Quick Thought

Let me start by saying that in no way am I claiming I am/was addicted to food in the same way an alcoholic needs booze, or a drug attic needs a fix, I am however going to use the comparison to try and make clear how I have to go about sticking to my plan. I think it is also worth noting that some people are actually addicted to food in much the same way as the previously mentioned addicts. Moving on.

Food can be very much like a drug. It can trigger the same responses as many drugs, and can get very addictive. The combination in a double cheeseburger for example lights up many of the same areas that are known to be affected in the brain during illegal drug use. I already mentioned the reward system and the feeling you get when you first bite into a particularly delicious and much anticipated treat. It makes you feel good, it makes you feel content, and it is something that is very hard to give up.

For me there is no little bit. There is no gradual diet change. If for some reason for the next few days I couldn’t eat anything but fast food, lets say someone held a gun to my head, that would be the end of this. I’d like to tell you I could do that and just get right back to eating my low calorie meals, but I know I couldn’t. Right now I am having trouble consuming bad food because my body has finally decided to get with the program and start liking the healthier stuff I put in it, but let me re-acclimate to the delicious grease, and tantalizing combo of cheese, hamburger, and a ketchup with slightly more sugar than its store bought cousin, and I would be leaving the world of turkey bacon and lettuce far behind. Shoot I would like to do it right now just reading about the taste extravaganza I am denying myself. So for me falling off the wagon is a very apt description, I would fall off onto a bed of golden brown French fries, and deep fried pastries, and eat my way to heart disease and diabetes, and I cant begin to tell you how often I have to remind myself of that just to keep this little life style change going…

Character Flaws 2

To watch me eat a meal of something I particularly like, you would think me an Ethiopian kid who hadn’t seen food in weeks. The behavior I exhibit when it comes to the actual consumption of food is strange, and seemingly baseless in its reason for existing. I can’t think of time when we didn’t have enough food, or I had to go hungry, but I have always eaten like that is the case. My eyes being perpetually to big for my stomach I guess.

One of the best examples of this beast rearing its head is whenever pizza was involved. Kaje and I would get pizza from somewhere and usually breadsticks, or cheesy bread, or a side of some kind. I would get it all back home and proceed to eat it as fast as I could get the food shoved into my mouth. Not pausing to enjoy the taste, not slowing to savor the food, just trying to top of the tank as fast I as possibly could. The problems you run into when you eat like this are as follows.

1. You get full long before your brain realizes it.

a. This is almost common knowledge these days, but your brain has lag time. So if you for example, let your wife it two pieces of a large pizza then proceed to shove the entirety of the remainder down your own throat, by the time your brain starts shouting at you to slow down you’re full, you’ve left that marker way behind you, and you are so filled up that you feel sick.

2. Do the first one enough times and your body will start to compensate.

a. Our bodies are meant to adapt to a huge range of situations regarding available food sources and nutrition. So when you constantly let your body know you are going to pack away enough calories of grease, bread, meats, cheese, and tomato based products to make it sick, it is going to start finding ways to alleviate the discomfort you put it through. So your body goes about converting all those extra calories into fat stores for a rainy day whilst making sure it lets that stomach expand to handle the high volume you truck to it daily. So what would once have made you sick now only makes you full, and that point at which you stopped eating previously now adds about 500 calories to the total needed to reach it. This isn’t something you want to be leveling up.

This is one strangest things I have ever done to myself. It’s something I still don’t really understand. Like I said there was never a time when food was scarce in my life or I had to compete to get it. The fact remains that when I had something I like in front of me I would wolf the stuff down with gleeful abandon until I felt full to bursting, then would tack on one more breadstick just to make sure. If anything remained an hour or two later when things had a chance to settle down I would gladly make sure the fridge wasn’t hindered with pesky leftovers.

Now adays I still deal with this. Not so much overeating, but eating way, way to fast. It happened to me at an Ihop, I ate the entire meal in less than 5 minutes. It happened at dinner at home twice, once with a pizza, and once with Chinese food. I think Kaje could think of a few more instances. However the difference now is that while I eat way to fast the food is well within my portion allotment for the day and I am not passing my calorie goals. An interesting side effect of all this weight loss though is the inability to eat this way and keep it down. I don’t know if its because my stomach has shrunk, and by the time my speed eating catches up to me I am already overfull, or whether my body is so accustomed to the new dietary habits that greasy, starchy, empty calorie rich foods just don’t sit in my stomach anymore. All I really know for sure on that score is that in fact they do not stay in my stomach long.

Image 1

Self esteem and image are something that if you asked me about I would probably tell you are not a real factor in my life. That I don’t really care what other people think of me or how I look, but when I think back over the years, the things that really stick with me, and the memories that are most glaring in my mind tend to be of incidents where it becomes very clear that I am, or at least believe myself to be the fat kid.

The first time I recall being aware of my size was during a school trip I went on. I think it is important to note here that I am pretty sure that this is actually coming from two separate trips from two different years, but my details on them are so sketchy I don’t know, in fact the only thing that really sticks out from the two are the two instances I am going to talk about, which tells you just how strongly they impacted me.

I think part of the problem with the school trips was the fact that I wasn’t a student at the school. I was home schooled at the time so I was already sort of an odd man out. I had several friends at the school, but I knew I wasn’t part of the jokes and the group the same way everyone else was. Mind you I wouldn’t change me education for anything it let me breeze through High School and a very difficult College with little to no struggling, but I am again off topic.

So I had to be between the ages of 12-14 during these memories. The one I think of as happening first took place at the hotel we were staying at while visiting some old Civil War sites. It was late at night, and everyone had come down to pool to go swimming. I went down with everyone, but did it in jeans, a tshirt, and socks and shoes. Just so no one got any ideas on my stance on getting into the pool. Everyone started swimming and I remember as one person after another gave up on trying to convince me to swim, and I made excuse after excuse. Once most of them were in I waited for an opening and slinked away to watch from a balcony. I remember sitting up there making sure not to get to much into the light so no one would see me and try to make me come down. I knew I wasn’t very fat, that I wasn’t crazy overweight, but I was just fat enough to look different than all the other kids. Big enough that they’d notice and probably talk about it. So I hid from all the kids up there for about an hour then slipped back into my room and went to sleep before anyone got back. In the morning I just made sure to let everyone know whether they asked or not that I was just tired and went to bed early.

The second part of this, and again I don’t remember if it was the same trip or not, came once I got back and got the pictures. I knew I wasn’t skinny like the other kids, that I was “husky”, but until this point never really thought I fat, just that I was built bigger than the rest of them. When I got the pictures though, it was devastating to me. Because I was looking at them and I kept noticing something very different between me, and all the other kids. When I was next to them, no one else (not completely true, a few others did in retrospect, but at the time I believed this) had a pop belly sticking out, or had a chubby looking face. I didn’t want to see a single one of those pictures again.

It’s like I said before, I was always aware that I was bigger, but it never previously registered that it was being overweight that made me bigger. Once that got into my head and it never got back out. I went through periods after that when I was fairly normal sized or even skinny for a few months, but I always ended up back at a pudgy overweight, I did everything I could to keep that information from myself, but when I looked in the mirror it’s all I saw.

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.