Extreme Weight Loss: Hitting The Road Alone

Many years ago I was sitting on the examination table at my doctor's office. The doctor was finishing up and talking over some of my results. As usual I got the lecture about needing to lose weight. My doctor was old-fashioned and didn't beat around the bush.

"Mr. Harrington, you're morbidly obese."

I thought to myself:

Morbidly?

I had never heard that term before in relation to being overweight. I only knew "morbid" to mean "ghoulish" or "gruesome".

Morbid Obesity sounded like the name of a Heavy Metal band. 

I knew I was overweight, but I thought my doctor was just emphaticallydescribing my condition. He went on to tell me that this was a medical term to describe a level of obesity.

I think I was in denial of how deep was into the Obesity Abyss. I'm guessing at time I weighed over 300 pounds. I could still run faster than my kids, take aerobic classes, ride a bike, and generally get around okay. It wasn't until I got into my late 30's where I gained even more weight and a host of co-morbidities (health issues related to my obese condition like sleep apnea, pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, etc.).

By then I was Super Morbidly Obese.

When I look back on this doctor's office memory I think about a Family Guy episode where Peter's doctor tells him he is fat and Peter is in denial about it.

Like Peter, I didn't have a realistic body image at the time. When I look at pictures of myself  from back then I can't believe just how big I was.

I asked my doctor for suggestions as to what I can do to lose weight and he told me, "You need to eat less and get more activity."

Well, I kinda knew that already...

He gave me a referral to a nutritionist and suggested that I join a weight loss group like Weight Watchers to help me get started.

I wasn't interested in joining Weight Watchers. I wanted someone to tell me exactly what I needed to do and I just go and do it.

The challenge is that I had to figure out what doing it myself entailed. I did end up talking to a nutritionist. Other than the volume of food, and getting more vegetables, I always ate fairly healthy. I liked lean meats, fish, high fiber grains, etc. I was eating too much and I eat when I feel stressed. So the advice from the nutritionist didn't help me much.

I joined a local weight loss support group. We talked about weight loss topics, had weekly weigh-ins, and commiserated about our conditions. I eventually lost 50 pounds quickly and became the star of the group. They were supportive and well-meaning, but lacked knowledge about sustainable weight loss. The members often went out to eat after the meetings and ate terrible foods. We even went to a buffet for a holiday meal. Obviously not the best choice for people with eating disorders. We had two members who had bariatric surgery in the past and had gained all of their weight back. Eventually I started to gain weight back too as I wasn't really learning anything other than the fact that this group was not helping me for the long-term.

My doctor told me about a procedure called "gastric banding". He said that I was an excellent candidate for it because I was fairly healthy overall, young, and it was a minimally invasive procedure. So I did some research and found a local hospital that offered it. I requested information and went to a session that talked about what was involved. Despite being touted as a "minor" procedure, I was not too keen on having my innards manipulated and forcing me to take in less calories. That just didn't make sense. And there were a number of medical risks involved that worried me. In the end, I decided it was not for me. 

In 2010 my dad passed away from colon and lung cancers. The experience was devastating. I watched in horror as he withered away right before my eyes in his nursing home room.  And as he passed from this life, I saw regret on his face. That image burned into my mind and I told my mom that we needed to learn something from dad's poor health habits. At that time I weighed well over 400 pounds. You can read more detail on the story here.

One reality kept staring me back in the face:

I needed to commit to a healthy lifestyle

And I needed to figure out how to do that on my own. There really was not a place where I could turn for help. I did not have the money to afford a health coach nor one of those weight loss facilities. I had fantasies of taking off a year from work and focusing just on my health. I couldn't afford to do that either. 

So I just decided to do it on my own. After a lot of research and soul-searching I figured out a place to start. I found a food tracking app which I used to log all of my food intake and started a very moderate exercise plan. Over time I gradually reduced my food intake and increased my physical activity.

And I told everyone what I was doing. This was also key for moral support and to keep me accountable.

You can read up more on my journey in my blogs and website, but suffice it to say that my commitment to a healthy lifestyle enabled me to lose over 200 pounds in 11 months. The hard part comes afterwards as I found out. My obesity demon never went away. I had to learn techniques for managing my condition. For me this is a journey and I am constantly learning and improving. 

For many severely obese people I talk to,  they feel like there is no place to turn. Sure, many programs, health coaches, diets tell them they have the answers, but these people are skeptical. We have tried things in the past and failed. It is through caring and compassion that we can help people learn to try new things. In my experience with coaching severely obese adults, it is about the connection and trust. They trust me because I have been there. There is no glory in revealing some of the humiliation I endured. I know what it is like and can relate to many of their struggles. 

Obviously the bigger solution to all of this is prevention. We need to stop creating severely obese people. In the meantime, we need better solutions to help those in need of losing a lot of weight. Now with the latest headlines around people who lose all of their weight often gain it back due to issues with metabolism, they may be getting even more discouraged.

We need a ray of hope in all of this. It can be managed and it takes work. The effort is well worth the health gains. As we all know the hardest part is the mental aspect. I am sharing the techniques I use to overcome the roadblocks, setting an example, and opening up about the realities of what it takes.

In end my doctor was right in terms of what I needed to do in order to lose weight- eat less and get more activity. We could debate all day on what we should eat and types of activity we should get. And while we are wasting time debating, the world is getting fatter and people never get started because they just don't know where to begin. The answers don't have to be complicated, we just need to do something which is better than nothing.

Life isn't perfect and nor are we. None of the experts seem to agree on what we need to do in order to solve this growing problem. My vision for the future is that we can all work together collaboratively to achieve the most important goal in this- a better quality of life for everyone.