I'm Not Half the Man I Used to Be

I've been promising to post something 'lighter', so here it is -

In the past five months, I've lost 75 pounds.

I've been overweight my whole adult life, and I had pretty much given up hope of ever getting to a healthy weight. Nothing I did ever worked - I mean, I would practically starve myself ('embrace the hunger pangs. . . Ommmmm'), and lose five or ten pounds, but I could never sustain anything. After a certain amount of time, you just can't keep talking yourself into enjoying the feeling of hunger. So I was pretty much resigned to life as a Fat Boy.

I refused to 'go on a diet' - take on some drastic program for a while, then once I'd lost the weight go back to what I'd always done, thus undoing all the weight loss. No, I knew that I needed to change my lifestyle - I just didn't know how.

Then, last winter, my birth-mother came for a visit (to be here when 1F had her baby), and brought a diet book with her (very subtle, my birth-mother), saying that this seemed like a really good program, aiming at lifestyle change more than simply weight loss. Just what I needed. Molly read the book, taking a week or two to absorb the ideas, and then she went to work, following the book's recipes to make healthy meals for me. And it worked. I lost 18 lb. the first two weeks, 30 the first month, 45 in two months, and now 75 lb. in five months. I'm back down now to what I weighed in college (and when Molly and I got married). The thing is, I'm still 50 lb. heavier than I was in high school, and I was a 'Fat Boy' even then. So, I've still got a ways to go.

Now I have more energy, and I just generally feel better. Six months ago, my blood pressure was 140/90, my cholesterol was 230, and my resting pulse was 78. Last week, my blood pressure was 111/62, my cholesterol was 95, and my resting pulse was 54. I was on two BP medications and a cholesterol med, and my doctor took me off all of them. And if you ask Molly, she'll tell you that things between the sheets are better than they've been for a long, long time.

I don't know how to tell you what an impact this is having on me. I feel a little like Cinderella, waiting for the clock to strike midnight. I've had such a lack of success in my life at losing weight, that I almost can't believe this is really happening. But I can tell you, this is a permanent change - I'm never going back to the way I ate before. And I am so incredibly grateful to Molly - she's doing all the work. Food preparation is taking significantly more of her time now, but she's happy to do it for me. It communicates her love to me in an incredibly deep way. I mean, she really does want to keep me around for a while longer, and grow old with me.

So goodbye, mayonnaise - enjoyed the time we had together, but I just can't hang with you anymore. So long, ice cream - it was fun, but I gotta go now. Bye-bye, pizza - you had to know this was coming, right? And hello, spinach - I can't believe we never got to know each other before now. Same for you, blueberries and cherries. And green tea. And my old friend fish, sorry I neglected you for so long. Stick around, chicken, but don't bring you skin with you, OK?

I apologize if I'm being too 'preachy' about this; I really do know the difference between weight loss and something REALLY of ultimate importance. But this is so amazing to me, so flat-out miraculous, that I just sort of rattle on about it. If you all will just indulge me for a moment here, you'll be very kind. . . Thanks for listening.

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edit June 22 - Molly is urging me to tell you all 'the whole story' of just how miraculous this weight loss is. . .

Last fall, I asked for prayer in one of the meetings of the Christian community Molly and I belong to, because I was so discouraged about my inability to lose weight, and my weight was starting to affect my health, and bring my long-term viability into question. No big deal, no falling down, no 'HEEE-YUHL', just asking some folks to pray for me. And then, this winter, my birth-mother showed up with this diet.

Now, the timing of things could just be a happy coincidence (well, it is AT LEAST that, isn't it?). I mean, I'm an engineer; I have a Master's degree. I understand the laws of physics, cause and effect, all that. But - what if it's NOT just a happy coincidence? That possibility has to be acknowledged.

And, at the very least, after decades of nothing working, of beating the crap out of myself to no avail, I am amazed and grateful that now, finally, somthing is working, and it's happening when it never did before.

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