Pure honesty

I'm a fat guy. Come on, we all knew that, I didn't need to be honest about that but the honesty comes from how I feel about it. I've always been a fat kid, I was a chubby baby, a chubby toddler, a chubby child, a fat teen and a massively obese adult. I've had my moments of dealing with bully's as a fat kid and even as an adult, the insults are just different. I've had people assume that I must hate myself for being over weight, Including a bishop who had me come into his office to ask if I wanted a personal trainer and that the church would help pay for one if I needed it. I've had grand parents tell me how I need to loose weight and then 15 minutes later offer me cake. I have been told my entire life that I need to loose weight. Yet I've never been stopped by my size, I go bike riding, I go hiking, I ride motorcycles, four wheelers and sand rails, I go swimming, I do yard work, I work on my own car (often with help because I don't know what I'm doing), I am more active than a lot of skinny people I know and yet it's expected of me to be lazy because I'm fat and that pisses me off. I've always felt okay with who I am, its been other people who make me feel like crap for being over weight. I'm okay being over weight as long as I never need to say, "I cant because of my weight" or "I don't think that my body can handle that." I'm okay with who I am as a person, I'm okay with being overweight.
Now that being said, there are health concerns with being over weight and most of those involve your heart and joints. I've never had problems with my joints until my wife hit me with a car (funny story actually). I did notice that it took longer for my knee to heal after though, and I've noticed that my back is giving me more problems as an adult because of my weight. My family has crappy genetics when it comes to backs but adding a lot of weight doesn't help. I know that if I loose weight I will probably live longer, and that my heart will be better off. So I want to start this off by saying that I don't want to loose weight because I worry about what other people think because frankly screw them ,I'm fine the way I am as a human being, I want to loose weight because I want to have my body feel better as I get older. I want my back to not give out on me in my 40's, or have knee problems in my 30's. I want to be able to CONTINUE to do what I already do.
Like any other fat person I've done a lot of "diets" and never had any long term results because diets like that focus on short term weight loss, not a change of life style, which is what I need. I already have fairly active life style (during the summer) but my diet is lacking in many ways. My two biggest problems are fast food and eating large meals. I could make excuses for this but simply I've been to lazy to pack a lunch for work and I enjoy food so I over eat. Fast food is easy, its fairly cheap and it tastes good. So its was just easier to buy Carl's Jr then it was to pack a lunch in the morning. So I know that to make a change I need to cut out the drive in's.
Two weeks ago I started eating better and packing lunches everyday and trying to exercise more. I had a hard time eating less because my body has been eating one way it's entire life and then I expect it to change after 25 years. I decided to talk to my doctor to see what was healthy for me. After we talked for about half an hour we decided that a steady diet, and low impact exercise like bike rides, swimming, the elliptical and so on would be best for now and that treadmills and jogging would be hard on my knees and should wait until some of the weight was off. I liked that idea because I hate running and treadmills in general but I love bike riding and swimming. However he also gave me a prescription for phentermine, which is the half of phen-phen that doesn't hurt your heart. So I went home did some extra research on phentermine and found that none of the side effects are life threatening and decided to give it a try. Now I should point out that this isn't a permanent addition to my life, it's to help with constantly feeling hungry as my body adjusts to it's new food intake. I have been eating about five times a day and eating small amounts, and its been great so far. I've gone down a pant size and feel like this is a stable change and not just a quick fix diet. I really only changed 4 things in my life.
1. I write down every thing I eat
2. No fast food
3. No buffets
4. Packing my lunch and snacks for the day before work.
I didn't think that such little things could make such a huge difference in your health but apperently they do. I think the most important is writing down everything you eat. When you know you your going to write that ice cream down or a Carl's Jr hamburger you often decide to go with something a bit more healthy. www.caloriecount.about.com has been a big help with this because I just log what I've eaten for the day on my Ipod or on a computer and it keeps track of it for me and lets me know what I'm eating to much of or to little of.
In short I like the changes I've made and hell yes I miss Chinese gourmet, but I think as I go on things will become the normal, instead of the diet, or at least that's the hope.