Wise Up, Sober Up & Shape Up--or Die

    “We’re morbidly obese, drinking like fish and eating like pigs. Unless we make a serious lifestyle change fast, we’ll be dead in five years. At least, I will.”

    Immersed in lifelong obesity, frustration and anger, boiling to the surface under the influence of at least four stiff honesty-inducing drinks, that’s the grenade that my soul-mate, Kay, unceremoniously lobbed over my transom one night this past Southwest Florida summer--the hottest in recent memory, by the way. It had just gotten a whole lot hotter.

    I believe she was mostly angry and frustrated with herself for not finding the inner strength to stop slowly murdering herself with food and drink. She was also disappointed with me for my own inability to muster the strength from deep within myself to spur her on to shed the cancer of these two life-long addictions.

It Takes Two to Tango

    Time, it would seem, had shown us that these were unattainable goals for either of us flying solo. After all, I was her soul-mate and captain, was I not? And she was my admiral and the flag of my bridge, was she not? Why was I not her pillar of strength in these matters? And why did it take such high drama for her to wake me from the slumber of my apathy, much less the summer of my discontent? It seemed we were enabling each other’s inevitable demise. 
   
    Worse, through our inaction, we were essentially murdering each other with mutual consent. Our double-barreled weapon of choice? Apathy and laziness. We simply lacked resolve to deviate from our chosen vector, for whatever reason. And yes, we apparently needed a bit of drama to get off our pair of butts and do something about it! Together!

    But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The Dilemma

    In retrospect, retiring from our careers was both a most rewarding and a most destructive lifestyle change for the two of us. Suddenly, we had free reign over all of our time. Simultaneously, we had moved over sixteen hundred miles distant from our family and our home town. We were now free to indulge in a nearly continuous vacation/resort lifestyle where we allowed food to take center stage nearly every waking moment... that is, until happy hour. Then the bar would invariably upstage the table, along with most everything else, literally from five PM (sharp!) until bedtime. As the sun began to set, so did our butts, until the inevitable fade to black.

    We figured we were eating atrociously for an average of four hours a day and imbibing heavily for at least another four hours out of every twenty-four. That’s every single day, folks. This meant that our activities and attentions were drawn toward these two addictions for at least half of our total waking hours every day.

    During that self-imposed sentence, we were either slavishly anticipating or morbidly over-indulging in one or both of these chronic bad habits. Not only was this thoughtless self- and mutual-abuse taking its toll on our emotional well-being, the time investment required robbed us of precious and unrecoverable spinds of our life-clocks.

    Likewise, we weren’t allowing ourselves activities we really used to enjoy. We also couldn’t go places we wanted to go for fear of putting ourselves in mortal danger by driving under the influence. Worse, these progressively demanding addictions were increasingly inhibiting us from pursuing more healthy choices in our rapidly deteriorating lifestyle.

    The water in which our flaccid carcasses were immersed was starting to boil. Like the frog pleasantly soaking in a nice warm bath that is gradually increased to the boiling point, he is oblivious to his own inevitable demise because the insidious change is so gradual. We suddenly realized we were dangerously close to the boiling point ourselves! “Ribbet”, she said.

The Challenge

    Now for those of you who know me, you know that levying a challenge to me, especially one with which I am able to become passionate, like ”change or die”, kicks in my not infrequent and often dominant personality after-burner that some consider an asset, others swear is a liability. I can, and often do, become extremely obsessive-compulsive. I’d like to believe it’s more frequently an asset than not, at least until it approaches the anal-retentive stage, at which point Kay is there, fortunately, to remind me that it may be time to moderate.

    This sentiment is customarily conveyed to me in no uncertain terms.

    So I enthusiastically accepted this challenge to wise up, sober up and shape up, not really begrudgingly at first, but perhaps slightly skeptical of our chances for success based on previous failed attempts, until I surrendered to its inevitability, given the colossal stakes this time.

    My first year after retirement was frankly a ton of fun, born mostly of giddy abandon. We’d get things done, but at the same time, I had a blast putting on that extra forty pounds in eighty weeks, and we were indeed the life of every party, were we not? But at what cost? Didn’t care. Now we do. We want to claim our parole!

    Read on for never-before verbalized lifestyle secrets we’ve kept just beneath the surface our entire adult lives. 

    We’re “coming out”, gang!

Anti-Delusional Introspection

    Have we enjoyed the “high life”, in relative moderation we might argue, for the last forty-five years? After all, we were high-functioning drunks, or rather, successful social drinkers with successful careers to prove it, were we not?

