I didn’t have time to write a short post, so I wrote a long one instead.
The middle part of any trilogy is always the boring story, and the story frequently comes with a sad ending as well. My middle story is no different.
In the classic middle story, the protagonist is subjected to myriad trials and tribulations. The story frequently ends with a cliff hanger leaving the protagonist in peril. There’s never a satisfying conclusion to the middle story.
Thus, I begrudge no one for skipping my middle story and heading to the comments to shit post freely. The comments are yours.
Sad But True
In my younger years, I never really paid attention to my weight. I did not hop on a scale and check my weight regularly. What I did track was my waist. The belt tells you every single day where you are at and where you are headed.
By junior high, I had reached my final height of a towering 5 foot 6. That late-teens/early-twenties growth spurt that my brothers all got somehow evaded me totally. And my waist settled in at a nice round 36 inches. I could generously be described as chunky, but everyone knew, by the very clear standards of the 70s, that I was fat.
I made a concerted effort starting in my sophomore year to lose weight. You hit 16, and new priorities pop up – imagine that. By the end of the summer between the sophomore and junior years, I had managed to get down to a 32-inch waist. I was no longer fat. Of course, I achieved that by riding a bicycle everywhere, being very active (golf in the morning; public pool in the afternoon), and I basically stopped eating. Not exactly a sustainable way of life. And so, by graduation in spring 1975, I was back up to being the fat kid with a 36-inch waist.
Adult life started quickly after graduation. By 1980, I was married with two kids and working as a printer. I had completed a couple of mostly unsuccessful semesters in college – so a degree had become a deferred goal. And in 5 years, I had continued to expand to a 42-inch waist. But at least I was solidly built. I spent 8 to 10 hours a day, five days a week lifting, carrying, and throwing around hundreds of pounds of printer paper. It showed.
Side trip – let me introduce you to Ronald Reagan and Paul Volker:
The Reagan recession refers to the severe economic downturn from July 1981 to November 1982, marked by the highest U.S. unemployment rate since the Great Depression at 10.8% in December 1982. Triggered by Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker’s aggressive interest rate hikes to combat stagflation, the prime rate peaked at 21.5% in June 1981, causing business failures to triple and GDP to contract by 2.2% in 1982.
I became one of those unemployed folks in 1982. Jobs were nowhere to be found, so back to school I went. The wife and I figured out we could double our financial aid if she went to school as well, so she enrolled too. The next three years were all stress and poverty – me in school, the wife in school, the son in school, and the daughter in pre-school (through the U). Needless to say, this did nothing good for my physical well-being. Graduation came in 1985 after college life turned me into a soft marshmallow with a 44-inch waist.
I spent 7 years in Phoenix. During those years, I bounced back and forth between a 44- and 46-inch waist. I was working long hours (50 to 60 hours a week). The wife spent two years finishing her degree, then joined retail management (say good-bye to nights and weekends). The kids went from kids to tweens; then from tweens to teens; and became more troublesome as time advanced. My evenings and weekends would be tied up dealing with the kids’ hobbies and not my own.
We returned to Iowa in 1992. Hard winters, long work hours, and an extensive travel schedule produced a massive expansion in the waistline. I peaked in 1995 at 50 inches and 315 lbs. It was at this time that I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and doctor in charge gave me a vicious brow beating for my weight. I was fitted with a CPAP. And for the first time in years, I could drive into work in the morning without fearing that I would fall asleep on the way into town.
Side trip – cause and effect
So, does obesity cause sleep apnea? Or does sleep apnea cause obesity? Discuss amongst yourselves.
I did actually do something about it this time. The twice daily refills of the 32-ounce, company-approved, non-ESD drinking vessel with unleaded coca cola came to an abrupt end. The boxes of candy from Sam’s club disappeared. And I shed 10% of my body weight in short order getting down the middle 280s. Which is where I spent most of the next 25+ (almost 30) years.
