Cheer up, fatty. — Corey's Stories

My 36th birthday is on the horizon. As this seemingly insignificant day approaches, different things come to mind. Are we going to have more children soon? How am I doing with financial goals? Business plans? I can’t help but feel I’m ignoring the elephant in the room - and by elephant, I mean me. I was 18 when I first started to pack on body fat. Turning 36 means that I've spent half my life skinny, and the second half downright porky. I still look at my soggy waistline in the mirror today and say, subconsciously, "That's not me. I'm actually skinny. I just need to drop the weight and get back to the real Corey!" Honestly, it's delusional.

Chubby Hubby

I got married at 28. At the time, I was extremely uncomfortable with my appearance. I'd been steadily gaining weight for about 2 years, swelling from around 160lbs to nearly 200lbs! I felt like Jabba the Hutt in a rented tux on my wedding day.

My wife and I had built our entire wedding budget around hiring this photographer we knew. He was great, and we used him for the engagement session as well as the wedding. Let's just say there wasn't much money left over for anything else. Looking back, I see now that I paid a small fortune for really high quality fat pics. I've been completely unmotivated to look at them ever since. The candids from our honeymoon are even worse.

Needless to say, I remained a blubber butt throughout our first year of marriage. I look back at photos from all the marriage milestones: Buying our first home = fat. Weathering our first hurricane = fat. Celebrating our first Christmas = Fat. Fat. FAT. It's a miracle my skinny wife and I could even fit into a selfie together by our first Valentine's Day.

Right after our first wedding anniversary, my ever present desire to be thin finally took over. I went to my nutritionist, put myself back on caloric restriction and started dropping weight like never before. By June 2009, I was markedly thinner. By June 2010, I was 137lbs. I hadn't been anywhere near that weight since high school. I loved the way I looked. Still, no matter how skinny I got, I still had a flabby waistline.

From 2009 through the end of 2011, people routinely commented on how skinny I looked. Some folks even expressed concern that I'd lost too much weight. I assured them I was well within my target weight range according to health professionals. Unfortunately, the skinny didn't last.

January of 2012 was the start of a transformation in my life, taking me from the fairly stable to the wholly chaotic. My job situation has continued to be a rollercoaster, due in large part to the nature of the work. There seems to be some confusion about this, but the type of disaster recovery work I do is government contracting, not insurance claims adjusting. Between projects, prolonged periods of unemployment have become the norm. We also had our first child in 2013. I started my creative business this year. The stress of all this upheaval has taken its toll:

If this photo had a caption, it would read, "Gross!"

It wasn't always this way. What went wrong?

Growing up, I had an average build. Still, I was teased routinely for all sorts of stuff. I am confident that if I'd had a muffin top back then, kids would have let me know. There were really only a few times during my entire upbringing when people said things that made me feel self-conscious about my waistline. When I was about 10 years old, some of the neighborhood kids teased me because I didn't have 6-pack abs like the rest of them. They all played sports, and though I was pretty active, I was no athlete. If this mockery had continued, I surely would have developed a complex. This was not the case.

I was a skinny kid in high school. I will say, though, that I was less active in early high school than I'd been in junior high. I grew soft and started to develop love handles, so I started jogging and doing sit-ups. I remember one of my friend's moms later commenting on my weight loss. The whole thing seems ridiculous now, considering how small these weight fluctuations really were. I was a teenager, and I may have gained and lost 5lbs. It's not really something people should be commenting on.

Everything changed after I graduated from high school. I still had a full time job that kept me active during my freshman year of college, but that's about all I had going for me. I'm sure my metabolism slowed down, while increased stress drove my cortisol levels through the roof. I commuted to school, sat in lectures all day and ate lots of fast food. My high school girlfriend dropped out of college and really started treating me like garbage. We broke up. I packed on the freshman 15 and just kept right on going. I dropped out of college after 2 semesters, lost my job and everything just went sideways.

Looking back, it's easy to see the slow and steady progression. My whole life I'd been eating to manage negative emotions without realizing it. With each new phase of life, I became more sedentary while my access to and consumption of restaurant food steadily increased. I never drank water, so I remained in a constant state of dehydration. Skipping meals and eating large portions at night, coupled with zero exercise, helped to decrease an already slow metabolism. Stress levels kept my body in crisis (fat storing) mode. Being out of shape can become a vicious cycle. You eat because you're unhappy; You're unhappy because you eat. Without the proper guidance and motivation, it's easy to become hopeless inside.

