I was thinking about my journey in the area of health. It is certainly been interesting. When I had lunch (at which I of course ate nothing) with my friend Ray on Friday, this was one thing we discussed. I also exchanged emails with Jodi my friend in Cary on this subject.
I was raised by parents who were completely clueless about health and nutrition. Maybe even more than most people. My parents were both rednecks. They met in East Texas during the depression. WWII was the only reason either of them became educated. My father was drafted into Patton's Seventh Army and chased him all the way across Europe, never firing a shot. He was released from the army with many years of GI bill. He used those benefits to educate himself and my mother. Both of them eventually earned degrees from East Texas State Teacher's College (Now East Texas State University) in Commerce Texas.
The education they received still taught them nothing about health or nutrition. They both ate an incredibly unhealthy diet as a variation on the standard American diet. As a result they both struggled with their weight their entire lives. All three of their children did as well.
I well remember my mother's cooking. Talk about comfort food. She could make incredibly palatable meals, without question. Meat loaf. Chicken fried steak, with creamed gravy. Mashed potatoes, of course also with gravy. Baked ham with red eye gravy.
And, of course, hamburgers. We called them momma burgers. Served up thick and juicy with lots of cheese. Nothing else on them but mustard.
My mom used to tell me that this was good for you. "A hamburger is a complete meal," she would say. "It has everything you need. Meat, dairy and grains." They actually thought this diet was healthy.
She made incredible desserts as well. Cherry pie, pound cake, and so forth.
I was a butterball my entire childhood. I was teased incessantly as a fat kid. I was the constant butt of bullies.
My father struggled to maintain his weight. He was a fighter pilot in the United States Army Air Corps (later the US Air Force) and fought as such in Korea and Viet Nam. He was always overweight and dealing with that issue. He would "go on a diet" in order to lose weight to get down to his target. We went on them too. All kinds of fad diets. Eggs and grapefruit. Oh my God, do I remember how I hated that diet.
By the time my father retired from the Air Force, both of them were overweight and very unhealthy. My mother was also a heavy smoker all her life.
Perhaps it is no surprise that both of them died early.
As a form of rebellion, I suppose, I began to become athletic and healthy. Strangely, my father deeply resented and never supported any form of athletic pursuit. If I joined Little League he would not come to a single game. Needless to say, I was terrible. During all my school years I was hopeless in terms of athletics.
When I went to law school that began to change. I joined ROTC. I went to boot camp. I got in shape. I began to jog (this was the period where jogging took off). Eventually, after a lot of weight fluctuation, in the 80s I learned of macrobiotics and became a vegan vegetarian. This was partly the result of the influence of Susan Powter who was my friend at that time. She mentored me in the area of diet and nutrition, and eventually I became a professional aerobics instructor as a result of her training and guidance.
At this point, my parents' health caught up with them. My father was feeling poor. He had lost some of the use of his left side and thought he had had a stroke. He went to Wilford Hall Medical Hospital in San Antonio, Texas for a check up. My mom was also feeling unwell, and asked to be examined as well.
They were both admitted to the hospital with acute cancer. My father never left the hospital. He died after a few months.
From Susan Powter, I learned of the book Recalled by Life by Anthony J. Sattilaro. This book recounts the experience of a medical doctor who was the CEO of a major hospital in Philadelphia. He was diagnosed with multiple cancers, and pronounced terminal. He went on a macrobiotic diet and eventually overcame cancer. I purchased this book for my mother. (I had no hope for my father at that point.) At this point, I was on the diet and was extremely healthy. I was teaching aerobics daily, and weighed in the 170s. I was convinced that she could overcome cancer if she would stop smoking and go on this diet.
For those not familiar with macrobiotics, it is extremely similar to the ETL diet in many respects. It is a strict vegan, extremely low salt and sugar diet. It does have a lot of religious aspects. But the end result is the same.
My mother adamantly refused to read the book or consider the diet. She continued to smoke and eat the SAD until she died 11 months after my father did.
I must admit I was angry about this. But there was nothing I could do about it. I judged my mother very harshly for failing to make a simple lifestyle change in order to ensure her health.
Ironically, a few months after my mother's death I faced another personal crisis of my own. One reason I had been able to become so healthy was that I was working in an extremely supportive and creative environment. I was a software developer for ATip, Inc., a think tank / IT entrepreneurial company headquartered in the Infomart in Dallas, Texas. This company was very willing to allow me to consume brown rice and beans with steamed vegetables for lunch. I was allowed to be whoever I wanted to be.
Eventually all good things must end. ATip went under, pulled into insolvency by the Pizza Inn bankruptcy at that time. I was out of work and desperate. For a period of time I lived on food which I obtained from Shell service stations by running up my Shell credit card, the only form of credit I had. Needless to say, this was the purest form of crap. All processed food. Processed sandwiches. Chips. Soda.
