This is my first installment for a blog-series that I am calling “The 1,000 Pound Journey ”.
I was born as a naturally insulin resistant human being – this would lead me down a life path that encompassed very easy weight gain and of course very difficult weight loss. This was due simply to the fact that I cannot metabolize or utilize macronutrients the way any normal person does. By the way, I should state that no chronic diseases or other conditions run in my family – my father lived a long life and up until his death, kept a muscular figure at 80 plus years of age. My mother will be 88 soon and is still of sound mind and but for aches and pains from arthritis and some back surgeries of sound body too. I on the other hand have had a life filled with much hardship due to this condition and more importantly due to the lack of knowledge regarding this unfortunate metabolic condition during the 1980’s,1990s and even 2000’s. It has not been until recent times that terms like pre-diabetic or that precision diet know-how has become common place and accessible.
I was naturally a big kid, not a fat kid – just a big kid – big chest, wide stance – good center of gravity and I played every sport starting at age 5; in most years even winning the MVP award etc. I also worked at my uncle’s tire business on Saturdays and during the summer, when I was 12 years old, I even learned how to weld. By age 14 I could change out tires and fix flats on 18 wheelers and small tractors. In my teens, I’d ride my skateboard for 12 hours a day all through downtown Houston and other hot spots every chance I could. Candidly, I realize today that if it wasn’t’ for me being an extremely active kid and teen, I would have probably succumbed to full blown diabetes by 21 or 22 years of age.
When I was 10 years old, I had developed a darkening of the skin around my neck, a condition that is now called Acanthosis Nigricans – and in a Black or Latino child, it is a surefire way to determine if a kid is insulin resistant or even in the pre-diabetic stage of the chronic disease. This darkening of my skin was embarrassing because it was noticeable – it was especially embarrassing during my middle school years. My mother would try every kind of soap, lotion and remedy she could get her hands on – exacerbating Fiesta Grocery Store, Walgreens or through our neighborhood Curandera. Nothing worked – I remember being at our general practitioner’s (MD) office and his retort to my mother was “tell him to wash it”. In addition to that, my weight gain was always a mystery to her – we tried everything under the sun from doctor prescribed weight loss, Slim Fast shakes and even an over-the-counter product in those years called Dexatrim (holy sh*t, I just realized it’s still around). I would eat reasonably what any other Mexican American kid from the east side of Houston ate and I was extremely active – but still remained pudgy.
As I would get older and married, my lifestyle would change and then my weight gain got incredibly worse. It’s as if my body excelled at getting fatter – starting at about 25 years old, I would cross over from a big husky guy to a pretty fat guy and then soon to an obese guy. It’s as if I was a mean-unlean-fat-storing-machine. And so began, what I call the journey of a thousand pounds. Between my early twenties and into my mid-forties, I would venture to say, that I probably lost at least 1,000 pounds in various increments and at various iterations in my life. Of course, if I would drop 40 pounds, I would soon gain back 60 pounds. Because I was naturally insulin resistant, I didn’t realize that going back to normal after I had lost the weight wasn’t a good option for me. This is because what is normal for the normal person is actually quite horrible for me; moreover, the drastic measures it would take for someone like me to lose this weight was not in anyway, a sustainable model for life; it was equivalent of a full-time job. I would carry my meals and supplements with me in small temp controlled cooler in the same manner that professional body-builders would, except for without the shredded results.
What happens over time and as you get older, all of this begins to catch up with you impacting your organs and hormones, further impacting your ability to metabolize and lose fat or build and maintain muscle. A recent study of countries shows that the greater a nation’s GDP becomes, the greater the increase in obesity and type 2 diabetes. Of course, the more successful I became in my career and the older I would get, the more weight I would gain and then the more difficult it would become to lose it. By the time I was 44 years old, I had pretty much given up on the idea that I would live a life past my late 50’s. I should interject here that I have always been mentally strong, a motivator and when it came to career goals or hitting sales targets, I was a die-hard surpass every goal every time type of person – it was very hard for me to understand why I could not overcome this one area. I have overcome much adversity and childhood trauma in my life but figuring out how to be fit seemed completely insurmountable to me. I had ballooned up to at least 450 pounds, at least that’s how high the scale went – the actual number is a mystery, but the main picture in the title of this blog is where I was that year. I was not suicidal, but I was hopeless, and I was incredibly lonely. This affected my personal and family life in ways that I would have never imagined – there was no affection in my life. This dynamic only further affected my brain chemistry and my hormones negatively. I was on a slippery slope in a downward spiral.
That year I ended up in a doctor’s office dealing with several issues, which were all by-products of the deeper issue. My blood glucose test (finger prick) in the doctor’s office came back at 366. Many doctors would categorize my score of 366 as “off the charts” and consider the person to be at severe risk of heart attack, stroke, blindness, or kidney failure. I went through a full comprehensive blood analysis and my A1C count was 12, along with some very advance hypertension.
