It's Either Gravy or the Grave

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to take one look at me and know I'm overweight. Okay, not just overweight, I'm freaking obese. No point in sugar coating it.

I don't know if it's hereditary or what but even as a young boy I was "big boned". I hate that term so I'm just going to use the word fat from here on in. I was called fat all my life so it must be the right word to use. And by the way, just a note to those who called me fat behind my back growing up, I know who you are and I've never forgotten. I guess you could say I'm like an elephant. Insert your own joke there.

Me at my heaviest. Christmas 2009

But this isn't about who I was. This is about who I hope to be and in fact, who I am becoming. Now I have no grand illusions about what my future holds. I never have been thin and I never will be but I am trying to get healthier. I'm 45 this year and I would like nothing better than to be around in another 20-30 years see my niece get married and be in good enough shape that I don't require a forklift to load me on to the plane to get there.

I've had nothing but bad luck with diets in the past so I try to avoid using that word. What I'm doing isn't really a "diet" it's more of a lifestyle change. And that is not something I ever thought I'd be able to do.

Food is a weakness of mine. I love food. Even more to the point, I love food that is not good for me. Potatoes, bread, pizza, fast food...you know the yummy goodness of which I'm referring to. I like all the foods that are usually forbidden on any weight-loss plan. Long story short, I love those fatty calorie filled goodies but obviously they don't like me. Correction...the amount that passes by my lips disagrees with me. And sadly I'm a finicky eater which means either I eat what I like or I don't eat at all.

This brings me to the situation that I was confronted with in the Fall of 2012. After having been diagnosed as a diabetic in March of that same year I knew that unless I made some kind of change to my eating habits and lifestyle it was possible that body parts might soon be surgically removed from my body until I eventually found myself with only a head and a big fat torso.

My doctor recommended to me that I was a prime candidate for gastric bypass surgery. And while I've never ruled that out, it wasn't something I was willing to do right away. I wanted to try and lose weight on my own. It's not that I'm afraid of the operation. I know people who have had it done and they've lost a great amount of weight and their lives have drastically improved. I just felt I could find enough will power inside of me to get the job done and at the very least get to a more manageable weight.

I've always been active in sports but in recent years my weight gain has pretty much ended that. All except golfing but even there I was forced to use a motorized golf cart to get me around the course instead of walking due to the pain associated with walking. My ankles and other joints would ache for days. But back to my original train of thought.

When I played football in high school I weighed 260 pounds. That's pretty big but I was a solid and well proportioned 260. I could run short distances pretty quickly. I played baseball 5-6 nights a week in my 20's but all the time I kept adding on the pounds. Fast forward to 2011. I hadn't been to my doctor in years except to be diagnosed with Sleep Apnea, another common condition for obese people. I also hadn't weighed myself in nearly 20 years so I had no idea what damage had been done from the decades of overeating and the sedentary lifestyle I had adopted simply because I didn't like being sore from getting exercise.

One day on a job site I spotted an industrial scale used to weigh large heavy loads before they were packed into trucks for shipping. I knew most household scales would be useless for me at this point. I knew I wasn't going to like the results if I stepped on but the curiosity was killing me. I had to know what damage I had done. Lets face it, nobody ever looks in the mirror and actually sees what others see. I stepped on expecting it to come back with a shocking reading of something like 350 pounds or so. My heart nearly stopped when the reading settled on 420 pounds. That wasn't possible I thought, but the numbers didn't lie.

Heaviest weight in August 2009

The next day I started trying to eat better and smarter but as in the past, it didn't last long and I fell back into my old habits. It wasn't until I was diagnosed with the diabetes and knowing what that can lead to that I realized this was my life I was wasting and possibly eating away. I had to make a change or at the very least die trying.

I began my changing immediately. It wasn't easy and I had to ease into it because the damage had been done and in order to get active and walking again I had to lose some initial weight. And I did. By the Fall of 2012 I was starting to walk short distances and eventually several kilometres at a time working up a good sweat and getting my heart rate up enough to start burning calories. I won't lie and say my food choices changed much but I did make some changes.

