Prologue (Part 3 of 3) : Yo Adriaaaaaan....

Ok I mentioned the part about the labs and my cholesterol levels in part one and the source of my weight gain in part two, now on to part three, the resurrection....

So as you can imagine that last doctor's visit was not fun. Here I was freshly divorced, bad bloodwork numbers, a close family member just passed away, and I was in two major risk groups for an early departure (heart disease and adult-onset diabetes). Not to mention I'd been grossly overweight for years, in part because of a physical setback at age 26, but c'mon...that doesn't explain why 12 years later I was still exhibiting 3 out of 5 symptoms of metabolic syndrome. You could definitely point to stress due to the number of life changes I'd endured since then - getting married, becoming a parent twice, having to leave my band that I loved so much, enduring the breakup of my marriage plus the deaths of both maternal grandparents and my father - I went through a lot of crap in a short period of time. But that doesn't completely explain it, and my doctor rightly let me have it, telling me basically "lose weight or join your dad" (to paraphrase). He even slightly apologized for how hard he went at me, but did caution that it was for my own good and that it was his job to point these things out.

Now I mentioned I can be a real independent guy, bordering on stubborn; I really do not like people telling me what to do. This is why I'm a registered independent voter (though I lean fairly far to the left), an agnostic, even with the types of music I like I refuse to be pegged down - I find something redeeming about damn near every style of music imaginable, and I'm fluent in it as well (though I do tend towards loud aggressive stuff mainly). So I'll admit that after this appointment, I was really pissed off. Initially I was miffed at the doctor for pushing at me like that, but I realized after a while I was really angry at myself - how could I let this happen? And I always had promised myself that if my doctor ever told me "do this or get sicker" that I wouldn't be one of those assholes that keeps doing the wrong thing.

So I after this visit I did....nothing. Call it shock, call it denial, call it whatever you want. I made promises to myself to start losing weight and broke them. I did one day of exercise thinking it would be the start of something, then I'd do nothing for weeks. I ate voluminous amounts of bad stuff, particularly Mexican food which is plentiful in the Sacramento area 24 hours a day and downright spectacular on top of it.

I remember saying on more than one occasion to friends/family while watching or talking about "Biggest Loser" or "Ruby" or one of these weight-loss shows that to honestly get that obese, it took real effort. And true enough, these guys would go on camera admitting that they ate super-sized meals alone in their car at a drive-thru on the way home to dinner. Or that they'd stay awake late at night watching TV and snacking continuously. Or worse yet, that they'd leave the house while everyone was asleep and hit up Taco Bell or Jack in the Box and eat till they wanted to burst. What those family/friends didn't know was that I knew from direct knowlege that it takes effort to be that fat because...I was doing all that stuff too - the binge eating, the concealing, all of it. That's addictive behavior and as much as I'd loathed addiction in others, here I was addicted to my own bad habits with food. What a hyprocrisy.

At some point I realized, I wasn't making myself any happier or satisfied. I wasn't eating because I was hungry, I was just eating because I could, and I was killing myself in tiny increments. I was that asshole, doing exactly what the doctor said not to. I needed to do something drastic. I remembered my doctor mentioning Weight Watchers as the sole program he would recommend to anyone contemplating weight loss, so I started looking into it. I put the bookmark on my web browser and stared at it for days. I changed it to my home page. I even looked in my company's health plan and found they had discounts to join for up to a year.

Finally one night in March 2009 after yet another trip to a 24-hour drive-thru Mexican place, I pulled the trigger. I got out the credit card and paid for an entire year of Weight Watcher's Online for Men. I didn't want to go to meetings cause I didn't want to be the only guy there (no offense ladies). I did my first weigh-in the next day at 267 pounds and started counting points. Six months later, I'm 42 pounds lighter. I went from having a 42/44-inch waist to a 36-inch waist (I was wearing 38" shorts but just bought 3 pairs of 36" jeans tonight that fit extremely well, to my surprise). I used to have to wear XXL or XXXL shirts, now I just wear XL. I haven't had my bloodwork or body fat checked yet, but you'll be here for that (right?) and I'm expecting some improvement there as well. I work out practically every day. I eat far less food but I'm nowhere near as hungry.

