The Weight-loss Chronicles, Part 5: Not Being Afraid of the Doctor

I never liked going to the doctor’s office. We always had the same conversation every time. “You need to lose weight,” he’d say. I’d just sort of shrug my shoulders and say, “Yeah, I know.” Of course I never had any intention of losing any weight. Nope. So year after year we repeated the dance – my doctor insisting I need to lose weight, me going “Eh, whatevs.” At some point I just stopped going because I didn’t want to deal with it. I was ashamed to admit I still wasn’t taking care of myself.

However, about three months into my new lifestyle I had gall bladder surgery. After some abdominal pain, a call to urgent care, and an ultrasound, I found out I had polyps in my gall bladder. My google search suggested this could happen when one loses a lot of weight in a short amount of time. That definitely described me. By the time the end of March rolled around, I was around 217 or so from 258. I had to have my gall bladder out. Whatever weird thing happens when you drop weight happened to me. Once I’d recovered I had to have a checkup with my primary physician.

This time it was different.

We would have an all new conversation this time. He walked in and checked my chart and vitals. I informed him that I had just had gall bladder surgery.

“Do you know why you had gall bladder surgery?” He asked.

“Because I lost a bunch of weight?” I replied.

“Yep.”

I was pretty proud. He was proud too. I told him about my diet plan and how much I had lost. He was actually impressed. He was more complimentary than I had ever heard him be. I wasn’t afraid or ashamed anymore. I was actually taking care of myself and I felt a lot better about the whole “going to the doctor” thing.

That’s not the only thing that was better. I hadn’t been taking my blood pressure medicine because it was making me light-headed. However, when they measured it, it was normal. All my bloodwork was normal. Blood sugar? Normal. I was elated! I was healthier than I had been in probably ten or fifteen years. It was awesome. Even the nurses were impressed and happy for me.  

There was just one the doctor wanted me to do.

“Are you getting any exercise?”

“Um…no.”

“You might want to start getting some exercise.”

Noooooooooooooo!

Next time: That dreaded exercise!

Progress Pictures

Time for some progress pictures!

This video was taken in February, I think. I'm still kind of big but shrinking! My clothes are kind of enveloping me!

Here's another picture after about a month of Keto dieting.

And finally... this was around the end of March. You can really tell a difference in my face!

Stay tuned for more Chronicles!

The Weight-loss Chronicles, Part 4: Setbacks, Highs, and Lows

Now is as probably a good a time as any to talk about setbacks. They will happen. They have happened to me. In fact, this past week was probably one of the biggest setbacks. I was on vacation. I went to River Street for the first time with my wife and some friends. Do you know what they do there? They hand you samples of candied pecans! For free! They would ask, “Would you like to try…”

“YES!” *Nom nom nom*

Then my in-laws got here. My mother-in-law is a good cook. She’s the kind of cook that I could watch scrape roadkill off the side of the street, bring it in, prepare it and still be all, “Um…yeah…let me get some of that.” So she did what she always does when she comes down here – make bucketfulls of pansit and lumpia. I’m not ashamed to say I think lumpia (a Filipino eggroll) is just about the best thing on the planet. Needless to say – I gained some weight this week. It is a shame because I was only one pound away from my goal weight! ARGH!

I said all that to say, setbacks will happen. You will, at times, eat stuff you shouldn’t. It happens. It’s another reason why I say no “cheat” days – because you will have them. They will happen because life is messy and complicated and doesn’t care if you’re going low carb. Sometimes you eat carbs because that’s what a guest or a host has set in front of you.

The good news is that you are always in control of your own habits. Setbacks will happen but they need not derail your efforts. You’ll have to gain back some ground, sure. Just consider it self-control practice.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is highs and lows. At first I lost weight like it was going out of style. It was awesome to see pounds drop off week to week. It’s definitely a good motivator to keep going. However, I eventually stalled out. I’d sit at the same number for a week or two. I’d measure success in tenths of a pound instead of pounds. Keep in mind that I was keeping to my plan. Yet there were times when my body would just not let go of weight. I remember 215 being a particular threshold. Then 210…207…205. Every now and then my body would just decide it needed to keep some pounds and I’d have to get all Meghan Trainor on it and say – “YOU NEED TO LET IT GO.”

I stuck to my plan though. Eventually, you break through those walls. It just takes persistence. The key is not giving up. You have to stick to your plan every day. EVERY. DAY. I’ll leave you with a clip of my favorite anime, One Punch Man. In the clip Saitama (the titular One-Punch Man) explains to his enemies the key to his great strength. While I personally don’t do his training methods (though it’d be pretty cool to do) what I’m inspired by is his discipline. It motivates me to stick to my plan no matter what. God bless all of you out there trying to get healthy and stay healthy! (Also, you should totally watch One Punch Man because it is awesome.)

The Weight-Loss Chronicles, Part 3: Redefining Hunger

“…But you’re always hungry all the time.”

“Yes. Yes you are.”

