Overeating My Way To Imaginary Weight Loss

February 22, 2015
Day 298

For the past four weeks, my diet and exercise plan has plateaued, as in flatland-as-far-as-the-eye-can-see kind of plateaued.  It doesn't surprise me though in the least, because I've barely been keeping up, exercising only once or twice each week, and eating healthy only most of the time.

In fact, weighing in is almost a joke lately.  I step on and say my serenity prayer, knowing full well the scale is gonna be like, "Dude, what do you expect me to tell you after what you just did this past week?"

Still, I'm not giving up!  I just need a new head game here, because clearly my overeating and gym skipping is NOT going to do it for me.  I need to be harder on myself, and maybe even more judgmental of myself to get this done.  When in need, as I am now, I go to a mantra that's helped me in the past: what will others think of me at the beach or poolside?

I'm honestly okay with some extra--it's been a part of me for a long time now--but I don't like too much extra, and I prefer the tighter, thinner version of myself I've seen in recent years.  I lost 41 pounds, I remind myself, and though I've gained 14 back, I'm still 27 pounds down from where I started.  These last 14 pounds may be the hardest ones to shed, but I'm already two-thirds of the way there!

So as I look at the next 9 to 10 weeks before I turn 40, and I look at the 14 or more pounds I want to shed by then, I see possibility.  I see potential.  I see myself doing it.  I just can't give up, even for a week, and I need to work harder at this.  It won't be easy, but I know I can do it, and I know I'll be much happier, which is always the ultimate goal!

To Scale

January 9, 2015
Day 254

I see it everywhere: the whole world wants everything "to scale".  If something's pictured larger or smaller than it really is on a package, you better have "Not shown actual size" captioned next to it, or trust me: there will be trouble!

So when I step on the scale at home, as I did again today, I wonder what actual size I'm supposed to be.  I don't mean the fashion magazines' norm, or even according to the national health standards.  I know my body better than anyone else who will ever exist, so I already know what "to scale" means for me.

As I stepped on the scale this morning, it didn't tell me I was too fat.  It just told me my weight.  It left the judgment up to me, and whether I like it or not, to the rest of the world, too.  The scale made no funny faces.  It didn't mock me, or call me names.  It didn't even plaster on a fake smile or give me a sympathetic shrug.  It just gave me a number.  As I expected, the number was high.  As I did not expect, it was higher than the high number I guessed it might be.

Still, I did not cry.  I just prayed, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change".  I knew that in the moment I stood there on the scale, I could not change what the scale told me.  I couldn't blow my nose, clip my nails, or cut my hair off to achieve some dramatic difference.  All I could do was take note of the number, and accept what I could not change in the moment.

We live in a world of scale.  Scales of justice, scales of weight--hell, even scales of fish.  Everything is understood "to scale".  When we're overweight, we're said to tip the scales, as if we're practically knocking something over.  "Whoa!  Don't tip over my display, fatty!"  But if you think about it, the scale starts with, quite literally, nothing at all.  Without me and my body mass, my scale is absolutely nothing, a zero.  I'm the one who gives it a number.  I'm the one who defines it. 

I will get healthy, and I will lose weight, but I'll do so while remembering that the person I really am is already in perfect scale to the person I already am.

My love affair with butter

July 5, 2014
        Day 66

Butter and I have been together now for well over 30 years.  It's been a mostly wonderful relationship, if you can call it that, although truth be told, we have had our rough spots.

He's basically what you'd call a feeder, you see.  He likes me plump.  And I in turn have let him do this to me.  I eat at him, and he in turn eats at me.  It's a very, very unhealthy relationship, I know, but we love each other, okay?!  It's real, damn it!

I don't expect you to understand, but butter just does something incredible to me.  He makes me feel so much better about everything.  I put him on toast or a bagel, and watch him just melt away slowly before I eat him up, and I just--  I just need him, you know? 

But there have also been bad times, and because he's not here right now (or even knows how to use a computer), I can tell you the truth.  He hurts me sometimes.  He's not good for my health.  He's even given me pimples.  He makes me fat.  The more I have of him, the more others are turned away, which is probably exactly what butter wants in the end.  He wants me all to himself.

My partner Andy knows about him, by the way.  It's been a constant issue in our relationship.  Andy will tell me to just cut back a bit, to only see butter now and then, not every day, or even every week.  And he's right, I know he's right.  But it's hard.  Butter is waiting for me at every supermarket, delicatessen, and restaurant.  He's got me craving him all the time.