    Did I like needing a power nap nearly every afternoon following a leaden lunch of Chimichangas and more than occasionally, a fistful of rum ‘n diets? Did it sentence me to frequently feeling decades older than my years, and demanding sacrifices in terms of opportunities lost? Did I care just a little?

    Would I feel good about myself while peering with only a little chagrin (not shame, really) at the shirtless reflection of my saggin’ soul in the not-so-magic mirror? Especially the rear view of my ever-more-prominent “handles”? Or when I rarely stepped on a scale, was I a tad reticent at what that heinous device would betray?

    When I’d invariably slip off to a fitful night’s sleep, startled awake at least sixty times per hour from a lack of oxygen (or so the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorder Center told me), did that bother me? Was I panicked by the notion that I was  potentially one prolonged gasp away from congestive heart failure? My frequent, irregular and obnoxious snorts ultimately grew so loud, they’d not only wake Kay, but find her frequently fearing for my life during the night. This was livin’? But the water wasn’t boiling yet, so....

    Was I doing myself, or my dearest soul-mate any favors by treating these ongoing lapses of judgement, utterly diabolical in retrospect, as  merely self-indulgent guilty pleasures, and little more?

Therein festers my dilemma.

Costly Dividends

    Drinking this steadily and heavily, by the way, had a few other “dividends”. We tended to eat and drink out more often, both of which were not only costly, but potentially deadly - so very many more exceptionally bad choices were possible in a devil-may-care-but-I don’t state of mind.

    Driving was always a tricky dribble, and boy, did we love to go major appliance shopping after a boisterous happy hour... charge it!

    Have I mentioned the nocturnal “altered state” where Kay vicariously hopped onto the Internet to accidentally and prematurely pay off one of our car loans--to the tune of several thousand unplanned dollars? Just a few easy mouse-clicks away! We really needed that money for cash flow that month. Oh well. Doesn’t that make for a humorous anecdote now, after all?

    And were there not countless other “fox paws”--that’s the butchered redneck version of the French admonition, “faux pas”, meaning social screw-ups, they tell me--when we both had said things that would have been infinitely better left unsaid? Again, at what unknown and therefore, untallied cost?

    And would Kay not clandestinely and regularly forego taking important medications because they didn’t mix well with alcohol? This one hit both me and her physician like the proverbial ton of bricks. Me, for reasons some of which were more obvious than others. But Doc kept prescribing heavier dosages of her blood pressure and cholesterol medications when tests revealed her current dosages just weren’t working!

    When Kay came clean, the M.D. was understandably livid, and adjusted her prescriptions! I was just angry, less at Kay, more at myself for essentially abdicating my responsibility to prevent her from committing this egregious iniquity since she reciprocated by allowing my own over-indulgence, and I let that pass! 

Relatively Conscientious Drunks

    Don’t think us totally foolish, however.

    We were extremely conscientious drunks in other respects (we weren’t alcoholics, we’d joke, since we didn’t actually attend “the meetings”). We would painstakingly avoid hangovers by ensuring a careful balance between alcohol-induced, hangover-creating dehydration and more healthy, headache-avoiding rehydration by consuming a recipe of equal parts cocktails and water. We were very good at alternating our drinks of the tasty stuff and glasses of the good stuff. Every good drunk knows this basic fact of the high life, and every bartender knows this is how you keep a drunk drinking (and tipping) longer--tease ‘em and sustain ‘em with the good stuff that’s free so they’ll keep buying the bad stuff (hmmmmm...). Not all who regularly visit the altar of the grape practice this wisdom, however! So another relatively healthy choice for us, so say we? At least, in addition to deluding ourselves, we were also diligently diluting all that sugar, weren’t we?

    We even convinced ourselves we were making some other (relatively) “healthy” choices. After all, when you’re a drunk, it’s all about relativity. There are absolutely no absolutes, other than that brand of vodka of which Kay was so fond, and of course, the inevitable outcome of the next happy hour tomorrow afternoon, or perhaps, tomorrow morning on “special” days.

  Then there were other self-delusional choices that I’d make, attempting to convince myself, with silly rationale, really, that I was making relatively good choices about what went into my mouth. Allow me to illustrate.

    When I would gleefully slurp the final delicious dregs of that second martini, every night, by the way, I would contemplate whether or not to dive into a third before switching to my one or possibly two nightly bottles of wine. A bottle was only a bit over three glasses, after all. My idea of a (relatively) healthy choice at that point was to skip that third martini and jump directly into that first bottle of wine instead.

