On November 1, 2011, as my mother-in-law was undergoing a surgical procedure to repair the arteries that transport blood to the brain, I spent the day working, smoking cigarettes, and probably overeating...since I weighed around 260-ish at the time, it was certainly probable that I was overeating. Although my mother-in-law had suffered through a series of minor strokes a year earlier, and although she had had a similar surgical procedure at that time, I still hadn't seen the "light" and didn't feel a pressing need to change my condition. Oh, I thought about quitting smoking, and I thought about losing weight. But I hadn't done either. Yes, maybe I lost a few pounds here and there, or maybe I had cut back to ten cigarettes a day from fifteen or twenty; but those changes were short-lived and not at all reflective of a genuine effort on my part.
But all of that was about to change.
My wife, Michelle, texted me that the surgery had taken much longer than anticipated and that the doctor looked exhausted when he came out to speak with them. At the end of it all, my mother-in-law suffered a massive stroke while undergoing the surgery, and her life was about to look completely different than it had just a day earlier. She lost her ability to walk, to speak, to use her left arm, to eat, and to take care of herself...and at 75 years old, she was now about to take on some very difficult physical therapy, which she still has to take on to this very day.
As Michelle was listing to me the outcomes, she also shared with me that the sign in the hospital elevator indicated one of the leading causes of strokes was cigarette smoking...and it was at that moment that the proverbial "light" went off and I knew that it was time to get my life and my health back on the right track. It was at that moment that I realized that my weight and my smoking was leading me down a path of heart attacks, strokes, and lung disease. It was at that moment that - with all due credit to Stephen King, Morgan Freeman, and the script writers of Shawshank Redemption - I knew it was time to make the choice to "get busy living...or get busy dying."
Fortunately, I chose the former, and on that day I picked November 11, 2011 (11-11-11 sounded easy to remember) as the day to quit smoking. So for the next week I mentally prepared myself for the date, I purchased Step 1 of the nicotine patches, and I kept reminding myself that it was time to change my life.
So on November 10, 2011, I sat on my back porch and smoked what is still the last cigarette I've ever smoked (smoking dreams don't count, right?); and the next morning, I jumped on Facebook and announced to 200 friends old and new that I had quit smoking and needed the assurance and support from both my ex-smoker friends, as well as my "never smoked" friends...my "still smoking" friends stayed silent (as I would have a couple of weeks earlier). The good news was that I received overwhelming support from all of them...and that was so needed.
Another key element to letting everybody know, though, was that I forced myself to be accountable to a group of friends and family. I opened myself up to the "are you still not smoking?" question, and hindsight tells me that being open and honest (with everyone) about quitting is one of the reasons why I was able to get through the toughest smokeless days. Telling people I had fallen off the non-smoking wagon just seemed more painful than the moments of craving nicotine.
Over the next couple of months - very tough months, by the way - I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted to eat (couldn't get too health crazy all at once), but I had it in the back of my mind that I was going to undertake weight loss after the "give me a cigarette!!!" moments subsided.
Well, on January 7, 2012, weighing in at 275.6 pounds, I decided that the cravings had subsided and the time was right to start the South Beach Diet for a second go round, as it had been the most successful weight loss plan I had experienced in my decade and a half of obesity...but this is already a fairly long post, so let's get into the weight loss next time.
Until then, enjoy your journey...
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