January 28th, 2012: The scale is still in a downward motion. Down a pound to 327, for a total of 23 lbs. lost. I was too tired yesterday to hit the treadmill, so the pound off is one of those gift pounds.
More about fatigue. My little two-year old is fighting a cold, so he crawled in bed with us at 11 last night. Five minutes later he had a coughing fit, poor little dude, and then 5 minutes and 30 seconds later I was covered in kid puke. Poor Kid, poor Dad. A common little irritation that occurs when you have little ones. Why, however, does the psychology of addiction cause you to immediately think of jumping off the wagon? Why was I then in the kitchen hosing off vomit and thinking about rummaging through the fridge and/or pantry to find something to eat? Don’t worry, I never caved, and thankfully the thought was rather fleeting. I never gave in because I owe it to the process and to myself to carry on.
Above is a minor experience; I also had a bigger piece of harder news to deal with yesterday. I was hesitant to write about it because I’m not asking for sympathy or anything like that – seriously – this is not what this blog post is about. But, I feel it’s good to air out things that could potentially derail a diet to others who struggle with everything from little irritations to really bad news every day. The news was that my mother’s cancer has returned. She had beaten it back for two years, now it’s back. My Mom is one of my favorite people in the world. All of this is another story and another challenge for her, and also for her supporters, but, at the risk of appearing egocentric, I folded it into my weight loss challenge. Why was I given that piece of news and one of the first thoughts I had was whether or not I could continue this challenge? The games your mind plays are incredibly powerful. My answer to the question of whether or not I would continue was “you are goddamn right I will”. It crossed my mind to just say screw it and go to IHOP and eat my feelings. Is that really the right thing to do? Who does that help? I’m not sure what the numbers are, but I know that obesity- related illness is right up there with the cancer for killing people. Therefore, I must remember that I too, am in a fight for my life.
These things come out in the wash, but all things I don’t have control over endanger my psyche. I know I have control over my weight problems, though, and by God, I will win.
January 27th, 2020 (retrospective): So what’s the next step after a binge? First, I learned that you’ve got to stop the bleeding. Whenever I realized I was losing control of the process, which happened more often than I would like to admit, I had to get myself out of the situation and the actual physical area where the food was as quickly as possible. I could sometimes do that by playing guitar in another room. I sometimes got in my truck and just drove aimlessly. One time I even went so far as to find a porta-pottie so I could look down the barrel at all the piles of shit from the food that people “didn’t want to waste”. That killed my appetite to be sure. I would do whatever it took to refocus my attention.
Then I had to manage the inevitable guilt. Guilt that I had caved into my demons. Guilt that I felt guilty about simply eating food. Guilt that I just couldn’t appreciate my life as compared to the unfortunate who have nothing to eat at all. Guilt that I would ignore life to sacrifice myself to the process and then in one instance fuck it all up.
I learned that I’ve got to control my astonishing ability to binge on guilt. One of the greatest NFL quarterbacks ever was talking about how he dealt with his feelings after he threw an interception. His explanation was something along the lines of just making a mental note of what went wrong, and then filing it away and moving on. His performance on the next offensive series must not be determined by the pick he just threw in the last series. In the study of probability and statistics, these are called “independent events”; like flipping a quarter twice. The results of the second toss are in no way influenced by the results of the first toss. In dieting, this means that how I proceed through my eating today should not be affected by a fuck-up yesterday. Last night’s binge was last night, today is today, and tonight is tonight. All are simply moments available to me to either shine or suck – my choice. I just preached it, now I gotta go live it. But, I’ll plan ahead and make sure there isn’t any easily-prepared garbage to eat in the fridge or the pantry – that’s the best I can do. A little bit of best wishes and luck also helps.
