FITNESS!

I’m fat.

We were all thinking it, I just wanted to get it out in the open so we can work with what we have, which unfortunately is a lot.  I have struggled with this since I was out of college and it hasn’t been pretty. 

I’m not huge, but technically I’m obese and nobody wants to be known as obese.  Obese sounds like you have a terminal medical condition.  Obese sounds like a game animal on the African Savannah that is extremely easy to kill, as in:  “Any luck shooting that lion on your hunt today Richard?” “No, but I killed these six Obese on the way back to camp.  No sport, but extremely flavorful eating!” I don’t want to be obese anymore and I certainly don’t want to be shot by some “C” level executive on a big game hunt.

I have given weight loss the old college try several times, but anyone who has seen my college transcripts will know that I didn’t try very hard at college (seriously, mom and dad, I did try.)  Each attempt to lose the weight ended up with more weight gain.  That wasn’t very encouraging.  However, a few things started changing for me in the last two years or so of my life and I wanted to share them with you.  Are you still reading?  I’m still typing.

Let’s run through some of the things that didn’t work:

Ice cream twice a day, everyday towards the end of college didn’t help.  I think this one is self-explanatory.  Ice cream is delicious but it should not be taken in as frequently as water.  Ice cream is not a meal, despite whatever fruits, nuts or other items Ben or Jerry may have put in it.  It’s not.  No.

After college I took a job that was only several doors down from a Trader Joe’s.  Trader Joe’s sell’s some amazingly healthy food, just the type of thing to build strong bones and clean arteries and I didn’t know about any of it.  What I did know was that their cookies were amazing and so was there candy isle.  GOOD quality chocolate for not a lot of dough.  I actually did buy some dough there too.  It was delicious.

But you’re thinking now, “Steve, these failed attempts just talk about foods you liked.  You didn’t mention any exercise.”  You’re right, I didn’t.

By this time, I was gaining a bit of a tummy.  It wasn’t pretty but I was sure it was manageable.  I cut back a little on the sweets, but that didn’t seem to melt the pounds away.  My diet plan was to not eat the last taco in the Taco Bell six-pack and to leave a few cookies in the bag.  The math worked in my head.

It was about that time my then girlfriend, who later became my wife, made a plea for me to stop eating meals at gas stations.  Well sure, when you put it like THAT it sounds disgusting.  But I looked at myself as a man constantly on the go.  I felt extremely efficient at grabbing a meal on the run and not wasting my time sitting down to a “proper” meal.  It was a harsh reality I had to face.  I ate at gas stations less, “a-few-cookies-left-in-the-bag” less. 

Next came the Adkins diet.  I would like to take this time to officially apologize to the public for my actions the two weeks I adhered to the Adkins, no-carb diet.  I lost a marginal bit of weight, yelled at everyone I loved, was convinced someone was following me home from work, hated everything and let people know it.  I don’t know what was worse, my headaches or people reminding me that the diet is great because if you like steak, you can have all the steak you want.  Toward the end of that little experiment I was verbally punching anyone in the throat that said that to me, or near me.  My relationship with the Adkins diet ended with me waking up next to a dumpster behind a Dairy Queen with a half-eaten ice cream cake in my lap.

I joined Bally’s gym.  I bought a year’s membership to go and swim early in the morning.  I found the morning swim crew extremely judgmental.  The first day, I completed a good number of laps and slipped into the hot tub for a minute before dressing and going to work.  One of the other swimmers that was doing fast turns around me in the pool addressed me.

“You’re new.  Did you just move here?” asked the swimmer.

“No, I just joined this gym, I live nearby.”

Nudging the guy next to him and shaking his head in disbelief he says, “Yeah, we’ll probably see him three or four more times before he disappears.”

Well that was rude.  I wasn’t going to let that go without making the guy feel like crap for a minute.

“The doctor told me to take it slow at first.  This is the first time I’ve been back to exercise since the accident,” I said with a tone that I had just been transported to a painful memory. 

The swimmer’s face went pale and slack, as if he had just realized he had insulted a dying man.  The rest of the people in the hot tub went silent.  Not one word was spoken for a couple of minutes.  Nobody got out to leave for fear of breaking the delicate frame of mind I appeared to be in.  I could tell the swimmer wanted to apologize but I just sat there looking solemnly into the frothing bubbles as he ran the tape of the mean thing he said back and forth in his head.  I just wanted to let that cook awhile. 

“Uh, what was the accident you were in, if you don’t mind my asking,” said a brave man sitting next to me.  I realized I was kind of holding all of them emotionally hostage too, AND it was a good setup for a joke.

