Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Depression, pain, and weight gain

In 2006, I ruptured a disk in my upper spine, C6-C7, which caused me an enormous amount of pain. On the last day of my insurance coverage, Halloween Eve 2007, I got surgery to fuse that section (it was great, I was Frankenstein's Monster for Halloween without even wearing a costume, complete with 4 bolts in my neck). They catheterized me during the surgery, and having that out was about the worst sensation I've had in a long time. I vowed not to let my weight keep creeping up so that I wouldn't have any more back injuries.

In recovery for that surgery, I lost 20-30 lbs, down to 225. I felt good about myself, but old habits came back and bit me in the ass. I struggled to get my photo business going, and fell into a depression that's lasted me about 2 years now, feeling like a business failure. I fell back on food, for comfort.

I'm now 100 lbs over what I consider my ideal weight of 180 (the military and BMI says I should actually weight 160 lbs, but that just feels too skinny). I've been lying to myself, even as all my "fat" pants stopped fitting, saying I'm just around 250-260, but then I bought a scale and saw the truth in front of me. 278 lbs worth of denial, depression, and bad food.

I want to be around for my kids graduations, marriages, grandkids, etc, so I decided to start this calorie counting - something I never thought I'd have to do when I was 30 years old and wearing size 32 waist pants - to make sure that it happens.

I'm still in a depression, but I'm no longer turning to food for comfort, just pushing through and getting my health in order. I'm tired, tired of the constant pain, tired of hating my reflection, tired of feeling like everybody is judging me for my weight.

Once I get accustomed to the lower caloric intake, I'm going to add in calisthenics like the ones I did in basic training, and then, who knows, maybe try some of those 5k walks that are so popular. We'll see, one day at a time.

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