Terry George of North Carolina was on a journey to save his own life. He was a drug addict, a food addict, had a binge eating disorder, and mental health problems.
But he overcame all of that and now he says, “I feel so free.”
It wasn’t easy but he did come out the other side a free man. When his journey began, he weighed 441 pounds and basically lived in his bed. He was completely miserable and that wasn’t even the worst of his problems.
“From the time that I was 19 until I was 24, I was hopelessly addicted to painkillers. Not the kind you get for a sprained ankle. I eventually fell so deep into opiate addiction that oxymorphone was not off of my daily list of things to get my hands on,” Terry recalls in a piece he wrote for Love What Matters.
“It was a time I don’t remember a lot of. I still have memories that come back to me in waves as my brain continues to recover from the chaos I put it through. It always starts harmless enough, but before you know it you are losing everything. When I finally gave in to a recovery program, I had lost my car, my job, my apartment, my financial security, and my will to fight.”
But he did fight. Not for himself, but for his family. At that point, he realized how much he was numbing his feelings with drugs.
He was left with extreme anxiety and depression.
“In a sense, I traded my drug addiction for a food addiction and had no idea how to even come remotely close to addressing my mental health. So, I didn’t at first,” he explains. “So here I was, collecting unemployment for a while, bouncing around temp jobs, binge eating anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 calories a night for years. I was a prisoner of my own mind and body. One of the jobs I went through was a work-from-home type.”
Terry’s mental health hit a critical point after this. He hadn’t left his house in five months and was terrified of people, noises, and daylight.
He reached “a very dark place” and spent time in a mental health recovery program.
“Looking at yourself in the mirror can be hard. Looking yourself in the EYES can be the hardest,” he says. “Pulling all of the buried chaos up to the surface hurts. Unfortunately, I still continued to treat these issues with food for another year before putting my foot down.”
Eventually, he realized he would die if he kept up his habits so he tried to get a handle on his weight. He failed several times but never gave up. And the more he exerted his willpower, the stronger it began.
He began with lowering his caloric intake.
He then started lowering his carb intake little by little. He credits a ketogenic diet with saving his life. Now he doesn’t eat more than 50 carbs per day, but he does eat lots of fiber, healthy fats, and a moderate amount of protein. He lost 25 pounds in his first month.
He ended up losing 234 lbs in 22 months.
And now he feels great and says he is never going to give up his healthy lifestyle.
“My hopes in writing to you all is that someone realizes that they can fight. That is the only option. Giving up is so easy, but living your life to the fullest? That’s one tough job,” he said.
“You are worth it. I am worth it. We all have value. We all deserve love. We all deserve respect. We all deserve to try and be as happy as often as we can. If even one person makes today their day because they know it’s possible, then sharing my adventure is worth it,” Terry says.
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