There are lots of different lifestyle changes that might cause someone to pack on excess body fat:

Freshman 15
Happy weight (dating, engaged, married)
Quitting another vice
Retiring from a sport
Prolonged periods of high stress
Physical injury leading to disability
Keeping baby weight postpartum
Effects of aging on metabolism
Getting too busy

For the record, I maintain excess body fat because I consume more calories than I burn. There are two different aspects to dealing with this problem, and I'd like to talk about both. Obviously, one aspect is the mechanics of how to shed the unwanted body fat so that I can be healthy and trim. The other, more worrisome aspect is the psychology behind how I treat my body. One is pretty straightforward, while the other is anything but.

The mechanics of reducing body fat

At the core of my personal fat loss regimen is caloric restriction. The goal for healthy weight loss is to create a 400 calorie deficit between calories consumed and calories burned. If the average person burns 2,000 calories a day, you might want to consume 1,600. If that same person burns an extra 300 calories playing basketball after work, he/she might want to eat 1,900 calories. If you are particularly sedentary or have reason to believe your metabolism is slow, you might want to assume you aren't quite burning 2,000 calories per day. In that case, you might want to start with 1,900 as a base and subtract 400 from there.

Counting calories is my preferred method for reducing fat, but it's not for everyone. I keep resources on hand that tell me the caloric content of most natural foods, and I track every morsel of food I consume on a spreadsheet. I use a cheap digital food scale to determine portions, both when preparing and serving meals. Food labels were my friend when I first began to employ this method, but over time I found that processed foods typically contain more calories than what is stated on the Nutrition Information label. The organization that regulates the food labeling process allows for a substantial margin of error, making this information difficult to rely on.

I have had tremendous success with counting calories. When I was 25, I went from the upper 180s down to 160lbs. At 30, I went from the upper 190s down to 137lbs. This took time, but it was the healthy way to go. I didn't cut carbs, use weight loss products or do anything out of the ordinary. I just monitored what I ate very closely, which allowed me to adapt to different situations. I could eat a piece of cake after lunch and eat salad and grilled fish for dinner. I could adjust my level of caloric intake to fit my activity level at any given time. This is great, because I was not very consistent with exercise.

I don’t really have a physical job or any physical hobbies. I lead a very sedentary lifestyle. Almost everything I do in life is done while seated or lying down.

Eating
Sleeping
Thinking (I’m an introvert. I spend a lot of time here.)
Driving
Photo/Video editing
Conducting interviews
Business meetings
Blogging
Watching TV/movies
Reading
Online learning
Conversations with friends and family
Practicing musical instruments

That’s a whole lot of sitting around. Finding time to be more active is difficult, but it’s vitally important. I prefer to just wake up early, get some exercise and then get on with the rest of my day. This is why I tend to focus more on restricting caloric intake than I do on increasing activity. You could eat your entire caloric allotment for the day in one sitting, or 10-15 minutes. It would still take your body 24 hours of normal daily activity to use all of that energy. Rather than find time to burn all of the excess calories, it’s more practical to avoid overeating in the first place.

If I ate whatever I wanted and worked out 6 days a week, I would probably be very strong, yet still carry lots of body fat. Been there, done that. On the other hand, if I ate and hydrated very well while avoiding physical exertion altogether, I would lose almost all of the excess body fat and then hit an insurmountable plateau. I would also be a weakling. Been there, done that, too. When you hit that plateau, perfect caloric intake and even good cardio may still leave you fighting those love handles and trying to get those abs to show. That’s a good time to focus on lean muscle gains.

Exercise will always be a part of my strategy, but I place more emphasis on nutrition and hydration. Hydration is very important regardless of where you are in your fat reduction journey. Your body needs plenty of water in order to burn stored fat efficiently. There is a wealth of information online about the benefits of proper hydration. Just hydrate.