Take the Long Way Home
I estimate that I’ve lost 400, 500, maybe even 600 lbs in the 50 years since high school Unfortunately, the net score is still plus 50 from graduation (although 12 months ago that was +120 lbs). I’ve tried countless diets and weight loss programs in that time. They all work . . . for a while . . . until they don’t anymore. Note, that estimate might look shockingly high, but in reality, that works out to losing 8 to 12 lbs each year, then gaining it back again, then losing it again, and gaining it again, endlessly. Some years you lose more. Some years you don’t try. A continuous cycle of successes and failures.
So, how does a college educated engineer with formal training in risk management fail repeatedly over decades to follow the simple guidance of eat less and move more. That solution is so easy to understand. People have been telling me for years how easy it is – just put down the fork and push back from the table. So simple even a caveman can do it.
And the answer is actually just as simple – compulsion. The completely irrational urge to eat, all the time, even when you’re already full, even when you’re full to the point of discomfort, you get this never-ending need to just eat some more. So then, how do you overcome compulsion. Again, the simple answer is just to get over it – tough it out – stop being such a wussy. Failing that you get to choose between drugs (Big Pharma for the win!) or therapy (Big Psych for the win!).
Side Trip – Insomnia
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder characterized by difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or waking up too early, resulting in daytime impairment such as fatigue, irritability, and poor concentration. It is classified as acute (lasting days or weeks, often triggered by stress) or chronic (occurring at least three nights a week for three months or longer).
At roughly the same time that I was peaking out on the scale and being diagnosed with sleep apnea, I consulted with my doctor about getting help with insomnia. I’ve struggled with insomnia since childhood. On an almost daily basis, I would head to bed and struggle to fall asleep. It could take hours (2-3 hours) to fall asleep on the worst nights.
My little country doctor was more than happy to prescribe meds to help me sleep. Doxepin is an antidepressant that also helps with insomnia. It successfully put me to sleep and then ruined my waking hours. I used it for several years, and eventually decided enough was enough. The emerging World Wide Web gave me loads of useful information that basically explained that behavior modification was the only effective solution to insomnia. Go to bed at the same time every night; get up at the same time every morning; sleep in a cool, absolutely dark room, and turn the fucking digital alarm clock so that you can’t see it when you’re lying in bed. I cannot stress how big of an impact that last instruction had on me.
So, when it finally came time to deal with my yo-yo weight situation, I settled on behavior management for controlling the urges. The first part of that behavior modification was to start “grazing”. Eat 5 times every day on a clear, repeatable schedule. Small meals three times a day and smaller snacks in between. This helps to shrink your stomach because you’re eating less food at any given time. And it helps to keep the howling wolves in the back of your mind at a bay, because you’re always getting close to the next scheduled meal or snack.
When I first started on this path about 15 years ago, I managed to lose about 40 lbs after nine months, then I plateaued. A year later, I was up 10 lbs. And another year later – another 10 lbs. And so on. It took four years, but I eventually got back up to the 280s.
Following a rigid schedule for eating mostly worked. Except anything that took me out of my normal routine would result in rapid weight gain wiping out any successes that I had recently had. A road trip to visit friends over a weekend – dinners together with lots of wine – plus three lbs in a weekend. A weeklong vacation eating in restaurants three times a day – plus 8 to 10 lbs in a week. Four-day joint planning sessions at work with breakfast, lunch, and snacks catered – that’s right – 4 or 5 lbs.
Surrender
You can manage compulsion into a corner and keep it there for long periods of time. But just look away for a moment and compulsion is on the loose again. At some point, you just kind of surrender and decide this is the person you are. And you focus on not letting things get worse.
My prime concern became general fitness, not weight. I joined the gym at work and went three times a week – cardio and strength training. During the summers I would play golf every weekend and walk 18 in the worst conditions that an Iowa summer has to offer. Then I would go home and spend 2 ½ hours mowing the lawn. I was a fat ass, but my heart, lungs, and legs were in pretty good shape.
I discussed fitness with the Doc one visit. I said I was certain that I could pick up his scrawny ass in a fireman’s carry and take him 100 yards out of a burning building to safety. And that’s fit enough for most purposes particularly for a guy with a desk job.
