As of today, I'm heavier than I've ever been in my entire life. During my high school years, I was considered skinny. I rode my bike EVERYWHERE! In fact, everyone made fun of me. Then I got a driver's license, went to college, and my teenager metabolism got stored away with my bicycle.
In the summer of 2002, I weighed 255 lbs. and decided to do something about it. I joined Weight Watchers and bought a Tae-Bo DVD. I worked out daily (sometimes twice a day) and I got down to 209 lbs. I looked awesome! I felt awesome!
Then I got married. And here I am right back up at 260. It's hard to get up off the floor when playing with my puppy. Various body parts hurt. And my blood pressure could stand to go down a few notches.
My wife and I tried to go back on WW a couple of times, but we weren't successful.
The other day, I came to the conclusion that the reason I haven't been successful at it lately is because my evening meals with Lesli were always a crap shoot. We never really knew what she or I were going to cook until we were ready to cook it.
So the other day I proposed something drastic - we plan ALL our meals independently. When I was single, I had each meal for the week planned out very carefully and methodically. The easier it is for me to follow my plan, the more successful (in theory) I should be.
So tonight, we ordered our last stuffed-crust pizza from Pizza Hut and tomorrow we embark on a new journey of weight loss and becoming healthy again.
Wish me luck!
ADDENDUM:
As I type this, it's 2:39 a.m. and I have just experienced one of the many reasons I need to lose weight - ACID REFLUX.
For those of you unfamiliar with the experience, here's how it affects me: Imagine waking up at 2 a.m. to find that someone has poured battery acid down your wind-pipe. It's such an intense pain that depending on the severity of the attack, you start to consider going to the emergency room because you think you're having a heart attack. What has actually happened is that stomach acid has crept up your esophagus and trickled down your wind-pipe. You cough non-stop for about half an hour. You drink water. You cough some more. It's about an hour or two before you can lay back down again. But that's when you find that the acid has torn up your wind-pipe to the point that you're now wheezing which makes it difficult to get back to sleep. Laying on your back helps, but then - because you're overweight - that makes you snore which keeps your wife awake. So you just sit up watching TV in the other room for the rest of the night until the alarm clock goes off and it's time to start the day. The wheezing continues for the next day, so you're coughing most of that time. You're eventually able to breathe normally by bedtime the next night.
I was working on a show at a theatre where they worked on the set during the day which left a very fine powdery sawdust lingering in the air at rehearsal in the evening. I suffered a pretty bad attack one night and found breathing at rehearsal even more difficult. And the show involved a great deal of physical comedy which often left me gasping for air thanks to my compromised respiratory system.
Fortunately, tonight's attack wasn't bad at all. In fact, I barely coughed. But the wheezing will probably keep me up the rest of the night. I'll surely need a nap tomorrow. Good thing I work at home.
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