January 1st, 2021, I decided to try to lose some weight. I was a few months away from turning 40 and I’d weight more and more each year for the past decade. I was also beginning to develop a knee problem related to my weight that was starting to impact my life.
On New Year’s Eve I weighed 300.2 pounds as a 6’1” dude. I started using calories-in-calories-out and tracking what I ate with an app, cut way back on my drinking, and started lurking in /r/loseit.
By February I had found a rhythm. I had found filling but low-calorie foods that I liked. HUGE shoutout to /u/wesevans whose free recipe cards, mentioned in his r-loseit post here became a major component of my meal planning. The pandemic actually helped a bit, as I wasn’t going out to restaurants, getting beers after work with colleagues, or spending inordinate amounts of time at our local brewpubs. I had tried and failed many diet attempts before, but it looked like this attempt was working.
By May I had lost more than 30 pounds. With added confidence in my body and newfound athletic energy, I decided to augment my dieting with some exercise. My knee problem was still an issue, so I took up swimming laps at the pool at the health club that I had just joined. I was never a great swimmer but, eventually, I got pretty good at it.
Jump ahead to this month. I’m down 65 pounds and I’ve hit my goal weight. I’m on vacation with my family, enjoying a day on a pretty remote beach—we’re the only ones there for a quarter mile in either direction. I’ve just poured myself a gin & diet tonic when we hear a faint yell out in the distance. It’s a swimmer in distress about 250 meters offshore. The guy has a neon orange swim cap on for long distance swimming so he is easy to spot, even at that distance. There’s a split second where we are trying to figure out if he needs help or not, but something about how he was moving clicked with me as trouble, so I ran into the ocean to help. I swam as fast as I could but, even with the surge of adrenaline, it still felt like it took forever to get to him. As I approached, I could see he was having a harder and harder time keeping his head above the water. I tried to yell “Help is coming!” a few times as I approached but I was so winded I had trouble getting a shout out. His back was to me as I arrived. Just as I reached him his head dropped below the water. I put my shoulder behind the back of his head and was able to forcefully tread water to elevate his head so he could breath. I could feel how weak he was in my arms. I was getting weak too; I was far too exhausted to try to bring him back to shore, but I knew my cousin had followed me in after grabbing an inflatable tube thing and would be arriving eventually, and I knew I could hold on treading water for however much longer it would take. After another few minutes of treading water and holding him up my cousin arrived. We were all able to hold on to the float and support him much more easily. We could also see that the professional lifeguards were hauling ass down the beach on their ATVs—a family member on shore had called 911 and given them our location. The lifeguards came out on a rescue surfboard and we all made it back to shore safely. I have never been as physically exhausted as I was while treading water out there after a 250 meter sprint swim.
Here is what I know for sure: if I had not lost the weight that I did, there is absolutely no way I would have made it to him in time. You could say the same for me making the decision to start swimming for exercise, which itself was brought on by the weight loss.
And yes, I know, it is really stupid and a huge drowning risk for a mediocre swimmer without a floatation device to try to rescue someone way out in the ocean. But here’s why I did it, and this is also the big plot twist: The swimmer in distress was my father.
Losing 65 pounds might have saved my life… time will tell. But I already know it saved my dad’s.
Many thanks from this former lurker to all of you in the /r/loseit community for your weight loss tips and tricks, without which my weight loss wouldn’t have been possible. Thanks again to Wes for his recipe cards, and of course a huge thank you to the lifeguards!
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