Читать книгу The Spirit Told Me What the Doctors Couldn't - Jody L. Williams - Страница 4

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” —Jeremiah 29:11-13

My story officially begins in 1997, although my wife and I recently discovered it may have been a year earlier. We were looking back at photos from our wedding in 1996, and we noticed that I was showing signs even then. Prior to that time, I had always been fairly athletic and maintained my weight around 175-180. I enjoyed lifting weights and was in good shape. But then my life began to change.

I was a graduate student at Virginia Tech in 1997, earning my Master of Business Administration Degree (MBA) with a concentration in finance when I first noticed something was off. Prior to starting my MBA studies, I had been working in the banking industry as a commercial banker when my company, Signet Bank, was purchased by First Union. As a result of the merger, most of the loan officers of Signet Bank in the rural areas of Virginia were laid off. I took my severance package, put that toward tuition and my wife and I moved to Christiansburg, Virginia. We settled into a routine of me taking classes during the day and studying at night while she taught first and second grade for Montgomery County Schools.

I had always been physically active, mountain biking and hiking, and I enjoyed officiating youth sports for baseball, basketball and football. However, without any warning, something dramatic changed in my body. It happened all of a sudden, not a slow gradual change that goes undetected. I started gaining weight really fast, a pound or two a day. I had not changed anything in my diet. I was still walking all over campus and officiating sports, but nothing could slow the weight gain. My clothes stopped fitting, I started having trouble walking and had to stop officiating basketball because I could no longer run up and down the court. I had headaches, muscle aches, and problems sleeping, plus I developed stretch marks on my stomach. After six months, I had gained ninety pounds and now weighed 265 pounds.

My wife complained that I started to snore. At first, it was only annoying, but as the weight continued to pile on, the snoring became louder and louder. It reached a point that she could no longer sleep in the same room as me. In fact, she would leave the room after I fell asleep, close the door to our bedroom and go to the opposite side of the house to try to sleep, but she could still hear me snoring.

Concerned about my unexplained weight gain and the snoring issue, I visited one of the campus doctors. I told him about the rapid, unexplained weight gain, my trouble walking, my inability to continue officiating and other symptoms. His diagnosis was that I had just hit the age when the body stops working as efficiently and that I was eating too much and not exercising enough. He prescribed lower calories and time at the gym. I told him that I really believed something was wrong. I wasn’t eating that much and I was pretty active, walking everyday to and from classes, and walking to the bus stop. I was walking at least three to four miles a day. I showed him my stretch marked sides and he said that I had gained weight so fast that my skin couldn’t keep up.

He said, “Son, it is a simple formula. What you take in, less what you use up. If you take in too much, you gain weight; if you take in less, you lose. You need to stop lying to yourself, it’s time to get disciplined, start watching what you eat and do more exercise. You’re not a kid anymore.”

Still not satisfied, I asked him how many calories a day a person would have to eat in order to gain ninety pounds in six months. Wouldn’t that have to be something like five thousand to six thousand calories a day?

He simply said, “I don’t know, but you must have done it.”

I didn’t really think it was possible for me to eat enough to gain ninety pounds that quickly, but that was the doctor’s diagnosis and he was the expert, so he must be right. But it didn’t make sense to me. I didn’t think I was eating too much and I was exercising more than most people I knew, I guess I must need to work harder. So I did. I started to walk even more. I would not go to the student lounge between classes, but would walk the campus until my next class. I really started to watch what I ate. My wife and I tried the Atkins diet and I lost some weight at first, but then things stabilized and the weight came back, plus more.

By the time graduation day arrived, I was up to between 275 and 285. I’m not sure the exact weight because I was too ashamed to weigh myself. Looking back at pictures taken that day, I remember being so large I barely found a shirt with a collar big enough to button so I could wear a tie. My neck size was more than 22 inches. My face was always bright red; people asked me if I had been out in the sun because it looked like I was sunburnt. My sides looked like I had been whipped because of the purple stretch marks and I was snoring so loudly my wife couldn’t even sleep in the same room as me.