I've broken it off now and then, spent more of my culinary time with Country Crock spread, but Crock doesn't give me the same delight as butter does.  Crock is nice and all, but she doesn't appeal to me as much as butter.  And don't even get me started on the other man in my life (Hellmann's). 

Ugh...I really don't know if I'll ever be able to break it off with butter.  He's just always there calling to me, asking me to just give him another chance...and I do.  Like a fool, I always do.  I always take him back.  But life with him is good too, you know?  Butter is just so, so good.  He makes me happy, and that's the most important thing, isn't it?  Being happy? 

I know he's not good for me, and I know our relationship is doomed to melt eventually, but if this is real love, I'm willing to take that chance.  For 30-something years now, butter's always been there to make my life taste better.  And if nothing else, that's worth the pimples and the extra gym time. 

Some love is forbidden, some love is true, but my love for butter is just a long-term hydrogenated mass of caloric daydreams...and I'm okay with that.

___________________________

Note: You better believe this is the G-rated version of the story I could have told here!

Losing Pounds and Pounding Loss

My friend Gary created this sign for me, and left it by
my favorite elliptical in the gym at work one day.

June 13, 2014
          Day 44/365

Erma Bombeck wrote, "In two decades, I've lost a total of 789 pounds.  I should be hanging from a charm bracelet."

We do this.  We lose and we lose, and we lose some more.  We count up our lost pounds with glee all the time, refusing to recognize how often we keep gaining them back again.  Well, maybe not refusing, but certainly trying very hard to look in the other direction.

Weightloss is hard!  Those whose metabolism is friendly to them, the ones who are perpetually fit despite their bacon cheeseburgers and extra scoops of cookie dough ice cream, are the lucky ones.  But they're not, I don't think, the average ones.  Most of us struggle.  Like, a lot.  We work at our bodies constantly, trying to stay in shape, or at least maintain whatever weight feels comfortable.

The more we lose, the more we celebrate.  It's pretty much the only kind of loss we do ever celebrate in life.  You don't see anyone posting on Facebook or Instagram that they've just lost their dog, and are throwing a party.  Loss is usually not good. 

And yet it's our losses that we add up when we lose pounds.  It's our losses that we celebrate, that we share, that we reward ourselves for and publicize. 

Losing weight is dropping pounds of carnal sin that we put on over time.  It's saying goodbye to the weekly bacon cheeseburgers we ate five years earlier, and bidding farewell to the extra scoops of cookie dough ice cream we binged on after a bad breakup eight years ago. 

Losing pounds is almost always a good thing, and certainly is if you're unhealthily overweight, as so many Americans are.  But pounding loss is just as important.  We pound and compound loss when we add up our successfully lost pounds, and appreciate what they stand for.  We pound loss when we don't just lose the pounds, but analyze the success at hand.  And we pound loss when we don't just celebrate our weightloss on social media, but celebrate it emotionally and intellectually too, by really taking a good long look at how far we've come.

My friend Gary created a sign for me after I told him I'd recently lost 41 pounds.  He works with me in the same company, so he made the sign and placed it by my favorite elliptical in the gym.  The sign was a celebration of achievement, but long after the celebration was done, it remains a reminder of success.  Other colleagues, people I don't even know, saw that sign and recognized my achievement.  But for them, it wasn't just a recognition of pounds lost.  It was a promise of possibility for them as well. 

When we lose pounds, we celebrate, and rightfully so.  But when we pound loss, we tell it to stay away, and to keep on walking down that road in the other direction.  Celebration is important, as is sharing our victories with others.  But so too is the next step, and the step after that, and the step that follows that one.  Losing pounds is the first step, but pounding loss is like the support meetings that follow for years afterward.  It's the constant reminder not only of the realized success, but of the constant need to succeed, and the possibility to do even better.

Choose Your Speed

May 23, 2014.

Each afternoon during my lunch break, I like to drive over to the park near my job, and eat my salad right there in my car.  That way, it's easy to just jump out afterward and begin walking.

All around the park on the nicest days, people of all ages and speeds are out walking.

I walk quickly past an older couple in their 70s, and feel a pang of guilt, as if I'm showing off or something.  I often send out a telepathic message to them that says, "I'm on my lunch break, so I have to keep moving quickly!  Otherwise I'd walk slowly like you...not that you're walking slowly or anything!"

