Image 4

Another story from the high school years has been banging around my head the last few weeks and I figured I might as well put it down here, or else keep dealing with past embarrassments. This one spans my late sophomore through my senior year and the main problem with this incident was finding anyway to avoid my peer group seeing me without a shirt on.

A girl that went to the school in my front yard decided to start throwing parties about the time we all got drivers licenses and much to my dismay she lived at the local lake community, water side no less. This sucked because what it meant was that any party that took place between the months of may through September would most likely involve swimming. I actually love swimming, I really like being in the water, always have, but I hate taking my shirt off. Due to the myriad of issues I have discussed before this was not something I would do willingly. So I had a wide variety of plans and excuses to avoid this. That is why I tended to have a injury that I was unwilling to show anyone occur shortly before these get together so I couldn’t get into the lake. I would frequently show up late, sometimes waiting till they were midway into whatever movie they picked that night just to avoid the lake. Sometimes I just wouldn’t show up at all.

The reason I bring all this up and why it has been kicking around my head lately isn’t because this was particularly hard on me, but rather because of two things. The first is that it illustrates how I frequently limited my social interaction and fun because of weight, the second is regarding another person who also went to these parties and had a blast.

To the first thing, it is really stupid how much even I wouldn’t do just because I assumed all eyes were on me because I was what could be called husky at that age. Not even close to as bad as I got in recent years, not really that bad at all looking back, but it stopped me at so many corners from having the fun I really wanted to and doing a lot of things I would have otherwise enjoyed.

The second things really ties in with the first. There was another guy that came to almost all these things and he was quite a bit chubbier than me at the time. However, he had absolutely no reservation about losing the shirt and diving right in. Enjoying the party from start to finish. He in fact never had reservations, if it was a game of shirts and skins I dreaded the later, but this guy didn’t bat an eye. He knew he was a bit on the heavy side (he wasn’t fat, neither was I at the time, but chubby for sure), but it just didn’t interfere in his life.

This is the real problem anyone with weight issues has to deal with. This is what I believe has more to do with my steady weight gain than almost any other factor. The mental muck up this causes can range from a stumbling block to a solid wall, preventing me from living my life, which lands me alone at home, sitting around and heading for some kind of food to comfort my frustration at not being part of anything. If I had a free pass to change something about myself, I wouldn’t speed up my metabolism, I wouldn’t ensure that my muscle remained rock hard forever, I would kill the part of my brain that made me believe that everyone in a room was starring and scrutinizing me. Pretty self centered mindset when you think about it.

I am not in the shape I really want to be in yet, I haven’t hit my goals, but I have come a good way towards them, and what I am learning is that losing weight has nothing to do with this part of my brain. I still assume everyone is looking at the fatty (IE ME), I am terrified of anyone catching a glimpse of me with my shirt off, which is the reason why I run almost exclusively at night or have to put medical tape on my nipples (prevents chaffing on distance runs) when removing my shirt would be much simpler and far more effective. The truth is there are a few people out there who would notice my not completely fit body, most likely people like me who fixate on body image, but they would forget it just as fast. The truth is my mind is the only thing really holding me back.

About a week ago I went to a waterpark with my family, this is a big fear of mine. I can never decide what is more embarrassing, going shirtless or being the dude with the shirt on in the pool that lets everyone know you’re to embarrassed to take it off. What I decided was that it was going to have work the same way as controlling my eating habits and work out habits, to make any kind of meaningful change I was simply going to have to change. So me and my farmers tan went for a walk. The first ten minutes on the lazy river with my wife and baby nearly gave me an anxiety attack, but slowly I realized that I didn’t really care of someone whose figure wasn’t exactly perfect went around in a speedo, then I needed to just enjoy my time with my family. I never got comfortable exactly, but I did have fun, and managed some time in the wave pool and a ride or two with the wife, shirt not included.

Workouts 1

This is a detour from the typical post I throw on this thing, but as I have been running more and more it seems that something has been coming up so much in my mind its worth writing about. With luck putting in writing will help get it out of my brain, thus eliminating the war that is ranging over my will power ever single time I work out.

I noted two post back about how I have recently learned that I can in fact run again, and thanks to a combo of barefoot shoes (oxy moron?), and less fat to haul around, I am finding that I am capable of running for greater distances than I ever believed myself capable. My body is able to deal with the miles without to much complaint, and recover fast enough to do it again the next. However, I am getting off topic, what I am more concerned with the battle that goes on mentally whenever I run.

