My Re-Found Health Kick

My name is Dan and I used to be 9 million pounds. There I said it. I just put it out there in the universe. I am now accountable for staying that way. If I get fat again, I have embarrassed myself in front of Both of My Readers! If I continued hiding behind my laptop screen and rode this roller coaster ride that is my life, then you wouldn’t have noticed if I lost 40 one day and gained it all back again on the next. Well, I did lose 40 pounds and I almost never felt better.

I was always skinny, possibly due to the fact that I love to run. I love to run apparently a very little bit more than I love to eat because somehow I remained relatively slim throughout my life. In another life (no, I don’t believe in reincarnation. I mean over 20 years ago.), I was a rather radical vegetarian. Nearly, a 100 % raw food vegan! That was pretty extreme, I know, but I don’t enter these life changing events lightly. This move made rational sense to me and the proof that it was the right thing was the simple fact that I never felt better. During this period in my life, I happily ran 3 out of the 5 marathons I have run.and I needed only 5 hours of sleep to make my day perfect. I worked at a Whole Foods and was immersed in a lifestyle that I truly loved and craved. Life was simpler then.

Well, as the saying goes, the older I get the better I used to be, I got older. I won’t blame having Baby Goats on my gaining weight, that would be unfair to the woman that actually did gain the weight!…But it was my kid’s fault! The day-to-day began overtaking esoteric goals of being healthy. I was the only vegetarian I know that loved the taste of meat. I was the only vegetarian I know that loved the taste of junk food. and eventually, I got away from eating healthfully and begun eating crap. It was a slow insidious process. From my small-ish frame, I began ballooning up and remembered being in a state of shock when I was preparing to run the Ocean State Marathon and I noticed I was 170 pounds. By this point, I was no longer a vegetarian, I was a buffalo wingatarian. I ran the worst marathon of my life. As a vegan, I did a sub-4 hour marathon and was working on qualifying so I could legally run Boston. Now, I was looking to walk across the finish line in Rhode Island.

If I was in shock at 170 pounds, the shock turns to numbness and then resignation as I cross each 10 pounds. First 180, then 190. I thanked that gods that “at least I wasn’t 200 pounds!” Then I was 200 pounds. If my body stopped there. If I had an ounce of control in my life, then I could deal with it. I could find it in me to return. I still had it in my head that the life I led before was the healthier and rational choice for me. But I could not gain control as losing a job I loved as an EMT to marriage to Baby Goats all conspired to make me look the other way as my hand shoved another Twinkie into my face. Obviously, I am not really blaming others for my vices. I can tell you that I don’t laugh when I see people smoking outside the office in the middle of winter, no matter how pathetic they look. Because they are no more pathetic than I when I would get up at 2 AM and shove a sleeve of Oreo cookies into my mouth and tasting only the last two or three. Then came 210. I have officially entered the dark side. No one, of my build should ever know what 200 pounds looks like and now I am 210. How about 220? In the words of Bruce Springsteen in the song Philadelphia, “I was unrecognizable to myself.” I was a puffy-faced fat guy. But then came 230 pounds and now I was morbidly obese. I was not one of those globular fat people. More like Kevin James on King of Queens. I became a neck-less wonder. People I knew from just 10 years earlier did not recognize me. I would say the embarrassment of losing so much self-control, actually made me lose a lot of the friendships I once cherished.

In the meantime, I would run…occasionally and eat right…occasionally but I never had control. Then, about 6 months ago, I started experiencing health problems. I had an ulcer on my leg that was originally diagnosed as a spider bite and it later was diagnosed as “pyoderma gangrenosum.” DO NOT GO TO GOOGLE IMAGES WITH THAT ONE UNLESS YOU WANT TO THROW UP! It was simply treated as a skin problem and I went to a dermatologist and he gave me a series of 15 – 20 extremely painful shots within the ulcer itself…two or three times a week! This thing would not heal. Finally, we got a grip on it. and it mostly healed. I have an ugly coaster sized scar on my shin that looks a little like the continent of Africa….might be time for my first tattoo?

Then, another ulcer appeared in another spot and I needed to approach this one a different way. I went to a doctor who also specializes in nutritional counseling. She is of the mindset, slightly outside the realm of traditional medicine, that the health of the skin is directly related to the quality of one’s diet. That was all I needed.

I began eating healthier. I already ate whole grains and a ton of vegetables, but I also ate a ton of junk. The first step was to stop the junk and the casual eating-without-thinking. The next step was to move my ass outside whether or not I was running 7-minute miles. I ran and wheezed my way through a few hundred yards, but did it again the next day…and the next. I was able to find the runner again even if I had to carry a few more pounds. The next step came with putting only quality foods in my mouth. No more junk. Now, I have been reading about some of the different problems that arise when people have too much gluten or wheat products in them, so I have virtually eliminated bread of all types from my diet. This is not related to the whole “no-carbs” weirdness that we have seen lately. This is strictly a health issue. So now I eat gluten-free breads [insert gag reflex here] and sprouted grain breads [not as bad]. My doctor essentially said that losing weight was going to be the most important thing. The specific diet will be next.

And the weight came off. I am finally at a more respectable, yet still chunky, 190 pounds. I am eating so much better, especially over the last 3 months. I am fully aware that at any time I can just go back to the way I was, but for now I will ride this wave and see how far it takes me.

Of all that I have written so far, this has taken the most out of me. I am still not sure this will be posted. If it is, I am not going back to edit, so you will have to put up with typos and blurtings. A lot of what I wrote is the first time I have verbalized this to anyone, even my friends and people I work with so this is huge for me.

Thank you both for listening. Now it is time for a 6 mile run. Care to join me?

Question for BoMR: Have you ever had deal with weight issues? How?

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