I know I've been slipping on this blog, but I'm finding it hard to continue writing it when I've been slipping so badly lately with my eating. The guilt is crushing, and because of that, I've found it very difficult to face all of you.
I'm working on breaking out of this relapse, though, and here I sit - after 1 in the morning when I should be snoozing in bed, instead pecking away at this keyboard. I've been slipping, but I'm committed to seeing it through to the end.
Tomorrow I'll post my food diaries. Despite everything, I've still managed to keep those. Here's today's - in case you're interested. It's quite easy to see where I goofed.
Breakfast: 3 pancakes, 3 pieces of bacon, 2 pieces of sausage, and a glass of orange juice.
Lunch: Bowl of Beefaroni, bowl of Shearer's rippled potato chips.
Snack: Bowl of tortilla chips and salsa. A little bit later, three Butterfinger crisp bars.
Dinner (at midnight, mind you): Jr. Hamburger plain, medium fries, and a small Frosty from Wendy's.
Soda today: 7 cans
See what I mean? I've been terrible, but I'm determined to get it straightened back out tomorrow. Any tips for avoiding these cravings I'm having? I'd be delighted to hear some ideas to make it through them.
Until tomorrow,
J.
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
In the beginning...
It all started when I was 13. I was into BMX then. Actually, I was into just about everything. I played football, baseball, rode that damn bike all over town, took boxing lessons, and just about anything else my group of five or six friends could come up with to pass a lazy summer day. But at that time, all the girls thought BMX'ers we're the height of cool. So I was a BMX'er.
As fate would have it, I was "being cool" in an apartment complex parking lot directly across the street from the local hospital clinic when it happened. I slid my feet onto the rear pegs of my bike, pulled up, and did one of the highest "bunny hops" I'd ever done. I felt like I was up in the air forever.
Of course, being up in the air wasn't the problem. It's that part where gravity has it's final say.
As soon as the back wheel touched tarmac, it rolled right out from under me. I tried to pull my feet forward to catch myself, but my momentum was too great, and I fell backwards, almost landing on my knees. The force was enough to snap my right ankle, directly above the joint.
One day I'm in great shape (for 13, anyway) and looking forward to maybe going for a swim. The next day I've got a cast on my leg and I'm sitting on the couch, Doritos and Mountain Dew on the coffee table, Super Nintendo controller in my hand.
Six weeks later, I'd gained 50 pounds or so.
Six months later, that number was closer to 150.
As I write this, I think of the brief encounter I had with the scale in the upstairs bath last evening. It had bad news for me. Apparently in the past 27 years I've managed to pack on a staggering 340 pounds.
I know...there are lots of people heavier. And I know there are lots of people sicker than I am because of their obesity. Other than the obvious symptoms - fatigue, shortness of breath, the occasional heart palpitation - I haven't been sick (sick enough to go to a hospital, anyway) in 20 years. All in all, I guess I'm fortunate. I'm still at a weight where I can be fairly physically active without running the risk of injuring myself. There's that, I suppose. Three cheers for me.
But the physical effects of being overweight do not rank as high on my list as the psychological ones. The body is a very resilient thing. I read somewhere that you can cut your liver in half, and it'll grow back. How cool is that?
Medicine can fix your body being overweight - lap band, gastric bypass, "miracle" pills, etc. - but its yet to come up with a procedure to address the psyche. If you're like me, you find the depression that comes after binging far harder to deal with than having to get a table at the neighborhood grille because you're too fat to fit into a booth.
I should probably say here that I am not a medical doctor. We're all grown human beings here, and we all should know (even those of us old enough to read but not quite legally "grown" yet) that if we want medical advice, we should go to the doctor.
Okay?
The idea for this blog was my wife's, honestly. One of the hardest things about being overweight is that talking about it has become a social taboo. I remember once when I met an ex-girlfriend's four year old nephew. The first thing he did was look at me and say, "You're fat, aren't you?" More disturbing than that, I think now (but not then), was that his mother spent the next ten minutes apologizing for him. I mean, the kid had it right, didn't he? I was fat. I still am fat. What's so wrong with saying it?
There's nothing wrong with saying it. You've got to admit and accept that you are fat before you can do anything about it. Period. There's no shortcut, no soft, polite way to deal with it. Obesity is an ugly disease; did you really expect the solution to it to be nice and clean? Come out and say it. You're fat. I'm fat.
Now let's do something about it.
My wife suggested this blog as a way for me to vent my feelings on being overweight and over-eating. More importantly, though, having to write them out would force me to confront them. It would make me think about them instead of allowing me to dig in to the nearest pint of Ben and Jerry's and forget my problems for ten minutes or so.
I think it's just what I need, too. Society has made talking about obesity (for that's what it is, no matter what you call it) a no-no. Smoking in public is almost a hangable offense against decency, but don't you dare call somebody fat! No sir! You can talk about how much of a problem obesity is, you can talk about all the surgical options to correct it (the insurance companies really hate that), and you can talk about the things you'd all like to do about it...but we never talk about it. We never talk about being fat.
