March 18th, 2012: I’m having a really lucky week, I’ve got to admit it. The new intensity of my exercise has got to be a part of it, but certainly the stars have aligned for the past two weigh-ins. 2 more battles won. 290 lbs. on the dot today. 60 pounds gone!
It’s raining where I’m at in Idaho. The rain where it’s seriously like a shower, not too hard, but not drizzling. Just a soaking, cold, gray spring day. Now, I ask myself, which season will try my willpower the most? I started this journey in the dead of winter, for me the darkest and hardest time of year. I figured if I could make it through that, everything would be easier. Now it’s essentially spring, but the grayness still is unrelenting – so my resolve remains challenged 90% of every day. What will summer be like? Since it is my favorite year, I expect that eating to combat depression will ease up, but then eating to celebrate each beautiful day will become an issue. With the fall comes the colors and football and hunting season – my second favorite time of year. Shorts and the motivation to look good in tank tops will be replaced with wanting to be in supreme shape to hike steep mountains. But with hunting season comes camp food – not historically considered as low calorie. Yet again, my will will be tested. Hmmmm. What’s going to happen with these changes of season?
Since summer is next on my list to look towards, my daydream is yard work. Yard Work! Yes, yard work. Yard work with my shirt off. Yard work where I don’t have to stop and sit down every 10 minutes. Yard work when I can bend over to pick stuff up and not have to hold my breath. Yard work where I’m not sweating so hard that there are puddles of it in the grass. Yard work where I can look back on the difficult and daunting beginning of this journey/war and know that I’ve made it this far and can make it all the way. Yard work where I can sit and have a glass of Crystal Light and finally start to feel good about myself. Come on June!
March 18th, 2020: Just because I got scared doesn’t mean I can quit; any firefighter would tell me that. Just because I got bucked-off doesn’t mean I don’t get back on; any cowboy would tell me that. Just because I met my match doesn’t mean I concede defeat; any football coach or boxing trainer would tell me that. You’ve come too far to go back now; my dad might tell me that. Stop being a fucking pussy and get back in the water; my brother Tom might tell me that.
So I got back in the water. And I swam and swam and swam, and then biked and ran; and one day in July, completed that goddamn triathlon. I’m not going to let down any of those tough-love bastards from my past.
As promised, I can relate this story to the weight-loss war story. It seems like there are two types of hard: there’s the acute and immediate challenges, and there’s the long and chronic. Swim across the lake alone = acute and immediate. Spend damn near a year of your life, every damn day, alone and battling negative thoughts, as you do all you can to reach a goal weight you set way back then = long and chronic.
I felt alone most times in the darkest, grey, and hazy days in the war to get to 189. And I felt alone so many times on the bright and sunny days when everyone was grilling burgers and eating chocolate shakes. Sometimes I felt like a modern-day martyr. I would fail to remember that I had put myself in this position. Regarding weight loss, I had put myself on that metaphorical east short of the lake (350 pounds), and now needed to swim across to the west side (189 pounds). A death from obesity related complications may not be so dramatic and immediate as drowning in a lake, but I’d still be just as dead. Although I don’t particularly fear death, I must’ve made the unconscious decision in the lake that day that I’m not ready to tip-over yet. I must have made that decision in January of 2012 as well.
The difference between the swim and the weight loss is that with the latter I’m forced to play a head-game every single day that requires me to find some reason, or manufacture one, to keep going. Even years after reaching goal weight. It can be exhausting. Every morning when there are plenty of things to eat that the program (which I still follow) tells me I can’t, I’m standing on the shore looking out into the lake.
