Thursday, February 25, 2010

I'll Take The "Blame Game" for a 1000 Alex.

Yeah, my fatness has never been my fault...in this climate of being politically correct...I have decided to focus the blame elsewhere.  It's what I do best and how I roll.  You might be suprised though, by the culprits of this henous crime.

I'll start with dear 'ole Mom.  If you don't know by now, Helen Page was born cripple, her hands were deformed and she has never been able to grip or hold anything quite well...of course, unless it was an extension cord that she could sling like a whip at her three angelic sons who were calmly brushing their teeth one morning when she went nutsy fagan...but, that's a story in and of itself.  That has never stopped her though, as she can drive a car and has managed to outwit more people than not and is one of the most politically opinionated souls I have ever known.  Sometimes it's good and sometimes it's not.  Anyways, being raised by this woman in the seventies was an experience that my siblings and I shall not forget.  This is not an indictment of her parenting skills, oh heavens no, on the contrary, we had a very good upbringing.

Being from Fayetteville and living at 4624 Cheltenham Road for all those years you could well imagine the influence the US Army had on our neighborhood.  Specifically, everyone's father, with the exception of Mr. Dalton and Mr. Fisher who were in Law Enforcement, all were soldiers.  That's right, everybody's old man was either a Green Beret, Screaming Eagle, Sky Soldier or All American.  During Vietnam, Dad had to do his tour and it was just Mom and the four of us little ones.  Times are always tough it seems.  The difficulty of putting food on the table back in the  sixties and seventies is no different than our present day struggles, nowadays, we just think it's more expensive.  I can vividly recall back then, having to "ration" many of the items in our pantry til the next payday.  Unlike today, bi-monthly paychecks were unheard of and payday was always once and at the end of each month.

Back then, to save money or call me crazy...torture her kids, Mom decided that there was an alternative to Whole Milk.  She would buy this powdered milk crap called "PET."  Well, lets just say that you didn't even have to refrigerate the stuff.  As God is my witness, it was the most disgusting thing I have ever had to consume...almost as hideous as Powder Eggs.  To make matters worse, she wasn't buying Capt. Crunch or Honey Combs or Coco Puffs like any other normal family...no, we Laugisch's had to endure generic Corn Flakes or those "Powered Puffs" thingamajigs in bags you could get five for a dollar.  Here we are eating this bland and disgusting combination for breakfast and the only way to even swallow it was to drown it in heaps of sugar...they hadn't quite perfected fake sugar back then.  How does this make my mother an accessory to my fatness?  Because, having to eat like we were in a Gulag for all those years, she turned me into a Sweet Junkie when I became 18.  Yeah, that's right.  The moment I turned that magical age I ran into the Piggly Wiggly, bought the largest box of America's Greatest Navel Commander's cereal (Capt Crunch for those that didn't get that), some real milk, a large Jethro-like container to pour it in and leaned up against the rear tire of my car and gorged myself on the most heavenly tasting morsels I thought I had ever eaten .  Going forward in my life I struggled mightly with the sweets. Can you see now why she is to blame?

There's one other true villian in all this crazy mess.  Grandma.  I know, you probably read in my profile that I would rob a bank for her or walk over hot coals if she asked...yes, it's true, I would do all of that, but when it comes to my weight gain...she is the Devil.  First, she spawned my mother, which makes her guilty by association.  Secondly, she is the greatest Southern cook to ever whistle Dixie.  Paula Dean seems to be all the rage these days but I'm willing to bet Clara Page, even in her nineties could give her a run for her money.  Two of my favorite items she made from scratch were her buttermilk biscuits and fried chicken.  I spent 5 summers with her while picking tobacco for a local farmer and there was nothing better than walking in from a hard day at work and smelling those biscuits rising in the oven.  Her "fresh" fried chicken on Sunday after Church was something to behold.  I hope I don't have to explain "fresh" in this context...but for all my Northern readers it involves a "live" chicken in the morning and the #1 rule of being a chicken on a farm is: Your either producing eggs  or you become Sunday Dinner.  Does that help?  If your wondering, I do know how to "pluck" a chicken.

