25. How Did I Get So Fat? So Fast?
I've always been a skinny guy. It used to be so hard back in Junior High when my friends started filling out into bodies with muscle and substance while I waited desperately for the promised development to begin. I was so thin that in a windstorm my body would vibrate a musical note like it was some kind of tuning fork. If I flexed really hard I could lower the note. With just the right amount of windspeed and some admittedly awkward-looking practice, I learned how to play the theme from "Summer Breeze" by stretching and curving my body into various positions.
I went out for wrestling in High School because they had weight classes. I was tall and skinny with the ability to contort myself into many different positions, possibly due to my musical exercises. I wasn't exceptional as a wrestler but I could occasionally squeeze an opponent hard enough to cause musical noises from them for a change.
Later, when I settled on a career in the tire business, one of my reasons had to do with the seriously physical nature of the job. I knew I did not have the self-discipline to exercise regularly so why not have a job that requires it? When I grew into my twenties, my body finally started filling out into an amazing specimen of championship bodybuilding like I'd always wanted. Except it didn't.
By the time I hit 40 I finally began to gain a little weight, but it wasn't muscle. And with the weight came the inevitable teasing from the other kids.
My own kids,
If I leaned forward a little, my belly would create folds and the kids referred to the effect as "Mr. Smiley." I still had decent metabolism and when I wanted to, it wasn't hard to get the weight back off, but the freedom to eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight was a habit hard to break.
Then came cancer. We had certainly known friends who had died from various cancers and as a rule, they became emaciated as they traveled through the process. Now fighting it myself, Juli and I were meeting new friends who told their stories, usually involving significant weight loss, even dangerous weight loss.
Juli and I were certain that I was going to lose weight while going through chemo because of all these stories. I sorta stopped trying to watch what I ate. What a shock to begin chemo treatments and watch the scale climb to the point that I stopped watching the scale! We had the idea that to attempt any sort of intake control would be inadvisable during a time when my body was being attacked by chemo drugs. I did try to eat well, but my lifelong habit has been to ignore the minutiae of nutrition and just enjoy food. So a week ago my scale said 200 lbs for the first time in my entire life, and it is not pretty.
When I first lost the hair on my head I was startled every time I walked past a mirror. As I've lost the hair on the rest of my body, exposing more clearly in black and white (well, mostly white!) the condition of my body... Well, let's just say that I'm no longer built like a tuning fork. More like a fork, knife, spoon, bowl, and plate. Sigh.
Interestingly, a friend on FaceBook posted an article last week on the Science of Fasting. It is a documentary, available on Amazon Prime if you have it. Her friend is a nurse who had spoken to her about the health benefits of fasting recommended in a wellness program used by her organization. According to the friend, it was also said to mitigate side effects of chemotherapy. My friend very subtly stated that she was posting the link because she had several friends suffering from cancer. I knew I was one of the people she was talking about because I'm fat, not stupid.
I joke about the fat, but it must be said that my motivation to watch the documentary had to do with looking for anything that may help in the cancer battle, not the weight-gain battle. Juli and I watched the documentary and were impressed enough to start looking up Dr Longo of USC and his nutrition and longevity studies. It turns out that fasting, done right, switches on an incredible mechanism designed into our bodies. Of course, Dr Longo is impressed by the evolution of our bodies to react to fasting the way it does but that is just silly in the face of the perfect complexity of the process. We wouldn't look at beach sand and expect to find a $35,000 Baccarat flower vase after a million years of wind and erosion.
What happens during a water-only fast is that on day one the body feeds on glucose. On day two it starts eating fat stores and defective cells. The really cool discovery has to do with the way the good cells in our bodies protect themselves from being consumed. The question Dr Longo had was whether or not cancer cells also protected themselves during a fast. It turns out that cancer cells are stupid and "always on." Instead of switching to a "protect mode," they actually expose themselves even more to the chemo drugs. Meanwhile, the good cells have given themselves a sort of shield against the chemo which is said to mitigate the nasty side effects of the infusion.
