My Story February 17, 2009

My troubles with weight were always in my life since I was  little. To this day I dream of my mother’s baked chicken dripping in veggie oil, coated with salt, pepper, and season salt. Eating healthy was just not something I was taught. Vegetables always came from a can, or drenched with italian dressing in a taco salad.

I have always been one to stifle bad emotions with food. I remember while mourning a family member’s passing when I was 15. Relatives and friends would bring food. Noone in the house felt like eating, and I wouldn’t stop. I ate a whole loaf of a delicious cranberry nut bread all by myself in a day.

When I was on my own in the military, when things turned bad I turned to stuffing my face. Eventually, the expanding waistline outgrew my ability to work it off, and I ended up on the Air Force’s Weight Management Program. You don’t know dieting until the military forces it on you. The goals were modest, and the information was there to be digested, but fighting the emotional demons in my head at the same time was overwhelming. I resorted to pills. Diet pills, Vivarin or No Dose, even laxatives. Anything to make my monthly weigh in and not be forced out of the military. My girlfriend at the time, the lucky young lady who eventually became my wife, found out about my “regiment.” The 4 days of only water, vitamins, and pills before each monthly weigh in to fast down below the monthly goals set before me.

She forced me to stop, or else she would leave me. I stopped. it also caught up with me, and I failed my final weigh in within 2 months of the end of my enlistment, one pound above the maximum allowed weight for my height, 184 pounds.

I separated, honorably, with a non-reenlistable code on my DD214 on October 4th, 2002.

Four and a half years later I have gained over 100 more.

It’s coming off, people. I am facing my emotional gremlins, and recognising the patterns which have caused me to push 300 pounds. I am finally motivated to drop this weight, I am finally motivated to move on with my life and put the past behind me.

I will be lying if I said that I won’t need help. I have a large number of factors working against me that most every person who attempts to lose weight have. I will need your help, your insight, and your support. I will need your taunting, prodding, and joking insults.

Beyond us, the hungry people of Delaware need us. The Food Bank of Delaware serves an honorable purpose, and that is to feed those who cannot afford proper nutrition.

We will have some fun along the way, but in the end let’s do this for them.