Battle of the Bulge, Part One. Where it All Began...

For nearly all of my life, I have battled with my weight.  While I've never been morbidly obese, by BMI definitions, I am indeed obese, and have been that way thorough most of my 20s, and all of my 30s and 40s.  

But it started well before then.  As a kid, while I wouldn't define myself as a fat kid per se, I was always on the larger side.  It was made manifest in 6th grade football, where I was deemed too heavy to carry the football as a fullback, and the coach at the time suggested I go on a diet.

So I did.  A diet for an 11 year old.  And the conversations over my spartan brown-bag lunch by my peers, just starting their cruel adolescent years, injured me with scars I carry to this day.

And it also initiated what has become a lifetime of fits and starts as it comes to dieting.

Diets through high school, college, adulthood.  Famines and fads like Cambridge, Vegetarian, Cave Man, Nutra-System, Atkins, and at least a half-dozen others.  Each successful, but none sustainable.  Hence, the net results were always fleeting.

Ah, yes, the inevitable failure.  And with it comes the loathing; for cameras, mirrors, my clothes, and myself.  Always for myself.

I title this segment the Battle of the Bulge, but given how long it has raged, and the costs associated, the title is understated.  This is a war, and one in which I've been losing far more than winning.

But the war rages, unabated.  And I continue to try and put up a fight.