As we roll into this holiday season, and the two year anniversary of the Fast Track road show where I made the commitment to loose weight, I find myself in a reflective mood. I’ve made the decision to hold off on weigh ins until the first of the new year, I’m back in the 230′s – but know I’m not going to hold the food perfectly on track this next week – and with the stress from the “anniversaries” I’ve decided the watching the scale climb up a few pounds is an added stress I want to put aside for a few days.
2 Years ago
The fast track road show and the group of photographers (many of whom are now some of my best friends) that I made the public declaration to loose weight. The challenge was set for 200 pounds in 2 years.
I failed that challenge.
I’ve stalled after loosing 180 pounds – lots of reasons and excuses, but stalled none the less.
But I’m not really sad or very upset about it now that the “2 year” window is passed – heck I lost 180 pounds. My reality today is I weigh in the 230′s not over 415. I’ll hit my 200 pound mark, just not this month.
The support from the photographers pictured, and many more who while not there that day still rallied in support of me, proved so helpful and motivating in getting this far. I wasn’t alone, and that brings us to the other anniversary.
This holiday season marks the 40th anniversary of where my reality was shattered and with it anything resembling a healthy relationship with food.
It was a emotional winter forty years ago for me. My parents had announced they where getting a divorce. My father who was an over the road truck driver came through Denver less and less that year, so it was just me and my mom, and my baby sister who was born that winter.
Sherri Lynn was born in November of that year, but there where complications – a lot of which I still don’t really know the exact reasons behind – but she would never come home. When she left the hospital it was for a special home near Boulder where she could be under 24 hour nurses care.
My mother and myself drove out there every day to spend time with her, until at least December 18th of that year, 1 week before Christmas, the day Sherri died. Sherri’s funeral was on the 23rd of December. Heck of a way for a 9 year old to spend the holidays.
My father did arrive in town for the funeral, arriving the day before and leaving the day after. I hated him for years for not being strong enough to be there for me during that time. I know now that he was battling his own demons and finally was able to let go of the pain I had surrounding him and forgive him – although as they say I’ve never forgotten.
My mother was emotionally wrecked as well. She withdrew for a long time, sleeping most of the day, I started getting myself ready for school, making my own breakfast and lunch, only to come home and find her either still in bed or in her robe sitting on the couch watching some awful day time TV soap opera.
Family, friends, neighbors, people brought us food to make things easier. None of it good or healthy. Mom would buy me just about any sweat treat I wanted – for a while I think that’s all the support she had in her to give.
So there I was, 9 years old, burying my baby sister the day before Christmas Eve, feeling abandoned by my parents who where both lost to me in their own struggles. My father moving out of state, I’d only see him about a half dozen times over the next 20 years, and my mother so emotionally distant she might as well have been living elsewhere. In the midst of all that I learned to replace love and companionship with the release of blood sugars into the system from consuming huge amounts of sugars and carbs.
The only good feelings I experienced related to food for the next several years. My mother slowly recovered but she saw giving me the food I wanted as a way to show how much she loved me.
Needless to say I went through years of depression and during some of my teen years was borderline suicidal – not that I ever actively tried to kill myself, but oh how I used to fantasize about it. Went so far as to once even play a few rounds of russian roulette. Don’t worry – it was with a little .22 – even if I had landed on the fateful cylinder I doubt that thing had enough power to get through my thick skull, probably would have just hurt like all heck.
Of course I saw my weight as just a slow form of suicide. I’d given up on life and was eating myself to death. I dropped out of school and was homeless for most of one year. Not living on the city streets kind of homeless, I lived in a tent up in the foothills and came down to town to work day labor when I needed money.
When I fell in love with my wife, I started thinking about the future. Got my GED and went to college to get an accounting degree (3.95 gpa) – but the relationship with food I could never fully repair.
A few years before starting this journey I had another year that made the holidays so difficult to handle. Both my cat and dog where getting very old, my cat who was about 20 passed the week after Christmas and my dog Luna, had to be put to sleep in early February due to cancer. These two animals where a huge part of our family and both my wifes and my weight starting shooting up over the next few years.
Then two years ago the road show, and new more positive stories to tell. My wife and I together started making new memories and rebuilding our relationship with food. It’s still not always perfect – but it’s a lot more healthy than it used to be.
I’d be a liar if I said I don’t have any issues with seasonal depression anymore – but it doesn’t control me anymore, and we’re building some newer more positive memories of this time of year.
Heck I may always struggle this time of year. There’s a lot of emotional scar tissue built up there and it’s going to take more than a few good years to heal it all, but now I think and work to the future and try to spend less time reliving past painful memories.
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