I was not always overweight.
This truth took me years to figure out and I still have to remind myself of it almost daily when I think about myself and how I look.
I look back at the years I had growing up and I remember thinking that I was always fat becuase thats what other people always told me. I can remember the first time I was called "fat". It was my first day at kindergarten in 1976. I was 5 years old and I was going to school for the first time. I remember getting on the bus that day and having an epiphany that I would be doing this for the next 13 years. What I didn't expect was the stigma of being different that would accompany it. At recess, everyone was playing and a ball rolled towards me from a group of kids that were playing catch. I stopped the ball and picked it to give it to the kid that was running to get it. His name was Chris. I gave him the ball and said "hi" or something. He looked at me and said, "You are fat" then turned around and went back to his group of friends. I stood there dumbfounded, unable to comprehend what just happened. I am sure at the time it didn't actually bother me and I don't recall any other time that was ever brought up. In fact it wasn't until 2nd grade when things really got out of hand. I had my own fan base of kids that went out of their way to pick on me simply because of the way I looked. To them, I looked fat. I have heard all the variations of the word through the school years. Some of the earlier years were worse than others, however its those early years that really stick with you.
I was very introverted growing up, not really trusting people and thinking that every kind thing that came my was was to be distrusted. That some elaborate gag was being setup to further humiliate and embarrass me. One of my greatest regrets came when I was in sixth grade. I was literally chased around school by this girl that took a huge liking to me. She wanted me to be her boyfriend in the worst way. I didn't believe it and she terrified me. I did everything in my power to avoid her all year. People who weren't really even my friends would come up to tell me that she really liked me and that I should give her a chance. All I saw was that someone had setup the elaborate scheme to laugh at me when I finally gave in. They say that music and scents provoke memories in people. For me, that time will always be brought up when I hear "Electric Avenue".
My self esteem never really grew much as I got older. The edifice of my identity was being eroded by imaginary plots and schemes of shadow people that were against me. I never had proof but I was always wary. I am actually surprised that no one had me checked out for a mental illness while I was growing up.
Yet I had all this stress with very little personal outlet. While I school, I had gym class. I loved playing games and I loved being competitive, even if I didn't know how to properly play the game. I gave it my best effort. I ran, I jumped, I tumbled, I leaped. There was only two things I could not do in gym. I should never do a pull up and I couldn't climb a rope. However, give me a spring board, a vault and a few of those huge padding to land on and I was all over that. Once I left school, I didn't have gym class anymore to focus my nervous energies towards. I found solace in three things that were my escapes from life that was hard. Food, books and eventually computers.
Fast forward 20 years from graduation. I am now as big as I used to imagine myself as or rather, as big as I thought everyone else must see me as. For about 10 or 15 years there, I was actually ok with that. Hey, maybe being big isn't that bad. The food is good and as the years go by, the portions get bigger and bigger. I have never really been unhealthy was "Grossly obese" as the Doctors put it. Every time I would go in for a physical, I would get the standard run down about cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes due to my weight. I would look at them and say, "Yup ok, so lets wait for the blood test." Sure enough, my blood test would come back healthier than most people of my age group and the Doctor would grumble at me about how I should lose weight anyway.
The one thing I did have from my obesity is sleep apnea. For those who don't know, its when the soft palate slides down in your oral cavity and blocks your airway and you stop breathing while you sleep. When I started dating again after my first marriage fell into a separation. My now wife would tell me that she sometimes couldn't sleep because she was listening to me stop breathing and would jab me to startle me into breathing again. That and my snoring was really bad. Eventually, I went and had a sleep study done, just 45 minutes into the study, they saw my blood oxygen levels hit the 60% to 70% range. So they woke me up to put on a CPAP and let me sleep the rest of the night. I have been using the cpap ever since to sleep. On those rare occasions that I don't have it available through my own lack of forethought, I can actually feel myself choking as I drift to sleep as I am now unused to the feeling.
As for other problems slowly creeping in, I do check my blood pressure from time to time with those kiosks at the pharmacy. For the last year, I have seen my levels creep into pre hypertension which is unacceptable to me. The final straw is that I dislike who I see in the mirror now, being fat is tedious to me and I feel that it is truly the base cause of a lot of my insecurities that I have about myself and about people around me. I know I am a good person on the inside, but I don't feel that I am displaying that properly on the outside. right or wrong, it is how I feel and I truly wanted to do something about it.
Right before Thanksgiving, I got a job that separates me from my family by about 200ish miles. I am currently staying (Camping I call it) with a friend and working in Tampa. November and December, I had to take a good look at how I was going to live and figure out what I needed to do to change my eating habits. I would be working 5 days a week and eating fast food every day was a significant drain on my limited resources. I have come up with a simple menu that I have filled with grains, fruit, vegetables, protein and dairy that will feed me once every 2 to 3 hours while I am at work. I am still in the process of tweaking that diet, trying to find new things to add and slowly removing the semi-unhealthy items from the meal plan.
