My Road

Part Two:

Finding Fearless: Let Not Youth Be Wasted on the Young

words and photos by Robert Kingsland

At five years of age I learned to use a rotary phone which was replaced by a pushbutton phone then a slim cordless phone to wireless flip phone to Blackberry to I Phones and Android Phones.

In 6th grade I learned to type on a typewriter which became a word processor in 7th and by 9th grade giant computers which evolved to laptops then all in ones to Tablets.

In 2007 the information internet highway was supercharged with the birth of Apple, Facebook and Twitter on the stock market. This incredible American led technology revolution opened information to all people and allowed us to take more control of our lives.

It helped me to find My Road forward.

As I grew in weight in 2010, I used this technology to search the web for diets, diet supplements and healthier recipes. I followed them. I researched and I purchased all types of bars: protein bars, energy bars, bars with hunger blockers.

I did smoothies and 3-4-5 day cleanses. I stirred powders into my coffee which were to make me feel full or add protein or energy booster powder to my juices to spur my exercise and metabolism.

I bought a fitness bike first than an elliptical machine with maps and different levels. They were pre-Peloton, but they were cutting edge in 2011 and 2012. I did a health challenge and was given a Fit-Bit to track my steps. A device on my arm to count my steps and calories!

I was never alone. Every year at least 45 million Americans go on a diet. We spend between $45 million to $100 million, depending on source, for diet supplements, diet clubs, prepared foods and vitamins.

We also spend between $300 million and $600 million on in-home gym equipment and spend over $600 million on gym memberships. I spent money on all the above!

Yet, 95 Percent of diets FAIL every year yet we keep coming back to try the new diet, the new supplement or a new exercise device.

If you ask me ” How many diets did you do in the 8 years of my weight battle?”; I would say I tried every one. If you asked me if I used my gym memberships or equipment that I spent thousands of dollars on, I would say I’m part of the statistic that only 8% to 20% of us actually use our gym membership fully or our expensive equipment.

I can’t say all diets didn’t work for me, I had lost 40 pounds over 4 years and had maintained 238 lbs for 2 years. I also can’t say I didn’t benefit from the use of my elliptical when my joints let me, but I did cancel the gym membership as I never went.

Our bodies change we are told and their is truth to this. A 56 year old will not be the same weight as his 21 year old self much less his 37 year old self but I never imagined being 108 pounds heavier in 2012 versus my weight in 2007.

As my eyes opened the day after Mother’s day in 2018 I was a man without a job and I was at a cross road. I had decided to take June and July off, my mind was spinning and I wanted to explore other opportunities as I didn’t know who would hire me at my price point and my unhealthy condition in the restaurant business. I also didn’t think I could handle a restaurant job or the stress or the physicality of hospitality.

As I lay in bed, heavy, joints aching with digestive dissonance, I was determined to use this time to change my state of being and find the fearlessness I had when I was younger and healthy.

I was determined to cook healthy food from scratch, walk more, ride a bike to the beach and assess the next steps in my life and not settle for a job or my physical state. I was going to find answers and find a road back to health.

I felt the biggest issue preventing weight loss was the growing inflammation in my joints. Every joint.

My ankles were bloated, I could barely wiggle my toes. This pain prevented me from doing more time on the elliptical or walk. In fact, many times, one workout or too much housework would lead to days of acute pain or trigger pain in my lower back or trigger my plantar fasciitis.

I started taking more turmeric and joint health products advertised with smiling faces of relief. I found little relief.

I started to eat blueberries and strawberries and make smoothies with them. I drank cherry juice. I ate more salmon, nuts, kale and beets than I will ever eat again and to be honest these things led to diarrhea, or stomach cramps or indigestion.

At the same time, even though I wasn’t adding much to my exercise routine or diet, I started to see my weight decrease slowly. By the end of June I was 235 pounds and maintaining it.

