Once -- long ago -- I was thin. Too thin. My grandmother used to complain all the time that I looked sick, and she tried to fatten me up with chicken soup and other goodies.
Obviously, I took her concerns to heart, because once I got to be about 9 or 10, there was no longer any concern about my health -- at least not if being healthy meant having some beef on your body.
I went from being fed chicken soup to shopping in the "husky" section for clothes. And to be honest, that's my earliest bad memory of growing up large ... being dragged by my father to clothing stores so that the attendants could laugh and joke about what a big guy I was.
I suppose everybody thought it was all in good fun ... the same way you might joke with kids about the latest dumb, goofy thing they did today (the way I used to laugh and joke with my son when he did something that ONLY a kid would do).
But it really wasn't ... at least not to me. I interpreted those jokes -- whether they were meant that way or not -- as a reinforcement that I was different, and that my size was fair game for people. To some extent, of course, it IS fair game. How many times is a big person referred to as "slim," or (my favorite) "big guy?"
Here's how it goes: You're going back and forth with your mechanic because no matter how many times you bring your car to his shop it still won't work properly. Finally, you get a little hot under the collar over the time you've wasted bringing your car back and forth to his place. He responds by saying, "calm down, big guy ..."
Now I can assure you that there are times when you do not need to be reminded that you're a "big guy." Like always. And that's especially true when you're arguing with your mechanic because he's charged you money -- and wasted your time -- for doing absolutely nothing to fix your problem.
You might surmise from this that I'm about to head into a "I- got-negative-reinforcement-from-people-so-to-compensate-I-ate-too-much" jag, but you would be wrong if you did. I won't say I never ate out of anxiety, fear, boredom, the Red Sox won, the Red Sox LOST, or for 112 other reasons. There are lots of reasons to eat. But the biggest one is simple: It's all I knew. For years, that's how I dealt with everything. I ate.
But with all that, I can honestly say I never put a single thing in my mouth based on what someone thought of me, or called me. All it ever did was make me angry, and make me vow that if I ever GOT it together and lost weight, it wouldn't be because of some jackass in a clothing store, or a mechanic who thought that calling me "big guy" was the right thing to say to a customer who'd just received terrible service.
Besides, I look back at pictures of myself during high school, and do you know what? I wasn't THAT big. I wasn't THIN ... but it wasn't as if they had to weigh me on a packing scale or anything.
I played football ... badly. And it always amazes people when I tell them that, back in the 10th grade, my problem was that I couldn't keep weight ON. A lot of that had to do with my horrible work habits when it came to lifting weights. I hated it (and I hate it even more NOW). But back in the 10th grade, with a maturity level that was somewhere between embryonic and about five years old, my way of dealing with my hatred for lifting weights was to NOT LIFT WEIGHTS.
So ... I'd start the season at a solid 180 pounds and go DOWN to about 165 in no time at all. And I'd get the shit beaten out of me in practice to the point where even playing the sport at all was more and more of a chore.
I didn't play my senior year. Too many injuries resulted in a rapid decrease in interest. I just didn't care about it anymore. And that, really, was the first time I seriously ballooned with my weight. I got up to 225 (a weight that, today, I'd be very happy with!).
Now, one way my "big guy-ness" affected me was that I thought I had to be thin and trim to date girls. So to me, I had to lose about 40 or so pounds (get to the magic 180 "playing weight" figure) to get a date to the senior prom.
I went to my doctor to find out what I should do (I'll skip the whole "Good Lovin'" rap, though I'll gladly sing it if you'd like ...) And HE said, quote, "to lose weight you need STRONG ARMS ... to push yourself away from the table."
So, from February to June, I pushed myself away from the table and got down to 185. Losing weight when you're 17 is a breeze. It comes off so fast you think someone's sucking the fat right out of you!
I got a date ... and that was the LAST date, too. My thinness didn't impress her, but my overall goofiness and alarming lack of social skills impressed her even less. Or so she said (I'm sure I wasn't as bad as SHE made me out to be).
Whatever, that rejection set the tone for five years of pretty much the same thing in college. I'd develop feelings for a woman, I'd go on a diet in order to impress the woman, and the woman wouldn't change her opinion of me one way or the other.
You'd think I'd have learned, but I never did. About the only person I met during that whole time was a girl named Linda, who didn't seem to care what I looked like. She took me as I was ... and I took her horribly for granted in the beginning.
