Side effects 2

Being overweight long term while making varies efforts to fix it can be very discouraging. It reminds me of attempting to pay off school loans. Which may be the most heartbreaking thing life has given me thus far in my adult life. Anyway it works like this with student loans, you take out a large amount, but something that seems manageable, then you graduated and don’t think about them until that first bill shows up, and oh crap, it’s a lot bigger than you remember it being (think stepping on a scale for the first time in 4 years) but it seems manageable. So you start working on it, paying it off little by little, a year passes and you look at the totals and realize you have made almost no dent at all in the total (think dieting). Well crap. Then something happens and you can’t pay for a few months, so you either let it go, or put them in deferment and when you start paying again, they are even bigger than when you started. That is a bad day for sure. You work and work but what sucks is that you don’t get back to that number you first saw that when you got the first bill, not to mention the number you barrowed initial. It is soul crushing if you think about it to much.

The reason I think it translates so well to weight loss is because it’s the same way I felt when I decided to deal with the problem years ago. I had gotten into the low 200’s but it wasn’t so bad, I would just not eat so much and I’d be fine, besides I didn’t look bad anyway. Then I weighed myself a few months later and had put on 20 or so pounds, well crap, I guess I better start running to, that’ll fix it. So when I check again I was just above the original problem weight, I had lost quite a bit, but it felt empty because I wasn’t even back to what I considered being overweight.

Vicious circle is an apt description. I would gain enough weight to make me look at myself hard in the mirror and start to do something about it, but the high side would get a little higher, and the amount of weight I lost would always be just a bit higher than the last time. It is one of the worst feelings in the world to know you lost 20 pounds, and you are still 10 pounds heavier than that first time you decided you needed to lose some weight.

Over time, much like interest, the effect of this compounds, forcing the stretches in-between the time you work up the nerve to fix to grow longer and the amount of weight you lose when you do to shrink with a sense of futility. Eventually you get big enough that it starts to seem pointless, and then you start on one program or another and work at it for 3 or 4 weeks cut back a little on the eating, and you don’t lose a pound, or worse you lose one or two and it feels pointless, when of course leads to binge eating, and the program you started eventually results in weight gain, making you feel more worthless, and the whole thing more pointless.

This cycle is a nightmare to break, it hurts like crazy physically, you are always hungry, your body is always sore and it doesn’t do a thing to keep you from feeling like it is all pointless. If you are willing to dive in all the way, not so much change habits, or work on making better choices, but kill that old person who thinks it’s ok to eat what you want just because you run a mile, it can work. I am in constant danger of getting out of the pool and just going right back to the old me, I have to have the same conversations with myself every stupid day, but I will not be the old me, it doesn’t matter if I lose 1 pound a week as lose as I as that number is going down. I refuse to be that person again.

Side effects 1

Being uncomfortable with the way you look and feel has odd ways of creeping into your life in strange and subtly destructive ways. It can wear away at your pride just as efficiently as any river grinds away at its river bed until there are whole portion of your life so feel so shameful and embarrassing you hide them with the same kind of zeal a closet drunk hides his bottles. Forgive the comparisons I am just trying to explain how bad this made me feel over the years.

I think some of the best examples of these are the lengths I went to too hide or just out and out ignore the fact that cloths weren’t fitting the way they used to. There is a very “final nail in the coffin” moment when a certain shirt or pair of pants becomes so uncomfortable you just can’t wear it anymore. For most people it would be the wake up call they needed to make some drastic and immediate changes for me it was just a particularly big dust bunny to sweep under the denial rug.

I guess I start with the belts. This is something I do not believe I did completely on purpose, at least I don’t remember making a conscience decision to do so any specific time, but the fact remains that it kept happening every time I got a little to fat for a belt. What that is, is that when a belt could no longer contain my every expanding waste line it would somehow get lost, left, break, or accidentally thrown out. Thus forcing me to have to buy a new one. When I went to pick a new one up somehow the styles in the smaller belts just didn’t suite me, but the perfect looking belt would always be in a size 1 or 2 up from the one I lost. I need to get on thesaurus.com and look up synonyms for embarrassed. The recounting of this leaves me thoroughly abashed (gotta shake things up a bit). I think what bothers me the most about the belt thing is that it is only in retrospect that I see this trend. At the time I really didn’t think about what I was really doing, that is not the case with the next example.

