For the past three years, each time I took my annual blood test at Kaiser, my glucose level was a little higher. My doctor advised me, “Be prudent about your eating,” but gave no specific details. Such prudence was easier suggested than done.
My weight had gone up around 15 pounds (about seven kilograms) in the past decade. Even before that, I’d been overweight. Now I was definitely, by conventional standards, obese. I’d thought, however, “This is my body, my weight. It’s the weight I’ve gravitated to, and it may be right for me!”
My concern increased this past summer, though, upon seeing the trend continue through yet another round of tests. I’ve known two people who had amputations due to diabetes and ended up dying from complications of the disease.
A lifetime of ups and downs
I’ve had a seesaw history with weight since childhood. As a boy, I often wore Husky pants. In photos from some childhood periods, however, I look almost svelte.
One afternoon when I was around 10 years old, Mom and I took a bus from our home in suburban University City, Missouri, to midtown St. Louis, so I could see Dr. Sato, my pediatrician. The reason I remember the visit is probably that spending a quiet afternoon with Mother, in those days before she learned to drive, was always a treat.
I recall the doctor telling her, “Max is off the chart again.” He meant the chart showing the normal weight for a boy of my build. I felt surprised to hear him say that.
Off the chart? It sounded as if I was huge! I don’t think I was; yet I was chunky enough to earn nicknames like “Beef” (rhymes with my last name) and later on, in junior high, “Jelly Belly.” Ups and downs in my family’s emotional life probably paralleled my weight fluctuations.
A breakthrough
In 2006, I lost 50 pounds (about 23 kilograms) in three months, in a group weight-loss program. I’d taken an oath to stick strictly to the diet, one that had originally been developed for diabetics.
I reached my goal of 175 pounds, slightly less than my average high school weight of 180 that had enabled me to be a lineman on our school’s pathetic, but deeply-bonded football team.
At a certain point, however, that diet simply became too monotonous! Basically, it had me eating the same meals every day, with all snacking strictly prohibited. Breakfast, a generous helping of yogurt and a bowl of oat bran, was OK. It was the lunches and dinners, each consisting of huge, nutritious salads, that came to feel too repetitious, even though I’m a salad lover.
I made a few seemingly minor “maintenance adjustments” to give my meals a little more variety—but then watched as my weight slowly started rising again. After a couple of years, I’d gained back almost every pound.
Back to the present
After carrying that weight for a decade or more, this summer’s test result became a wake-up call. It brought me out of denial and made me realize my situation demanded a change, if I truly didn’t want to go the route of my two now-deceased diabetic friends.
I made an appointment with my chiropractor, Dr. Michael Rehl, who is also a nutritional counsellor. He said he believed he could help me reverse the trend.
For the next two months, I conscientiously took several daily nutritional supplements that he prescribed based on muscle-testing we did in his office. Then, with his approval, I went for a new batch of blood tests and awaited the results.
The new numbers dismayed, even shocked me. My blood sugar was higher, by a few points, than in the spring! Confused, I wrote Dr. Rehl a kind of emergency email.
For the next couple of weeks, I felt up in the air. I’d relied on the supplements alone to lower my numbers. My current eating and exercise habits had seemed to be a “bottom line” I didn’t feel capable of changing. Barbara, my wife, cooks dinners that are both nutritious and delicious. The breakfasts and lunches I make myself are, too. It appeared that the weight gain and blood sugar rise were mostly due to snacking.
However, that too seemed non-negotiable. I would come home from work and eat blue corn chips, which I loved, while waiting for dinner. I thought of the corn as somehow sacred.
We also dined out, usually at an Indian buffet—occasionally, a favourite Chinese one—once or twice per weekend. After that, I’d spend a day or two making up for the extra carbs and fat I’d eaten. I’d accepted all of this, though, as part of the paradigm that my current weight was “right for me,” even if I might appear obese.
