So I'm not as fat as I used to be..
Jul 26, 2013 10:31:15 GMT -5
Post by Road Warrior Shark on Jul 26, 2013 10:31:15 GMT -5
This is long, personal and kind of boring. feel free to ignore.
So today I crossed a kind of sad milestone. I stepped on a scale this morning and I was under 300 lbs for the first time this century.
Let me back up a bit. In late March, I had a day where my heart was just racing, but I was calm, breathing normally, just sitting at work. No pain, no discomfort, just a weird feeling in my chest. By the time I got to a doctor, it had calmed somewhat. They ran the battery of tests, blood, EKG, X-Ray, etc.. and decided my heart was fine, what happened is my blood sugar had spiked well above 300, and that was the cause. I left with a diagnosis of Diabetes.
This wasn’t a huge shock to me. Between my grandmother, a couple aunts and first cousins, I must have 5 diabetics on one side of my family alone. So I knew I was susceptible to it, and had kind of sub consciously adjusted for it. I’ve really not been a big candy or other sweets eater. I stopped drinking soda at home for the most part. Not big steps, but not top of the mind intentional ones either.
So how did this happen? I’ve always been a big guy, Ever since I can remember. Husky, heavyset, fat, you name it, they all applied to me. I worked a lot of fast food jobs when I was in high school, so that didn’t help. When I was 21, I managed a fast food joint for almost a year. I was young, in a crap paying job, in a bad marriage with an infant. We were more than broke. So eating one or two meals a day at work was a necessity. I estimate I put on 60-75 lbs that year. I moved on to better work, but not really better places to eat. I got divorced, became a single dad and went through bankruptcy all within a year or so. So again, eating once a day or so at the bowling centers I worked at was a necessity. Eating lots of cheap, quick fix meals didn’t help either. I got bigger and bigger, bought bigger sized clothes each year and I just never noticed.
But as big as I was, I was pretty active, (at least more so than I am even now) My job required me to be on my feet a lot and mobile. I didn’t sit at a desk in front of a screen like I do now. I bowled regularly, and other than things like bad knees and a sore back that come with lugging around extra weight, I felt pretty good. I could take my son to Sea World and go from 9 am to 10 pm non-stop, criss-crossing the whole park numerous times trying to see and do everything. When I remarried, that first summer my wife and I took the whole family there and neither her or my girls could keep up. I couldn’t (and still) can’t really run, but I could out walk anyone else in my weight bracket.
Then I started getting old. Moved out here to the middle of nowhere where there’s not a bowling center in sight, not much to do to really stay active. My jobs changed, and I spent a lot more time behind a desk. I didn’t really put on a lot more weight, but there was a difference.
So here I am. I take my medicines (no insulin injections thank God), and start watching what I eat more. I should exercise more, but there are only so many hours in the day right now. Since March I’m down over 30 lbs from a high of 335. My blood sugars hover in the 140s, as opposed to the 220s when I first got on the meds. They still should be lower, (under 100 is ideal) but a lot better. I’m also on a blood pressure medicine, it has always been slightly elevated, 130/90 instead of the 120/80 baseline. And I’m on an aspirin a day regimen. Why? Diabetes makes me even MORE susceptible to heart attack/problems.
Back to the family history, not only are there a lot of diabetics, but heart issues run rampant throughout the same side of the family. My grandmother has had a Triple Bypass, my grandfather, a double AND a quadruple. A couple of aunts and uncles have issues as well, and my dad died of a heart attack at age 53, which is 15 years from now for me. Luckily my heart is fine. My cholesterol is 178; the bad type is slightly elevated, but just barely (104 when it should be 100 or less)
I honestly don’t feel any better/different, which I find weird. I mean, my clothes fit different, but I’m not just full of energy or anything. The most difficult thing to deal with is the diet. I used to enjoy eating. You know that feeling you get after a really really good meal? I don’t get that ever anymore. Seems like everything I liked eating, that I enjoyed, I can’t have. And I don’t mean sugar. Cutting the sugar was easy. But cutting out the carbs wasn’t. Sure, limiting pastas and bread is easy, but good lord, there are carbs in things I never expected. I thought, no pasta, no problem, I’ll just eat rice instead. Not so fast! Eat more veggies? Blah, but I like corn on the cob, I’ll do that. Bzzzt! No sir. So I eat because I have to, not because I want to. And that part sucks.
My saving grace with all this is my wife. About a year and a half ago, she had a gastric bypass. She’s lost over 150 lbs so far from it. Part of that process, even before the surgery itself, was a huge dietary change. And through her, I also learned a lot about how I eat. She can’t tolerate too much sugar or she gets very sick. She needs to eat more protein and therefore less carbs to keep herself healthy. Since her surgery, and even before my issues arose, I was cutting back what I ate & eating slower. I ate the same stuff, just less. I never stepped on a scale (I really didn’t want to know) but I would bet in the year since her surgery I had dropped another 15-20 lbs.
So although reaching 299 still means I’m fat, overweight & even obese (God I hate that word) but I’m getting better, getting healthier. I want to be around when my kids graduate. I want to see my grandkids grow up. and to think I might only have 15 years left scares the shit out of me.
