Food is the nemesis of people who struggle with obesity. (Don’t you hate that word, “obese”? It just sounds ugly! I used to say that I’d rather be called fat than obese.) We can’t survive without nourishment, which means, (for most of us, at least), that we need to learn how to eat in a way that supports our bodily functions and level of activity without overdoing it. Yet the very thing that we need is also making us unhealthy, because we haven’t learned how to eat well. Alcoholics and tobacco users can “give up” their problem substances, but those of us with eating problems must learn to modify our behavior, because we need to eat to live.
My personal struggle with obesity began when I was quite young. I can remember going through alternating phases of being a little overweight and a little underweight between the ages 4 and 8. It didn’t help growing up in the era when children were always encouraged to “finish their plate” and to not waste food, since there were “children starving in China.” Complicating the issue for me was the family business—Maurey’s tastee-freez, a fast-food drive-in restaurant, specializing in soft-serve ice cream products, and grilled and deep-fried foods. Both of my parents were hard workers, and devoted nearly every waking hour to the running of the business. Consequently, my brother and I often ended up eating food that was made in the restaurant, or grabbing whatever was fast, easy, and convenient at home. As you can imagine, this included a lot of cheeseburgers, french fries, onion rings, ice cream, white bread, and soda pop.
Remember the alternating phases mentioned above? By the time I was 8 or 9, I got stuck in a “fat phase” and started putting on weight. One time I went on a diet with my mom and dad (I was about 14, I think), and lost 42 pounds. Then I discovered my dad’s secret cache of cookies in the freezer. This was so disappointing to me that I gave up and went back to my old ways. Silly, in retrospect, but hey, I was a teenager.
Another memory from that period in my life: About to leave for a week at summer band camp, I thought “I’ll surely lose some weight there,” so I weighed myself before leaving: 240 pounds. The camp was physically demanding; lots of marching, walking around a good-sized campus (what is now the West Baden Springs Hotel), and exercise. Upon returning home a week later, and eager to see how much I’d lost, I weighed myself and… 239 pounds. I’d lost a single pound—which didn’t provide me with much motivation to keep trying. That was the end of my giving any serious thought to losing weight, until 1981. I wasn’t exactly happy being so heavy, but I didn’t care enough to do anything about it.
Maybe you can relate to some of my coping mechanisms during that time: I avoided letting my picture be taken, and always wore clothes that kept everything covered. No form-fitting clothes, long pants, long-sleeved button-down shirts, and lightweight jackets. Always a jacket—even in hot weather. I never even thought about activities like swimming. These were all attempts to “hide” the extra weight, as if that were even possible. I don’t know whom I thought I was kidding: by the time I was a sophomore in college I weighed 300 pounds, wore 48”-50” waist pants, and 18.5” dress shirts. There’s no “hiding” that.
Then, one day in December 1980, I stepped on the scales after avoiding them for months. 295 pounds, and I knew that I’d been heavier than that in the preceding months. This was the first moment where I thought to myself that I should probably do something about it. Several weeks passed. One day I was walking back to the Indiana State University campus (this was my sophomore year), after making a trip to downtown Terre Haute to do some shopping. While crossing the street at 7th and Cherry, the light changed, and I ran across one lane of the street to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. One lane! but I was out of breath when I stepped up onto the sidewalk. This was the second moment where I was struck with the idea that maybe the amount of weight I was carrying around was a more serious issue than I had realized. Later that spring, in the middle of April, as I recall, a friend and I walked from the campus, downtown to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop on the corner of 5th and Wabash. I remember ordering three regular sized scoops in a dish, and sitting down at one of the arm desk chairs similar to those found in high school and college classrooms. My belly extended out onto the desk by several inches!
For whatever reason, we started talking about being overweight, and the need to be healthier. By the time we returned to campus, we had decided to make a bet with each other: I would lose 50 pounds by the first day of school in the fall, and she would lose 30 (she was closer to an ideal weight than I was). The winner would collect $60 from the loser, and if we both reached our goals, the one who lost more weight beyond his/her goal would collect the difference @ $1 per pound from the other. I went home and, the next morning, stepped on the scales to mark my starting point. 285 pounds. I’d lost 10 pounds since December, and hadn’t even realized it!
So began my weight loss journey. What did I do? Ate everything that I usually ate, but intentionally cut the amount in half. The only thing that I stopped consuming altogether was regular soda pop, switching to diet soda only. By the end of June I had lost 27 pounds, and started to get excited. I called my friend near the beginning of the fall semester to see how she was doing (we lived an hour away from each other). She told me that she hadn’t done very well, only losing 10 pounds. I told her to get her checkbook ready, because I was down by 45 pounds, and would have the other 5 off by the beginning of the next week. I used that money to make the down payment on my future wife’s wedding ring.
Losing 50 pounds is significant, whatever your starting weight. In the drive-in restaurant, we’d buy 50-lb bags of onions, and 50-lb cubes of shortening for the deep fryer. That’s 2 cubic feet of fat. Visualizing the 50 pounds in this way was, for me, very motivating. I was now wearing size 42” waist pants, down from the 48”-50” size. This milestone provided me with motivation to keep going, so I simply continued to follow my plan, though by now I was paying more attention to types of food, as well as quantity. By Thanksgiving I was down 75 pounds, and by Christmas I was wearing 38” dress pants and large (rather than XXL) pullover sweaters. By April of 1982 I was down to 185 pounds, and by July 1, 1982, I’d reached 179 pounds. I went down a size in shoes, was now wearing 34” waist pants, and 15.5 dress shirts, athletic cut.
That’s the condensed version of my weight loss story. 121 pounds came off, in the period December 1980-July 1982. It marks the beginning of “maintenance” and the never-ending pursuit of life-long fitness. More about that in the future.
My current statistics are:
Height: 6’1”
Weight: 163-166 pounds
BMI: 21.8