The Pandemic Might Have Saved My Life

Ok, that might be a little bit of exaggeration....but let me explain.

I struggled with when I should write this, or even if I should write this. Thousands of people have died, millions have lost jobs, felt isolated and cut off from the people and things they love....and here I am thinking this might be the best thing that could've happened to me. I acknowledge that my privilege has made this incredibly easy on me, and it's not something I take for granted, I promise you.

Those feelings of depression and isolation are not absent in this house, mind you. Our kids are handling it as well as can be expected, but they've had to sacrifice so much more than I have to keep the community safe.

The list of things my kids have sacrificed:

• Jonah missed his state basketball tournament
• Jocelyn missed her dance recital
• Jonah missed his first middle school track season
• Jocelyn missed out on several field trips at school she was looking forward to
• Outdoor school was cancelled for Jonah
• They both missed their spring soccer seasons
• They've had summer camps cancelled
• Sleepovers have not happened. It wasn't until recently that we have softened our stance and let them see friends for outdoor playdates. 

The list of things I have sacrificed:

• Commuting to work
• A summer vacation (we had designs early on of going to Spain, but that probably wasn't going to happen even before COVID hit, so in all likelihood I just gave up a train trip to Wisconsin to see my in-laws, who are wonderful people, mind you. But honestly, how many of you out there see "train trip to Wisconsin to see the in-laws" and think "Andy, you lucky son of a bitch?")
• Watching my kids do all of the above stuff (minus the sleepovers....kind of glad those have been put on hiatus). 

That's it. The biggest thing I've sacrificed is watching my kids do things. I feel a little guilty about how little this has affected me, when so many are dealing with so much more. 

"But Andy," you're probably saying right now, "how does any of this tie into the ridiculous title of this blog post?" Good question.

So far I've lost 30 pounds since the shutdown began, and it's embarrassing how easy it's been. I don't say this to minimize the struggles of weight loss, because for normal people, it's hard to lose 30 pounds.....really hard. For me, it's because of one simple reason.

I work from home now.

It took a global pandemic for me to make necessary changes in my life. How pathetic is that? 

Since high school, I've just steadily gained weight. Somewhere, there's a picture of 15 year old me with glasses on and a hat that's slightly too big for my head. It looks like I just finished my 4,000th round of chemotherapy. My skin is so pale, I look like a member of the Cullen family of Forks, Washington on a cloudy day. Then I turned 16 and got a car. Now I could drive places to get food. 

When I was 17, McDonalds had a little promotion called Monopoly. Wikipedia tells me they started the promo in the 1980s, but it was HUGE in 1996. I'd go every chance I got, and of course I'd get the supersized double quarter pound meal to maximize my chances of winning. All I won was more food. Fortunately for me, when you're 17 it doesn't really matter what you eat. I remember eating a DQP meal one day at lunch, driving back to school, realizing we were running a timed mile in PE, and going out and running a 6 minute mile less than an hour later. 

When I went to college, I suddenly had multiple fast food restaurants within walking distance of my dorm, and a student ID card loaded with money. I was a forestry major when I started, and that first semester, I had a day or two a week where we were out in the woods all afternoon, usually in the rain, looking at trees. Being the dork that I was, the only rain gear I had was bright yellow and made me look like I belonged on a box of Gorton's fish sticks. I hated it. We'd get back from the arboretum around 5, I'd be starving, and I'd have to walk a mile across campus from Peavy Hall to Wilson Hall (again in the rain) to get to my dorm. Halfway between Peavy and Wilson is the Memorial Union, and I would stop there, wait in line in my fish stick outfit, and get a Double Whopper meal at Burger King. Even on days I didn't go out in the woods, I was still making that walk past the MU and still stopping at BK. I think I ran out of money on my ID card with almost a month to go in the semester, so I lived on cereal and ramen for a month. After that, I didn't do a better job of budgeting my money, I just asked my parents to load more onto my account. 

This was the beginning of a 20 plus year love affair with fast food. Fast forward to 2019, and I'm going to Buffalo Wild Wings once a week for lunch with a co-worker. On the days I'm not doing that, I'm walking or driving the half mile to the shopping center where there's a Burger King, Subway, and a Safeway with a killer deal on fried chicken and jojos for lunch most other days. I just can't stop eating crap.

Exercise, of course, became the enemy. Anything more than a walk hurt my body and I'd get winded rather quickly. I had trouble sleeping sometimes because I just didn't feel good. I've known I needed to make changes, and I've tried several times over the years, but none of it ever stuck or worked very long....the notable exception being the year I was roped into running Hood to Coast with my family and I was so scared of not being able to complete my legs that I forced myself to run pretty much every day for six months to prepare. I lost some weight and did just fine in the race, but as soon as it was over I felt like I never wanted to run ever again.

Then the pandemic hit. All of a sudden, my access to fast food was severed. I simply didn't leave the house and ate what we had here. Within three weeks, I had lost 12 pounds without doing really anything. Then I started jogging in the evenings. I'd always go about three miles, but usually walking the last two. Before long, I was making it the full three miles without stopping. While the weight loss hasn't been as drastic, it's been steady, and this morning, I weighed myself and I was down a full 30 pounds, from 258 to 228. I need to drop just a few more pounds to get my BMI out of the "obese" category, and let me tell you something....having that Wii Fit Board not say in it's chipper voice "that's obese!" every time I weigh myself is going to be the greatest thing ever.

I feel better. I'm not going to sit here and tell you I have boundless energy, and my skin is now perfect and my hair has gone from white to sandy brown or that I'm able to run marathons and bench press my car. It's not like that at all. But I sleep better. Laying in bed staring at the ceiling until 2 or 3 in the morning doesn't happen much these last few months. I've had more dreams in the past four months than probably in the previous ten years that I can remember - last night I was playing soccer with Alex Morgan in her twin sister Alice Morgan, who doesn't exist (I googled it. She has two sisters, Jeni and Jeri. They aren't twins.) There have been times over the past several years where I've had this dull pain in my left shoulder and chest area that I wondered if it was from sleeping on my side or if I was having a heart attack. I don't have that anymore, or at least it hasn't happened since February which seems like a longer than normal stretch between "episodes."

My phone tracks my steps and my miles traveled a day. I'm pretty sure the mileage is overstated, but the steps seem fairly accurate. My step count this year has gone from 7,209 per day in January to 14,330 in June. A lot of that is because I have time. I can go for a walk or a jog in the morning before work without waking up at 5:00 am because there's no commute anymore. If I don't shower until noon, nobody cares. I can walk after work because there's no sports to get my kids to.

But all the exercise in the world wasn't going to make up for the way I was eating. I used my credit card at Burger King AND McDonalds on March 13th. I don't remember what I got or why, but the fact that hitting up two fast food restaurants in a day wasn't significant enough for me to remember should tell you all you need to know. 

So do I want this pandemic to end? Absolutely. This isn't about me. I want things to go back to as normal as possible. I want my kids to go to school in September. Our office has stated that people can continue to work from home until October 1st, but I'm planning on asking if I can make this permanent, and pointing to my health improvements as a reason why I should be allowed to continue to do so. I'm fortunate enough to work for an organization that I think will at least consider it, given my productivity level hasn't decreased.

But think about this: It took a worldwide pandemic that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people for me to get serious about my eating habits.