That was the famous movie line delivered by Dean Wormer to John "Pluto" Blutarsky in the 1978 movie The Animal House. Can you imagine that that movie came out nearly 50 years ago? But it's what I thought of when I chose to jump on the scale yesterday for my 57th birthday. Standing in our bathroom butt naked peering down over my belly to see the state of my weight. And it wasn't good.
I forwent the annual New Year's Day new-life and decided to wait until this Monday to begin anew. The stressors of the fall semester coupled with the Thanksgiving through birthday chow downs had me thinking that January 13th would be my day. It's a good day because Theresa brought me home a bagel yesterday for my birthday and I joined my buddy Marc for a couple of mid-day pints of Guinness at a local tavern.
I usually try and take a photo or two of the anglers that are with me on every outing, that includes a pic taken from someone else or a selfie. Each time I look at one of me I see how horribly wrong my profile is. From an Alfred Hitchcock "Good Evening" profile, to a poorly positioned striping basket, I always am left saying, "I have to do something about that."
So before I stood on the scale yesterday I took a guess, "Maybe I'm round 210". Well I wasn't even close. When I saw 218 I knew it had to be go time. Putting on weight, especially as I get older, is something I need to closely monitor because it can easily get away from me, and it has. Our bodies get used to the weight, our cells look forward to the same caloric intake each day, and health issues related to a poor diet and extra pounds can be detrimental to our mental and physical well being.
It was February 24th 2013 when I stripped down, well almost, and took the above photo of myself before my gastric sleeve gastrectomy surgery at Monmouth Medical Center. I had ballooned up to over 260 pounds and had a BMI (Body Mass Index) of 37. And with the weight came all the fun things like hypertension, a bad lipid profile, borderline Type II diabetes, and sleep apnea. Add to that pissing out of my balls and not being able to see my manhood which is never good for a man's self esteem.
If you're on the big side and would like to depress yourself before you sit down for the three NFL Playoff games today and chow-down, you can go online and search for a BMI Calculator, like HERE, or do the height vs weight comparison on paper. Right now at 218 and 5'11" I just squeaked into the "Obese" classification. But it's just by a 0.5, so really I'm just close to being "just" overweight.
The picture above is one of my all-time favorites. It was good, I was good, and, if I could say, I looked good. That was after I shed 80-plus pounds after my surgery. I was around 185 which dropped my BMI to 26, which technically put me overweight. I'd take that overweight any day of the week.
They say at the gastric surgery meetings, "They operate on your stomach but not your mind", which is true. In the early days there was the full gastric bypass, or Roux-en-Y procedure, then came the Lap Band, and then the gastric sleeve. While they all can lead to drastic weight loss if you're not careful you can "eat through" your surgery and find yourself at your pre-surgery weight, or beyond. And that's why I need to draw a line at the trough now and get myself back into shape.
I am about to enter another stressful semester, maybe the highest level since I started four years ago. And you know what stress brings on, stress eating. Whether it's stress, trauma, or depression, many of us eat for reasons other than sustenance. While force feeding ourselves releases all the wrong neurotransmitters which gives us a temporary high, there's then the depression that hits when you realize you can't move, have a hard time breathing, wear he same clothes everyday, and find your stripping basket more around your knees than your waist.
I have bins and bins and closets lined with clothes that go from a 32 inch waist and a size large, all the way to a 38 and XXL. I can't even keep track and find myself wearing the same get-up everyday. Recently Theresa took a seasonal gig over at Costco and she brought me home a few pairs of pants. 34's have been good for me, at during some points of my life, but at a BMI of now 30 these trousers look more like sausage skin than comfortable pants. And that's even with the friendly "Stretch Canvas" around the waist.
Besides how I look and feel I knew I had another problem when I looked down at my old man toes. When did I get my Dad's toes? And why do old toes angle out and get so dam ugly as we age? But the alarming sign was the nail care that I had allowed to get away from me. I can't see my toes, because of my poor eyesight, and my belly, but my socks let me know when it's time to side position my legs and try and get a nail clipper, or hedge trimmer, on them. I hate when my socks get pulled by that hang nail, or two, that has been allowed to grow and angle up and over my toes. That's just hideous. Thank God Theresa doesn't have a foot fetish.
So right now blood pressures good, a recent trial of a the statin Rosuvastatin, got my lipid profile all within normal range, and my A1C is within normal limits. As far as the statins, I'm out on them, I didn't feel good and I didn't act good. So now it's up to me to control, and that's what this food and weight thing is all about, what, when, and how I eat. And the water intake? I am forcing myself to drink more of it rather than those pots of coffee and "healthy" 20 ounce Diet Cokes I used to drink. The above picture is one I took of a client back about 10 years ago. That's the way a stripping basket, and your jowls, are supposed to look from the side.
Look at that hot mess of a man above. Nice guy, for the most part, but man is that not good, and that was from October 2024. Yes there's a heavy sweatshirt and the waders but c'mon man. They say 'Health is wealth" and I see all of the problems firsthand in the log term care facilities and hospitals each day I go to work. I should know better and heed my own advice that I share with patients. I'm not going down the road of the recent craze of injecting myself with a GLP-1in order to cut weight, I have to do this the right way. And getting myself up and moving wouldn't be a bad things either.
So, yes I won't be an Alfred Hitchcock look alike this spring. My neck won't be hanging, even though it's in my DNA, my profile might look more normal, and my stripping basket will sit the way it's supposed to. And my wading socks won't get caught up on those hang nails and I might even be able to easily reach down and release a bass back into the water.
