My weight began to slowly creep up and my stomach started to expand in the fall of 1992. I was given a job assignment that required me to travel five days a week. Being away from home and not being able to participate in my normal activities depressed me. Oh, I didn’t suffer from deep depression as some poor souls do. I was simply down because I was away from home.
Hotel and restaurant food tasted awfully good, as did beer. I assuaged my depression in high-calorie physical activities. I perfected the “fork shovel,” a method of eating that allowed me to ingest a significant number of calories in a very short time. I also earned a gold medal in the “elbow bend,” a sport familiar to many men. It is a well known fact that the weight of a can of beer decreases proportionately to the number of times the elbow bends upward.
Within months, I was pushing 172 pounds. I remember weighing myself at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. “172 pounds! Yikes! I’m getting fat!” Boy, what I would give to be 172 pounds today. It was an insidious thing. The needle on the scale continued to move more and more to the right as time progressed. 180. 185. 190. And still higher. If only I could be 180 now! My trousers are snug. They’d be tighter still if my wife had not expanded the waist on several pair. I have at least two suits that I would like to wear but cannot. I have even more trousers that simply occupy closet space, collecting dust.
Is there hope for me? Sure. I’ve been there before. In 1975 I weighed nearly as much as I do now. It took time to lose my excess flab and it will take time to do so again. In addition to reducing my caloric intake, I need to return to the one activity that allowed me to lose so much weight: running. It will be painful to run again, but I must convince myself that the pain will be short lived. I will be sore for only a few days and I can probably minimize the discomfort by stretching throughout the day.