When I decide on the mileage I am going for before the run I am fired up, it isn’t going to be a problem and I am going to knock out the miles without event. This is what I tell myself every single time I get ready to go. Lets look at the 6 miler I did last week. I hadn’t gone that far before and I was determined to do it this time, and knew I could. Until I was about 100 yards into the run that is.

The first mile is always an argument in my brain. It starts pretty quickly with me asking myself why in the world I think I need to run that far. I come up with several good reasons pertaining to weight loss and overall health as well as achieving personal goals. To which I am happy to inform myself 4 miles would most definitely suffice to meet those very same goals, and while six may be notable it is completely unnecessary, and boy I would like to avoid the soreness I am most definitely going to endure as a result. When the argument starts I am firm in my goal, but about half way into the second mile I have decided that 4 miles will actually be fine. It will still be above my calorie burning goal and six will just suck, why even bother.

This decision typically lasts until I am mid way through the 3^rd mile. It’s strange. It may be what people always referred to as runners block, but I doubt it as I am far to aware of the pain in my legs, and my labored breathing to be in some trance, and the fact that I am having an involved conversation with myself about it also indicates that I am not exactly rising above my physical limitations. The fact is by the time I get within a half mile of my recently revised goal that stalwart attitude I had before the run starts to assert itself subtly. It typically begins with me thinking how I am not going to run six, but I am almost done with 4 and I could totally make it another mile. I don’t have to or anything, but I could if I wanted. Maybe what Ill do is just start in on a 5^th mile and run till I don’t feel like it. It could be 100 feet or another full mile, but I already met the goal anyway so why not? My brain thinks in run on sentences fyi. The stalwart sides keeps the give up side distracted with this line of thought so long I typically finish the 5^th mile before I realize it, and if I am gonna do 5, I pretty much have to do six.

What is so ridiculous about this is that it does not matter how far I am going. If I decide to do six it happens, but it also happens if I decide to do 3, its just more of a cliff notes convo because my brain doesn’t have the luxury of all that extra time. Its very annoying to have to change your mind so many times whilst doing something you’d really rather never do in the first place, but maybe now that’s it written I can start to get past this latest manifesting of my OCD tendancies.

Image 3/Side effects 4

This is a post I am not sure is worth writing. I am not sure this is something that necessarily contributed to my remaining overweight, or even made me want to stay fat. I think it’s more of a flaw with my body in general, that gaining a lot of weight only made worse. Seriously I am sitting here and I don’t like thinking about this, because it’s something that is now part of the way my body looks and will always look, it’s not going to change with the weight loss and it was there before the big part of the gain, and it sucks.

I have always had bad skin. It dries to the point of bleeding, I had acne that could be described as horrifying when I was a teen, and it is generally easily irritated by all manner of things. So it shouldn’t have been any surprise to me when I found the first stretch mark. This started to happen when I was 16/17 during a summer when I was in the best shape of my life (excluding currently). I was getting strong, could run 10 miles and was very healthy. However, it seemed that my muscle growth was outstripping my skins ability to cover them. So the first place the marks showed up were on my biceps, shoulders, and chest.

What’s better is that the kind of markings my body gets aren’t those barely noticeable ones (in comparison) some women get during pregnancy these were deep angry red things, that looked like some large animal raked its claws deep into my flesh wherever they popped up. If I had trouble taking my shirt off before, you might as well have painted it on after the red lines started crisscrossing my body. It got so bad that I begged my doctor for some solution to get it to stop. When someone would catch a glance they assumed I had got into some accident related to farm equipment, which I never outright denied, because its better to have scars than stretch marks.

Now because of how far I let myslf go before I decided to get back on the straight and narrow, it appears as if I spent most of my youth in knife fights for all the ugly furrows on my chest, arms, sides, stomach, back, shoulders, legs, and just about everywhere else. If I managed to get ripped one day I doubt you would ever see more skin that a well fitting tshirt would reveal because my body underneath is some ugly to me. In truth I doubt most people would comment, and my wife (great to me) never mentioned it to me once, but in my mind it is all I see when my shirts off.

This is something that I am going to have to work on for a long time I think. I may be ready to stop eating like an idiot and to work myself to the bone, but I am still several steps away from seeing anything but my flaws whenever I look at myself.

