THE INTRO

I have never been thin. Until recently, I was never hugely fat, either. Being sedentary since earliest memory probably never helped. After roughly 33 years of various self-destructive behavior, my five-foot-four-inch self stepped on a scale one day and almost had my head explode. 211 pounds? WTF?

Around that time (1999) the Mayo Diet thing was making its rounds. I also had a co-worker who swore by Protein Power. I bought the PP book and a gym membership, but fell prey to the low-fat mantra and started following that instead. I did lose weight--about sixty pounds, to be exact. I was working out six days a week, but I was also starving hungry pretty much all the time and found myself practicing bulimia if I ate something I deemed "bad." We, meaning Mr. Laser Rocket Arm and I, moved to Virginia, and in the midst of setting up our new lives I drifted back to my whatever/whenever eating plan combined with a charming alcohol habit.

Flash forward seven years. I got sick and needed to go to urgent care to get a note to go back to work (I tend to avoid doctors). The nurse took my blood pressure, and her eyebrows raised. Another nurse came in, did the same thing. Another nurse ... well, you get the idea. My BP was through the roof. I got weighed (I don't own a scale so I won't be a slave to it).

211? I wish. Try 240.

I am a huge NFL fan (as if the name of the blog wasn't a huge obvious clue). The first thought that went through my head when I saw the scale was "OMG, I weigh the same as Ben Roethlisberger." Yeah, Big Ben--who is thirteen inches taller than me. I can definitely drink like a Roethlisberger today, but apparently eating like him isn't a good idea. Oh--and don't forget the high blood pressure! Armed with a prescription, I went home and really looked at myself. My family always remarks on my resemblance to my mother. That day, I saw it. The round, red face. The bloated body.

And I remembered my last sight of her--in her casket, dead at 43, no doubt of obesity-related causes. And I had just turned 40 in the autumn.

I knew that I needed to do something. I get up at 4:15 in the morning to go to the gym (my job pretty much ties me to a desk and I hate the after-work crowds at the gym). I know it'll be a long journey, but I'm trying to look at the long term goals of health. I used to be all cardio all the time but in my never-ending internet prowls I came across Stumptuous.com and got sold on weight training, which I started seriously about two weeks ago although I lift pretty girly weights. I also do intermittent fasting, eating only twice a day with no snacking. I kind of do a Paleolithic diet--I eat a LOT of meat (mostly chicken, but I do throw in steak and pork) and eggs and keep to the really low-carb fruits and veggies. I don't eat wheat or sugar at all and very little dairy except for butter and some cream in salad dressings. As a result, I feel great--I sleep MUCH better and am never hungry between meals. And I'm losing weight. The last time I weighed myself (early June), I weighed 234. The scale at my gym is currently broken, but I've noticed my clothes getting looser and that I can feel the edges of my rib cage when I suck in my stomach, which I haven't been able to do in about two years.

So that's me in a nutshell. Most of this I took from my intro post on a low-carb forum in which I participate under a different screen name, but since I may occasionally want to bitch about people there--like a lot of "diet" forums it's full of stay-at-home mommies who pass around Oprah sayings and Bible verses and post about eight gazillion recipes for low-carb cheesecake--I won't link to it, although I will happily link to sites of people I've met on the Paleo section who seem to have more brains than most on there. I use the forum as my food/gym journal and will probably end up copy/pasting more stuff from it over here but won't abandon it since I like how it's set up. I may also talk about football and post YouTube Peyton Manning commercials since I do sort of have to honor the guy who uttered the words that became the title for this blog. Just so you're warned.