![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Jun. 4th, 2019 05:13 pmSo, I'm fat. I stepped on the scale and tipped it at 253 lbs. At 5'11, that means I've got a little bit of a belly. I'm not, like, orca fat or anything, I'm just heavy. As Sara Millican might say, I don't have a muffin top, I have a cake shelf.
I've been big most of my life. As a kid, sweets were a reward for good behavior and an expression of familial love on the part of my mom and grandma. When I was a teenager, I wasn't so much 'fat' as solid. If I'd been so inclined, I could have played football and been hell on defense.
The fatness came when I left high school and got a job. The job involved sitting at a computer terminal, under bad light, performing data entry for 8 hours a day. It was boring as hell. While my coworkers imbibed tonnes of caffeine to stay awake during the day, I preferred sweets. Soda. Candy. The occasional bag of chips. And, after work? I didn't do crap except go home and eat a big ass can of Chef Boyardi and slug down a two-liter soda. I did this, or sometimes things that were even worse, for almost seven years. The weight piled on.
Then, in 1995, my life started to change. My job announced they were relocating to West Virginia and I started experiencing random chest pains. In short, I was courting a heart attack. I realized this but was scared to go to the doctor because he would probably confirm my suspiciouns. So, I chose to ignore the signs and medicate myself with even more crap food.
Later that year, I moved to Alaska and started working nights. The move did remove a lot of stress, but I was still not feeling great. Working nights let me sleep in, which I loved because I've never been a morning person. However, working nights in Alaska meant I was craving even more sweets than usual. There are physiological reasons for this, but I won't bore you with them. Needless to say, I wasn't losing any weight. And the signs of physical deterioration were continuing to get worse.
Eventually, I broke down and saw a doctor. He told me I wasn't fat. I was beyond fat. I was OBESE, rapidly approaching MORBID OBESITY.
I was grateful to find this out in the doctor's office, because those words almost gave me a heart attack. The doctor told me I needed to lose weight or I'd have a heart attack before I was 30.
Fear is a great motivator. I found a gym and started going to it three days a week. I did cardio and weight machines. I took yoga classes.
I didn't lose weight, but I did firm up. For the first and ONLY time in my life, I had abs.
But I was still eating crap. The doctor told me to lose weight but he didn't bother to tell me what to eat. So I was working out and still eating pasta and pizza and soda and scarfing down chocolate bars.
Weirdly enough my blood pressure, at the time, was excellent. Good genes I suppose, so something must have been working.
Then, I started taking drugs. Amphetamines. Medically prescribed by a doctor at a weight loss clinic. The first time I took them, I was awake for over 40+ hours and bouncing off the walls. When I crashed, I crashed hard and when I woke up I felt like a pile of goo.
Stupidly, I went back to the doctor and had the dosage adjusted. The second time was much better. I had boundless energy and took it out at the gym on the stationary bikes and weight machines. And, wonder of wonders, the pounds started to slip away.
Eventually, I reached my goal weight and decided that I could maintain it without the pills, which I'd never liked taking. So I stopped the pills and kept going to the gym.
But then work-stuff happened to disrupt my exercise schedule, and I never quite recovered. Apparently, this is common to a lot of people. Once you break your workout routine its super-hard to get back into it.
Eventually, the infrequent trips to the gym became no trips to the gym. But I didn't care. I was feeliing okay. The doctor was happy with my progress. So I sort of fell into free fall and began coasting.
And, the weight slowly began to come back. I imagine it creeping back in, at night, like a shady little ninja glomming onto me. Secret fat terrorists sabatoging my health.
So I started serial dieting. I counted calories. I did Atkins. I did low-fat. I did low-sugar. I did primal foods. I did fasting. My relationship with food became so confrontational that I quit keeping food in the house, because I knew I would eventually get mad or frustrated and just eat everything.
I never went back to the gym.
This was my pattern for years, until, after twentysomething years, I quit my job. The stress was making my sick, physically and mentally. So I left.
I think I must have been depressed after quitting because it seems I didn't do anything but sleep for the next three months. Then, I got my condo ready to sell and wrote my first book and began shopping it around to publishers. My weight was the furthest thing from my mind.
Then my condo sold and I moved back down South. I lived with my mom for about a year, during which I got back on a 'normal' schedule. I got up at 8:30 and was writing from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Eventually, I moved out and got a part-time job that metamorphosed into a full-time gig.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that I'd lost some weight. I stepped on a scale and was convinced it was broken. It wasn't.
Somehow, I'd lost a butt-ton of weight. I think part of it was that I wasn't stressed from my job. Also, I wasn't shoving candy bars and soda into my mouth like I used to.
For the first time in ages, I could buy shirts that were NOT from the Big & Tall section. It felt great! I felt great!
