How Do You Manage Inflammation, Weight Gain & Shame While Being Catastrophically Injured?

For years I went to doctors about my weight gain after I was medically retired. I was mostly met with condescending comments or outright blame from medical doctors. It got to a point; I had to take my wife to a doctor’s appointment about my weight gain and suspected diabetes (again). When the doctor accused me of eating like an idiot my wife jumped in and said, “He’s the healthiest eater I’ve ever met.” Nothing was accomplished because no help was offered, ever.

Weight gain due to decreased activity, the stress of being disabled and pain-related cortisol issues is a real problem. I would spend the next nine years eating 500 to 1000 calories a day to keep from blowing up even worse than I was already.  After another doctor change in 2011, I was finally diagnosed with diabetes and put on daily Victoza injections. Victoza helped with the weight gain but not enough. I was subsequently diagnosed with a fatty liver and was told these conditions were permanent. 

I was convinced that if they finally amputated my lower left leg, I would be able to get back to training and lose the 90 pounds I’d gained since being medically retired. I was finally sent to the Center for the Intrepid at Brooke Army Medical Center in 2018 for my amputation and follow-on surgeries I needed to be able to function again. 

I was excited for the possibility to lose weight; but to my dismay, I was told that I wouldn’t be able to lose weight. That was soul crushing, but I was defiant, “How could this be?” Then the doctors showed me my cortisol test; my levels were “off the charts” and that isn’t hyperbole.   

If you don’t know how detrimental cortisol can be to someone, you may want to study up. That’s what I had to do because I was given ZERO chance to get back to a healthy weight by medical professionals. Despite the discouragement, I started training like a madman once my leg was amputated. I lost weight immediately, then it abruptly stopped six months later. Two years later I was still only down 30 pounds; it was soul crushing. Looking around at my fellow amputees wasn’t encouraging either. I watched people puff up around me. 

As I researched more peer-reviewed cortisol studies, I found multiple studies where cortisol reduction was a happy accident. This led me to make four changes to my life. 

1. I nixed caffeine from my life. The caffeine from my morning espresso was shooting my cortisol levels through the roof all day…not allowing me to lose weight. My afternoon ‘pick me up” was a fatty nitro coffee: more caffeine. 

I went cold turkey off coffee which was painful for the first six months until I found rediscovered cacao; the drink of my ancestors. I started buying cacao beans, roasting, grinding and brewing an adult-like hot cocoa concoction with some fatty coconut milk.

Turns out, cacao gives you more energy than coffee and does it as a vasodilator instead of vasoconstrictor like caffeine. This allows for a more stable blood pressure and increased blood flow instead of restricted blood flow. Performance enhancing? The Greeks called the “theobromine,” the chemical in cacao that gives you added energy: “The Drink of the Gods.”

2. The 2nd change I made was eating a high fat diet. I start my day with coconut fat and an egg.  This primes my body to burn fat throughout the day. My body was starved for fat from years of eating lean meat, salads & veggie’s. 

I read a study that said, “Look at what your great grandparents and great, great grandparents ate.”

This hit home because my uncles had just been talking about their grandfathers, my great grandparents, rendering fat and eating it straight away–and homemade pork rinds. I remembered eating them as a child.   

It turns out; all the foods I’ve hated my entire life, but tolerated because of social pressures, were horrible for me or straight up poison to my body. The foods I always loved; just happened to be the foods that work with my Native American physiology.

Eating poison, which for me is wheat, causes full systemic inflammation. This is self-evident in the faces of indigenous Americans if you ever happen to go to a Native American (NA) reservation where people are force fed wheat, sugar, and alcohol.   

My point is, what works for a European physiology, doesn’t necessarily work for Indigenous populations around the world. This has been proven many times over. I was called spoiled or an asshole as a child because I didn’t like a lot of Euro food, and I was often hospitalized for stomach issues as a child because it turns out, milk and wheat made me sick. This increases inflammation exponentially. 

If you want to maintain your health, adopt the healthy foods of your ancestors. If you’re Indigenous American; wheat, sugar and alcohol is your poison.  Get off of it. 

3. The military and my civilian doctors put me on cannabis in 2017. I recommend eating cannabis daily. The American Pharmacology Association also recommends this. Inflammation is extremely deleterious to our bodies. Cannabis is the best anti-inflammatory money can buy; and it functions as a homeostasis agent for our bodies.  