    Besides, the health benefits of a glass of red wine were well-documented. At some point during an evening’s imbibing, we would then inevitably jest that moderation is highly over-rated, is it not? One can't drink just one glass of wine. The probability against that is, in any event, staggering (no pun intended).

    In reality, we drank mostly white wine anyway, so it mattered little.

    For example, my favorite cocktail for many (twenty? thirty?) years was gin and tonic (G.T.s), no lime (save the fruit!), no olive (hold the salad bar!). Kay favored vodka tonics (V.T.s) made with Absolut vodka. At some point, fairly recently, we realized that tonic was loaded with sugar (even far more than was the alcohol), but diet tonic just doesn’t taste right at all, now does it? We were, in fact, consuming thousands of calories of refined sugars every single night of the year, just in tonic!

    Next, an epiphany!

    I decided to make another relatively (quasi-self-delusional) healthier lifestyle choice by losing the tonic and switching to martinis (pure gin on ice, the way I make ‘em). At least we were thinking about this stuff, in our own twisted little way! And weren’t there health benefits in drinking tomato juice in our bloodies on Sunday morning?

    Delusional, but delicious, especially the punctilious ritual surrounding “the proper martini”, which I viewed as a vitally important component of nearly every happy hour. I’ll spare you the most fastidious details so important to the more enlightened and sophisticated gin and vodka aficionados, that is, concocting the perfect out-of-this-galaxy martini. Suffice it to say this ritual, and its sublime subtleties, rival most sports or academic rituals in all their attention to detail, pomp and, of course, circumstance...

        See how this works? Some of you know, all too well. You know who you are! No judgement, by any means, as a fellow reveler, just an observation. As for the rest of you, I don’t really expect you to understand the depth of the commitment we were most seriously contemplating, or the daunting commitment that many of you have repeatedly thought or worried about making, or have victoriously achieved. To the former, I would offer courage and hope. To the latter, I salute you for overcoming the same weakness, guilt and shame to which Kay and I were scurrilously enslaved for the preponderance of our adult lives.

Say Somethin’ Stupid, Dummy!

While inebriated, I could have cared less about saying something stupid in my state of rabidly diminished inhibition, unless it was to Kay. Even when sober, we were nearly militant in defending our lifestyle to all who would challenge it. I didn’t even care that some folks didn’t like us when we were practicing our hard-won freedom to live our lives the way we had chosen, especially those acrimonious self-righteous bigots who believed their own narrow definition of life’s path was the only path to tread. All else was nothing but the highest order heresy.

    My ebullience with respect to this modern remnant of the Spanish Inquisition is likely a cherished artifact of my rebellious youth. But the thought of Kay dead in five years? No, some things must not be allowed. Even though her challenge was perhaps somewhat dramatized for effect, that thought was, well, sobering.

Who Cares? WE do! But How?

    Then, enter the sobering (literally) “dead in five years” deliberation. OK, the time for change is now since this lady I call my wife is more important to me than just about anything in life, and it was time I just walked the talk for both our sorry sakes.

    You can tell, however, by my emotive narrative of our rather intimate affair with booze that this would be nothing less than a monumental, life-altering retrenchment of the highest order.

      But what do we do, and how do we do it?

    We just took control and DECIDED that we can make this rather overwhelming change TOGETHER, I told myself more than anyone. But we either do this right, I declared to Kay, or we don’t squander the time and substantial emotional capital, agreed? I knew I would be the one who’d need to be the stalwart spirit to sustain our collective resolve, but Kay would have to lean on me in no uncertain terms, and be willing to do so. This was definitely breaking new ground in our forty-year marriage, as well as in every other dim corner of our lives. I was used to leaning more on her than her on me.

    Then and there, we made that solemn commitment to each other, which at least up until now, almost 150 days later, has been powerful enough for us to keep that life-changing vow to each other, every bit of solemn as our wedding vows we exchanged over forty years ago.

    Fortunately, we’re finding that is enough, at least so far--almost a magical contract. Every day is a bit of a struggle, more or less, but we’re doin’ it, and feeling pretty good about it! How are WE doing it? Read on, faithful curiosity-seekers.

A Bit More Structure, If You Please!

    Now that we had created the appropriate sense of urgency, we needed help to put it to work, with and for each other. More, we needed structure. Enter Weight Watchers. We had successfully employed this method of weight loss before, and being strong believers in its effectiveness, we decided this would provide the structure we’d need. For us, hinging our success on weight loss, a common denominator to combating the negative effects of both food and alcohol addiction, seemed to be the right thing for us.

