Algolfmans Story 11/23/2003
I was born on July 25th, 1968 in Detroit, MI. I was a normal 6 lb + baby. My family was very normal. I have one brother and one sister, who throughout my whole childhood and through high school were very thin. My brother was a beanpole! My dad has always had a weight problem. At one point in my childhood, he lost enough weight to get close to 200 lbs, but he has always been a yo-yo weight person. My mom is overweight, but not severely.
I have always been overweight as long as I can remember growing up as a kid. My eating choices have always been different than everyone else in my family. As many kids are growing up, I was a very picky eater. I never ate meat, including steak, pork, chicken, turkey, etc. My main source of protein has always been cottage cheese. My parents have always been frustrated with my picky eating. They tried to force me to eat meat, but I refused. My basic diet has always been a lot of carbs, potatoes and pasta being the main ingredients of my meal. My mom, who is an awesome cook, would always accommodate me by making special meals just for me. I couldnt stand vegetables or fruit either. The only vegetables I would eat, only if they were cooked were green beans, corn and peas. The only fruit I liked were bananas, strawberries, and apples (without the skin). It was all carbs all the time. Potato chips, Doritos, corn chips, etc. I absolutely loved!!! My trip to McDonalds was pretty easy, Super size fries and a chocolate shake, which was my lunch or dinner!
I moved to Anchorville, MI before 5th grade. I was definitely a fat kid at this point. Starting a new school is always tough at that age, but especially as a fat kid. The main way I integrated with the kids was athletically. I was a very good kickball player, I could get a lot of weight behind it. My first girlfriend was in seventh grade. Her nickname for me was Captain Chubby! I have always been conscientious about my weight even then. I think because of my weight, I felt embarrassed that everyone in our class was gossiping about us or so I thought. You know how kids are! I broke it off relatively quickly and I really havent had a girlfriend since then. I have always felt that girls/woman arent interested because I am an ugly fat person.
Throughout high school I continued to gain weight. I did play baseball my Freshman, Junior, and Senior years. I was the first baseman. For my last two years, I had to wear special baseball pants, with pin stripes because they didnt have any plain white pants in my size. I got up the courage to ask a girl out for my senior prom less than a week prior to the dance. She accepted to go with me as friends. We never dated after that night.
I went college at Michigan Tech, 550 miles away from home. I lived in the dorms for two years. The dorms had cafeteria food, all you can eat, and did I ever eat. I also ordered a lot of pizza, from Dominos or Little Caesars. They were always buy one get one free. I would eat both of them in one sitting. I would never weigh myself in those days. I never owned a scale. If I had to guess, by the time I graduated from college I was well over 300 lbs. I think it was during my college years when my parents got me to try hypnosis to help with my weight loss. I tried one session and gave up. I remember my last night up at school at Tech driving around campus and thinking back about the four years that I had spent at school. I started to cry. The reason, I had not dated anyone, or really even attempted to strike up a relationship with a girl. I was sure that they werent interested due to my weight.
I got my first job out of college. I was still living with my parents. I would always feel terrible about my weight gains and continually tried to hide my overeating from my family. I would constantly stop at a 7-eleven to buy a Super-Size bag of chip/Doritos. I would devour the whole bag in the car on the way to and from work. I would hide the leftovers in my car. I couldnt wait to get in the car the next morning to have the leftovers. Yummy, Doritos for breakfast, the breakfast of champions!! Vegetables and fruit were still not on my radar screen. I then started a weight loss club at work with some coworkers. We would weigh in at work once a week. I did really well. I dont recall how much I lost, but I lost the most in the group. Of course this group ended quickly when my company started laying off a lot of people. I left the company on my own and started working for Ford.
I then joined Weight Watchers for the first time with my Dad and aunt. I followed the program pretty well and lost weight. This was pre points system. I still didnt get into the vegetables and fruits, but I still lost. When I started weight watchers I weighed 370 lbs. I lost well over 100 lbs. During this timeframe, I moved to Louisville, KY for my job. I found a weight watchers group down there and I even started to exercise at the gym at work. I really stopped following the program (probably due to boredom and a plateau) and tried to continue to lose weight by going to the gym 2-3 times a week for 1 hour. My usual weigh in night included a trip to Tumbleweed Restaurant and Burritos Grande with Con Queso sauce right after weighing in. I eventually stopped going to the meetings altogether and the weight started coming back on with a vengeance.
