A Short History of My Life as Told in Terms of Eating, Diets and Weight Loss

I was born chubby. At birth I was ten pounds, six ounces. Let's just say I was big boned.

Throughout my childhood I remained chubby. I was soft, flabby, with a gut. I liked eating, especially chocolate candy, ice cream, and salami. One particular delicacy was Miracle Whip sandwiches. Every day, after school, I would eat a Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread sandwich. It sounds gross but it tastes great. It's really a classic combining two American institutions that way, neither one providing more than a semblance of nutrition. It was the deep-fried Twinkie of its day. If only my brother realized what a great thing he had created.

At the age of thirteen, my parents became somewhat concerned, and installed an above-ground pool hoping that I'd get more exercise. What staved off morbid obesity was ice hockey, and I maintained a reasonable, albeit chubby, weight.

When I graduated high school, I quickly gained weight by drinking beer and eating more. I exercised regularly, but you can eat a hell of a lot more calories than you can burn. I happened to be in Air Force ROTC when I entered college, and the Commandant of Cadets, Capt. Flag, told me to lose weight or that I'd be kicked out. I weighed 210, and the Air Force guidelines suggested that 182 was the maximum I could weigh at five feet ten.

I invented my own form of a starvation diet, skipping breakfast, eating just a little protein for lunch, and a salad for dinner. I also drank a lot of beer on weekends. At the same time, I launched an intense exercise program (to meet the physical fitness guidelines) and went from running a 15-minute mile and a half to running a nine minute mile and a half. In four months I dropped forty pounds. I kept my weight in the 170 to 180 range the rest of college, but only with a bizarre diet of no breakfast, small lunch, salad for dinner, and beer on the weekends.

What I didn't realize is that I lost a lot of that weight in the form of muscle. I had been lifting weights all through high school, but when I see pictures of myself during college, I see more bone than muscle.

Middle Age Came Early

I slowly gained that weight back over the next few years until I was back to 210 six years later. At that time, I thought I could exercise it off, and lifted and ran and did all sorts of things, but never gained control of my weight. What I didn't realize is that I was eating more than I could exercise. As I worked out, my appetite increased, and I convinced myself that I could eat more with the workouts.

If you are healthy, you can always eat more calories than you can burn.

Then my son was born, and my evenings became preoccupied with parenting. That was fun and I don't regret it, but I gained ten more pounds before he was six months old. A new all time high.

I redoubled my efforts, but the weight didn't change.

My daughter was born two years later, and again my evenings became parenting evenings. I gained another ten pounds, now topping the scales at over 230 pounds.

So I did what any sane American would do in that situation: I went on the Atkins diet. This began my formal pursuit of fad diet perfection.

To find out what happened, read on.