Struggling for a lifetime

My Grandfather once sat on a bench and asked the overweight person next to him "Why did you let yourself get like that?" He said that she really didn't have an answer. Old folks can sure cut right to the chase when it comes to problems with society. I am a memeber of the ever increasing portion of our society that is overweight or obese. Over the past 15 years I have been fat and I have been skinny. I can tell you that skinny is best. When I graduated from high school I weighed just over 200 pounds and had be active in sports including varsity football and baseball. When I went to college I went from being overweight to being obese. I gained weight all the time with no activity from sports and the famed on your own college diet. By my fourth year in college I knew I was seriously overweight, but I hadn't weighed myself in a long time out of shame and denial. Just before Christmas of 1994 I finally broke down and weighed myself. I was astounded with what I saw. I had reached the unthinkable at the time. I weighed 303 pounds. I was so upset that it galvanised me to lose weight. I asked for weights for christmas and I took all my christmas money and bought extra weight lifting equipment. Then I went out and bought a supplement kit from my local GNC called Cybergenics. I followed their workout plan and diet plan and took the dietary supplements included in the program. It wasn't long til I started seeing results. Over the course of the next year I went from weighing 303 pounds down to 175 pounds. I lost a whole person. A person that weighed 128 pounds at least. The problem was that to reach this weight I had to workout every day. It was a constant battle. A battle against obesity that I thought I had won, but only to find out I was really still losing. I approached my obesity like a surgeoon tackles cancer. I surgically attacked it from all sides, but I didn't get any directions on post-op care. Just like recovering from any invasive procedure there are steps you have to follow to recover correctly and I didn't do them. I learned a lot about nutrition, but not how I could apply it daily in my life. As time went by, I exercised less. I gained a little weight back, but nothing that seemed too major. I was still under 200 pounds and happy with my new body. It was around this time that I started working a new full time job that averaged 55 hours per week. It was at this point that exercising stopped. I soon started seeing a girl and that was when the pounds started coming back big time. Dating means movies, eating out and other unhealthy habits. Slowly but surely the obese me was making a come back. Flash forward to 2009, some 15 years later and I am faced with the battle of my life. In April of 2009 I was admitted to the hospital with a severe infection following the passing of a kidney stone. It was during this hospital stay that I learned that my weight had ballooned to over 360 pounds. I also learned that I was on the verge of going from pre-diabetic to facing full blown diabetes. When I got out of the hospital I resolved that I wouldn't let myself continue to kill myself. I didn't want to ever have to inject myself with insulin or face the thought of dialysis. Once again I started to watch what I ate. The hospital gave me a two page pamphlet on diabetic food intake, but it wasn't the most explanatory piece of reading material that I had ever seen. I was able to eat better for a little over a month, but I slipped back into old habits. Over the next five months I did little to help my situation. One day I was at the laundry mat washing clothes when I spotted an ad in the Lansing State Journal. It simply asked the question, "Are you male? Do you want to lose weight?" it had been placed by a local doctor who was running a study on the weight loss effects of the hormone HCG. They were comparing the effects of injected HCG versus oral drops. I called the Wycoff Wellness Center and inquired about the study. They referred me to their website and told me to call back if I was interested in participating. I looked at their website and then did some research on my own about HCG. I talked with my wife about the pros and cons of participating in the study and finally decided to do it. I was already killing myself why not take a chance and see what happens. The cost of the study was $200 and when you only work part time and have no health insurance that is a lot of money. I knew that if I committed myself to doing the program I would have to follow thru. I made my appointment to see Dr. Wycoff and gathered together the money for the study. On October 27th I saw the doctor. They weighed me and took readings on my body mass and basal metabolic rate. I weighed in at 368 pounds. I don't know if this was the heaviest I have ever been, but once you get so heavy it is tough to find scales that can weigh you. My BMI was 57.6 and of my 368 pounds, 148 of them were nothing but fat. Over 40% of my body was made up of fat. Because of my size my basal metabolic rate was 3120 calories. Meaning if I did nothing all day, essentially stayed in bed, my body would burn 3120 calories in a 24 hour period. This was actually a good thing because your body has to burn 3500 calories more than what you take in in order to lose one pound of excess weight. Conversely or perversely, depending on how you look at it, your body only needs to take in 10 calories in order to maintain one pound of excess weight. The doctor went over the program and gave me some paperwork that included recipes and the do's and don'ts of the program. They also wanted me to get bloodwork done before I started the HCG hormone so they could compare the results with bloodwork after I had completed it. The first phase of the program is to last around 4 weeks to get you used to the necessary eating habits and diet restrictions and prepare your body for the second phase. I am currently in phase one and have been now for 25 days. It will be a couple more weeks before I move on to phase 2 since I need to come up with the money for the blood tests. On Friday November 20th I weighed myself for the first time since starting my program. I was amazed by the results. I had lost 23 pounds in 23 days!!! In my next post I will talk about how I got there and share a recipe or two.