle began to appear like the clouds of an approaching storm during the last year or so. In the months following my retirement at the end of last May, I began noting that I was sleeping very poorly, tossing and turning throughout each and every night. I also found that when I got up in the mornings it took a few minutes to an hour to really get moving. It was if, like a car in winter, I had to "get warmed up". Ecstatic to be free of the stresses of thirty-one years of working with teenagers, my new daily routine consisted of donning my retirement uniform of t-shirts, shorts, and flip flops each day and the setting about doing my daily chores of cleaning, laundry, cooking, and pool and yard maintenance. I stayed busy, but it wasn't really exercise. I walked occasionally but, more often than not, I managed to think of some domestic chore that took priority over exercising. As the months passed, my restless nights and slow sluggish starts to my day persisted, despite my "keeping busy".
In late October, I spent the weekend in Jacksonville at the Georgia-Florida game with my wife, my brother and sister-in-law, and my sister and brother-in-law. Upon returning home to the Island, my wife posted a picture that she had taken of me and my brother (there are few in existence) that weekend on Facebook . I was appalled at what I saw. When I told her of my horror upon seeing my image, she revealed that my brother and sister-in-law had both expressed concern to her about my weight during our visit. Seeing that hideous picture, hearing of my brother's worry, and then enviously and insecurely watching my beautiful, trim, athletic wife run her very first half-marathon the following weekend surely combined to provide me with a much-needed wake-up call, didn't they? Um-m-m-m-m, no. After vowing to walk and to try to eat better for a week or so out of guilt and shame, I soon relapsed and returned to the friendly, familiar, and non-judgmental confines of DENIAL land, that magical place we create in our minds where we can hide behind all of our good excuses from the truth. I mean, after all, in my bathroom mirror, which only shows from the neck up, my head didn't really look that much fatter, did it? And besides, the holidays would be soon upon us. Within a week or two, with my guilt once again safely suppressed, I fell right back into my old sedentary, self-satiating, self-deluding habits.
At the dawn of the new year, like so many others did, I pledged to get fit. I walked with ferocity...for awhile. But I found that after a couple of miles, my feet just ached and eventually just went on strike. I bought pair upon pair of walking shoes (even ones for overweight walkers) and special inserts, but nothing seemed to help. Blaming the shoe and foot engineers rather than myself, I allowed the pain to provide me with a good excuse to curb my resolve to get moving in the annus (note the consecutive 'n's) novum. Accompanying my foot problems (and subsequent waning will)), yet another sign of trouble appeared on the horizon. In the outside of my right thigh, I had a numb, but burning sensation. I had sporadically experienced it over the course of the last year, but it had always subsided. This time was different; this time it didn't go away. Like so many in the online age, rather than seeing a doctor I decided to try to diagnose myself on the Internet. Besides, I never have been one much for going to the doctor; never really been sickly, never really felt the need, never really wanted to know if anything was wrong on those rare occasions when I sensed there might be a problem. Very quickly, I pinpointed the condition that I believed (and still do) to be the culprit - meralgia paraesthetica, or a pinched nerve in the groin area that resulted in the very sensation in the exact area that I was experiencing it. The cause? Obesity...or maybe pregnancy. And to add fuel to my growing flames of concern, as winter dragged on and I repeatedly attempted to recommit to my New Year's resolution, my feet not only continued to ache after walking but I began to have tingling sensations and numbness in them as well. My research into this new symptom suggested a possible diagnosis that I dreaded...diabetes.