A change of heart
In our subsequent correspondence and a phone conversation, Dr. Rehl gently told me that he’d consulted with a colleague about my case. The consultant’s view was that although the supplements I was taking had been extensively vetted for effectiveness, turning the numbers around would also require changing my diet and exercise habits.
It began to sink in that I really had an important choice to make. If I continued my long-held habits, my numbers would keep going up. After a few more years, or possibly less, I would be solidly in the diabetes range, with all the attendant complications.
The truth dawned on me: there was really only one sane choice. My years-long perspective about being at “the right weight for me” suddenly dissolved like mist before the sun. I began eliminating nearly all snacks, resumed the daily walks I’d abruptly stopped two years before, and began paying more attention to portion sizes and the carb-and-fat content of the breakfasts and lunches I made. Nonfat Greek yogurt became an important component of my diet. Importantly, I feel, I also stopped taking a bite of whatever appealing food I saw, wherever I went.
Within a few days, my weight started to go down. The magic I felt, however, was as much in the motivating power of my recognition that the seriousness of my situation mandated actual change, as it was in the weight loss itself.
Deep inside, I acted on a calculus we all carry within us. I’d been able to accept my past beliefs and behaviour, as long as I’d believed that they weren’t leading me into complications and suffering that would deleteriously affect the quality of my life.
Now, with the evidence of my blood tests and the opinions of my chiropractor and his consultant, I could no longer maintain these beliefs. They had clearly been shown to be false!
With the baggage of my former view of myself out the window, there was no limit to the potential for change. I would still die someday, of course—at least my body would—but the odds of a continued high-quality life would now be strong, as I lost weight, ate well, exercised, and occasionally practiced the “intermittent fasting” (meal-skipping) that my chiropractor also recommended.
The discovery that the previously intractable situation I’d been “trying” but failing to change for so long was one in which I am, after all, capable of determining my own destiny, has been profoundly empowering!
Timing and the ineffable
During the years when I was struggling, Barbara had occasionally said to me, “Your time will come.” She carried extra weight for several years, too. One day this past year, though, she confided in me that she’d quietly succeeded in losing 20 pounds (about nine kilograms) in the last year and a half. Her time had come.
Barbara’s weight loss made me envious, but I deeply appreciated her attitude of continued support and encouragement. And before long, the combination of circumstances that led to my own change took place. I’m a firm believer that my “time arriving”—which some might call serendipity, and others, Grace—truly did play a mysterious but real part in this saga.
Caveat
I also want to note that in my experience, getting to one’s optimum weight is not a panacea. It was interesting that, during my previous experience of that weight more than a decade ago, people I knew congratulated me as if I’d found the Secret of life. One or two even thanked me for being “so much easier to look at now.”
In carefully noting, though, how I felt inside, as opposed to the smiles and “thank you” my social self kept responding with, I realized that I was not “a new person” just because I’d lost weight. No: I was the same person, just thinner. That was one reason, perhaps, why I allowed the slow rise to my earlier weight.
There is vanity to reckon with, of course, and I’m as prone to it as anyone else. Now, however, I realize that my health, as I continue to age, depends more and more on my fitness. I’ll still have many challenges to face in life. Being relatively fit, physically, simply allows me to avoid other unnecessary challenges, and is more likely to allow active life and the facing of those challenges to go on unimpeded.
Final thoughts
The battle towards health is still difficult, for there is much maya wherever desires are involved. Each day remains and will remain a challenge. But the scale doesn’t lie. It accurately reflects my own actions back to me. As 12-steppers say, “The program works when you work it!”
I’m gaining new self-respect, day by day. And I really like that!
The author has written for The Mindful Word for several years. In 2006, he lost 50 pounds while on a sponsored diet, only to gain nearly all of it back little by little. This time, he and his wife are approaching things intuitively, and so far, at least, are succeeding in ways that are likely not to have a “rebound effect.”
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all images: Max Reif
