Remaking Myself

It didn’t happen all at once. It never does.

But you eat a crap meal here or there and say it’s okay, soon you’re eating crap meals here and there. You have a bad day, and a cupcake becomes three, or some candy becomes a bagful of candy. You skip a day in the gym, then another, and then a third. You tell yourself you’ll start over next week, then a couple more weeks pass just like that, and you promise yourself you’ll start back at it next month for sure. Bad habits and excuses build up over time, and before you know it, it’s out of control.

Let’s backtrack a bit. I was always active. As a teenager, I played pick-up basketball in the summer and pick-up football in the fall. As an adult, I subbed softball for football. I moved to the Pacific Northwest in my 30’s. I played pick-up basketball twice a week at the Bellingham YMCA with the over-30 crowd and softball in Vancouver from spring to summer. I also used to work out five days a week.

Around 2014, while I was trying to figure out how to market my last novel, I slowed down from all that activity. I’m a night shift worker, so I slept most days and spent my waking time before work hawking my book. I spent some hours at work plotting and writing the next one (don’t tell anyone, it was on company time). Over the next couple of years, fitness became less of a priority as my life became increasingly busy, complicated, and unhappy. And I still loved the cupcakes and M&M's.

I’ve been conscious of my weight since my early 20’s. I’ve had bad knees since the late ’90s, a parting gift from pick-up football. As I saw my weight creep up to 265, 270, 275 pounds, I felt it in my knees and in my back. I was in the high 270’s when I met my fiancée. In the back of my head, I thought I’d be able to fix my weight whenever I wanted. After all, I was always active before, and it would be easy to get back there.

By the time 2018 rolled around, I was heavier than I had ever been. I tried to get back in the gym, but Robyn moved to Seattle, and a medium-distance relationship needed some effort to work. Looking back, that was a terrible excuse. The gym routine didn’t stick. But I was happy, so it was fine. I wasn’t even all that concerned when my clothes started fitting poorly, then not at all. My closet was full of shirts and jeans I had outgrown. And all the while, I convinced myself that it wouldn’t be long before I shrunk myself back to a 38-waist size, and my jeans would fit again. The explosion of weight-loss was coming.

At the end of 2018, I moved to Seattle and in with Robyn. I joined a local gym shortly after, telling myself that paying for a gym membership was its own punishment for not using it. I was right. Between February and December of 2019, I visited that gym only 51 times.

Last October, we went back to my hometown of Brooklyn, NY, for my grandmother’s 100th birthday. It was a few months after we got engaged, and Robyn surprised me with an engagement photoshoot. We took pictures at the Brooklyn Public Library, Grand Army Plaza, and Prospect Park. The photoshoot involved a lot of walking and bending. My knees and back were not happy, and by the end, I was sweaty as hell. I chalked that last part up to being overdressed in New York’s unpredictable early-fall weather pattern. A month later, we got the pictures back, and I was thrilled at the quality of the shots.

Just not so happy with my body in them.

It was an “AHA” moment for me, where I saw how far I was from where I wanted to be. I joke that I look five or six months pregnant in those shots, but the truth is I barely recognize myself in them. I mean, it’s my face, but I’m still wearing my unhappy person's body. I made the promise to start back in the gym after the holidays because starting a routine around Thanksgiving is almost dooming yourself to fail. Another excuse.

At the beginning of this year, I tipped the scale at a frightening 293 pounds. I got back into the gym along with the resolution crowd and made the promise to take better care of my health. That was reinforced by a subsequent visit to my doctor where I was diagnosed as a pre-diabetic. “You don’t need medication,” he said to me, “but you should try to lose some weight.”

I see a fair bit of patients with diabetes as a sleep tech. I’ve seen what can happen if you let it get out of control. I was terrified. Change needed to happen and quickly. My older brother had extolled the virtue of intermittent fasting to me, as he’s been doing it for the last couple of years. I tried it once or twice, but it never worked for me because not eating seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. I was adequately motivated now, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, along with my regular gym routine.

To date, I’ve lost 16 pounds and 5% body fat. At 277 lbs. I’m lighter than I’ve been in the last 3 years. I figure I’m about 30 pounds away from where I feel good in my skin and look good in a suit, and 13 months away from the wedding. Will the changes stick this time? I think I’ve learned better than to just assume they will, by magic. The difference in my thought process and in my body will be earned, one day at a time.

In the interim, the only thing to do is to keep working at it until I look like myself in those wedding photos.

To be continued...

#2020vision #fitness #wellness #change #author #writing