The Urban Poser Presents: A Story of Change by Ben Hulet

{For those of you who don't already know...this is my husband. He has been a constant "pillar of strength" in my life. If it wasn't for his steadiness, commitment and resolve I would not have the health that I have today....both physically and mentally, haha! I am so thrilled and grateful that he was willing to share his story with you and how he lost over 100 pounds but gained so much more! Enjoy!}

I don't pretend to have the full perspective on how and why life has happened the way it has for most people. I don't even claim to understand my own story all that well. There are a handful of things that I do know though.

The Things I Know:

I know that somewhere in my elementary school years, I began to develop an indulgent approach to food. It was celebratory; and even though that in and of itself is not inherently wrong it can be problematic because for a 10 year old....everything merits a little celebration.

Point in case: At a post-performance pizza party for my 5th grade show choir, I challenged my classmates to a pizza eating contest and won by an overwhelming majority after eating two and a half large pepperoni pizzas. I had already won after 2/3 of the first pie but I REALLY wanted to show them something impressive.

Something else that I know: from that point forward, I can't remember a time when I didn't want to be eating something. It wasn’t that I was hungry, just that I always wanted to eat. So much so, that I would eat to the point of feeling sick; at every meal. I would sometimes eat until my stomach hurt so badly that I couldn't do anything besides lie on the floor for a good long while after a meal. Other times I would eat so much that I would actually have difficulty focusing on what people were saying to me.

When I wasn't eating, I was thinking about eating. This mostly consisted of a short period of searing regret for the amount of food that I had just consumed, gradually transitioning into a building excitement and anticipation about the upcoming meal. In retrospect....I see that it was an obsession, but at the time it just felt like I was REALLY living!

As you might guess, I gained a lot of weight throughout my Jr. High and High School years. By the time I left for college I was considerably overweight and I suffered from a great many physical issues that came with being so; high blood pressure, painful joints, problems with my feet and chronic IBS that controlled and consumed my daily schedule. I had frequent, debilitating migraines and regular sinus infections as well as chronic yeast issues. At this point, I really didn't associate these things with my weight OR diet, I just thought that this was how everyone felt. I thought.... this was normal.

Another thing that I know is that despite all this, somehow I still was able to meet and marry a beautiful and fit young woman. What I didn't know at the time was that her life was marked by a similar dysfunction (bulimia) when it came to eating. So despite our deep love for each other, our combined issues surrounding food and lifestyle very nearly destroyed our marriage before we even really got going. Six months in, our connection had nearly dissolved and all that we had left was conflict.

What became Of  Us:

In desperation I turned to prayer, begging God to change something. Around the same time, my wife attended a women's meeting where the topic of discussion was natural foods and healthy eating. This topic struck a particular cord with her as she knew that she also needed to change if we were to ever have the hope of a family. So when she asked me if I would be willing to try eating  in this more 'holistic' way (with a promise that she'd make it taste good), I said "Yes!" What she didn't know is that I had been praying for some glimmer of hope and would have said “Yes!” to very nearly anything if I thought there was a chance to save our marriage.

We jumped into this healthy eating thing with both feet and began the process of changing our habits and rebuilding our fledgling marriage. As the years passed, we experimented with all the various "camps" of healthy living. We started with organic meats and veggies and then spent a few years as vegetarians. Eventually we became vegans and spent a couple years living that way as well. During this time, my wife started training to become a yoga teacher and so we naturally began to explore Ayurvedic medicine and cooking. We experienced a lot of healing and found a new identity in the way that we ate and the lifestyle choices that we were making but there was still a fundamental problem under the surface.

From reading what I've described so far you might think that I had a healthy amount of perspective about my choices and motivations during this time, but this wasn't really the case. In fact, for the most part, I had begun to view our life and the choices we made as a product of the brokenness in my wife (her eating disorder) and thought that I was generally pretty balanced. Because of this perspective, I didn't feel that it was all that important for me to participate in our healthy lifestyle choices when I was on my own. I would make good choices at home with the family and continue my lifestyle of indulgence when I was away. It wasn't that I participated in our healthy choices at home begrudgingly, just that I was comfortable with the duality that allowed me to not face my own issues.

So life continued on like this for quite a few years. We had children, changed jobs a few times and generally enjoyed our life.....until February 2011.

Over the course of several days, my healthy, active, creative wife went from being all of those things to not being able to get out of bed. In fact, her body so quickly turned on her that she couldn't even stand on her own. All she could do was lie still in bed, wracked from head to toe with excruciating muscle spasms.

Over the course of several months we exhausted every medical and natural avenue trying to figure out what was happening to her and no one had anything to offer. Without any hope on the horizon I was faced with a harsh reality:

Everything good and healthy and productive about our family was largely driven by my wife's convictions…..

…..and she no longer had the means to hold us to them.

Choices:

Faced with this reality I had two choices. Let things go and hunker down to weather the storm indefinitely, or stand up and take charge of our family. By God's grace I chose to stand. 

Eventually we found a doctor who recognized what was happening to my wife and he set us on the path to recovering her life. We took the supplements that she needed, changed the way we ate to exclude those things that were causing her immune system to attack her and began the slow climb towards rebuilding her broken body. But to sustain this process, we had some serious choices to make. Once again, I was faced with a polarizing diet, but this time I chose solidarity rather than escapism. Instead of always making a separate meal for my wife, we decided to change everything and try to walk this road together. We would have to reinvent our entire approach to food altogether, but we would do so as a family; for all of us, not just her.

As the months passed, I began to notice little changes in myself. First, I noticed that my headaches had gone away. Then it was less pain in my joints and a feeling of invigoration after eating, rather than exhaustion. I started to crave activity and began to willingly do the yoga routine that I had only done reluctantly in the past. I found that I actually had the energy to engage in activities with my sons. Eventually, I noticed that my clothing was looking frumpy and decided to weigh myself. To my amazement, I was 30 pounds lighter than I had been at my last checkup. I surmised that I must be reaping a side effect of the choices we were making....

.....and then I ate some pizza.

 After just a couple pieces I knew the truth. The choices we were making for my wife's survival were just as critical for me as well. There was no more room for denial, no way to rationalize myself out of this one. I was sensitive to many foods, just as she was, and I had spent my life slowly killing myself by denying that fact.

The rest of my story is still being written. The details of it are unique to me but the principles are true for everyone.

I have a Russian friend who I once asked what it was like to go from Communist Russia to free America. His response was that growing up, he didn't know that life was different anywhere else. It was only when he got to America that he realized that people lived and looked at life differently. Like him, I didn't know that what I thought was 'normal life' was actually far less than what it could have been all along, and that the choice had always been mine. 

We are all on that path. The sooner that we eliminate denial and recognize the ways in which we lie to ourselves, the sooner we can break the unhealthy cycles that keep us from being the people we want to be. What this looks like practically will be different for each person. For some this path is sought out voluntary. For others, the circumstances of life have thrust change upon them. In either case, the choices are the same: We can face our reality with honesty and grow, or we can hold on to our denial and we will stay exactly as we are. In the end, the choice has always been up to us.