I know 3 lbs doesn’t seem like much, but I had been stationary for 3 years at 238 lbs. To see movement lower and to hold that new lower weight is key to real weight loss. It’s not water loss when you maintain a new low over a period of time.

While better days were starting to overtake bad days, the bad days would constantly come back. It was baffling. I had days and weeks without severe breathing issues or heartburn and weeks where my stomach would not be bloated.

But the bad days were terrible, debilitating and depressing. In July 2018, I decided to purchase a travel franchise and spent a week in Orlando at a training camp.

By this point, I was 232 pounds. I had lost 6 lbs and was maintaining this new low with swings of a pound or two during the week. I was less bloated, my face was smaller and I was wearing my size 36 pants again.

But I didn’t feel healthy especially with the ‘episodes’ of acute heartburn and digestive blockage. The ‘episodes’ would feel like an asthma attack with severe breathing issues, acid reflux, uncontrolled burping all in one.

Understand, that even though I had lost weight the ‘episodes’ were outside of this constant hum of dissonant digestive discomfort. If you are losing weight shouldn’t you feel better? Breathe better? Have less joint issues? I was following diets, eating yogurt, cottage cheese and melons!

Then, one day at the end of July 2018, after the travel school, I was home with a perfect shore weekend with friends coming for a Porch Supper that evening after the beach. I was in a great mood. A positive mood.

I left my house early that Saturday morning with an Iced French Pressed Coffee and a buttered baguette to visit Matt’s Farm in Belmar, the Asbury-park Farmers Market, local 13 Fish and my favorite supermarket.

I also had on my list a new Greek place that was the bomb according to my friends, with a real Greek food shop with different varieties of Feta and real Greek prepared foods. I’d dreamed about a gyro, I’d not had one in ages and I craved one: Extra tdziki, extra onions please.

I ate that beauty of Greek cuisine as if it were my last meal. An hour later as I was peeling potatoes, I thought it could be.

My body went into full ‘episode’ mode. I could barely breath. My heartburn and acid was out of the hemisphere. It took hours to catch my breath. How was I going to cook? I thought I was having a heart attack. I took pills prescribed to me years ago for high blood pressure, chewed tums, used my inhaler and laid down on my bed breathing, my mind angry for answers. What caused this? What?

It had to be something I ate! There were very few things I’d eaten by this point of the day and this was one of the worst episodes I’d had since I left my job in May 2018.

In my bed, my breathing coming under control, tums kicking in, I started to ask what ingredient of the Items I’d eaten had I’d not eaten in the last week and 3 ingredients immediately popped out: Feta cheese, the lamb meat and Raw onion. I Googled Feta first then I Googled: What is in lamb Gyro meat?

The answer: Onions are an ingredient in the lamb meatloaf or Gyro.

Then I Googled: “Are onions hard to digest?.”

The answer, yes.

Game changer number 1: Good Ingredients May Hurt You and Lurk in Foods You don’t realize.

Could onions be the trigger of my ‘episodes’ and a source of my daily digestive malaise? Is this why on most days now, I felt so much better as I’d stopped consuming raw onions in multiple forms 2 or 3 times a day every day since May 2018?

Well, as you guessed, onions became enemy number one and were not part of any sauce or preparation for the Porch Supper Menu which was a success although I burped through the whole evening.

After this weekend, my episodes were cut in half but a constant dissonant discomfort in my bowels didn’t go away. I started reading labels and found onion or a derivative in so many products from catsup to gravy to certain hot dogs or packaged snacks.

Cutting out raw onions and dried powdered onions started to calm my dissonant digestive tract. The more I cut out the better I felt and I also started to lose more weight and I reached 225 lbs in August 2018. A new record.

I had now lost 53 pounds from my 2012 peak and 13 pounds since May 2018.

While thinner, my joints were becoming more inflamed. Being on my feet for a 4 hour bridal show was grueling. I started weeding with a chair and sometimes had trouble getting up from the chair. Tumeric wasn’t the answer nor the many supplements and expensive vitamins I tried. Nor were the foods I added to my diet when I Googled: What vegetables reduce joint pain.

