THE NEW ME

I75 POUNDS – DOWN FROM MORE THAN 300

I guess this is still me.

But when I look in the mirror, I’m not sure it’s me.

I’m used to a double chin, maybe a triple.

I’m used to cropping every photo at the shoulders – because there was a mountain of fat below.

I weighed 175 pounds before I entered high school.

The last time I was ever my proper body weight for height and age was entering the summer between 2^nd and 3^rd grade.

I still may well suffer the body damages brought on by four-plus decades of obesity…I wonder aloud whether a knee or hip replacement is in my future or if overworked heart and organs will have something to say about the way I treated them.

I’d be lying if I said I no longer crave eating an entire pizza to celebrate something, or to eat two bacon cheeseburgers, a super large fry and chocolate shake to cope with something depressing.

Just this month, while in New York on business, I certainly indulged in a bit more pastrami, slice pizza, cannoli and Korean Fried Chicken than my daily regimen allows.

But I also got up early to run and took a super long walk before day’s end.

I totaled just more than 70 miles run/walked in seven days.

My poor wife didn’t see me get up early to work out more than a half dozen times in the 30+ years she’s been with me.

I’m not sure what she thinks of this guy with a closet full of men’s medium shirts and 32-inch waist pants.

For most of our life, she knew a guy that went up and up and up – till his pants waist was north of 50 and his 3XL shirts were getting tight.

I hope to share some secrets to my success. But it mainly was eating right, moving around more and most of all – believing in myself and seeing food as an energy source, not a drug of choice to medicate all that ails…plus a substitute for love when I needed a boost and celebrated by eating a 7-course meal of fatty, sugary, fried food.

HAPPY 33RD WEDDING ANNIVERSARY TO HEIDI

WHAT MAKES A SOULMATE? A ONE IN A BILLION PARTNER WHO:

Believes in you when you start Weight Watchers at age 55, 100-plus pounds overweight and fat for more than four decades running.

Takes joy in your overseas trips -- to exotic and fairly difficult or impossible for accessibility – places.

Supports your healthy lifestyle by marinating chicken breasts, grilling finfish, making salads with berries and splurging with thin crust, lots of red pepper, low fat cheese/sauces and turkey ‘roni home baked pizzas.

Makes wonderful homemade birthday, anniversary and Valentine’s Day cards with stories narrated by cats and historical figures.

Finds cool documentaries, great music and other cool things to share with you.

Loves cats. Period. Indoor, outdoor, at cat cafes, in Rome and Istanbul, in cartoons and YouTube clips.

Our actual anniversary date is June 11, but because of calendar conflicts we are celebrating this weekend.

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

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.