Number 127

 Food & I

I always hated 'liver' night. So did my brother and sister. We called it "ketchup and milk" night. Other than that, I pretty much ate whatever my mom made. I was never much help to all those kids in China, either. I always ate everything on my plate. My mother always claimed it was because anytime I tried to contribute to the evening's conversation, my older brother and sister would tell me: "be quiet - you don't know what your talking about." So I just ate.

No problems through college. I had the physiology of a young cis male at the time. In fact, during the swim season my junior and senior year, I was probably putting away six to seven thousand calories a day. I weighed 190 lbs. and I was a 'legit snack'.

It's after I graduated and sat down for a living that things began to change.

My problem was I love to eat. I enjoy the act of putting food in my mouth, tasting it, chewing it, and finally swallowing it. Though it would be a long time before I heard this term, I had no "portion control." The other problem was that food became my de facto reward or celebration when things went well, or my salve when things went wrong.

I didn't eat horribly, but goodness knows I didn't eat well. And I certainly relied on fast and processed food too much. The other issue was that I would eat out frequently - at the moment the restaurant industry in America decided to supersize their portions. 

Nor was I completely inactive - I was just mostly inactive.

Slowly I started gaining weight. The problem was I had a body type that hid it fairly well. I had, what was described to me as a "Henry" build. Kind of short and squat, like a fire plug. My thighs were huge. If I had ever been cannibalized, a small village could have fed off of them for a long while. Finally, in my mid 40's I took a close look and said, "Holy Shit! You're getting fat!" 

I'm sad to report that I didn't start to make positive changes until after my wife died unexpectedly in 2016. I had just turned 50. She had been worried about me, and had tried to gently persuade me to start taking care of myself, but I never did. A few months later I made plans to begin working with a personal trainer at the YMCA. When I got back in my car I began sobbing, begging her forgiveness for waiting too long.

For the past four + years, I have slowly tried to get my body back into shape. The problem was, it was mostly time spent in the gym. I hadn't yet done anything to change the habits of my knife and fork. So I kept shoveling the food in. I reached a high of 260 lbs. in June of 2019. Uh-oh.

This happened to be the same month that I first met with the plastic surgeon who will (hopefully), one day perform my vaginoplasty surgery that will allow my to finally achieve gender congruence between my heart, head, and body. He told me I was too heavy. So I hit the gym with a fury and finally began to look at my eating habits, especially at the amount I ate. I lost 30 lbs. The surgeon agreed to go forward.

Then Covid, and the lethargy associated with living an isolated, quarantined life hit, and I began to slip into the bad old habits. I should be preparing for my gender confirmation surgery today. It was going to take place tomorrow, but my surgeon pulled the plug because I was too fat. He gave me that news five days ago.

I hope to God it's not yet too late to tame my beast.