Paleodyssey

Just two years ago, I weighed 35 lbs. (about 16 kg or 2.5 stone) more than  I do now. Many people have lost a lot more weight than that on paleo, but it’s pretty significant to me. I weigh 10 lbs. less than I did when I graduated from high school. I’m not skinny (except in comparison to many of my fellow Americans) but I am no longer overweight.

It’s only in retrospect that I realize the things I did to avoid confronting my physical self. I was certainly clear that I could stand to lose some weight, but didn’t think about it much. For the most part, I just avoided thinking about it at all. I refused to buy pants with a waist larger than 32 inches (81 cm), even though they didn’t fit that well any more (I started buying the ones with a stretch waistband for “comfort”). I figured out which brands made pants labelled “32,” but which were really a bit larger. I am now at a 29, which is hard to find in the U.S. (many brands start at 32 and go up from there). I never went to the beach or anywhere else that involved taking off my shirt, and I bought shirts that were a bit too large without thinking about why, which was to cover up.

All of that is obvious to me in retrospect, but was a tiny part of my conscious self awareness at the time. I didn’t think about diet or health. I didn’t go to the doctor unless I got bronchitis and needed a prescription. My eyesight was deteriorating, I got winded a lot more easily, I gave up anything athletic, my teeth started hurting, and I am sure in retrospect that I was working toward my first heart attack. All of that was too unpleasant to think about, so I didn’t.

It may be that I’m now too aware of health issues—I have certainly been accused of that. But by comparison, things are so much better now that it seems a worthwhile tradeoff.