Very often I'll pass people who are right around the speed I prefer to go, so I have to speed up to get past them, then time it just right to start slowing back down to regular speed once I'm far enough in front.  It's like a game, or a science.  An art form really...the kind of art I hate.

The runners, though?  They make me feel like an old slowpoke as they whir past me.  "Oh, I used to walk," I imagine them telling me, "I used to just meander around like you, as slow as can be, but now I can do this."  How rude!  I admire them anyway though, and hope to some day join them!

No matter what speed we're all going though, fast or slow, we're all enjoying the trip.  We all chose to go to this park and move around a bit.  None of the people I see there live in the park, as far as I can tell, but whether it's from our homes or our jobs, we've all decided to take some time to be with nature.  We've all made the time to move around this beautiful park, smell the freshness of late spring, and bask in the sunlight bursting through the treetops.

The speed with which we all move is irrelevant, and the time it takes me to get around the large path is neither better nor worse than the time it takes others.  We're all just appreciating the park, and appreciating the blessings of time itself. 

Getting Better All The Time

May 2, 2014.

Every once in a while, I just feel very, very happy with my life.  It isn't that I'm not happy most of the time anyway, but sometimes you just look around at your house, or think about life, and just feel like it's going pretty well.  Very often when this moment appears, I start thinking about or singing the tune, "I have to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time".  And the coolest part about this phrase is the timing inferred.  Things have gotten better from where they used to be, and things are always getting better all the time. 

Life, for me, has always been about moving forward.  Of course we all have setbacks, but when I look around at my worst traits and behaviors, my most challenging pursuits and endeavors as a human being?  I'm just so pleased at how far I've come, how much I've learned, how much I continue to change.  I want to always keep becoming a better person, a stronger soul.  It isn't about finding perfection, but it is about believing in a closer pursuit of perfection.  Complacency is just the worst possible lie we accept for ourselves.  It's the weakest part of us that says, "This is just how it's always going to be, and that'll just have to be fine with me."  No, I don't mean refusing reality.  If you have a personal struggle or disability, there's a very good chance you will always have this.  I mean instead a complacency of all the things we can change.

Every week as I'm about to step on the scale, I pray, "God, please give me the serenity and peace to accept the things I cannot change, the courage, the strength, and your help to change the things I can change, and most importantly, the wisdom to know the difference."  It helps me focus on truth and reality, hope and desire all at the same time.  I may not have lost any weight since the week before, so I brace myself for that reality, while still reminding myself I have the power to change my body's shape moving forward.

And weight is just one of many struggles I've had, as we all do in life.  In the last two years, I have made it my goal to get fit and stay fit, and I've done an incredible job so far!  But my weight-loss goals are just a small part of my big-picture "plan".  For me, life really is about getting better all the time, and that means knowing how you need to get better.  The 12 steps talk about first admitting you have a problem, and we seem to be living in a culture that tells us, "You're fine as you are, don't worry, there are no problems".  And I try my best to do the opposite.  I hear people when they make fun of me for this or that personality trait, and I absorb it.  I tell myself this is something people don't like about me, and maybe that's something I need to change. 

My friend John once told me I was looking at my watch too often, so I stopped doing it.  Someone told me I walked with a hunch, so I try my best to keep my chin up, and stand upright.  Andy tells me not to touch my face too much, and I try not to.  Friends have said I correct people publicly too much, so I have tried very hard to do this much more in private.  Drink more water--I drink more water.  Listen more to another person before interjecting a response--I listen more.  The list goes on and on.  I know I cannot improve as a human being unless I listen to the comments and criticisms from those around me. 

Eddie Murphy once said, "I spent my 30s fixing everything I broke in my 20s."  I'm 39 now, and though I don't think I had a hundred million things to fix in my 30s that I broke in my 20s, I have used this quote to inspire me throughout my 30s.  Likewise, a friend once told me back in my early 20s, "Once you go over the deuce [200 pounds], you never go back.  I finally proved him wrong a year or so ago, after climbing up to about 240 pounds.  Once I got back to 199, which is where I am right now, I promised myself it'd never happen again.  I have gone over 200 since and come back again recently, but what matters is, I took the challenges in my life and worked with them.  I didn't just accept them as the status quo. 

Life is about change and growth.  We cannot hope to discover more amazing heights if we never climb the ladder.  It's hard.  Life is hard!  And some things in our lives will just never change.  But for everything else, there's room for growth.  And if you asked me today how I'm doing, I'd tell you quite honestly, "I have to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time".