Nearing the end of this so called Obese Life

Aloha, I'm Neil.

There hasn't been a day alive that I've been anything under "Obese". That is, no day before my very first few years, and no day after January of 2013.

In 2003, I graduated high school in the mid-200's. At 5'10, I was obese, but not morbidly so. In my first year of college, finances dictated largely what and when I ate. I went to Pacific Lutheran University, then rated worst chow hall in colleges across the nation. My father had split to go be with his wife and my mother was barely getting by, so after dad paid for the minimum mandatory food plan for freshman, 9 meals per week, I found myself binging at one time a day (generally evening as it was the 'best' food at that time) and trying to maintain a rough patch in my relationship with my woman at the time. By the time I was 21 in 2005, I'd ballooned from about 260 to about 330 lbs, give or take. Having fixed that relationship, I married that girl in 2006 and over the next couple years of wedded bliss (or so I thought), I was peaking around the 350 mark by 2008. In August of that year, my best friend was getting married and after being friends with him for years (and being my best man at my wedding) he and his wife, also a close friend, didn't even include us in the bridal party. His tool of a friend and the friends wife who got the man and maid of honors became a douche and last minute, my girl and I became the best man and matron of honor titles. This thrust me into photos and spotlights that made it all too clear how dangerous my weight was getting, so the four of us started to work out at the local gym together.

We chose the oldest gym we could find because we figured we didn't care if a bunch of old farts were eyeing us working out, and I dropped from what I officially recorded as my top weight of 347 lbs down to about 318 in December of 2008. During this time, the market having crashed, my wife and I bought a house deciding it was better to have a nest set up for kids than have kids and have to find something later. 30 days after purchase, she proceeded to try and plan for babies. While it was my bed, I was apparently playing no role in the plan.

January 21st, I heard the phone conversation late at night that every man dreads and confronted her. I kicked her out only to find out that my best friend and his wife encouraged her to find someone 'better'. That she was in a 'bad place' with me. The local Karaoke Jockey who made 75 dollars three nights a week, was 4 inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier apparently was it for her. Good riddence.

Coming out of this situation was the continued wakeup call I needed, though with a much different outcome than I'd anticipated when I started focusing on getting my health in line the 5 months earlier. Grief stricken of losing my wife of three years, monogamous relationship of 8 years, I was so fed up with being told what I was not worthy or capable of doing, I felt an inner desperation, a voice screaming in my head that sounded a hell of a lot like me saying something to the effect of "Well?! Aren't you good enough?"

I had to do something that seemed ridiculous to anyone who asked me what I was up to, but really pushed me to have no other choice but to answer "yes. I'm good enough for anything". My friend K who worked with me when everything started falling apart proved to be my first confidant after failed marriage. More than anything else, she was a friend completely separate from the failed friendships of everyone I'd know for almost 10 years as a couple'd man. She talked about the Pacific Crest Trail, a trail that spans Canada to Mexico. She'd done the California portion of it years earlier.

She'd talked about it in passing, it wasn't even a suggestion, but I knew she was on to something. February, I started walking. At first, just a mile or two a day. Then every lunch. And on lunches I'd try and make it 4 miles. Maybe on one day, try and push myself past 5 miles on a hour lunch period. Take the google maps and draw a circle five miles out, so a round trip would be a 10 mile walk day. Same thing for 10 miles out to make a 20 mile walk day which got me to Portland Oregon from where I'd start. It was painful. Perfectly painful. It put in physical form what I struggled with psychologically and emotionally. I've always been stoic, but with little esteem. I had to justify pain with physical activity while I reached into my brain to confront the things I'd never otherwise stand to confront.

While I was planning toward the PCT, specifically the portion between the Washington/Oregon Border to the Oregon/California border (about 500 miles), I had to consider the amount of time it would take versus how much time I could take off from work. I had 2 weeks at my fingertips and by the standards I was holding up, it would take twice that to complete.

If you're from the PNW, you know of a race called the Hood to Coast. It's a 24 hour relay race that pits teams against each other to run from Mt. Hood in Oregon to Seaside on the Pacific Ocean. It's 140 miles. Easily doable in 2 weeks, and every day I was getting stronger. So by May, I'd decided that the next month, I was going to do the Hood to Coast on my own instead of the PCT. I've blogged about the experience which you can find in my profile here, so I won't reiterate too in detail, but suffice it to say, when all was said and done, I made it about 120 miles of the 140 before knee and food issues put me hitching the last stretch to seaside. I weighed 267lbs, down 80 from 10 months earlier in a completely different life.