When the body is in fast mode, it not only consumes fat, it also consumes damaged cells, cancer cells, and anything else that is not needed. It is kind of like flying an airplane that is low on fuel. In World War II during the Doolittle Raid to Japan, the men in the B25's carried extra fuel in cans inside the plane. They used up all that fuel and dumped the cans out of the plane when empty. The body is trying to survive until it's next feeding, so it saves what it must and eats what it doesn't need. In addition, Dr Longo's studies have shown that the process also activates stem cell rebuilding of the immune system that has just gone through a thorough cleaning.
I'm a huge skeptic. When you have cancer, you hear all kinds of "cures" and special healing diets. When it came to this particular subject I couldn't help but think that God has shown this path to many before me through the ascetic practices begun in the Early Church with continuity even today in the Orthodox Church. Our bodies were designed to "reset" with fasting, something that happened naturally in times of famine or want, but in the USA, we have food to spare and the spare tires to prove it.
I have only 2 more chemo sessions to go but I really wanted to try this because of the potentially serious knock-out punch that could be delivered to my cancer. I don't expect an unreasonable miracle, but I do want to cripple those cancer cells badly. Dr Longo and USC do not recommend fasting on your own, but only under a doctor's care, so I asked my oncologist for support and she has given it. The human trials for this treatment are still in process, but the ones that have been completed all point to success, and they see this as a support to the standard of care, not a replacement.
The plan which we began yesterday is a 4 to 5 day water fast. I stopped eating after breakfast yesterday morning to have 3 days of fasting completed by Friday's chemo session. It is critical to maintain the fast for at least 24 hours after the infusion or liver damage can occur from waking up the digestive system while the poison is still in my body, so I will wait to "re-feed" until Sunday morning.
I am fortunate to be fat. Those who have had their weight decimated by cancer and chemo cannot even consider this option. Please remember our friend Galen Reames and his wife Laura in your prayers to God as Galen suffers in this way. Galen and Laura have created a beautiful video to describe their situation and the way God is walking with them through this process.
Thank you for continuing to remember Juli and I to God as well.
 |
| Early 20s with our firstborn Stephanie. :) |
I went out for wrestling in High School because they had weight classes. I was tall and skinny with the ability to contort myself into many different positions, possibly due to my musical exercises. I wasn't exceptional as a wrestler but I could occasionally squeeze an opponent hard enough to cause musical noises from them for a change.
Later, when I settled on a career in the tire business, one of my reasons had to do with the seriously physical nature of the job. I knew I did not have the self-discipline to exercise regularly so why not have a job that requires it? When I grew into my twenties, my body finally started filling out into an amazing specimen of championship bodybuilding like I'd always wanted. Except it didn't.
By the time I hit 40 I finally began to gain a little weight, but it wasn't muscle. And with the weight came the inevitable teasing from the other kids.
My own kids,
If I leaned forward a little, my belly would create folds and the kids referred to the effect as "Mr. Smiley." I still had decent metabolism and when I wanted to, it wasn't hard to get the weight back off, but the freedom to eat whatever I wanted without gaining weight was a habit hard to break.
Then came cancer. We had certainly known friends who had died from various cancers and as a rule, they became emaciated as they traveled through the process. Now fighting it myself, Juli and I were meeting new friends who told their stories, usually involving significant weight loss, even dangerous weight loss.
Juli and I were certain that I was going to lose weight while going through chemo because of all these stories. I sorta stopped trying to watch what I ate. What a shock to begin chemo treatments and watch the scale climb to the point that I stopped watching the scale! We had the idea that to attempt any sort of intake control would be inadvisable during a time when my body was being attacked by chemo drugs. I did try to eat well, but my lifelong habit has been to ignore the minutiae of nutrition and just enjoy food. So a week ago my scale said 200 lbs for the first time in my entire life, and it is not pretty.
