I was born with a food addiction but it did not show up until later. I was the son of an Air Force officer so we moved around a lot when I was growing up. My father’s idea of a diet was to not put ice cream on his apple pie—he was always in shape but did not work out. My mother did have a weight problem—I guess I got her genes. Which brings up an important point – you did not choose to be overweight. You were born into food addiction. You may have a genetic predisposition for slow metabolism; a family that had overweight issues, or an inborn personality style that makes you crave and eat lots of food—or all of the above. And we all live in a culture that encourages people to overeat and eat the wrong things, health wise.
I don’t remember much before age 8 or 9, but I think all was fine with no major trauma and fine relationships with my parents. When I was 8 or 9 I began to become overweight – probably part of the answer was I now was near stores in the USA after having lived on a military base in Okinawa. I was also able to ride my bike to those stores. My father said later that he never should have given me that second box lunch I asked him for on an airplane flight we took back from Okinawa to live again in the USA. My parents would fight at times over how to deal with my weight problem not surprisingly. As you might imagine, my father—a boxing champion and military officer—was not thrilled about having an obese son. I guess maybe getting negative attention was better than no attention at all is all I can figure on that count. I had a miserable time growing up for the most part from age 8 or 9 on with my food addiction only getting worse as I got older.
By age 11, I weighed 115 pounds. By age 18, I was 275 pounds. I never dated as a teenager—I even stayed home on prom night. I had a miserable time, given how few people were that overweight back then—the teasing from other kids was relentless at times. As a young man I remember I would go to Burger King (one of my fast food addictions) and order two Whoppers and two chocolate shakes to go, hoping the people there would think I was buying for two. I wasn’t—it was all for me. Not an unusual behavior in food addiction. I would also not go home from work each day without two quart bottles of Coke since I drank about that much each day. I topped out at something over 325 pounds. I was pretty sick and tired of being a bit of a freak and being sick and tired.
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