We need to face the fact that we're fat, and we need to make the decision to do something about it. I'll tell you my story here, and you can comment back and tell me yours. Keep me in line...don't let me make excuses for slipping up, and I'll do the same for you.
That's the true aim of this blog. If I do nothing but help myself come to terms with the fact that I am fat, and that I'd better do something about it...fine. But if I can inspire one person to sit up and take notice, to stop hiding from cameras at social functions, to stop being embarrassed about eating in public, to stop being afraid to go to the movies for fear that they'll be too big to fit into the seat...if I can get one of you to stand up and do something about the problem rather than talk it to death, then I've done something more than just help myself, and I think we should all do that as much as possible.
So here's day one of this blog. I weigh 340 pounds. My scale stops at 300...I'm so fat that it had to spin around a second time to accommodate me.
Enjoy it while you can, scale....
J.
As fate would have it, I was "being cool" in an apartment complex parking lot directly across the street from the local hospital clinic when it happened. I slid my feet onto the rear pegs of my bike, pulled up, and did one of the highest "bunny hops" I'd ever done. I felt like I was up in the air forever.
Of course, being up in the air wasn't the problem. It's that part where gravity has it's final say.
As soon as the back wheel touched tarmac, it rolled right out from under me. I tried to pull my feet forward to catch myself, but my momentum was too great, and I fell backwards, almost landing on my knees. The force was enough to snap my right ankle, directly above the joint.
One day I'm in great shape (for 13, anyway) and looking forward to maybe going for a swim. The next day I've got a cast on my leg and I'm sitting on the couch, Doritos and Mountain Dew on the coffee table, Super Nintendo controller in my hand.
Six weeks later, I'd gained 50 pounds or so.
Six months later, that number was closer to 150.
As I write this, I think of the brief encounter I had with the scale in the upstairs bath last evening. It had bad news for me. Apparently in the past 27 years I've managed to pack on a staggering 340 pounds.
I know...there are lots of people heavier. And I know there are lots of people sicker than I am because of their obesity. Other than the obvious symptoms - fatigue, shortness of breath, the occasional heart palpitation - I haven't been sick (sick enough to go to a hospital, anyway) in 20 years. All in all, I guess I'm fortunate. I'm still at a weight where I can be fairly physically active without running the risk of injuring myself. There's that, I suppose. Three cheers for me.
But the physical effects of being overweight do not rank as high on my list as the psychological ones. The body is a very resilient thing. I read somewhere that you can cut your liver in half, and it'll grow back. How cool is that?
Medicine can fix your body being overweight - lap band, gastric bypass, "miracle" pills, etc. - but its yet to come up with a procedure to address the psyche. If you're like me, you find the depression that comes after binging far harder to deal with than having to get a table at the neighborhood grille because you're too fat to fit into a booth.
I should probably say here that I am not a medical doctor. We're all grown human beings here, and we all should know (even those of us old enough to read but not quite legally "grown" yet) that if we want medical advice, we should go to the doctor.
Okay?
The idea for this blog was my wife's, honestly. One of the hardest things about being overweight is that talking about it has become a social taboo. I remember once when I met an ex-girlfriend's four year old nephew. The first thing he did was look at me and say, "You're fat, aren't you?" More disturbing than that, I think now (but not then), was that his mother spent the next ten minutes apologizing for him. I mean, the kid had it right, didn't he? I was fat. I still am fat. What's so wrong with saying it?
There's nothing wrong with saying it. You've got to admit and accept that you are fat before you can do anything about it. Period. There's no shortcut, no soft, polite way to deal with it. Obesity is an ugly disease; did you really expect the solution to it to be nice and clean? Come out and say it. You're fat. I'm fat.
Now let's do something about it.
My wife suggested this blog as a way for me to vent my feelings on being overweight and over-eating. More importantly, though, having to write them out would force me to confront them. It would make me think about them instead of allowing me to dig in to the nearest pint of Ben and Jerry's and forget my problems for ten minutes or so.
I think it's just what I need, too. Society has made talking about obesity (for that's what it is, no matter what you call it) a no-no. Smoking in public is almost a hangable offense against decency, but don't you dare call somebody fat! No sir! You can talk about how much of a problem obesity is, you can talk about all the surgical options to correct it (the insurance companies really hate that), and you can talk about the things you'd all like to do about it...but we never talk about it. We never talk about being fat.
We need to face the fact that we're fat, and we need to make the decision to do something about it. I'll tell you my story here, and you can comment back and tell me yours. Keep me in line...don't let me make excuses for slipping up, and I'll do the same for you.
That's the true aim of this blog. If I do nothing but help myself come to terms with the fact that I am fat, and that I'd better do something about it...fine. But if I can inspire one person to sit up and take notice, to stop hiding from cameras at social functions, to stop being embarrassed about eating in public, to stop being afraid to go to the movies for fear that they'll be too big to fit into the seat...if I can get one of you to stand up and do something about the problem rather than talk it to death, then I've done something more than just help myself, and I think we should all do that as much as possible.
So here's day one of this blog. I weigh 340 pounds. My scale stops at 300...I'm so fat that it had to spin around a second time to accommodate me.
Enjoy it while you can, scale....
J.
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