And, then, about a year or so ago, I stepped on another scale and saw that I'd gained about 25 lbs. It sent a shockwave through my system.
I hadn't deliberately dieted in ages, but I jumped back onto that train like an old hand. But this time I approached it differently. I researched diets and lifestyles and watched YouTube videos of supposedly normal people embracing these lifestyles and, eventually, decided to try a ketogenic diet.
On a ketogenic diet you keep your carbs under 40g per day. Most of your calories come from proteins and healthy fats. To my mind, it was a more sustainable form of the Atkin's Diet (which I'd never lasted longer than three days on), so I jumped in with both feet.
It was great. I was eating foods that I liked, I wasn't feeling deprived and I could tell I was losing weight from the fit of my clothes. I'd tossed the scale out years ago and wasn't going to buy another one.
The weight came off at a steady pace. Ten pounds the first week (mostly water weight), then about two pounds a week after that. It was great. I felt great.
Then, I didn't feel great. The foods I was eating, which I'd been eating for about four months, were starting to give me problems. I would get stomach aches and cramps. I was taking a vitamin supplement, so didn't think that was the problem.
I spoke to a friend about it who suggested I talk to a holistic doctor she knew. I took her advice, saw her doctor friend, who said it sounded like I'd killed off most of my gut bacteria with my diet. She recommended prebiotics, probiotics and that I slowly reintroduce simple carbs into my diet.
I followed her advice and gradually things got back to normal. To this day, I have no idea why my body fauna and flora reacted like they did, but my experience with keto was soured. I looked at other diets, other medically recommended diets, and, after a while, decided to try a more liberal low carb diet. I'd keep carbs under 100g per day.
It seemed to be working, but then the store I work at began to relocate and it became too much of a hassel to maintain the diet.
Which brings us to today, and the scale which read 253 lbs. So, once more I'm jumping back onto the healthy lifestyle bandwagon. Not a diet, not anymore. A lifestyle.
I'm not doing keto. I'm not doing low-carb. I'm not doing low-fat. I'm just doing me. The other night I had home-made fish & chips. Today, I've just eaten a gigantic green salad with pease and carrots, all of it drenched in Ranch dressing. There's Genoa salami and sliced chicken breast in the refrigerator. A jar of peanut butter, in the closet if I get peckish. Bananas in the fruit bowl. Ripe strawberries in the refrigerator.
I'm going to eat better. I'm only going to eat when I'm hungry. I'm going to put the scale I just bought in the very back of my closet for at least a month.
I'm still not going to the gym. Exercise is for masochists.
So, let's see what happens.
I've been big most of my life. As a kid, sweets were a reward for good behavior and an expression of familial love on the part of my mom and grandma. When I was a teenager, I wasn't so much 'fat' as solid. If I'd been so inclined, I could have played football and been hell on defense.
The fatness came when I left high school and got a job. The job involved sitting at a computer terminal, under bad light, performing data entry for 8 hours a day. It was boring as hell. While my coworkers imbibed tonnes of caffeine to stay awake during the day, I preferred sweets. Soda. Candy. The occasional bag of chips. And, after work? I didn't do crap except go home and eat a big ass can of Chef Boyardi and slug down a two-liter soda. I did this, or sometimes things that were even worse, for almost seven years. The weight piled on.
Then, in 1995, my life started to change. My job announced they were relocating to West Virginia and I started experiencing random chest pains. In short, I was courting a heart attack. I realized this but was scared to go to the doctor because he would probably confirm my suspiciouns. So, I chose to ignore the signs and medicate myself with even more crap food.
Later that year, I moved to Alaska and started working nights. The move did remove a lot of stress, but I was still not feeling great. Working nights let me sleep in, which I loved because I've never been a morning person. However, working nights in Alaska meant I was craving even more sweets than usual. There are physiological reasons for this, but I won't bore you with them. Needless to say, I wasn't losing any weight. And the signs of physical deterioration were continuing to get worse.
Eventually, I broke down and saw a doctor. He told me I wasn't fat. I was beyond fat. I was OBESE, rapidly approaching MORBID OBESITY.
I was grateful to find this out in the doctor's office, because those words almost gave me a heart attack. The doctor told me I needed to lose weight or I'd have a heart attack before I was 30.
Fear is a great motivator. I found a gym and started going to it three days a week. I did cardio and weight machines. I took yoga classes.
I didn't lose weight, but I did firm up. For the first and ONLY time in my life, I had abs.
But I was still eating crap. The doctor told me to lose weight but he didn't bother to tell me what to eat. So I was working out and still eating pasta and pizza and soda and scarfing down chocolate bars.
Weirdly enough my blood pressure, at the time, was excellent. Good genes I suppose, so something must have been working.