“Oh, the accident!  Yeah, I accidently ate about 25 dozen donuts over a period of two years!” I said loudly.  The entire hot tub breathed a sigh of relief, or someone adjusted the bubbles, but I could see that everyone was off the hook including the jerk that was inevitably right about me only showing up to the gym four or five more times (three).

I’ve lost weight from stress, which is a lousy way to lose weight, though you get tons of compliments.  The problem is, whatever is stressing you out to the point of losing that much weight doesn’t allow you to feel good about the weight you’ve lost, so when the stress is over, you put even more weight back on. 

Fast forward through years of poor eating and good intentions and we come to a fat thirty-something husband and father with a history of heart disease staring down the loaded double-barreled shotgun of reality.  My doctor told me that I had the cholesterol numbers of three healthy men.  She explained that because I’m only ONE man, that those numbers spelled certain disaster for me.  In this case I’m substituting the word “disaster” for “death”.  She said if I didn’t lower my numbers by the next visit, she would put me on cholesterol meds and wasn’t this time because I asked her to let me try to lower it myself.

This happened to coincide with my son becoming what I call a “corndog vegetarian”.  He asked that the family stop eating meat for a month, so Wendy and I did.  He however didn’t quite grasp the rules he was asking us to follow.  There we would be at dinner, eating our beans and rice and greens and we would ask our son what he chose for lunch that day.

“I had salad, a cookie, some carrots, a corndog and some yogurt,” said the “corndog vegetarian”.

So I cut out the “walking meats”, chicken, beef, pork, goat, lamb, horse, dog or cat (who knows, I might have eaten some, I was eating at gas stations).  I stayed with fish though, because I didn’t want to go too extreme and I also felt like I hadn’t eaten enough sushi, having discovered it too late in life.  This meant that most fast food was off the menu so I just didn’t go.  I stuck to fish and grains and fruits and vegetables.  I felt better and that made the transition easier.

I went back to the doctor six or eight months later and she reviewed my results with me.

“What cholesterol medication did I put you on?” She asked as she flipped through my file.

“None,” I said. 

“No, you’re taking something, do you remember what it’s called?” the doctor asked again.

“Uh, no, I’m not taking anything, so even if you did prescribe something, I’m not taking it.” I assured her.

“You’re sure?” she asked again a third time.

“Well, if I am taking something for my cholesterol and I don’t know about it, I think I have bigger problems than my bloodwork,” I said with finality. 

“Well then this test isn’t right. It says your numbers dropped significantly from the last time we tested you,” she said.

“It might be because I completely changed my diet and I’m not eating animal fat or fast food,” I said, hoping that my Neanderthal grasp of modern medicine was enough to convince her that I may have moved the number on my own.

“Ahhh, that’s what’s wrong,” she said with a smile, “nobody ever does what I tell them to do so I don’t expect a change.”

“It was my understanding that death was involved,” I said to her, this time it was my chance to not believe HER.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter, they still don’t do what I tell them to do,” she said in a tone that was either too calloused to laugh or was a joke delivered so dry, a glass of water wouldn’t have revealed it.

THIS was the success I was waiting for.  I had lowered my cholesterol number by simply changing a behavior on MY terms.  It felt great!  Before my doctor left me to give quickly dismissed advice to other patients, she told me that if I began simple, regular exercise, I would be surprised how much I could lower my numbers even more.

At the same time, I was exploring my ADHD with a counselor and reminding myself of all the things that someone with ADHD has to deal with.  One of the big pieces of ADHD in some people who have it, is a problem controlling impulsivity.  We enjoy instant gratification.  It gives us a little hit of the hormone or chemical we need to be satiated enough to tolerate life.  Food is a big impulsivity thing for me.  I will rationalize myself to the bottom of a box of donuts faster than Atticus Finch at a trial of the wrongly accused.

I had thought about food as addiction, specifically sugar and salt.  I know they tickle the brain in a way that can bring me relaxation, happiness, euphoria… Not unlike how heroin might, but on a much smaller scale.  Understanding that sugar and salt are in most foods and that you need to eat three times a day and cannot control your urges and impulsivity, paints a pretty bleak picture of how you can kick the sugar and salt habit.  Drug addicts and alcoholics have a difficult time cutting those substances out of their lives and they don’t need them to survive.  But with food and impulsivity, it’s like asking an alcoholic to quit binge drinking but you must have three and only three drinks at three different times of the day.  Any program member will tell you that the next drink is the end. 

