Background Information

Two months ago, I turned 39 years old. I am not one of those people that constantly dwells on getting old or being old or how much of their lives have gone by and having little or nothing to show for it. Trust me, I could. I just never have.

I have to grin when I hear people say things like; “I’ve struggled to control my weight all my life.” I can’t say that. I did not struggle with it, at all. I let my weight control me and for many years, I did nothing to try and control it. That is, at least, in a healthy aspect. I did much to control it while watching it rise.

I could not go through a grocery store check-line without grabbing a candy bar to eat in the car. Most mornings, it was too much of a hassle to make sure that I had a healthy breakfast. If I even had breakfast at all, I would get something from a fast food restaurant or convenience store grub such as Twinkies, honey buns (yes, plural) or I would get lucky and find a store that sold Krispy Kreme donuts. I would buy a bag or a box or get at least 2 (sometimes 3) individual, cream filled, chocolate coated, hand held, delicious pastry filled with love.

We’ve all seen those tabloid TV shows that brought into our living rooms images of people that were so obese that they could not get out of their own bed. I was never at that point. However, not that long ago I weighed close to 275lbs. That was not good for a 32 year-old, five foot, ten inch tall guy. I committed myself to changing.

For me the change was not as simple as diet and exercise. That was a big part of it, but there was more. That is when I became aware of some of the obsessive-compulsive issues that I had.

I did not crave junk food. I just could not leave anything incomplete. If I bought a bag of potato chips, I had eat the entire bag in one sitting. I could not open the bag and grab a few as a snack and walk away from it until another day. If I opened it, I had to finish it. This applied to just about everything. If I ordered a pizza, I had to eat the entire pizza. If I bought a box of snack cakes, I had to eat all the cakes in the box. If I cooked something…even something healthy…I had to eat all of it, once I had dished the first portion out of the pot, pan or casserole dish.

I could buy a box of Twinkies and leave them in the center of the kitchen table and walk by them a hundred times a day and never crave one. However, when I opened that box, I had started something and I had to finish it. The only way to finish that task was to empty the box I had opened by eating all of what was inside. That was my compulsion.

Once I identified that, I knew I had to make some changes. Yes, a proper diet and disciplined exercise was required, but I also had to change the way I bought food and cooked food.

I could still buy potato chips. I just bought several individual serving-sized bags, rather than 1 large bag. I could open a bag and eat them all and not feel like something was left undone because the other bags were never opened. I could still buy snack cakes. I just bought individually wrapped items and not a box. I could buy frozen pizza, I just bought the small, singe serving.

In addition to this, I decided to stop drinking regular soft drinks and drink only diet drinks. At the time, I also worked for a large company that had an employee fitness center. After work, a few times a week, I would spend about an hour on an elliptical machine.

In 6 months, I had dropped to 175 pounds. I was so proud of myself and loved the way that I looked and felt. Thanksgiving of that year, I had gone to the home of an aunt and uncle where all of the extended family was gathering. It had been 4 or 5 years, since I had seen some of these people. There were people there that said they did not even recognize me. The next Spring, I noticed 2 photographs that my parents had on display, next to each other. The first was my brother and I, at Christmas, two years prior. The second was my aunt, her daughter and me at the Thanksgiving gathering, eleven months later. I hardly recognized myself.

One of my best friends told me that 175 was not a good look for me. She said I did not look healthy and that I actually needed to put a few pounds back on. I think I was about 7 years-old when someone last told me that I needed to gain some weight.

Since that time, I have been able to maintain my weight below 200 lbs. That is still huge, compared to the nearly 275 that I weighed a few years ago. However, I am not getting the exercise that I need to be getting and I am going back to some of my bad habits. Damn, I do love me some Krispy Kreme.

So, I have decided to try something new…P90X.

I have heard about this and I am going to try it. I am writing about my experience, because if history has shown me anything it is the fact that my life is like a sitcom where so many bad, but not life threatening, things happen to a guy that it makes others laugh and appreciate how good they have things.

I fully expect this to have the same result.

I don’t have the money to buy the P90X program, new. I looked on Amazon and Ebay and there is not much difference between the price of the new program and the price of what it is being sold, used. I looked on Craigslist and saw that someone was selling a set of copied DVDs and said that the buyer could print all the nutrition guides and workout plans from the Internet. Still, $60.00 is a lot money for me to spend on a set of DVDs for a program that I may wuss out on.

I looked for the DVDs on a shareware site. I was able to download all of them and, sure enough, I found all of the paperwork and printed them as well.

I looked at the nutrition guides and wondered if I had lost a few pages or if everything had printed. There had to be something like that going on. There was not enough food on this thing. What they call a meal, I call a snack. What they call a snack, I call a bite. For example, one meal allowed me to have a 3oz portion of chicken breast. That is about the size of a deck of cards. I am committed to this, though. So, if that is what it takes. I can do it! I Can Do It!! I CAN DO IT!!!