Friends and Introductions

I enjoy my friends, love spending time with them.  I also enjoy meeting new people, especially in a natural way in which our relationship can unfold fluidly.

But, I don't like being introduced to new people.  It's awkward, with the little details of those first verbal exchanges that may or may not be important to remember ... like their name, marital status, stuff like that.  And then, with introductions, all parties are forced, too soon, to decide if this new relationship is worth pursuit.

So how do I introduce myself to you in this blog post without rifling information at you, like I'm a 43 year old married father of two that teachers math?  That's not who I am, anyway.  What we do, how we respond to our challenges and how we treat others is who we are, right?

The goal of this blog is to tell an on-going story about battles with obesity, over-eating, compulsive behavior and all of the good stuff that comes out of it.  Seriously, the upside of being fat.

I'd like to share some of what I've learned about fighting obesity (and the situations that cause it), and how vigilance is a foundation.  I'd like to share specifics about diet and fitness.  But I also would like to share how fighting obesity lead me to discover a new passion, lifestyle and circle of friends. I'd like to share my stories about racing bicycles this coming year!

Stories are all about setting.  If Bill Gates finds $20 in an old coat pocket, he's likely to smile.  But there's no consequence or significance.  A poor college kid finds $20 in an old coat pocket, especially towards the end of the semester...well, that's a different story, right?

So, please allow me to establish some background.  I'll try to avoid flowering the events with the emotional baggage they brought.

It really started on the 10th of April, 1998, around 4 PM.  It was Good Friday.  My wife was pregnant with our daughter, my mother and grandmother were over at our house visiting.  I returned from work and went to sit on the floor to talk with my mother.  Suddenly, without warning, three discs in my lower back ruptured.  A couple of weeks before this I had some back pain, and a few days before that I felt a little sore doing some yard work.  But aside from that, no warning at all.

In early July (1998), I had a full discectomy of the L5-L4 disc and some clean up of the S1-L5 and L4-L3. Before the surgery the doctor told me to expect at least some partial paralysis in my right leg.  After the surgery he said the only explanation for full functionality was my age.

This whole thing scared me.  I was betrayed by my body. I do not understand what happened to this day, which meant I couldn't prevent it from happening again.  So I tried to protect myself by doing as little as possible that was risky.  Watching football was low risk.  That meant also drinking beer and eating without limits.  Baseball goes great with beer, too.  What about watching basketball?

I ballooned to over 300 pounds during the following twelve years.  But I was still in pain, almost daily.  I was unhappy with how I looked.  I didn't like how I felt.  I took NSAIDs all the time and those eventually sent me to the ER with stomach issues.

I learned, though it took me over a decade, that I was going to be in pain whether I did what I wanted to do or not.  I couldn't hide from it.  I decided to change.  My first commitment was that every day I worked I'd do some form of exercise.  I began on the first day of school in 2010.  By the end of that school year I'd lost about 100 pounds!

I stayed around 200 to 220 pounds for the next few years.  In 2014 I discovered that I had some potential in bike racing.  Two hundred pounds was gigantic for a cyclist, but it turns out I have good aerobic capacity and muscular endurance.

Time trials were my specialty.  I was just learning them and I was doing well.  Not only was I posting the fastest times in my category, usually by several minutes, I was always among the top times of the day among all competitors and categories.

Then, in May of 2014, while riding up a hill with some friends, I felt a twinge in my left calf.  All of my previous nerve issues were on the right side, so I didn't think much of it.  But it developed to the point where I couldn't use my left leg correctly at all.  I started getting slower in the time trials and eventually lost to competition that I had always beaten by minutes.  That convinced me to go to the doctor in July of 2014.

I competed in the State Championship Individual Time Trial in September of 2014. I believed it to be my last race, ever.  I hadn't ridden the bike at all for three weeks leading up to the race and I wanted to go out a winner.  I came in third, but due to technicalities, I was awarded the state championship for Category 5 cyclists.  That left a bad taste in my mouth, though I've not mentioned it much.  I had done my best for what I brought to the race that day, but it was a far cry from where I was just a few months before.

I spent the next year attending physical therapy and hoping time would fix me up.  In November of 2014 I had to step away from the bike entirely.

A year went by, my condition continued to remain.  An MRI showed a page and a half of "severe" conditions, many of them structural between the S1 and L3.  In October of 2015 I had a TLIF (fusion) from the S1 to L5 and L5 to L4.  The prognosis was that I should return to a normal life, but one that involved competitive cycling would remain to be seen.  If I was lucky, yes.

During this time period, from Fall of 2014 through Spring of 2016, I suffered through depression.  I turned to food and drink to avoid my sadness.  I gained weight.  On March 31st, 2016, I stepped on the scale.  It read 272 pounds.

Between March and December I lost 70 pounds, regained a lot of form on the bike.  Much of the lost neuromuscular efficiency and control returned and continues to improve still.  I WILL be racing in 2017 and those experiences, how I prepare and continue to learn about nutrition and such, is what I want to share.

I share this with you not for kudos and certainly not for sympathy.  I am creating this blog because I hope you will find useful information, perhaps entertainment and maybe even motivating stories here.

If you've read this far, I thank you.  I hope you'll follow my blog.

Until next time...