February 6th, 2012: Lost those two pounds I gained by thinking about Los Albertos too much, so I’m back to 319. Back and forth and back and forth, but yet I never really do that much different from day to day, in terms of diet and exercise. I gotta believe and learn to be still. There is no way this can’t work. I must still throw 130 more punches, run 130 more miles, climb 130 mountains, win 130 battles. And then I’ll just be starting the rest of my life. I guess I already feel tired.
I think one of my biggest problems in life is balking at limits. I’ve already told you about the first time I experienced an issue with my weight (5th grade football), but I think it never really ballooned out of control until I started worrying about it. Yes, this is a Catch-22 or a “What came first (chicken or egg)” type of thing; meaning, it’s not like I was ever skinny…
…but I sometimes wonder if many of the things I struggle with in life would not be struggles if I would have just kept them in the category of unhealthy, rather than pushing them far beyond, where they are now sinful and horrible and nasty and shameful and hideous.
Let’s start with drinking. I had always partied, but it was more like a weekend warrior thing: work hard all week, party hard all weekend. I rarely drank during the week, and if I did, it would never have been more than a six-pack of Bud Lights. As soon as someone pointed out that maybe I had a drinking problem, I developed a real drinking problem. All the identification did was paint behavior with guilt. Enormous guilt.
Guilt gave way daily to dishonesty. I tried to make everyone believe I maxed out at a six-pack a night because I considered a six-pack a night just the typical amount for a common good-ole’ boy. But I would hide another six pack (or two) in my truck. Then when I would drink one from the fridge, I would sneak out to my truck and grab one to replace it. I didn’t think anybody’d figure it out. When they did, I started drinking O’Douls (non-alcoholic) beer to demonstrate control. Soon, I was modifying the O’Douls by pouring out the O’Douls and pouring Bud Light back into the empty O’Douls bottles. And so on, until it blossomed into functioning alcoholism by anyone’s definition. My life revolved around beer.
When I sent beer packing, I blew up like a whale, and eventually made the mistake of telling people I was going on a diet. No program or anything, just low cal stuff. Pretty soon I was stopping at Burger King or KFC on the way home; then at dinner, I’d be like, “Oh, I’m stuffed” after eating normal portions of food at home. And so on.
I think you get the picture. Limits sometimes make a problem for me when there wasn’t one before, and then they make the problem fester when I realize just how difficult it’s going to be to operate within those margins. I don’t think it’s happening that way this time with diet. I’m not doing this because anybody told me I have to, although the doctor recently told me I could expect to die from it if I continued on this trajectory. The thought of dying doesn’t scare me enough to control the way I eat, the thought of not living does.
I feel like I’m just in a zone now, this feels pretty normal. I’m just on cruise-control on the Weight Interstate today. And if the zone is where I’ll have to be for a long, long time, then I guess I just better, you know, embrace it and stuff.
February 6th, 2020 (retrospective): Is there ever a day when the process isn’t painful in the form of a dull ache? Can I/will I ever be happy again? Here are questions I have asked myself daily for 8 years.
Just like with the process itself, there aren’t concrete answers. Instead, I’m trying to practice into perfection the skills is takes to re-define happiness as I know it. For most of my adult life, I’ve searched for that one thing, one situation, one event that would represent my transcension into a perfectly happy place on Earth; and guess what? Every time I picture this place there is an over-abundance of good food, and maybe even beer, with sunshine and no wind. This picture in my mind is crystal-clear, while all the activities and people surrounding the food table are blurry. Is this just because at the heart of the matter, a living thing must gather energy in order to survive? Or is it because happiness is good food and it’s been drilled into my conscious. Can this be defeated? Should I try?
Objective data gathering tells me that most of my moments not spent eating anything I want are pretty damn good. Maybe there are no high-highs because I will no longer untether myself from reality and food-party until I’m uncomfortably stuffed, but there are also no more low-lows because I don’t food-party until I’m uncomfortably stuffed. On the continuum, the dull ache is worth it because the firm satisfaction often tastes “fine” and fills my plate and cup enough to allow me to move past the pity that I sometimes indulge in when I have to sacrifice.
