At 3, I was diagnosed with Polio and Perthes Disease, a degenerative bone disease that effects the hip. My right leg was significantly shorter than my left and my feet were 2 sizes different from each other. By way of a Miracle, I have no side effects or any physical abnormalities associated with the conditions I had. But that's a story for another time. As as result of my inability to be active, since I spent a good portion of my childhood in the hospital and a wheelchair and braces, I became an overweight child. A condition that followed me throughout most of my life. And so the story begins..................
I lost my first 100 pounds at 20-21, determined not to turn 21 a fat man.
I was successful and although I ping ponged up and down, I maintained a reasonable weight throughout my 20's and became athletic for the first time in my life. At 31 I did a Triathlon, as my rehab to a cocaine/freebase addiction I had developed. I went macrobiotic and started training! It worked.................
After the Triathlon, I gained the weight back and stopped working out.
My weight continued to go up for the next 25 years until my peak at 315. When I was 44 in 1997, I had a heart attack.............caused by bad habits and family history! It was the worst experience of my life and I almost didn't survive. I spent 2 weeks in intensive care having had a procedure to correct 3 blockages of 95-98% and emergency vascular surgery to remove a blood clot that had developed. I was a mess.............
You would think that after an experience like that, I would do something to get my life under control. I did lose a few pounds but it quickly came back. Shortly after my Cardiac event as it was called........or as someone pointed out to me, my heart attacked me, I guess I wasn't being too nice to it, my mom became ill, which started 10 years of caring for her and neglecting myself. So with each passing year, I watched my weight continue to go up, wondering what it would take to start taking care of myself and worse, not really caring! My doctor would tell me "Marty, if you don't lose weight, you're going to DIE!" I told him that food was pleasure and with no other pleasure in my life, I wasn't about to give up the only pleasure I had. I was such a foolish boy!!!
I hated the me I saw in the mirror and would ask myself, "2 weeks in intensive care and look at you, what's it going to take, Marty!" If death won't scare you into action, then what? I almost viewed death as a better alternative to the life I was living. I had it all planned out............
when I had had enough of this life, I was going off my meds and hitting Katz's Deli and Ray's Pizza for one hell of a binge. I called it Death by Corned Beef! I told all my friends about my plan and had such a rational argument for it, nobody challenged me on it. Looking back, I wish someone had smacked me and told me I was out of my fucking mind. But then, I wouldn't have listened to anyone, I was in too dark a place to have been able to see any light.
So this is the background of my life as a fat man! A closet eater with lots of excuses! My next post will chronicle the Epiphany that changed my life and started me on the road to taking control of my life and learning how to Love myself! Which resulted in me going from 315 to a svelte 200 and turning my life around.
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