I've been meaning to make this post for a while and this one is mostly about me marking a personal milestone for myself so, fair warning.
I started logging my weight around three or four years ago, what put me over the edge was trying to squeeze into a brand new shirt that Shardé bought me, probably a birthday gift. We've been together since we were in college so it's honestly extremely flattering that she still saw me as a medium slim, that's how you know the love is real. Weight wasn't something I struggled with as a kid so I never thought it would happen to me. I was one of those guys who could eat an entire pizza in college and have people wondering where I was hiding it all. As a child I was underweight but in hindsight that was more likely due to poverty than my appetite, in my teen years when my family was more financially stable I would eat everything in the house and leave everyone else starving. I'm so, so sorry to my sisters and parents, now that I have teen boys of my own the tables have been turned!
In college I was eating out during the day, but not "real food", couldn't afford it, so I would get by on a bag of Skittles, a 99 cent bag of Doritos 10oz, and a 99 cent bottle of Mt Dew, also 16oz. Getting that many calories at those prices is basically impossible these days due to the raging shrinkflation/inflation. After college my eating habits got even worse, but my weight barely did anything, I was 175 at my heaviest but I really wasn't paying attention.
One of my roommates at the time was a pizza delivery driver and he would often come home with entire pizza pies that we would feast on nightly, during the day I would get lunch with my co-workers and it was just a roulette wheel of extremely cheap fast food. We'd rotate between McDonalds, KFC, Wendy's, Burger King, daily, and still because I was so active, biking and walking everywhere I could.
By the time I was in my mid twenties I assumed that I could eat however I wanted, I'd learned about "middle-aged-spread" in health class but that was something that happened to other people so I pushed it to the back of my mind. I got married, had kids, moved from NJ/PA to Virginia where my mind was blown to find beer easily accessible in supermarkets and gas stations. I picked up a taste for IPAs (I know, I know) and went from being just a "social binge drinker" to also being a guy who had one or two, and finally three or four beers to wind down after work.
Somewhere in the midst of that I also learned that my oldest son would probably never speak due severe autism (I haven't given up on him!) and I'm ashamed to admit that I spent a decade using beer and bourbon cocktails to try to numb myself, selfishly, over the life I'd felt I'd lost. We pour all of our hopes and dreams into our children, but the first born probably more so than the rest, it can't be helped. So it's tough when you've already fantasized about little league games and your kid growing up to be president one day to have that taken away.
I'm not trying to make excuses, I just wanted to look these thoughts and feelings in the eye, but I've gotten off topic.
Before I knew it I was a functioning alcoholic, just in time for the pandemic to arrive, that's when things got really bad. I don't need to go into details, I wasn't blacking out every night or anything that bad, but I think it's safe to say that I kept a mild buzz going pretty much any time I wasn't working. While I was living through this I wouldn't have admitted any of this, which is another reason that in hindsight I know I was off the rails.
I know it feels like I've gone off on a wild tangent, so let me bring it back to that birthday shirt I squeezed into, looking down at my stomach I remember the image of one of the weirdly shaped coffee addicted aliens from Men in Black invaded my thoughts, and I decided that I needed to lose weight.
So I started counting calories and I was shocked to find out how many were in each of my beers, cocktails were just as bad if not worse, and single shots were still alarmingly high. I'm laughing to myself as I think back on the way I contorted myself to try to avoid giving up drinking while maintaining a calorie deficit. My favorite was dispensing my beer into shot glasses so that I could sip them daintily to stretch them out.
Eventually I threw in the towel and I'm proud to say that, while I haven't quit drinking completely, I've cut back so significantly that I can safely say I only drink socially these days, and I think the results speak for themselves. Turning down alcohol has allowed me to turn up activity and time spent with my wife and kids, and spending less time buzzed has allowed me to develop a deeper relationship with my non-verbal son. I've learned that part of my life's journey is to help make his easier, and I've realized how selfish I was for despairing while my son is right here and he really needs me to be present every single day. Not to mention my two other sons who also suffered from me being here, but not here, for so much of their lives.
This was supposed to be a brag post, so let me end with a toast, to life, to love, and to another year of health 🥂