    So we followed the program to methodically lose weight over time, and to keep it off. One hundred fifty-some days later, Kay and I have each lost over thirty-five pounds, and are feeling good. But we’re not feeling as strong as we’d like, so now we’re taking it to the next level - to continue our life-altering transformation--to lose more weight while concurrently building strength--in essence, to reverse the natural erosion of muscle mass that takes place as we age as well as due to the accumulative and compounding effects of too many bad habits.

    Next, enter a holistic and popular program called “Body for Life”, originally put together by a walk-the-talk kinda guy named Bill Phillips. More structure around strength training, motivation, nutrition training and planning. Here’s why we’ve chosen such an approach.

Why Not Just Stop Here?

      As we get older (Kay is almost fifty-nine and I turn sixty next month), we’re inundated with ever-increasing aches and pains, and the higher probability of injuries that ironically, take longer than ever to heal. Tired of this? Yup.

    We’re thinking that building some additional muscle around these ever-more-fragile joints that seem plagued more and more by osteo-arthritis, not to mention the naturally degenerating discs in my old spine, will help us sustain the active lifestyle we continue to crave in our retirement years. 

      For my part, losing this initial thirty-five pounds has demonstrably helped improve my personal energy level, but I’m still not satisfied with either my appearance or my endurance. Staying off the booze is already manifesting a clearly positive systemic effect, mostly on my generally improved outlook and on becoming increasingly productive. Amazing what living without heavy daily doses of depressants does to the psyche!

    So now we’re committed to also physically pumpin’ it up to the next level for a look-see. Bill’s is a twelve week program during which we’re eating differently, employing his efficient body-building regimen, and keeping our “success journals” for motivational and troubleshooting purposes. We’ll nail the program while retaining a respectable modicum of constructive skepticism. At the end of that time, we’ll compare our ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures (doesn’t everyone?), attitude, and chart where we’ll venture next. No fancy fad diets or other-worldly implications - just good health for longer life. Appealing, no?

    Additionally, we’ve joined a local fitness center, and Kay has found a kindred spirit in her new forty-seven year old trainer, Connie, who went from a five foot six inch two hundred sixty-five pound potato to a lean and firm one-forty in two years. She’s been here, and now helping others get through a similar transformation.

    All good! And it just feels good to be good and look good!

    Looking back, now a hundred and fifty days ago, when Kay declared, “we gotta make a serious lifestyle change, or I’ll be dead in five years.”, I was shocked into making a decision, based on a personal crisis that was meaningful to me, and was perhaps the most difficult of my entire adult life--to get sober and at the same time (since we were essentially out of time), to pursue a well-rounded healthy lifestyle instead of a generally destructive one.

Withdrawing Gracefully, With A Little Help from Our Friends

We experienced  no noticeable physical alcohol withdrawal symptoms, which was a pleasant surprise, but the social aspects of no longer drinking were, and still are by far, dramatically more traumatic. That leaves some unmet challenges. As the northern snow-birds, many of whom were our most loyal drinking friends return to Florida for the winter, and as we continue our boating lifestyle, we will need to stay particularly strong for each other to stay sober. At the same time, however, not only would it be unacceptable for us to become hermits in order to stay sober, that would be neither acceptable nor sustainable. So now what?

    We’ve concluded that this sort of significant lifestyle change, essentially ridding ourselves of an addiction (alcoholism), and moderating yet another (food addiction), is also a great test of who our real friends are.

    Since we tended to hang around fellow party-goers, those who now might try to convince us to “have just one drink”, or are offended by our caloric moderation, we no longer consider friends. Period. We explain, and failing acceptance on these terms, we walk. Non-negotiable. Many clearly don’t and won’t appreciate the depth and breadth of resolve required of us, nor are some likely to respect our conviction to be successful in this.

    They aren’t where we are right now. That’s OK.

    Those who do respect our decision, however, just as we have and will continue to respect theirs, those are friends we will cherish now, more than ever. And interestingly, it doesn’t bother us to be around them, even during happy hour wings ‘n drinks! We celebrate with them, only now for different reasons, and now, in a different way!

A Humble Inspiration to Others?

    Then there are those who would like to make such a change, but for whatever reason, haven’t been successful in doing so, much like our selves in the past. For those, if we can be a humble and non-invasive inspiration for those dear souls, we’ll receive more in return than we could possibly give!