I walked out of that office with what felt like a confirmation of what I was feeling emotionally – an early death sentence; it would take me a few days to pull myself together. I would spend hours on end for like 10 days learning everything I could about type 2 diabetes. During this internet-rabbit-hole zombie state, I discovered a Ted Talk entitled “Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Starts with Ignoring the Guidelines”, by Dr. Sarah Hallberg. It gave me hope – and I was in desperate need of some hope – this new hope would produce strength and energy within me to get to work on me. There were several other nuggets of wisdom that I would come across, but this was the cornerstone for my health formula. In my soul, I would have to settle on a few truths – (a) No one is going to help me, but me and that’s okay, (b) my DNA is what it is, now live accordingly, and (c) God or the Universe doesn’t hate me – I just need to get to work with cards I was dealt with. This last part is unfortunate, but it’s also calming and relaxing when you realize this and just accept it – I found it almost empowering.
Within 45 days year from that date, my blood glucose scores were coming in consistently between 75 and 130. Within a year I would drop about a hundred pounds; furthermore, my A1C count was a 5, which is on the high end of normal. Thanks to Dr. Sarah Hallberg, the best thing about all of this is that I had a great lifestyle and a nutrition plan that was sustainable and satiating, thus it was not some unrealistic diet. This was now the end of 2017 and for the next few years, I would do good and maintaining everything in good working order – I was not anywhere close to what my goal was, but I wasn’t in a frenzied rush anymore.
Then 2020 came – Oy vey! In the start of 2020, I was sitting on a binding letter of intent for $100MM in financing for my new ESG business and then the pandemic started, followed by government shutdowns and then of course, followed by the public at large losing their minds – okay I kid on that last one. By August of 2020 I had packed on about 90 to 100 pounds. I cannot tell you how sad I was because during my last weight loss journey, inspired by Dr. Sarah Hallberg, I was convinced that I had found my formula for life from that point forward and I would never again have to worry about pricking my finger 3 to 4 times a day or take my blood pressure on anyone of my cuffs at home or the office – but here I was in August of 2020, pulling myself together, psyching myself up, encouraging and speaking to myself to make the trek again and one final time.
I started the trek in the middle of August but this time the results were dismal, nothing as fast as the last time I did this trek – my body was simply not responding in the same manner anymore. Then during the first days of September 2020 I got the Coronavirus (Covid 19); I was afraid because with the weight gain, I had two co-morbidities – I was obese, and the type 2 diabetes had returned with some fervor. Thankfully, I had no lung or heart issues during my bout with Covid 19, however, I had a very severe chronic fatigue syndrome that prevented me from even walking across the room. I had never experienced anything like this – the entire duration was so surreal that it felt like one big dream. I would be in this state of fatigue for an entire 3 weeks. I spoke of this event in another blog entitled “My Lessons Learned from Covid 19” and I also spoke about the long-term effects that I dealt with in a blog entitled “My Long-Term Effects of Covid 19” – please review and comment if that is of interest to you.
I would make it out of my Covid 19 ordeal and then get back to my goal and task at hand – fighting to get my life back. Surprisingly, the mental battle was not easy – it was much more difficult this time than the previous times, but I was hella-determined. There were some mental frameworks that I had to uproot and some new ones that I had to adopt. In any event, for the second time in my life now, I have completely reversed type 2 diabetes, taken an A1C count from 12 down into the 4.9 vicinity and over this recent duration of time – I have dropped 130 plus pounds, while keeping muscle and gaining strength.
It’s hard for me to share a lot of these things, because for the most part it’s easy to judge fat or obese people. One of my favorite comedians Bill Burr has a special gift for joking and ranting about the overweight – I regularly LMAO. Without a doubt, there are people who consume 7, 8 or even 10 thousand calories a day and their physical body and organs rightfully show the results of those choices. And then there are millions like myself who on average (not during some crazy diet iteration) consume 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day and for me, my worst days were around 4,500. I am thankful for the knowledge that we have today and for the access to information – had I of known what my predispositions were in 1985 or hell even in 1995, I could have experienced a much better ride, but I am here today and want to make the most of it; and hopefully I can help other people like me.
Most people in my community have no idea that their normal diet is leading them towards a slow death. I was raised as a Mexican American, but my DNA test shows me as 80% Native American – American Indians are more than twice as likely to have diabetes over American whites and African Americans are 60% more likely to develop type 2 diabetes over whites and are twice as likely to die from type 2 diabetes over white people. I’m reminded of the ancient adage “…people perish for a lack of knowledge”. These conditions are chronic diseases that for the majority of people could be completely avoided – and not through legislation, but through lifestyle and through wellness.
One of my personal and professional goals is to make wellness available and accessible to everyone – I believe that wellness should be the gold standard for healthcare as opposed to this reactionary monster of a system that we’ve allowed to exist for far too long. Wish me luck!
Installment 2 coming soon – Journey of a 1,000 Pounds!!
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