Sunday, July 20, 2008

4) Take My Picture

Has anyone ever made a comment to you, that at the time didn't really make sense, but years later actually did make sense? For me, it was about 10 years ago and it came from a guy named Fred that ran a printing office in the same building that I worked. Fred was one of those people that I never quite figured out whether he was a genius or one step away from being committed. The saying "Genius is more often found in a cracked pot than in a whole one" pretty much sums up the situation.

I don't really remember the reason for my visit to his office that day, but since he did some printing of business cards and company stationery for us, I will assume this was the reason for my visit. I'm also not sure how we got off on the topic of weight, but like most conversations with Fred, they usually went off in tangents that had little to do with printing within 30 seconds or so. And while I don't recall the specific conversation, I do specifically remember the exact look on his face and location in his office when he said "You really don't know that you're fat do you?".

At the time I was ~270 pounds and thought it was one of the most bizarre things anyone had ever said to me. Of course I knew that I was fat! A look at the weight on the bathroom scale confirmed that to me, although that was mainly due to the weight of the clothes I was wearing and that I had just eaten a meal 12 hours earlier. Clothes constantly seemed smaller, but that was also due to the dryer shrinking them.
Sure, new clothes sizes were constantly increasing, but I was pretty much convinced that that was due to a worldwide pact between clothing manufacturers to decrease the "size scale" (ie XL is now L, XXL is now XL, etc). The seats at Fenway Park, the movie theaters, airplanes, etc were starting to become tighter, although they were always on the small side anyway. Most importantly, I could see myself in the bathroom mirror and saw that I had gained a little weight, maybe. I left Fred's office convinced that he was far from a genius and decided to keep future conversations limited to a simple "Hello" and "Have a nice day".

For those of you that are not aware, my "journey to the Boston Marathon" is being documented on film by a young film maker named Christian (Chris) Torres. And while I have no expectations of anything big coming from it other than a DVD that I can show my friends and family after this is over, I will do whatever I can to help out the director with this project and hopefully help it to become a success for him and his career.

One of his requests was for me to put together some pictures throughout my life that he could reference in the movie. Fortunately I had scanned in some old pictures while making a video for my father's 80 birthday two years earlier so that helped save some time. In addition, with the convenience of digital pictures, I had quite a few pictures from the last five years. It was at that point that I stumbled across a couple of interesting things.

My first observation was that I really don't have a lot of pictures of just myself. I suppose that kind of makes sense as I have been an amateur photographer since the time I was around 15 and because of that I prefer to be behind the lens versus in front of it. That said, as I went through the pictures, I realized how much I really didn't like pictures of myself. Thinking back, I really don't ever recall asking someone to "Take my picture", with me being the only one in the picture because deep down I knew that I probably wouldn't like the pictures once I saw them. For the vast majority of the ones taken just of me that I had available, they were taken by other people and sent to me. Of those, most were thrown in the trash since I was the only one in the picture and invariably it was a "bad shot". I didn't need those pictures anyway, because in my mind I "knew" what I really looked like and it was nothing like the way I appeared in those pictures! That statement may confuse a a lot of people but others know exactly what I am talking about...

The second observation that I discovered was almost by accident. As I collected the pictures and saved them in a folder on my computer, I decided to rename each picture by listing my age as the file name. That way when Chris went through the pictures, he could find one of me at age 1 or find one of me at age 41 if he needed one. After renaming all of the pictures, I then sorted them in order of age, and like a slideshow, watched myself as I grew older. As I clicked through each picture, I was struck by what was happening to me on the screen. As the pictures played one after another, my weight, like my age, continued to get higher and higher almost like a perfect graph. And as strange as it sounds, I realized that Fred was right, and probably for the first time in my life at age 47, I realized just how "fat" I was. Congratulations Fred, you were right.

I should probably end the story there but there is one last chapter. A couple of days after I was putting these pictures in order I had my monthly "weigh in" on the 7th of the month. Although I had weighed myself a couple of times between June 7th (the official starting date of this project) and July 7th, I really didn't know where I would come in on the scale. I have been sticking to my exercise routine and diet almost to a fault but still had no idea where I stood, hoping that I had lost at least 16 pounds to get me below 260. So on July 7th with Mary by my side, I stepped on the scale after my 3 mile walk/run and was very happy to see that I had lost 22.1 pounds! I proved to myself that even though I was 47 years old and never paid attention to diet and exercise, that through hard work and perseverance, I could lose weight and change myself for the better. As I added the new picture of me at 254.6 pounds to the folder for Chris the director, a song by the group Filter "Take A Picture" was playing in the background. To make a long story short, I ended up making a quick "video" out of the pictures and using the song. BTW, I chose the picture of me in the white shirt to end the "slideshow" because it marked the heaviest I ever was at 318 pounds. When I first saw the picture I didn't even recognize myself...but I have no doubt that Fred would have.

Below is the video that I have uploaded to YouTube. In the event that the video doesn't connect, you can download a higher resolution of it HERE

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Roger-

I am loving your blog! I am on a similar journey right now and I'm getting so much inspiration from your posts. I'm doing the 24 Hour Fitness/BodyBugg(as seen on Biggest Loser) routine and getting good results. Your totals for the first month are truly awesome! I bet Mary is super proud of you. Keep the posts coming. Thank you, Charlotte(Suzie's Sister)

Mike Willis said...

Thanks for your honesty regarding denial.

For the first time, I'm on a path of a lifestyle change not a diet. You obviously know what I'm talking about.