HOW DID I GET HERE??

The summer before seventh grade was the first successful time I had in my life at losing weight.  I drank "Metrecal" (Pre-historic Slim Fast)  four times a day, and in that summer I lost around 40?? pounds. [See my early years page.]

Around sixth grade before my first successful weight loss.

Sometime close to seventh grade.

I felt great about myself, and it was a terrific way to start over from elementary school to junior high.  New kids, new surroundings, new me!  As soon as I lost the weight, I started back with my old eating habits, and like almost everyone else who has ever struggled with their weight, the weight came back and more!  By the middle of eighth grade it was the same fat me.  However during this time I did gain height and rode my bike constantly so as I remember, while I wasn't "thin" I wasn't supremely huge either.  By eighth grade tho I was in the heaviest weight class for wrestling.

Thru out the rest of my school years I remember categorising myself as fat, but looking back at pictures I see that I went up and down the scale somewhat.  I was a busy teenager and had lots of friends and once out of high school I had a very physically demanding job in a tire warehouse so while my eating habits didn't change, I evidently worked hard enough to burn up many of the excess calories I was consuming.  I guess the key here is I still thought of myself as fat and had a low self-esteem because of it.

I weighed between 195 and 225 for the 4 years from when I graduated high school in 1977 to when I got engaged in 1981. In 1982 the love of my life and I were married and I weighed 245 pounds. When we returned from our honeymoon we decided to join Weight Watchers…she really has never been much overweight, I think she joined so I would. At any rate this was the second time in my life I had a successful weight loss experience. I lost almost exactly 50 pounds and felt I had “arrived” at an ideal weight of 195 pounds.

The above article appeared in the January 1983 issue of New World; a regional publication of Weight Watchers at the time.

My second successful weight loss attempt (1982). 
A drop of close to 50 pounds.

Unfortunately, even though you think you have the eating monster tucked away in some black hole or iron cage, he slowly but surely creeps (he is a creep too!) back into your eating habits and eight years later-(1990) I weighed in at 302 pounds!

Back to Weight Watchers I went, because at 30 years old, with a two year old and a newborn in the house I was way too heavy to be the responsible husband and daddy I wished to be. I couldn’t function very well and it just needed to happen. Enough was enough, my head had to come out of the sand or from whatever other dark place it was in!

On the left 302 pounds February 1990,
on the right 195 pounds September 1990.

In about 10 months I went from 302 down to 183…(my goal weight was 194) and this time I was determined to keep the weight off, so I continued thru the 6 weeks of maintenance that Weight Watchers recommends and swore that that was it! I still attended meetings and faced the scale at least once a month to maintain my free lifetime membership. This was my third successful attempt at weight loss.

YOU'RE LOOKING GOOD!

And I darn near lost my mind! Once all the weight was off, and people quit admiring my new look and great achievement, it became much harder to eat properly. I was getting a lot of emotional positive strokes from people and that helped me stay motivated. But once my looking thin became my new "normal" look  people quit telling me what a great achievement I had accomplished. 

All the positive reinforcement dwindled and I started to try make myself feel better again by eating.  (Which of course is impossible!)

Dieting is damn hard work and even though I told myself that this had to be the way I needed to live for the rest of my life, I secretly hoped that I could eat anything I wanted too and gain and lose the same 5 pounds for the rest of my life.  Not able to maintain the will to watch what I was eating, that 5 pounds loss and gain stuff never worked. 

In late December 1994, my mom passed away at the age of 70 after a long two year battle with breast cancer, I was 35. I had gained about half of the weight back from my big loss in 1990.
Within 6 months of her death I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. 

High blood pressure, acid reflux and clinical depression followed soon after.

Seven years later, on our 20th wedding anniversary I was admitted into the hospital with Pericarditis. Pericarditis is a condition in which the sac-like covering around the heart (pericardium) becomes inflamed. If the buildup of fluid in the pericardium makes the heart function poorly or produces cardiac tamponade, it is necessary to drain the fluid from the sac. This procedure, called pericardiocentesis, may be done using an echocardiography-guided needle or if needed, surgery. They tried the needle way first which was unsuccessful and then I had open heart surgery. I was one very sick man and was hospitalized almost 3 weeks…I weighed 305 pounds!

