drop20

I'm not going to tell you what it was like before 1992. I'm not going to tell you the story of how I lost 50 pounds in three weeks in my senior year in high school either (not yet). Instead, I've just picked a place to begin the story of how I spent 16 years trading 300 pounds back and forth...

220 to 400

Back in 1992, I was working as a programmer, eating my way through $10 fast food lunches (that's a lot of fast food) and drinking my fair share of beer. I packed on 20 pounds and then 50. It took about a year and some change to go from 220 to 400.

I was killing myself, but I didn't care.

I didn't care because I was overwhelmed by stress. When you have that much stress in your life, you reach a point where you just don't care anymore. I didn't know how I could get out and eating eased the stress. You do what you gotta do, even if it kills you.

Not long after I topped 400 pounds, my body started rejecting any food that had more the 2gm of saturated fat. If I crossed the threshold of 2gm I'd be doubled over with cramps for an hour. What's kind of psychotic is that I kept putting myself through nearly unbearable pain for weeks. I'd just keep slipping when the stress got too strong and eat something I shouldn't even though I knew I was condemning myself.

But pain gets boring after awhile, especially the kind of pain that makes you break out in a sweat and cry. So, I eliminated fat from my diet.

All of it.

I drank skim milk, ate grape nuts and salad for pretty much every meal. It wasn't the most nutritious way of doing it and I should have gone to see a doctor, but I'm not that type of person. I just did it.

400 to 200

The human body is an amazing machine. Most people seem to be oblivious to this until they experience some extreme physical damage. Then, the body's ability to absorb enormous amounts of abuse comes to the fore, followed by the even more miraculous bounce back.

But you have to give your body the chance to recover. In my case, my body sort of made the decision to get on the path but it was up to me to stick to it.

The first two weeks were the hardest. After that, it was actually quite easy to stick to the diet. The threat of pain was a strong incentive.

After a month, I began to notice some serious changes in my body. I certainly felt better. More clear headed, more energized. I stopped caring about the stress in my job.

It was almost like waking up after a particularly painful nightmare, a sense of relief mixed with a curiosity about why I'd ended up there in the first place.

Over the next 12 months, I dropped weight at about the same pace as I'd gained it. When I got down to 250, I started to exercise. It started with a little swimming and then some walking and rollerblading.

Something important to note here: I didn't exercise because I wanted to lose weight. I exercised because I had more energy than I knew what to do with. I wanted to exercise. It felt good, and I lost another 50 pounds in six months.

200 to 260

At 200, I was pretty happy.

I'm 6'1" with pretty broad shoulders. 200 sits pretty well on my frame. I could probably go down to 185 before I'd start to look like perhaps something was wrong with me.

So, I looked good. I felt great. I was working a telecommuting job (i.e. laptop by the pool). Life was awesome.

But just when you think life is going swell, something happens...

On a whim, I'd taken up running. Having never run before I had no idea what I was doing. One day I was walking 2 miles a day and then the next I was jogging 2 miles a day. I liked it and so I kept pushing myself.

When I hit 4 miles a day, I started picking up the pace. And then, well, I hurt my knee. I injured it badly enough that I couldn't even walk without pain.

Without that exercise, I started to feel depressed and I had no idea why. It turns out that exercise released endorphins and without that cardio I was depriving myself of the natural high it craved.

Looking back, this is probably what got me in trouble in the first place. I got amped up on those endorphins and I just kept pushing myself for more without ever thinking about why I was doing this in the first place.

When you have a craving, you have to fill it with something. I filled mine with food.

Pizza is my worst enemy, and by this point, my body had recovered to the point where I could eat saturated fats again. Slowly, I began to slide from my diet (which had become a lifestyle change) and back into my bad habits.

I also moved from this wonderful world of stress free telecommuting back to a semi-office environment. Life was changing, and instead of going out and finding ways to control my own destiny I went with the flow. In six months, I went from 200 to 240.

Only dead fish go with the flow.

260 to 210

I got married, and my wife and I moved to a different state. I took an extremely high stress job where I had to wear a suit every day to work even though I was a programmer. Bad food, too much stress, no exercise.

260 was just a short hop away, then 300 looked like a definite possibility.

When things pile up like this, a lot of people get divorced. I didn't do that. The wife was right (she's my best friend); the life was wrong.

I started working out again and eating right. I just went back to what worked before, but this time I paced myself. Bit by bit, I got control of my body. We had a child, a wonderful boy who has been an incredible delight. And for his sake, I wasn't about to let up. I was going to be in control.

210 to 250

We moved back to familiar surroundings and life felt pretty good. I got down to 210, but I couldn't reduce the work stress. I knew that I was headed for a fall.

Yup. Sure enough.

Business travel is a killer and I was jetting between the US and Europe every two weeks. The pace was incredible. I missed my young family. I missed out on so much. This led to some serious depression which turned to food. After a year of that (struggle as mightily as I did), I was back to 230 again.

250 to 200

My mother worked long hours, took very poor care of herself. Even though I told myself I was going to learn from her example, I was doing the same thing.

And then suddenly, she died.

It was an accident. She'd fallen asleep on the couch, which was fairly typical. After midnight she woke up (sort of) and tried to go upstairs to bed. Instead of the hall she walked into the basement stairwell and fell down to the cold concrete floor below. This happened one week before her 52nd birthday.

The shock of what happened to her didn't hit me at first. instead, I tossed myself even harder into my job. I added on another 20 and hit 250.

Then on one trip to Europe, I found myself sitting in a train station. It was winter. The city was beautiful and I was just watching the light snow settle outside. The board showed cities far away: Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid. I thought to myself that I could buy a ticket anywhere. I could just get up and walk away from everything.

It was then I knew I needed to change.

This change thing is a recurring theme in my life. Over and over, I fall into the trap of building up some part or another of my life, only to destroy myself again and then rise from the ashes. Maybe I should have called this site phoenix20.

In any case, I did change. I started working out again and then I took to running. I decided to train for a marathon, which is not uncommon when people lose a loved one.

200 to 250

The training went well. I kept myself injury free. Focus.

I decided that wasn't enough though. I wanted to be home, so I switched jobs. I took a big pay cut and left behind oodles of stock options. The new job, like all new jobs, was a challenge. I got things going, but I didn't think through the impact of what a new job can do to you.

Then, one day when I was on the home stretch of my morning run, I landed wrong on my foot and broke it. It was just a stress fracture but I was devastated. I was just two months away from the marathon.

I kept to my diet for a long time after that and managed to keep off the weight for a few years. But without the outside focus, work slowly took over again. I fell into the old pattern, but it didn't happen quite as fast. It took another two years, but this past Christmas I weighed in at 250.

Breaking the Cycle

If I set that aside the mechanical aspects of weight loss for a moment and glance over the story above, I see that I keep repeating the same destructive pattern over and over again.

Getting away from those destructive patterns isn't easy. I certainly haven't managed it for more than a few years at best. But I'm willing to try again. My mother wasn't the first to die at such an early age. I come from a long line of people who worked themselves into the grave. You'd think we'd learn something from the experience and maybe I have.

I'm not going to claim victory now (or maybe ever). I've just picked a place to start my story.

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