Hello! I’m Larry, and I’m a Former Fat Dude.
I’ve never been to an AA meeting before, but that first line sounds like what they say there. My name, and an acknowledgement that I was morbidly obese. The difference between AA and FFD is Former Fat Dudes don’t have to attend monthly meetings, at least not FFD meetings. But, the analog between AA and FFD is pretty stong. Us FFD members have overcome a pretty big (pardon the pun…) problem in our lives just as successful AA members have overcome theirs. And just like them we have to be constantly vigil to keep from slipping back into our old habits and end up back where we were.
The story of how I became a fat dude to begin with starts back in the first grade, or there abouts… Just prior to the first grade I had a tonsillectomy. Before that I was a scrawny, sickly little kid. After getting those offensive tonsils removed I “sprouted”… And during the first week of the first grade Mrs. Thompson marched our whole class the two blocks to the Public Library and had us fill out library cards. That library card would be well worn by the time I reached puberty.
Another aggravating factor was the fact that I couldn’t see. I don’t mean that I was blind, I mean that just couldn’t see very well. In fact when I finally had an eye exam, it was found that my vision was about 20/400!!! What a normal kid could see at 400 feet, I had to get as close as 20 feet to see. The funny thing about it was nobody knew I couldn’t see. My parents didn’t know, they thought all kids liked to sit to close to the television set. My friends didn’t know, they just thought I was a terrible baseball player who never got a hit or caught the ball. (Kinda hard to catch the ball when you don’t see it until just before it smacks you between the eyes!)
Consequently, either I wasn’t included in, or chose not to participate in sports. Even I didn’t know that other people could see better than me. I guess I just thought they were lucky to not get hit as many times as me. Even though I couldn’t see anything at a distance, I could see from about 12 inches on in like I had a magnifying glass! So reading was easy, and I did it a lot. When I finally had an eye exam and got some glasses I was amazed! It was like, finally for the first time in my life, someone focused the camera. Trees suddenly weren’t just green blobs. They were thousands of individual leaves clumped together with limbs and branches and trunks… Wow!
By the time I got to the seventh grade I was the chubby kid in the “Roebuck” husky sized jeans. Always the last around the track in P.E.. I at least got some contact lenses so I could see.
But, the die was cast, I would never be a jock! I had something better. I had the Public Library!!! During the summer while all the other kids were out running and riding bikes and playing, I was reading in air-conditioned comfort in the John Cain Public Library in Stuttgart, Arkansas.
Over the years I went from being “husky” to “chunky” to “fat”! But, there were times, along the way that I would diet like crazy, and lose a little weight. Like the time in 1975 when I went to weight watchers and lost down to 179 lbs only to balloon back up to over 200 by 1977. Over and over, up and down, mostly up.
Eventually, the ups continued and the downs were few and far between. By about mid 2007 I broke the 300 lb mark for the first time. Three or four years before I had been diagnosed with hypertension and Cardiac Artery Disease (CAD). I was on that slippery slope to oblivion. I was to heavy to enjoy doing much of anything and my metabolism was slowly headed for zero! There were many week-ends when I would come home from work on Friday afternoon, and never leave the apartment until Monday morning. I called it “Vegging Out” but it was more than that. It was dying a slow death. I had decided that I was going to die, and I might as well face the fact that I would never see my 60th birthday. I was 53 years old at the time.
I’ll admit it, I was scared. I was scared that I was going to just lay down and die. That I’d leave my wife alone. That my grandchildren wouldn’t have their Papa Larry around.
(More to follow… )
