The impetus for this column was a discussion about a very good kind of quitting that I had with Steve Novotney, radio host, journalist extraordinaire and editor for this column.
He’s writing a column about his quitting smoking, and I’m writing about my ongoing love/hate relationship with food.
There is an important distinction here – you can quit tobacco. You can’t quit food.
I’ve struggled with weight my entire life, and it’s worse now that I’m halfway through my 65th year.
Part of the problem was my depression era parents, who would shovel whatever Mom was cooking on my plate, and full or not, I was commanded to “clean my plate” as there were “children in Africa who are starving.” Of course, like any good son, I did what I was told.
It’s not that either had food insecurities growing up. My father’s immigrant parents scratched out a living. My mother’s parents did quite well. It was the rationing mentality that came from growing up then, and the war effort for World War II.
Then I had the pleasure of playing football in High School, and low and behold my Dad was the coach. Bulk up to 210 pounds for the season, and then drop 22 plus pounds to wrestle at 188 when that was a weight class. I made that weight by taking my glasses off and exhaling while standing on the scale.
During my senior year of high school, I injured my left knee wrestling.
Cartilage, ligaments and tendons. Sounds like a law firm, doesn’t it? If it is, they specialize in pain. My immobility for the winter and spring saw my weight balloon to 245 lbs, and was the end of my amateur sports career.
I arrived at college tipping the scales at this prodigious weight, and two things became painfully obvious – that I would not be getting too many dates at that weight, and that the food on campus was nowhere near as good as Mom’s. I was permitted by my doctor to play non-contact intramural sports, and I did. By the middle of my freshman year, I was a rather svelte 170 pounds and in fairly decent shape.
In retrospect, I was probably consuming three times the number of calories I needed but walking around campus and sweating it out playing volleyball and about anything else let me keep that weight.
Then, the dreamland that is college ended, and I was thrust into the real world of sales management. Behind a desk, with phone in one hand, or sitting on airplanes. Sales calls, that when scheduled correctly included a business breakfast, a business lunch, and a fairly high-pressure business dinner, all the while I was concentrating on getting the deal, and absently mindedly shoveling food into my pie hole.
Seriously, I was taught to concentrate on the client. I didn’t even think about the food, which was usually ridiculously rich, and available in copious quantities.
In what felt like a blink of an eye, I ballooned up to about where I was when I left high school, a whopping 230 pounds.
A “very low calorie” diet and a ton of exercise brought me back down to 170 lbs and provided me with gall stones. Not an unusual side effect, I might add.
That experience had me eating like a rabbit, because a single piece of pizza or fried-anything was good for a trip to the emergency room.
My weight was up and down like a Yo-Yo for the next decade, usually ending a little bit higher at the end of each cycle. At about 250 pounds, I chose to quit smoking. I had been a two-pack-a-day guy for about 20 years, starting in the early 1980’s. I sucked on my last cancer stick July 18, 2001. I know that date, as it was my Dad’s (and my wife fathers) birthdate. Some things are just seared in your memory.
Often, I love being predictable, but I didn’t this time.
Without whatever appetite suppression I was getting from myself administered nicotine habit, I shot up from 250 to over 300 pounds. Somewhere in there, my blood pressure decided that it was going up as well, so I was medicated by my doctor, and suffered most of the side effects.
One of my doctors, who I’ll call “Dr. Perfectweight,” was rather brutal about my weight, and I kept asking him what he was going to do to help. Nothing but crickets. In the mid 1990’s, a lot of the options we have today didn’t exist.
Of course, that changed when “Dr. Perfectweight” had a massive heart attack. I ran into him socially a few years later. Seems he came to understand my dilemma.
Few people with triple-digits of weight to lose are capable of doing so. I don’t know why, but I have researched the numbers. They are shockingly small. I used to joke that “I quit smoking 100 pounds ago.” In retrospect, it was a pretty lame excuse.
My peak weight was 383 pounds. That’s morbidly obese. That’s un-insurable. That’s “it’s not a matter of if you’re going to have diabetes, it’s a matter of when”. There are many unfortunate things I learned along the way – as a fat man, you don’t want to show up at the ER with a busted up hand. They will assume heart attack and start looking for it.
Don’t show up at a buffet, if it’s served; they want to pile it on your plate (here, eat up, porky).
Here, you look like you want two desserts, to which I would smile and quietly wish pox on their house, while wrapping the sweets in the cloth napkin which could easily be a mess for the bus staff (my apologies).
The twisted cultural norms are completely wrong when it comes to food. Eating stupid was encouraged at every turn.
