I Lost 86 Pounds and Learned a Few Things
Shutting up and showing up, to name a few
Eighteen months ago, I got an assignment from a magazine editor: Check out those “sitting is the new smoking” articles and see if there’s any truth to them. So I read the studies, interviewed some doctors, and dug into the science. As I read all this material about obesity and sitting and cancer and death, it occurred to me that I weighed 293 pounds, and that my job entailed sitting all day, typing. It “occurred” like a pile of bricks on my chest, in the way that imminent suffocation might. I had to do something.
So I did what I had done several times before. I joined a gym. But this time I asked to hire a personal trainer. When Izzy Barth Fromm sat across from me that first day, she asked what my goals were. When I told her “weight loss” and “to feel better,” she suggested those goals weren’t specific enough. She asked, “What’s a specific thing you want to feel better about?” So I said, “I want to fit into an airplane seat.” I hated airplane seats. I hated spilling over. I hated rubbing elbows with my neighbors, trying to make myself small, clenching. She nodded and we got to work. At first, it was really hard. Later, it was really fun.
I had been morbidly obese since middle school. The first time I felt like I actually fit into an airplane seat was…
