Suddenly, there's a new a person at this party of killers. Someone add a Suspect Card for COVID-19, and an Item Card for Global Pandemic to my personal round of CLUE. Where will it happen?!
Anyway - the world is falling apart at the same time I am coming to terms with my life style choices, and my mortality. As stated, my horizon has changed. Both figuratively and literally. I've never been one that pondered old age, but I certainly never thought about being dead in my 50's either. A figurative shift in perspective has definitely taken place over the past year. Quite literally, when I look down at my feet, everything passed the stomach has disappeared. My perspective has shifted from nearly 6 feet, to about 2.5 feet to my stomach. It's depressing, demoralizing, and has contributed to the sinking of my self-worth.
In my life, I've always had very established plateaus regarding weight. For as long as I can remember, I always had what was referred to by most people as "baby fat". I just never could get a flat stomach even when I was in excellent shape. My work career, up until my current job, was generally, physical in nature. I remained for the most part, thin with a some stomach until my mid-20's. Then, I had perhaps my most physically-demanding job, and suddenly I had shoulders, and muscle tone, and jumped from 140 to ~180. I think most of that was muscle mass, because my stomach remained roundish but wasn't any larger. Then - I lost that job, and it took me some months to find another. In that time, my weight shifted from a healthy 180 to an unpleasant 180. It's in this period that the first suggestions that my sleep was abnormal were being uttered. I was 29. I don't know how long before this point I may have had abnormal sleep, this was simply the first time I was being included in the knowledge of it.
Additional Information: I just checked with my mum, and she told me that she doesn't remember me snoring ever. So... chicken (sleep apnea) likely came after egg (weight gain). So, in idiot's logic, if I lose all the eggs, so goes the chicken?!
So, in my 30s I established a new plateau, it was 229-238. Officially moving into the medically obese territory. I'm at the job that I am still with today (for now), and I had a lot of safeties in my life that resulted in a lot of complacency. Refusing to look at myself and instead I really refined my art of worrying about everyone else. If I treat everyone great, then they have to accept me in whatever condition I present myself. That's what I believed, it's a behavior I struggle with still. In my mid-30s,
I move to Orlando. The pace of my job went from completely manageable, to absolute madness. Everything around me became a source of stress: my job, my finances, my marriage, myself - I started drinking much more than I ever had before. What felt like 30 pounds of stress, had turned into 30 pounds of weight by the time I left Orlando. I'd also established a diagnosis of High-Blood Pressure, an Anxiety Disorder, and had Kidney Stones (twice). I was "off-the-rails" at this point... my body was in bad shape, my head was in worse shape, and I had developed an unreal-level of selfishness that was fed by years of worthlessness, betrayal, denial, and every bit of toxicity I could cling to.
Into lovely New Orleans... overweight (260), undiagnosed medical conditions on top of the known ones, depression, anxiety, utter fear - "I should start smoking!" My reasoning is at premium levels of stupid now. Our home is surrounded by cemeteries, but I don't see the irony of it. I again have other people to put all of my energy and focus on. There's so many new hurdles: new faces at work, new faces at home, wow, the school's are terrible and there seems to be a lot of crime, and wow - look at all these celebrations, and cemeteries. So many distractions... shuffle the cards, palm the one that has me on it. It's somewhere in this time frame that I lost my connection with memories of how it felt to be healthy, and to have clear thoughts.
Soon comes a series of cascading events... when I think about them now, it's hard to remember the good in-between. There has definitely been some magic... my marriage to Hannah, and the events surrounding it may be the best memories I will ever have; our adventures together; Ethan growing up and all of his successes and interests. All of that has kept me from complete darkness. For the past four-and-a-half years, I've been fighting a war against my body and my mind.
A broken ankle and knee during a business trip resulted in one of my most nightmarish and humiliating events and left me being stuck downstairs for over a month, and out of the office. My knee had given out hundreds of times, but I never managed to break an ankle and my kneecap. It was my weight that shattered my bones. Like I said, humiliating. Physical therapy was beneficial, followed by surgery, and more physical therapy. Motivated, oh so briefly to do better - and failed myself.
Having done absolute zero to correct my horrible diet, my weight reached it's next plateau, (~285), which navigated down and up until my gallbladder tried to kill me. I thought the kidney stones were excruciating, my experience with a gallbladder going haywire was days and days of misery that turned into weeks until I was admitted to the hospital and finally had it removed.
It's been post surgery that it feels like the terrible choices I make, result in terrible, cannot ignore, types of consequences. And here I am, just shy of 300 pounds. Every day, I am checking the scale - "is today the day?" So far, not yet. But I'm hovering right at that point. My body gave me signals one morning while standing in line at a Lowes - and it scared me. A bizarre shooting pain across my chest, and I was convinced that was the moment. Contemplating whether or not to alert this poor clerk in the garden center, and flashes of my wife and my son finding out...the ambulance ride, and memories of the humiliating moment when I broke my ankle. I went to the car and the sensation came 2 or 3 more times. I got home, maybe going in shock, and frantically searched YouTube and Google for the symptoms of a heart attack. I didn't have one, at least as far as I know. It was enough to convince me to put the cigarettes to bed. It took a couple of months, but I did finally quit in October 2019. Nearly five months ago as of this writing. Success at that convinced me I can take care of myself.
This past weekend, I made it through Saturday and Sunday without soda. In some regards - that's a miracle. I wanted to see what would happen. The scale seemed favorable to the idea. I'm also playing with a low-carb diet. I know you have to go all in until ketosis, so I am failing at that. But, I am eating much less fast food, fewer carbs, soda only til 12, and making a low-carb dinner for myself. My plan, as ill-conceived as it is, is to continue on this path until habits form, upon which I can build more discipline.
I want to lose 100 pounds. Can I do this? Is surgery my best or only option? Reality is, like the sleep apnea - my poor diet is going to kill me. Diabetes, stroke, heart attack - any number of ways. I want to be clear, I am not equating weight with health. I have acquired my weight through making unhealthy dietary choices, but even if I hadn't - it's my diet, the smoking, the low self-esteem, and complacency that are at the core of my poor health. If I didn't have high blood pressure, or sleep apnea, or paper maché knees, or a lack of energy - I wouldn't be talking about my weight. As I've added weight, and maintained an unhealthy diet, I've added a detrimental effect. I can exercise (yes I should), and maybe if I fell, I wouldn't break a bone... or I can lose the weight that will break the bone. For me, it's a path of least resistance. Maybe on the other end, is more energy and fewer things that will kill me?
My rationale is that every pound after 180 came with an added ill-effect. I know it's nonsense to think that going in reverse will make those ailments fall away. Again - it's not the weight, it's the diet. So - I am going to do everything I can to change my diet and hopefully lose a lot of weight.
I hope that anyone reading this doesn't take offense to my words. My experience is my own, and I don't assume that what is true for me is true for everyone. I don't believe weight and quality of health are connected. I also don't believe that what I consider to be unhealthy choices, are true for everyone.
With that said - on to the next...
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