Matt's Weight Loss Odyssey: Part 5 (November 5, 2005)

It had been six months since I got my first dose of weight loss reality. On Friday, November 4th, I sat in my family room, riffing about weight loss and my frustrations to mom. I was scared, nervous, tense and frustrated. At most, I figured I had lost 10 pounds over the previous three-month stretch.

So the next morning, I woke up and went up to Kaiser for a weigh-in. I didn't bother with breakfast; the way I looked at it, every pound counted toward the final total.

I didn't wait long and stepped on the wholly accurate digital scale, which looked like an out-of-order treadmill.

In mid-May, I weighed 351 pounds.

By November 5, I weighed 372 pounds.

I was mortified. I picked up Subway on the way home, called Mikaela and met her down by the river for our weekly (or so) 2-mile walk. It was cold and wet outside, but when we met, it wasn't raining.

We walked for a mile as I replayed the scene over and over in my head. I was probably six months away from 400 pounds. Four hundred pounds. Say it out loud.

We made it about a half mile before the rains start falling. We stepped under a bank of trees separating the trail from the river, and this moment ... Mikaela will always be one of my best friends for what happened next.

I tried to keep it together, rationalizing how I'd gotten to this point and scared about what to do next. If I wanted to make positive changes, ... well, I wasn't thinking about positive changes. I was scared to death. How long would it be before I suffered a heart attack? And I quit eating fast food - shouldn't I be in better shape?

Finally, I couldn't keep it in anymore. I cried. Not just an idle tear; more like a puddle. Mikaela gave me a hug, and I cried. Whatever momentum I thought I'd established had evaporated.

I remember an episode of The Simpsons where Homer got to work from home after ballooning to 315 pounds. Homer had nothing on me. And that scared me. Would I need a muumuu? A motorized cart? In short ... what was wrong with me?

I cried until the tears wouldn't come anymore. I cried harder than I ever had. Mikaela never once came down on me or even tried to cheer me up; she knew that I just needed to go through this. Your best friends are the ones who are there when you need them most ... and Mikaela was there. If she hadn't met me down by the river that morning, who knows what would have happened?

Eventually, when I caught my breath, we agreed to continue our walk at the mall, which was undercover and much warmer. So we did just that. We walked from one end to the other. Slowly but surely, my mind drifted away from the horrors of weighing 372 pounds and more toward the positive steps I needed to start taking.

We put together a shopping list. Mikaela gave me tips for losing weight. I still had my gym membership at work.

For the first time in my life, I wasn't going to say, "I'll start my diet tomorrow."

If you've never thrown yourself into trying to lose weight ... well, it's easily the single most daunting thing I've undertaken in my life. Every aspect of my life, from the physical activity to the food to my attitudes on weight loss, needed changing.

I realized that I could never "treat myself" to a KFC snacker again. I'd taken my last sip of Diet Coke. Post-workout hot dogs were a thing of the past. Hell, those walks were a thing of the past. Literally, when it came to my diet, every single thing changed.

Even my attitudes about dieting changed. Try this on for size: I refused to say I was on a "diet." Being ON a diet means you can go OFF the diet, and I didn't want to give myself the option to slip and fall. It is and always has been a lifestyle change.

November 5, 2005. It was a turning point. It's when I bottomed out. It was the slap in the face I needed but feared. It was the end of one stage of my life, and the beginning of another ... a much happier, healthier stage.

To be continued ...