But COVID happened in 2020 and our overlords shut down the world. You stop exercising at 63-64 years old, and things go to shit very, very quickly. I’ve spent the last 4 years trying to regain just part of the conditioning that I had before COVID happened. It’s rough at this age.
Dark Star
The darkest hour comes just before dawn – or some bullshit saying like that.
While I had my struggles, my wife was going through similar problems. Except her family medical history is actually quite worrying – cancer; diabetes; stroke; heart failure, etc. Thus, the doctor has been tracking her situation far more closely than mine for the last two decades.
She was diagnosed as pre-diabetic 15 years ago. She never got worse and crossed over into diabetes, but she never got better either. Two years ago, the Doc decides they need to take some positive action to reverse her situation. He recommends Mounjaro which will correct her diabetes problem with a beneficial side effect of weight loss. She agrees, and so he submits a treatment plan to insurance. They deny the plan immediately – pre-diabetes is not diabetes. The medication is expensive as fuck, and they don’t want pay for it. The doctor waits a couple of days and submits a new treatment plan – Zepbound for chronic morbid obesity. Insurance approves this. So, yes insurance actually cares whether you are getting Zepbound or Mounjaro and will only approve one or the other based on your diagnosis. They are chemically identical, but that doesn’t matter.
She starts on Zepbound and immediately starts losing weight. The next checkup three months later shows all her blood chemistry back into normal, safe ranges. She is no longer pre-diabetic. By the 10-month mark she has dropped more than 50 lbs. And it occurs to me that it would be stupid to not try this medicine out.
About the time that thought crossed my mind, the wife does one of those wife things. We have the daughter and her fiancé over for dinner. After dinner, kinnath is cleaning up and the rest of them talk about family stuff. The fiancé’s father is old and out of shape and morbidly obese. The kids are trying to talk him into trying Wegovey or Zepbound, but he is resisting. This is complicated by the fact that Medicare is not paying for these drugs at this time. Then the wife says to the daughter “I wish I could convince your father to try Zepbound”. First thought through kinnath’s head “hello! I’m in the same fucking room as you!”. Second thought “we haven’t talked about this at all.” Third and final thought “message received”.
Thus endeth part 2.
https://www.glibertarians.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Peak-kinnath-1995.jpg
My waist never got bigger than my chest. But in 1995, it got really close.
My peak measured weight was 360. That was years ago. I’m at 285 give or take depending on water weight for the day.
That’s a big loss. Congrats.
It wasn’t all in one shot, but thanks. It was more than a decade ago that I was at that high number.
kinnath: I emailed you to tell you your piece was scheduled, but my message bounced. Please update your Glibs profile with your preferred email address. Thanks.
will do
First place I gain and last place I lose my weight is just above the belt. I’ve been hanging between 32 and 34 inches the last few years (at 190 to 205 poundwise). Right now, with having semi-regular workouts, the gut is receding (and the 34s are loose but the 32s too tight).
In HS I was certified to wrestle at 138 lbs. Twenty-some years later I was 220. An attack of Type Two soon followed (acute unquenchable thirstiness is no fun). Realizing that food was my enemy, I actually managed to starve myself back down to the 140’s, but over the years the poundage slowly came back. After another weight loss nose-dive I’m now back in the 190’s but have been stable there fore some time (though still having to inject). My biggest problem is overheating during physical activity, I’m not ‘that’ unfit, but my mass-to-surface ratio isn’t what it needs to be.
So, using only myself as an example – I’m a little overweight but not obese (6′, 195#, 36″ waist) and I was diagnosed last year with sleep apnea of the ‘How are you still alive and sane?’ level of severity. Over 120 apnea events per hour. Fortunately, it has been responding very well to BiPAP therapy.
I would say, and I think that my doc would agree, that obesity can be a factor in sleep apnea, and that poor sleep quality can be a factor in obesity. But neither one really tells the whole story.
Your body wants to weigh what it wants to weigh. It sounds stupid but it seems to be true.
I’ve found that if I stop shovelling scads of food down my gob, I don’t weigh as much anymore.
