April 6th, 2012: Down 2lbs. – so the scale number was 290 today. I’ve been here before, so no net loss.
It’s pretty cool how this progression goes, or how it’s gone so far, though it is a little like a roller coaster. I started in January with those ten solid reasons for doing this. Really though, it just comes down to looking good and feeling good. And even then, in all honesty, it’s first and foremost about looking good, or more specifically, just being of a size where I don’t stick out from the crowd. I just want to fit in, literally and figuratively.
I guess I have no real designs about ever doing anything athletic again – these are mostly just daydreams. I just want to be able to go on amusement park rides with my little boy and actually fit in the seat, or put on a pair of pants and not have to suck in my gut just to button them.
And now I’ve spun myself into a cocoon. The hours have been excruciatingly slow, the months actually rather fast. My weight has gone up – it has gone down – it has stayed the same – the same – the same – then gone up – then gone down. Now summer is coming and I see how this works. No matter how you go about it, in the end you just have to suck it up sometimes.
This is the weirdest, hardest, coolest thing. It’s torture sometimes, torture, but there are times you sit back and say “wow, this is so cool”. The challenge is intrinsically rewarding. Even if you didn’t lose a pound, you stuck with it, and if you can do that . . . I’m just saying.
It’s boredom that’s dangerous to me, because my thoughts inevitably become centered around the only thing you are not supposed to do, and that’s eat everything in sight. So I sometimes want to eat everything in sight. Then I say to myself, “This is my time now. This is my time to shine. It is my turn again to be champion of something.”
I think about how lucky I am that my challenge is so simple and straightforward, and really lacks any mystery. There’s a payoff for this hard work.
Something else to consider: when people say “you can do anything you want in this life”, each “anything” must be evaluated, and this is a very complex statement. Don’t forget that with most things, there’s an element of luck involved. Losing weight, there’s no luck, there’s no real complexity about it, the program has done that part for you. The truth is, if you put your mind to this, you CAN do it, and relatively quickly.
As I write this, I’m 37 years old, 5’10” and 290 lbs. If I really wanted to play in the NBA, it would be a bit more difficult than just losing 101 more pounds. I’m going to say that, as a matter of fact, it would be impossible for all practical purposes. This though, this weight loss thing, I can do this shit.
Today’s entry was a stream of consciousness. So here I am at my job thinking nothing about my job, and it rules. I just wrote what I was thinking. That’s all.
April 6th, 2020: Every decision you make takes you in new directions. I never dreamed my decision to give in to my appetites way back when I guzzled and gagged my first Bud Light would lead to a 16-year habit that accelerated into alcoholism. This decision then forced me to make the decision to stop it or die. Same thing with over-eating and more or less stopping all real exercise – stop it or die, and so forth.
So many decisions are not as immediate as one would think, nor do they produce many real-time results. This is especially true for big decisions. It also seems to be true for decisions that take you in a direction that forces you to metaphorically climb big mountains. I guess my point is that sometimes even a bad decision can take you in an interesting direction if you ride that shit out and see where it takes you.
I learned not to be afraid that I might take the wrong fork in the road. I learned that, while I don’t like to, I can almost always turn around and work my way back to that fork and choose the other direction. Most of the time, I just like to keep going on like a Bilbo Baggins-sort of hobbt-person and see if there might be even more interesting paths up ahead. I prefer peace and solitude and my hobbit hole, but you gotta keep moving or life will catch up to you. Sometimes there are maps and guides, but even those have to followed with caution.
