ABOUT ME

Thanks for opting to learn more about me! I’m a 41 year old man living in Salt Lake City, UT who has released over 260 pounds. In March of 2020, just as we were all sheltering in place for a global pandemic, I developed gout. I’m 6’4” and at the time I was 38 years old and 600+ lbs (273+ kg/43+ st). The truth is, I’m not quite sure how much over 600 pounds I was. I had a small freight scale I used to weigh myself that went up to 1000 pounds, but once I hit 580 pounds I put the scale away and didn’t use it again. When I first felt the symptoms of gout, it wasn’t in my toe like most people, it was in my knee. Doing regular things like walking and using the bathroom began to become very humbling moments. The pain, shame, and recent onset of the pandemic made me come to a decision, I was going to get rid of my gout and try to live a healthier version of my life.

But, how did it get to that point? Like most problems people struggle with all their lives, there were several contributing factors.

I grew up in a suburb outside of Kansas City in the 1990’s. Like every era, the 90’s offered up unique experiences that helped mold my perspectives going into adulthood. Many of those experiences were positive, but we tend to remember the things that hurt us more than the things that didn’t. Looking back those moments were amplified by a few things. Being so young, many of the challenging emotions I was feeling I had only just been introduced to. Subsequently I didn’t have any of the healthy coping skills necessary to process such new and raw emotions. Toss in some undiagnosed severe anxiety and depression issues, an alcoholic father, an undiagnosed bi-polar mother, and serious self-hatred stemming from home and school situations, and the world had manifested a pretty troubled, scared, kid.

My parent’s behavior by today’s standards would have been seen in some ways as abhorrent, but that’s the curse with being a parent, history will judge you harshly as we all continue to learn. In other words, I personally don’t believe that my parents meant to harm me, it just happened along the way while they were trying to raise a family, like a lot of people.

My mother grew up with advantages. She’s white, her father was rich, her mother was a philanthropist and artist, and her brothers all had good heads on their shoulders. She vacationed in the Ozarks regularly, and my grandfather always made sure she could live comfortably, even into late adulthood. Growing up, she struggled with her weight and her parents tried to nip it in the bud, so they made the most compassionate decision they could think of at the time and sent her to “fat camp”. Ultimately I think my grandparents were worried. They didn’t want my mother to end up sad and alone, so they tried to stop that from happening. Unfortunately, it’s my belief that their attempts at behavioral change came at the cost of my mother hating herself both as a child, and as an adult, never satisfied with the way she looked to herself, or others. Something I’ve personally struggled with all my life.

My father grew up a world apart from my mother. He lived in a rough neighborhood in Raytown, MO. His father was a freight worker, and his mother was a homemaker, both who were “equally yoked” as devout Baptists. I heard a lot of stories about my father being a “worry wort” growing up, acting bizarrely anxious to the point of crying fits. As a child I remember these stories being told with a certain levity, but as an adult I realized that my father dealt with undiagnosed severe anxiety all his life. Once my father graduated high school he joined the US Army and made it to the rank of Sergeant (E5) as an artilleryman. Shortly after being honorably discharged, he met my mother. While my father’s military service was a trait he defined himself by, and something I was always proud of, the culture of military service allowed him to indulge in booze as a coping mechanism and was seen as mostly acceptable at the time. It’s not the military’s fault that my father became an alcoholic, and it’s not my grandparent’s fault, it’s just the hand my father was dealt in life, and booze was his highway to addiction. At this point, I should mention that my father is dead. He died in 2021 due to heart complications, but those complications were brought on by poor decisions in both his professional and personal life. In the end my father won his fight against alcohol, but not before it robbed him of his family, his profession, and his dignity. I’ll remember him as a good man with a troubled mind, and I think the booze helped him “turn off” the anxiety when it would overwhelm him, but it was also the only way he knew how to “handle” that part of his life.

I wanted to write all of that as a way to explain the kinds of issues I’ve personally dealt with. In many ways my parent’s unresolved issues became my unresolved issues. The fears they had and tried to protect me vehemently from became my fears. I’ve personally struggled with self-hatred, severe anxiety, and depression all of my life.

At 38 I went from not caring at all what I put in my body and how I treated it, to gaining a deeper understanding of nutrition, emotional regulation, and physical fitness. I want to be perfectly clear though. I was a person that avoided voluntary exercise and reveled in the fact that I ate what I wanted, and I didn’t really care what people thought about me. All because of a thought that had manifested in my mind as a young man; that no one wanted anything to do with me physically, and that I was seen as a bother. So I stayed away, because interacting with people meant having to deal with pain.

Food was there though, and movies, and video games, and work, and my friends, so that’s what I focused on, the stuff that didn’t regularly hurt. I used food and booze almost exclusively as an emotional panacea through my teens, 20’s, and early 30’s.

At 35 I decided to seek therapy, because frankly I wanted to get people off of my back about my weight. I had been fat all my life, and I figured that was the way I was going to die, but if I told people I was going to therapy at least I could end the “weight-loss” conversations far more quickly by just saying “I hear you, I’m actually in therapy right now addressing it.”. Fast-forward to 40 and I was down over 230 pounds, had a much different way I viewed the world, myself, and my place within it.

People often ask me “How did you do it?”, and I find myself stammering for an answer because the explanation isn’t a simple one. On the shallowest of levels, the old adage is true, “diet and exercise”. That’s a far oversimplified and misleading piece of “advice” though. “Diet and exercise” play a key part, there’s no denying that, but if the underlying psychological/trauma issues aren’t treated by a mental health professional, and new coping mechanisms aren’t actively developed and practiced, then you may find “diet and exercise” alone failing you as you relapse into old behaviors.

On this site you can read about the meals I regularly prepared for myself. Since I changed my diet as I was recovering from gout, my earlier meals tend to be pretty gout-friendly! This is good news for you if you’ve found this site looking for “safe” foods to eat while you’re suffering from gout (hint: potatoes!). I will state that I am not a qualified health provider, nor am I a chef, nor am I a nutritionist/dietician, please keep this in mind as you peruse the site and make sure to consult a qualified health provider before making major health decisions about yourself.

So, how did I do it? Compactly; I began engaging in therapy, I gained a new perspective after experiencing pain due to gout, I discovered where my feelings of inadequacy and other issues stemmed from, took people up on every offer to help, learned the basics of healthy cooking, purchased a membership at a gym with trainers that know how to work with severely obese people, forced myself to engage in my new behaviors until they became habit, leaned on friends for support/accountability, celebrated my small victories when they occurred, tried not to let setbacks keep me from moving forward, allowed myself to sit in and feel my own emotions, cultivated and practiced new coping mechanisms, let my pride fall to a tertiary concern behind my weight release and fitness goals, and I accepted that discomfort and pain were going to be unavoidable, but meaningful, parts of my weight release voyage.

I warmly thank you for reading.