GIVING THANKS FOR FINALLY BEING HEALTHY

I CANNOT BELIEVE THAT I LOOK HALFWAY IN SHAPE

This is not me.

http://Pedestrianspace.Org asked for a full length photo.

I’m still used to seeing the 300 pound me. 

This is the 170 pound me. 

Eating healthy, working out has transformed me after 4 decades of being overweight.

THE VERY LONG ROAD TO REDEMPTION

AND A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE

By the time I escaped my family’s endless descent into more toxicity, by being the first Wright ever to attend college, I knew what a reward was. A reward was a pair of bacon double cheeseburgers.

I also knew what comfort and love were. Those came in the form of downing whole pizzas with 6 toppings, or wolfing down enough giant burritos to feed four starving men.

When I realized my dad was perfectly content to ignore most of my mom’s obsessive compulsive and other damaging behavior, I salved my pain – and 40 work, 40 hours of study weeks – with newly-discovered sub shops and fatty food drive throughs open late night in downtown Akron.

It took me damn near a half century to figure out that I could confront pain and reward achievement – with something other than triple slices of cheesecake with a caloric content exceeding the recommended intake for all five work days.

I’m not all the way there. When even a hint of anxiety or depression enters my life, visions of iced brownies, XL orders of fried catfish and mountains of double buttered whipped potatoes dance in my head.

I’m an orphan now. Have been for nearly a year. Dad died of cancer a few years back and mom died in a nursing home April last year when COVID was ravaging her dementia care ward. They are at rest, maybe, freed from the demons that robbed them of much joy and burdened their two sons with shame, obesity, insecurity and mountains of unresolved issues.

I’m about as imperfect as they come. But I have a dynamite soulmate of a wife. I have a loving, if strained relationship with my only sibling.

And for the first time since I was a tiny boy, I’m eating right and exercising routinely.

 

OVEREATING -- ROOTED IN SADNESS

I WAS TAUGHT TO MAKE FOOD MY DRUG OF CHOICE

I understand the factors that made me overweight from a young age.

My late mother was severely mentally ill and dad unspeakable things to me. A chaotic and terrifying day was a good one.

A day of having everything you loved dearly -- including trinkets your beloved late grandfather gave you on his deathbed when you were nine – torn from your arms, broken then burned in a ceremony of anger and draconian punishment, those were the hard ones. And they sometimes outnumbered the “simply” torturous days of chaos and agony.

When my mom would come out of her fit of fear, anger and rage – she’d run to get her little boy a big pizza.

When she snapped out of it -- and realized she should not have told me I would be an orphan because she was either fated to die within a year or would take her life in front of me – she would bake a pie and feed me half of it.

After a round where my mom, nearly psychotic, would attack me, pummel me – then lie and tell my dad that I raised my hand to her, so he would beat me black and blue when he got home from work – she would order a 4-piece fried chicken dinner with huge breaded jo jo potatoes to some how make up for it.

When I went years without seeing a museum, park, zoo, or play on a school field trip – because her messed up mind felt I would be exposed to imagined death-causing germs for leaving the classroom – she compensated my weeping (because of being left out) with half bags of chips, pretzels and sugary sodas.

When I became isolated from all friends – I was the only kid who never was allowed to host sleep overs, or have visitors, or join a sports team – and considered a leper to be made fun of, mom would feed me a half dozen big donuts from the in-store bakery at the new super market.

From about second grade on, you can see it in my school pictures. As my tummy outgrew its little body, my eyes looked vacant, sad, mournful, hopeless.

Part 4, the final chapter, published in this blog on Sunday March 14

THE HEALTHY LIFESTYLE JOURNEY CONTINUES

NEXT UP, LOSE 25 ADDITIONAL POUNDS AND EXERCISE MORE

Carrying around a second “me” in belly and other fat took its toll.

I started realizing that when in Turkey or Morocco – I would shun restaurants that had third story dining rooms reached only by stairs.

I would skip the museum on a hilltop for a walk through a neighborhood on flat land.

I threw a fit when a budget inn told me upon check-in that the elevators was broken and wouldn’t be repaired for ages – so I would have to walk not only to my room but to the rooftop café for included meals.

I was about 50 – and not a smoker or drinker or taker of much of anything stronger than Tylenol – but my knees were killing me.

Finally, my beloved wife Heidi told me I needed a plan.

No more thinking I would walk off a giant meal.

No more fad diet, or buying an armload to Lean Cuisine dinners and figuring those would magically shrink my size by delivering a lower cal microwaved lunch and dinner.

I got an app that rates the fat/sugar/carb/protein count of food.

I made a 3.5 hour trip to the grocery, buying a lot of stuff that barely made it to our fridge and cupboards before.

I slowly, methodically threw out dozens and dozens of treats, main dishes, sauces, sweets, breads, brownie mixes and other stuff I’d been mainlining forever.

I try to walk several miles per week, but I know that portion control and cutting out a lot of stuff that is darn near poison (albeit tasty, well-marketed poison) – is the key.

I have several remaining goals:

1)     Step up the walking even more. And bicycle too.

2)     Continue to cut out some once a week treat foods – even if they are in small portions and fit within my meal plan.

3)     Keep the 100 pounds lost off of me for six months – to make sure I’m not one of those folks that celebrate reaching a goal…by consuming a bunch of “cheat” treats that were the reason I needed to drop 100

4)     Drop another 25 pounds. Yep, your read that correctly. I’m not auditioning for the role of a man on hunger strike. I simply got so out of control, that to truly be the weight I should be – for my age and height under six feet – I need to drop about 125 total, from my December 2019 starting date.

Wish me luck.

I HAVE NOW LOST 100 POUNDS

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

It started around Thanksgiving 2019.