Then, I started taking drugs. Amphetamines. Medically prescribed by a doctor at a weight loss clinic. The first time I took them, I was awake for over 40+ hours and bouncing off the walls. When I crashed, I crashed hard and when I woke up I felt like a pile of goo.
Stupidly, I went back to the doctor and had the dosage adjusted. The second time was much better. I had boundless energy and took it out at the gym on the stationary bikes and weight machines. And, wonder of wonders, the pounds started to slip away.
Eventually, I reached my goal weight and decided that I could maintain it without the pills, which I'd never liked taking. So I stopped the pills and kept going to the gym.
But then work-stuff happened to disrupt my exercise schedule, and I never quite recovered. Apparently, this is common to a lot of people. Once you break your workout routine its super-hard to get back into it.
Eventually, the infrequent trips to the gym became no trips to the gym. But I didn't care. I was feeliing okay. The doctor was happy with my progress. So I sort of fell into free fall and began coasting.
And, the weight slowly began to come back. I imagine it creeping back in, at night, like a shady little ninja glomming onto me. Secret fat terrorists sabatoging my health.
So I started serial dieting. I counted calories. I did Atkins. I did low-fat. I did low-sugar. I did primal foods. I did fasting. My relationship with food became so confrontational that I quit keeping food in the house, because I knew I would eventually get mad or frustrated and just eat everything.
I never went back to the gym.
This was my pattern for years, until, after twentysomething years, I quit my job. The stress was making my sick, physically and mentally. So I left.
I think I must have been depressed after quitting because it seems I didn't do anything but sleep for the next three months. Then, I got my condo ready to sell and wrote my first book and began shopping it around to publishers. My weight was the furthest thing from my mind.
Then my condo sold and I moved back down South. I lived with my mom for about a year, during which I got back on a 'normal' schedule. I got up at 8:30 and was writing from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Eventually, I moved out and got a part-time job that metamorphosed into a full-time gig.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that I'd lost some weight. I stepped on a scale and was convinced it was broken. It wasn't.
Somehow, I'd lost a butt-ton of weight. I think part of it was that I wasn't stressed from my job. Also, I wasn't shoving candy bars and soda into my mouth like I used to.
For the first time in ages, I could buy shirts that were NOT from the Big & Tall section. It felt great! I felt great!
And, then, about a year or so ago, I stepped on another scale and saw that I'd gained about 25 lbs. It sent a shockwave through my system.
I hadn't deliberately dieted in ages, but I jumped back onto that train like an old hand. But this time I approached it differently. I researched diets and lifestyles and watched YouTube videos of supposedly normal people embracing these lifestyles and, eventually, decided to try a ketogenic diet.
On a ketogenic diet you keep your carbs under 40g per day. Most of your calories come from proteins and healthy fats. To my mind, it was a more sustainable form of the Atkin's Diet (which I'd never lasted longer than three days on), so I jumped in with both feet.
It was great. I was eating foods that I liked, I wasn't feeling deprived and I could tell I was losing weight from the fit of my clothes. I'd tossed the scale out years ago and wasn't going to buy another one.
The weight came off at a steady pace. Ten pounds the first week (mostly water weight), then about two pounds a week after that. It was great. I felt great.
Then, I didn't feel great. The foods I was eating, which I'd been eating for about four months, were starting to give me problems. I would get stomach aches and cramps. I was taking a vitamin supplement, so didn't think that was the problem.
I spoke to a friend about it who suggested I talk to a holistic doctor she knew. I took her advice, saw her doctor friend, who said it sounded like I'd killed off most of my gut bacteria with my diet. She recommended prebiotics, probiotics and that I slowly reintroduce simple carbs into my diet.
I followed her advice and gradually things got back to normal. To this day, I have no idea why my body fauna and flora reacted like they did, but my experience with keto was soured. I looked at other diets, other medically recommended diets, and, after a while, decided to try a more liberal low carb diet. I'd keep carbs under 100g per day.
It seemed to be working, but then the store I work at began to relocate and it became too much of a hassel to maintain the diet.
Which brings us to today, and the scale which read 253 lbs. So, once more I'm jumping back onto the healthy lifestyle bandwagon. Not a diet, not anymore. A lifestyle.
I'm not doing keto. I'm not doing low-carb. I'm not doing low-fat. I'm just doing me. The other night I had home-made fish & chips. Today, I've just eaten a gigantic green salad with pease and carrots, all of it drenched in Ranch dressing. There's Genoa salami and sliced chicken breast in the refrigerator. A jar of peanut butter, in the closet if I get peckish. Bananas in the fruit bowl. Ripe strawberries in the refrigerator.
I'm going to eat better. I'm only going to eat when I'm hungry. I'm going to put the scale I just bought in the very back of my closet for at least a month.
I'm still not going to the gym. Exercise is for masochists.
So, let's see what happens.