My other siblings to a certain degree were picky eaters.  I, on the other hand would eat anything you put on my plate...with one exeption, squash; for some reason boiled squash was not something I enjoyed. I do love vegetables and there were many a meal at my Grandparents house that only involved them.  Grandma's garden could rival what Harris Teeter puts out on their produce floor.  I'm deadly serious when I say it was a big damn garden!  4 rows each, most summers, of corn, butter beans, snap peas, cabbage, tomatoes, potatoes (these were those little red ones that you had to dig to China to get to all them), cucumbers, peppers and of course squash.  One other thing I forgot to mention, my grandparents were the product or the generation that survived the Great Depression.  Food was something that they took seriously but it never went to waste.  Moreso than anything, they enjoyed watching me eat...hell, I enjoyed eating and coupled with working hard in tobacco fields all day, I built up a ravenous appetite.  Are you seeing where I'm going with this?  Grandma is only guilty because she loved to cook for me and strangly, watch me eat.  I blame her for developing my heathly palete and not explaining to me what it was going to do to me when I was still consuming massive amounts of good food but not burning the calories in a more sedentary lifestyle.

I would be remiss if I didn't add that my wife is a pretty damn good cook in her own right; I really don't want to have explain to her why I think she is the second best cook in my life, but this is Grandma, the Patron Saint of Raven Rock.  I call it like I see it.  Til next time, Adios Muchachos!

Friday, February 19, 2010

The Mendoza Line

Weight loss is such a numbers game; we get so fixated on that bottom line...that Mendoza line.  Everybody has one. It's that line in the sand that we dare not cross. To be factually correct, it's a baseball term that was made famous by George Brett back in the early eighties. Brett played for the Kansas City Royals and made the comment, "The first thing I look for in the Sunday papers is who is below the Mendoza line." It was in reference to the fact that Mario Mendoza was the last listed player who's batting average was at .200. If your a fan of the sport you know anyone batting at or near that number won't be playing in the big leagues for much longer. My Mendoza Line, coincidently, is 200...200 lbs that is. It is the weight that I strive to maintain.  According to certain publications for my height (5'11" and some change) and age 46, I should weigh somewhere near the ballpark of 179 lbs.  Man, for a guy that was sporting 280 lbs. on that very same frame a short while a go, there aint no way in hell I'll ever see 179 lbs.  Yes, I want to lose weight and have a healthier lifesyle, but somewhere in this equation you have to ENJOY life.

The last time I posted I ended by telling you how disgustingly fat I looked on the beaches of Normandy. It wasn't like it had dawned on me that my weight was getting out of control...I mean, how hard was it for me to notice the jeans I was wearing were specially purchased from Omar the Tent Maker in a size 44" waist? Or, that my shirts were XXL and sometimes XXXL...oh, I knew all right.  Seriously, when you can't physically lean over and clip your own toe nails without having an anyuerism, then your a "Fat Bastard." Anyways, my lovely wife had already decided to "grab the bull by the horns" so to speak, and enrolled herself in the Weight Watchers program. She had been doing this several times during the course of our marriage and in her opinion it was what worked best for her.

Knowing this, I decided what better way to support her and kick start my own weight loss than being on the program myself...right?  There are those moments in your life when you look back and say, "what the hell was I thinking?"  Now, as a guy I wanted to support my wife but this "dred feeling of the unknown" kept washing over me as she explained in  horrific detail what it was I had to do exactly.  Count points?  Weekly Weigh-ins in front of God and Country?  Oh...and those dreaded meetings where you listen to a bunch of women squak about their problems...please, somebody push me into oncoming traffic, now!

So, I found a meeting and decided to take my fat ass down there and get this over with...we decided it would be best if we didn't go to the same ones...and I found one that met at lunch on Tuesdays.  I had already made up my mind after listening to Claudia talk about Weight Watchers that this may not be the best avenue of approach for me.  It was a 15 minute walk from work... at of all places...The YWCA.  Great, more women around to make me even more subconscience and nervous.

I was heavy and knew it but your first weigh-in your hoping the scales are wrong.  Mind you, these are calibrated and balanced digital scales with Swiss watch precision; I step onto one and the lady recording my info looks at her readout, which you can't see, then she stares at you with that "Christ, this guy is fat!" look, and stands up and says, "excuse me, I'll be right back. " So I'm stuck there with that "I'm too gargantuan for Weight Watchers" feeling and she returns in a couple of minutes with the Group facilator, Theresa.  She introduces herself and starts in with her new person routine...I instantly cut her off...I wasn't trying to be rude and it may have appeared that way but I wanted to know what the damn scale read!  I said, "Before we go any further, could someone tell me what I weigh?"  She said, "of course Mark, your starting weight is 275.4 lbs."  I looked at her a little puzzled and said, "275, are you positive?"  "Yes," was her response, but you could tell she had been asked that a hundred times in her role as a facilator and her look was like, "No, idiot, I only told you 275, to mess with your mind!" 

