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By Roger I :  How I got to the weight I am ?

A few weeks ago, as my three daughters, the love of my life and I ate a dinner of pulled pork, my 15-year-old decided to forego the meat and eat a second hamburger bun. At 5 feet, 10 inches, she tall and willowy, as most teenagers are.

“You may be able to do that now, but you need to know it won’t always be that way,” I warned her.

I am 6 feet, 4 inches tall and weigh 360 pounds. My ideal weight, according to BMI calculators, is 185 pounds.

How is it that I weigh almost twice what I am supposed to?

I’m the shortest of the six boys among the 11 children to which my mother gave birth. When I look at the photo of my family gathered at the church following the funeral for my brother Rufus, who passed away two years ago from pancreatic cancer, I am the shortest and the widest.

When I graduated Highland Park High School in 1980, I weighed 180 pounds. During high school, I often was made fun of because of how skinny I was. A lot of people compared me to the character J.J. on the T.V. series Good Times.

Like for many people in my youth, being overweight wasn’t a problem. I ate pizza, consumed fried chicken and drank large quantities of beer, all of which appeared to have little effect on my physique. My metabolism at that time was able to counteract any bad food habits I might have acquired.

But as I got older, my metabolism slowed down. My weight slowly crept up.

I went from being a string bean to having a more athletic build. I was active in intermural flag football at College of Lake County.

A friend on my team asked me to try out for the semi-pro Lake County Vikings football team. At that time, my weight was 240 pounds. I looked very athletic and like a football player: I was without the gut and had broad shoulders and a two-pack.

My first year of semi-pro football was challenging because I was a lightweight compared to other players and got knocked around.  So in the off-season, I decided to bulk up my weight.  In addition to my usual diet, which was high in carbs, I consumed high-calorie protein shakes, gaining 40 pounds.

Since ending my semi-pro football career at age 28, I’ve settled into a sedentary lifestyle. My job as an architectural drafter is like many office jobs that don’t require a great deal of movement for long periods of time.

This also was the time I married and my wife and I had three daughters. When I wasn’t at work, I didn’t feel I had the luxury of going out for a jog, a swim or a bike ride. Or so I thought. The greatest amount of exercise I got was walking the dog.

With the help of Choice Eating high-protein meals, I am renewing my commitment to physical fitness. Many of the challenges of family life that got me to this point still exist, but I am determined to get down to my proper BMI level.