One man’s perpetual struggle with obesity as he tries to lose weight…again

By Brent Selmins

Three square meals a day, all of the drive-through variety. I’m not consuming the fast food; the fast food is consuming me.

Two hundred ninety-two
The scale’s the thing. Silver and white, sterile and clinical. I know I can trust the scale not to make any judgments. I slam it down onto my bathroom floor and eye it nervously. I begin to worry my mass will suffocate it, squeeze the life out its battery. To ensure an accurate reading, or maybe to make the number on the digital readout lower, I take off most of my clothes. Standing in a pair of boxer briefs, I place one foot on the scale and step off. A moment. A sigh. I step back on, both feet planted on the silver platform. The digital readout dances and twists in a circular motion. It’s as if the scale is mocking me, like it knows the answer to the question I’m asking it, but refuses to tell me.

Then the scale reveals its secret: 292. The numbers sear their way into my brain. Never before had I been so close to 300 pounds, a number that seemed impossible to reach. Yet here I am, only 8 pounds away.

How had this happened?

The answer is simple: three square meals a day, all of the drive-through variety. I’m not consuming the fast food; the fast food is consuming me. One day at a time, one meal at a time, 6,000 calories a day. Hamburgers, French fries, milkshakes, pizza, chicken wings, soda, candy, cookies, cakes, pies, day after day, meal after meal.

I’m doing this to myself because it’s easy. There’s nothing simpler in the world for me than walking into a Jack In The Box, taking $6 out of my wallet and requesting an Ultimate Cheeseburger combo, large sized with a Coke. It takes less than five minutes to finish it; two minutes if I’m in a hurry. Afterward, I don’t feel full, because it takes the brain 20 minutes to release serotonin—the chemical that contributes to feeling full.

But other things have become difficult. I get winded looking at somebody walking up a flight of stairs. My legs succumb to the pressure of my feet slamming onto the pavement. Shin splints from walking less than half a mile.

Today, panic sets in. I’m committing suicide by food. So I look at myself in the mirror, eyes sunken, belly distended, and decide to stop. On June 11, 2005, I began the process of leaving 292 behind in search of 200. It’s a battle I fight every day

Obesity in America
According to the American Obesity Association (AOA), 127 million American adults are overweight, 60 million are obese and 9 million are morbidly obese. Obesity is measured by a formula called the Body Mass Index, or BMI. Your BMI determines if your weight is normal (BMI less than 25), overweight (BMI between 25 and 29), obese (BMI between 30 and 39) or morbidly obese (BMI of 40 or higher).

Obesity is a widespread problem in America. It increases the risk of a long list of health problems, including diabetes, stroke and heart disease. In America, 127 million adults are overweight, 60 million are obese and 9 million are morbidly obese.

Obesity is the second-leading cause of preventable death in the United States—only tobacco-related deaths account for more. Morbid obesity can cut life expectancy by eight years, and that figure doesn’t take into account obesity-related illnesses, such as heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.

The AOA says the plumping of America is due, in large part, to the modernization of our everyday world. We drive instead of walk. Modern appliances mean we don’t have to do manual labor anymore. White-collar jobs don’t require physical activity, and food has become processed, easier to prepare and less healthful.

Photo by Brent Selmins
Try to avoid coffee, sugar and soda, which contribute to an obese lifestyle.

Debra Landau-West, a Scottsdale dietician, says an unhealthy lifestyle is often learned at home. Parents who don’t make their children eat their broccoli but allow them to eat ice cream for dessert are teaching poor eating habits their kids will carry over into adulthood.

A danger area for many young adults is the first year of college. Healthy eating and exercise routines can help most students avoid putting on weight when they move from home to a dorm—an unstable living environment. But weight gain in college, known as “the freshman 15,” is easy when students rely on pizza and beer as staples of the college diet.

Lisa Galper, a clinical psychologist who specializes in compulsive eating and obesity, says the radical change in lifestyle from high school to college contributes to the freshman 15. The abundance of heavy foods on college campuses and students living in dorms are coupled with a stressful transition. Students are trying to discover their individuality, and the stress often leads to weight gain, says Galper.