23 years in the northwest was enough for me to have connections to everyone who reminded me of everyone I didn't want to have connections with anymore, so I moved on my friends simple suggestion to Phoenix. I took a desk job, increased in my weight to about 307 before I finally said that enough was enough, and ended up staying stable around that weight for about 2 more years.

I met a girl in Phoenix, who to me it was clear it was never going to be a permanent thing, but it was a very healing time emotionally for me in many ways. My weight, as it turned out, became an ugly do over where I was seeing all the things that happened in my previous relationship starting to happen all over again. Sex would reduce to 4 times a year, making me over the course of my 10 years of maturing, a sexual annorexic. I made up for it often with food, but the food is what made me lose the chemistry. I wasn't going to let my friendship with this girl turn in to the nightmare of the last, so January 2012, I started working out vigorously. I dropped to 295, saw that this was going to be a one man show and uncovered the fruit of descent. An email my girl had been typing to try and talk over with me about the lack of attraction she had for my body. I was devastated. She wasn't cheating on me which was much more courageous than the first one could say, but while she was feeling this way, she was also pushing for more commitment in the relationship. I always caught it as a too little too late for other people's time lines.

Having lost my job in Phoenix on, you'll never guess it, January 21st of 2011, I'd been unemployed and performing music and living on unemployment trying desperately to make a living by the time I uncovered that email. I was a failure to this girl. She loved me because I treated her exactly how a man should treat his woman. With unconditional love and support. But there was something wrong about me that I was not able to be unconditionally loved and supported in my efforts, or at least only for so much. I uncovered the email on January 21st of 2012. I've decided this year to make myself decidedly unavailable for anyone to knock my heart and ego around.

February, I stopped working out because I'd begun planning my departure and it seemed callous and rude to 'spiff myself up' for another girl when in reality, I was just trying to rebuild myself. No other girl was in the plan, if this girl wasn't good enough for a relationship for me, no one was. At least for now. I told her that the plan I'd been developing over the year during my unemployment to get out of a dead end state for a divorcee in banking with a shot credit because of 2 repos and a lost house from my past life, the plan to move to Hawaii, was going to be a plan for one. I would not drag anyone anywhere, I could not get the unconditional love I needed to heal, so I need to find the unconditional love for myself first.

I moved to Hawaii officially back at the 307lb mark in May of 2012. I started by earning a roof and bed by painting, flooring, and yard maintenance up on the north part of the island for the first month and a half. After the second month concluded, I moved to Hilo, East side of Big Island. Wet side of Big Island. I walked everywhere, brought my guitar with me and earned whatever I could to pay the guy I sublet over the summer while he was on honeymoon in the mainland.

When the sublet was concluding in September, my point of contact that helped me get established over here cued me in to a local mortgage company that was looking for processors. It being in Kona, I got the job and moved over here by the end of September. All the while, all I've done is walk everywhere. It's a mountain island so hills are everywhere. I've used MFP to keep the food right while I use the discipline of long distance walking to keep my excercise right. When writing this, 12/18/12, I'm at 227lbs. 80 lbs lost since moving to Big Island just 7 short months ago, 120 lbs lost since I first had to confront that I had an emotional eating disorder.

I'm absolutely certain that I've got years of therapy ahead of me to sort out a lot of things. But I refused to say that it took someone else to tell me to start doing what I can where I can.

I'm not out of the ball park. I've got a lot of weird quirks when it comes to compulsive eating, emotional commitment issues, etc etc. Who doesn't, really. But what I can be confident in is when enough is enough, I now have the inner strength and esteem to say so. It has been from this simple foundation that all other things have had to be reformed.

How do I know this is permanent? I never had a choice. But even before **** hit the fan, I'd already started realizing the vision of living a life separate from obesity, let alone morbid obesity. It has been painful, wrought with emotional guilt and physical and relational letdowns. But, at least for now, I can attribute the pain to something that is for once actually worth the effort that created it.

Mahalo for reading. Check out my blogs on this weightloss as well as my walk. www.staubmusic.com facebook.com/staubmusic and youtube.com/instinct101b.

Aloha.