Who’s that man in the mirror?

This is going to be quite personal, in ways that I haven’t been publicly in quite some time. I’m likely to break out a number of parts of this into a series of posts, but for now, the punchline of the whole thing is that as of this morning, literally:

In late February 2020, there was a lot going on in the world. But this isn’t about most of that. At the time, I weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 367 pounds. That’s a hard thing for me to say. I was quite embarrassed by how I’d let myself really not address my health in general for most of my adult life. Essentially I’d gained weight from birth till I was about 35. I then yo-yoed around a bit for 7–8 years, and the number noted above was around the worst my weight got.¹

A strange irony is that my general health nor my weight itself were really sufficient to motivate me to seek to change much of anything. I’d swung the pendulum pretty far to the end of prioritizing work and a few small interests that sustained my ability to work (dogs, Arsenal, Yankees, occasional poker) for years. What did serve as a bit of a “burr under my saddle” was the amount of times I found myself making choices about activities based on whether I thought my weight/health was likely to constrain my being able to enjoy them.

Hanging out at a bar with friends? Would I have to stand the whole time, and how hot/stuffy would it be? Both of which impacted how uncomfortably sweaty I’d end up. Getting out into the mountains around Denver? Would I really have the energy to enjoy it? Etc.

So, as things started shutting down in response to COVID,² I realized there were elements of the nature of what was going on that made sense to make a few changes. It started out simply — I began making almost all of my meals, instead of eating out (or ordering in), cut out all alcohol,³ and stopped buying some of my favorite junk food snacks (or at least in the volume I used to). By May 15, 2021 these small changes had me down to 305.

But it turns out I’d probably had a little boost in the weight-loss department from an unfortunate separate health issue that had arisen in the few weeks prior, mostly unnoticed to me. You see, I know my precise weight on a specific date because that’s the day I was admitted to the hospital for an inpatient stay for the first time in my life. I was in a pretty bad way at the time.

My primary diagnosis was diabetic ketoacidosis. My HbA1c (average blood sugar) was literally off the charts. Shockingly, I’d not even been diagnosed as Type-II diabetic before this hospital admission, and things having gotten as bad as they had. But part of that was very likely because of my other diagnosis upon admission — as a result of an infected abscess (which was what I actually went to urgent care for in the 1st place), I was also in severe sepsis. It turns out that these two things were likely feeding back on one another and making each other worse. One of the doctors upon intake literally said “I have no idea how you’re even walking around right now.”

It took 5 days to get both things under control, including more blood draws than I ever thought one person could sustain, one surgery, refusing further treatment from one of my doctors who was a complete ass, and a lot of learning about medical things I’d never even considered before. I was released from the hospital on May 20th.

The next few weeks were a blur of learning to manage diabetes on my own (4x daily insulin injections at the beginning), initiating therapy (something I’d been meaning to do, but found absolutely necessary with all these rapid changes), and just coming to grips with where things had gotten to.

I’m not gonna talk too much about the diabetes-related care at this point, because while it was taxing and overwhelming for a while,⁴ the other changes that came along with those events have led me to be completely off of all medications (even those I was taking for other things prior to my hospitalization) as of early in 2022. So for the rest of this post I’m mostly going to detail how I subsequently overhauled the rest of my life around that time, yes initially largely to manage the diabetes, but later just as a continued aim of being able to live my life the way I want, not the way my body allowed me to.

One of the big changes that came as a result of the diabetes diagnosis was a complete overhaul of my diet, including a couple of meetings with dietitians.⁵ I started counting calories religiously. I eventually settled into options that are heavy on the vegetables, healthy lean proteins (lots of fish!), a fair amount of fresh fruit, and managing my carb intake (when I was on insulin, in a very specific range at each meal). This took quite a bit of calibrating, but eventually we got it sorted. And now I’m actually to the point of upping my calories and carbs.

In fact, we got it sufficiently sorted to the point that we were weaning me off of the insulin much quicker than anticipated, and I fully stopped taking any by September (I started metformin around then, but only ended up staying on it for about 4 months).⁶ My diabetes management coordinator became convinced pretty early on that things may have been more about the DKA/sepsis combo than that I was in long-term uncontrolled diabetes. So she had hopes that this trajectory was possible, but we even out-paced her optimistic timeline.

Part of how this all continued to turn around so quickly was that by the time I was physically able, I was ready to start exercising pretty regularly too (starting from essentially no intentional physical activity prior to my hospitalization). And once I started, boy did I get going. I started off on my (to that point lightly used) exercise bike, and was quickly on it essentially every day for months (as an assist, I pick shows to binge that I then only allow myself to watch while exercising; I’ve made it all the way thru Seinfeld and most of the way through Parks and Rec so far).