MY FAT MAN AND THIN MAN HAVE FOUGHT EACH OTHER ALL MY LIFE!

Between 2002 and 2007 I joined Weight Watchers three more times. I would lose 20 or 30 pounds and drop out….gain all that back and more and guilt myself to go back again. I also saw a psychiatrist for several months to try to help me figure out why I was “eating my emotions” or however you wish to describe it…but ultimately I had no true desire to fight my weight anymore.

Sometime in 2007 I think I just decided that since I had always failed to keep weight off after losing it, why even try at all?

It is extremely embarrassing to start gaining weight after everyone has seen you thin. That is the worst for me…there is no hiding the fact that you are failing in a very public way. You get tired of feeling like a failure, and I told myself, I’d rather just not do anything about my weight anymore.

I said to myself, "People are used to me being fat and I’m just gonna quit fighting it."

2008 was one of the worst years of my life. My emotions and personal life sort of fell apart in what you could describe as a “Perfect Storm”. Some relationships that were very key to my life and happiness really got frayed around the edges and I also made some very bad decisions relationally as well. Thankfully my wife and I were able to depend on each other and even grow closer.  We’ve had our ups and downs like all couples, but we were a great support to one another as we faced this very rough year together.

While I was going thru this rotten year, I found myself gaining weight with abandon. At this point I was hovering just under 350 pounds.

 I have a good doctor. He has taken very good care of me for almost 20 years. He has been consistent and very creative in prescribing medicines, and offering medical care to meet the challenges I was facing as I continued down the path of morbid obesity. He always remained hopeful that he and I could figure out the key that would unlock my ability to decide to do something proactive in reducing my weight. I’m sure it seemed to him as if he was bailing out a sinking ship with a thimble!

In 2008, several local doctors, in conjunction with one of our local hospitals, opened up a weight loss center that offered the public several options in fighting the battle of the bulge. My doctor began suggesting I consider this option, which on the surface I immediately agreed to consider, but inside I just said..”Nope…been there done that, not gonna do it anymore.” Besides in late 2008, early 2009 I was so wrapped up in my relational “Perfect Storm” I had no desire to add to my stress with a weight loss regimen.

[About the Mercy Weight Loss Center in Dakota Dunes, SD] 
Ph. 605-217-4567

 

Mercy Weight Loss Center Introduces Area’s First Physician-Supervised, Non-Surgical Option


The Mercy Weight Loss Center at Dakota Dunes has launched a non-surgical, state-of-the-art weight-loss program appropriate for those who want to lose anywhere from 10 to more than 100 pounds.


The medically managed program offers several dieting options: clinic-based weight loss programs with or without medical supervision, or home-based weight loss programs with complete “do it yourself” diet kits.


Establishment of the new program expands the weight loss options offered by the specialty center to include both surgical and non-surgical alternatives.


“Since research shows that using low calorie, portion-controlled meal replacements produce substantially greater weight loss and weight maintenance than standard diets, all program options use nutritionally complete HMR weight-loss foods like shakes, entrees, soup, cereal, and nutrition bars as the basis of the diet,” said Dr. Ross Bacon, medical director for the new weight loss program, which is part of the Mercy Weight Loss Center at Dakota Dunes.


“Participants in the program may receive a complete medical screening prior to starting the diet, with medical supervision provided as necessary. The emphasis is on teaching new lifestyle skills and healthier behaviors,” Bacon added.


After weight loss, participants join an extensive maintenance program that focuses on simple strategies for long-term weight management.


The new program at the Mercy Weight Loss Center at Dakota Dunes was developed by HMR (Health Management Resources), the nation’s leading provider of weight treatment services to the medical community.

