When the world shut down in March 2020, I decided to do something about my weight.
Growing up, I was always a heavy kid. In adulthood, my weight fluctuated depending on how active my current job kept me but - even at my lightest - I was squarely in the obese camp. Morbidly obese if you want to get technical about it. When I started a job in the restaurant industry, things went off the rails. I ballooned up to nearly 400 pounds at my heaviest. With great weight came great health problems. I had terrible indigestion (occasionally uncontrollably vomiting or pooping my pants after meals), chronic skin rashes, and I began to show pre-diabetic symptoms. Also, my pee smelled like cotton candy.
Quarantine was not without its negatives, but I actually look back at those first six months of COVID with some degree of fondness. I had the time to write, the time to exercise, the time to catch up on all the television shows people had recommended over the last decade. Thanks to my daily five-mile hikes, ten-mile bike rides, and 30-minute calisthenic routines, I lost almost 70 pounds between March 2020 and April 2021. But then the world started to wake up. As we entered spring of 2021, I found that I wasn’t able to work from home every day and I was eating out more and my Saturday cheat days became cheat weekends. Before I knew it, my weight loss had plateaued before eventually grinding to a complete halt.
Cut to March 2022 when I attended SXSW. It had been months since I had lost any real weight but - during a week spent in Austin eating all my meals at fast food joints, food trucks, and 7-Elevens, I actually gained weight. A lot. I returned home having gained twenty pounds in a week!
This caused issues. When I had lost weight last year, I decided to take a page out of Christopher Columbus’ book and burn my boats, so to speak. I donated all my clothes - keeping only the shirts and jeans that fit properly. Twenty extra pounds meant shirts that fit fine a few months ago now bulged around my curves and I had trouble zipping up my pants. I immediately threw myself back into my fitness regime with a passion - waking up at 7 AM to fit in my daily hikes, staying up to midnight riding my stationary bicycle or lifting weights. The problem, though, was that I had learned some bad habits during SXSW.
I had a sweet tooth for one. I found myself buying Peeps to snack on during afternoon trips to Target (these trips were meant to stretch my legs and get a few steps in during my otherwise sedentary workday). I looked at the calories - only 140 for a package of peeps - and thought “How could I not eat those marshmallow treats!” When I failed to lose any weight, I put two and two together. While Peeps are low in calories, eating a single Peep is like eating a spoon full of sugar. Even after I wised up, I continued to struggle with my sweet tooth. I started taking AirBorne gummies. I told myself they were to help boost my immune system in the wake of a potential superspreader event like SXSW, but I was popping them because they tasted like candy. And, after studying the nutritional facts, I discovered the gummies were, in fact, basically candy!
Nearly a month after SXSW and I had failed to lose any of the weight I gained during the trip. I was growing depressed and a little voice started to appear in the back of my head. “You should just give up,” the voice said. “You’ve had a hard day. Why not stop at Taco Bell on the way home and treat yourself to all the confections a $10 bill can buy you? You’re always going to be fat, what’s the point of all the heartache that comes with trying to change things?”
I’m not a religious man but I’ve come to associate that voice with the Devil. I’ve heard it all my life - offering me the easy way out and giving me an excuse to throw in the towel. It’s the voice that convinced me to put off doing homework until the last minute during high school, the voice that suggested I didn’t need to study during college, the voice that made it possible for me to weigh 400 pounds in my early 30s. This voice isn’t actually Satan - at least I don’t think it is! - but it’s the voice of temptation. And buddy, temptation is a hell of a voice to say “no” to.
But I worked too hard, I gave up too much to get where I was today. I thought back to those nights early in Quarantine, when I’d go to bed starving or push myself to exercise despite my body crying out for rest. I was not going to give up everything I had accomplished while the world around me went to hell. I wasn’t going to give in this time. I wasn’t going to let myself backslide.
I started looking into solutions to my problem. The first thing I did was cut out all sweets. I threw away my remaining AirBorne Gummies, began a process to ween myself off diet soda, and set very strict boundaries on when I was and was not allowed to stay from my diet. I began looking into potential assistance - everything from personal fitness trainers to Alli, the weight loss medication that promises to block fat absorption from your food. I came very close to buying some Alli during a trip to Target but, after reading online reviews that promised that, while the drug did work, you WOULD shit your pants, I passed. As the headline says, I have a fear of shitting my pants.
Instead, I buckled down and focused on what I knew had worked before - exercise and diet. I also listened to my mother. “You’re dehydrated and malnourished,” she said. “You’re retaining water. Don’t starve yourself and drink more water and you’ll lose the weight.” It turns out she was right. After slightly increasing my daily calorie count (but not carbs), drinking more water, and eating more vegetables I began to lose weight. I’ve lost ten pounds in the last three days - putting me back to the weight that I was pre-SXSW.
I still have a long journey to go on. And it’s not just about losing weight (though that is important to me - I want to have the freedom to do physical activities that I cannot currently do because of my weight, like riding a horse). It’s about developing long-term habits and a knowledge of my health and body that will keep me happy, healthy, and active for as long as possible.
Also, I don’t want to shit my pants ever again.