The thing with the clothing is something I have recently admitted to my wife, whom I assume knew exactly what was going on from the first time she asked, she’s insightful like that. Here’s what has been going down for the last several years. I have been essentially collecting cloths, not because I have some desire to add to my collection, but because there is apart of me that can’t admit that I have no business owning the sizes that are neatly folded and stacked in ever growing piles on that shelf in my closet that never moves. Old jeans, shorts, shirts, dress shirts, pull overs, coats, sweaters, thermals, and just about everything else that is size specific was stuffed back there under the auspices that I no longer liked the way it looked. So every few months my loving wife would ask me in an exasperated tone why I wouldn’t just get rid of all this old crap I never wear? I would divert the question, or flat out ignore it until dropped it, and that is the way it went until recently.

Very recently in fact, just the other day I pulled out an old shirt from that pile and with severe trepidation pulled it over my head, and come to find out it fit. I won’t say it was loose, but I didn’t feel the inside of a sausage link, and if I wore it out I don’t think people would wonder if I was trying to make a statement. It was then that I came clean with my wife about why I stockpiled clothing. For me throwing it out or giving it away was akin to an admission that I was never going to be small enough again in my life to keep it. I think that would have been the proverbial nail in the coffin, not for me getting healthy, but for me to give up on ever fitting into those items again. I think that’s why she never just threw the stuff out while I was gone, or forced me to toss it out. There are still plenty of things in that corner that I’m not yet willing to pull on, but now it’s just a matter of time before I need to build another pile of stuff with to much free space, and I don’t think I’ll have any problem letting Good Will have it all.

Character Flaws 1

The more I write about this the more it forces me to look for the source of the problem. I think the over eating and self control issues stem from more fundamental personality flaws than just really liking food. There are several I think I need to get into eventually, but the one that really stands out is a sort of bull headed reaction to advice.

I am not sure how best to get into this, but the best way to ensure I don’t make a life change is to tell me to make it. Tell me to eat healthy, give me advice on how to lose weight, tell me to use a particular program and my natural reaction is to tell you to stick and do the opposite out of spite. It does not matter how devastating to me not taking the advice just the offering is enough to get my hackles up and have me ready to prove you wrong. Lest I sound to stupid, I don’t have this reaction to everyone that tells me what I should be doing, mainly the people I see as pretentious, people I think have no business messing with my life, and people I believe are being hypocritical. And being the violent cynic that I am, that encompasses a lot of people.

I think the reaction comes out most strongly when I believe someone is judging me. There are certain friends I used to have that would scoff or give me a certain look if I ordered a soda instead of a water. This did not make me want to order water, it made me want to kick in their door and force feed them two liters of mountain dew until they threw up (this is that overreaction I was talking about). It ties in with another glaring flaw of anger I have, but more on that later. Besides the angry reaction, if they acted like that you better believe I was not going to be caught dead drinking anything remotely healthy in front of that person again. No way was I going to let them think they had some sort of positive effect on me… This is incredibly stupid logic.

When you really stop to think about my reaction what is apparent from the outside looking in, is that they certainly did affect me, I let them force me into even worse behavior. When a person would tell me I should stop eating fast food, or drinking soda, or eat more fruit, all I could think of is that I was certainly not going to do it on their suggestion.

This knee jerk stupidity very nearly derailed my efforts to change my life. About two weeks in to working my butt off I went to the doctor to get some issues I’d been having checked out. I had been getting nausea frequently, dizziness, vomiting at least twice a day. It was a real problem. However, this twig of a man doctor wouldn’t shut up about organic foods like I’d never heard of them, and spoke of grilled skinless chicken like it was a closely held skinny idiot secret. He asked me how long I’d been struggling with morbid obesity and patted my shoulder while starring at me like I was a misguided kid. I don't think I have ever felt so humiliated. He then suggested I use myfitnesspal a program I had been using for two weeks already. Him mentioning it nearly put an end to everything. If I changed my life I was going to change it my way, no way was this self righteous jerk going to take credit for my hard work. That’s right, the fact that he mentioned it made me believe on some level if I really made changes he would claim he was what changed me life. I was committed to quitting the bike rides and controlled eating when I left, I got so mad it made me dizzy. It took every scrap of self control not to just quit everything, I am getting angry right now reliving it. It was humiliating, the guy couldn’t have been 4 years older than me.