“I LOVE YOU AND WANT YOU TO GET BETTER”

In May of 2009 at my next appointment, my doctor, (who helped save my life in 2002), rocked my world so completely, words can barely do it justice!! After discussing my current medical needs and towards the end of the visit, we were discussing my astronomical weight gain of the past year, he paused, looked right into my eyes and said,

"Charlie, I love you and I want you to get better."


I was rendered almost speechless! My doctor had always been very friendly and we joked around alot, but this comment threw me totally off guard! He had crossed over into being an actual friend, and not just a doctor I paid to tell me the stuff I'm supposed to do. I was stunned! I don't remember what I said in response, somehow after the appointment I stumbled to the parking lot and drove away...but no matter what I did, I could not get away from those words!

Now I have a pretty active spiritual life, and while I think that the bible is our primary source of what God would wish for us to do, sometimes I think God uses circumstances of life, and people in your life to get your attention.

Here's a copy of a devotional that says it much better than me:

Devotional drawn from "Jesus Calling" July 25th entry, p.216
Written by Sarah Young, Thomas Nelson Publishers

As much as I hate to admit it, (because of stupid “male pride”) I know God has used my wife to accomplish things in my life that He wanted.

She has been my rock and steadfast and faithful companion for the past 28 years. She has tolerated me and my overweight self and suffered largely in silence as I balooned out. She made it perfectly clear that she was not happy about my weight because it affected my health so severely. She worried, but she didn’t nag. During every bad food choice I made for years and years she stuck by me and loved me anyway. However that didn’t stop me from feeling guilty about it…but my reaction to the guilt was to stuff those feelings away by stuffing my face instead, which of course only exacerbated the problem.


I guess you might say that she had resigned herself to being widowed at a relatively young age, as I was surely killing myself with food just as sure as if I had a ticking time bomb sitting on my lap. Knowing that and feeling so poorly healthwise, was a constant thumb in my back pushing me closer to a crisis decision.


My brother and sister too were very worried about me and rightfully so, and my two daughters occasionally chimed in with their feelings about having their father die at an early age. So while all this is swirling around in my head and heart, my doctor…God Bless Him!!...said just exactly what I needed to hear!

“I love you and I want you to get better.”

My next doctor appointment was in September of 2009. This time my doctor gave me a resource packet with information about Mercy Weight Loss Center. I agreed to look it over and even took it to work so if I had time during the day, I’d browse thru it. It was put in my lower desk drawer and for four months every time I’d open that drawer I’d remember I was supposed to look at the information, and every time I’d say to myself, “I’ll look at that pretty soon!” (As of July 28, 2010 it is still in my lower desk drawer!!)

A LOOMING CRISIS THAT WOULD BEGIN MY TURNAROUND!

Then God allowed something to happen that in retrospect doesn’t seem so terrible now, but terrified me when it happened. In late December 2009 we had experienced some very heavy snowfall.

My daughters car buried in a snowdrift, Dec. 2009.  It's a bright red car, can't you tell?

One noontime I was home and decided to walk thru my backyard to the garage to get a second snow shovel I had there. My wife tried to shovel most of the snow as it fell because she was afraid that I would have a heart attack if I tried to do it. I thought, “Well I’ll get the second shovel out and I can at least do my fair share, especially on days with lighter snow fall accumulations."

Uh huh….The snow really didn’t look that deep drifted in my backyard…actually kinda pretty. Since I was just “running” out to the garage and the temperature was in the low thirties, I decided I didn’t need to put my coat on to make the quick trip to the garage and back.

About halfway to the garage I was slogging thru snow drifts that were 6 inches above my knees. It got to where I could not lift my feet high enough to clear the snow to take the next step. I got tripped up with my own feet and fell to the ground. Mind you I was in the middle of a snowdrift so it didn’t hurt when I fell; I immediately tried to stand back up…and couldn’t get my feet underneath me! After two or three tries I was so out of breath that I had to stop and rest for a minute. As I would put my hands down to support myself they would push through the drifted snow all the way to the ground. This means that as my hands touched the ground, my face was in the snow! This wouldn’t have been a problem if I only had to do it once to gain my footing…but it became very annoying and a little scary as I lost my footing several times and lost my breath to the point of exhaustion.

