Where It All Started

In high school, I was at my heaviest at 280 pounds. I started to take diet pills and got down to 260 by the time I graduated. But then some heart palpitations and a company recall of said pills meant I needed a new way to lose weight. During college (the first round), I took up running and hiking and even took up a little weight lifting. After a really bad physical (let’s just say I scored high where I was not supposed to on the blood test), I asked my physician at the time to keep a short leash on me to get me healthy again. By the way, that’s a really bad idea unless you’ve got a lot of money to spend.

The year was 2004 and I was steadily teetering on the 255-pound mark. I had my degree in biology (Pre-med no less), and yet I was stuck with no job and an extremely waned interest in the medical field. So I went back to school to get a second degree and did what I thought I would never do: I joined a diet program (which shall remain nameless for now). And it worked. It worked really well.

After a year, I had gone from 254 pounds to 185 pounds. Now, that sounds like a success story, doesn’t it? Ask all the experts, and they’ll give you the same information. All it takes is the right food, the right education, a regular exercise regiment, and some will to lose all that weight. Bullshit. Now, I’m not saying that they’re lying especially since it obviously worked. But there is definitely one aspect of weight loss that is hardly ever emphasized, if at all.

Losing weight isn’t a just a physical feat. It’s mental and in some cases, very spiritual. In the same year that I lost nearly 70 pounds I was diagnosed with clinical depression, anxiety, and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Hindsight showed me the irony of having OCD tendencies while on a very strict diet. But I suppose that’s why the program worked so well for me. The point is I treated them as two separate problems when one could have possibly been a result of the other.

My second degree was in civil engineering, which was definitely not helping with the stress levels. But three years later and here I stand at 235. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I’ve never got back to any of my original weight. However, that can’t be good for my body. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted when I was losing all that weight. Losing weight isn’t exactly a concrete goal, at least not to me. I lost all that weight at about the time that my depression had peaked. Ultimately I still felt unhappy, making gaining the weight back infinitely easier to do.

Therefore, I declare that I will lose all that weight again and God help me, will keep it off. I have spent the past three days thoroughly enjoying the carnal pleasures of eating for the sake of eating. But for the next 10 weeks, I intend to chronicle the progress of my diet and mental status on this blog in the hopes that it will keep me more honest. If all goes well, I’ll be a much smaller man by the time Thanksgiving rolls around. And hopefully a much happier one at that.