    Now here’s a surprise: this process is actually starting to be a lot of fun... who’da thought! And substituting positive ACTION and receiving positive ENERGY as delightful dividends feels so much better than unconsciously and haphazardly choosing to perpetuate a lifestyle ridden with guilt, shame, admitting helplessness to change. No longer much of a choice for us, even though we’re no longer on the easiest path! True, this path is not without bumps and potholes, but side-stepping them is gladly becoming easier with time.

What Makes A Change Like This Sustainable?

      So we have good structure around weight loss, and are refining our structure around muscle gain. We still had insufficient structure around nutritional supplements and building muscle, however. This demands some additional education which we're acquiring from within our new social milieu centered around fitness.          

    With only moderately specific information on nutritional supplements in the Body-for-Life program as a foundation, we augmented that with input from our trainer, from a good deal of 'multi-denominational' reading and from a couple of visits to the local sports and weight loss nutrition shop, gaining valuable insight from its knowledgeable owner. We’ve learned that there is no substitute for high quality supplements (protein, vitamins, minerals, detoxification, etc.) as well as the timing of ingesting those supplements  with respect to workouts, meals, dosages and bedtime.

    We’d need to develop other tricks to more easily remember to take them at the right time, and relative to other medications folks our age need. These factors all find their way onto our daily meal planning calendar, mapped out the night before, and diligently get checked off as we take them!

    Like I said, structure is our friend, as is true with any relatively (there’s that word again) complex new topic.

Some Positive Trade-offs We’re Now Celebrating

- A progressively constructive lifestyle instead of a progressively destructive lifestyle,

- Personal relationships based primarily around fitness instead of those primarily based around drinking and eating,

- Able to wear flip-flops and tennies instead of having to wear shoes with orthotics (weight loss),

- Vitamin, mineral, protein and other natural nutritional supplements instead of buffalo wings, nachos and other unnatural un-nutritional body bombs,

- Cardio and resistance training, naked baked potatoes and brown rice instead of remaining TV couch potatoes with “handles” pasted on with sour cream and bacon bits,

- Protein shakes and cool water instead of cocktails and chasers,

- More activity, more energy, more meals and less hunger instead of slavery to lethargy, guilt and a constant hollow craving.

Movin’ Into a Brighter Future!

    So off we merrily trek to the fitness center three days a week, working out at home on the three alternating days, with one “free” day of rest, and we’re doin’ it! Once we get where we need--no, make that want--to be, we’ll be able to back off to a less-aggressive maintenance lifestyle, but right now, we’re transforming--burning in the good habits--and having real fun at the same time! This being fun was the greatest dividend of all!

    Just like our marriage has succeeded against all odds (that’s another story), we’re granite-hard determined to successfully re-invent our own physical and emotional physiques, and to hell with the rest of the world! We’re gonna enjoy it. Who knew so much positive energy was so, well, positively energizing!

    Like we say, “They can’t stop us! Only “we can!”.

    And studying and using the ample directions available in the  “owner’s and operator’s manual” for our own bodies makes even more sense than it does with a costly appliance!
         
    It’s not easy, but what that’s worthwhile in life is? 

In summary, Kay and I:

- ADMITTED that there was a real PROBLEM and that prompt and radical change was needed,

- CREATED a sense of URGENCY to get on with it, IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS, TO EACH OTHER AND WITH EACH OTHER,

- got off our dead asses, and irrevocably CONVINCED OURSELVES that WE NO LONGER WISHED TO BE ENSLAVED by our own very public weakness or CONSTANTLY SUBJECTED TO queazy feelings of GUILT, SHAME and generally, FEELING CRAPPY most or all of the time, basically just because we were humiliatingly LAZY,

- were both INSISTENT as hell with each other about sticking to the plan AND PATIENT as hell with each other when one of us was struggling,

- FOUND something that worked for US. It may be different for others, but we realized we had HELP OPTIONS, and CHOSE ONE, demonstrated to ourselves our own surprising strength of will and purpose, once solemnly invoked, ditching the FEEBLE EXCUSES for ongoing failure in this aspect of our otherwise successful lives,

- ADOPTED a PERMANENT set of LIFESTYLE changes (without loudly declaring them as such) that enabled us to achieve our WRITTEN GOALS in a FINITE PERIOD OF TIME.

- diligently seek to be a POSITIVE and pragmatic EXAMPLE for others.

Now we're counting miles, reps, weights, calories, grams of protein, carbs and fat, as well as our blessings!
         
Here’s to your good health and longer life... and ours!