The pain was becoming acute and it would flair up after any walking, gardening or attempts at exercise. I was doing many travel shows at Bridal Extravaganzas and its at one of these shows I heard about Celery juice and diet. Hmm I said and Googled: Is celery juice good for you?

The answer wasn’t a clear yes but there were many articles and blogs.

This became Game Changer Number 2: Celery may be an anti-inflammatory and it may aid digestion and weight loss.

I read many articles positive and negative about the affect of Celery Juice on the body, but the one I took to heart said “try it for 30 days, what have you got to lose?”

What many of the bloggers were in agreement was that celery Juice needed to be the first thing to hit your gut, not coffee or water but celery juice. It was also clear that eating a stalk of celery didn’t do what celery juice does. It was also clear that the positive effects were 50/50 depending on the person.

This is the beauty of today; Information at our fingertips that allows us to make our own decisions and after labor day 2018, I decided to give celery juice a try. Nothing else was working and what did I have to lose?

I learned there were two ways to do celery juice and each offered different benefits.

Juicing with a Juicer makes a clear liquid but removes the fiber, those strings that get caught in our teeth when we crunch down on a stalk of celery with our Buffalo wings.

Pure juice will help your inflammation.

Celery Juice fiber, however, removed in the juicer helps with digestion and blockage which leads to option 2, the blender. You are still turning the celery into liquid but you keep the fiber to aid your digestive tract.

You have a choice of how to do it and each is a personal one. I wanted the anti inflammation benefits with the green fiber for digestive help and chose the blender method.

I started with 1 median stalk with about 6 ounces of water to get about 8 ounces of juice. I did this for a week.

Was it good to drink?

No. It’s a horrible texture. I drank it and envisioned a celebratory shot at my best friends wedding to get it down. I started adding a banana to help with the texture. It is something that I learned hurt me down the road.

Did it taste good?

No. But I’ve tasted worse, like my first ever Sea Urchin with a friend who promised it’s the most amazing experience of tastes ever in your life.

Immediately, I had an incredible cleansing of my bowels beyond what I’d had with other cleanses. I felt the bloat draining from my digestive system. I experienced no cramps.

Within days, My stomach felt lighter, my belly wasn’t bloating out of my shirt and I had less days of complete constipation or not going or extreme diarrhea.

I built to 10/12 ounces of juice by the middle of the second week by adding one and a half stalks of celery with 2 ounces more of water or 8 ounces.

My feeling of hunger in the morning was less, I could not finish my iced coffee nor needed the caffeine, I felt more alert and less in a state of feeling sleep deprived and I was yawning less. My urine was clearer and I personally felt that the urine flow was increasing to a healthy level. My skin was looking clearer as well and I was also losing weight.

What I wasn’t feeling was immediate joint relief and I would still have days of digestive discomfort return with ‘episodes’ even though I’d become diligent about not consuming onions.

It gets frustrating to not see immediate improvements or feel discomforts rise again and again. This is why we give up on diets and exercise routines or a juice regimen. We change course too quickly but at this point for me, after years of diets and cleanses I felt that what I was doing was moving me down a better road and I needed to keep going.

Thirty days turned to 6 weeks with celery juice, my morning drink and onions continued to be banished as best I could. I kept telling myself to stick with the program, believe in my choices and give new lifestyle changes a chance to make an impact.

I was losing weight again. Not “diet” promised miraculous weight loss but my scale was going lower each week and never up. More importantly, the range of weight was 1 or at most 2 lbs. Not huge swings.

By mid September 2018, I knew my Travel career was going nowhere and knew I needed to get back to my true love and passion, food and entertaining. I was thinner and healthier and I felt maybe, I could create a consulting business and some how, stars aligned.

In October 2018 Alta’s Kitchen Company was born. I was at 220 lbs by this time and about 6 weeks into my celery juice regimen. As I said from May 2018 to now, I was losing weight gradually but in the 6 weeks of a celery juice regimen combined with a diligent no onion policy the weight really came off and by this point I started to notice my ankle swelling going down.