So what about foods vicious cycle?  If I look at food in the belief of addiction, how can I possibly beat that monster?  I think I have an answer.

Oh, it isn’t easy.  I’m not going to market this as some kind of self-help fat reducing program.  I’m simply sharing what seems to be working for me.

First of all, I got my meds right.  I took the time, met with professionals to get my depression and ADHD levels in check chemically, removing the depression eating and lessening the impulsivity binging.  This means nothing to some of you, but to my mental health suffering brothers and sisters… *WINK*

I figured I need to head off my impulsivity with a psychological blocker.  I can’t simply not eat food, and I can’t just cut out sugars and carbs and salts without it blowing back in my face.  But what I can do is determine how much I deal with on MY terms.

I know the foods that are bad for me and I know the foods that are good for me… finally.  I know I’m going to have to eat but some of the food is going to be a bad choice.  So psychologically I need to treat it like it is something I absolutely need to keep around and interact with, yet do not trust at all and limit my time with.

Now I treat food like a brother that I share duties running a family business with AND is the only one carrying a spare kidney for me in case I might need one (this is all make believe, my kidneys are pristine).  He’s a brother I need to keep around or the family business will crumble and my world will fall apart.  However, I have to create a scenario where I don’t want to spend too much time with him.  I need to despise him as if he is constantly trying to betray me by sleeping with my wife.  It’s all very “Mexican soap opera” (the very best kind) in my head.  I even have a very impressive mustache, while my brother, who looks just like me, is clean shaven.  Oh, I hate you Esteban Damm!  If it weren’t for the honor of our family business (we make extremely comfortable short pants), I would murder you for constantly trying to sleep with my wife!

In short, I’m blaming the food for my bad choices and impulsivity.  I’m projecting evil on to something that really isn’t, but it makes it easier for me to stay away from the thing I’m most tempted by.  It really works!

So that’s the food part.  The exercise part was easier.  I had already been encouraged by my doctor to continue lowering my cholesterol numbers and I had some momentum.  It turns out, we had a treadmill in the basement, so I started hitting that regularly.  It wasn’t easy but I made myself do it, and getting to watch movies and shows while I did really made the experience better.  Unfortunately, the treadmill is only one kind of exercise and in reality, due to drumming, my legs already look super-hot (ONLY my legs and mostly just my calves).

I hated going to gyms, because of people like that swimmer from above or other people that just want to come up to you and strut and be competitive.  I hate how SOME weight lifters scream at their partners to “PUSH IT! YEEEEEAH BABY!” or something similar.  I really just wanted to swim and do some machines for strength and tone.  I did not want to “get big” or expand my chest.  I wanted to go to the gym, not talk to anyone at all, exercise and then go home. 

My wife got me a membership for my birthday, AT MY REQUEST!  She’s not a cruel person, but she was excited that I asked for that particular gift and the transaction was completed in record time online by someone who has a hard time finding an address on the net.  Thanks again hon. 

My first time to the gym, I wandered into the weights and began doing some reps on a leg weight machine.  I don’t know what the machine is called but I understand the concept that if you do it a bunch, the weight that you have on the machine will feel lighter over time.

I’m immediately hassled by a guy who does not work for the gym who wants to show me how I’m “doing it wrong”.  He also starts talking to me about how I can take these supplements that will basically double the results of the workout.  I wanted to suggest to him that since he had been at the gym awhile, he should just take one of those and call it a day so he could leave me alone, but he was intimidating and I wanted none of it.  He followed me to a couple machines letting me know what I was doing wrong, talking about supplements and generally making all my worst fears of going to the gym true.

However! Despite the jerk from the pool and the supplements guy, I continued to go to the gym.  I even went twice a day when I could.  I would swim on my lunch break (I swim like a desperate walrus) and then do some strength stuff or running in the evening.  I started feeling great.  I actually belong to two different gyms now and go as regularly as I can.  I’m seeing results and feeling better.  But I’m not a zealot about it.  I’m not punishing myself.  I’m just making realistic goals and challenges and hitting them.  I’m working out alongside my wife, who loves the extra time with me (so she says).  I have shoes that I only use for exercising now (THAT was an awkward day at the gym in the loafers).   As soon as I get over this cold, I intend to go back.

I’m still fat, but I know which direction I’m going.  THIS time, with the help of a good gym routine and my imaginary evil Mexican-soap-opera-food-metaphor-of-a-brother, I feel like I’m going to continue this healthy trend and that’s the Damm truth.