The Partial Vanishing of Alan

My mother told me that when I was only three years old, shortly after my younger brother was born, I began to put on extra weight.  On the day I graduated from high school, a “normal” healthy weight for my height would have been about 150 pounds. I weighed 207.

As I accepted my high school diploma I vowed to stop gaining weight.

Alas, for most of my life I remained on a “seafood” diet.  I see food, I eat it.  Ultimately, I ballooned to a high of 278 pounds.  That was twelve years ago.

At that point one of my children gave me the name of a nutritionist and told me that a friend had lost 70 pounds working with her.  That sounded good to me, especially since she did not include exercise as part of her program.  Just eating sensibly.

She made one small, but effective, suggestion to help me modify my dietary habits. For example, at lunch I should use just one slice of bread for my sandwich instead of the customary two (and skip the French fries or potato chips entirely).  Also, I could eat half of the sandwich at noon, and the remaining half in the late afternoon.  A second tip was to immediately order tea at a restaurant, rather than devouring six slices of sour dough bread before any other food even arrived.

Working with her over the following year I lost 75 pounds, and basically stayed in that range until COVID-19 arrived in March, 2020.

I’ve read reports that during the past 17 months of the pandemic the average American has gained 20 pounds.

But since I haven’t been eating at restaurants, or had dinner at a friend’s house for a year and a half, I’ve continued to control the size of my meals.  Yesterday, for example, my lunch was a small helping of tuna salad, with a desert of blackberries and raspberries.  No bread to accompany the tuna salad, and no sour cream or honey on the berries.

This morning my scale displayed 188 pounds, which is my lowest weight since I was a teenager.  Almost one-third of me has disappeared in the past twelve years.  (Friends say they have found the weight I lost.)

For lunch today I think I’ll splurge.  Maybe I’ll have a little more tuna salad than yesterday.  After all, I don’t want to vanish entirely.

Alan