March 22nd, 2012: This has got to be a record – A six-pound gain in one day!!! Fuck!!!
No waxing philosophical or poetic. Just the facts today so I don’t make this mistake again.
- Forgot to bring my lunch to work.
- Thought to myself, “Well, I’m just going to drink tons of water today and flush all those poisons out, maybe this is a good thing.” Drank at least a gallon of water. Maybe a gallon and a half. Seriously.
- At 1:00 pm was starving, so I went to the cafeteria and ate what I thought would be comparable to my normal lunch.
- It doesn’t work that way, and so maybe it’s my first cheat day. Fucking shit! Chef’s salad with too much ham and too many hard-boiled eggs. Lots of salt. Small bag of chips. So good that it turned into 2 small bags of chips. 1 banana. Okay. 1 Chocolate chip cookie. Wait, I’m only allowed one dessert-type thing at lunch. Oh well. Cookie was so good it also turned into 1 chocolate brownie – so 4 total dessert items.
- No energy. Went home and took a nap. Got up and “conveniently” forgot that I had already eaten lunch, so I ate my normal lunch that was sitting in the fridge on the third shelf. Then I ate dinner two hours later.
- No exercise.
- Didn’t sleep good at all.
- Pretty much a failure yesterday – chalk that one up.
All you can do is say “fuck it”, stop the bleeding, and move on. Fire up the machine, which is still being finely-tuned, and fake a smile. I have fumbled the ball to the other team, so now my defense has gotta get back to work. Not really a Chicago Bears fan, but when I think of a mean motherfuckin’ defense, I think of the ’85 Bears. This is the team I want right now.
March 22nd, 2020: Have ya had your first cheat day yet? Your first fuck-up? I bet you have. I can’t believe I made it 80 days without my first one. Unfortunately, it was unplanned, and therefore no doctors were available to stop the bleeding. I had to fix it using a cut-up pant-leg as a tourniquet, a crucifix necklace for a little luck, and a lot of reminders to myself about the power of will when the chips are down. I haven’t checked tomorrow’s post from 2012 yet, but I sure hope I didn’t continue on the path toward self-destruction. Lord knows I fumbled before, and Lord knows I’ll fumble again. I’m human and I have character, so there ya go.
As part of the program, I’ve told people to not even consider having a cheat day, or cheat meal, or whatever, until someone who does not know you’re working on losing weight, comments that you look like you’re losing weight. I’ve revised that in an updated form of the program, but with caveats. I don’t think you ever should have a cheat day or even a cheat meal – ever again. This is the lifestyle, lifelong part of this, and though I do understand that if you don’t die soon after you enter the process matrix, you will cheat on the program. However, you cannot, cannot, cannot ever plan on cheating – you have to have the mindset that this is how it’s going to be forever and ever, amen.
I’ve learned that when I have a Plan B, I may as well call it Plan A, because that’s where I’m headed anyway – I know it. When I have something to fall back on, guaranteed I’m falling back on it. Plan A is all good, it’s my shot at the stars, and I need to have the dream that enables me to reach escape velocity and maintain a trajectory out past the influence of Earth’s gravity, but I ain’t never making it past the moon.
The program is not fail-safe, and there are no guarantees about its effectiveness because it’s only as good as your dreams, the horsepower your engines can generate, and ultimately the desire to keep fighting even when you’re black and blue and very very tired. You’re going to cheat on any diet plan, including the program. The difference with The Program, though, is that a stumble-fuck does not mandate a shift to Plan B or Plan C. You maintain this heading motherfucker, until you reach final destination, whether that’s the stars, moon, or over there by the river. Then call it whatever plan you want and be prepared to live it.