The biggest change I made was to stop drinking regular Coke and Pepsi. I would drink a lot every day. I didn't like the switch to diet pop but I have acquired a taste for it now. The foods I eat for meals are more or less the same however instead of filling my plate up 2 or 3 times for supper I'll fill it once and maybe get a tiny bit more if I haven't had much else during the day. I've cut way back on my night time snacking as well which I know has had a major impact on things. I've also started using the MyFitnessPal App on my iPad and iPhone to track everything that I eat and drink each day. I only allow myself a certain number of calories which allows my body to change and shed the pounds.

Along with the change in my eating I've also been walking regularly. I have another app called MapMyWalk which uses GPS and calculations based on my age and weight to determine how many calories I burn during my walks. I can see maps of where I've been and how many calories I burned during my trip. These two apps have really proven to be great motivators for me.

Left: December 2009             Right: May 2013

So where do I stand you might be wondering after starting at 418 pounds and feeling like there was no hope of ever breaking out of a nose dive towards an early death? As of today, eight months into an honest effort towards weight-loss, I am sitting at 321 pounds. I'm happy with what I've achieved so far but still not satisfied with my weight. I'm approaching the 100 pound milestone and mini-goal I set for myself. Ultimately I'd like to lose as much as I can but the goal I set for myself when I began was to try and get below my football playing weight. My goal is 250 pounds. If I'm able to make that weight, I'm sure I'll set a new goal. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I take it day by day and week by week.

I feel great walking and I no longer ride a cart when I'm golfing. I walk the course and carry my clubs. Sure when I climb the big hills I get huffing and puffing but everyone does and it's a good sign that I'm working my body, raising my heart-rate and dropping more calories. Best of all, the feeling I get every time I finish a round of golf knowing that where I was just a year ago, gives me a great sense of pride in myself.

So here I sit feeling healthier and lighter but my journey is long from over. My diabetes is under control with my lowest blood sugar readings ever and my aches and pains are no longer weight related; they're exercise related. While I'm still single I hold on to the hope that perhaps the changes I'm making will eventually lead to some new relationship down the road. Every day is a challenge but I've had a lot of wonderful support from family, friends and even complete strangers. I know that I can get the job done. After all, my life depends on it.

Morning Glory

I like to sleep. I’d call it my “beauty rest” but lets be honest, by now I should look like Brad Pitt with all the sleep I’ve had over the years.

I was never a morning person. From the time I was going to school and college and then all the years I spent working the morning show for the local radio station, getting up before the sun was never my cup of tea.

I never saw any reason to wake up early on my days off. I was a night owl and still am. The only difference is now I’m finding myself out hooting at work until 7:00am instead of waking up before sunrise.

Why on earth would anyone want to get up early in the morning? What’s the benefit? Lets forget about work for a moment and assume you have the day off, you’re retired or it’s the weekend. What possible reason could there be to haul your butt out of bed before 6:00am?

I’ll be the first to admit that on a nice clear spring or summer morning, the sunrise can be very nice and often quite pleasing to the eye. But beyond that and maybe being a photographer and wanting to capture some photos with the early morning light, I just don’t see the benefit. You can only watch so many sunrises before the novelty wears off.

I see only negatives after that. The stores don’t open until around 9:00am so you can forget trolling the aisles of Zellers at dawn. The early morning television programs are just bloody awful. Once you’ve seen the news of the morning and the forecast once, you’re set for the rest of the day as they only repeat it over and over again. You can’t cut the lawn since all of the normal people are still in bed just like you should be.

Perhaps you’re one of those people I see on the way home from work who enjoy an early morning stroll for exercise. But for me, if it’s a choice between going for a walk or staying in bed and sleeping…sleep wins every time.

The only time I vacate my sleeping quarters on my day off by 6:00am is if I’m going golfing. But at least I have a good reason to wake up. But just getting up with no plans or need to makes zero sense to me.

At this time of year the sky starts to lighten up around 4:30am or a bit earlier and the sun is up by 5:30am or sooner. That makes for a bloody long day and there’s just too much TV you’d miss when you’re in bed for the night at 8:00pm.

