50 Posts Later: The Things I Haven't Said Yet

 Welcome to Post #50.

In the blogging world, fifty posts is a milestone. It’s a modest body of work. If you’ve been reading since the beginning, you now know a lot about how I eat. You know about gluconeogenesis, mitochondrial biogenesis, and my disdain for soybean oil. You know the "what" and the "how" of my Clean Keto lifestyle.

But I realized recently that I haven't spent enough time on the "why."

The truth is, you don't end up weighing over 400 pounds because you simply like the taste of cake. You don't survive five heart attacks and keep struggling with food because you lack information.

To understand why this "reboot" at 53 means everything to me, you have to understand the ghosts I’m leaving behind.

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The Armor

For decades, I didn't just eat food; I ate my feelings.

I carried a deep, simmering anger from my father leaving the family when I was young. I carried the constant, vibrating sense of being an "outsider" that comes with a neurodivergent brain. I carried a heavy, wet blanket of undiagnosed depression that I didn't have a name for.

I didn't know how to process any of that. So, I buried it.

I ate and I smoked with abandon because, frankly, I didn't care about myself. I built a fortress of flesh around me. I rose to over 400 pounds, and I wore it like a shield. I was unapologetic about it. I pretended I was just a "big guy." I made the jokes before anyone else could. It was a performance designed to keep people—and the truth—at a distance.

The False Starts

Then came the first heart attack in my early 40s.

That was the crack in the armor. It was the terrifying realization that I wasn't just "living large"; I was actively committing slow suicide.

So, I tried. God, did I try. I did DASH. I did Mediterranean. I went Paleo. I did Whole 30. I did Atkins. I did so many more.

They all failed.

They failed not because the diets were wrong, but because I was wrong. My brain was still in the grip of the addiction I had put there. Food was my drug, my reward, and my only coping mechanism. Every time life threw stress at me, I folded. The moment things got hard, I sought the dopamine hit of sugar and starch. I was trying to fix a broken engine with a new coat of paint.

The First Ascent (And the Fall)

Eventually, I realized that if I wanted to live, I had to push past my own psychology. I had to brute-force it.

That period was a war of attrition. I remember the pain of trying to do a single crunch. I remember the humiliation and exhaustion of one kilometer walks that I could barely manage. I walked through snow, through freezing rain, and through blisteringly hot summer days.

I became obsessed. I watched the scale every single day, my mood dictating by every tenth of a pound. If it went down, I was okay. If it didn't, I was crushed.

But I pushed. And I pushed. And I lost over 200 pounds.

I thought I had won.

Then came 2020. The pandemic hit. I was trapped alone in my apartment. The store shelves were empty. The silence was deafening. The loneliness broke me.

I started eating poorly. The weight crept back. Then, life became blissful and complicated complicated all at once. I met my future wife and tried to wrap my arms around the grief and sadness that family had experienced. I moved over an hour away and started commuting again for the first time in 10 years. The stress mounted. I gained. I lost. I gained. My heart protested again.

The Reboot

That brings us to this year. To the trauma and grief and stress experienced by those around me. To the end of my marriage. To the restart of my life in Halifax at 53.

This isn't just another diet. This isn't "Attempt #12."

This is a necessity.

I am not doing clean keto and One Meal a Day just to see a number on a scale. I am doing it because I finally understand that I cannot separate my physical health from my mental resilience.

I am doing it to get better—completely, holistically better. I am building a body that is strong enough to carry the weight of life without breaking. I am building a mind that runs on clean fuel so it doesn't succumb to the fog of depression.

I am taking the time to do it right this time. No shortcuts. No "dirty" fixes. No obsessions with the scale, but a dedication to the process.

I am 53. I have a lot of life left to live. And I am making damn sure that no matter what life throws at me next, I will never slide back down that mountain again.

Here’s to the next 50 posts. I'm just getting started.