Recently I attended a party where a friend who I had not seen a while complimented my appearance. I thanked him graciously and tried to change the subject, not because I was annoyed, but because I am thoroughly Midwestern, and as such, I am not great at accepting compliments. When he went as far as to called me “inspirational,” I smiled, and with tongue-firmly-in-cheek, I said, “Yes. I am an inspiration.”

These kinds of interactions are not uncommon.

About a month before that, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army, who has survived cancer and the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, sidled up to the urinal adjacent to the one that I was using and thanked me for inspiring him to lose weight. Over a few months, he had lost 30 pounds and was still going. Inspired by his weight loss, his wife also started taking steps to improve her physical health.  It was a chain reaction that I could not have predicted, and at no point in my life prior to that bathroom break had I felt more like a fraud.

I entered college in the fall of 2005, weighing an athletic 170 pounds. Thanks partly to my diet of soda, cafeteria hamburgers, and pizza, and largely to my nightly binge drinking, I was knocking on 200’s door by the time I was a sophomore. My “freshman 15” was a “freshman 30.”

From there, my weight gain shifted into high gear. Even though I eventually stopped drinking (my rock bottom turned out to be higher than that of most drinkers, and for that I am grateful), the hamburgers and pizzas followed me for nearly a decade. My life was also becoming increasingly sedentary. Frequently, I would watch three or four episodes of Star Trek per night, or if I were feeling particularly ambitious, I would read 70 pages of some Russian epic or French absurdist novel.

Only seven years after being a reasonably svelte cross-country runner, I was obese, unrecognizable, and decidedly not an inspiration.

Conversations like the one I had at the party invariably result in a series of assumptions and questions, each of which I have heard enough times that I have developed well-rehearsed responses, which I deliver in a bashful tone with a coy smile.

Assumption: I bet you feel great.

Response: I don’t know about great, but I do feel better. (True)

Assumption: You must have tremendous will power.

Response: No more than anybody else. (True)

Question: What made you decide to lose weight?

Response: I was just tired of being tired. I live on the third floor of a walk-up, and it would feel like my heart was going to jump out of my chest every time I climbed the stairs. (Partially True)

Question: What is your secret?

Response: You know how doctors are always saying how important it is to eat right and exercise? Well, it turns out that they are telling the truth. (Bald-faced Lie)

I am not denying that eating right and exercising were instrumental, but eating right and exercising cannot reasonably be considered a secret when it comes to healthy living.

Someone once told me that change only happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of making a change. For over a decade, I was apathetic about my weight (or appearance in general). I made a few halfhearted attempts to get healthy, even losing as much as 40 pounds in 2013, before putting it all back on. These attempts were not sincere. These attempts were fashion.  

In July of 2018, I flew from Chicago to San Francisco to visit a dear friend, as well as to see my favorite band: Phish. Before the plane took off, a flight attendant asked me if I could lower my armrest. I asked her if I could leave it up until it was time to take off because it was uncomfortable. To this, she responded by telling me, gently, that the reason she was asking me to lower the armrest was to see if it would go all the way down.

Embarrassed, I lowered the armrest for the flight attendant’s inspection. I was very nearly in “two-seat” territory. 

I realize that I have created something of a false memory when I recall this interaction. In my mind, the plane was silent, and everyone within a 10-row radius could hear the flight attendant accusing me of being too rotund for one seat. I was humiliated in front of an audience of 60 people who were all laser-focused on my conversation with the flight attendant, dizzy with anticipation as I lowered the armrest. This dramatization of the events is not how it played out. The flight attendant did everything in her power to be discrete. It is unlikely anyone else heard our conversation.

My first full day in San Francisco was a busy one. My friend and I walked to The Buena Vista near Fisherman’s Wharf for breakfast and Irish coffees, we played 18 holes of disc golf in Golden Gate Park, and from there we walked to Height Ashbury. After a short rest, we headed to the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium for the first of two nights of Phish.

Also, we witnessed a murder.

The next day, I was too tired to move. There were things that I wanted to do and see while I was there, but I could not muster the strength or the energy to leave my bed for most of the day. I squandered the second day of my vacation, dedicating it entirely to convalescence. We did attend the second night of Phish, but I sat for nearly the entire show.

Following Phish down the coast, I spent the next two nights in Los Angeles. Once again, there were many things I wanted to do, but I was only able to find the energy to get donuts at the iconic Randy’s Donuts. I bought six donuts, all of them for myself. The plan was to eat three before the show and three after the show, but I accidentally got in the wrong car (I could have sworn it was my Uber) and gave the driver one as a peace offering. I had to settle for eating two after the show.

I have had more than my share of embarrassing injuries. In 2007, at the age of twenty, I threw my first punch and broke my thumb because I tucked it into my fist. As I have already stated, I no longer drink. Just this year, I broke my pointer finger opening a box of frozen Brussels sprouts. In August of 2018, I pulled my groin when I slipped throwing a frisbee. I had to go to the doctor because the pain was excruciating. It was here that I stepped on the scale for the first time in well over a year. I was astonished to hear that I had ballooned to 280 pounds. In fact, I was so shocked by this number that I weighed myself on the industrial scale where I work to verify it. Sure enough, 280 pounds on the nose.

A few days later, I flew to Denver, again to see Phish, and this trip was pretty much the same as my trip to San Francisco (sans murder). This time though, I was hanging out with friends who are 15 to 20 years older than I am, all of whom were able to stand, dance for three nights of Phish — I was not.

These events all occurred over the course of seven weeks.

I wish I could say that there was a “Eureka!” moment, but truthfully there was never a time where I sat down and considered all of these things, and there was no declaration made stating that I intended to lose weight (at first). Instead, I simply realized that I had not eaten a donut or fast food in a couple of weeks, and thought, “Let’s see how long I can keep this going.” As of writing this, I am at 440 days.

With the holidays around the corner, I will, with very little doubt, be asked about my weight and face the string of assumptions and questions that typically follow, but here is the thing, this time around I am considering telling the truth. 

Question: What is your secret?

Answer:  My weight-loss was possible because of a lifelong pattern of compulsive behavior. It is the same as my binge drinking in my late teens, early twenties. It is the same reason I fly around the country, seeing Phish dozens of times. It is the reason I would eat fast food for two, sometimes three meals per day. It is the same reason I have watched 700+ episodes of Star Trek at least twice.

My secret is that I have been in pain since I was 16 years old, and I will do anything to feel something – anything—other than shitty.

My secret is that my intention was never to get back down to my high school weight. My goal was to tear down the person I was and build an entirely different person in his place. I was not trying to start a new chapter in my 32-year bildungsroman. I was completely rewriting my character, and I was going to start with my appearance.

My secret is that I am a one-man wrecking machine.