No, I’m afraid rising early in the morning is a bit overrated as far as I’m concerned. I say let there be light…provided I don’t see it until at least noon.

Sleep Clinic Nightmare

I'm sure those of you who have first hand knowledge of the experiences you go through during your first visit to a Sleep Clinic will be able to relate to the hellish night I went through less than 24 hours ago.

After consulting with my doctor a little while back, he decided that some of the symptoms I was describing could be related to Sleep Apnea. For those of you who don't know what this is, sleep apnea is a serious disorder that causes your breathing to stop repeatedly while you sleep. And as I'm sure you can understand...to stop breathing is a bad thing.

So I was given an appointment to go spend the night at the clinic and have my sleep patterns monitored. It sounded simple enough to me. I'll just show up and go to bed and wait to hear my results.

Of course it just isn't that simple. I showed up at 8:15pm and was met by a lovely nurse and one of the two other patients for the evening. Lets call him Andre. He was French and is in the Canadian Armed Forces...go figure. His accent was thick but with a little effort he could be understood. The conversation was pleasant but I quickly realized this wasn't going to be a simple night of bed rest.

As I filled out a group of forms with a seemingly endless amount of questions, I watched as Nurse Gail (I think that was her name) prepared Andre for his nocturnal slumber. She was measuring his head and drawing red marks on his scalp in different places and then began attaching sensors galore. I don't know how many there were but I'd guess there were at least four on the head, one on each cheek and two on the chin. There was also a sensor attached to the neck and three on each leg and two belts were wrapped around his Chest and Stomach. Just to add to this madness, two more were attached to the back shoulder blades and then one inserted into each nostril.

I watched this and realized I'm next. How the hell was I supposed to sleep with all of this crap and their wires glued to me? Nurse Gail went through the same process with me and then placed the box containing the other end of all of the sensors around my neck so I could walk to my assigned room. Once in bed, nurse Gail hooked me up to the machines in the room at the top of my bed. There was also a camera at the end of the bed so I could be monitored from another room. I knew I had to behave myself now.

Nurse Gail then left the room and spoke to me through an intercom and had me do several things to test the connections. I was doing ankle flexes to eye movements and coughing. The best one was when she had me try to move my stomach like a belly dancer. Pardon my grammar but I ain't no belly dancer. I must have done alright as I was given the green light to sleep.

By this time it's about 10:30pm and as I'm used to staying awake late, I wasn't even close to being tired. I was allowed to read for a short period of time but by the time 11:30 rolled around it was lights out.

Now the fun begins. With no clock in the room I had no sense of time. I laid there for what seemed like hours before I finally nodded off but it was only for a brief time. I was forced to sleep on my back. I never sleep on my back. I sleep on my stomach so that just added to the torture. I could barely move with all of the wires hanging from me. The probes in my nose kept moving around and stabbing me. That was painful and the bed was too damn hard. A few hours in my back was aching. It was one of the longest nights I can remember.

I tried laying on my side but that didn't work well either. Nurse Gail had also attached a monitor to my right index finger to keep an eye on my heart rate so that was yet another obstacle.

I could hear every little sound and of course the harder I tried to talk myself into sleeping, the less chance I had of actually dozing off. Several times I was tempted to just call her on the intercom and say enough was enough but I stuck it out. I did manage to fall asleep a few times through the night but I kept on waking up.

At 5:30am Nurse Gail opened my door and said it's time to get up. She removed all of my sensors and I couldn't have been happier. I asked her if I'd slept and she said I had slept some but didn't say how much. All I know is it was probably the worst sleep I'd ever had. I used the washroom and gathered up my belongings and booked an appointment for a follow up chat with the Doctor. I have no desire to ever do that again.

I made it home and had a shower to remove all of the sticky gel and red markings from my hair. By the time 8:00am rolled around I was finally ready to go to sleep and I wasn't in my own bed very long before I was out like a light.

It was an interesting experience but I've come to the conclusion that if I ever have to do it again, I'd better try to stay up for 24 hours straight prior to going so I can be sure to fall asleep sooner and easier. Going to bed isn't supposed to be a job but after this experience I felt like I'd worked a 12-hour shift.