When I first lost the hair on my head I was startled every time I walked past a mirror. As I've lost the hair on the rest of my body, exposing more clearly in black and white (well, mostly white!) the condition of my body... Well, let's just say that I'm no longer built like a tuning fork. More like a fork, knife, spoon, bowl, and plate. Sigh.
Interestingly, a friend on FaceBook posted an article last week on the Science of Fasting. It is a documentary, available on Amazon Prime if you have it. Her friend is a nurse who had spoken to her about the health benefits of fasting recommended in a wellness program used by her organization. According to the friend, it was also said to mitigate side effects of chemotherapy. My friend very subtly stated that she was posting the link because she had several friends suffering from cancer. I knew I was one of the people she was talking about because I'm fat, not stupid.
I joke about the fat, but it must be said that my motivation to watch the documentary had to do with looking for anything that may help in the cancer battle, not the weight-gain battle. Juli and I watched the documentary and were impressed enough to start looking up Dr Longo of USC and his nutrition and longevity studies. It turns out that fasting, done right, switches on an incredible mechanism designed into our bodies. Of course, Dr Longo is impressed by the evolution of our bodies to react to fasting the way it does but that is just silly in the face of the perfect complexity of the process. We wouldn't look at beach sand and expect to find a $35,000 Baccarat flower vase after a million years of wind and erosion.
What happens during a water-only fast is that on day one the body feeds on glucose. On day two it starts eating fat stores and defective cells. The really cool discovery has to do with the way the good cells in our bodies protect themselves from being consumed. The question Dr Longo had was whether or not cancer cells also protected themselves during a fast. It turns out that cancer cells are stupid and "always on." Instead of switching to a "protect mode," they actually expose themselves even more to the chemo drugs. Meanwhile, the good cells have given themselves a sort of shield against the chemo which is said to mitigate the nasty side effects of the infusion.
When the body is in fast mode, it not only consumes fat, it also consumes damaged cells, cancer cells, and anything else that is not needed. It is kind of like flying an airplane that is low on fuel. In World War II during the Doolittle Raid to Japan, the men in the B25's carried extra fuel in cans inside the plane. They used up all that fuel and dumped the cans out of the plane when empty. The body is trying to survive until it's next feeding, so it saves what it must and eats what it doesn't need. In addition, Dr Longo's studies have shown that the process also activates stem cell rebuilding of the immune system that has just gone through a thorough cleaning.
I'm a huge skeptic. When you have cancer, you hear all kinds of "cures" and special healing diets. When it came to this particular subject I couldn't help but think that God has shown this path to many before me through the ascetic practices begun in the Early Church with continuity even today in the Orthodox Church. Our bodies were designed to "reset" with fasting, something that happened naturally in times of famine or want, but in the USA, we have food to spare and the spare tires to prove it.
I have only 2 more chemo sessions to go but I really wanted to try this because of the potentially serious knock-out punch that could be delivered to my cancer. I don't expect an unreasonable miracle, but I do want to cripple those cancer cells badly. Dr Longo and USC do not recommend fasting on your own, but only under a doctor's care, so I asked my oncologist for support and she has given it. The human trials for this treatment are still in process, but the ones that have been completed all point to success, and they see this as a support to the standard of care, not a replacement.
The plan which we began yesterday is a 4 to 5 day water fast. I stopped eating after breakfast yesterday morning to have 3 days of fasting completed by Friday's chemo session. It is critical to maintain the fast for at least 24 hours after the infusion or liver damage can occur from waking up the digestive system while the poison is still in my body, so I will wait to "re-feed" until Sunday morning.
I am fortunate to be fat. Those who have had their weight decimated by cancer and chemo cannot even consider this option. Please remember our friend Galen Reames and his wife Laura in your prayers to God as Galen suffers in this way. Galen and Laura have created a beautiful video to describe their situation and the way God is walking with them through this process.
Thank you for continuing to remember Juli and I to God as well.
Comments
Post a Comment
Comments and encouragement always welcome.