Funny how that works, huh?
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: Humans are terrible at estimating how many calories they consume. If you’re not using a food-tracking logbook, you really don’t have any clue how much you’re eating.
Yep. I just restricted my self quite a bit. When I tracked I was eating enough food for the whole family. I was 240, now approaching 220. Would like to reach 200 but that may take a long time.
I don’t actually try to count the calories. I’m focused on measurable portion sizes and the composition of the food – things I can easily see and control.
Today’s lunch was two sausages which had a (prior to cooking) weight of half a pound combined. This is a full meal now. Used to be I’d keep going back. Now I can go, I think I’ve had enough for today after two meals, and we’re not talking my old meals.
Fat me could eat a whole large pizza. Yesterday I rejected the thought of an eight inch pizza as too carby. I don’t want to risk my numbers. My numbers are good and getting better.
That is part of the retraining. Doing good.
Your body actually does “remember” what weight you were at. Fat cells just shrink, and when you start over eating again that’s the first place it redirects to.
You can reprogram it.
That is my premise in Part 3. And my theory is that Zepbound changes what your body wants to weigh.
It’s all written in my head, I just need to get is down in electrons now.
I look forward to it.
Subsistence evolutionary pressure has conditioned your body to store reserves for the hard times that don’t come.
I’ve found that if I stop shovelling scads of food down my gob, I don’t weigh as much anymore.
The trick is to train your body to stop incessantly calling for more coal for the furnace.
Yup. Step one of that is realizing that just because you’re feeling hungry doesn’t mean you have to eat.
I find that my hunger is downstream of my sedentariness. I can work outside all day and skip meals and hardly notice. I miss my meal time by 30 minutes while I’m at my desk and I feel like garbage.
The good news is that my weight is as low as it has been in a decade plus and I’m reasonably active on the nights and weekends. The bad news is that the weight has plateaued and I’m having a hard time getting all of the good habits going at the same time. I get a grasp on one habit and the other ones start to slip.
So, yes insurance actually cares whether you are getting Zepbound or Mounjaro and will only approve one or the other based on your diagnosis. They are chemically identical, but that doesn’t matter.
Why do I suspect kickbacks are involved?
Because our “insurance” is no longer insurance.
The idea is that the obesity is condition that can be treated. OTH, pre-diabetes is “pre”. It hasn’t actually occurred. Now insurers have been forced to cover a lot preventative care, but they don’t like to do it for expensive treatments like this and will push back tooth and nail.
After you burn out your kidneys and need a transplant or dialysis the insurance WILL cover that. The system is fundamentally broken on so many levels.
In my wife’s case, the insurance refused to approve Mounjaro for treatment of pre-diabetes. But they did cover Zepbound for chronic obesity. And it fixed the pre-diabetes immediately.
My was takes it for weight with the added benefit that it has drastically reduced snoring and sleep apnea.
was = wife!
With Ozempic/Wegovy is actually does matte. Wegovy is approved for higher doses that Ozempic.
With Mounjaro/Zepbound they are both approved at the same doses. This allows people to get approved for diabetes control and then actually focus on weight loss after the diabetes is under control. So, in some ways it doesn’t matter what the insurance thins at this point.
I will note, the Mounjaro is expected to be taken for life. It is not clear that insurance will continue to cover Zepbound after you get to your target weight.
One of my secondary goals is to avoid going on medications. I know they exist, but I so very much don’t want to be dependent on them.
I’m trying to phrase my perspective on degrees of success without sounding like I’m disparaging those who do use medications.
This is a cool series, thanks for posting. We are partnering with a nutrition coach, and he did a presentation this weekend for a few of our members. He knows the macros and the grams and all that, but he spent a lot of time talking psychology, as in how people feel before and after they eat, what kinds of things happened around food in their past, things like that. My wife’s cousin has a lot of success using the Noom app, that is all psychology as well.
As you said, you know what you need to do, you just… don’t. That’s the entire battle.
