It seems like a dream hobby. I would sleep 8-12 hours per day, and eat until I was stuffed, day in and day out. High calorie, high saturated fat, and high cholesterol- this has been shown to raise levels of anabolic hormones- testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin. I would work out 4 times a week, 2 super heavy days and 2 lighter ‘recovery days’. My body weight during this training had gone from 200 pounds (after a bout of giardia) to 258 pounds. I hadn’t taken my shirt off in public for two years, but I was strong! A heart attack waiting to happen, I would often snore so bad that I woke my self up, and I would breathe so loud it sounded like I was still snoring, even when I was wide awake, but my lifts were going up.
On July 10, 2004, I competed in the Massachusetts strongman, in the heat of a parking lot. I was happy with my events, but did a poor job staying hydrated, and by the second event began cramping so bad that I had to stop that event. Then I started eating bananas and drinking gatorade and fought diarrhea the rest of the day.
The next day we were on a plane for Guyana. We planned on putting in clean water systems in some of the villages along the Essequibo river. One way we were planning to do this is by pounding pipe into the ground, down to the water level and then putting a pump on top. The heat was incredible, and with my conditioning I’m not sure how I survived.
After riding in a small boat, basically a canoe with a motor, along the cyanide laced river (they use cyanide in the gold mines) and talking about piranhas, we came to a little village. The kids were playing cricket (Guyana was part of the U.K.) and we joined them. It didn’t take me long to realize they were calling me fohtmon. It actually hurt my feelings, they wanted to touch my belly and see my manboobs. It was a little embarrassing to realize that my hobby was 1- killing me, and 2- I probably ate more in a day than their whole village.
Out of the group of children, there was one little boy, probably 10 years old, but the size of our typical 7 year olds. He was sitting alone and picking at his feet. When I came over, he tried to hide, so I went back to what I was doing. Eventually, I managed to sit with him and saw that he had an open wound from the ball of his foot to the heel. He was picking at it with sticks and wiping the puss off. He did not want me to come near his feet. This wound prevented him from functioning normally, and he was ashamed of it, he did not want anyone to see it. There was also a mission team from Jamaica there with us, who had a doctor and a nurse. He did not want to go in to be healed. I managed to carry him in, and felt bad when he was crying as they tended to this wound, it sounded painful.
It really makes me think about how many of us pick at our emotional and spiritual wounds. Trying to make them better on our own, too ashamed to show anyone else. These wounds prevent us from living the life we are supposed to live, we limp along, or hide or deny what everyone else can see anyway. For so long that has been me, picking at my hurts, never healing, being held back by them, hiding from the one that can heal me.
Just these past few months I have begun to learn to trust a few people with some of this, and it hurt to address. In fact in front of grown men I have cried until I had a 2 foot snot hang down, but healing has begun, after so much time. There is still so far to go, but as this healing process has begun, I can see so many people doing this same thing, unable to love or trust or be vulnerable because of their own wounds, I guess I just hope for all of you that you will allow the Healer close to your wounds.
I’m pretty sure being called fat man will always sting, regardless of where I am in the healing process.