Let’s talk metabolism. According to the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, my metabolic rate is naturally slower than average. At rest, I will burn approximately 100 calories less per 24-hour period than the average person. Still, I have a lot of control over this area. A lot of my tendencies and lifestyle choices tend to promote a slower metabolism, but I can change this. Some things to keep in mind:

The number one way to increase metabolism it to get exercise and increase muscle mass. Arguably one of the best ways to jumpstart your metabolism is to schedule your workout first thing in the morning.
Skipping meals, particularly breakfast, will stall your fat burning. The same is true for eating heavier meals late in the day. During waking hours, you should probably not go longer than 3 hours without something to eat. It’s also a good idea to eat your most substantial meal early in the morning. Then your meals should get progressively smaller throughout the day, while still supplying your caloric intake goal.
If you eat too few calories, your body will go into starvation mode and prevent you from burning fat. You need to adjust your caloric intake to coincide with your level of physical activity.
Hydration is good for everything, including metabolism. Drink a glass as soon as your feet hit the floor in the morning, and then steadily hydrate throughout the day.
Proper sleep is important. Any disturbance in your sleeping schedule can mess with your metabolic rate. I have a toddler. Trust me, I understand.
What you choose to put in your body can affect your metabolism. There are all kinds of products on the market that claim to help, but I would stick to natural foods with metabolism boosting properties.
After you lose a certain percentage of body fat, your body will try to force you into a plateau. Sometimes it’s best to take weight loss in stages.

Lastly, there doesn’t seem to be any perfect way to judge your progress other than how you look/feel and how your clothes fit. Body weight, BMI and body fat percentages all have benefits, but all 3 have issues that make them hard to apply universally. Consult a health professional such as a nutritionist to determine your healthy caloric intake and healthy target weight range.

Overcoming psychological barriers

There are many common vices that people may turn to in their weakness: substance abuse, gambling, sex, violence, consumerism, American Idol… My primary vice is food.

I feel like food is an addiction for me. I can see how abusing food negatively impacts my life. I want to stop eating so poorly and restore balance, but I won’t. It’s not that I can’t, but I won’t. I need to understand why I’m at war with myself.

In a battle, victory is victory, no matter how narrow. Your desire to get healthy might be strong like a tank. However, if your compulsion to turn to food for comfort is just a wee bit stronger, then emotional eating prevails and nothing else matters.

I think people on both sides of my family tree have some sort of food issues. There was a lot of trauma in my family life. The use of food as a coping mechanism was modeled in my household, though I didn’t recognize it at the time. My sister and I were indoctrinated early. Both of my parents were troubled people who self-soothed with, among other things, food. I’ve been immersed in it my whole life and don’t really know anything else.

Depression and anxiety go hand-in-hand. I’ve been aware of my predisposition toward depression since my early teen years. It wasn’t until some time after I got married that I started to recognize how much I struggled with anxiety as well. Anxiety is a lot about control, or feeling a lack of it. My diet is one of the few areas of my life over which I feel like I have control. Instead of maybe deriving that sense of control from exercising restraint, I tend to do so by giving myself the freedom to eat whatever I want. I make poor choices and indulge too often.

I feel like I live with chronic emotional pain. I believe that one of the primary ways in which I cope with all of that pain is through food. That doesn’t mean that I eat until it hurts or eat when I’m not even hungry. I’m not the guy going to a buffet and eating 2-3 plates of food or waking up at 3am to binge eat a tub of Blue Bell. My problem is that I take things other people do occasionally or in moderation, and make them routine. Dining out, eating my heaviest meals at night, drinking soft drinks, having dessert. In my daily life I almost never choose the healthier option.

Life is full of frustration. I have this mental picture of what I want my life to be. The creative career, the beautiful home, the strong financial outlook, the close-knit and stable family, etc. The things I dream of always seem so far away. I think my food issues are often about being able to say yes to myself when I live in a world of constant rejection and no.

All of this negativity leads to stress. Stress causes your brain to release hormones like cortisol into your system. Increased cortisol production leads to increased fat storage and loss of muscle mass. I’m not going to give you a science lesson, but suffice it to say that overproduction of cortisol is the natural enemy to all of your health and fitness goals.

Final Thoughts

I said above that the reason I carry so much extra body fat is because I consume more calories than I burn. I also said that I was in control of this, and that I wanted to examine why I would choose to stay this way considering how much grief it causes me. Recently I got to film interviews of recovering addicts for a rehabilitation center in town. They are taught to examine the unresolved emotional wounds from their past in order to find the answers to such questions. I know that I exercise the "freedom" to eat whatever I want as a means of coping with the way I feel about my life, myself. I also know this has to be resolved before I can experience true freedom.