Ben’s Story – I Was Over 380lbs in 2013

My relationship with food has been a complicated one. As far back as I can remember, I liked to cook. I
liked to see what different flavors would taste like together. By the time I was in high school, I was
pretty good at it.

High school was, for me, as I am sure a host of others, not the best time.

But it is where I developed my complicated relationship with food. I found that people would talk to me when making food for class parties. They would praise my dishes, and I would feel valued. So over time, I tied up some of my worth in the reaction I elicited from people as they ate the food I made.

I was meticulous when I prepared for groups. On top of that, I demanded some pretty high
standards from anyone willing to assist me. I was creative, overly motivated, and exacting in how I
wanted everything to turn out. This also led to cooking itself being stressful and draining. But I did enjoy the praise.

I don’t rely on recipes to prepare food. I have tons of cookbooks but mainly used them for inspiration.
And diets, to me, took all of the fun and reward out of cooking. Having to follow someone else’s guide
gave me no thrill to cook, and, let’s face it, no one really praises diet food.

I was around 190 pounds when I graduated high school.

Four years later, when I was blessed to marry my wife, I was somewhere around 230. We experienced our first diet together shortly after, and it sucked. As I recall, we ate salads for lunch and dinner for a month. I may have lost 5 pounds. I didn’t eat another salad for years.

Looking back, the funny thing is that I only liked to cook when I had other people around to eat. I can confirm this by recalling Lisa’s first deployment. While she was out, I shopped for my groceries
almost exclusively at Walgreens. When Lisa was home, we also enjoyed eating out quite a bit.

Add another 50 in five years. And as a result of my poor shopping habits while she was away, and all-out celebration dining when she was home, I increased to 280 pounds before our 5th anniversary.

The Journey from 280 to 380 pounds.

I blamed the lack of exercise. Sympathy weight gain during all three of Lisa’s pregnancies, sitting at a work-from-home job for 10 to 12 hours a day, and my friends’ peanut butter and chocolate helped me to hit over 380 by 2013. At that number, we started paying someone a ton of money to help us.

I had hit a plateau for a week and was not losing weight. Lisa was in a similar situation. We reached out, and I was told I should eat nothing but steak for an entire day. Lisa was told to eat nothing but apples. That was an awkward dinner.

I lost some weight, but it wasn’t enough. So I dropped the coach, and we returned to our standard American diet. Needless to say, the pounds piled back on again.

Sometime during our move from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts, I discovered that gluten and I didn’t get along. We went gluten-free in the house. Using substitutes that I could buy in the grocery store increased my weight because of the extra carbohydrates. I was sad and stressed and thought that nothing was going to change at all.

That stress bled over into all of my relationships — with Lisa, friends, and family.

I hit rock bottom and needed serious help

I had a crisis that shoved me into a pretty deep depression. That drove me not to want to eat, and for about a month, I fasted and prayed. Counseling saved me from ruining my relationship with Lisa and my kids.

If you had asked me if I carried around baggage from my past, I would have said no. I would have sworn that I had nothing to deal with and that everything I was going through in that moment was because of that moment. Boy, was I wrong.

It is incredible how little things scar your heart and drive your thoughts and actions. I realized that I judged my worth on the way people enjoyed my food. I learned that I value time and schedules because of broken commitments growing up. I needed to work through some of those things and embrace my value in God.

I needed to work on my relationships. Also needed to “not eat” more as well — that is, fasting.

We started to work out, too, To My Surprise.

Some years ago, Lisa and I were watching a documentary about CrossFit athletes, and she asked if we
could start working out.

I looked at her and reluctantly said, “Yes,” and then eyed the tv where people were climbing ropes, jerking barbells overhead, and flipping up over bars, and said, “As long as we don’t have to do that!”

The two of us have been lifting weights for seven years. We have been doing CrossFit for four years.

We have dived into nutrition and tried to see how things have changed through the years. Everything that we have been through has brought us here.

Food is fuel for me now.

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t make it taste good!

Everything that we eat has an impact on our bodies.

I want to ensure that I am around for as long as possible and that I control what I eat.

I know that saving time with convenience foods now will cost me later.

I want to remember my family.

I want to be active with my grandkids.

I want to be vibrant in my old age.

I will use the right food as fuel to control that as much as possible.