We went out to an upscale seafood holiday buffet at a waterfront restaurant.

Overweight almost all my life (well, since 3^rd grade, but that’s almost a half century ago), I went hog wild.

Oh, the grilled finfish and chilled shellfish might have actually been decent choices.

But somewhere along the way -- gumbo with rice, starchy side dishes, breaded crab cakes, fried fish, sauces, butters, sodas and too many dessert bar trips to count – I did what I always do: eat like a starving man.

And when we got home, I didn’t even feel bad.

This became such a routine, that I didn’t feel like I had a half dozen portions of full meals – in one body.

I think just about every one of us loves food.

We crave fat and sugar.

Back when there wasn’t a drive-through on every corner and a snack count at every convenience store and gas station, we had to work all day for a meal – so if we gobbled down a bit much, it was burned off.

For me, food has a magical quality.

I fell under its spell like a person with substance abuse issues chases the high from heroin, meth or hard liquor.

Have a miserable day. Boss tore into your over nothing? Parents 1,000 miles away not speaking to your over a trivial issue? Treated your spouse poorly and raking yourself over the coals trying to figure out not only how to apologize, but also how to stop yourself from repeating bad behavior?

Eat a half a giant pizza, down a whole bag of chips, eat a third of a pie, down 6 pieces of fried fish drowned in tartar and accompanied with a mountain of French fries.

But food also was a way of patting myself on the back, of making sure the warm feeling of success felt like a zillion calories inside an ever-expanding tummy.

So a family sized serving of whipped potatoes in butter, a half a box of gourmet chocolate, a PBJ on artisanal bread with Jif and high fructose jelly spread thick as an inch – those were the way to do a victory lap, to celebrate the front page story, the closed deal with a creative client, the first day in Europe on vacation with my wife.

While I had to (or should have learned to) own this behavior for a third of a century of being an adult – I did not.

It took me decades and decades to realize that even if I didn’t care about my appearance “because hell, I was not male model or movie star,” that I was risking my health.

(more on my healthy lifestyle journey next blog post – February 28)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO (A HEALTHIER) ME

I’VE TAKEN OFF ABOUT 70 POUNDS THIS YEAR

I’m not a big birthday guy.

Mine is the 22^nd, this Thursday.

We will probably do more for Halloween.

And we never go out on the date itself, unless it falls on a Saturday or Sunday.

Call us pragmatic children of the Midwest.

The big thing to mark this year, more so than accomplishing 56 years on earth, is my weight loss.

On Thanksgiving 2019, we went to a seafood buffet.

I turned it into a see food buffet.

I ate about 20 plates of everything in site including breads, starches and desserts.

Easily blowing up the healthy, low calorie value of seafood.

In early December, my bride of a third of a century suggested some lifestyle changes.

We focused on weight loss.

I’ve been fat all my life.

Actually, up to second grade, I was skinny as a rail.

But my mom fell into terrible mental illness in the early 1970s.

She said “sorry” by heaping on fatty food.

I medicated with mass quantities.

Let’s just say by the time I started looking at portion control and introducing more fruits and veggies, I was getting up to NFL lineman weight.

And that was on a 5-10 frame, not a 6-4 frame of a big boned left tackle.

I started learning stuff. Like that a granola bar seemed like a better choice than a candy bar, but that many have more fat and calories than a few squares of dark chocolate.

And I used to think I was doing great eating a half cup of raisins. Or a gulping a big glass of orange juice.

Till I found out sugar in those.

I knew eating the better part of a whole pizza, even a small one, was wrong.

Little did I know that once slice of a cheese pizza was more calorie than a healthy eater should down for lunch.

So here we are, 70 pounds lighter.

A flight of stairs no longer is the enemy.

My knees don’t feel like their 90 years old.

Pants are sliding down without a smaller belt.

I’m swimming in some of my fat dude golf shirts.

The frightening thing, considering how much I’ve shed, is that I’m still fat by any measure.

I have more than a couple pounds to go to get under 200.

I'd like to reach my ideal body weight for a 5-10 man over 50.

It's won't be easy. I’ve plateaued for a few months.

They say it happens.

I need to walk more.

While I’ve done great with the calories and food choices, I’ve not exercised enough.

I know that does great things for metabolism and even mental well-being.

I guess the same combo of stuff that kept me putting off healthy eating for more than four decades has continued to block my desire to schedule some walks around the neighborhood park.

I know I don’t have to join a gym, buy equipment and do cardio till I pass out.

A healthy body is two simple things. Eat less (and better) and move around more.

Here’s to calling myself out in public in this blog.

Guess my birthday gift to myself is pretty obvious.

Time to start walking.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, 

I RESOLVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO MY HEALTH

From the time I was little, I ate whatever I wanted in whatever quantity made me feel full.

It’s a long story – one that will be told on this blog sometime in 2020 – but suffice to say my mom was severely mentally ill and often abusive.

In her rare times of being lucid and contrite, she would cook an insane amount of food for me as a way of saying sorry.

A little kid, barely 5, would be served enough lasagna, garlic bread, veal cutlet and cake to feed a crew of Olympic swimmers in training.

Fruits and vegetables were rarely on the dinner table.

Thus began a century of associating 5,000+ calorie days with being loved.

Feeling down, eat an entire pizza.

Celebrating something great, get $300 worth of food from a $100 gourmet brunch.

I turned 55 in 2019 and by the end of the year, decided that maybe another round of buying bigger pants, shirts and belts…was not the answer.

So I am on my journey.

Healthy eating and exercising seems as exotic and faraway to me as the images of Marrakech, Morocco displayed at the top and bottom of this page.

But day by day, I am getting used to shopping healthy, cooking healthy, eating healthy.

Wish me luck as I add some healthy moderation to my life.