So today I crossed a kind of sad milestone. I stepped on a scale this morning and I was under 300 lbs for the first time this century.
Let me back up a bit. In late March, I had a day where my heart was just racing, but I was calm, breathing normally, just sitting at work. No pain, no discomfort, just a weird feeling in my chest. By the time I got to a doctor, it had calmed somewhat. They ran the battery of tests, blood, EKG, X-Ray, etc.. and decided my heart was fine, what happened is my blood sugar had spiked well above 300, and that was the cause. I left with a diagnosis of Diabetes.
This wasn’t a huge shock to me. Between my grandmother, a couple aunts and first cousins, I must have 5 diabetics on one side of my family alone. So I knew I was susceptible to it, and had kind of sub consciously adjusted for it. I’ve really not been a big candy or other sweets eater. I stopped drinking soda at home for the most part. Not big steps, but not top of the mind intentional ones either.
So how did this happen? I’ve always been a big guy, Ever since I can remember. Husky, heavyset, fat, you name it, they all applied to me. I worked a lot of fast food jobs when I was in high school, so that didn’t help. When I was 21, I managed a fast food joint for almost a year. I was young, in a crap paying job, in a bad marriage with an infant. We were more than broke. So eating one or two meals a day at work was a necessity. I estimate I put on 60-75 lbs that year. I moved on to better work, but not really better places to eat. I got divorced, became a single dad and went through bankruptcy all within a year or so. So again, eating once a day or so at the bowling centers I worked at was a necessity. Eating lots of cheap, quick fix meals didn’t help either. I got bigger and bigger, bought bigger sized clothes each year and I just never noticed.
But as big as I was, I was pretty active, (at least more so than I am even now) My job required me to be on my feet a lot and mobile. I didn’t sit at a desk in front of a screen like I do now. I bowled regularly, and other than things like bad knees and a sore back that come with lugging around extra weight, I felt pretty good. I could take my son to Sea World and go from 9 am to 10 pm non-stop, criss-crossing the whole park numerous times trying to see and do everything. When I remarried, that first summer my wife and I took the whole family there and neither her or my girls could keep up. I couldn’t (and still) can’t really run, but I could out walk anyone else in my weight bracket.
Then I started getting old. Moved out here to the middle of nowhere where there’s not a bowling center in sight, not much to do to really stay active. My jobs changed, and I spent a lot more time behind a desk. I didn’t really put on a lot more weight, but there was a difference.
So here I am. I take my medicines (no insulin injections thank God), and start watching what I eat more. I should exercise more, but there are only so many hours in the day right now. Since March I’m down over 30 lbs from a high of 335. My blood sugars hover in the 140s, as opposed to the 220s when I first got on the meds. They still should be lower, (under 100 is ideal) but a lot better. I’m also on a blood pressure medicine, it has always been slightly elevated, 130/90 instead of the 120/80 baseline. And I’m on an aspirin a day regimen. Why? Diabetes makes me even MORE susceptible to heart attack/problems.
Back to the family history, not only are there a lot of diabetics, but heart issues run rampant throughout the same side of the family. My grandmother has had a Triple Bypass, my grandfather, a double AND a quadruple. A couple of aunts and uncles have issues as well, and my dad died of a heart attack at age 53, which is 15 years from now for me. Luckily my heart is fine. My cholesterol is 178; the bad type is slightly elevated, but just barely (104 when it should be 100 or less)
I honestly don’t feel any better/different, which I find weird. I mean, my clothes fit different, but I’m not just full of energy or anything. The most difficult thing to deal with is the diet. I used to enjoy eating. You know that feeling you get after a really really good meal? I don’t get that ever anymore. Seems like everything I liked eating, that I enjoyed, I can’t have. And I don’t mean sugar. Cutting the sugar was easy. But cutting out the carbs wasn’t. Sure, limiting pastas and bread is easy, but good lord, there are carbs in things I never expected. I thought, no pasta, no problem, I’ll just eat rice instead. Not so fast! Eat more veggies? Blah, but I like corn on the cob, I’ll do that. Bzzzt! No sir. So I eat because I have to, not because I want to. And that part sucks.
My saving grace with all this is my wife. About a year and a half ago, she had a gastric bypass. She’s lost over 150 lbs so far from it. Part of that process, even before the surgery itself, was a huge dietary change. And through her, I also learned a lot about how I eat. She can’t tolerate too much sugar or she gets very sick. She needs to eat more protein and therefore less carbs to keep herself healthy. Since her surgery, and even before my issues arose, I was cutting back what I ate & eating slower. I ate the same stuff, just less. I never stepped on a scale (I really didn’t want to know) but I would bet in the year since her surgery I had dropped another 15-20 lbs.
So although reaching 299 still means I’m fat, overweight & even obese (God I hate that word) but I’m getting better, getting healthier. I want to be around when my kids graduate. I want to see my grandkids grow up. and to think I might only have 15 years left scares the shit out of me.
Healthy Sharky means more cowboys!