Not only will cannabis reduce inflammation but can also cure diabetes and a fatty liver. I started seeing my best health benefits when I was finally able to consume over 100mg a day of cannabis. I haven’t been diabetic since 2019. My fatty liver is gone as of 2021. I was told I would live with both for the rest of my life. 

The most recent studies on cannabis and diet have found that people who consume cannabis daily, are thinner than the general population. You can have all the “hangups” you want about cannabis, but it is medicinal and nutritional; those are facts. Here are more facts: alcohol is poison and has ZERO health benefits, research it.

4. My one modern tool for weight loss while being catastrophically injured is Wellbutrin (Bupropion). Most people think of this drug as an anti-depressant but it’s actually a hormone regulator. I read multiple studies where women who were on Wellbutrin as an anti-depressant (regulated hormones) were losing weight. It turns out that’s because these women now had lower cortisol levels. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s an appetite suppressant. 

Within 90 days of implementing these strategies for weight loss…I lost 30 pounds. Maybe two doctors thought I could lose 100 pounds of fat and pack on 30 pounds of muscle with my cortisol levels… but that’s what I’ve now done in the last four years.  

Besides the health benefits and overall improved wellness, the psychological effect is the biggest benefit, for me at least. Being over fat after being a “Captain America” is a near impossible pill to swallow. I opened a bar when I was medically retired and people would see pics of me from active duty and say: “Damn…that’s you? What happened?” Soul crusher. 

I didn’t understand at the time that my body had gone into protect mode; injuries, inflammation, years of surgeries made my body want to horde fat for the impending hard times. The problem was there’s no off switch once your body thinks it’s in survival mode. 

The American medical answer was: ”Stop eating you fat fuck” or “just accept it.” And that’s what I did for years, while slowly putting on pound after pound and being humiliated for my weight gain. The humiliation wasn’t just from my doctors, it came from family and “friends” as well. 

To this day, I don’t understand how horrible you have to be to kick someone and humiliate a person going through what I was going through. But a lot of people enjoyed taking turns with their kicks while I was down. They assumed my struggle was permanent.  For two decades, I’ve barely looked in a mirror because I hated who looked back at me, but there was no “safe space” for me except with my true friends. 

So many people reveled in my perceived “downfall,” but so many have also been here the entire time encouraging me. I was never supposed to get better; the military set me out to pasture and they were all too comfortable with me just dying and going away. Believe it or not, I’ve had to fight for medical care. I’ve had to fight to get surgeries I’ve needed for decades because I’m less expensive for taxpayers buried in the ground. 

Luckily, two world-class surgeons looked past my inflamed, fat body and have been my champions of pain and change. They gave me a chance and I’m making the most of their belief in me. After 2+ decades of surgeries, joint replacements, and amputations to rebuild myself, I can confidently say that the hardest and most painful thing for me to overcome was the weight gain and the shame that came with it. That’s a sad statement about how we treat catastrophically disabled veterans who are already fighting daily battles just to stay alive; but it’s also the truth. 

I’ve started to look in the mirror again. I’m not ashamed of the person who is looking back now, with a shirt on. 

Baby steps. 

___________________________________

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on December 10, 2024.

Shane was a former elite athlete (football & wrestling) who left college after getting hurt to pursue his dreams of being in U.S. Special Operations as a Ranger in the 75^th Ranger Regiment. He spent 13 years in the military before being medically retired in 2005/2008. He served in 1^st Ranger Battalion, the 173^rd and as a Ranger Instructor and Combat Diver at 6^th Ranger Training Bn. Since retirement, Shane spent the last 19 years as a tech entrepreneur while enduring a grueling full body rebuild to include multiple artificial joints and amputations. He’s been training and competing in para-sport and adaptive sports since 3 weeks after his initial amputation and now teaches, coaches & mentors disabled children, adults, veterans and Rangers. 

Most recently, Shane started an adaptive sports & wellness program for members of the 75^th Ranger Regiment in partnership with over a dozen national Adaptive Sports Organizations. In his spare time, he is still involved in LED & renewable technologies, writing and curing PTSD with psychedelics. He also competes for U.S. Special Operations Command on Team SOCOM.