Eating For Life

My mid-life crisis was physical rather that psychological. Being physical, survival was never a foregone conclusion; actually the odds were heavily stacked against me being alive today. Having survived and realizing just how long the odds were, it’s hard for me not to look around and say ”Okay, I’ve got a second life, now what do I do with it?” Looking back over my life, this is only the latest time that I’ve cheated death, if I was a cat, I’d be on my second set of nine lives at least. Several people have pointed out that maybe the fact I’m still around means I’m supposed to do something with my life. I also see, on a daily basis, people that tell me that what I have done with my life has inspired them. Many of them have been so inspired that they have made changes to their own life, some with already fantastic results themselves. Between the feeling that I need to really do something with my life, and people telling me that I could help a lot of people by sharing my story with them, my path has started to become defined for me. Working for Whole Foods, a company that truly cares about the health of it’s employees and offers incentives and many tools to help them improve their health, I began to think that maybe I can find a way to begin to share my story through my work. Towards that end I’ve talked to and sent my story to someone in Regional leadership and offered to share it with as many team members as possible, so far I have gotten positive feedback and I’m cautiously optimistic. My intent is not to tell people how to take control of their health and weight, there is much good information out there already.  I can tell people how I have done it and what worked for me, but everyone is different and part of taking control is finding what works for you. My intent is to prove by example that it can be done, that even at 50 years old it is possible to come back from the brink of death and get yourself in the best shape of your life. Truly, if I can do it, anyone can. As part of my effort this is going to be the first post in a tandem facebook group and blog that I am starting. I want this to be a place where I can share my story and where others can share their stories, kind of an online support group for people who have made the decision to journey forward into lives of healthy eating.  My intention is to keep all posts about the connection between nutrition and health, be it weight loss, cancer, mental health or just the general feeling of wellbeing that comes from properly feeding our bodies. Therefore if you have comments about the politics of food, the immorality of using other animal for food or the evils of Monsanto, etc, I would ask that you take them elsewhere, there are already many forums out there dealing with these issues. So thanks for joining me, here we go…

Eating For Life

Eating for life can mean many things, in my case even more so. Foremost is the fact that eating consciously has saved my life. If I had not changed the way that I eat and the way that I look at food I am sure that I would not be here today. A 2007 came to an end I was tipping the scales at over 325 lbs. I’m not sure how far past I went because that’s where my numbers on my scale stopped. I had never had very good eating habits. I grew up in the Iowa in the ‘60s and ‘70s and every meal revolved around meat, steaks, pork chops, pot roast, beef stew, bacon and sausage for breakfast.  The only times we had meals that meat wasn’t the main course was Fridays (we were good Catholics and meat wasn’t allowed on Friday) then we usually had pancakes or grilled cheese sandwiches accompanied by tomato soup with plenty of American Cheese melted into it, my mom didn’t like fish. Other than mashed or fried potatoes the only vegetables we had were frozen or came from a can, then they were boiled into a soggy green mass which was then covered with melted cheese to make palatable. I completely refused to eat them and didn’t eat my first vegetable until I was in the Marine Corps. When we had bacon on the weekends the greese would be poured into a large jar on the stove and this was used to fry everything else throughout the week. This diet took it’s toll on my family, when I was 8 my father died at 38 and two grandparents died in their mid 60s, all from heart attacks. For most of my early life I remained lean, as a youngster we didn’t have video games and all our playing was outdoors and very active. This was followed by 4 years in the Marines and then a career in construction. Between a young metabolism and active lifestyle I remained outwardly fit into my 30s, however there were signs that I should have been more concerned about, my blood pressure and cholesterol levels had started to creep up. Truthfully I never worried too much about my health because with my family history I had developed a fatalistic viewpoint, why bother to take care of yourself if you’re not going to live that long anyway. Besides, I could just take a pill every day, problem solved.  As I moved through my 30s, I was more and more running larger jobs so I started spending larger parts of my day on the phone talking to owners, architects and sub-contractors. But I continued to eat like I did when I spent the day scrambling around hauling lumber and framing, this was when my weight steadily started increasing. The health problems started to multiply also. I developed gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD), I added Prilosec to my daily regime, another pill, another problem solved. I did end up with severe stomach problems at one point. I had all the GI tests done, CAT scans, cameras shoved in bath ends, all the fun things associated with getting older. The results were not encouraging, as a result of the GERD I had developed Barrett's esophagus, a pre-cancerous condition involving changes to the cells lining of the bottom of the esophagus due to contact with stomach acid. They also found that I had diverticulitis and colon polyps. I wasn’t too concerned though because I still was convinced that a heart attack would take me out long before I had to worry about cancer. It was soon after this that I started experiencing transient ischemic attacks, otherwise known as TIA or mini-strokes. My countdown clock was definitely starting to tick faster.

