Stay scared and ashamed, and watch the pounds fly off!

I just figured out how to make a major life change: Get really scared.

For years, I’d been meaning to lose weight but lacked motivation. Every time I had a routine physical, my doctor would remind me that the maximum normal weight for somebody my height was 188 pounds. That meant I was about 15 pounds overweight.

More to the point, my glucose levels were higher than they should have been, putting me at risk for Type 2 diabetes. I needed to cut out the carbohydrates and sweets.

Every time, I’d tell my doctor I was going to change my eating habits, lose weight and lower my blood sugar to a normal level.

But then I’d leave his office and go to lunch, where I’d be forced to decide between fried chicken and baked chicken, and between French fries and steamed broccoli.

That’s when I’d notice all the food around me that I wasn’t supposed to eat, and all the people eating it. And that’s when I started wondering how many Americans weighed what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended they should. Four?

I’ll take the fried chicken and French fries, please.

Plus, whenever somebody would offer me a jelly donut and I’d resist, they’d tell me I was skinny and that I should shut up and eat the donut.

I was not skinny. According to the CDC, I was overweight. But who isn’t overweight, right? For an overweight person, I guess I was kind of skinny!

So I’d eat the jelly donut. And the chocolate frosted one. And maybe just a plain glazed.

There was one person who wasn’t telling me I was skinny: Bess. In fact, she actually told me she needed me to stay alive at least until we got all our children through college. That’s seven years, if our kids stayed on track and the general populace kept buying lottery tickets in Georgia.

(For the record, she did say she hoped I would be around for much longer than that.)

In March, when I had another physical, I figured my doctor would give me the usual scolding. I was wrong.

He said I was now more than 25 pounds overweight, and my blood sugar was off the charts. I was awfully close to having Type 2 diabetes.

He said he was scheduling another appointment in three months and that if my glucose levels weren’t dramatically lower by then he’d be putting me on medication.

“Can I have six months?” I asked.

He sighed. “If I give you six months, you’ll wait three months to start making changes.”

“You have a point,” I said.

“See you in three months,” he said.

When I left his office, I did not go out and eat fried chicken and French fries. I was too scared – and frankly, ashamed.

Many people are stricken with disease by no fault of their own. But I was facing disease – and putting the future of my family at risk – simply because I liked eating food that was bad for me and I was too undisciplined and impulsive to stop.

How stupid was that?

I told Bess I needed her help. She helped me map out a low-carb diet and made a list of everything I could and couldn’t eat, as well as a fairly rigorous exercise plan.

I’ve tried diets and regimens before, but the difference was that this time I was afraid.

So for these past three months, I’ve stuck to it. And on Thursday, I went back to the doctor, who told me I’d lost 24 pounds and now had normal blood sugar.

And that I needed to keep doing whatever I was doing.

In other words, stay scared.

This story was originally published June 9, 2017 at 6:39 PM with the headline "Stay scared and ashamed, and watch the pounds fly off!."