A lot of my psychology has to do with availability. I do a lot of my editing and control at the grocery store. If I don’t buy it, I can’t eat it. It does mean I have to skip the best bulk deals and meal prep, but buying smaller packages at the butcher’s means I can more readily cook smaller meals.
Ding ding ding!
It’s easier to exercise self-control for an hour a week at the store than 24/7 at home. Don’t bring cookies/chips/candy home, and you won’t eat cookies/chips/candy.
I need to do better with portion control, mainly at dinner. And I need to cut back some on the booze. I’m about 10 pounds over where I would like to be (I’m at 190), and I think that’s all it would take.
The move completely wrecked my habit of daily exercise. Just starting to get back into that. But it never really seemed to affect my weight.
You are welcome.
I hope it provides some value.
My wife’s cousin has a lot of success using the Noom app, that is all psychology as well.
One of my brother’s sons works there. I have no idea what he does. I think he’s on the software side.
I’m impressed by it. He lost 70 pounds in just over a year, and combined with our strength classes he’s now quite a beast. One thing he learned was that he doesn’t like to waste food. So if someone brings in donuts or something to work, he feels compelled to eat whatever is left over.
Time for my lunch walk break.
Back in 45 minutes or so.
3900 steps in 36 minutes. A good pace for today.
Good job! (Nobody hears that enough.)
thanks
Body oddities, continued: “Exploding head syndrome!” It’s a “parasomnia” like sleepwalking and other nighttime weirdness. (Not your morning boner. That’s a different, fun neuro thing, tho.)
Talked to my neurologist about it just a bit ago. Recently, they’ve become more auditory, and loud. I’ve had one flash of light, before. Pinkish. They’d happen maybe every other night, or so, and usually more than one before drifting off. They had been physical ‘shoves,’ like, powerful ones. But never painful or anything resembling such. Like if I were standing up, and I got shoved that hard, I’d have to dance to catch myself, if I could. Usually on my right arm or upper back. No movement associated, just the sensation. I didn’t get pushed out of bed, but it does put off actual sleep. They certainly are interesting, though.
Glad you got this in, Kinnath. I’ve got to keep the dog away cleaners and then Uncle time with the 5yo, who expressed interest in making more paper airplanes. Will have more thoughts later.
To be fair, Evan, didn’t your head explode once already?
He got better!
(Alternatively – they put it back together)
+1 David Cronenberg
Really enjoying these articles, Kinnath – thank you for creating/posting/sharing.
you are welcome
I love the modern economy. Home Depot just delivered at 10 dollar box of screws to the house for no charge.
I loathe Home Depot.
It’s the last place I go for just about anything I need. There’s the quirky local hardware store, then the normal hardware store, and if neither of them has it, I’ll go to Home Depot.
Trapped in Suburbia, IA. You choice are Home Depot and Lowes. Although there is a small Ace Hardware that carries interesting stuff. But they don’t have online inventory of that stuff.
I have Lowes, Home Depot, an Ace in walking distance… I don’t know if the lumber supplier sells hardware, I only ever go there for wood. Walmart might carry screws, but I wouldn’t trust them.
STEVE SMITH HAVE WOOD AND SCREWS. AND HE DELIVER.
I miss the old Home Despot parody site.
For those of you looking to cut the carbs, here’s a good site full of recipes:
https://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/
1/4 cup of lemon zest? how tightly packed?
and fuck zesting citrus. The zester is one of the few kitchen implements that actually injured me.
You obviously should have been wearing your zesting gloves.
UCS, you never disappoint.
*lemon zester gloves*
🍋🧤🔪
CATO suggests him driving a cab in a US metropolitan area should be net benefit to the US.
https://x.com/its_The_Dr/status/2066698800538784129?s=20
I’m convinced if I stopped working a desk job and stopped drinking beer I will get to my target weight in a year with no other action required.
This is true until you hit mid-forties.
Too late.
I got my reset in my early 40s and it stuck.
Retirement has seen a marked improvement in my health, and a substantial reduction in alcohol consumption. I’m pretty sure both are related to the stress I experienced while working.
Terrorist dimed out by his mommy.
Or 4chan troll.