Wellness Beyond Weight Loss

By Christopher Everette Howard

Wellness is more than mere numbers on a scale. Embark on a transformative journey towards sustainable weight loss as you explore a holistic approach to wellness and exercise. In this enlightening guide, you will discover the profound synergies between mental, emotional, and physical health while mapping a personal path to a more fulfilling and balanced life.

With practical insights, motivational tips, expert advice, and examples from the author's personal journey, Wellness Beyond Weight Loss will prove to be your must-have companion in creating lasting change and a healthier, happier you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CHF Books
• Release date: Jun 18, 2024
• ISBN: 9798989916214

Book preview

Preface

I began writing a health and wellness book as a way to capture my thoughts on weight management. Any journey or quest to improve one’s physical fitness or physical appearance starts with a self-examination. This might happen after a yearly physical or by mustering up enough courage to step on a bathroom scale or by trying on a favorite clothing item after not doing so for quite some time.

For me, it happened during the holiday season in 2000. Friends and family were gathered at our home for dinner one evening, and prior to eating all of the season’s customary delectable selections, we had come together in the kitchen to hold hands and say grace. As a family member was saying the prayer, I opened my eyes and I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the kitchen window.

What I saw gave me a jolt. I had packed on so much weight that what I now witnessed in the mirror of the window was a 32-year-old man with a big belly and male breasts. That image still remains fresh in my mind, serving as a reminder of how complacent eating and lack of physical activity can lead to unsightly and unwanted outcomes. And these are just the outward signs of what is happening on the inside.

In our daily lives we don’t see what hyper-nutrition, malnutrition, and sedentary lifestyles are doing to our bodies and the intricate system of life-supporting processes that are constantly working to keep us alive. Unfortunately, it’s usually a negative health diagnosis that grabs our attention and thrusts us into being more attentive to what we are doing and how we are taking care of ourselves. On that fateful day in December of 2000, filled with embarrassment and shame, I had no idea that a miraculous, wonderful, exciting new direction for the rest of my life had begun.

What do you do after a moment like this? I can remember saying to myself that I was going to enjoy the rest of the holiday season and that afterwards I was going to get serious about losing some weight. But when does the holiday season end? Is it not true that we can always find an occasion to eat, drink, and be merry?

For me, the end of the holiday season was going to be February 1st, 2001. My younger daughter’s birthday was in late January, and we had to maintain our biannual tradition of sticking our fingers in each other’s birthday cake before diving in for a piece (or pieces). I chuckle now as I write these words and recognize that I was just making excuses as a way to hold onto patterns of destructive behavior that were comfortable and familiar to me.

I had been going to the gym for as long as I could remember with the mindset that I could eat and drink anything I wanted because I was working out. I can remember finally mustering up the courage to step on the scale at the gym and actually laughing out loud when I saw the number 289 glaring back at me—just eleven pounds away from 300! I decided in that moment I was not going to get to 300 pounds. I was ready to start my physical transformation in earnest.

In today’s fast-paced world, where societal emphasis on physical appearance and the pursuit of a particular number on the scale has reached an all-time high, it is essential to pause and reflect. Undoubtedly, weight loss was my impetus for getting started with my wellness programming, but my continued motive force has changed and revolves instead around my desire to live an abundantly healthy and vigorous life.

However, I cannot complete another sentence without asserting that my physical transformation could not and would not have taken place without an underlying spiritual transformation, through an awakening and acknowledgement of God’s presence in and through the infinitesimal details of my life. In fact, only because of His grace am I able to do anything. I lean now and forever on His love and mercy as I press forward and complete this memoir in hopes that it can be of some help to others. This journey of writing will be cathartic for me and I hope it will also serve as a blessing to others.

For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.¹

I chose this passage from the Holy Bible as a North Star for the rest of this book. It is one of my favorite passages and holds a great deal of spiritual meaning for me. During my time back at school, these verses seemed to create a positive feedback loop, replaying constantly in my head, whether in a chemistry class, biology, or anatomy course.

For instance, did you know that our DNA is so tightly wound within each cell of our body that if you were to unravel it, it would be capable of extending from the Earth’s surface to the sun and back approximately six hundred times? By the way, the sun is some ninety-three million miles from the earth. So when the above verse says you knit me together in my mother’s womb, I think about the double helix characteristics of the DNA molecule as well as the scientist Rosalind Franklin, whose crystallography helped Francis Crick and James Watson describe this critical feature of the DNA molecule.

Me (left) with Kurt Wilson at Allegheny Ludlum’s Grinder Department Christmas Party in December 2000.

The tree is a representation of life…Power. Structure. Development. Response. The branches respond to light. Light is a metaphor for knowledge. If a branch is not getting enough light it will bend and twist and do whatever it has to do to get light. And, people should do the same thing but they often don’t.