Despite all of these signs portending the likelihood of the onset of more serious health issues, I denied and procrastinated. Now I consider myself a reasonable intelligent person, so my refusal and failure to act in the face of the mounting troubling evidence goes to prove that the power of denial can render even the brightest people blind, ignorant, or perhaps both. Finally, however, when I was least expecting it, my wake up call finally came. One morning in mid-March, while I was having my coffee after taking my daughter to school and before beginning my daily routine, I received a text. It was from my best friend, my wife. It said, "Metabloic (Weight Loss Clinic) is opening a clinic on the Island. I wish you would try it for yourself. You are worth it!" Throughout our marriage, I have talked to my wife, a lifelong athlete, fitness geek, and a physical educator by training, about losing weight. She has always lovingly supported me in my struggle. While she would listen and respond when I raised the topic (yet again and again), she never ever brought the topic up herself. Among the various weight loss programs out there, Metabolic had come up in our previous talks, as we knew a couple of people that had great success on their program. I, of course, had always shot the idea down because a) it involved traveling back and forth across the bridge to Brunswick, which I am loathe to do unless I just have to, and b) it involved spending money. I had always railed that I wasn't spending any money on anything that I could do (but wouldn't, of course...but that's beside the point) on my own for free. Knowing how difficult that it must have been for her to send that text and that she felt that I was worth any expense finally made me stop and take stock of what had been happening to me over the past three years and throughout my life. "It's time...it's finally time," I said to myself. After all, it's not as though the thought that I might die soon if I didn't do something had never crossed my mind.
Because spring holidays for the girls were looming just ahead, I targeted Monday, April 9th, when they would return to school, as DDD-Day, Determined to Diet and not Die Day. I began to contemplate what my plan of attack should be. Having been engaged in this fight virtually all of my life, I have, by this point, acquired a quite a bit of knowledge (that is not say that knowledge always translates to power, or action...it doesn't) on the subject. So-o-o, what's the game plan gonna' be, Coach? Well, let's see, we could go Nutri-System or Weight Watchers route and eat pizza, either out of a package or for points, but either way, for a price...nope, I don't think so. Metabolic? Nah, already nixed that. But wait, what about the concept behind it? I started researching and reading about people that had independently used HCG and the "Pounds and Inches" Plan. While I was researching and planning one day, the television was on in the background one day, and they aired an interview with one of my all-time heroes, Bill Clinton...ha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a, that was a joke. Anyway, in the interview, "Slick Willie" was talking about a doctor who had written a book called, "The Blood Sugar Solution", and how it had helped him. He also shared that Pastor Rick Warren, he of The Purpose Driven Life fame, had put him on it and that he had introduced to Saddleback congregation which had used it with tremendous success to lose literally tons of weight.
In sum, in the book Dr. Mark Hyman talks about the epidemic of diabesity that has spread among Americans, and he attributes it largely to the contemporary, super-sized, processed American diet which constantly raises blood sugar levels and conditions our hypothalamus to tell us that a) we are hungry, and b) we simultaneously need to store fat...a dietary double-edged sword of sorts. In addition to leading us down the path to obesity, this misguided diet also contributes to diabetes which so often accompanies being overweight. Dr. Hyman's work simply suggests that through a diet composed primarily of real, whole, natural foods weighted heavily toward the proper balance of lean proteins, healthy fats, and low-glycemic carbohydrates people can attain a healthy weight and may even be able to reverse the onset of diabetic symptoms...sometimes even in a matter of weeks. In addition, his program recommends employing a vitamin and herbal (nothing weird) supplement regimen (designed to help maintain nutritional needs and target things such as metabolism, cholesterol and heart health) and regular exercise as critical l tools in reversing diabesity.
In the end, I decided to adopt an amalgamated approach, blending the following features: using faux HCG drops (probably a placebo - didn't want to take the hormones of the HCG), sublingual B12 drops (for energy), and a 500 calorie per day diet (I know, hard core, right?) of two meals per day, consisting of 100 grams (less than 4 ounces) of lean protein, a cup of low-glycemic leafy, green vegetables (I ate kale, spinach, asparagus and broccoli, with a little romaine here and there), and a slice of melba toast, a meal plan taken from the "The Pounds and Inches" program and reinforced by The Blood Sugar Solution. This meager fare was combined with the supplement regimen and recommended exercise of "The Blood Sugar Solution". For breakfast, I would have only coffee ("Pounds to Inches") and my morning supplements. Other than coffee, I would drink only water or unsweetened tea. Whenever possible, the meat and vegetables were to be organic, with an eye toward detoxifying my body. What about the stringency of the 500 calories a day restriction? I decided that I needed to adopt President Obama's phony "We Can't Wait" approach with Congress in attacking this weight loss, believing that the longer it took me to lose the weight, the more my "want to" and stick-tuitiveness would wane (losing one or two pounds per week, however healthy that approach might be, it would take me a year or two to achieve my goals...never gonna' happen if it takes that long) . I committed to adhere to this spartan program for six weeks. There. With my game plan devised, all I needed from that point forward was to muster the will, commitment, and sense of purpose to get started and to stick with it without cheating...and, of course, as much support as I could garner, anticipating that the road which lay before me would often be rocky...very rocky.
