May 3rd, 2012: Down south and into a new decade today, for a total of 81 lbs. lost. I’m across the metaphorical Mississippi, but that’s not to guarantee I won’t have to swim back to the other side before I plant roots over here. 269 pounds today. I think the 270’s were one of my quickest weight decades. I think I’m going to suggest with more certainty today that it was absolutely the diet adjustment. I’m eating less, not more. I will never be tricked into thinking I’m not eating enough. Who the hell made up that lie anyway?
I see on the Biggest Loser last night that they have 7 months left. Is this correct? If so, I plan to ramp up my game and lose at least 19 more lbs. by July 2nd. I have to, have to, get that – just to feel like I could’ve been a formidable opponent on that show.
There’s an Eagles song with this line: “You don’t feel like winning, but you don’t want to lose…”(can you name that song?). I lost my drive to compete as I topped 300 lbs., and I thought I entombed it for eternity the day my old man took me to the big-and-tall section of the clothes store. I felt then like I was alive only to be a cog in the machine of life by doing some kind of mundane job somewhere until I just bit the dust.
I feel that competitive drive coming back to life, like some kind of bird coming from the ashes. I’m no longer going to exist just so I can pay my bills. Maybe a month or two ago I still didn’t care if I won, I just wanted to fit in, and that’s the same as just not wanting to lose. Now I feel that maybe I might shake off these ashes and cobwebs caused by the obesity-related live-burial of my confidence, and perhaps become a leader again.
May 3rd, 2020: Have you ever found yourself reduced in attitude toward life where you just want to finish? You just go through the motions? You do just enough?
I was caught in that stage of pre-contemplation for at least 5 years; unwilling to accept that by not wanting to put in any effort toward change was actually allowing myself to be swept down the river. I’m not sure, but I don’t think that as a red-blooded American, you can simply tread water and assume that’ll be good enough, or “just enough”. The competition for the limited pieces of pie is just too strong, and only getting stronger. Not to mention as soon as you think you’ve got it made is when some shit like the Covid comes along and turns the world upside-down.
Not wanting to win, but not wanting to lose either is like trying to tread water in a class IV rapid on the middle fork of the Salmon River. Good fuckin luck with that. And then sometimes the slide toward finding yourself in a very unhealthy situation is more gradual, like the rust that shows up on the quarter-panel of your truck. You don’t notice it until you do, and then it may be too late.
I learned that in order to merely survive, I have to try to be a step ahead of the demons in actual physical motion, and several steps ahead in planning the next moves. The pre-contemplation stage is not static, it’s a stage that’ll eventually turn me up and over and counterclockwise in the spiral of life and I’ll find myself again caught in a vortex that’s trying to take me down the drain.