Another factor that leads to weight gain is emotional eating. People tend to associate food with emotions, be it celebrating a birthday with an extravagant dinner or drowning your sorrows in a bowl of ice cream.

“My husband and I were training for a bike ride, and our bikes got stolen out of our garage. I was upset, and the very first thing that I did was I went to the fridge,” says Kristen Shane, coordinator of the weight management programs at Scottsdale Healthcare. “I wasn’t hungry, and I wasn’t looking for something. I knew that [food] would take me away from my feelings, and I used food for giving me a better feeling.”

My downward spiral began in college, and I’ve been struggling with weight issues ever since. When I began my most recent journey from 292 toward 200, my BMI was 38. Twenty weeks later, I weigh 249 pounds, and my BMI is 32.

Impulse on cruise control
Two weeks after my first conversation with the scale, I settle into a manageable routine. Limiting my eating is tough, the exercise painful, but I manage to work through the daily grind until I meet the first roadblock.

A busy day at work leaves me no time to eat dinner. Hour by hour, the hunger grows. At 11 p.m., I head home, food the only thought in my head. The hunger is consuming; my stomach feels as if it’s collapsing in on itself. I know I had eaten only 1,000 calories through lunch, leaving me 1,500 more for dinner. What a break! I can eat just about whatever I want. Even a Big Mac meal at McDonald’s comes in at only 1,120 calories, leaving me room to spare.

Photo by Brent Selmins
The author lost 42 pounds on his weight loss journey.

I agonize over the decision on the ride home, and the hunger grows angrier. My stomach snarls, “Fill me!” My head is spinning, my taste buds dancing in anticipation of the culinary delights that will greet them. Will it be okay to eat a hamburger on impulse? Will I approach each day trying to figure out how to structure my meals so I can eat the foods that delivered me to 292?

Less than four blocks from my home, I come upon a Subway. I make a deal with myself—if the Subway is still open this late, I’ll forego the fried foods for a sandwich.

The doors are open; I walk in. “How late are you open?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

A wave of relief washes over me like ocean water. I avoid a personal catastrophe that could have caused the weight-loss process to come to a grinding halt. I eat the sandwich and press forward with the routine.

Therein lies the beauty of routine. It’s a reliable crutch. Plan it once, and the rest takes

Less than four blocks from my home, I come upon a Subway. I make a deal with myself—if the Subway is still open this late, I’ll forego the fried foods for a sandwich.

care of itself—like impulse on cruise control. I have a routine so rigid, it’s almost militaristic. Six days a week, the days melt into each other like ice cubes in the sun.

The routine makes it easy to get to the gym. The routine makes it easy to eat a reasonable diet. The routine makes it easy to forget how much easier impulse is. It’s a safety net to catch you when you fall. Routine may bore you, but impulse will kill you.

And yet I hate the routine. For months, I’ve been going to the gym, but I don’t feel better. I can lift more weight and run farther today than I could four months ago. I’m cutting back the foods that created the 292-pound monster I’m trying to leave behind. But none of it makes me feel better. Physically, I’m in constant pain; I have tendonitis in my ankle and I’m always tired. The only indication I’m making any progress is the numbers on the scale.

But I will not live a life of culinary asceticism. I understand hamburgers and pizza make for a deadly diet, but eating is my favorite activity. I refuse to eliminate one of the great pleasures of life; I make a compromise with myself. One day a week I’ll be impulsive—24 hours to slip back into the abyss to prepare for another week of the routine.

Cannons and parachutes
A healthy lifestyle is the key to successful weight management, not dieting, says psychologist Lisa Galper. Dieters, however, aren’t committed to changing their lifestyle. Instead, they focus on losing weight as fast as possible as. Dieters are too concerned with content—what to eat and when to exercise—rather than context—how to approach every day as a whole, says Galper.