I had mornings where I literally sat up from my bed and stood without reaching for something to balance me with no ankle or knee pain and I was I able to do more physical things for longer periods of time. I could bend down and tie my shoes and sit upright with no pain in my hips.

My first client was an acclaimed West Village Restaurant. I knew returning to New York City would be a challenge but my body was evolving in the right direction for the first time and I needed to keep moving down this road challenging myself.

With my first client, I was surrounded by people who talked about ingredients and the affect they have on a body. They are leaders in gluten free pastas and believe ingredients affect the body. They believe in pure ingredients.

It was here, in March 2019, I learned the word FODMAP from the Culinary Research and Development Director when I was talking about not eating onions. “You may be FODMAP insensitive”, she said.

FOD-WHAT?

Game Changer 3: The Onion is a Fodmap and Gluten is a Fodmap

Fodmap stands for:

Fermentable Oligosaccharides Disaccharides Monosaccharides And Polyols.

Simply put, very complex sugars many people cannot digest easily. Don’t get lost at first reading what Fod-Map means, go right to the map of ingredients that are High in Fodmaps.

Here, with my arch enemy the Onion, were ingredients that diets I’d followed over many years mandated. Ingredients I believed healthy and worked into my daily life. Ingredients that I added to lose weight and Ingredients I added because they were good for reducing joint inflammation. Here is a partial list:

Onion of all varieties

Watermelon

Ripe bananas

Avocado

Raw Apples

Beans of all types

Baby Cucumbers

Broccoli

Cauliflower

Cottage cheese and most soft cheeses

Yogurt and dairy products

Beets

Many types of nuts

Pomegranate

Melons

Honey

Artichokes

Maple syrup

Wheats, barely and other hops- Gluten

Agave Syrup

High Fructose corn syrup

This was overwhelming as I started remembering bad episodes where I would have friends at my house for the weekend, feeling amazing and slicing up watermelon, honey dews and packing beautiful fresh foods for the beach, nibbling of course as I packed. I would then have an episode as we set out for a day of bliss. I would pretend I was needed on a conference call and return to my house to chug Pepto Bismol and use my asthma inhaler and arrive an hour later.

I would be at work conferences, feeling great at the morning greet, my presentation ready, and have the morning breakfast with the team with bacon, scrambled eggs, yogurt parfait, beans with Chorizo and cut fruits including watermelon and sliced papayas. When it came time to present I would be in a full blown ‘episode’ mode.

I cut out a slew of foods and my digestive dissonance went way down and the episodes were seldom. I was reading ingredients and writing down what I ate each day and when I had a day of discomfort I was able to find the culprit.

In June 2019, I was walking down my stairs at home with little pain in my ankles or knees and one foot in front, not the sidestep and my buddy noticed the change.

I wasn’t out of the woods. If I exerted too much I would have leg pain in the upper hip or the lower back. If I did too much on my feet, I could spark my plantar fascitous which would keep me in bed.

I was also cautious with my body as I still had breathing issues that would appear out of nowhere and a very low but ever present digestive dissonance. I still didn’t feel secure walking more than a few blocks or riding a bike to the beach with friends. It was still very frustrating but, I felt I’d turned a corner.

I made a lot of progress in 2019 and finished the year at 215 lbs. Then came Covid in March of 2020.

During this time, I cooked for myself and my friends and family and worked on recipes for Alta’s Kitchen Porch Supper. Weight continued to come off gradually and I entered 2021 at 205 lbs. I still had days with digestive dissonance but I would find out the cause as most of the food I ate in 2020, I prepared but I kept ignoring one set of ingredients on the Fod-map: Gluten

In August of 2021 after a beautiful beach day, I posed for this photo in size 34 slim cut short and a large ‘slim fit’ shirt. I was below 205 pounds for the first time since 2009 at 198 lbs. I still had a low dissonant hum at times and minor episodes as I wasn’t cooking all my food as in 2020 but the dissonance grew during the holidays of 2021.