I still have this reaction. I have had people who suggested I lose weight tell me they’re glad I finally took their advice, and it is with the barest margin of self control that I don’t just throw it all away just to deny them the satisfaction of thinking they changed me. The truth is the only thing that got me fat was me, and the only thing that can lose the weight is me, and if I don’t keep telling myself that I am going to stop and fill up like the Good Year blimp, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me furious when people take credit for my hard work. No one stepped up and said sorry for making you fat.

weight 2

Food is a real issue for me, like several members of my family in fact. I think my sister put it best when she said that we “really like bad food.” What She meant by that was that we love to eat, which is bad enough, but we love terrible things. Rather than having a taste for fancy deserts and high dining we tend to prefer things like double cheeseburgers and croisandwiches. I believe this is probably more true when it comes to me.

I hesitate to so far as to say I am/was addicted to food but it has some striking similarities to chain smokers. When you start to read up on the mindset of a smoker you tend to find a common theme, that being that they see the cigarettes as a little reward. Make it through the first two hours of work, reward. Make it to lunch, reward. Have a stressful conversation, reward. This is much the same approach I took to food. Except I felt the need to reward myself a lot, apparently I had a lot of achievements during a normal day. Starting with waking up. I probably packed 800 calories away before 10am most days. The sick part is how much I thought about that first fix before I got it. Basically from the moment I woke up I was fixated on when the first food break was coming, would it be BK, or McDonalds? Maybe even Steak n Shake, they have amazing hash browns. I would make sure that my stops that morning took me by the restaurant that won the war that day. The first bite of that food was so satisfying it was like a weight off my shoulders. A little bit of relief.

The real ridiculousness comes right after I finished eating, because I would crumble the bag, toss it to the side and immediately start planning on what I was going to get for lunch, the meal forgotten and the excitement of the next filling my mind. It really seems quite sick when I write it down like this, but the only thing I thought about was if I was going to have an energy drink, and how good that would be, or just have a soda and wait for that drink for lunch. What I am really struggling to put into words is just how satisfying eating that food was. Or when I got my hands on a Mexican coke, how the anticipation would make my mouth water, and how I would plan to make a stop in the area in the next few days just to get a few more. I could feel my stress bleed away for a minutes with the food or drink I chose.

I think what made it go from a problem to a borderline addiction was when I decided on an entire criterion for giving myself candy, soda, energy drinks, or fast food depending on what happened in a day. Sell something, food. Angry customer, food. Bad talk with boss, food. Small fight with wife, food. Completed job, food. Are you beginning to see a pattern? I didn’t. Not for a long time.

When I decided it was time to make a change in my life I realized it wasn’t something that could be done by half measures. I had to go all in or not try it all, I tried to do that several times, but as I mentioned earlier if I had something to blame, I did, but something my cousin and uncle did made sense to me, and that is what I am doing now. I haven’t stopped eating all the bad food, but I don’t have 3 Mexican Cokes in 10 minutes anymore.

weight 1

When I sit down (I have about 4 hours a day do to driving) and think about just how I let myself go to the point where I had to make these hard decisions several things pop into my mind, the majority being excuses. The first being when I had mono when I was just out of college and heading for a new job in Chicago. Prior to that I hadn’t exactly been a striking image of physical prowess but I was actually running 10 or so miles a week and wasn’t eating to badly, mostly do to having very little cash. Because of the mono I lost all that endurance I had built up over my 3 years in college, so when it came time to get back in shape it was just hard. Running a mile went from something that was no problem to leaving me winded and exhausted.

It was very discouraging to not be able to just throw on a pair of shorts and run a miles, so discouraging in fact that I just stopped trying. I lacked the ability and drive to push through the pain. I can remember many times getting half way through a mile and just dying on the vine. The thought of how bad it hurt to run and how tired I was winning out over the drive to keep going and just giving up mid way through. I don’t like writing that down. I have always tried to work my butt off and prided myself at having the determination to finish anything and do whatever I decided I could. So add being discouraged to a crumbling self image at not being able to mentally overcome the pain (something that had never been an issue to that point) and what you got was a downward spiral. Not to say I didn’t have weight and image problems long before that, but I think I’ll get into that more in a latter post.

My job in Chicago had me sitting for around 7 hours a day, and when I was sitting I was just standing still, so I wasn’t exactly getting a workout. Basically the only exercise I got was walking to the train and back and some bag time. The punching bag is a great workout if you actually work at it for more than 5 or 6 minutes. I would hit if for a minute or two and stand around, then do it again till a half hour or so had drained away and tell myself I had a good half hour work out. I ate terribly, and I gained weight. Which is pretty much the theme for the last 3 years.