I’ve always kept a fairly decent level of muscle hidden under this flabby exterior, and my brother-in-law once mentioned that I moved pretty well for a “big man.” It was intended as a compliment, and I took it as such. That still haunts me.
This journey to get my weight under control has required a concerted effort over a number of years, and I’m lucky to have some medical professionals with completely awesome skills and an amazing level of compassion.
The numbers look like this – fewer than 5% of those with a pack-a-day or greater smoking habit successfully quit smoking. Less than 1% of those who endeavor to lose 100 pounds or more do.
Less than 1%. One in 100. Ten in 1,000. You could easily do better at any casino.
While there was a run-up to the beginning of my weight loss journey that included a year and one half of turning in nutrition sheets and attending online call learning sessions (sometimes, I felt like the smallest person on the call … I know that I was the most fit on a number of the calls).
Over two years of dealing with insurance companies who claimed that the surgery my physicians were prescribing was “cosmetic.”
I thought then, as I do now, that paying for a one-time surgery vs. the cost of decades of diabetes medication is a loser for the insurance company. Unless, of course, they plan on burying you before you get too expensive.
With the current popularity of the GLP inhibitors, diabetes drugs that have a pretty decent track record with weight loss, I spent some time at Ruby Hospital investigating them as well. That’s medical weight loss, as opposed to surgical weight loss.
I plan on being on this side of the turf for another 30 years and didn’t like the idea of a new drug with not fully understood long-term implications. My team recommended the surgical approach, and that’s what we did.
The pivot date for me was June 18th of this year when I went in for surgery and had over 80% of my stomach removed. Technically a gastric sleeve.
I need to thank my surgeon Dr. Lawrence Tabone at WVU/Ruby Hospital for what I consider to be an amazing gift. For the first time in my adult life, my body tells me “enough, stop eating”
There is magic behind this, and a lot of it came from Rachel Allio, my dietician who counseled me all the way through this process. Those who know me know that I can be a forceful personality. She spoke truth to my power in a way that resonates with me and made a difference for me. As with most medical professionals, knowing your stuff is a given. Being able to deliver it in a way to make a difference is a gift. She has that gift, and I’m convinced that it’s the reason my surgeon put her on my case. I’m thankful.
What’s going to be different this time? It is what happens between my ears when I make a move to ingest anything. Do I need this? Is it healthy? Is it on my acceptable list?
I went from eating whatever was around with no regard for quantity to counting everything.
I knew a lot of this stuff before but what I lacked was being intentional. This simple lesson, learned in one of those group sessions (and repeated continuously for 18 months) drove the point home. Message received and acted upon.
I’m still doing two or more business meals per day. I’m perfectly happy eating a small part of a high-protein meal. Or a small serving of cottage cheese. I’m not there for the meal; I’m there for the conversation. Or for the business. Or for the friendship.
Half of what is put in front of me is going into a “to-go” container, or in the trash. For me, it’s a small price to pay. I don’t eat behind the wheel. I don’t eat behind the keyboard. I don’t eat in front of the television. Eating time is time to eat, not a side car to some other activity.
I don’t walk through the door at home and open the fridge. That’s “old Dolph.” Instead, I’m cruising with a water bottle in my right hand most of the time. Hydration is sips all day long because I’m one gulp away from having it come back up the way it went down.
I can, and will, do this for the rest of my life. There is no choice, and there is not an alternative that I consider acceptable. I’ve lost enough weight already that I’m considering wearing suspenders with my shorts in quite possibly the worst fashion move you can imagine.
In the eight weeks since the surgery, I’ve lost 43 pounds, and the trend line is looking good. I’m off all of my blood pressure medications, and my numbers are normal.
I am going to lose one of you – the equivalent, anyway. I am going to lose 200 lbs. For some of your, that might equate top two of you. That’s 10 20-pound bags of kitty litter to you who have feline members of your family. That’s more than what the government considers a standard adult (at 160 pounds).
Everything is better.
Food tastes better. I don’t have to go to “Omar the Tentmaker” to buy a shirt. I’ve dropped two sizes in pants … which results in a selection that is probably an entire order of magnitude larger.
I sleep through the night very soundly, and wake refreshed. Losing those 43 pounds has felt like the weight loss rolled the clock back 20 years. I’m not going back to 383 pounds. My life does depend on it.
I’m surrounded by amazing family, and probably better than I deserve medical professionals. I thank you all, and it was a good use of your skills and my insurance companies’ money.
Like those who have dealt with addiction, I have to wake up every morning and suppress the “fat man” inside who’s desperately trying to take over. I’m not about to let him win.
I’m doing this for me. And it’s going to get done and stay done.
