Early in my life I got little to eat. Throughout my childhood, I was a very skinny child, or “bony” as some would jokingly call it. My mother and father would both tell others that I was naturally skinny. But the truth was that I wasn’t fed very much as a child up until my teen years. This was because each of my divorced parents always felt it was someone else’s duty to feed me. My maternal grandparents, who raised me also fed me, and pay for food for me when not with them.
So, whenever I was with either of my parents, I never got much to eat. My mother and her 2nd husband would only feed me table scraps. My father and his 2nd wife, ) would only feed me leftovers.
Rock bottom came when I was put on a diet by a psychiatrist being told by my mother that I was an overeater who had the potential for obesity. After following this diet for a year, I was hospitalized for 3 weeks where I was treated for anorexia and internal bleeding. I was fed intravenously and orally to make up for deprived nutrition.
Ater, the hospital discharged me, my grandfather (a medical doctor and surgeon himself) made a decision to secretly feed me and break this horrible diet I was put on. Along with food He convinced my grandmother to not tell my mother about it to avoid any retaliation. From there on, I had learned that if I wanted to eat more, I had to do it when I was with anyone other than when I was with my mother or father, who both had refused to fed me properly. I had never made a big deal of it, but I know that I was lucky to be treated for it in time and learn early the consequences of malnutrition.
It tuned out that in my teen years my older brother taught me to work out and exercise more, leading me to crave food. It was good, as I started to go as far as eating two meals a day so I could burn it off the food I ate. At that time, I was already drinking beer for the barley for filler, thus wetting the bed at night, something my brother was oblivious too, I stopped wetting the bed when I gave up beer for booze. By the time I got to be a full-grown man, liquor was something for me to work on quitting, which I eventually down the road did. Thus, in all my life, I very rarely had a three-meal day like I am told most others are supposed to have. For years on, I would keep working out and creating muscle. In the mid-1990s, I had been about to give up booze, but still kept on eating and working out. I was in pretty good shape, weighting about 260 pounds, most of which was muscle.
But after my entire thyroid was surgically removed back in 2002 due to cancer, I stopped working out, thus went back to living off of snacks and maybe one meal a day. I tried to keep it all nutritious. I had developed a “beer belly” and lost most of my muscle. It always helps that I have been alcohol free for over 20 years now. I am now 235 pounds and trying to lose weight, eating one meal with snacks a day at best. From the time my daughter was born, her mother and I made it a point to make sure she is always fed properly, and that has turned out well. Lots of times, people take for granted that how much they weight won’t affect their health. There are so many young people today that are either too skinny or too obese. A lot of obese people chose to be that being that they feel they can get sympathy from others and feel it’s all a game.