This was the conversation I was having with a co-worker about my diet. He was right. On my diet I was hungry all the time. But let’s be honest here, how was that any different from normal? I was always hungry before – ravenous even. I’d eat breakfast, then second breakfast… like a friggin’ hobbit. One thing was clear to me in the beginning: I had to figure out a way to deal with hunger or I’d never make it. I chose to redefine what hunger meant to me.

Most of the time when we start a new diet plan we look at hunger as the enemy. The nasty dragon or sumo wrestler we must contend with and overcome every single day of our lives. The prospect of this is daunting and at times discouraging. Hunger is at its most ferocious in the beginning when you’re trying to wean yourself off of sugar, carbs, and just generally eating like a vacuum cleaner. Hunger was my nemesis and it was the one thing that always kept me from really changing my lifestyle.

But what if hunger were my ally? What if it was my companion? What does that even mean? I began to look at hunger as a good thing. Instead of striving against it I started thinking to myself, Oh, I’m hungry. That means it’s working! I’m losing weight! That hunger is me getting healthier! Now I don’t know the exact science of it all and I certainly can’t claim that it’s true that when you’re hungry you’re losing weight. However, I told myself that the ache in my stomach was a good thing. After all – I knew I wasn’t going to die. I was eating (and eating better than ever) so that wasn’t the issue, but I had programmed my mind and body to need food all the time. Hunger was there constantly reminding me that I was in process. Hunger had become one of my biggest cheerleaders.

Hunger even helped me control my portion size. After I had eaten a meal it would be there, gently whispering, “I’m still here so that means you’ve probably had enough.” When my portion was gone I was done eating. Period. After a while I would be a little concerned if I wasn’t hungry after I’d eaten. Oh crap! I’d think, I’ve gone overboard! Then half an hour later hunger would be back and…get this…I would actually be relieved. Can you believe that?

I’ll go a step further.

As a Christian I believe that God can use hunger to help us find areas in our lives we need to work on. I say that because I was an emotional eater. I was kind of like Doug Heffernan on King of Queens who would eat any and all emotions including “scared” and “bored.” Before I started my diet hunger would be this raving lunatic that would scream at me, “YOU’RE DEPRESSED ABOUT YOUR JOB!  PIZZA WILL FIX THIS! ALSO, SNICKERS!” In time, hunger would say, “Hey… I’m here and you’re stressed and sad. Maybe ask God to help with this.” In time I found that all those emotions sort of worked themselves out after I decided to just go ahead and feel them then move on with my life. Don’t be afraid to feel your feelings – it’s a lot quicker and healthier than eating them. If you’ve got a lot of pain that you don’t think you can bear without food, maybe there’s a bigger issue there. It might be time to really go after God and figure it out. Find a friend you can talk to and deal with the issue. Food is delicious but it doesn’t heal emotional and spiritual wounds.

I have grown to be so thankful for hunger! The kicker is that it’s not even really actual stomach pains hunger. It’s just cravings and mental programming. So when you’ve started your new diet plan and you’re hungry – R E J O I C E!  It’s working! You are making progress! You won’t die if you don’t eat Reese Sticks! 

Obligatory "Before" Pictures

Before we move on to part three of the Chronicles, I thought I might share a few pictures of big me. Always helps to have some context. Now, by some standards, I'm not "huge." But rest assured, I was unhealthy.

This was me on July 4th of last year: Notice the puffy face and big gut...

Here's another summer one of me getting sprayed with the hose. The water was cold. Big gut is kind of the theme for these "before" photos.

And here we are again with the big head. At Starbucks eating cookies of all things! Hey... I loves me the cookies.

So yeah...I was probably average according to good ole boy Southern standards. However, I was on high blood pressure medicine. I got sick a couple times a year. I also got winded doing...well...just about anything.

I will post more pictures as I work through my story so you can see the progress. By the by, I am literally one pound away from my goal weight as of this writing!

The Weight-Loss Chronicles, Part 2: The Plan

So I’d decided to lose weight. Now what?

I needed a plan. A good plan. A sustainable plan. ”Sustainable” had to be the key. A lot of people want to go on diets that are, at best, short term solutions. This is why I don’t like diet shake plans. They are so expensive and you’re not going to do shakes forever. Are you? Going to just drink shakes until you’re eighty? No, you aren’t. You can’t. If I was going to do this I wanted a plan that I could stick to for the rest of my life. So here’s what I did.

I watched what I ate and changed my diet. Duh. At first I just sort of asked my wife about what I could eat on the Keto diet. “Can I have this?” “No.” “Damn it!” “What about this?” “No” “DAMN IT!” So what was I not having? Grains, cereal, rice, potatoes, sugar, starch, candy, etc. It was pretty much everything that I’d lived on for most of my life. So what could I have? Meat, cheese, dairy, vegetables, nuts…wait vegetables? Oh gosh…

Honestly, our weapon of choice those first few months was a wonderful cookbook called The Primal Low-Carb Kitchen by Kyndra Holley. We ate out of this almost exclusively for a couple months. It’s got a lot of great recipes for stuff like mashed cauliflower, almond flour biscuits, lemon chia-seed pancakes…great stuff to replace what I was eating at the time. The best part… it tastes pretty good. We also utilized Google extensively for low-carb options of our favorite foods, like pizza. These were smaller portions too. I was often hungry still, but I’ll get to dealing with hunger later.

