My life on a rollercoaster!

I have lived a pretty privileged life, I admit that freely. As such, I have never had to look very far for a meal or a snack. One of the pitfalls of living a privileged life is the ability to eat WHAT I want, WHEN I want, HOW much I want, WHERE ever I want and, that coupled with oscillating will power, has led to some pretty serious peaks and valleys in my body dimensions. It is a life long struggle where I have succeeded and failed multiple times, likely having lost 5 times my body weight over all of those years ... I'm NOT exaggerating! This is a post about the trials and tribulations of being me ... it IS NOT pointing the finger of blame at anyone else, my parents included, because as I have remarked on a number of occasions, I have never accidentally eaten any thing!

Looking at some photos from my younger years, I can see a pretty healthy kid who had a nagging roll or two near his belt line. I recall being pretty active ... I did grow up in the times when playing outside was actually encouraged ... and I was blessed to participate in a number of unorganized activities and organized sports, even spending entire summers away at a canoe camp in Algonquin Park. Revisiting my pre-puberty memories, I can visualize scenes of me helping myself to multiple helpings of dinner, regularly eating nigh up to, and occasionally beyond, my satiation level. I grew up in a family of 4 boys who were all built like me, with similar appetites, and my mother was a good cook. She would cook a limited amount of dinner and the four of us would race to finish our first plate so we could get seconds, shaping habits that bewilder my wife and prompt, "Do you even breathe when you eat?"

As a consequence of a privileged life, I have grown up with the cupboards and fridge well stocked, allowing an independent youth to retrieve a snack whenever it was desired, and my brain desired it a lot. During the times that I chose to be Uber active, the energy in more or less equaled the energy out and my overall health was okay. Unfortunately, during the times that I chose to be less active, the balance was tipped heavily in an undesirable direction and my overall health suffered. Any psychologists reading this will immediately point out that radical changes to my thinking were/are required ... Yep, I get that, but I have struggled with this for a very long time. I eat when I am bored, when I am stressed, or in response to some cues, with watching sports on TV being a HUGE one.

Over the years, I have ridden the diet roller coaster. I remember keeping things at bay somewhat successfully throughout high school and university, again, mostly due to my chosen level of activity. Like all good things, my playing days came to an inevitable completion, and a combination of my continued over-indulgence, working a  hospitality lifestyle, and near nothing activity led to my first trip north of 300 lb massiveness. I had become like Charles Barkley, except there was no rebound to my round mound. My mother was the one who ultimately got through to me, sponsoring me to try Nutrisystem, and with my addictive, full-focused mentality in place, and I lost over 100 lb, becoming a poster boy for the company. What a lot of people didn't know was how active I had chosen to become, embracing running my activity choice, while radically changing the composition of my diet. Joyce and I got married soon after that so fitting into a reasonably sized tux was not an issue.

That lasted for a while. I was able to keep things in check for most of my elementary teaching career, but those old demons of over-work coupled with under-active creeped back into my life, as did my ever expanding waistline. Around that time, I was hired to teach at Barrie Central, joined some colleagues who were activity buffs, prompting me to "sacrifice" some duties during lunch to start running again, leading to the expected and desired reduction of what I remember to be around 60 lb.

Of course, old habits die hard, and a return to my ways of indulgence and negligent activity became more evident as I approached my 40th birthday. Looking back at the photographic evidence, I could see I was entering uncharted territory. My darling wife, ever so patient with my faults, coerced me to take charge again, and I was able to hover around 260 lb, or thereabouts, for a few years. That continued until I approached the dreaded 50th birthday and even I couldn't explain away my prominent belly that cleared the threshold a few seconds before my face did. A sad but humorous story to demonstrate the mental gymnastics I have allowed myself to participate in at various times in my life happened between Christmas and New Years in 2013. I was choosing to be very busy with teaching, coaching, parenting and almost everything else except fitness, eating too much and too often, things that I knew I shouldn't. I knew that I was gaining weight but I was rationalizing internally that it wasn't that bad. I had been stepping on the bathroom scale for feedback and it was telling me that I hadn't hit that magic 300 lb "line in the sand" that prompted panic. On three consecutive weighings, I hit 300 on the dot until it finally raised my curiousity.
"Hey Joyce. Do you know if there's something wrong with the scale?"
"I don't think so. Why?"
"It keeps saying the same weight."
"What does it say?"
"That I'm 300 lb."
"Hmmm ... I'm pretty sure that it only goes to 300."

YIKES, I thought, there's a good chance that I was well north of 300! Time to do something about that if I wished to see my children's marriages and my grandchildren. That was January 2013.

As usual, I embraced the choice to become more active, but my 50 year old body was not having anything to do with it. It was a true struggle this time, and I quickly realized that I would have to do other things to support my old habit of running the weight off. I had always loved resistance training ... a byproduct of varsity football days ... so it was a natural companion to the running, and true to form, I put the new regime in a strangle hold. As the weight slowly waned, and my frame added muscle, I started to feel better than I had in years, and something pretty cool happened. I actually embraced more nutritious cooking and portion control, leading to a full scale wardrobe change and I massive feeling of pride in a job well done. Joe Public saw a previously obese bald guy transform into first a Grizzly Adams type (those of you old enough will understand the reference) followed by a huge Handlebar Moustache accompanied by flowing locks. All was well and good.

That is, it was good, until I was transferred to North with the closing of Central. It was the new teaching duties, new teams + athletes, new colleagues, and new weight room which all combined to nudge me backwards. At first it was okay since I would make some time here and there to get active, but as my years at North continued, my old hard-wired habits surfaced again and their slowly changing body dimension issues. I'm usually the one behind the camera so I don't have a ton of pics capturing me in action. I can hear you thinking, "P ... you post a ton of selfies." which is true, but selfies are almost always shot at a good angle, hiding the evidence. In the few I have that other people took, hints of a slowly expanding midriff are detectable. As the end of a career loomed, the goal was make a few of those familiar changes and step confidently into retirement on the right path.

There is a happy ending to the story, however, because finally reaching the age that I could retire, with the increase in "ME time", I resurrected those habits from my early 50's. Starting the process in Florida was the easy part ... biking, walking and lifting are simple choices when the weather is warm and dry ... and the mandated isolation has only provided a minor challenge in motivation, shifting from the GC Fitness Center to the basement. I will tell you that the body weight exercise craze is more like powerlifting when you're a man of girth! I am proud to tell all that I am making progress, I can see the desired changes already, and I am thrilled to also tell you that Joyce has embraced the daily fitness routine too ... thank you YouTube! We have settled into the daily routine and are both feeling it's important to stay the course so we'll see where the next few months goes.

Wish us Luck!