When I graduated from Illinois State University in 2003, I left with a degree in Mass Communications, a minor in Cinema Studies, and a gut the size of a ‘72 Volkswagen Beetle. I tried to live in denial as long as I could that I had put on a significant amount of weight since my days in high school but when you gain weight people not only notice they also often lack the tact not to mention it.
“You’ve gained at least 50 lbs if not more since the last time I saw you, Adam.”
“You’ve really packed on the pounds over the years.”
“Adam…you’re fat.”
Thankfully, none of these three very thoughtful individuals have gone on to work for St. Jude.
I was always a big eater growing up my Germanic appetite devoured EVERYTHING in duplicate (sans the occasional malignant Good Housekeeping recipe) and I sort of got away with it during my formative years because of my height and received a pass from most of my peers as a big guy – a term I heard a lot but never really took too much offense to because I knew what the alternative was.
Then I graduated from high school and like everything else at that age: things changed.
It wasn’t as if our cafeteria offered much in the way of sound nutrition (I used to think Landshire must have the school board in their back pocket) but attending high school in the only state during the late ‘90s that made physical education mandatory combined with the uncanny metabolism rate most teenage boys seemingly enjoy during these four otherwise awkward years [almost] balanced me out in proportion to my height.
I began community college having stopped growing the preceding year and no longer required to exercise three days a week now only walking to and from my car and to class. I probably took less than half of the steps an average human does a day. My teenage metabolism soon evaporated with the onset of my 20’s and never having a predilection towards healthy eating I basked in the glow of my new school’s daily servings of cheeseburgers (with a side of cheese fries), salty sandwich wraps (with matching potato chips), pizza (with a side of ranch dressing – hold the salad), ice cream (with cookies), and then there was the pie (banana crème, butterscotch, chocolate, coconut, peanut butter, et al).
And that was just during the day at night on the weekends I discovered the joys of Chinese food and it was love at first bite! To me, lo mein, fried rice, egg rolls, wanton soup, crab rangoon and just about everything else on the menu (including a few items my taste buds couldn’t fully decipher) felt to me like what it must have felt like for Richard Simmons the first time he combined candy-striped Dolfin shorts with a Swarovski crystal-encrusted tank top.
As the ‘90s drew to a close two more significant factors would enter the fray in relation to my diet: I began to hang out with a group of guys who traditionally met at Pizza Hut* every Friday night and around the same time I (somehow) managed to trick a girl I met at school into believing I was someone she would want to hang out with regularly. The crux of a new relationship is often food and we hit every restaurant in Peoria County.
So, to recap: wake, go to class, drink a vat of grease for lunch chased by 1 liter of sugar, go back to class, go home, eat everything at the dinner table twice and depending on what night of the weekend it was sit down to a delicious dinner of lard on a cheap plastic plate. And I carried this diet right on to ISU where the situation went from bad to worse because I was now eating all of my meals on campus where a man could virtually have whatever in terms of trans fats he wanted three times a day (and I did).
In my final year of school and now living in an apartment my diet almost solely consisted of Lucky Charms or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Pop Tarts, Easy-Mac, ramen noodles, Jacks oven pizza, ice cream and I more or less filled in the blanks with Chinese takeout, Mexican carryout, and pizza delivery.
I returned home after graduation topping out at 265 lbs.
To be continued…
* Pizza Hut is perhaps America's most recognizable pizza chain and is also one of the country's least healthiest restaurants. Pizza Hut's menu is so laden with items we should teach children and adults alike to never put in their mouths that you'd be better off dining with Ronald McDonald or even The Colonel.
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