Long Journey

I mention this in passing to people that may not have known me for very long, but I don't go screaming it from the rafters either. I tend to shy away from bringing it up unless it has relevance in the conversation, but I want to write about the journey I started nearly 3 years ago.

I used to weight nearly 300 pounds. I was 24, obese and extremely unhappy.

All through high school I was heavy, sitting around 6 feet tall and 220 pounds with absolutely no muscle mass, pretty much just bone and fat. Every time I go home I see that graduation day photo my parents display proudly in the kitchen. I see my smile on my chubby face and wonder why I hated myself so much and why I still hate looking at those old photos.

But before I get too deep into the journey, I want to examine a characteristic that enabled me say it was OK to be unhealthy.

The most important thing that enabled my shitty lifestyle was that people liked me. I was very charismatic. Seriously, I have a hard time thinking of anyone that really hated me ... ever. I can read people really well and turn would-be agitators into allies. It was a survival instinct I adapted as a child to get people to stop tormenting me about my weight. My behavior would transition between different types of people. I was goofy with jocks, they liked the class clown that would make them laugh. I was polite and intelligent with my parents and family, they wanted a good son. I was loud and vulgar with people I worked with, they wanted the crazy guy to tell stories about. Hell, I could break it down to shifting personalities between individual people, but I will spare the readers. The point is, I was not one person that people liked, I was a lot of people in one large shell that hated himself.

With that craziness explored lets move on to after high school. I went to college for a while but I had little patience for it. I am pretty smart, smarter than most people I have met, but I lacked discipline. In college I actually had to try, instead I just gave up. I worked shitty jobs and made ends meet as my weight slowly grew.

Finally I got a break...I got a job doing what I thought I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I got a job at a local newspaper as a graphic designer. "Hooray! I get to sit at a computer all day and work my mind and create!" I thought I was taking a step in the right direction, getting a respectable career that my family would be proud of. I was not making minimum wage anymore, I worked at the same place my father did, they wouldn't think I was a fat screw up. Later I realized they never did think I was a screw up. They didn't care what I do for a living or how much money I make as long as I am happy.

Working at the newspaper combined with a poor diet of fast food influenced by an equally unhealthy roommate, and no exercise because of an addiction to World of Warcraft, my weight went to near 300 pounds. This was my lowest point in life so far, yet I could not see it. I thought I was doing great, aside from having a closet chalked full of size 44 jeans that I could barely fit into.

It took several events to make me see what I was letting myself become. Some I thought were good and some were Earth shattering bad at the time.

The first event was my roommate was moving away and I had no where to live. I had to move back in with my parents for several months. I really did like this guy, he was a good friend, but he had a terrible influence on me to be lazy, and to eat the most God awful shit. Burgers and fries and chips and cereal, whatever was easy.

The second was meeting my new co worker, Brady aka B-Rad, aka B-Radimus Prime. I worked with B-Rad for several months and we slowly became friends. He nudged me to get out and be active. He had an old weight bench in his shed and we would lift weights a few days here and there. Also he loved to go for jogs. He finally convinced me to go on one with him. I don't think I even made it a block before I had to stop. I realized then just how bad my body was. Thank you B-Rad.

Event three chronologically should be the first but in this story it happens after B-Rad. In my college days I worked with a guy at Wal-Mart named Kevin. Kevin was very charismatic just like me, but he was a physical fitness major at the University. He was always training and eating right. He would mention to me that I should try this exercise, or come to the gym with him. I did do it for a while, but I never saw any progress, so I quit. The best thing about Kevin, he never pushed the fact that I was unhealthy. He tried to help and saw I was not ready to take his advice. I am grateful that he never gave up on me. He is also to this day, one of my closest friends even though we have been separated for many years. About the time I started at the newspaper, Kevin graduated and moved away. We talked on the phone here and there, just bullshitting. During the B-Rad time of random jogging and free weight bumbling I mentioned to Kevin that I was trying to get fit but I didn't think I was going about it right. I was expecting the flood gates to open with years of knowledge that he had been wanting to share with me. Instead he gave me a simple answer. "Dude, that's great. You should check out this book 'Body For Life.'" That was pretty much all he said. Thank you Kevin.

Reading "Body for Life" was an event in itself. Extremely helpful book and I slowly started adapting it's principles into my daily life. I was living with B-Rad and his daughter now and was in a good environment to promote healthy living, responsibility, and discipline.

The final major event in my journey was one that I thought at the time was the end of my life. I was fired from my job at the newspaper. I had numerous indiscretions there in the past, what can I say I was loud and rowdy. One involved a DUI on my first week there, one involved some Nazi propaganda (IT WAS A JOKE!) but most involved me just being a dick. My bosses at the newspaper were more than fair, they let most of my shitty behavior slip. I thank them for putting up with me as long as they did, god knows how. But the hard fact is I deserved to be fired. I earned a swift kicked to the ass. But thankfully it got me away from the computer screen and made me grow up. Thank you Ray and Dallas for firing me.

Getting fired made me scrutinize myself even more. Not just my exterior and physical health which I was well under way to fixing. But also my inner self. I came to terms with how much of an immature jackass I was and how much I truly despised myself. I still struggle with it today, as I still struggle with being healthy.

I am proud to say that now I am the best person I have ever been, physically and mentally. I am at a decent 6 foot 2 inches and 185 pounds. I have gained an huge amount of muscle since I really had none when I began. I still have a little bit of a gut, but I am working on it. I go to the gym 3 days a week and I recently started jujitsu training 3 days a week.

I let myself eat a cookie or two from the work cafeteria or eat some fried chicken. I let slip a tongue lashing to people around me or make unfriendly remarks about someone. After doing so, I always feel worse, but at least I recognize the faults now. Granted, no one can be perfect, but I don't want to be the fat kid any more than I want to be the asshole.