My last meal

See that sandwich to the right? That is my last meal. Well, not last meal as in the last meal that I will eat in my entire life. It is the last meal that I will have in between ten to thirty days. It sounds insane, and possibly dangerous but nothing is more dangerous then how I am living now. I have a serious addiction to food. I actually have seen a counselor for it, and currently see her on a weekly basis. On top of that I have also been taking Dialectical Behavioral Training classes for the last two months. When I say addiction to food I do not mean that I just eat a lot of junk food. I mean that as I am writing this I am contemplating grabbing McDonald's before work. Depending on how I feel I would eat a double cheeseburger and fries, to the more extreme six piece chicken selects, large french fries, two double cheeseburgers, and one or two apple pies. I'll be full after the first hamburger. By the end of my meal my stomach will be bursting and I will be in an extreme amount of pain. That won't matter though, I will still eat more. The satisfaction that I get from the food greatly outweighs the health risks that eating like that carries. It is ridiculous that this is my lifestyle and it is VERY hard to admit it. Even my closest friends don't know how bad my food addiction is or the problems that it has caused. It has caused me to miss college classes, be late for work, and worst of all murdered my self esteem. The other difficulty is not having much family support. Not because they don't want to, but because they have no idea how to. My parents are skinny, my sisters are skinny, my grandparents were skinny, and so on. Not just skinny but very athletic as well. My father played Lacrosse, Ice Hockey, and Soccer. He stayed active through his entire life and has retired and lived out his dream of owning a horse farm. He does everything by himself and it is a serious amount of work. I respect my dad for the hard work that he puts in (by the way, he does all of this at 71 years old) but even more because he has never put me down for being overweight. My mother tries to support, but she has been the largest problem in contributing to my obesity (besides myself of course). Let me give you a little peek into my childhood...

My parents split up when I was five years old. It hit me pretty hard but wasn't absolutely crushing. Even at that age I understood why they were splitting up. My father constantly traveled for business. He's a biologist and has worked for several non-profits since I have known him. Most of his job involves going to fancy dinners and raising money from philanthropists who care about whatever cause he is fighting for at the time. Since he was never around I never saw my parents "in love" so the divorce didn't change much. As a young kid growing up my mom worried about my father taking me from her (she had some good reasons too) my father had threatened my mother and said he would take me instead because she wasn't a fit mother. In some ways he was right, but ultimately I love my mom. She is one of the most supportive people I have ever had in my life. Unfortunately when it came to saying "no" she failed miserably. This is probably because she wanted to keep me happy out of fear of losing me to my father. Now we get to the most relevant part...

My mom never had time to cook food. She was a special education teacher who spent most of her time working. She would generally come home around 7pm with a mountain of papers that she needed to have done by the next day. This meant that EVERY night was fast food/restaurant night. Sometimes she would bring me home McDonald's, Burger King or Wendy's. Sometimes she would go to one of our favorite restaurants. T'J Carmody's (AWESOME Irish Pub. If you are ever in the Bennington, Vermont area go there first.), Rattlesnake Cafe (not sure if this place is still around) and various diners and pizzerias. Restaurant portions as most of you know, are much larger than the portion that you should be eating. At Carmody's I would get Shepherd's Pie, Buffalo Chicken Strips. No matter what they would come with french fries and a salad (never ate that). At the rattlesnake cafe I would get Nachos or a Hamburger and fries. Sometimes I would get both. That is where my mom had trouble saying "no". She SHOULD have told me (because I was seven) that that was far too much food to eat. Sometimes I would have her order a small pizza just for myself. When we went out to restaurants she would only eat half her meal. Instead of taking it home she would give it to me. Later on she started cooking more which was nice. The problem with that was I was so used to eating out that I still wanted to all the time. Once again she had trouble saying "no" she definitely tried, but I was a spoiled little brat. She would still cook dinner and I would eat it. We just switched the bad eating habits to after school. When my mom would pick me up from school we would go to McDonald's for an "after school snack" this was usually a super sized chicken McNuggets meal.

Fast forward to the present time. I currently have poor eating habits. Not as bad as they used to be, but still bad enough to make me feel like garbage all the time. On top of that I struggle from GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) and Bi-Polar disorder. Both of those are hard to deal with, and often contribute to my poor eating habits (mostly binging during my manic episodes). I take medication though which has kept it pretty under control. I was diagnosed with both of these in 2008. I've had mood swings and manic/depressive episodes as well as anxiety issues since childhood, but they came in full swing in 2008. At first it was the panic attacks. I would start eating and get this sudden feeling like I was going to die. I ended up in the ER constantly. Eventually eating became such an issue that I just stopped. I went two weeks without anything to eat. I lost about 30 lbs in those two weeks. Then I started eating a small amount of food. Generally a few crackers were my only meal. Eventually I dropped down from 265lbs to 195lbs. I started eating again only because my mom forced me to go to the doctor, who then told me that if I didn't eat anything I would end up inpatient. I HATE going inpatient, that was the last thing that I wanted. I ate small amounts, but my weight maintained for a while. The long term damage from this is starting to take its toll. I lost so much muscle. Sometimes lifting a gallon of milk will cause my arm to uncontrollably shake because the muscle is so weak. I feel sick so often which I think is a result of the starvation. What was the worst effect? I gained the weight back. Once I could eat again it just went into a full on binge. As my wife put it "You ate like it was your job" and I really did. I was consuming about 6-7,000 calories a day. Some days I ate as much as 12,000 calories. Looking back on it makes me feel absolutely disgusted with myself. All the nice clothes that I could no longer wear had to be put back in the closet. Everyday I looked at myself in the mirror and was more and more disgusted. The final result of all of this? I was looking at myself in the mirror at 295lbs. 30lbs higher than the heaviest I had been before the starvation. About a year ago I went on a diet and lost 25lbs. I have been a consistent 270 since then. My ultimate goal is to be between 190-210lbs. I know that I can do it. I've been walking and weight lifting for the last two weeks. I feel better, but was still eating poorly.

About 4-5 months ago I saw a documentary called "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". It's about a man who was seriously overweight like I am. He went on a "juice fast" and dropped a significant amount of weight. It pulled me in right away, but I abandoned the idea pretty immediately. I figured that it was just an infomercial style documentary trying to sell juicers. I am also very wary of dropping massive amounts of weight fast. My current body size is a perfect example of how that doesn't work. As I have done more research though, I have realized that many people say that the diet works great. They feel great and their bodies are operating well. I never eat fruits and vegetables. With this juice fast it forces me to eat fruits and vegetables and keeps me away from carbs. All the carbs that I have eaten have given me nothing but trouble. I feel that if I stick to this "fast" for between ten to thirty days that I can jump start my way to eating healthy. I feel that the weight won't go back on this time because I have not only learned from my past, but also have spent a great deal of time in therapy to help keep me from binge eating. Anyway haters gonna hate. I'm going to try it this way. If it fails then people can laugh at me and say "I told you so" fine, whatever. I am doing this for me and I don't care if people don't believe in me.

That is all for this evening. If you find this blog entertaining and want to hear how things are going, stick around. This blog is for me though. I want to track my progress and motivate myself by writing. Plus when I write my desire to eat dies a little bit. It is just something to keep my mind of the food.

This blog won't just have my weight loss. It will also probably have some of my political opinions tossed in, stories from work (gotta stick around for those), movies, music and more. Mostly the weight loss stuff though. Right now that is my main focus.

Nighty night.