In February of 2014, I weighed 190 pounds. I had just been in the hospital for a month due to an accident where I lost half of my left hand. I was prescribed pain killers for the chronic pain, and sent on my way to relearn how to live with half of a hand (index and thumb only).
The hardest part for this was the fact that I had been drumming since I was 7 years old, and now, at 24, I couldn’t hold a drumstick. After a few months, my wife noticed the hallmark signs of depression; the malaise, the lack of motivation, the sleeping, the overeating... so I went to a therapist.
It was working. I was making some progress, and feeling better, but between physical therapy 3 times a week, visits to my pin specialist once a month, visits to my orthopedic surgeon twice a month, visits to my plastic surgeon who do the muscle transplant and skin grafting once a month, and therapy twice a week, the copays were getting a little much (Yes, USA.) After 6 months, it was time for me to go back to work. I couldn’t keep all these doctors appointments and continue with my life, so I cut physical therapy down to once a week, and stopped seeing my therapist. This is when I started in on my downward spiral.
From the beginning of 2014 until September 23rd, 2018, I began to abuse my pain killers to self medicate for the depression, mixed with alcohol and weed. I was able to fake the “happiness” to the point where people didn’t ask questions. I was able to sort of fake the motivation; instead of being depressed, I was just viewed as having poor work ethic. The one symptom I couldn’t beat back was the over eating. I ballooned up 90 pounds. 270, as of a month ago.
September 23rd, as previously mentioned, was when I decided to get clean from the opiates. That followed a further cycle of depression, where others noticed and I had to seek professional help. I saw a psychiatrist, who prescribed me with anti-depressants, therapy, and addiction meetings. The anti-depressants really worked. As I’ve been taking them, I became remotivated to be better, my anxiety about death led to a positive outcome rather than a negative one; I wanted to get healthy.
On March 6th, I made the decision to stop drinking soda with my lunch, and drink sugar free energy drinks or use artificial sweeteners in my coffee. By a week later, my plan changed. I was going no sugar at all. After two weeks on no sugar, I lost 20 pounds. I needed to keep going. I bought a gym pass, I stopped buying my lunch everyday and make a spinach, oranges, carrots, and grilled chicken salad everyday for lunch. Sometimes dinner too. Now I’m watching calories. I went out to breakfast yesterday with my wife and kids and for the first time, as I scanned the menu looking for numbers, for the first time I was looking for the number of calories and not the price. I’ve never eaten this healthy. I’m 7/7 this week on workouts, and today when I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go to the gym, I took my kids outback to play and while they were playing, used my jump rope, did push ups, sit-ups, squats, lunges, stepped up to my retaining wall and back down a bunch of times... I got a good work out in, even when I knew I couldn’t go to the gym. I’ve never been this motivated in my life.
I’m now down 32 pounds, it’s been 4 weeks and 3 days. I’m pushing harder at the gym. I’m counting every single calorie that goes in my body. I used to think people who did this were crazy and would never have dreamed of it; but I’m tired of being a fat ass, and I want to live to see my daughters get married, not die of a heart attack at 40.
Well, this rant turned out to be longer than I planned. I think I just needed to get it off my chest. If you end up reading it, cheers, and thanks for entertaining my inner thoughts. If you don’t... tl;dr was depressed, ballooned in weight, got treatment, no I’m resetting my life.
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