Instead of fundamental but gradual changes, a dieter quickly switches gears from overeating to crash dieting, leading to a vicious cycle that leads to greater weight gain and more extreme dieting.

This cycle has long-term implications for your health. With each successive attempt at dieting, your metabolism slows. An extreme crash diet, such as a poorly balanced low-calorie diet, depletes your muscle mass. When you go off the diet, you regain fat faster, and your metabolism is slower because you have less muscle.

The cycle has been called a roller coaster or yo-yo effect. But that’s not an accurate description of the process. A yo-yo starts and stops at the same place, going down and coming back up at similar speeds. What happens here is more like being shot out of a cannon with a parachute on your back—your weight rockets up and drifts down.

Galper says a key to breaking out of the cycle is a commitment to a significant lifestyle change. “There are lots of fantasies associated with being thin,” says Galper. “What most people don’t understand is that being thin is not a good enough motivator for staying thin.”

Emotional eating comes up consistently as one of the major speed bumps to significant lifestyle change. When you eat emotionally, you depend on food to help trigger the pleasure sensors in the brain and provide emotional balance when you’re sad or upset. The problem is the pleasure sensors are only activated for a brief period of time. When the relief ends, you reach for more food, perpetuating the cycle.

Emotional eating has become a part of my fabric. During the cycles I’ve been through, what I perceived as failure always led me to turn back to food. After exercising for three months and successfully losing 30 pounds in 2001, I tried to play a game of basketball. After one game, I had trouble breathing and my legs were throbbing. I viewed it as a failure and spiraled out of control.

Dealing with everyday challenges is a part of succeeding. The roadblocks I’ve encountered in the past 20 weeks have varied in size, but nothing was more discouraging than when I gained 5 pounds on my vacation to Las Vegas.

Photo by Brent Selmins
The hamburger, which had been the author’s best friend, quickly becomes his enemy in the Battle of the Bulge.

Fatman
In August, the glittering lights of Sin City draw me in. I’ve been planning this trip to Las Vegas all year, but made the plans before I decided to turn my back on culinary debauchery. While the hotel I’m staying at has a fitness center, exercise and healthy eating have never been staples of my trips to Vegas.

The week zips by, and I ignore the moderation I’ve managed to develop over the past eight weeks. Steak dinners bleed into one another, and hamburgers become a staple of my Vegas diet. In the past, I dealt with slipping up the only way I knew how—I gave up. But once I got home, I felt I needed to press on. That long-lost desire to accomplish something returned. “It begins again, right now,” I said out loud to myself.

Millions of people across the country have walked this path before; many of them are veterans of the trail, attempting to leave pieces of themselves behind, only to pick them back up later. Kristen Shane at Scottsdale Healthcare says 90 to 95 percent of dieters will put the weight back on plus more.

I arrived in Los Angeles at the University of Southern California as a wide-eyed, 6-foot-2 inch, 200-pound freshman in 1998. By the time my sophomore year rolled around, I had managed to eat, sleep and study my way to a robust 235 pounds. Walking up the three flights of stairs to my dorm room became my daily exercise. Snacking on anything I could fit into my day substituted for reasonable meals, and the only time I ate vegetables was when they were included as toppings on a burger or mixed in with Chinese food.

Seeing the number 250 chasing after me, I strapped on my parachute and drifted down by curtailing some of the fried foods and jogging around campus once a day. It wasn’t much of a diet or an exercise routine, but I managed to whittle myself down to under 220 pounds before landing in another cannon.

The series of skydives continued throughout college and beyond as 215 turned into 255 and back into 230; 230 transformed into 275, and then there was the roller coaster.

It was during the summer of 2003, and it had been a long day at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, Calif. Walking around with friends in 100-degree heat and dashing from ride to ride had been exhausting, but there was still one ride to go on before we could call it a day: Batman.

The purple-and-gray metal monster looms in the northwest corner of park. The cars hang from the track, suspending the riders in the air with their legs dangling. It twists and turns and loops and dips and dives for 2,693 feet at a top speed of 50 miles per hour. You don’t ride on Batman—you fly on it.