13. Positive Negatives 1

I really hate how much present achievement sheds light on past failures sometimes. I try not to dwell to much on these things, choosing to write them down here and forget them, but this particular issue is something that causes a tightness in my chest out of shame due to a couple of years of self deception. I hate lying to myself much more than lying to anyone else, I try very hard not to do that, now more than ever, but in this little corner of my personality I couldn’t seem to stop

To the point. Recently I have started running again, I hate running, but my bike is plagued by constant problems. I seem to run over ever staple, piece of glass, or nail (3 of the 6 objects to have given me a flat this far) on the road. Doing enough damage to render the never flat tires worthless and the constant repair costs prohibitive. I have been willing to spend that money because of my distaste for running. It burns more calories per minute than riding, but because I had so much trouble completing even a mile it just didn’t give me the total calorie burn I needed. That was until the last 6 days.

I had another flat and asked my wife to grab me a new tire from walmart so I would be able to get on the bike quick as I was getting home late. What I didn’t mention is that there is a difference between a tube for a mountain bike (what I have) and a road bike and she grabbed the latter. So the sun was going down, neither of us wanted to go back to the store and I wasn’t going to ride my normal route at night anyway. I was not about to not burn those excess calories, so it was either a p90x cardio (murder me) or running (just torture). So I strapped on my KSO’s and headed out. I was able to do nearly 3 miles. This had me stumped, because the last time I attempted running (2-3 months ago which was when I started losing) about .6 miles in everything hurt, and by the end I was sore and felt like a train wreck.

This should’ve made me very happy, and it did at first, but what it made me realize is that the reason running those miles was so horrible was because of all that excess weight jolting my body with every step. Not the mono killing my endurance, not bad joints, just excess weight. I ran 5 miles today, something I haven’t done since I was 17. I think I could’ve made it 6, the only reason I wasn’t able to do this 3 months ago was because of my weight. I love my bike, it may be one of the best things my wife ever got for me, it started me rolling down hill to change, it let me work off the excess without making my body feel like it was falling apart. However, it feels really good to be able to mix in running again, and at a level surpassing what I managed as a teenager.

Side Effects 3

This is something I have been thinking about a lot since I talked with one of my female friends who is also struggling to get her weight under control, and it is the concept of getting comfortable with being the “fat one.” As with most of these posts this shows up in a few places but it generally consists of it becoming far easier to just be the fat one in your group of friends then work your way to normal, or past it to the fit one. There are certain expectations people start to have for the way you’ll eat and drink, and the way you’ll act. Once those expectations are in place when you go outside them there is some natural push back even if you’re heading in the direction.

When you are with a group of people you know really well, out to eat, or maybe just having dinner at someone’s house, they expect certain behavior from you. If you are in fact the fat friend, like me they’ll expect that you eat a lot, drink high calorie/sugar drinks and generally make a glutton of yourself. I don’t think anyone would say it outright but having a friend that does this is great for your self esteem. It lets you indulge a bit more than normal without feeling bad about it. After all at least you’re not eating as much as fat friend. I do not say this from the inside looking out, or to pass judgment on anyone else, because if fact I am just as guilty of this as the next guy. I have had several friends over the years I loved spending time with because I knew that even though I was letting myself go a bit, at least I wasn’t ballooning like so and so. It was a bad day when I finally realized that I had become that friend to several of my own peer group.
Side note: What is far worse than this is when you realize you’re the heafty one and you decide to watch what you eat, but only in front of other people knowing full well, that they know full well that you eat whatever the heck you want when they aren’t there, but because of social courtesy everyone ignores the fact the diet cokes at outback don’t offset your consumption of half of the groups bloomin onion, and everyone smiles and says good for you when you let them know you’re running again…. (this comprises several years of my life dang it)
In step with having a heavy friend around when you’re having a meal, it’s nice to have someone plumper than yourself around all the time. It is only natural for us to compare ourselves to others finding out what you have better or worse than the next person, for men it could be strength, hair, weight, ect.. for woman breasts, weight, general attractiveness. It is a natural as breathing. So I as the chubby kid fill a crucial niche in a social group. It isn’t the one anyone wants to fill, but it does allow you to have a lot of friends who don’t find you particularly treating.

