What does matter is where things begin and where they end. I know where things began, but am no seer. Where things will end is more difficult to ascertain. So let us begin, unsurprisingly, with the beginning.
Pre-November, 2013
Events and time have been condensed, but this is largely how I remember things.
Some time around 1981 or 1982 my life changed, and not for the better. I don't know how or why, and truly doubt that it matters, but I started gaining weight. I went from a relatively normal looking kid to a marshmallow quite quickly.
As the years passed on, I would "stretch out" a bit but still remained chunky. By the time I was in junior high, I was a little shy of 200 pounds. Things would remain like that (luckily there were growth spurts in the future) until my senior year of high school. The pounds still kept coming, about ten a year, but there was more growth "up" than "out." But it was in that final year of high school that I had my first accidental encounter with low carb dieting.
Work was exceptionally busy before Thanksgiving. That is just to be expected when working at a grocery store. The side benefit was that my meals quickly turned from "home cooking" to "this is quick, and I can do it myself." While not ideal in most circumstances, this led me to a diet of chicken patties, American cheese, and yellow mustard. I was still eating plenty of junk, but the activity at the store meant that I was burning most of that off and managing to make headway on my own.
I dropped twenty or thirty pounds, although I was still North of 200, and then stalled as the school year wound down. That is the way things remained until after graduation.
Once graduation had passed and my friends had left for the military, their own new lives in new cities, or simply just drifted away, I was left with little else to do. I focused on working (and spending money) instead of going to college straight-away. The side effect of that was my sleep habits improved dramatically, my mood-swings became less frequent, and my stress level just about disappeared. I wasn't able to see it myself, but the few others I was around were noticing that my weight was dropping. I dropped another fifteen pounds and fell below the 200 mark for the first time since my early teens.
Working at the store kept me at that weight, and I didn't worry about my diet even though it was mostly junk food. I tried various things to keep my weight loss going, but did not succeed. I thought weight loss was just a game of calories, and was happy having a 36 inch waist and wearing medium or large shirts. So if I didn't lose more it was OK, too.
And then I turned 21.
Alcohol, unsurprisingly, does not normally help a person lose weight. The weight gain was minimal even though I was known to drink somewhat heavily. I put on ten or fifteen pounds and held steady. Not too bad really. Not great, but not too bad.
Then my life changed, and not for the better. Life threw me a series of curve balls that I simply didn't want to deal with. So I drank more, quit my job, pigged out, and just generally became a slob.
That lasted until I neared graduation. I needed to get a job and working again. I had put on an unknown amount of weight, perhaps up to 60 pounds by my best guess. As luck would have it I knew someone who was putting together a small team at the warehouse where he worked and I was on the short list. It wasn't glamorous, but I was working again. Working in a warehouse keeps you moving and a hot summer keeps you from getting very hungry. Within eight months, I was down to the 200 mark again. I was still eating garbage and drinking, though less heavily, but activity kept the pounds from packing back on. My weight went up, my weight went down, but didn't stray far from 200.
Even after I went back to work at the grocery store things did not much change. Even after I did some temp work for an office things did not much change. But once I went to full-time office work, the weight came screaming back with a vengeance.
Things would likely have been much less severe had I not developed a crush on the bartender at a restaurant across the office. That led to me constantly having a sizable lunch and a dessert. Without the warehouse or grocery store to help burn off the pounds my weight skyrocketed again. I was, to my best knowledge, around 280 pounds.
Thus began my first conscious experiment with low carb dieting (Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution). It wasn't easy. Luckily, I had help. My mother would end up often cooking two meals so I could eat low carb. Things at the office weren't always so great, though. Birthdays, service anniversaries, and other special occasions are celebrated with food. Bagels, cinnamon rolls, and doughnuts are common in the morning. Pizza is a common lunch treat. There's easy access to a vending machine and there was more than enough frustration to drive a person to think that a package of cookies or a candy bar will make things better.
I believe I had taken forty pounds off before the frustration (and cake) finally wore me down. I put twenty pounds back on. Many attempts were made to start dieting again after that. None were successful for more than a few days.
My life changed again, for the better this time, when my girlfriend (eventually to become my wife) and her daughters moved in with me. Weight kept creeping back on, though. This time there was no stopping things. By the summer of 2012 I was well over 300 pounds. I didn't have any jeans that fit. I had difficulty sitting in seats in an arena or theater. Back pain which had always been problematic was now almost constant. It seemed as if I would do something to aggravate my back as soon as it started to feel better from the last problem. Sometimes I needed a cane to be able to walk without looking like I was impersonating a pretzel.
And, with little variation, that was how things went for the next year. I managed to skip my second annual doctor visit during 2013. Things really hadn't gone very well in 2012, so it was easy to forget. I decided to drown my (assumed) medical bad news during the month of October by just absolutely binging on sugar: Ice cream, cake, cookies, or anything else that packed a sweet punch.
I do not recommend doing that for any reason, especially if, like me, it is really just a matter of time before a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes comes. One day the wife and I were talking about dieting. We had talked about it before many times. It usually ended with us deciding to do something later in the year or even the year after. But this time was different. Instead of suggesting, as I expected, that we begin our expected diets a month early (December) she suggested I start in November.
I agreed.
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