I have always struggled with weight. I’m no scientist, but by looking at my relatives on both sides, I can see that there is an unmistakable predisposition toward rotundity in my genetic code. Not everyone has been struck by it, but it’s certainly there.
During my junior year of high school, I made my first attempt at being a homeschooler. I was fed up with public school and I plunged into the murky depths of learning at home. It wasn’t for me, but what was for me was the opportunity to get into shape. Going into that year, I weighed in at 214 pounds. I was pudgy and soft and felt quite far away from being the chick magnet I wanted to be. Granted, I was nearing my final height of 6′4″, and with broad shoulders and fairly large build overall, 214 wasn’t very fat. It wasn’t, however, where I wanted to be.
Performing little to no cardio (I always had asthma problems as a kid) I began crafting my own diet, high in carbs and extremely low in fat. The carbs weren’t intentional, they were simply the only things I could find that didn’t have much fat in them. I absolutely refused to snack, and never ate late at night. At the time, I didn’t care about alcohol, so that wasn’t an issue. I didn’t worry about sugar at all.
In the mornings, I did a bunch of crunches and bench presses, and that was pretty much my workout. At the end of six months, I had dropped 34 pounds and hit my lowest weight of 180 pounds. I thought I looked great. I could feel my abs with my hand on my stomach, even if they weren’t ripped, and I was lean as could be. Looking back on my pictures, I was emaciated. 180 was way, way too skinny for me. I also royally screwed up my blood sugar levels, and have suffered from low sugar attacks ever since. Don’t know if the two are related.
My senior year added back some of the weight, and I found myself at a healthy 206. I was exercising a lot, so it was a less flabby 206 than I had experienced before. The summer before college, I worked in a physically intensive job with a family of German farmboys in Idaho, and added another 10 pounds. I was back to 215 when I started my first semester at Steubenville, but I was in great shape.
College is fairly sedentary, however, and includes large quantities of foods like pizza and beer. After fluctuating up during the semesters and down during summer jobs that were very active, I graduated from college weighing 245. I was a bit more pudgy than I would have liked, but I was still in decent shape and had reasonably good reactions from the ladies. It was in fact at this time that I met my wife, who was at the time sporting a lovely physique of her own that was often well displayed through the use of miniskirts (which she has since gotten rid of…to both my relief and chagrin.)
There was a problem, however. Jamie and I both love to eat. In fact, our first real encounter was over lunch, where we discovered our mutual passion for food. I was also entering the phase of my life known as the “sedentary white collar career”, which involved increasingly longer commutes and even more epic stretches of time sitting on my butt in front of a computer screen under unnatural fluorescent lighting.
The pounds began to add up. They peaked just before my wedding, then I managed to fight them back down, only to move to a different place and schedule and allow them to stack back up. Now, as I mark the first full year of my thirties, I shudder to admit that it’s not a fluke, not simply the result of a binge or a bender, but that the scale consistently tells me something I utterly don’t want to hear.
I weigh 300 pounds. Yes, that’s THREE HUNDRED POUNDS.
Granted, a guy my size at three hundred can still see his toes, walk up stairs without panting for breath, and doesn’t look nearly like Jared before he did the Subway thing. But three hundred is three hundred. I’m carrying an extra hundred pounds over my senior year of high school. That’s like having an entire Ewok strapped to my chest, 24/7. (A full-grown Ewok. Not Wickett.)
The time has come for things to change. I’ve added 10 inches to my waist since high school. Stuff doesn’t fit that should. Tying my shoes without an elevated platform of some kind to rest my foot on is a chore. I’m sluggish and tired even when I get a good night’s sleep. I feel like crap, my back hurts, and I’m a chronic grump.
I used to have a little something called willpower. I find that concept elusive these days. I’m gone from home for nearly 12 hours a day, and when I arrive, I’ve got screaming babies to attend to, a frustrated wife, a messy home that said wife couldn’t stop from being destroyed by said babies while she was making dinner, and a whole butt-load of stress that I carry with me from day to day because of any number of reasons, including the fact that I’m a psychopathic worrier.
I could etch out a little bit of time at night to exercise, but it would be tough. When things finally settle down, the time I do have is coveted relaxation time, usually on a full belly. I still haven’t figured out the trick to waking up early and getting moving. I am a zombie when I awake. Exercise is as far from my mind as it can get.
So I have an uphill climb ahead of me. The fact is, I don’t want to weigh 500 pounds by the time I’m forty, or need quadruple bypass surgery before I qualify for a senior citizen discount, or become a diabetic like my grandfather (who also hit 300 at some point). I love my wife and kids, and I’d like to not only be around for them, but in a better mood. And of course, I really want to look better in my bikini…wait, no. Forget I said that.
So this is it. This is the first step toward accountability. This is me, telling you, my 3.7 readers, that you can nag or encourage me as you like, and heap scorn, derision and public humiliation on me if I fail. I have about 350 days left this year, and I want to lose thirty pounds. This is, I think, a reasonable (if not nearly sufficient) goal. It’s 0.08 pounds a day, or 2.5 pounds a month.
I should be able to do this. I plan on updating on the first of each month to say how things are going. Maybe at the end of the year I’ll post before and after photos - but only if I don’t shower or shave in the before photos and can airbrush the after photos and wear my most slimming clothes and have über-stylish hair.
With any luck, maybe I can lose more. This isn’t just a cliché New Year’s resolution weight loss thing, either. This is one of several big goals I have this year, which include getting evaluated by a medical professional for my ADD/Anxiety issues and seeing my own writing in print in a real publication of some kind.
I’m terrible about goal-setting and goal-accomplishing, but I’m going to give it an honest-to-goodness try.
Let the fat jokes begin.
