OnePhatMan

Before I begin this story, you need to see something. This is what 371 pounds of fat and lazy looks like:

When you’re fat it’s easy to pretend that you aren’t, to pretend that you’re just another person walking down the street without a care in the world. You don’t forget how fat you are, but you successfully block it from your conscious mind. Sometimes, however, you get a harsh reminder. Mine came over my birthday weekend in May 2000, when Robyn and I took our daughter, the spud, on a vacation to the Smoky Mountains. That was where my wakeup call began.

The spud wanted to ride a virtual roller coaster and I climbed in with her. Halfway through, I had to stop the ride because I was terrified the seatbelt holding me in was going to snap during one of the numerous times the machine suspended us upside-down. With my 370+ pounds and her 130, we were a good twenty pounds over the machine’s posted weight limit of 480 pounds.

We also tried the Ripley’s Motion Theater, which is like a normal movie house except the seats move—and they move violently. I was so big I had to force my frame into the seat, and to hold on I used the handgrips in the seats on either side of me. The seatbelt barely made it around my gut, and my arms got bruised all over because they were outside my seat and banged on other seats.

I learned a valuable lesson from those two rides. Can you imagine what it feels like to tell your child that you can’t share a ride with her because you’re afraid you won’t fit, or that you’re concerned you’ll break it?

We returned home the Sunday before Memorial Day, May 28. After three and a half days of walking in one-block stretches because I couldn’t go any further without resting my aching feet and knees, all I wanted when I got home was some good TV time with my sweet snacks. As it turns out, I got exactly what I needed.

I settled onto the couch with a Little Debbie strawberry shortcake roll. Before I started eating, I spent several minutes surfing channels looking for something to entertain me while I ate, because really, isn’t mindless eating the best kind of eating? I settled on an emergency room documentary.

In this particular show, a middle-aged man lay in the E.R. complaining about a bad pain in one of his feet, which was wrapped in a towel. According to the doctor narrating the story, the man was a diabetic and he didn’t take care of his disease. As I took my first bite of the strawberry roll the man unwrapped his foot, revealing several crusty black rotten toes and a foot covered with suppurating sores. His leg had to be amputated right below the knee. While the amputation wasn’t shown, what was shown was worse: the man moaning and crying when the doctor told him that his leg would have to go.

In that man’s story I saw my own story, and what the not too distant future had in store for me. I didn’t like what I saw, and resolved that something had to change.

I got off the couch that very minute and threw away the rest of the strawberry roll. The thought of having my own leg amputated was enough to instantly transform the way I viewed what I was eating.

I can still imagine, at times, what Ebenezer Scrooge must have felt when he realized it was still Christmas morning and the future of his dream had not yet come to pass. That moment woke me from a deep sleep, and showed me that the time had come to get my act together. I went cold turkey on the sweet foods, and within a week I was working out doing the only thing I was physically able to do: treading water for 10 minutes at a time.      Transformation »