hey tubby, I'll trade you that beer for some discipline...that's me on the Koh Phi Phi ferry New Year's 2006 pushin' 210 lbs.

It’s a little after 8 am, on an early-April 2007 day.  I’m sitting in my doctor’s office in a really uncomfortable, 70s-era Swedish modular knock-off chair with zero back support.  Leaning forward, elbows on knees, hands clasped, head slung, and to the casual observer, striking a rather serious pose. In reality I’m just trying to take the pressure off my back it but could just as easily be the impending dread weighing on my brow that’s responsible for this posture.

Y’see in about 5 minutes my doctor’s gonna walk through that door and she’s gonna give me some pretty earth-shattering news. Funny thing:  looking back, it turns out this won’t be the true motivation to my change of attitude.  This is just the beginning.  This is just necessary context.  The prologue.

“Frank” she’ll say, as I avoid eye contact, preferring to stare at a photographic audience of newborns adorning all the thank you cards from the host of couples she recently turned into happy parents.

“Your cholesterol is high.  You know that you’ve got a history of heart disease in your family.  You need to make a choice before things get any worse.”

Yup.  I knew it.  Bad news.

At this point I’m carrying around 205 lbs (down just slightly from my all-time max of the shameful 210 lbs i was  carrying over x-mas 2006).  I haven’t exactly been taking care of myself either.

Doc tells me my options at this point are either a prescription that’ll lower my cholesterol and allow me to maintain my current lifestyle while silently eating away at my liver and something I’ll probably have to be on for the rest of my life (and I was hoping to live to at least 200 so that’s a mighty long time), or I can see the dietitian at the clinic and see if I can manage things with a change of lifestyle.

Being vintage 70s –era myself I’m just hippy enough that I’d prefer the lifestyle option to the “better living thru chemistry” waiting behind door #2, so I make an appointment with the dietitian.  Turns out showing up on time isn’t a problem cos she’s got the cutest receptionist.  Not that she’d give me the time of day at this point if it weren’t her job.

I considered myself fairly active.  I ran on the treadmill a couple of times a week.  I climb regularly (though I wouldn’t exactly call myself proficient at this point).  I bike when the weather permits.  Still, I’m not in the greatest shape.  Doughy is a kind description of my body-type.  Admittedly, I’m not the most disciplined person.  I’m more a creature of impulse.  Impulse I indulge at every opportunity.

The dietician is this pugnacious Filipina who sizes me up (supersized at this point) and says that until we get all my bloodwork in to find the kind of specific diet is right for me, the only prescription I need is the Canada Food Guide.

“Follow the guide.  It’s designed to provide all the required sustenance for men/women to maintain themselves at around the target weight.”

Target weight for me is somehwere around 175 lbs, or about 30 lbs lighter than my current weight.  What I’ll be on, she informs me,  is not a “diet” in the starvation, kinda reduce your caloric intake sorta way;  it’s a diet in the true sense:  a selection of foods designed to maintain the life force of a healthy human being.

Really tho, could it be just that simple?  Guess there was only one way to find out…

to be continued.

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