On Sunday evening, April 8th, in a Facebook status, I shared that I was about to embark upon an endeavor that represented a monumental challenge for me, a personal Mein Kampf, if you will. I asked that willing Facebook friends, without knowing the nature of my struggle, pray for me as I faced this test. Having few close friends besides my family to lean upon as a support group and not being one likely to seek one out among complete strangers, I knew that this would help me to feel as though others were with and behind me in this gauntlet and that God would be along to look out for me, there to bolster me in the inevitable, dark moments of weakness that I would surely face. Many responded, and so, with the wind of my family and their prayers beneath my wings, I was ready to take off the next morning.
That Monday morning, of course, brought with it the dreaded, terrifying, and gut-wrenching confrontation with the bathroom scales that I described so dramatically (it was) at the outset of this piece and that I had been avoiding like the plague for some three years or so. When dust finally settled, the diabolical dial meted out its revenge for my having scorned it for so long. It confronted me with the ugly truth that I had really known, but denied, all along, that I had completely let myself go, a self-neglect culminating in a lifetime zenith of 288 pounds. This apocalypse was simultaneously humiliating, demoralizing, depressing, and horrifying. As I related, it literally brought tears to my eyes. As I stood there, wallowing in self pity, I wondered to myself if it was simply too late this time, if I was just too far gone, if I was now too old, too lacking in will, and too set in my ways to fight the fight and win this time, if the sheer amount of the obstacle I was facing represented a mountain that I would never be able to climb. Psychologically, the weigh-in was an inauspicious beginning, if not an outright crippling deathblow, that did not bode well for my chances of success. Would it even be worth the effort? Shouldn't I just learn to be as happy as I could be with being huge and just eat happily forever after with the whatever time that I had remaining in life?
Six weeks to the day, sixty-six pounds, and around 150 walking miles later, I have made my way from morbid obesity to plain ol' obesity to overweight to, finally, my point of origin, just plain ol' "husky". I never thought "husky" would be a pleasant place to be, but it is. I haven't had a beer, a Tab or Coke Zero, a Blizzard, butter, or anything fried in six weeks now. I truly believe that, as Dr. Hyman suggested, my hypothalamus has been re-programmed. I'm not hungry all the time anymore. I don't live life from meal to meal. When I eat, I eat slowly, chewing and savoring every bite (have had to learn to since there wasn't much of it). I find that I am often satisfied before I even complete my tiny meals. I have learned that many things that I didn't think that I could live without I can. When cooking for my family, I learned that I can do it without constantly "licking the spoon" or my fingers, without test-tasting to make sure that it was good (I had no idea how big of a habit that was; the number of extra calories that I took in per day doing so was probably astronomical). Like the Nutri-System ad says, all calories, I have learned, are indeed not created equal. That you are what and how much you eat is the truth, not an aphorism. I've discovered that is isn't necessary, or even wasteful, to clean every one's plate ("waist not, want not"...a pun I made up and I lived by). Portions that I previously would have considered ridiculous are now satisfying. Eating is no longer a pacifier, I no longer think of it as a reward that I deserve for the hard work or stress that my day entailed. I have finally learned to eat to live, rather than living to eat. And I have conditioned myself to make exercise, at least walking a few miles a day, part of my daily routine. After just a few weeks of habit formation, I now find that it takes a toll both on my my body and my conscience to miss my daily constitutional. I walked on 36 of the 42 days during my period of "re-education", three of those non-walking days coming consecutively when I was readying our home for an open house last month.
I also now have the answers to all of those distressing questions that ran through my mind on that dark Monday morning as I stared with dismay at the scales six weeks ago. No matter one's age, it's never too late to change what you want to change about yourself if you are dissatisfied enough about it and are determined to do so. Does that mean that making the change will be easy? No. There is nothing easy about 500 calories a day, at least not in the beginning. There is nothing easy about giving up and replacing deeply rooted habits and tastes. Self-sacrifice is NOT fun. There is nothing easy about training yourself to make the time to do something that you have never really liked to do, like exercising for the sake of exercising and for your well being and future. There just aren't any shortcuts or easy ways to accomplish this. We want there to be, but there's not. It's simple math. Intake vs. Output. Calories in have to be less than calories being expended. Portion size and exercise are musts. Sacrifice in lieu immediate self-gratification. No pain, no gain (or, in this case, loss).