I was estatic, somewhere between my walk from work to the meeting place I had lost five pounds.  Not really, wishful thinking on my part, but I wasn't as heavy as I had initially thought and it was just the little mind trick to re-think this whole Weight Watcher  program.  I stayed for the meeting, got enrolled and left with a better attitude.  Was the meeting what I thought it was going to be?  Yes and no.  Yes, there were way more women than men (2 of us to be exact) and plenty of folks just happy as hell to tell eveyone how they lost half a pound, followed by everyone golf clapping their support of their success.  I was going to have problems going forward talking about weight loss in front of all these women and with that stupid clapping.  I got a sense from Theresa though, as she led the meeting that this wasn't going to be like an "AA" meeting, where you confess your sins, "Hi, I'm Mark and I have a slight weight problem," yes, you have some rah, rah cheerleading stuff going on, but Theresa was more about putting out information and keeping you in line with the program.  I could deal with that and besides it was my little secret for now...I wasn't exactly going to be at the bar telling all my buddies that I just joined WW.

So, there it is...my start.  I think next time around we'll start assigning some blame for my weight gain.  Seriously, did you really think I was going to take responsibilty for my own actions?  Noooo...there are way too many people in my life to fall on that sword.  Til next time.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Battle of Evermore

Seeing how this is my first blog entry it would only seem natural to introduce myself to a potential audience. "Guten Tag, meine Damen und Herren," oops...wrong language...trust me on this, if I'm speaking German, then I'm probably in a pub having a few beers. Let's try this again: "Greetings folks!" and for the "Down East" crowd, "howdy!" I go by a variety of handles so to speak, "Mark," if your just getting to know me, "MR. LAUGISCH"...if I owe you money. I can usually tell on this occasion as the individual is in a quandary as to how to pronounce it. The easiest way is the good 'ole American way, simply pronounced "Log-ish." Now, don't go getting in a tizzy if it some how comes out "Languish" or "Linguini." My personal favorite derivative, whilst playing rugby, was "Lo-gash." On that note I would be quite comfortable if each and everyone of you addressed me as Mark or from the many nicknames that I seem to have collected over the years such as "Blue," "Big Dog," or the endearing "Fat Bastard." I warn you though...should any of you address me as "Marky," I will make it my personal mission to hunt you down and rupture your spleen.

Now that we have gotten the formalities taken care of, how did we get to this point? No, not the point of no return, least wise not yet, but the point where I'm sitting here typing about my weight loss experience? I would be remiss if I didn't provide you at least with a little more background information, but not too much as I plan to interject stories of my life that have either hindered or helped me in this little journey of mine.

To start, I was born in the summer of '63, grew up mostly in the All American city of Fayetteville,NC("Fayettenam" for those that get that) with Mom, Pop, two brothers and a sis, Fred, Hank(Henry) and Laurie. Graduated High School in '81, joined the US Army that Fall, married the "Unsinkable" Claudia in July '89, left the US Army in '92, and spent way too long getting my diploma from NC STATE University in '98. That same year I went to work for the North Carolina Department of Transportation as an Environmental Engineer...took a long Winters nap in 2007 and woke up weighing 280 pounds.


It was in December of that year when my wife and I traveled to Belgium to visit her sister for the holidays. Far and away, one of the best vacations we've ever taken. It culminated in a trip to the Normandy coast to see the WW II Invasion sites. Being a former soldier I was totally blown away by the experience; I highly recommend it if you make your way to France. Needless to say I gorged myself on every imaginable food France, Germany, and Belgium could offer to include those wonderful chocolates and Belgium beer. I enjoyed myself so much, that on our return flight I had to ask the stewardess for an seat belt extender. It was not a very comfortable flight to say the least.

You would have thought that would have been my moment, or my "Epiphany" to do something about my weight. First and foremost, I never thought of myself as overweight...just "husky." I justified the fact that as a rugby player, when I weighed between 230-250 lbs. it was the best I ever played and allowed my body to absorb the blows. I needed the weight to sustain that level of play. It was after my playing days were over that I still felt the need to maintain that weight on the oft chance I might play again...wink, wink.

The "moment" occurred when we got the pictures back from the trip. There was one of me in Nuremberg eating Curry Wurst and drinking a Liter of beer, another of me scarfing down a Belgian Waffle and another where I'm in a French restaurant eating Mussels. I was oblivious to all that until I noticed the pictures of myself standing with my nephews on Omaha Beach. I'm standing there on that particular beach where thousands of Americans died...and I was horribly embarrassed at what I had become. More so from my perspective as I viewed those pictures thinking about the difficulty of that particular day on June 6, 1944, for those Americans who died and struggled to take that beach...I felt as if I had shamed my own legacy as a soldier. I didn't feel fat...I felt GELATINOUS!! It was at that moment that I decided to do something about my problem.