It's not a particularly noble thing, really. We all have aspirations. When my son was applying for college, I was made aware of the term "Safety School (that term didn't exist when I was going through the process, although the sentiment certainly did)."
Linda was "safety girl." If I had nothing else going on (translation: I couldn't find anyone else who would go out with me), there was always Linda.
And she'd always go. For a while, I really hated my hypocrisy. Linda was the one girl I didn't feel as if I had to work hard to impress, and -- at least with her -- I didn't work hard! Meantime, I'd be killing myself, on diets, running, whatever, to present myself in the best possible light to any one of a hundred females running around Northeastern ... without any success at all.
It didn't hurt that Linda was Italian, and her mother was a good cook. I'd go over there and they'd load me up with pasta, meatballs, sausages, Italian pastry ... until they'd practically have to put me on a dolly to get me out the door.
It was really the good life! And I felt so guilty! But it's funny how these things work out. Somewhere along the way, the "Safety Girl" became "THE Girl." We got married in 1977 and, 32 years later, we're STILL married.
I have traveled so far off course to make a point: That it should have been painfully obvious to me that while being a "big guy" might not be the healthiest thing to be, it certainly was not an impediment when it came to making friends ... AND that people who began and ended their assessment of me based on my waist size were probably not worth it anyway.
I don't know why I never figured this out ... even after I got married. Even after that, even after all that proof to the contrary, my self image was 100 percent wrapped up in how I looked, rather than what kind of a person I was.
I won't say that negativity made me eat any more ... but it certainly didn't make me eat any less. Because once you get it into your head that people are judging you solely on your size, you develop a huge chip on your shoulder about it. Even if you don't actually articulate it, you feel like, "fuck 'em. I'm not going to change for THEM."
And you don't. If anything, you get worse. You eat like a drunk drinks ... furtively, in private, and in fits and spurts (you don't want to give anyone the satisfaction of being able to lecture you about your increasingly unhealthy lifestyle). You binge-eat as if your food supply was going to be cut off any minute. You eat so much your sides hurt.
And then, you walk out that door filled with the delusion that you don't have a problem because, after all, "do YOU see me eating all that much? I don't know HOW come I can't lose weight ..."
The years progressed, and so did the problem. I was married, a father, settled into a career and a lifestyle, and had no real impetus to do anything about any of it. Even for people with far fewer weight issues than I had can understand the "fat and happy" phase of life.
Other things get in the way. Parenthood, of course, takes up a tremendous amount of time and energy. You devote way too much time to work. And with no woman to impress, I didn't feel the need to get down to my playing weight as often.
The result? My playing weight became a distant image in the rear view mirror, as the numbers on the other end kept climbing upward: 200, 225, 250, 275 until, finally (gulp!) 300.
Three hundred pounds! The only people I ever knew to be 300 pounds were NFL linemen and at least they had a reason!
During all this time of going up and up and up I made some half-hearted pretenses about losing weight. I'd try ... and drop maybe 10 or 15 pounds, and then give up. We'll get into why later, but let's just say it was impossible for me to endure that much discomfort for any period of time. They say quitting smoking is 10 times harder, even, than trying to lose weight but you couldn't prove it by me. And if it is, all I can say is I have SO much sympathy for smokers trying to kick the habit.
Because losing weight -- especially when you know you have over 100 pounds to lose -- sucks. It can't happen fast enough. And if it DOES happen fast enough, there's a whole army of people telling you how unhealthy it is.
Bullshit. Which is it? That's what I could never understand. Which -- the F*** -- is it? If you don't want me to be 350 pounds, and I lose 30 of it in a hurry, why is that BAD? Why is that unhealthy? It's this kind of mixed message that drives "big guys" crazy. I mean, can we get the story straight, please??
Well, I topped off a 372. That's right. You read that correctly. Three hundred-seventy-two pounds.
That was in 2002, right before Thanksgiving, when I honestly felt that if I didn't do something about it ... now ... that I'd explode any second. By then, my back hurt constantly and I had two knees ready to be replaced (that that were ultimately fitted with partial prostheses within the next year).