Speaking of threatening, my friend I mentioned earlier brought this up to me, and while I never lost weight while I was close to my friends I think this is worth mentioning. She was telling me about one time in the past when she had really made a hard push for weight loss and started to really change the way she looked. She had always maintained a playful relationship with her friends male and female, and that sort of joke flirting that happens between friends and their friends spouses. Which until she dropped weight was considered playful and fun, but when she was fast on her weight to being skinny the claws came out. All the sudden the playful joking was met with sneers and sideways looks, and her friends became a lot less friendly. She had upset the order. She was supposed to be the fat friend and that’s where everyone was comfortable having her, including herself.

That really is the heart of the matter. When you have been the fat one long enough, when you occupy that part of the social order it is hard to get out of it. That’s where everyone expects you to be, that is where you expect to be. Once you realize that, it is even easier to eat bad, not work out, and generally let yourself go, because no one expect any better of you, so why should you expect better of yourself? This is the point I have to constantly make to myself. No one expects me to lose weight, and most people don’t really want me to. My skinny friends don’t want to lose the fat one, my heavy friends don’t like being reminding that they are still heavy and not changing it. I don’t want to upset any of them, so it would be a lot better for everyone if I would just stop trying and gain it all back. No one is going to rush to your aid and cheer you on through the rigorous and frustrating road of to losing all the extra weight, you have to do that on your own. There will undoubtedly be a few people around you they will give you support and cheer you on, but no one will do it for you, no one will make it easier, and no one will make you do it, in fact they’d probably be happier if you didn’t bother. So forget friends, forget family members, and do it for youself.

The Problems

In talking with people who want to institute the changes that I struggle to keep going in my life it occurred to me that I really need to expand on some earlier thoughts. I have referenced the idea of knowing exactly what is going into your body and how that can engender a powerful change as far as your or my general health is concerned. The flip side of that coin is learning to put the owness of getting rid of the weight and the rewards on no one else but yourself.

What I am not saying is that I am the only reason for where I ended up. There are a myriad of life events, biology, and various other tid bits out of my control that contributed to my eventual weight problem. What I am saying is my reasons for not losing the weight were in fact within my control, but far easier to play off as the reasons for my constant problems.

The first thing I turned to was biology. There is a bit of a husky inclination in my gene pool. There is no one in my family that has that lovely luxury of eating anything they want and never paying for it. Our bodies turn out to be excellent at taking excess calories and storing them in fat. A couple hundred years ago this would’ve mean we were far more likely to survive in times of famine, today it means that if we don’t pay attention to every calorie that we shove in our maws, our body with happily shove them into stomach, thighs, and a variety of areas just in case we cant find any food for a month or two. This is particularly frustrating when you have people in your life who can eat whatever they see without a second thought and are incapable of gaining an ounce. Try to take comfort in the fact that if there’s ever a famine they’ll be the first to die.

Another convenient place I laid blame was on my job. I spend about 4 hours of my 10 to 14 hour work day doing nothing but driving. While my job causing me to sweat like crazy it really isn’t a calorie burner when I reflect on what I am really require to do. It is also the kind of job that requires me to be constantly rushing to a fro, trying to make up time and get to everyone I can in the short time allotted to me. It is really easy to eat a burger, fries, nuggets, and drink large cokes while driving. It is not so easy to eat salad while driving, and heaven forbid I spend 5 minutes in a parking lot on eating a 210 calorie versus saving that time and consume the almost 1300 calories in-between stops. When I write it out it seems even more absurd, but lying to myself is something I am excellent at.

The last big factor for me is depression. It is something I struggle with regularly. My life isn’t turning out how I expected it too, money is a constant struggle, I am frustrated with not being able to do something where I wake up happy to go to work every day and the feeling of spinning my wheels and never getting anywhere is overwhelming. It keeps me awake late into the night, and keeps my blood pressure in the pre-hypertension range even now. Part of my anti-depression medication was two all beef patties and a sesame seed bun. A constant in a world that still seems completely out of my control, doesn’t matter if I am going to have to pay the electric bill late as long as a get a few minutes of piece from the nearest dollar menu.

Here’s the conclusion I have come to. Nearly everything I believed was keeping me from losing weight, especially the 3 things mentioned, really were, but not one of them had to. Biologically I am handicapped when it comes to being then, I have to work a lot harder than the next guy to get the same results, I have to focus harder and push myself a little further to get to the same place. It is not fair, it sucks, but thems the brakes. My job is a constant problem, temptation to eat badly is going to be with me everyday. I counted the number of just McDonalds I pass in a day and it averages about 14. 14 opportunities for some short term comfort, and some long term failure. Depression and frustration with life are probably something that will be sitting on my shoulder for a long time. It is going to take a different level of work and determination to get that handled. The rub in all this is that all those things aren’t going anywhere. There isn’t going to be some dude that shows up on my door and gives me the secret to easy weight loss, there is no pill I can take to slim down with no change to my life. It comes down to me. I have to make the decision to not live that way ever again, to understand that life isn’t going to give me all the support I need to lose weight, that the only way I am going to make this continue to work is by working my body and working my mind, building up reserves of self control and discipline, working out when I do not want to, and eating less even when I REALLY want more, and doing it every single day for the rest of my life no matter what happens around me.