What makes getting constantly bigger is that that horrible difficult work out was just got taller and taller. The more I gained and less I ran the harder it got to run, or do pretty much any workout, and the harder it got the more depressed about it I got, and the less I wanted to do it. I think the closest I came to turning it around was the all to brief stint in Cincinnati. The apartment complex we lived in had a work out room and I spend a half hour or more on an elliptical trainer, I kept speeding up my times, and burning through miles, then I decided to get off the trainer and run a mile. Devastating. It hurt just as bad, it was just as hard, and I didn’t even make it a full mile before I just petered out. I think that had such an impact on me because whenever I can’t finish I think back to first time I ran a mile with dad, and what he said to me several times was “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, just finish.” I don’t know for sure why that stuck so firmly in my mind, but when I stopped I knew it wasn’t because I couldn’t job the rest of the mile, but because it was hard, it hurt, and I didn’t want to. Devastating.

That was pretty much the last time I made a real effort to change until recently. I am still just getting started but have not let myself give up. Kaje bought me a bike to use instead of running and I took to it. However, about 3 weeks in that wall I always run into showed up. I knew it was coming, I knew it was either a point I could launch from or something that was going to stop me dead. So when that day came, I told kaje, and she told me not to stop. So instead of stopping when I was half way through that days ride, I road the entire length and then tacked 3 miles on. It was some of the worst pain I can remember. Since then I keep running into those walls every few weeks. I haven’t blasted through them like that time everytime, but I haven’t left things half done yet. I recently started doing the p90x strength training workout 3 nights a week, and it is something I hate doing. I want to leave them half done, I want to not do the abs, or only do the first round, but what I know is that the first time I do not finish, will be the last time I finish any of my workouts.

No Fun

So around a few months back I realized several things about myself. The first being that I am a nearly constant liar, not so much to you but mainly to myself about a wide variety things, but for the purposes of this paragraph we will focus on weight. I am big, and I am in fact probably genetically inclined to be big. So for the last 4 or 5 years as my weight has slowly swelled to the size I was when I decided to try and head the other direction was substantial.

On the road to where I am now I have tried a truly staggering amount of things to lose weight and have found that I can blame every program and diet for my lack of weight loss and in some situations my weight gain while on them. When I did P90X I got crazy strong but lost no weight, this was because I almost completely ignored the diet, and in fact started eating more than normal because I was burning the extra calories. I ran, I cut carbs, I trained in MMA style fighting, and a large number of other things. Nothing worked and it had to be the programs, not my near addiction to energy drinks and anything with sugar in it, oh and McDonalds breakfast, Pizza, pasta, and a giant number of other things.

Well at the end of May my daughter was born. This is something that made me actually sit down and consider the ramifications of being fat dad. Not just the eventuality of heart disease, cancers, diabetes, and a variety of other ailments, but more pressing was the idea that I wouldn’t be able to participate in the wide range of things I want my daughter to be able to do.

My wife has taught ballroom dancing, and has been schooled in ballet and I am pretty sure when my baby turns into a little girl she is going to see her mother and want to learn. As fat dad I am not going to be able to do more than watch her learn from her mother, when what I want to do is learn with her, maybe even teach her a few things. I have taught a few martial arts and defense classes in my past and I would like to pass that to her so she could break the arm of any boy who decided to let his hands wander. As fat dad I imagine I’m going to be to winded and tired to do much more than watch my daughter distance herself from me. This is a small taste of the things that went through my head.

What I did next was evaluate myself. Not from the lens of self pity I had been for years, but I made a conscience effort to really look at myself. What have I been doing to myself? Why? Why did I weigh the absurd amount I did? Why did that number keep going up? Why didn’t my pants fit? This was one of my top ten most depressing events of my life, because at the end of the several weeks of reflection what it came down to was me. No one else, nothing else.

I was the way I was because I let myself get there. No self control, no denying myself anything whenever I wanted it. I looked back at the weeks and months before and wrote down what I ate, everything I could remember for several days, and the amount of food was just stupid. It is shameful, and make no mistake I am ashamed of the way I had been living for years. More years than I really want to write down. It’s embarrassing to confront that part of yourself you lie about for years, it sucks, a lot, but for my daughter and for my wife I am going to take the blinders off. I really don’t want to though.