I approached the train to strap in, but I was unable to sit down. I forced myself down as hard as I could, but couldn’t manage to wedge myself into the car. Humiliated, I trudged off to the side, took a seat on a bench and waited for the longest 2 minutes of my life.

“What happened,” asked one of my friends, stepping out of her seat. I didn’t want to answer. I was hanging my head in shame.

“I couldn’t fit in the seat,” I mumbled. Tears welled up in my eyes, and I hid behind my sunglasses.

Another parachute, another cannon. A higher number, a different approach to lowering it. Some small successes, another gigantic failure. The cycle continues.

Snacking on anything I could fit into my day substituted for reasonable meals, and the only time I ate vegetables was when they were included as toppings on a burger or mixed in with Chinese food.

Fix it now
One of the primary causes of the cyclical nature of the dieting process is the quick-fix mentality. Fad diets, magic pills and spot-reducing exercise machines all promise fast results, but none of them deliver on their lofty promises. Many people turn to these quick fixes again and again, because they don’t have a commitment to do what it takes to maintain a healthy lifestyle, says psychologist Lisa Galper.

There’s no mystery to losing weight; the formula is simple—eat less and exercise more. But exercising can be painful, and people want a system that allows them to consume whatever they want.

The fad that has gripped America over the past several years is the low-carbohydrate diet. By minimizing carbohydrate intake to less than 10 percent of you daily caloric intake, the body burns fat through a fasting process known as ketosis. The appeal of the low-carb diet is that you can consume as much food as you like so long as you restrict your carbohydrate intake, says Robert Ziltzer, a physician who works at Scottsdale Healthcare with the weight management program. We live in a high-carb world, and maintaining the low-carb lifestyle is difficult. Ziltzer says the average low-carb dieter maintains the lifestyle for six months. Eventually, people start introducing carbohydrates back into the diet, negating the weight-loss benefits.

“The reason the quick fix is so appealing is that people believe that once people have lost the weight, they will be so happy that they will be willing to maintain,” says Galper. “Quick fix mentality goes away quickly—it’s like the new car smell; quick fixes are not sustainable over time.”

Photo by Brent Selmins
In four and a half months Brent lost 42 pounds on the journey that never ends.

In media res
I’m about to hang up the phone with Rob Ziltzer. We just finished an hour-long interview about the medical aspects of obesity when he asks me about my progress.

“Well, in four and a half months, I’ve lost about 42 pounds.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of weight.”

“Yeah, two pounds a week. I can almost set my watch to it when I weigh myself.”

“How often do you weigh yourself?”

“Once a week, every week.”

“It sounds like you could lose 100 pounds in a year. But you have to be aware that every three or four months, you’re going to reach a plateau where you’ll be at the same weight for two to six weeks. You can be doing all the right things, and the numbers won’t budge.”

“Yeah, I hit one at 264. I was stuck there for two weeks.”

For 20 weeks, I’ve made the decision to go to the gym, to avoid the burgers, to take another step toward 200. It’s a continuous cycle. It’s a story without an ending.

We talk for another ten minutes before Ziltzer says something nauseating, “You know, losing the weight is the easy part.” I grip the phone tighter; I know what he’s going to say next. “The hard part is keeping the weight off. Being a successful weight manager takes a lot more discipline than it takes to lose weight.”

I have to get to 200 before I can stay at 200. And so far, the process has been painful and frustrating. What happens if I get to 200? I don’t even know if I’m going to succeed beyond this weekend, much less in the period of time it’s going to take to knock off another 49 pounds.

But that’s the battle I fight every day. I wake up, look at myself in the mirror and evaluate how important going to the gym is. For 20 weeks, I’ve made the decision to go to the gym, to avoid the burgers, to take another step toward 200. It’s a continuous cycle. It’s a story without an ending.

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The Devil’s Tale showcases the coursework of individual students at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University.