My hands and arms began to burn from exposure to the wet ice-like snow. My pants began to absorb the melting snow so that shortly, I was pretty thoroughly wet from head to toe, plus I began to sweat from the exertion of it all. Finally I had packed the snow somewhat around where I had fallen so that I had a more level area to attempt to stand up in.

Now what I have failed to mention to this point is that in 2007 I had a total knee replacement on my right leg. It was a direct result of my being overweight for so many years. As a rule of thumb, most doctors refuse to replace knee joints until a person is in their early sixties as they will usually wear out within 15 - 20 years. The theory is that as you delve into senior citizenship, you will slow down and not overwork your joints as much thereby extending the life of the artificial joint. I was 47.

Now for some“technical” medical jargon: My knee joint was so worn out, the upper leg bone had worn a groove into the lower leg bone.

Yes it was as painful as it sounds!


So the surgeon showed me mercy and replaced it, but strongly advised me that I needed to lose some serious weight or the joint would really wear out prematurely. Getting that knee replaced was one of the best things that ever happened to me…while it is a painful MAJOR surgery and the physical therapy is tough, the ability to walk again without pain was beyond bliss!! Now my right leg with the new knee joint was pretty strong but my left leg and knee…not so much.


For quite awhile I had found that whenever I was getting up from a lower position I needed to grab onto something so that my arms would help lift me up! Everytime I got out of my car I held onto the door to help myself get out and I compensated like that in all areas of my life and just like the king of Siam said: “Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!”

My life as a nearly disabled person. Could the medical scooter be far behind??


So there I was two years later stuck in a snowdrift in my own backyard and I had just flattened the snow enough that I thought I might be able to get up from my fall. Where’s a good spare car door when you need it!


Exactly! My legs were not strong enough to lift me up, and I had nothing to grab onto to help me up…I was stuck in a snowdrift in my own backyard soaked with melted snow and sweat and it looked like I was going to have to start screaming for help or freeze to death! In retrospect I could have crawled back to the house I suppose but real panic had set in and I wasn’t really thinking clearly.


So I did what any “normal” person would do in the same situation…I began to bargain with God!


“God, if you get me out of this fix, I’ll really, really think hard about going to Mercy Weight Loss Center like my doctor has been trying to get me to do. Wait that didn’t sound right….Ok God, I promise I’ll start up yet another conversation with my doctor about trying to go to the weight loss center.  Well, you get the idea.


So anyway, I took a deep breath, actually several deep breaths and put my left leg underneath me and lunged upward and somehow(with God’s help) I got my other leg underneath me and stood up!

Then like most people I shoved that "bargain" with God out of my mind.


Fast forward a couple of weeks to mid-January 2010 when I went to my doctor to get prescriptions refilled and check up on my diabetes.



Again, towards the end of this visit my doctor asked me about Mercy Weight Loss Center. Remembering my bargain with God I said, “Yes I was planning on going to one of their orientation meetings.”


He asked,” When?”


I said I didn’t know when they scheduled them for sure.


He immediately called his nurse in and asked her to call Mercy Weight Loss Center to find out when the next orientation meeting was going to be. She came back reporting it was Tuesday February 2nd. He looked at me and asked,” Can we schedule you now for that meeting?”


GULP! Well ok it’s just an informational meeting, I’m thinking to myself. “Sure doc, go ahead and give them my name, I’ll be there.” I figured it would get him off my back, and it wasn’t like I had to commit to actually doing it!


Then I remembered, “He loves me and wants me to get better.”…………Sigh!


God poked me on the chest and reminded me of the snowdrift bargain…double sigh!


So I went.


I learned that they had a far different approach to weight loss than what I had encountered in the past. It was medically supervised and it looked like the results could be astonishing! Safe and effective weight loss???


Yes!


I started Feb. 16, 2010…..

Below is a picture of me on my 50th. birthday in 2009 hovering right around 380 lbs.  This is what I looked like when I started...triple sigh!