Losing All Kinds of Weight Throughout a Season of Acquisition, Part 1

...and acquiring the best gift of all, in a twist we all see coming a mile away. We’ll start with the literal weight loss and move on the figurative.

I gave myself the mother of all bellyaches on Thanksgiving 2010, and that was before I could even get all the way through the main course. I’d dismissed it as a mere stomach bug then, but it didn’t go away. After a few more meals I realized I could feel the exact part of my intestinal tract when the food reached it. It felt like something sharp twisting as the mass worked its way through. 

As much as I enjoy eating, the anticipation of pain encouraged me to limit my portions. Boasting of my weight loss over the Great Holiday Overindulgence Season was the only pleasure I got from shedding those initial pounds. A visit to the doctor sometime in the midst of all this revealed I had diverticulitis. There was medicine for the inflammation, but it was up to me not to inflame it so much. 

Pain is a powerful motivator. Its bowl-grade coaching brought me down from a Class 2 Obese pork gorgon with 36.5 BMI to a mere high-end Overweight BMI of 28.9. It took 50 lbs (22.6 kg) to get there, and it made a striking visual difference. I felt better, too. I no longer needed the CPAP machine to breathe throughout the night. My cholesterol was fixing itself and I could quit taking the statin blockers. 

My assigned care provider, or whatever we’re calling doctors these days, was a fit lady who was not in the least impressed by my 50-pound weight loss when I came in complaining of a sore knee I got from landing wrong after pull-ups. (I’d torn my ACL.) As she saw it, I had 40 more pounds to go. 

She was correct, but I was happy. I was working out and feeling good. I had a lot more self-control in regards to my eating, that one necessary component to weight loss that most “fat activists” absolutely refuse to learn. I had the smug assurance of one who had leveled up, who had left some people behind. (“Hey, at least I don’t look like them. Ha!”) I didn’t feel it necessary to go the rest of the way.

This state of affairs went on for nearly five years. What did I do throughout that time? I was coming into my 50s, so I wrote my first novels, walked around the neighborhood, watched both children graduate high school and go their ways. The usual stuff. 

It was the day after Christmas 2015 when I got on the scales and saw I was up to 194 lbs on an empty stomach. A feeling of dread came over me. If I were to cross 200 lbs again would I ever return to normal weight? Of course, if I let myself go all the way back up to 200 again....

Portrait of the artist as a 240-lb pork gorgon in a suit, MCing a Toastmasters contest in April 2010.

I was not going back. I was not going to be one of those people who backslid and then accepted that most asinine and false notion that “diets don’t work.” The point of failure is the person on the diet who refuses to put in the non-effort of not eating because it’s too uncomfortable. If so many people fail it’s because weakness is more common than strength, sloth is easier than industry, etc. (I’ve often wondered if we treasure Good for economic reasons, i.e., it’s rarer than platinum.)

It was barely four years ago, and all I remember was that terror- and shame-driven dedication. I’m not sure how I actually started losing weight other than simply not eating. I’d become aware of intermittent fasting, and I know I did test myself to see how long I could exceed the 16-hour mark (20 hours with only coffee and water is my personal best).

When I saw my weight down to 189 lbs I realized I’d never imagined getting down to the 180s. Not even 189. I had been content to camp at 190. I was chagrined to understand my physician’s crossness with me. Having repented my weakness and sloth, I maintained my course.

The lowest I got was 159 lbs, after a 24-hour stomach bug. My wife and I were in a hotel room with four cats awaiting the paperwork to buy our house in the San Luis Valley and I more or less let myself go. It took me a while to drift out of my 160s. I wasn’t weighing myself at all, just happy that my pants fit.

4th of July 2016 in Manitou Springs, on the high end of normal weight for my height. Once again, I would let myself coast...but hey, I’m looking so much better than I used to, right? This is where we set the trap for ourselves.

Until they didn’t. It was Super Bowl Sunday night when I struggled to go to sleep, but had panic attacks every time I drifted off. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. When I weighed myself I saw that I’d risen back to 180 lbs. It was 10 lbs less that 190 but bad enough to bring back my sleep apnea.

To think I was happy at 190 lbs. Now I was feeling sick creeping up on 180 lbs. In the course of losing so much weight I’d raised my standards in regards to what I would tolerate. Also, I had demonstrated the fallacy of set-point weight.

Like many self-described “activists,” fat activists have a raft of pseudo-science to excuse their sloth and gluttony, one of which is the notion of a set-point weight that we’re all somehow genetically programmed to be at. No matter how much you try to lose weight, you will always fall back to that set-point. There is no escaping your genetic destiny! Indeed, should you dare disobey the dictates of your (grossly bloated and distended) body, you will fall into “disordered eating” and gain even more weight. So don’t try. No, seriously, don’t. It’s dangerous. (They really talk like this.) NO DIET TALK, IT’S TRIGGERING! Accept yourself as you are, a grotesque, malodorous mess of unfettered compulsions, ill-fitting clothes, labored breathing, etc.

Well, check me out, re-setting my set-points. Once it was 240 lbs. Thanks to the encouragement of diverticulitis, my set-point became 190. Thanks to sheer terror of approaching 200 again, it became 180. This “weight-loss journey” (yeah, I know) has covered the entire last decade, and I still have 30 more pounds to go before I hit my sweet spot. And guess what year it is....

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve completed a journey of your own. And, all the infantile happy talk aside, anything you’ve set as a long-term goal is a journey. I say let’s make it sound more heroic—that part isn’t wrong, if you’re one of the very few, not quite so proud who have vanquished an addiction to food or drugs—and call it a quest. You’re not merely working towards a goal, you seek a prize, a boon.

No matter how heavy you are, whether you’re 240 lbs or more as I started out, wherever you are, I would challenge you to lose no more than ten pounds. Just ten. You’ll notice two things. First, you’ve turned back the age clock and acquired superpowers along the way. You will feel so much better, so much more energetic, not merely healthier but happier. It’s one heck of a drug. Try it.

The second thing is you’ll be content to stay where you are. You will creep back up over time. Count on it. Oops. Guess diets don’t work. Either that, or re-activate your dead program, the one that made you feel so good when you were just ten pounds lighter. 

We know how most people will roll. Nothing to get fussed over. It’s human nature to take the soft option. I’ve done it.

Then I got tired of doing it.

There’s a Bible verse that, whatever your religion—and I count atheism as a religion, too; it’s as obnoxiously evangelical as the worst of ‘em so shut up, already—applies to this. Something about the narrow and rocky path few take versus the wide, smooth one that everyone else does.

I trust you get the point. It’s slow going, but what’s a quest without setbacks and obstacles and all that awful stuff you’ll be laughing about when you’re done?

This morning, after a small breakfast of scrambled eggs and chorizo. Six days and nights without beer (or tobacco!) has made an incredible difference. Only 25.6 to go ‘til goal. I’ll be within the high-end for normal weight for my height in 11.6.