My name is Matt. I'm 23 years old. On November 6, 2005, I went to the doctor's office, only to find I weighed 372 pounds. For reference, that's roughly equal to, oh, 372 cans of chili. That's a lot of chili. Since then, I've been on a mission to lose weight. And, nearly six months after that fateful day, I've lost 50 pounds and climbing (or falling).
So I'm going to tell my story. Then I'll continue to chronicle my continuing efforts. And who knows what else? It'll be interesting, whatever it is.
It'd be nice if, for reference, I had a "before" photo to share. Unfortunately, the only known (recent) photos of myself picture me in a two-sizes-too-large black graduation gown. Bad reference point. Alas, you're just going to have to trust me here when I tell you that, six months ago, I was big. Uncomfortably big. How did I get to that point?
As long as I can remember, I've been a big kid. Sure, I was teased and taunted all through school, and I probably have a good many years of therapy ahead of me. But I was never ridiculously overweight.
I stayed active by playing baseball in the spring, riding bikes and hiking in the summer and -- for two years -- playing basketball in the winter. Not just that, but my first job at age 16 (bagging groceries at the local Safeway) kept me busy.
In my junior year of high school, the Atkins diet really took hold, and one of my bosses extolled the virtues. He himself had lost a noticeable amount of weight seemingly overnight, and I was intrigued.
I went to bed one Saturday, determined to shed weight quickly. Up to this point in my life, I'd been perpetually single; I never even attended a high school dance. I didn't have any self-confidence, which I blamed my weight on. So, the line of thought was that if I could lose weight overnight, I'd be confident, and the ladies would flock to my side.
I woke up the next morning, had breakfast and went to work. My boss asked how it was going.
"Well, for breakfast, I had a couple pieces of sausage, a couple of eggs, three slices of toast --"
"You blew it, man. That toast right there was 20 carbs."
I was stunned into never giving Atkins another shot.
It even worked in 2001 for a spell. I was living in Seattle, attending one of those fast-food computer schools, and I was a security guard on the weekends. I worked 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. Saturday and Sunday, which should give you an idea of my social life. Anyway, my job involved loading up with a solid 10 pounds of shit - a Mag Lite, a clip board, two dozen keys, , a cell phone and a heavy pen-like object used to register each checkpoint my route - and lugging it around a complex roughly five times the size of a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
I would come back to Vancouver every other weekend, and my weight loss was obvious. It had as much to do with walking 20 miles every weekend as it did with the fact I rarely ate. Then, when my once and only girlfriend broke up with me, the food intake came to a grinding halt. I just lost interest in eating. My food intake was down to maybe a donut for breakfast and a bowl of spaghetti-os for dinner.
Realizing I was pissing money down the drain, I moved back home and took another job in another grocery store while completing my degree.
That was almost five years ago now, and since then, I periodically told myself I would start dieting tomorrow. Every couple of months, I would make a determined post in my other blog about wanting to lose weight, but I never made it past day 1. Never.
Two years after graduating from high school in 2003, I was only going through the drive-thru here and there. Mostly, I was decent about eating around the house.
Then at a certain point in mid 2004, I drifted to the Dark Side, as it were. Fast food wasn't an exception - it was the rule.
To be continued ...
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