One of the questions
people often ask me is what was the trigger that finally did it for me. I can't say it was any one thing
specifically, it was more a compilation of many years' worth of triggers.
It was obvious for a long
time that my weight was out of control.
I had been so miserable for so long, not only physically but spiritually
as well, that I felt like I was just waiting to die. I wasn't suicidal or anything like that, I
just didn't see a different future for myself.
How could I? I tried and tried
pretty much my entire life and always failed when it came to my weight. I had already been experiencing health
problems the last ten or fifteen years, I knew it'd just get worse with age,
especially if I stayed this weight or, worse, gained more. I kept walking around thinking all the time,
"This is my life???? How did I get
here? How did I let it get this
bad? What happened to me?"
For years I blamed my
weight problems on my stressful, time-consuming job. When did I have time to work on my
weight? Even if I had the time, when
did I have the energy? When I came home
from work, I was too tired mentally and emotionally to do anything like
exercise or cook healthy meals for myself. I just had enough time and energy to eat fast food or other processed
meal for dinner while I sat on the sofa to watch TV until it was time for
bed. At work, I'd go out to lunch with
my friends so we'd eat out every day. No one in my circle ever brought their lunch.
I lived alone so lunch time was my
social hour to be around people. This
routine was the best I could do for myself, and this was my life for many
years.
I knew that once I
retired, the weight would magically fall off me because I would not have the
same busy schedule or stressors in my life anymore. I was very lucky that I could retire
relatively young, and a few months before my 51st birthday, I pulled the plug
and retired in the summer of 2011.
Although financially it would have been a better decision to keep
working for a few more years, I felt my job was killing me. What good is money if you're fat, sick, and
miserable? For my health and mental well being, I felt I
had to retire with no further delay.
After working for 35 years
straight, my body and mind were exhausted.
I needed some down time to relax, sleep, read, and watch TV for awhile
without having to worry about schedules, meetings, deadlines, etc. My
intention was for this down time to last maybe a month, two at the very most
and then I could figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I felt a little guilty, but it was okay, I
deserved to do nothing at all for awhile. A year and a half later, at the end of 2012, my weight was still 300
lbs. and I was still having my "down time." I was sleeping a lot and watching way too
much TV, and although my eating habits were a bit better, I still wasn't losing
any weight - like NONE at all! What's
worse is I had no plans to change any of that because I had no desire to do
anything else.
A funny thing happened
when I was watching an episode from an old sitcom, "Samantha
Who?" In this particular episode,
the father retires and the mother is elated because she had been waiting for years
for him to retire so that the two of them could finally travel the world. They each made a list of things they wanted
to do now that he was retired. Her list
included travelling the world and her biggest concern was which country to
visit first. His list included watching
all the seasons of "The X Files" which he had ordered on DVD, and
after he finished that show, he planned to watch "Lonesome
Dove." This scene was for comedic
effect, of course, but I was living it!
You see, I was in the middle of completing "The X Files"
seasons myself - and I had the "Twilight Zone" planned next! I remember thinking when I heard him explain
to his wife what his retirement plans were, "Oh, my God! That's so pathetic, what a waste! Oh, my God, that's exactly what I'm doing in
real life!"
So here I was, a year and
a half in retirement, just had my 52nd birthday, I still weighed 300 lbs., and
I still felt horrible physically and spiritually, my bad (arthritic) knee had
been screaming in pain pretty much 24/7 for many years and it was no better,
and moving in general was difficult because of my big body and painful because
of my knee. I had absolutely no energy
whatsoever and I couldn't even remember what it felt like to have any. I knew that if I didn't watch it, I could (and
would) literally sleep all day, every day. I wasn't living, I was just existing and waiting for death.
Then a horrifying thought
occurred to me: where will I be in 10
years? Am I going to wake up 10 years
from now weighing the same (or worse yet, much heavier) and my biggest
accomplishment during those years was watching reruns of all my favorite
shows? When I was younger, I used to
tell my friend Joyce that if I ever got to 200 lbs., I'd have to kill
myself. Well, not only did I get to the
200s where I stayed for more than a decade, I went all the way to the 300s for yet
another decade. Suddenly I started
thinking, "What if in the next 10 years I reach 400?!?" It didn't seem too likely, but then again in
a million years I never would have guessed I'd end up weighing 300 lbs. either.
At this point I started panicking. I knew that if I got any heavier, I'd die emotionally
and spiritually. I had already wasted a
year and half of my retirement (not to mention all those decades before), and I
was reaching a desperation about having to do SOMETHING before it got worse. I could no longer keep living like this. I no longer wanted to keep living like this.
Although my time-consuming, stressful career had been a factor, it was obvious that it was not entirely to blame for my obesity. Now that I could no longer blame my job, what could I do?
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