Now you know that's not the whole of the story, obviously something is missing. What was so different this time? Why did it work? Is there a secret? And how am I motivated now to keep going with this new lifestyle as opposed to repeating the mistakes of the past? I can't attribute that all to Weight Watchers, although I feel I do owe the program a debt of gratitude for giving me something to steer me in the right direction - but I did this entirely on my own : no trainer, no dietician, no gym (I work out at home), not even a support group. So what was it?

At some point in our early 20's, maybe even earlier than that for some, our metabolism slows down. And unless you have some sort of wacko thyroid condition, it's directly controllable. In my case the slow-down was directly related to the time when I stopped growing at about age 21 - although I've gained and lost weight, my height and shoe size haven't changed since then. It was also about then that I stopped being consistently active other than delivering mail, and even that eventually became too easy and sedentary. Your body is known to drop your basic metabolic rate about 2% each decade after age 20, so it only makes sense. Also after age 30 your muscle mass starts to deteriorate at a rate of about 4% per decade and gets even worse after 50 (10% per decade), so that would certainly account for the increase in fat over muscle as well.

Basically it seems to me that as you get older, your body is gradually going into shutdown mode, one minute at a time. What must change along with it is your knowledge of that, your mindset, and your desire to do something about it. We're all gonna die someday, it just a question of how...and when...and how you deal with it. People spend years getting their wills, their life insurance, their stocks and bonds, their homes, their retirement set - but pay no attention as to how their bodies are faring during all of that. I could motion to the point system of Weight Watchers simplifying diet and exercise, or the fear of my own mortality brought on by my family's bad year in 2008, or simply being fed up with obesity. But I think the main reason I succeeded this time is because I finally grew up mentally and realized - I'm nearly 40 years old, I can no longer eat or sleep or drink or live any way like I did all the time when I was 20 years old, because my body is no longer equipped to handle it. I have to listen to my body from now on, and what it's telling me right now is that it needs to lose weight to keep functioning optimally. And as my fight here to take off ten more pounds gradually succeeds, I'll let go with all the things I've learned over not just the past 6 months but my whole "career" of attempting to lose weight and keep it off.

One last thing, you don't have to be 40 years old to draw some inspiration from this, or at least I hope that's the case. Hell I don't care if you're 13 or 63, if you're FAT or not watching your diet then you're dying faster than everyone else around you and now you know why. I'm doing this out in public because I want people to see a real person go through this - not a superhuman athlete, not a TV personality chosen specifically and given all the time and resources in the world - just an ordinary guy with barely any time doing this on his own and succeeding. That's as real as it gets.

Diet for Wed 9/2/09 :
Breakfast

• Cheerios 1 serving with 1/2 cup fat-free milk
• 4 oz. orange juice w/vitamins
• one big cup of coffee
• Two slices of wheat bread with yogurt spread

Lunch

• Tuna sandwich - two slices of Trader Joe's Harvest Wheat bread, one 3 oz can of BumbleBee solid white albacore tuna (in water, not oil), one tbsp fat-free mayo, one tbsp Gulden's brown mustard, one slice fat-free american cheese
• one red delicious apple
• water

Snack (I try to eat before I go to the grocery store)

• one 12 oz can of Safeway diet orange soda (zero calorie, zero sugar)
• 20 pieces of Snyder's fat-free mini pretzels

Dinner

• The Big Chicken Caesar Salad - although this time instead of croutons I stuck in almonds and walnuts and I'm never going back
• one glass red wine

Dessert

• 1 cup of Breyer's low-fat Chocolate Chocolate Chip ice cream

Exercise for Wed 9/2/09 :

• 5 min warmup on treadmill at 3.5 mph
• 10 minutes stretching
• Circuit 1 of the "Total Exhaustion Workout", the only difference being I did the five runs at 9 mph instead of 8. I had intended to do all four circuits but I was running short on time today, still - a very intense 15-20 minute workout is better than nothing at all.