I got a job in the legal business. (I am an attorney by training.) I was working for a telecommunications company in Garland, Texas. This was as unsuportive an environment as you can imagine. I was expected to eat steak, prime rib, and all the rest. In fact, the pressure to heavily drink alcohol was also very high. (I am a reformed alcoholic.) I did not succumb to the pressure to drink, but I did go off the macrobiotic diet and eventually began to gain a lot of weight.
Eventually this job blew up too. I continued to rock along at various levels of overweight for another decade. We moved to Alaska, one of the unhealthiest states in the US. There, I ate lots and lots of sourdough pancakes with reindeer sausage, Mexican food, and all the rest. When we moved to California, I had an IT job again, but I continued to eat in a very unhealthy manner. I began to work out, but my diet was total crap. Again, lots of Mexican food, Chinese food, Sushi, and the like.
My weight continued to rise until it hit a high of 287. That was in 2000 at the point that we had moved to North Carolina. At that point, I began to have lots of pain in my feet. I was seeing a chiropractor at the time who suspected diabetes, and had me purchase a blood sugar monitor. Sure enough, my blood sugar after eating was about 200, well into the diabetic range.
At that point, I had a choice. This choice was laid out for me carefully by my chiropractor. (In many ways Dr. Goode was an amazing jerk, and we eventually left his practice. But I have to admit that he did me a great service in this case.)
Dr. Goode I had two choices:
- Go to a medical doctor. I would be prescribed insulin and Glucophage. These would control my blood sugar. But I would be on them the rest of my life. In the process, I would be allowed to consume the SAD for the rest of my life as well. This would be a short life though. Even controlled, diabetics have 10 times the risk for all of the diseases that plague our country. I would die by the time I was 60 without question.
- Go alternative. Dr. Goode knew of an acupuncturist who practiced in Chapel Hill. Amazingly, this man, named Dr. Zen Chen, specialized in treating diabetes, and had great success in doing so. I would be cured in 2 years.
Sound familiar? You would think I would be getting a clue here. But as usual, I am amazingly dense.
Once again, I lost over 100 pounds, landing in the 180s. I was fit and trim. I was working out regularly.
I don't know why I didn't simply stay there. It would have been so easy. But no, I had to go off the diet again. I backslid into the SAD, and began to eat animal products. This was due to work pressures once more. I had taken on a traveling job involving lots of international flying, almost all in business class. I would have a plate of steak and potatoes stuck in front of me. And of course there was always dessert. And alcohol. This time I did succumb to the pressure to drink, and began to drift back into alcoholism.
In February of 2007 I had a serious wake up call. I will not go into the details of all of that, but I stopped drinking at that point. However, I had begun to develop autoimmune disease. My wife was deeply concerned and researched various alternative ways to address the issue. My weight had spiked back up to almost 260. I tried many different means to address both the weight and the autoimmune disorders. Atkins. South Beach. Sugar Busters. The Abs Diet, and all the rest.
I remained stubbornly sick and heavy.
As I said in my first post, I really owe my current progress to my friend Ray. He may have saved my life. He sent me Dr. Fuhrman's November 2004 newsletter on autoimmune diseases. In this newsletter, he outlines an approach to deal with issues like mine.
As you know if you are reading this blog, I am now on a road to recovery. I have no doubt that this will work eventually. I have already seen huge changes. I am losing almost a pound a day. My psoriasis is vastly improved.
I suppose the difference this time, as opposed to the other two times that I addressed my health in this manner, is that I now have the scientific basis for understanding the process of my body in respects to diet and health. I never had this before. Unfortunately, neither did my parents. This basis has been afforded to me by the privilege to read Dr. Fuhrman's books, as well as books like The China Study. These are giving me a basis for belief in the effectiveness of this approach, which I lacked. I never really believed in macrobiotics. It didn't make sense to me. Too much of it was steeped in Eastern mysticism and religion. In the same manner, I was ambivalent about Dr. Chen. An ancient Chinese man in his 80s who is less than 5 feet tall and weighs less than 100 pounds was a strange example to me. His English was terrible. It was amazing that I followed his recommendations at all, given how different he is from me.
Ray is like me, though. I understand him very, very well. He has faced his health challenges too. He is intellectually honest enough to research and understand the processes of his own body. I respected what he had done in his own life, and I wanted to do the same in mine. I respect him highly.
This is a very long post, and I apologize for that for those who may be reading. But that is my story to this point. It has been an amazing journey. Now, at the age of 53, I finally understand what is making me sick and how to fix it. I only wish my parents had had the same privilege.
More later.
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