George Stella's Livin' Low Carb Family Recipes Stella style

Chapter One: Stella Style I'm George Stella, the Low-Carb Chef, and six years ago I weighed 467 pounds. That's right, 467 pounds! I was only thirty-nine years old, but I was suffering from congestive heart failure and living on disability. I couldn't even button the largest pair of pants I could find at the department store, so I used a safety pin instead and let my shirts hang down in front so no one could see. By then, it didn't really matter anyway. I could hardly walk, so I stayed home in a wheelchair most of the time. I couldn't even make it across the kitchen without stopping for a breather.Only a few years earlier I'd been a chef at some of the finest restaurants in Florida -- Cafe Max, Sausalito Restaurant, Windows on the Green, the list goes on and on. Somehow, though, I lost control of my life. I began to eat, and then to eat even more, and when it was all over, I'd eaten my way out of a life most chefs only dream of.I was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1959. I was kind of a chubby kid, but not what you'd really call overweight. When I was eleven years old, my father, a former vaudeville entertainer who had fallen on hard times, decided to move the family to Florida. Times were tough, but the weather sure was an improvement. After a few years of sweating under the hot Florida sun, I'd pretty much burned my baby fat off. It wasn't until I experienced heart problems as a teenager that I had my first real problems with my weight. The treatment I was given -- massive doses of the steroid prednisone -- actually ended up causing a lot of my problems, including gaining a lot of weight. Luckily for me, my mother found a doctor who understood what was really going on -- just before I was about to undergo heart surgery! With his help, I was able to wean myself off the steroids and bring my weight down again.By then I had already been cooking for years. I got my start early, thanks to a good friend from the neighborhood, Jimi Volpe. At the time he was working as a line cook at the Ranch House Restaurant on Deerfield Beach, right next to the pier. He was only fifteen and had lied about his age in order to get the job. I was only fourteen, but I was tired of pushing a rusty old lawn mower around to make money. So I followed Jimi's advice, told the manager I was sixteen, and before long I had my first job in a restaurant -- washing dishes!I didn't wash dishes for long, but I was in the kitchen for good! Jimi kept pestering the manager to let him teach me how to cook the line, and finally the manager gave in. I had found my calling, and from that moment I decided that I wasn't just going to learn how to cook -- I was going to become a chef!There was just something about cooking that clicked for me right from the beginning. I just loved working in the kitchen. I loved being in the middle of all the action, surrounded by the noise and the smells of the cooking food. I loved learning from everybody I worked with too. I was hooked on cooking, but I got hooked on some pretty bad eating habits too. That's where all my problems started.The results of those bad habits wouldn't show up for a while though, and once I got past my heart problems, my luck changed for the better. I met my wife, Rachel, and we got married and had children. With a family to provide for, I really had to concentrate on my career, and it wasn't long before all those hours in a restaurant kitchen, and my terrible eating habits, began to take their toll. I still remember the first time -- after stopping the steroids -- that my weight climbed back above 200 pounds. I wasn't happy about it, but I wasn't too worried either. I'm drawing the line here, I told myself. All it would take was a little willpower.Well, it turned out willpower wasn't enough. By the time I turned twenty-five, I weighed more than 300 pounds, and by the end of the year I was in the hospital again -- after suffering a massivStella, George is the author of 'George Stella's Livin' Low Carb Family Recipes Stella style', published 2004 under ISBN 9780743269971 and ISBN 0743269977.