February 24th, 2012: Off went the pound. Sitting today at 307. Still a fat bastard I am, but not one headed north. Still just doing as I told myself!
This is not my first honest try at losing weight. It’s my third actually, and by honest, I mean a loss of 25 pounds or more, or well, at least a week of trying.
My first exposure to dieting was in 5th grade, during football, when I hovered around the upper weight limit for the Grid Kid (like Pop Warner) league at the time (I still don’t get it – too big to play football?!?) as I’ve explained in an earlier post. That was back in 1985, and while there were probably many other official diet programs available, a 10 year-old couldn’t be expected to notice any of them – so I just followed my football coach’s advice: “just don’t eat so much, fatso!” – further refined by my good-hearted, but ignorant parents, who modified the saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” to “An apple a day and you’ll be light enough to play”. I just remember being constantly hungry. I make a quick ha-ha laugh here when I think of how many years I’ve been hungry (but always over-fed, of course).
Next was the Atkins Diet, around oh, 2003. It had worked for one of my good friends, and for my brother. I was not a fan of this one, since you had to avoid beer and milk. By day 7, when my wife had made this awesome tray of cold cuts stuffed with cream cheese and the sight of it made me want to barf, I decided this program really wasn’t for me. Boy, the damage I would do to a cream-cheese stuffed tray of cold-cuts right now if I wasn’t determined to follow this program.
Anyhow, this program is my third try and it’s really working well for me, mainly, I’m sure of it, because I’m simply terrified of failing again.
So I think there ought to be a national competition. Seriously, think of how many infomercials we would never have to watch again as I explain this.
Biggest Loser is something I’ve been watching every week, but (and I may be speaking only for myself here, I realize) the only thing I’m ever interested in is the diet and exercise parts, the weigh-ins, and the physical transformations. I just get bored with the game play and the drama and the weird competitions they have. I can’t relate to those parts. What if all these diet companies just sponsored a competition over a season, however long, you know, like twelve weeks or something, where contestants from each type of diet competed – as individuals or as teams. Each diet plan could have its own mascot even. There could be the Nutrisystem Bears, or you could also have the South Beach Diet Dolphins, The Atkins Meat-Eaters, The Jenny Craig Celebrities, The Low-Cal Measurers, The Weight Watchers Meeting Attendees, you get it (feel free to come up with better mascots). There would be rules and stuff – like contestants would have to be similar in age and starting weight. There would have to be ways to ensure the contestants were following only their program; um, maximum times for exercise and types of exercise, etc. Seriously, I think this’d be fun. I would totally watch it every week. Whaddaya think? Help me develop this here idear and we’ll pitch it somehow. Seriously.
February 24th, 2020: I’m an 80’s kid from the ‘burbs, and as such, I was raised on a steady diet of Van Halen music and Rocky movies. I can say with complete honesty that there has only been a handful of days since the 80’s, and certainly since 2012 when I started this weight-loss mission of mine for real, that I haven’t listened to “Jump” by Van Halen, or any one of the more popular songs from the Rocky III or Rocky IV soundtracks. There is motivation packed in these songs for me. However, they’re motivation for the offense part of the program. I can get the extra rep or the extra mile out of these songs, but they don’t work for the defensive side of this program. And I have tried. I have, honest-to-god, listened to “Eye of the Tiger” prior to eating dinner to see if it would motivate me to follow the diet. It doesn’t do anything toward that. I have learned that it’s very hard to get pumped-up to not do something, e.g. eat too much.
I thought about that last night whilst pounding out the last of my workout, with “Training Montage”, from the Rocky IV soundtrack, fucking blasting out of the stereo speakers. Following that exercise session, I had my dinner. I thought again about ways to get motivated for moderation in the moment – and still I’m drawing a blank. It’s not like listening to some classical music is gonna make me chill out and consider my portion-correct dinner to be enough. Yes, it’s always enough, but I could always eat more, and more, and more – so my inner demons, Every. Damn. Night – start in on me. It’s just habit and daydreaming and retaining hope, along with a daily dose of willpower that allow me to beat them back and walk off under moderation. This is not easy – this is just worth it. I’ll continue to search for a reliable companion item to the defensive side of the program; something structurally analogous to motivational music for the offensive side. It has to be something that invokes one of the five senses. When I find it, don’t worry, I’ll pass that info on to you.