I was eating healthy day to day but I was creating food and in full baking, holiday, entertaining mode-cooking fried foods, breads, cookies, stuffing, cakes, pies and pasta. I was so happy cooking for friends and family after the Covid lockdowns and 2021 was the first one where we all felt freedom and could hug again. I was so excited to be baking and entertaining.

The celebratory stuff I love to bake and create all had one thing in common: Gluten. I realized that gluten was my next food group from the FODMAP I had to tackle but Gluten is intertwined into so many things we eat.

Giving up a watermelon is easy, but now I have to give up fried calamari and chicken parmigiana? I love Bud Lite, I make homemade tomato sauce in the summer because I love pasta! A grilled bacon and cheese on a grilled buttered hard roll is like my first smoke in the morning.

I knew giving up gluten would be as difficult as quitting cigarettes and I made a commitment that if I did go fully Gluten Free and my weight reaches 170 lbs. the next ingredient will be tobacco.

I am very close to the next step.

With Gluten, I knew I had to have a plan. I boxed breakfast and substituted bread with Gluten Free protein bars that were Fod-Map friendly and contained no fructose or ingredients like peanuts or yogurt or syrups.

I took a pineapple and tangerine snack with me to work and ate a lunch around a protein and healthy greens that were Fod-map friendly. It’s not easy to find restaurants that do the romaine wrap for a burger or sandwich or the availability of GF Pizza.

A few days into no gluten, my digestive system and body were in a complete rumble of cleansing and cramps. I felt cravings like you have when you deny your body nicotine and I started to have an acne breakout and moments of anxiety chills. I ate a lot of celery sticks at night and sliced pineapples.

Within days, my lungs opened up and I could breathe deeper breathes. Yes, a smoker’s lungs opening up is an unbelievable sentence to write but it happened. My stomach dissonance completely disappeared. I felt a tremendous sense of flow through my body. Constipation, diarrhea was replaced by smooth bowel movements. I slept through the night and would wake up with energy.

Within 10 days I went from from 198 lbs to 190 lbs and after stopping the beer on the 12th day, the weight literally melted off of me.

As I finish part two of My Road, today June 20th 2022, I’m 175 pounds. That is 103 lbs less than my peak in 2012 and 63 lbs less since May 2018 and My Road continues.

While I had very little pain in my joints, I would still have issues in my back. One morning in March, the owner of the restaurant looked at me and said ” You look great and thin but now your not aligned”. She gave me a referral to a mixed chiropractor who has realigned my core after a 100 pound weight loss. I have no back issues anymore.

I’ve learned how to stretch my muscles and I am lifting free weights and I’m dancing and smiling again. I’m not afraid to go out and walk with a group.

I’m going to continue writing about My Road and sharing recipes that are are delicious and Fod-Map friendly. I’m going to share exercise routines and discuss my restaurant experiences as I still will have digestive dissonance when a waiter doesn’t know their ingredients.

It’s not easy to give up a huge swath of ingredients and favorite dishes but I will never go back to gluten or high Fod-map ingredients. My challenge is to create the dishes I love that are Fod-map Gluten friendly as Gluten is a Fod-map. I’m going to develop AK Porch Suppers around food that all can eat. I’m very excited.

In Barbados 2018, I faced a crossroad. Accept my new being or find a way out. My dad would often say ‘Youth is wasted on the young’ and I would think, “Let not, youth be wasted on the young.”

I share my travels with humility.

I sit on my porch as I edit my words and I’m at a place I never dreamed I’d be in 2018. I’m 56 years old today. I feel fearless again as I didn’t give up finding My Road forward.

I don’t know the future but I am going to continue to share my journey that is forming my life and my approach to health, food, restaurants and hospitality and if my words and recipes help just one person, than that’s success.

Let’s Dance!

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