February 23rd, 2012: No scale movement. I’ll spend at least today at 308 again. You know how you can almost feel like you didn’t lose any weight? Well, I think the scale can sometimes sense what you’re feeling, kind of like a dog or horse senses fear, and your number becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If a bad horse senses your fear, he may buck you off, and in the process, kick you in the nuts, just like you feared. Just an FYI. The dog will bite you right on your fat left ass cheek when you turn your back, like that little bastard dachshund in Dillon, MT did to me in 1988 (I fear wiener dogs, and he knew it). Again, just an FYI. When you feel like you didn’t lose any weight, you probably didn’t. And I didn’t cause that scale knew I feared it today. Just sayin’.
I’ve had great success with my program so far, but still I have a long, long way to go, so here I put charcoal to the fire. It’s important for me, from time to time, to recall the mental Mirkwood forest through which I traveled. This weight loss stuff is just a head-game Super Bowl after all; and it’s day after day after day . I’m not about to say that I’ve got this figured out because it’s a moving target. So I go into deeper water.
When I’m starting to get uncomfortable now, I actually try to do, like, this reverse-binge thing. Binge by confronting the dark days, binge by getting up even earlier, binge by eating even a little bit less than yesterday, and binge by doing exercise that takes a little extra energy than my normal routines.
The donut story from yesterday? That was just a mildly humorous side note to that time in my life. I found a difficult opponent in clinical PTSD right around that time in my life – witnessed, and was caught up in some things I don’t think were healthy to a fragile psychological profile. I won’t go into any more detail than that – it’s another story for another day in another realm. Oddly enough, though, I have found comfort in reminding myself that I did survive it – and those thoughts have given me unexpected hope in the more difficult times of this weight-loss challenge.
Why is mental health so closely related to obesity? I mean, why do the endorphin levees break when we chomp into a Quarter Pounder? And why is that euphoria so fleeting? Why does it have to flood us and then turn back to the desolate dust-bowl so fast, leaving us searching for something to quench that desire? Why do I still feel that I can turn to food whenever there is a change in my emotions, be it good, or bad. It used to be beer and tobacco. Then it became food. This is unacceptable because that IS NOT WHAT FOOD IS FOR!!! Is it possible to re-wire ourselves? I have to believe we can.
February 23rd, 2020: I was gonna write about dollars and cents and calories today. I’ll do that in a second, but first let me write about liabilities and assets and the damn bathroom scale instead.
I got to thinking about it – if you haven’t already noticed, a number you don’t want on that scale has the power to steer you in a negative mental direction, for as long as you let it. However, have you realized how a desired number on that scale makes you feel? When I got good number that I thought I deserved on the scale (usually after several days of stagnation), I would feel like the king of the world. Sometimes a one pound drop – ONE SINGLE POUND – made me feel like a world champion! 16 ounces that were not on my body anymore, gone because E = mc2 would make me feel like there was absolutely nothing I couldn’t accomplish. Now that is simplicity!
It’s just a testament to my sometimes shallow psyche. 16 oz can make or break a day. However, in this knowledge, I can proceed on a “win” scale day like – “I came, I saw, I kicked your ass”, and on a scale “non-win” day, I can just be aggravated for 60 seconds and then move on. Liabilities into assets ya nerd. Neatly confusing in this whole game is that a loss is a win and a win is a loss. Shit, try as I might, I still can’t simplify it all the way, but I’m getting there.
Never mind continuing the money analogy for today, I’ll return to it tomorrow…
Carry on then, and let your faith be taller than your fears.
