Kevin The year was 2017. A family crisis had come up for me, and it showed me firsthand how quickly tables can turn when it comes to health. This left me out of the spotlight, and shifted the focus to them.
I’d seen almost every episode of My 600lb Life, up until then at least. I always rooted for the contenders, even if they acted like colossal buttheads to everyone around them. In fact, I still hope the best for every one of them. I hope that for the ones who hadn’t gotten where they needed to be at the end of the show, I hope they find that motivation and their own reason why to get themselves to a healthier place with themselves and their weight loss.
A lot of their stories had their differentiators in terms of demographics and life histories. The commonality among them was the way Dr. Now gave them a 1200 calorie diet that emphasized proteins, and minimized carbs. He’d have all of them do it for a month with a goal of 40 pounds in that same amount of time. While some would fall short of that goal, others met it, or lost the 40 pounds and then some.
I got to thinking after I got done watching an episode on one of those janky sites of ill-repute, chock full of computer AIDS-infested popups. I was like, if they could lose that much on Dr. Now’s diet, then let’s see where it’ll get me. At the rate of 40 pounds a month, why, I’ll be where I wanna be in a jiffy!
So I hit up Dr. Google for Dr. Now’s diet, and what I found didn’t seem to have been confirmed or disproved to have been the real deal. Hey, I tried nothing and I was all out of ideas, haha. So I studied each episode for anything he said about what to eat. The diet floating around the ‘net purporting to be Dr. Now’s, along with what I saw of it on the show gave me an idea as to where to start. A lot of what I’d already been eating would’ve worked for the high-protein, low-carb diet, however, it wasn’t actually on the diet list itself.
I knew something had to give, so I made the decision to lose weight.
Besides, I was bored as shyt, and figured I’ll try it out for a month, then regroup after that with any next steps. I wrote out a shopping list in my travel notebook, got on my bike the next day, and picked up a few things that were on the diet plan I found, skipping the fish. Hate that stuff anyway, so no loss there.
Yes, as overweight as I was at the time, I was still active enough to bike. Not great, but I did it.
I rode home from the store with my reusable bag hit kit full of goodies, listening to the music I had on my iPod Nano (5th generation, rest its’ weary soul), and was looking forward to this. Some of it was stuff I hadn’t had in a while anyway.
I’d already polished off of the last of the baking dish of dip I made the night before, along with the other half of a regular bag of tortilla chips, so this was meant to be. I made my first Dr. Now diet-style dinner of baked chicken and roasted baby carrots. I noticed things fitting a bit differently around the second week, but wrote it off as a fluke, or me being at a certain point in my cycles.
In early 2018, I was in a freak accident that left me with resultant mobility issues. When I made it to the doctor, I got on the scale, pretending to myself that I was on My 600lb Life, and figuring that I was just imagining things. The other shoe would drop any second. No surprise I was disappointed at the results, but considered it a loss all the same.
While the results weren’t specifically the 40 pounds in a month, they were comparable in hindsight. I was starting at a morbidly obese BMI at 5’1, and the people on the show were starting at higher BMI ranges than I was. By this time, I had shifted from the specific diet plan I found, while keeping the high protein, low-carb approach and the calorie budget. So far, so good.
The accident, and the hideous X-rays solidified my decision. This was my zero-hour. This was my motivation to lose weight, and stay the course. This was the moment I knew there was no turning back. I knew I needed to be as close to a healthy BMI class as possible, not just for the treatment of the injuries I got in the accident, but for when I have kids in the near future. I wanted the odds of a good outcome in both departments to be in my favor as much as possible.
Before I officially started the diet, I decided to keep my plans to myself this time around. On my way to the store for the diet-approved stuff, I got to thinking about every time I tried to lose weight in the past, and how I’d tell people about it. Every single time, they’d shove food at me, guilt-trip me into eating it, or discourage me saying I was fine, I wasn’t “that bad,” or that I wasn’t “as bad as So-and-so.” Well, looking back, I wasn’t that far off from getting to the point So-and-so did.
Then, BANG. I’d be back where I’d started.
This time, I decided something had to change, and I was gonna do it, with or without anyone’s help. I decided to walk whatever talk I had, and keep my project to myself for as long as possible.
I was done talking about it. All it got me in the past was clapback and sabotage. This time, I was gonna be about it.
For the previous installments, read here, and here.