Eating differently meant we had to shop differently. We had to replace all of our frozen stuff with fresh. We had to stop spending money on two boxes of cereal a week as well as bread and a bag of ciabatta rolls. The good news is that we didn’t really spend more than normal. All that frozen pizza adds up and swapping it out for actual ingredients didn’t bust our budget. (But yes, we are cooking more – which can be a challenge, I admit. We’ll get to that later too)

Probably the most important thing I did was put my eating on a schedule. I would eat three meals a day and one “snack” or “desert.” Breakfast would be around seven or seven-thirty in the morning. Lunch was promptly at noon. Dinner was then at five. I let myself have a bowl of low-carb ice cream for desert sometime during the day. Snacking was cut out almost completely save a small handful of peanuts or a cheese stick. I didn’t let my crazy work schedule interfere with my eating schedule.

The schedule was so important because I was grazer. I would eat almost every hour on the hour. I did not eat healthy, either. I would eat breakfast, then an hour later a bowl of cereal. An hour after that I might have a small bag of chips and so on. I was programming my body to think it needed food every hour. So, naturally, my stomach told my brain I had to eat. My body was using all of the food I shoveled in my mouth and not any of the fat on my body. I had to get control of my appetite.

I did not allow myself any “cheat” days. Changing your lifestyle is a lot like breaking an addiction. You have to make a clean break. I recommend that a person stick to a new eating plan as closely, as ruthlessly as possible. Get that self control. Get to know how your body processes what you eat. Get that into the habit of saying “no” to all the extra crap. Break the control that sugar has on your body and mind. Once you know yourself and can control yourself you can loosen the reigns a bit, but give it a good two or three months first. I'm at the point now where some days I'll eat breakfast, a really late lunch at two or three in the afternoon, and no dinner whatsoever. This allows me some wiggle room with what I eat.

I saw results almost immediately. The number on that scale would plummet every week I weighed myself. It was a great motivator to keep going. There were some harder weeks (we’ll get to that as well) but overall I had the proof – which they say is in the pudding. And I’ve had a lot of pudding, ya’ll.

Next time: Redefining Hunger

The Weight-Loss Chronicles, Part 1: Catalyst

I always knew I’d have to lose weight someday. I’d been overweight for most of my adult life. My doctor was always bugging me, telling me I had to lose weight and get healthier. My mom, a chronic worrier, was worried about my weight. I knew I had to do something at some point, but I always told myself I had time. I did have time, I figured. My uncle dropped dead of a heart attack when he was in his mid-forties. Dropped dead on a racquetball ball court. He was a habitual drinker and smoker. I figured I had time.

Then one day I woke up and I was thirty-seven.

I was explaining this story to a younger co-worker and he just laughed, “You woke up and you were thirty-seven?!”

“Hey, it happens,” said an older co-worker. Indeed it does. I woke up one day and I was thirty-seven. I don’t have any more time. I said to myself. It has to be now or never. I needed to get healthier and I needed to do it before I hit forty. I didn’t want to die of a heart attack and collapse face-down in someone’s engine block while changing their battery. I could only imagine the customer complaint from that.

“Uh…dis dude is dead. Is someone else gonna come out and change my battery? And who gonna clean my engine? I just got it all shiny now he got his face melted all over it. Who gonna pay for dat?”

Yeah…I wanted to make my demise a little more dignified. I remembered the previous year…trying to mow the lawn in the hot summer sun. My heart pounding, face red, praying to God, “Please don’t let me die in my yard.” In those moments I wondered how I was ever going to mow the yard next year.

I had other things I wanted to do too. I wanted to retire at some point. Maybe get to travel with my wife. Give my daughter away at her wedding. See my grandchildren. Become a successful, full-time You Tuber. Maybe stave off death until my mid-seventies instead of embracing it in my late forties or early fifties. I don’t have any more time.

So I started dieting. Not just “dieting” but deciding that, from here on out, I was going to eat differently. No more processed sugar. Limit carbs. No more three or four bowls of cereal a day along with candy bars every time I went to Dollar General. No more subsisting almost completely on pizza. My wife tells me that the official name for the diet I was going to do was “Keto.” Low carb, high fat. 

I can still eat bacon, you say? Sign me up.

So January 1^st, 2016, weighing 258 pounds, suffering from high blood pressure, most assuredly pre-diabetic, I finally started to do something about my weight. I wanted to get down to 200 (maybe 190, but I’d see how things went) by the end of the year. I hated eating vegetables and I hated exercise but the truth was staring me in the face. I don’t have any more time.

Alright…let’s do this.