I moved back to Michigan in 1998. In 1999, I went back up to Michigan Tech with my Mom and Dad, my brother, and my best friend. My brother, my friend, and I frequented a local bar one night, and got pretty drunk. Every time I get drunk I get depressed. I would start to think about my lack of relationships with women, you know the woe is me routine. I had a heart to heart with my friend and I confessed to him that I didnt expect to grow old. I figured that I would die a young death because of my weight gains. I was miserable. I had just resolved myself to always be fat and finally eat myself to an early death.
I then proceeded to go on several vehicle launches at Ford, mostly in Kansas City, MO. All food expenses were on Ford! Boy did I eat! More and more weight went on. I could barely get around the assembly plant. I lived on the third floor of an apartment complex and there were no elevators. I dreaded coming home at night. I thought I was going to have heart attack on those stairs. My right knee was in terrible pain. I had to limp around the assembly plant and everyone on the launch team was feeling sorry for me. I am pretty sure that I weighed well over 400 lbs. Plane trips back and forth to KC were dreadful. Every time I got on the plane I could see everyone looking and me and hoping that I was not going to sit next to them. I would scrunch myself into the seat and try to make myself as small as possible. I always had to request a table and not a booth at restaurants. Boy was that embarrassing. Whenever I visited my sister and my two nieces, my nieces would climb all over my like a jungle gym. I know it was because they wanted to play on mount Uncle Allan. I even broke their toilet seat sitting on it. One super sensitive thing for me was hearing things coming from kids like Why are you so fat? I would eat so much that I would wakeup at night after I stopped breathing and I would be in the process of throwing up. Several times I couldnt catch my breath. My snoring was so loud that it could be heard several rooms away. I basically couldnt breathe while I was sleeping. I couldnt sleep well at all.
I decided to go to the doctor to see if there was something that they could do medically. He prescribed fat blocking pills. I started taking them, but I didnt change my eating habits including cutting down on my fat content. This caused major problems for me in my digestive system. I wont go into that here, but it was ugly. At this point I was also attending Weight Watchers at work, but as I said I was not really following the program. When I weighed in at weight watchers after getting a scale that would work I weighed 426.8 lbs. My pants size was 62-64. I was wearing 4X shirts. By doing this fat blockers/weight watcher program in which I really didnt count points. I lost 30-40 lbs. I stopped going to weight watchers again. Almost all the weight went immediately back on.
I then started a new job within Ford. I moved to a different building and sat next to a guy who was as big or bigger than me, Tim. There was a class at work called Think Trim that Tim attended and he told me that it was a good program and that I should sign up for the next session. He also convinced me to give WW another try. Ford had suspended the at-work program (free to Ford employees) so Tim and I went to the local center in Dearborn, MI. I signed up for $160 for 16 weeks the first meeting night. I also joined the Think Trim class at the same time. This was Jan. 21, 2002. I weighed in at 422.2 lbs. The light bulb really went on for me this time.
I really made an effort to follow the program. The think trim class gave me a lot of new advice and ways to think about food and its role in my life and weight watchers gave me the rigid program to follow in order to be successful. I learned that food is not the most important thing in my life. I learned to stop eating when I am satisfied and not when I am full. I learned to ask myself before I eat something, Am I physically hungry? If not, why do I want to eat. The weight started coming off in droves. I started eating oranges, broccoli, cauliflower, salads with very little dressing, asparagus, squash, and zucchini, things that I have never considered eating before. Breakfast is now always a part of my daily plan. After I dropped to below 300 lbs, I joined the Ford gym. I started going to the gym 3-5 times a week. I started out slow on the cardio machines, 10-15 minutes per session. It seemed like every other week I would get a 5 lb star at my meeting. I was the star of the meeting!! I put the journaling program on my palm pilot to make it very easy to keep my journal. I can now do 60-90 of cardio. I bought a bike this past spring and rode it frequently during the summer. I am walking 18 holes of golf again. I have joined match.com and have attended a couple singles events. I have even gone out to dance clubs to try and meet women. I plan to buy roller blades next spring. I am down to size 34-36 pants and medium shirts.
