Beating the Food Addiction

Greg Currence has a love hate relationship for food.

“It is an addiction,” he says of food, “and unless you have been there it is hard to understand.”

But it is addiction that Currence has left behind him.  Though he still looks back on the times he would eat an entire eight piece fried chicken meal, including the two family size sides, four biscuits and a family size Bundt cake, as almost a fond memory, he remembers what the weight he was carrying around was doing to his body.

“I was in pain,” Currence said, “My back hurt, my feet hurt, and every time I would go out to do something active with my friends I would come home injured. I was having to take days at a time off work and it was all weight related.”

Over the years, there were plenty of chances for Currence to adopt a healthy lifestyle.  The pain could have driven him to get healthy.  The doctor who came right out and told him he was fat and needed to lose weight could have been the catalyst.  But, in the end, it was learning that he was going to be a dad that made him take the step towards a fit and healthy lifestyle.

“I want to be a good dad.  I had good parents who cared about me and set good examples and I knew when I found out Melinda was expecting that I wanted to be the same kind of parents,” Currence said.

Every process in life starts with a first step.  Currence’s first step seems almost too simple but it was the step that lead him to a healthy weight loss. 

He recalls telling his wife that he didn’t understand people who could eat cereal out of a cereal bowl.  For as long as he could remember he had eaten cereal out of a huge Tupperware container, eating a third of the box of cereal at each sitting. 

When he decided it was time to start leading a healthier life, he started with that step.  He woke up, poured a cereal bowl of cereal and though he was tempted to have a second or third bowl, he walked away.  With that first step, Currence set a precedence for portion control. 

It wasn’t easy and his wife Melinda recalls his getting angry one night as she was putting the food away.  He accused her of trying to starve him. But today, Currence says it was his wife’s support that got him through and made the process easier. 

“She knew that one of my issues was not being able to see food thrown away or put away,” Currence said, “Before I started watching my weight, I would stand at the stove after dinner and just eat everything that was left over. Food was almost a competition for me.”

Currence believes that his competitive nature was part of the issue.  He likes to be the best.  He has always been competitive.  At some point he began to take pride in he fact he could eat enough food to absolutely shock people.

The second step to leading a healthy lifestyle was much easier for Currence.  Though he had been overweight, he had always remained active.  He rode his mountain bike and played paintball with friends and generally led an active lifestyle.

But with the weight loss, Currence began to notice something he had not expected.  He had always thought of himself as being good at these activities  He had thought he was fast.  But when he lost the weight and started cycling with the Bike Doctor and running on the treadmill, he was shocked by how much easier he moved, how much faster and more agile he had become.

On Father’s Day, Currence did something he couldn’t have imagined doing before he changed his life and lost the weight.  He joined his mom, marathoner Melissa Currence, for a race in Severna Park.  Though he started the race with her, she knew that he was going to be faster than she was.  She told him not to finish it with any regrets.  She told him after a few miles to leave her and run his own race.  He did and finished the 10k in an impressive 53:58.

The weight loss has changed Currence’s life.  The doctor who called him fat recently commented on how incredible his weight loss has been.  He is healthier and faster.  He knows that he inspires others, including his mom who has always lived a fit lifestyle but is inspired to push harder in her workout by the hard work Greg has put in while changing his lifestyle.  Most importantly, he has seen the example his lifestyle has already set for his young daughter as she told her grandmother this weekend that she wanted to run too.

But he doesn’t look back on the time he was overweight with shame.  He even finds there are times when he misses that lifestyle.  Times when he wants to eat the big meals he ate before.  He finds he misses being a “big man.”  But during these times he reminds himself that this is part of the addiction.  It would be easy to slip back into his unhealthy habits.  But he has chosen to live a healthy life for the sake of his daughter and it is his daughter that keeps him from going back to that old unhealthy lifestyle.