On my wedding day 33 years ago I weighed 148 pounds and stood an inch shy of six feet tall. I wasn’t merely skinny, I was gaunt, despite gobbling up huge amounts of nutritionally horrible and calorie-laden junk food virtually every meal of every day.

I remember eating large subway-style sandwiches with Italian meats and cheeses, plus barbecue potato chips, and washing it all down with a large root beer twice per day for weeks on end.

I did add a little variety to the third meal of each day. It was usually colorful and involved dairy products.

Yup, my third meal was usually a heavily-sugared and artificially colored kid’s breakfast cereal.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I worked at a donut shop where I could have all the donuts I could eat for free. I’m surprised they were able to stay in business as I was eating their profits at a pretty fast clip. (Of course, I eventually got sick of them. To this day I’m not real fond of donuts, or even their smell.)

Yeah, I know, I was a poster boy for what NOT to do nutritionally, and on many other subjects for that matter.

I could write a book about what one shouldn’t do in life, and list all the things I did wrong that seemed so right at the time. Then on the last page of the book I could strongly urge readers to just do the opposite of what I’ve done.

Good luck to the poor person who begins reading but never finishes THAT book, and then tries using it as a road map for how to live their life!

Anyway, back to my story. No matter what I ate or how many calories it contained I never gained even one measly much-needed pound. Not even an ounce.

Then I got married. To say that marriage brings on many changes is about as much of an understatement as saying that having a baby might involve an occasional loss of sleep or a slight life-style change.

My beloved wife cooked healthy and tasty meals. That was wonderful! A smart man would have just stuck with those meals.

I, naturally, took a different approach. I ate all those good meals and “augmented” them with the junk food to which I’d become addicted.

That combination caused me to gain weight. YAY! I gained 25 pounds and for the first time in my life I felt good about how much I weighed and felt I finally looked “normal”. 173 pounds was perfect!

I was ecstatic! That lasted about 30 seconds, as I blew right on by perfection, past pudgy, and solidly into “Oh my gosh, how in the world did I get here?” territory.

I’d gained 48 pounds. In SIX months. I gained weight so fast that I ended up with stretch marks that I still have 33 years later.

And I’ve been fighting the battle of the bulge ever since.

So, this is a cautionary tale. If you are young and single, and eat a LOT of junk food, and if you have the chance to marry someone who is a good cook, be sure to think through ALL of the ramifications first!
;-D!