And what about this question? Should anyone just throw in the towel and learn to just be happy and satisfied with being fat. Well, that's an easy one. Hell no!!! If you do, then you should seriously question if you really, really love yourself , life, and the people that you claim to love so much. I mean, yeah, I realize that I could still keel over and die at this very moment as I am hammering out this blog. My first doctor visit in five years is looming a couple of weeks away, and I could be at death's door right now, the damage already done and beyond repair. People my age die every moment of every day. But the odds of that happening, at least, have now been dramatically reduced. My leg is no longer numb. My feet don't tingle anymore. I am sleeping the best that I have in years (and so is my wife). I don't ache and stiffly stumble around when I get out of bed in the mornings. And with each passing day and disappearing pound, my feet are thanking me for lightening their load by allowing me to walk pain free and for longer distances. Doctors that you listen to harp upon how obesity dramatically reduces life expectancy. The bottom line is that if you truly love life, yourself, and your family and friends, then you owe it to yourself not to settle.
But be ye not fooled, loving food to excess is just like any other addiction. It can control you, ruin your life, and destroy your health. As is the case with beating any addiction, the possibility relapse is real. I should know. I have gotten a handle on my weight several times, only to fall back into my old habits. All it takes is a little extra or unexpected stress, or some complacency with success, or a hiatus from weighing and exercising for a period of time, and with lightning quickness, the cycle of denial that helped to cause the problem to balloon out of control to begin with can be recreated. I know that, for me, the war isn't over. I may have won the battle short term, but the war still rages. The risk of rebound will always represent a clear, present, and omnipresent danger in my life. I see the situation as much like America's War on Terrorism. We can wage it, think we've won, and then get weary with fighting the fight, but it will never really be over. When we least expect it, our complacency will be imploded with the stark reality of another tragedy like 9/11...or another self-esteem crushing and scale buckling weigh-in. So, yeah, I know I'm in this for the long haul this time. I will always have to work at controlling my weight. Does that mean that I'm never going to have another beer or Blizzard? Are you crazy? People can't and shouldn't live life devoid of any of its many pleasures, and let's face it, food is one life's "good things". But I have to be the master of my own mind and body and have to be able to control and temper my own urges and wants. If I can't do that, then I have to resign myself to the fact that I'm really not very mature, that I am really unworthy of calling or thinking of myself as an adult.
The other day I accidentally did something that, over the course of my life as an overweight person, I had conditioned myself never to do. When I was going into a barbecue place up the street to pick up some supper for the girls, I looked up and glanced at my reflection in the storefront glass. As a lifelong "fat, fat, fatty", you learn to avoid such full length, frontal reflections in a ritual of renegement and repulsion. I did not recognize the image that the glass cast back at me. I have also noticed this dramatic change in my silhouette on the pavement as I walk or take the dog out to do her business. In six, short (though sometimes it seemed like eons) weeks, I have change my body and my life. And, yes, it was worth it. Like my wife said in that reluctant but loving text a couple of months ago, I am worth it. If you too are struggling with weight, you're worth it too...
Today is good day. Today, I'm just plain ol' "husky" again. I never thought that "husky" could ever feel so good. Instead of nearly pushing the scale beyond 360 degrees today I am just a scant, few pounds, by comparison, above a healthy weight. And maybe, just maybe, if I keep fighting the good fight, a few "todays" into the not so distant future, I will be something that I have rarely been in my life...average weight for my height. Today is a good day for another reason, as well...today, I am allowing myself to add a hard-boiled egg (if I want it) and, best of all, a Tab to my coffee on my breakfast routine. Ah-h-h-h, life's simple pleasures...thanks for reading and feel free to share this with someone that you care about who, in grappling with their own weight demons, needs a little inspiration and the strength of your prayers and support...just like I did...thank you from the bottom of my heart...my heart that no longer pounds in my ears after simply walking up the stairs...
