by Trent Rosser
Everyone knows that quite a while ago I quit drinking. As of this August I have not had a drink in 8 years. Now, there is a saying that when you drop one bad habit, you pick up another. My new bad habit; I started to eat. When I decided to change my life around I weighed about 110 pounds soaking wet. I was tall and very skinny. I could literally hide behind a telephone pole. If I was standing next to a telephone pole and I turned sideways, you would not be able to see me. Within a couple of years after I stopped drinking, I gained about 60 pounds. I was looking healthier and was not looking like “death warmed over.”
So now I’m looking better and feeling better so what do I do next? I get married to a wonderful woman. Did I mention that she really knows how to cook? Even when I stopped drinking there were still the nights of living on Ramon noodles and of course… Tuna Gravy! Now when she moved in, we were eating a full meal and it was good! No more hamburger helper, she cooked the real deal. So I became used to her cooking and working less. I stopped changing truck tires and started sitting behind a desk. So naturally I would gain a little bit of weight.
Also, most of you know that I was in the hospital last January. It was very bad and I was informed that I would have to quit smoking. So, I had to quit another bad habit and replace it with something else. Can you guess what I replaced it with…. That’s right, more food. I was snacking on chips and hot sauce, candy, caramel drops and going back for seconds, thirds and finishing off whatever we had for supper. There were no more leftovers, I was taking it all. Did you know that Reese's peanut butter cup ice cream is still good in the winter time? Mix that with a little bit of the caramel hard shell ice cream topping, mmm, that is some good stuff. So naturally I gained a little bit more weight.
Now here is your weekly school lesson. When you age, you lose muscle cells. Now muscle is what burns fat, so in a sense, you get fatter when you age. So, as much as I hate to admit….I am getting older. I look in the mirror and I no longer see the kid that I was. I still believed that I still had the stamina and the energy that I used to, but now I have come to the conclusion that the grey in my beard and the grey in my hair are a sign. I can no longer play as hard and as long as I used to. I am going to bed now at 8 and sometimes 9 at night. Remember when we would stay up all night, paint the town red, get in bed at 4 am and be at work at 8 am. No way can I do that now. I am use to it, and it does not bother me when I go to bed early. The grey does not bother me as much as it used to. But the weight is what is getting me.
I was happy when I weighed myself a few years ago and I weighed at 185. I have no problem with that at all. Now my wife and I went to a health fair a few months back and I was weighed again. This time it was at 203. I was not happy with that at all, and they said that I needed to cut back on the sugar as well. Hmm, little do they know, I do stay away from the sugar. I use sweetener in my tea and get no sugar Kool aid to mix with the water. That’s when I’m out of Dr. Pepper. I have never weighed over 200 pounds. I get plenty of exercising while chasing Hunter the dog. So I know for a fact that their scale was off. There is no way I could weigh that much.
Now I did mention that my wife cooks some of the best meals I have ever eaten. But there is something that I need to tell her and I do not want to hurt her feelings. She can cook really well, but she keeps shrinking my clothes when she does the laundry, I have never had all these clothes shrink so much. I cannot put on a couple of pants because they have shrunk so much. Plus to top it off, I was sitting in my chair at work, and for some unknown reason, it broke. I almost spilled my chips that I was eating. They have to get a new chair for me. It was embarrassing trying to explain that the chair was old and not in good condition. So for the meantime, I will keep eating my wife’s good meals. I will try to cut back on some of the chocolate and ice cream, and especially the sour candy. And I will keep trying to let my wife down easy that she is shrinking my clothes. I hope she doesn’t get too upset! Wish me luck. Oh wait… I smell cake!