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I think I’ll combine two instances I remember clearly here because they both occurred during my sophomore or junior year of highschool, but combined to take me from self conscience to double taking at everyone who looked at me sideways and wondering how fat they thought I was. That’s right, not if they thought I was fat, but to what degree of fat I fell into for their particular sensibilities. I think it is important to note here that while I was in the on the thin line between Obese and Morbidly Obese according to the BMI, if you looked at me I don’t think you would have thought “Now that guy is Morbidly Obese.” To look at me I was fat, but I am one of those people who carry it remarkably well. So with that said I think that most of my assumptions about what people thought of me were primarily my own creations, but the two to follow did happen, and convinced me whenever I was looking someone else was sneaking a peek at my jelly rolls.

The first incident of confidence shattering involved a teacher embarrassing me in front of a lot of people including several girls I had a tentative thing for. I was part of MADD, or whatever its new acronym is now, essentially it was a student group against drunk driving so probably SADD, who knows, I don’t. Anyway, our group was in charge of setting up for the winter dance, so one day after school we all showed up with some other volunteers and the Spanish teacher (in charge of group) and began to decorate the gym in nothing but the classiest construction paper. It is hard for me to recall at this point exactly what I was wearing, but I know it was a t-shirt and pants/shorts/jeans, doesn’t really matter. What does matter is apparently this shirt came just to the edge of whatever fabric covered my lower half, so when I reached up to hold a banner in place while someone taped it, a portion of my stomach was exposed. This flaunting of flesh drew the attention of the Spanish teacher who said in a slightly louder than normal voice “Wanna do something about that Robert, no one wants to see you muffin top.” I stared at her and said something dismissive like “haha” or perhaps “wha” which she took as a misunderstanding on my part, not realizing I was hoping to side step the comment to avoid the crushing embarrassment I was feeling. So she decided to clarify the point by saying “We can all see your fat roll.” This drew the rest of the eyes in the room who had laughed off or ignored the first comment. I stood there silently while they finished taping the banner, my face beat red I am quite sure I tend to all but glow when embarrassed, then made sure the rest of the work kept me out of the gym or at least out of eye contact with anyone. I did not speak to anyone the rest of that afternoon.

Being older, and having somewhat thicker skin and a sharper tongue I would’ve shot back or just ignored it now. At that time though it was bad enough that I didn’t want to go back to school the next day, and came up with excuses to never go to another decorating session. It was also very hard to talk to anyone I knew for sure heard all that because when I did talk to them all I could think about was them thinking about my fat roll.

The second thing wasn’t as devastating, it was more a shot across the bow from another kid my age for no apparent reason. I was part of theater for the majority of my highschool career and part of that was coming in on Saturdays to build the set. I enjoyed this more than any other part of theater because I knew more about building than most of the other people so I got take more of a lead role. I don’t know why but I was big on wearing tank tops in public, I am sure I thought I looked strong, at least until this morning, it retrospect I probably just looked like a nerdy theater kid who thought he was tough. I was walking down to the auditorium with the a few friends, a mix of girls and guys, when one of the smaller guys got up next to me and turned to one of the other guys and said “I don’t know why Bob (they called me bob) wears wife beaters (they called them wife beaters) he’s not strong enough for that, he’s actually pretty doughy.” Again for a self conscious kid this was a devastator. I made the mistake of confronting him right there giving him the opening to refer to me as husky, it made the girls laugh, at which point I think I shoved the kid, which led to more laughter. If you want to feel small have someone half your size insult the one thing your most sensitive about in front of a group of people you want to like you, then stick up for yourself and listen to them all laugh at you. This is one of those things I buried deep because it still makes me mad how stupid and helpless I felt. Not to mention fat.

You would think this would push me to lose the weight as fast as possible to prove them all wrong and rub their noses in it. Nope, I wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of thinking they had made me change, no way no how.