As 2007 turned to 2008 it was becoming clear that I could no longer continue in construction. The demands of the job combined with the hours spent sitting in the car were physically becoming too much for me.  The TIAs were coming more frequently, sometimes 2 or 3 a week, I would be driving or talking to a customer when I would lose control of the left side of my body and my left eye would take off on its own, rolling around aimlessly, at these times it was very hard to function at all much less focus. In January of 2008 I walked away from construction for good.  I had no idea what I was going to do and entertained many different ideas.  In 2001 and 2002 I worked for a time in a grocery store and had really loved the experience, so I put in applications at every company that had a store in the area. At this time I took the first small steps towards improving my health.  Not being on the road every day, I cut out fast foods and sodas, the weight slowly started coming down from my peak.  In April of 2008 I got a call from Whole Foods to interview, I got the job, I wasn’t aware of if, but my life had just been saved.  Even though I had probably lost at least 40 lbs from my top weight, I was still huge and still had the health problems. My cholesterol was well over 200 and I had added Type II diabetes to my list of problems, no big deal, just take another pill. At this point I’m going to change subjects as I have already written an account of what happened with my health from here on, it will be my second post, titled “Happy Re-Birthday to Me”

I want to get back to the topic of Eating For Life, eating properly enhances our everyday life. One huge difference I have noted is my mood. I haven’t been depressed at all since I have changed my eating habits; I think that this is a huge point. Like many people I had a tendency to eat when depressed. But the foods I was eating were making me depressed, so I ate more because I was depressed, which made me fat, which made me depressed, which made me eat more, which made me depressed….and so on. When you combine this with the similar yo-yo effect that eating refined carbohydrates have by stimulating your body to release insulin, which signals your brain that you’re hungry, which causes you to eat more… It’s no wonder that the more weight you gain, the harder it is to lose it. But it can be done, and the same systems work in reverse.  When you’re eating properly, you begin to feel better, as you realize the connection between feeling better and eating well, this reinforces and encourages you to continue to eat well. As your body becomes properly fueled and you lose weight you gain energy. I went from sleeping 10 hours a night and feeling always tired to sleeping 5-6 hours a night and having all sorts of extra energy. When I started at Whole Foods I took my breaks and lunch in my car because our break room was on the second floor and it too hard to walk up the steps. Now I spend at least an hour a day on a stairmaster because I can and it feels good. I also hike 10-15 miles at least once a week and have gone as far as 25 miles. All kinds of people will tell you that the key to weight loss is exercise.  I think these are mostly people that do not want to change their eating habits. For people that have become as morbidly obese as I was and have a range of health problems, exercise is out of the question.  If I had tried to lose the weight by exercise alone, the exercise would have killed me.  I think that the key is overwhelmingly nutrition. Anyone, no matte what their size and physical condition can change the way they eat, as you lose the weight and your health problems begin to subside, you find that you have the urge to become more active, as you become more active you begin to feel even better which makes you want to become even more active.  So I think the key here is changing negative feedback loops that reinforce unhealthy eating and behaviors, into positive feedback loops that reinforce positive nutrition and behaviors.  I’ve found that once you pass a certain point, any desire to go back to your old lifestyle completely disappears.

Lastly Eating For Life means to me finding a way that you will eat for the rest of your life. Anyone who has struggled with weight issues has probably tried the latest diet, lost a bunch of weight, and the had it all return and then some, when they have returned to their old eating patterns.  If eating a certain way made you fat once, it will again. Only an irreversible lifestyle change will truly transform your health for the rest of your life. This is something that is not easy, but it is something that I’m hoping to make easier by us all doing it together, If I can do it, anyone can.