—Muhammad Abdul Aziz

1. Ps. 139:13–16 NIV

Introduction

Fat Kid Loves Cake

We only humans girl, we make mistakes

To make it up I do whatever it take

I love you like a fat kid loves cake

You know my style, I say anything to make you smile.

—50 Cent, 21 Questions

Before we take our first breath, our organs have already begun performing the functions they will carry out for the rest of our lives. We possess a brain capable of storing more than a million gigabytes of data, a pair of eyes able to distinguish between more than one million colors, and enough blood vessels to circle the Earth’s equator four times. ¹ When I think of just a few of these miraculous feats our bodies are capable of, I cannot help but think of how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

I would love to tell you that I have always been health-conscious, watched what I’ve eaten, and been in great physical condition, but it wouldn’t be the truth.

The picture you see on the cover of this book was my fifth grade picture at North Vandergrift Elementary School, taken in 1978. The t-shirt I have on was purchased at the University of Pittsburgh’s student union by my aunt Jackie, who was a graduating senior. You can barely make out the Pitt logo and it foreshadowed my destiny of some thirty years later, when I became a graduate of the university as well.

But that’s not the entire story behind that photograph. I remember getting dressed that morning and not liking how the t-shirt was fitting me. It is obvious from the picture that I was a little chunky for my age, or should I say, husky. After all, I can remember my mother buying my school clothes in the husky section at Sears or K-Mart or Hills.

On that particular day, I did not like how my chest was starting to bud, like I was developing boobs. I decided to put on the brown t-shirt you can clearly see underneath the Pitt shirt. I vividly remember tucking the brown t-shirt into my underwear and pulling it as tight as possible to create a smooth appearance for my chest. I have never shared that story with anyone until this very moment, yet it stayed with me, an indelible impression affecting my self-image.

You see, some things follow us, whether consciously or subconsciously, for an entire lifetime. We can get saddled with memories tangled with judgment or shame that sometimes are more detrimental than the original event or experience, such as the development of adolescent body fat. Nevertheless, whether helpful or debilitating, such memories can shape our sense of who we are and who we think we can be, putting in place fears, likes, dislikes, and good and bad habits. To this day, I somewhat jokingly say that I despise the word husky, as it still reminds me of my fifth grade picture day and shopping for clothes in the husky section of defunct retailers.

Intended Audiences

I designed this book with many audiences in mind. At the beginning of each chapter, I start with inspiring quotes, lyrics to songs, scientific data, or words that convey my mood at the time of writing. These chapter lead-ins are designed to be inspirational or biographical, or both. Anyone that knows me knows that I have an eclectic style, and that it is commonplace for me to blurt out a quote from a movie or song or interesting tidbit of information that I have come across in my lifetime. Not all of these meanderings have health implications, but rather display some of my personality.

For current health and wellness professionals or people looking to become exercise professionals, I highlight quintessential knowledge, skills, and abilities germane to our profession. What I deem to be indispensable nuggets of information will be italicized within the text.

For the reader interested in losing weight and maintaining that weight loss, I have included personal stories and anecdotes to inspire you on your personal journey, as well as practical ideas you can use to develop your own unique health strategy.

Some readers may enjoy my deep dives into the scientific minutia and personal anecdotal evidence and choose to read it from cover to cover, while others may feel they can skip the detailed explanations and just enjoy the stories and practical advice. However you choose to engage with this book, I hope that it can shed some light on how to develop a competent and sustainable wellness plan as well as explain some of the principles behind exercise science, nutrition, and fitness.

Also included at the back of this book is an index, so you can easily find reference to specific subjects that are mentioned in multiple places throughout the book. Many of the italicized words throughout the text, in addition to being defined in the footnotes, may include some helpful insights to expand your current understanding of a given topic or word.

It warrants being said from the outset that I am not a registered dietician. Thus, the information I give in regards to nutrition will be kept to well within my scope of practice. Nevertheless, I believe this information will be eye-opening, thought-provoking, and very insightful.

Lastly, if nothing else, I hope you will extract wisdom and helpful information from this book, and incorporate those understandings into your own wellness plan.

1. Newsweek Special Edition: Your Body, 2018.

Chapter 1

Numbers

A good place to begin understanding your own long-term and multifaceted wellness, would be to correctly and thoroughly define fitness. Generally speaking, fitness is described as being physically fit and healthy. Adding a little more depth and science to this interpretation, being fit also describes how well our heart, lungs, and entire cardiovascular system deliver and use oxygen. And yet, this definition does not go far enough in my estimation.

Vital components of wellness must include mental health and emotional stability, as well as nutritional sufficiency in one’s diet. Safe environments where learning and recreation can be pursued, as well as a sense of community and value in a person’s work and indeed life, are often overlooked aspects in the quest to becoming healthier.

If any of these metrics of wellness are absent from a person’s life, then all of the other variables will not be at their peak, and overall health will be compromised. I believe that David Agus, in his book, The End of Illness, sums up what health really is: a state of being whereby your system allows you to function on all cylinders and enjoy a