How Superman Saved My Life
I love the summer and everything that goes with summer! But in particular, I love family vacations! Like, I REALLY LOVE family vacations!! I love unplugging from everything and just being able to spend time with Michele and the kids in a location that is different from home!
As a kid growing up in the “thumb” of Michigan, summer vacations with the fam nearly always meant a trip to Cedar Point. Now in my mind Cedar Point was THE STANDARD in not only roller coaster amusement parks, but in overall family vacation destinations! I mean, at Cedar Point there are the very best, highest, fastest, and most exciting roller coasters on the planet! What’s not to love?
We would ride every roller coaster in the entire park and our favorites would get ridden over and over again! We would sprint to the rides that sent you plummeting straight down at what seemed to be a million miles an hour and then swoop up to send you plummeting down the next hill! I loved every second of it! I would laugh my face off and really feel that as a family we were better off, and closer together for the time that we spent there.
“. . . as a family we were better off, and closer together for the time that we spent there.”
For me, summer was synonymous with family, fun, and rollercoasters; and to this day I am convinced that is the reason why I love the summer season as much as I do. So naturally, I wanted to incorporate this into what I would do with my family one day . . . and that’s exactly what I did.
Once our kids started getting to the appropriate “theme-parking; roller coaster-riding” age we immediately started making that a priority for our own family vacations. Seeing that we currently live in Western New York (at least at the time that I wrote this) there is a local theme park called Six Flags Darien Lake that we frequent every summer . . . and it is at this theme park where Superman saved my life.
You see, the very best ride at this particular amusement park is a ride called “The Superman Ride”. It’s name is extremely appropriate as you genuinely feel like you're flying as you speed through the hills, loops, and corners. Anyhow; I am in line with our two older kids waiting for our turn to ride this epic coaster and Michele is waiting for us at the exit with the two younger ones as they still weren’t quite tall enough to ride this one. The longer we wait the more the anticipation builds and the more that amusement park adrenaline is coursing through our veins.
Let me give some more background. At this point in my life I was tipping the scale at around 330 pounds and was what my doctor labeled as “morbidly obese”. This was the peak of me being at my most unhealthy. I had a host of health issues that included pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and, as you can see from the pictures, I was just an overall very large individual.
It finally comes to our turn to ride and the three of us get on. Our two older kids hop in a cart together and I jump into the cart behind them on my own. I go to buckle in prior to taking off and absolute terror washes over me . . . I am completely unable to get the one end of the buckle to reach the other end. No matter how much tugging, struggling, sucking in, or pushing I do this buckle is not gonna latch.
As you might expect, the ride operator walks over and notices the issue. After patiently watching me struggle a bit more, he then politely asks me to exit the ride. In defeated shame I get up, get off the ride, give my kids a quick fake smile, and take the long and lonely walk out the exit. Michele meets me at the end of that disparaging walk and knowing that something was wrong and seeing that I was visibly upset asks me what happened. I then go on to share with her what I just shared with you. And while all her “momma bear” instincts reared up inside her, and all she really wanted to do was beat the snot out of everyone who told me I was too big to ride; she instead calmly looked at me and said, “We’ll figure this out babe. Let’s start looking into what we need to do to get healthy.”
“We’ll figure this out babe. Let’s start looking into what we need to do to get healthy.”
Little did I know that that moment would forever and very drastically change the rest of my life. This ended up being the springboard event that sent me on a journey that would eventually have me take back my life by getting my health under control. That lonely walk towards my wife at the Superman exit gave me a few moments to collect my thoughts and really think, “Wow, how did I get here and what do I have to do to take control back?” And Michele’s response of “we” was what I needed to hear to know that I wasn’t alone in the endeavor.
As I write this I am now 165 pounds; which, if you do the math, means I have also lost about 165 pounds! I am quite literally half the man I used to be! I am leaner, stronger, happier, more confident, and on and on and on!! My pre-diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are all GONE!!
Maybe the MOST ASTOUNDING thing about it all is that I did all this without starting any new crazy fad diet; without acquiring a gym membership; without spending hours every day working out; and without me quitting because I wasn’t able to sustain it all., And while it was definitely hard and there were certainly moments of sacrifice; I was actually able to have some fun doing it. Michele and I were able to find a sustainable way to live healthy that was family friendly.
I had tried what seemed to be around 1,000 different diets, programs, plans, and routines before and had zero success! Why did this one work?? Well, that’s a blog post for another day. But know this for sure: no matter who you are, how old you are, how athletic you are, how much money you have, and how busy you are . . . YOU CAN DO THIS!!! Don’t get me wrong, sacrifice is required; but it’s never too late!
Hard, not complicated!!