By October, I was ready to take things outside, so started riding my old hybrid/commuter bike quite a bit. That quickly became something I really enjoyed. To the point that I rode over 500 miles in December alone, including 3 separate half centuries (one really lost ride on Christmas Day!), and a few rides up Lookout Mountain. I then bought road bike that I’ve been riding essentially whenever the weather allows & a mountain bike for some beginner trail riding.

Around August, I also started taking my dogs out hiking about twice a week. Denver is surrounded by beautiful options. I started really taking advantage of that. We especially made regular outings up to Golden Gate Canyon State Park and various Jefferson County Open Spaces — to the tune of 50+ miles of hiking in each of October through December.

By December I was interested in widening my activities further, and have since added weight-lifting, a Total Gym, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, downhill skiing, and swimming for the first time in decades⁷ to the regular rotation, and even went running this past weekend for the first time since I was a teenager. So, I’m actually riding and hiking a lot less now than I was in December, but it’s because I’m diversifying, not reducing (though I have started adding in more recovery days, recently too). I am really enjoying the variety, and have even signed up for a number of charity & longer rides, including the Denver Century, as well as some open water swims, a couple of aquabikes (triathlon minus the run), including one that’s half-ironman distance, and even a sprint triathlon this summer into fall.⁸

So, as of this morning, my home scale says 183, which is literally half the weight I was when the pandemic set into motion. But honestly, it’s not the weight loss or even my “general health” that motivated me. It provided some nudges along the way (including the severe kick in the seat of the pants around the hospitalization). But those were “manageable” things that could have been done with much less effort than I’ve put in. The thing that’s kept me going on this path is the desire to be able to decide that if I wanted to do something, then being confident I could give it a try; my self-imposed physical limitations weren’t going to keep me from being able to. That’s probably why the skiing in particular is especially enjoyable. I wouldn’t have even thought it a possibility just a year ago.

Anyway, there’s a LOT I’ve been processing lately, and likely will continue with a few more posts here about some of those things (like therapy, overhauling one’s entire wardrobe multiple times, maybe even some cooking/favorite activity things, where covid fits into all this, some tools I’ve found especially useful, the complicated reality of self body image, …). That said, large chunks of this processing (if not all of it) will likely be more for me than anyone. But this initial post is because I know a number of people have been wondering what’s been going on with me lately (whether from cryptic tweets, seeing me in various online meetings, or my almost entire disappearance from some work-related activities for a couple of months recently), and I thought this could serve as a blanket “well, things have changed a bit for me” explanation if you’re one of those who are curious.

And just to make the post’s title also literal…

NOTES

1. I really don’t actually know what my heaviest was. It likely was 5–10 pounds more than I actually saw on a scale. I’ll stick to the observation I know for sure of 367.
2. Ironically, with the lockdowns, I actually got more busy with work, in part because I ended up working with a team advising covid-related decision making here in Colorado. So, this was far from a “what do I do with all this downtime?” pandemic response. In fact, I hit a spot of pretty substantial burnout in late 2021, and had to take a break from most elements of work for a while.
3. I’d been dwindling on how much I drank anyway, so this part was not really a big deal at all.
4. I’m game to talk to people about my diabetes care, but somehow it’s just not the central element of my past year in my mind.
5. They really wanted to plan menus for me. They were certain that things wouldn’t work if we took my approach of just asking them what nutrient targets (fat/carb/protein %s, number of total calories, fiber content, and water intake became my focus) I should be hitting and letting me sort how to get there. I knew planned menus would not work for me (I’d get bored too easily and not follow them). In their defense, I’d let things get pretty out of control, so I could see why they’d think that wouldn’t work. But I hadn’t really ever tried to care about my diet before, and I know I have a bit of an obsessive personality, so I knew that it would be something I could manage if it was something I was actually interested in doing. And I was finally interested.
6. Unfortunately I’d just received a large quantity of insulin and supplies just before I stopped needing it. This felt like it was going to go to waste, but fortunately I was able to donate it to the Boulder Humane Society, where I got my second dog Harley from a few years earlier.
7. I was actually a competitive swimmer in high school, and had planned to walk onto the team at Virginia Tech, but didn’t end up doing so.
8. I should note that I have been in regular consultation with my medical team through all of this. They are perfectly ok with the strenuous nature of my new exercise regimen; I just built up to most of these things a bit gradually.