I joined Weight Watchers, which -- to me -- is the ONLY sensible commercial weight loss program out there. The ONLY one. There are lots of reasons for that, but the biggest one is that they take into consideration the simple fact that your stomach -- especially as stretched out as it is when you've eaten yourself to 372 pounds -- cannot just go empty. You cannot survive. You NEED food. And in Weight Watchers, you eat more in the beginning than you do once you lose the weight ... and this is why. A weight loss program predicated on starvation is doomed to fail.
I lost almost 50 pounds my first time through Weight Watchers ... and it took me from November 2002 until March of 2004. That's a LONG time. Fifty pounds is very good ... but all that time later, I was STILL over 300. And on a body that's 5-9, 300 is not where you want to be.
I also just got tired of doing it. It was almost a year and a half, and I just felt as if my momentum was slowing down to a crawl. As a result, I got careless, disinterested, and started putting it back on (though not all of it; I never got as high as 372 ever again, but that's kind of like saying "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play?"
The other thing that happened was as I was LOSING the weight, I got diagnosed with diabetes. And if there's a single thing in my life that's pissed me off more -- before or since -- I can't name it. All I heard was "you're at a high risk of getting diabetes, but if you lose the weight, you'll decrease that risk significantly."
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I lose 50 pounds ... and get diabetes. Ain't that just a kick in the ass.
Getting diabetes gave me religion for about a year. Then -- like anything else -- I lost my sense of urgency, lost my focus, and went back to my evil, unhealthy ways. I had people BEGGING me to interact with them, talk about it, share issues, secrets, problems ... whatever ... and I just couldn't do it. Couldn't ... and wouldn't.
Wouldn't is probably more accurate. I didn't want to lie to them and tell them I was doing great. But at the same time, I just didn't want to get into it at all. That's not how a binge-eater's mind works. You don't see a heroin addict whip his "kit" out and shoot up in public, and you don't see a binge-eater rip open a box of Chips Ahoy and stuff the cookies into his mouth with both hands in a room for of people either.
Both are done privately ... maybe 50 percent out of embarrassment that it's come to this ... and the other 50 percent because doing it out of the public eye gives you at least a shred if an illusion that if nobody knows about it, then it's not a problem.
I have a friend who just loves food. Loves it. She loves going out to restaurants, to beer-tasting parties, and just revels in what she eats. And you know what? There isn't a damn thing WRONG with that. And if that were my problem, I'd have probably been able to deal with this so much easier.
My problem was that I did all my serious eating when no one was around ... and in such a way that it was almost degrading ... hell ... it WAS degrading. It was awful. If I had to be in work at 4 p.m., for example, I'd be eating everything I could get my hands on ... and well PAST 4 p.m. I'd be late for work because I JUST COULDN'T, OR WOULDN'T, STOP EATING.
By the beginning of 2009, I was on insulin ... something I vowed would NEVER happen. By then, I'd already had one angiogram because the doctors were convinced I had a blockage in my arteries (I did not), I was on medication for that, for blood pressure, cholesterol ... on three different diabetes medications all at the same time (Metformin, Actos and Lantis), and had taken to walking with ski poles for balance because my back hurt too much to support me.
My mother is 86; I am 56, and I was catching up to her in the number of meds I had to take every day!
During a cardiac rehab class in 2005 (for the heart condition I did not have), I first decided that I was going to surrender ... and have weight reduction surgery. A nutritionist at the hospital talked me out of it then, and convinced me to give Weight Watchers another try. I did, but for whatever reason, each time I go back to what I've done before, it's less and less effective. Perhaps in the back of my mind, it's because I know it didn't work the first time. And like all delusional people, I never blame MYSELF ... always the program.
But years of pain, and frustration, self-loathing, depression, and illness finally made me give the gastric bypass a second look around October of 2008. It took a year from that date to prepare myself, both in terms of complying with insurance demands and just getting myself mentally ready, and on Oct. 5, 2009, I was operated on at Massachusetts General Hospital by Dr. Matthew Hutter.
The MGH staff prepared me well. There is a team of doctors, nutritionists and psychologist on the Mass. General Weight Loss Center staff, and they all pitched in to evaluate me, and make sure I was physically and emotionally ready for this huge step.
By the time I had the surgery, I was pretty sure I knew what I was about to face, and I saw it as a way to totally reinvent myself ... and to get a lease on life I thought I'd left behind forever.
What follows is my story.
