How Did I Get So Fat?!
At my highest, I weighed 385 pounds. In this video, I discuss a few of the things that contributed to my weight gain.
Transcript:
Hi everybody, it's Scott from Project Reboot. Welcome back!
How Did I Get to be Almost 200 Pounds Overweight?
So today what we're going to talk about is how I got fat. On the surface the answer to that question is actually pretty simple. I ate really bad food in massive quantities over a long period of time with very little exercise. I think that more interesting than the question of how I got here is why did I do those things, and the answer to that question if a lot more nuanced.
I'm Not a Victim
Let me start of first by saying that I believe that I am 100% accountable for where I am today. I know that with every bite of food that I brought to my lips I was consciously making a choice and I know that I made a ton of bad choices along the way. I don't buy into this whole supersize me victimization culture where people who are obese were duped into doing it or didn't know any better so I do believe that I am responsible for the decisions that I made. Now that being said I do think that there are a few things that significantly raised the bar of difficulty for making good decisions along the way.
It's My Weakness
The first thing is just natural predispositions. I personally believe that I am naturally predisposed to overeat as a mechanism for compensating for stress. All of us deal with stress in our own ways. Some of us become alcoholics, some people compulsively lie. Some people gamble their life savings away. So while I am not really predisposed to any of those other things, I do believe that I just naturally gravitate towards food as a stress relief mechanism.
In fact I was talking to a buddy of mine who is an alcoholic and he was describing the first time he had a beer and he said the first time he had a beer it tasted so good that he saw no reason to stop until he physically could not hold any more beer in his body. I was listening to him talk about that and I've never encountered a beer that I felt that way about but I've encountered more than few dishes of food that I feel similarly about. While I don't think that I'm naturally predisposed to something like alcoholism, I do believe that I am predisposed to seeking out food as comfort.
Food Makes Me Happy
The second thing is positive associations with food overall. I am Filipino and if you know anything about Filipino culture you know that food is a huge part of the way that we interact with each other and when a bunch of Filipinos get together it's normally just a day full of cooking, laughing, talking and there are no set meal times, it's just kind of an entire day of eating and over indulging. I remember my grandma just feeding me until I was about to burst and I remember my mom just cooking dishes that I love as an expression of her love for me. When I grew up and found myself in stressful situations food really became a way for me to transport myself back to those happier times where I felt safe and at home.
Bad Food is Cheap and Quick
The third thing is that eating badly is inexpensive, at least initially. You end up paying for it later down the road, but when you're a college student and you're working 20-30 hours a week, you're going to school full time, and you're trying to maintain some semblance of a life, eating well just doesn't seem like the biggest priority. I spent most of my early twenties subsisting exclusively off of Starbucks beverages and fast food dollar menus. In fact, I didn't really learn to cook until just recently, a few years ago. Eating well does take a lot of time, a lot of forethought, a lot of deliberation. It doesn't necessarily have to be expensive, but it does require a lot of discipline and it's something you have to think about before hand.
I Was Stupid
The fourth thing is an imperfect understanding of what good food really is. I've been horrified lately to learn that most of what I learned about good nutrition in school as a kid in the 90s and early 2000s is just completely and utterly wrong. There's a lot of new data coming to light on what really is the optimal mix of food that we should be eating. The low fat diet crazes of the 90s where just fundamentally wrong in their science, and we really should be eating a lot more proteins. Fat isn't the bad guy that people used to think it was, and it turns out that the way that we process our foods is actually really detrimental to our bodies and our overall health and well being, so definitely going with organic, raw foods, locally sourced foods is the better way to do. All of these things are things that I didn't know growing up. They are things that I desperately want to impart on my children so that they have good eating habits and they have the knowledge that they need to make better decisions moving forward.
I Needed Help
The last thing I want to talk about is the lack of a support ecosystem. My wife has been hugely supportive of me through the years, but she just doesn't struggle with food the same way that I do. She's always been able to regulate a healthy weight, she has a natural palette for healthier foods and she's just not prone to over indulging the way that I am. In a big way I think that's what Project Reboot is really all about. It's about finding people who have either struggled with this or are in the middle of struggling with this who have the same problems and the same weaknesses that I do, and really helping to bring us together and create a community of accountability and encouragement and sharing of information.
So how do you feel about the list? Are those things that you guys have struggled with as well? Are there other things I maybe missed? Leave me a comment below and let me know and if you'd like to join the journey, click on subscribe and I'll see you guys next time.