I have told a lot of people who have asked me what made me decide to get serious about losing weight at this point in my life. Some ask why did you let yourself gain that much in the first place. I dont really know about the second question, but I tell them, that I think it is part of Gods plan for me. I believe that this is why. I am doing this because God wants me to help others, to be an inspiration for successful weight loss. I want to be able to help others in their journey. That is why I have created a website, told my story, exposed my past failings and myself. I think that I wasnt ready in the past. I am ready now! For me, I believe my life has begun at 35. I am not willing to waste anymore of my life.
My main reasons for success:
1. Journaling
2. Continuing to physically measure portions to this day!
3. Trying new foods and finally getting less picky about what I will eat.
4. EXERCISING!! It is essential! I actually enjoy it now because I know how good it is for me!
5. Going to my meetings and weighing in no matter what! This goes to the No excuses Mentality for me!
6. Getting support from friends and family especially on the WW message boards
7. Kicking food to the curb! This is a mental challenge more than a physical one! Make up your mind that food is not #1 in your life and you will lose the weight.
That is basically my story! Hope you arent too bored by this time, so wake up!! You can do this too. I am ready to start my next new challenge, maintenance!! I am ready for it!!
UPDATE 3/12/2004
I have started my third month of lifetime membership. I am 5 lbs under my weight watchers goal weight. I have bought and used those roller blades that I spoke of in my story above. I have been dating a wonderful lady for almost 4 months now!! Life is wonderful! I still have a hard time looking at myself in the mirror and seeing a thin person. When I look at myself in pictures, though, I cannot believe that I am the same person!! I am now planning to participate in a 5K Race for the Cure coming up in June 2004. Biking season is almost here too! There are a lot of new challenges ahead of me. Being a lifetime member is a challenge in itself. I have commited myself to still go to meeting every other week. I monitor my weight once a week even if I don't officially weigh in at WW.
UPDATE 5/6/2005
Where do I start? Wow, since I updated my personal story on 3/12/2004, I appeared on the local News in Detroit with Florine Mark, the owner of a lot of Weight Watchers franchises in Michigan. It was pretty cool, telling my story of success! I ran that 5K Race for the Cure in 25 minutes flat. I have continued to date and finally propose to Cathy on April 16th, 2005. The wedding is tentatively scheduled for late October 2005. I sold my old house and bought a new one in March. I am currently preparing to run in the Race for the Cure again this year. Throughout it all, I have struggled a little with maintaining the WL. I have about 10-15 lbs to get back off again. It always comes back if you don't watch it very carefully, let me tell you. I am commited to get it off again. I will not go back to that person that you see in my before pictures, let me assure you of that! In summary, life is still happening, just at a very different pace and direction that what I lived with that huge amount of weight, despair, and lonliness that I lived for so long. Therefore, always remember, there is hope to conquer the overweight demons, believe me. GOD BLESS, and thank you Jesus for making this possible for me!
UPDATE 3/13/2007
Well, it has been a long time since I have updated the site with my continued story. It is 2007, and I have been happily married to Cathy for going on two years now. We got married on October 22, 2005. We live in Canton, Michigan. We just got a dog in December from the Michigan Humane Society. The weight loss aspirations have taken another curve in the road, as usually happens after marriage. Why is that? Oh well, I have to learn how to deal with this like I have learned how to deal with it as a single person. It is a struggle a lot of the time. I feel like I am very close sometimes to gaining complete control back, but something happens to derail the new progress. We are very sociable, Cathy and I, so that is where the main struggle is. I will get there! On a more positive note, my fitness level is still really good. I ran a 10K race in Plymouth, MI last Father's Day. I race it in just over 1 hour. I wasn't really tracking my time, so I would have pushed it harder if I would have known I could get in under 1 hour. I have raced in the Race for the Cure, 5K, for three straight years, and I am signed up again this year. One of the coolest things (NSV) that I have noticed lately, is that when I give blood now to the Red Cross, they take my pulse and it usually comes in around 50 beats per minute resting. They always have to ask me if I run, because the rate is so low. That makes me feel good all the time. I remember huffing and puffing coming up just one flight of stairs in the "OLD" days. Anyway, I thank you for coming to my site today and reading my story. God deserves all the glory and praise for everything in my life, especially my weight loss endeavors. I know that He will continue to see me through this journey. I will not go back to the old days! I am resolved to use His strength to see me through!
Talk to you soon!
Allan
(algolfman)
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