WELCOME!
I've decided that I wanted to write about a journey that my family and I have decided to embark on. This will be an on-going blog as my family and I progress from our 30 day introduction to the Paleo lifestyle through adoption of clean eating.
My Background
I'm John and I turned 50 years old on January 5th. As long as I can remember I've struggled with maintaining a healthy weight and lifestyle. I'm a southern gentlemen (most of the time). Being southern we celebrate everything with food. When things go well, we eat! When things go wrong, we eat! Births, Deaths, Marriages, Promotions and anything we do, is celebrated with food!
I've experienced most diets known to man. You name it and I've tried it (Weight Watchers, Grapefruit, Rice, Physician's weight loss, Adkins, South Beach, Nutri-System and hundreds of others). Throughout all of these I've lost hundreds of pounds over and over again! I've learned so much during my 40 years of dieting. The most important thing I've learned is never ever to diet.
In 1997 I married the love of my life! Vanessa and I are best friends and honestly I cannot imagine my life without her. She is my everything and I thank god every day that she was placed into my life at exactly the right time. In 1998 we had our first child. My namesake John Bland Jr. I could not be any prouder of John.... (Boog, Moose... so many names... so little time). In 2000 we had our second son, Christian. He was our last and an awesome way to end having children. I give nicknames to all my children. Christian is (poot, red wonder, ginger snap and of course cherry bomb).
In 2007 I had yo yo'd to my maximum size of 508.2 pounds. I am 5' 10" tall and had a 68" waste. I struggled to move. Even the lightest exercise would cause me to lose my breath. I knew at that time, if I continued at the rate that I was on I would not be around to see my children grow up. I was not able to be the husband and father that my family deserved and that I had always dreamed to be. I was going to leave my family alone without their father and that was something I could not let myself do.
In 2007 my wife and I decided to pursue having weight loss surgery. The amazing part is that I was too fat to qualify for the surgery. Due to my size, no hospital would take the risk of operating on a 500+ pound patient. My doctor and I agreed that in order for him to agree to perform surgery on me, I would have to be below 400 pounds. Vanessa did have surgery that year and had amazing results. Over the next year, she lost 172 pounds. She was always a pretty woman, but wow... she looked amazing. I must admit that watching her lose weight so fast motivated me to stick with the weight loss.
Over the next year, I lost 125 pounds in order to qualify for surgery. In 2008 my doctor (Dr. Enoch) agreed to schedule my surgery. I know that there are many people out there that don't agree that surgery is a good option. Given my size and declining health it was the best option for me at that time. I would have done it again if I had it to do over again!
Over the next year I got down to 280 pounds. This was a total of 228.2 pounds. This was almost half of my body weight. I had dropped to a size 46 waste and was well on my way to achieving a healthy body. But even the motivation of having lost so much weight did not last. Over the next 7 years the weight crept back on. It started slowly.... very slowly. Some candy here, a piece of cake there. I knew that I could not have those types of foods. I really didn't crave them. I honestly didn't even want them physically. Mentally though was a different question. You see, while the surgery helped me lose my hunger and get full faster. It still did not fix the underlying problem. I have a compulsion to eat and the food that I choose to eat is killing me!
Now comes to the present.... I've gained back up to 377 pounds. No I'm not as big as I once was, but I'm no longer 280 pounds. My wife has gained back a substantial amount of weight, but worst of all my children are now following in the path that was laid out by their parents. They have never once criticized either of us about our lifestyle and I have the most supportive children in the world. Vanessa and I love them dearly.
We all decided that we need a change! We've heard of eating cleanly and I did a tremendous amount of investigation into clean eating. As a family we all decided that as of March 1st, we were going to start a new lifestyle. One that celebrates successes and failures by something other than food.
