To Eat, Or Not To Eat…

One of the many issues I have with blogs is that a lot of them seem to be very self focused and guru creating . I have resisted getting into this gig because I don’t like the idea of being the “know it all guy”..

However, I really want to open the door up to something that is very personal and important to me.

Let me explain.

To eat, or not to eat….

Weight. How did it happen?
I might have mentioned this earlier, in another blog, but I am working on loosing weight. As most of you know, this is no easy task for 95% of us. In understanding how I got here, let’s jump into the “way-back machine” and travel 10 plus years into the past.
I would say a lot of this started back in 1997, where food started to get the better of me. I find food to be like money… either you control it, and live within your means, or it controls you.
In the last few years things have officially been tough. Of the top three stresses I have danced with them all. As one of the characters from ABS’s “Once” says, “All magic comes with a price!”

Well, “Life comes with a price”!

At that time, home life was hellish, and the best part of the morning was breakfast. If I didn’t cook it myself, I was off to my ‘mistress’ Bojangles. We had a wonderful relationship. I paid her money, she killed me slowly. Work was tough, and I spent the better part of my days scared of messing something up, always waiting for lunch as a reprieve. Coming home, dinner was a crap-shoot, but scraping together a meal of some sort provided a reliable form of anesthetic.

Food was pain killing, and a drug, not fuel.

What I chose to live with…
So, without a plan, and without trying to make this happen, I chose to live with this. I chose to make eating the fun and enjoyment of life. This was easy. I went along with a society where food has taken on a role that it’s never occupied before, in history. The outcome: 74% of Americans are over weight… did you wonder why?
Bet some of this is hitting home, huh?

Well, not too many years ago, we spent our lives just working all day to have enough food to live, and most of that was home-grown and raised. Today, food is entertainment. Today we have TV shows that people watch just to learn to cook, or to learn new things to cook. We have food competitions. We have games around, what not many years ago, was totally about survival. And I admit, I enjoy them myself.
Also, the food that is so easy and prevalent, is often not real food at all, but something manufactured.

Back in the 70’s there was a song writer whose name was Randy Stonehill. He wrote a song called “American Fast Food”. One of the lines is very telling.

“American fast food, what a stupid way die, American fast food order me a jumbo fry. It’s so easy it’s trouble free, it’s quick and disposable just like me.”

Now, before you get too nervous, just hear me out. I am not anti-fast food. I am anti-‘not taking care of yourself’.

Our society has changed a lot, and if you look to your left and right, depending on where are you sitting when you read this, notice how many people are overweight.

I like to ask, “why?”.
For me, the “why” was for pain killing, and easy access enjoyment, and fun. Almost none of my eating had to do with nutrition, or with giving my body what it needed to be healthy.

The recognition of the problem…
The wake up call started years ago. I tried cutting out sugar (almost impossible), portion control, food choices, etc. I joined OA and learned a lot of the why’s, and found that indeed this was killing pain, but I really wasn’t making progress in weight loss, or breaking the grip of this thing.
My weight went up. My feet hurt. My back was killing me, and I started counting steps, knowing I could only go so far before my feet and back couldn’t take anymore.
I had to get special shoes. I started loosing my life literally, like sand slipping through my fingers. Clothes sizes were totally out of control. I was miserable. This of course pushed me to seek more joy, more entertainment, and more pain killing through food.

The steps that pushed me to change…
It was a bad doctor’s report. This crap was getting real. My blood pressure was up to 160 over 95, I was pre-diabetic, I’ve had sleep apnea, and I was approaching 300 lbs.
My son needed me and I wasn’t able to be there for him like I wanted. My girlfriend, Elizabeth Love, works with woman across the country with a program call “Real Women… Real Bodies …Real life! The principles she teaches are about focus on listening to your body, recognizing what it needs, learning about triggers and why you eat, and giving yourself what you’re Really hungry for. She is gentle, and she has a gentle approach to these topics. This works really well for a lot of people.

Not me.
This is where my dad’s personality comes out. When the stuff hits the fan, I get aggressive and go after it. It was her principles though that formed the base line for me to understand what was going on.

I had to look at the facts.
I wasn’t moving – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I had stagnation syndrome. (Not an official term!)
I was eating anywhere from 1000 to 1500 calories a meal.
I was eating deserts A LOT.
I was on stomach meds for GERD, and I was popping them like skittles, with no results.

Like other events in my life, nothing was going to change unless I stepped in and made a choice to change.
I see this as God giving us free will. I had to choose.
You can complain all day long about how bad things are, but if you don’t make any changes you are spitting in the wind. It can be done with God’s help and strength, but I, Jeff Kennon, the manager of this body, had to do something different or Jeff was for sure going to die early.

What could I do? I had to realize that the cycle needed to be broken.

Could I stop the addiction to food? That’s Very hard.

Could I start to move? Not on foot but I could bike. For the equivalent of a few day’s ‘out to eat money’ I could purchase a bike. So I made the investment.

That was step #1.
I started riding a bike, and yes, it just about killed me. Even biking down hill, which left me breathless, was tough, but I had to start somewhere.

Step #2: I started walking
Investment #2: good walking shoes.
This cost more then the bike, but again, it was worth it.

Step #3 – adopted some new guidelines, which I tell myself often:

1 – Hunger is my friend. I don’t live with a stomach that is always full but a stomach that lives on empty with food added when I am at the bottom not the top. “Eat to Live, not live to eat.”
2 – Eat when I am hungry, not because it is a traditionally scheduled time.
3 – I must move: walk, ride, or a little jog/walk everyday. I have a sedentary job and my body wasn’t designed to sit and be inactive.
4 – Eat something alive many times a day. Apples, oranges, bananas, celery, salad, and grapes work well for me.
5 – Veggies are my friend. (Though I am good Southern boy and I like ’em deep fried, that really doesn’t count)
6 – Track my calories, and have some limits. When I get that hunger pain, check my weapon at the door before sitting down to eat, and make sure it isn’t killing pain, or following a schedule, but true hunger. That, my friends, is harder than you think.
7 – Believe that I can do this. I have the power given me, and I can change. Short of a medical situation, there is nothing stopping me. I can do this.

So, armed with shoes and a bike… oh, and an 11 year old who can ride his bike backwards faster then I can go downhill forwards, I was ready.

It was hard but understand this… when you are a fat greasy dude, because you spent years eating fat greasy food, you will see change happen fast. I drink water like a fish, I eat anywhere from 1200 to 1800 calories a day. I now walk 3.5 to 5 miles a day.
When I first started, I counted my daily steps, because getting down the driveway was painful, and the extent of my aerobic workout for the day.
To date, I am down 48.5 pounds.

Here is what I know… I am not alone in this struggle with food porn. It is on every street corner, restaurant, and gas station… useless calories that cause you to crave more.
I had to develop some new strategies. Trust me on this. Just eat raw celery for a snack. YOU WILL NEVER WANT TO EAT AGAIN!
I had to learn some very hard lessons, and they could still cost me. I don’t know the end game to this, and I don’t know if the damage I did with my ‘mistress’ Bojangles everyday for years, has done permanent damage, but these two things I know to be true.

I can do this….

And so can you!

See you on road… walking….
Jeff Kennon