Weight loss is something that I really didn't want to tackle or even think about this year, especially when I had other pressing matters that seemed more important in my life.  To give you a little background as to my physical stature, most of my adult life has been spent on the larger scale of life, so to speak.  At five foot ten inches and weighing over 200 lbs. For the last twenty years, my weight always seemed normal and something that was comfortable to me.  I never really thought of myself as being overweight as my physical capabilities have never been a problem.  Even though I had a back operation ten years ago, which to this day still gives me trouble and bouts of pain along with nerve pinching spasms, I still feel good about my physical condition.

However, as I have learned throughout my life, sometimes people need to be hit upside the head once in a while to understand that everything may seem okay on the outside, but inside, things can often look a different way.

One thing that kind of opened my eyes to reality is that I wasn't as joyful or happy as I once used to be.  For some people this might not be much of a concern, but one thing that I have learned over the years is that you can either be happy or sad in life, nothing in between.  For myself I have always been one that has chosen to be happy with life, no matter what events or situations come before me. 

The problem started last year when I slowly noticed that much of my so-called happy expressions and thoughts were just not there anymore.  I realized this from some of my photos over the last couple of years and compared them with past photos of my life.  I might have been smiling in all the photos, but for some reason I could tell the picture of happiness was just not there.  Obviously gaining more weight was my biggest problem, but for sake of pride and the thought of being able to conquer anything that came before me, my weight problem ended up being blocked from my thinking.

In June of this year I had a yearly doctor visit scheduled which I wanted to cancel.  I don't know about you, but I've never liked visiting doctors as it seems all they do is tell you that what you are doing is bad.  What's funny is that you have to pay to hear that.  Wouldn't it be great if the only time you had to pay doctors is when their advice or information is actually good news?  Yah, like that's ever going to happen!

Anyway, as you are probably familiar with visiting doctors, the procedures are pretty much the same.  Since this was a yearly visit or annual check up for me, the nurse has to go through and update my charts for the doctor.  The part that really opened my eyes is when I stepped on the scale.  I literally had to question the nurse as to the accuracy of their scale and how often they calibrate the settings.  By the way, the scale my doctor uses is one of the most up to date digital scales available, but I still questioned the accuracy of it as a way to justify my current weight.

Needless to say, when the doctor saw my current weight of 281 pounds he proceeded to give me the usual lecture of all the bad things that could happen physically in my life.  Believe it or not, while he was giving me the run down on all the bad things associated with being overweight, my mind was actually spacing out.  I still couldn't believe that I weighed that much and all I could think about is how I gained that excess weight.  In the end, I had gained more than 35 pounds in the last twelve months and all I kept thinking was how somethings wrong, this can't be right!