Wednesday, January 11th, 2012. I can’t let little things bother me. Well, little is relative. I just have to put on blinders and focus focus focus and allow the hocus pocus. This means I just have to look ahead and let the process do its body fat disappearing act. Even if it seems slow and unfair. Little things like not losing any weight are big things to me. I step on the scale, it should say 339. It still says 340. I slump my shoulders and it crosses my mind for more than one second to eat only laxatives today. That’ll move the chains. Or maybe I’ll try to puke-purge the bulk of the 2000 calories I eat today. That might result in a 5-yard penalty on Friday though.
Saturday, January 11, 2020 (retrospective): As a school psychologist, I regularly encounter children who have test anxiety. It doesn’t take much exploring to find out that often that anxiety increases during the test because the child sees other students turning their tests in, and this child looks down at his paper, and he ain’t even halfway done! He wonders to himself what the hell his problem is, why is he not able to finish that fast? He doesn’t want to be the last one done, that’ll make him appear different, and that, to a kid, is usually not welcome. He either begins to sweat and now has to deal with that, or he just marks down whatever he has to on the test just to finish within the bell-curve average time; score be-damned. This sometimes continues into adulthood, until you reach the age of don’t give-a-shit.
I had/have this anxiety about weight loss. I swear, even now, that I can see someone at the gym one day and they’re chunkier than usual, and a day later they’ve lost like 30 lbs. I feel like I’m back in 8th grade and everyone is finishing the test before me, and I have to consciously talk myself down. I’ll have the quick quake of faith in my program, and wonder if this’ll really work. Maybe that person who lost 30 lbs. in one night has the real answer.
I know now that it’s an illusion, because for them it’s been a battle too, and it’s probably been two or three months. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, finds pleasure in cutting calories, and time is relative to each of us regarding long-term challenges. You can mind-fuck yourself into some sadistic pleasure there (I know how), but it lives in a house-of-cards. Exercise can feel good, you actually get a little high from it. None of that tangible short-term pleasure happens with eating less. That wouldn’t even be mammalian. Dieting is a strictly long-term satisfaction attraction, and in America, when we want something, we want it right now goddammit! Hence the perverse thought of eating ex-lax for dessert every day. Don’t do it. There’s a rare piece of direct advice from me, and I promise my knowledge on this was not experimentally obtained – I’m not quite that dumb or desperate. Yet.