My challenge is this. I have $120. budget weekly for my gas and food expenses. I try to keep my costs as low as I can so I can fit in the occasional expensive toiletry items I need, such as razor refills and soap. I cook my major protein meal ahead of time and freeze it in ziplock bags and have my other items lined up in the kitchen so that the longest thing I put together for lunch is the sandwich I make for the 3pm meal. I have done meatloaf for ground beef, boneless pork chops and pounded chicken breasts as the main protein that I cook ahead of time. Usually that is the most expensive portion of my shopping. Thus far, I have gone 2 months on this diet and have found that my bleeding gums have stopped and that I have weathered several cold outbreaks at work due to my heightened intake of oranges since I started working.
Three days ago, I started working exercises into my schedule. I was shown a video on YouTube called: "Kettlebell Training- 3:00 of Hell" So I went out to Wal-mart and bought a 20 pound kettlebell weight and a 400 pound scale. At this time, I am too heavy to register on the scale any weight. So my first goal is to continue with the diet, making small changes as food availability comes and goes, continue with doing the exercise routine until I am able to get a number to show up on the scale. Then keep doing what I am doing for the exact amount of time it took to get a number on the scale and weigh myself again to get an inaccurate but close count as to how much my start weight was when I bought the scale and weight. From there, I want to continue to evolve myself to the next level of exercises once this first one gets easier. I haven't decided on what the next video to use would be yet.
The purpose for this blog is for me to document to myself what I have been doing on my journey. The ups and down, successes and cheats. To try and not be down when I succumb to a temptation but to continue where I was when I jumped off the wagon to smell a Krispy Kreme. To admit to myself with proof that I am human and not a perfect being. I don't want perfection. That is not my goal. I want to be a better me for me first and everyone else second. I want to have a better relationship with myself so that I can share that with the people and world around me. I want to look in the mirror and not know who I am looking at for the first few seconds and them smile in spite of myself. I want to looks down when I am standing up and be able to see my feet without contorting or lifting my foot. I want to be able to put on my socks without making up new yoga positions just to reach my toes in a risky lariat throw. I want to be able to buy sneakers that I can tie without having to catch my breath afterwards. I want to be able to hug my wife with my full body, not just with my belly and a lean. I want to know how it feels to properly spoon. I want feel energetic. I want to be able to wear fashionable clothes that aren't specialty items. I want to have a lap. I want to be able to cross my legs either while sitting in a chair or Indian style on the ground. I want some random girl to come up to me and flirt with me because she thinks I look look cute. I want to not feel like I am intimidating people because of how big I am now but because I am big in muscle tone instead. I want to do a successful chip up once in my life. I want to be able to do sit ups again on an incline board. I want to climb a tree again. I want to get into the back seat of someones car and have the seat belt fit with slack left over. I want to learn to jog again and like it. I want a mountain bicycle that doesn't have to be specially reinforced to hold me. I want to go to an amusement park and be able to ride ALL the rides. I want to run the Amazing Race not matter which place I end up in. I want to get on an airplane and fit in the seat without having to use the seat belt extender. I want to learn to dance with confidence. I want to go to a high school reunion and not be ashamed that I am overweight. I want to lose weight and look healthy before my Mother dies (not that she is on the verge of death or anything). I want to feel like I look good naked. I want to lay out in the sun and not have untanned divots of skin where folds of skin shadow myself. I want to ski. I want to think about running a marathon or a bike race and feel like I would have a chance of finishing it. I want to go on Southwest Airlines and not be obligated to buy 2 seats "just in case". I want to be the best me I can be.
I think I have enough reasons to do this. Having them written out will help remind me in the really tough times as to why I am doing this. The pain of getting through the start of an evolution can make me forget the reasons why *I* want this. Looking back while I am slumped on the floor after a workout will help I think. Plus I have always been able to get my thoughts out more solidly in writing than I have in any other form.
So now that I got this off my chest, lets get this show rolling. In setting up this blog, I am putting Google Advertising on. Feel free to click on them anytime. I don't expect to get much money from doing this blog, but any funds I do get will be going towards new equipment, vitamins, groceries and any other variety of things I will need to accomplish my goals. I know I wonder where the money goes for the ads on other blogs, but I feel like sharing that here and anything I do get with the funds I will post. I would like to get a bicycle and I would love to try and get a bowflex or something along those lines. So, anything bough will get a picture posted on the blog and a write up of my figuring out how to add it to my current schedule of "Thinks to do".
Before pictures are coming, fair warning. I just want to have a base line as to where I started. For a lot of my friends, you already have gotten to see me in my underwear, so No big deal there. Everyone else. Well, sorry.. :) I will use page breaks as best I can. Once I get scale weights I intend to update the body pics with the current weight. Should be fun and an interesting flip book once this journey peters out. It will never be over, but there will be a plateau. I also invite comments and suggestions to the blog. Comments will be screened to prevent spam bots and extremely negative comments. Not that I will delete them, oh no. I will save the negative comments for their own posts and have a little fun with them. Fair warning.
...and away we go.