I had planned to come back from my hiatus all triumphant and “Here I am, rock you like a hurricane” (which, incidentally, I sang to everyone who would listen when Hurricane Isabel hit a few years back). Unfortunately, my comeback can neither be described as triumphant nor remotely rocking.
I spent most of the last month and a half commuting three hours, twice a week for adult education classes in order to get some web design know-how under my belt; the point was to perk up my resume so I can get out of my fairly shite job. Now I have to go ahead and see if I’ve actually learned anything by attempting to apply the know-how for the next few weeks. When that phase is over (after I’ve built a couple rudimentary sites by the sweat of my brow and my html skillz) I then have to go back to job hunting in earnest. In the mean time I continue to train new people at work which makes me feel like 32 going on 40, since they all seem to be 28 going on 12. And as if that’s not enough to suck one dry of mojo, the oral surgeon excised a portion of the underside of my tongue last week for testing purposes making it hard to yawn or even talk at points—we are not amused.
So I’m sure you can understand why I’m a little less than effervescent these days. Am I glad to not be commuting six hours a week to have it made clearer and clearer that the barriers to entry for a school board run class are depressingly low? Yes. Does that mean that the climb to the life I’d like to be leading is remotely over? No. I’m just no longer perspiring blood over the whole thing. In light of all this, however, some things are a-changin’.
First, I will post when I can post. I’d love to post something insightful or controversial every day but that’s not reality. In fact even posting something of that nature every two weeks (my original goal) isn’t always achievable. So sometimes I’ll post more often but sometimes it’ll mean you won’t hear from me for a month. Secondly the Google Group is no longer. That damn thing nearly caused my untimely demise. Instead, a brief e-mail from heavymefanatics@gmail.com will arrive at your inbox and instead of the entire post being there you’ll get a teaser and a link to the blog (just like you’ve received this time). There’s one main reason for this—diminished inbox clutter. If everyone reads and posts comments on the blog itself (you can post anonymously) no one gets any more e-mails than they signed up for. So, yes, please post comments on the blog itself unless they’re super personal, in which case you can feel free to e-mail back to the heavymefanatics address—it only goes to me. Third, I won’t be writing something to rival the length of Psalm 119 every time I post. Anything that’s really long will likely be serialized for readability. And lastly, I hope, by summer’s end, to move this blog to the domain www.heavyme.com which is presently parked on my behalf—but that remains to be seen. If the url changes, you’ll of course, be informed.
I think that’s all the business, so let’s get down to the fun stuff.
Anyone who has dieted more than two or three times knows how tempting it is to jump back on the band wagon again—and how scary it is as well. Presently I live in this sort of no man’s land where I’m too scared to go on another diet or “life change” plan, but I’m scared of what will happen if I don’t get this whole food thing under control in the near future. The fear of the diet is all about the possibility that I won’t maintain the weight loss and we all know that the “gain back” phase is generally worse every time. I am the heaviest I’ve ever been by about five or ten pounds, and while I’m not moving up the scale, I’m not moving down either. I think the scary number “they” throw out is that you only have to eat about 30 extra calories a day to gain an extra pound per year (and I’ve heard as low as 10 calories for the same result). Do you know what 30 calories amounts to? A third of a cup of 1% skim milk, a third of a cup of All Bran Buds cereal, a piece and a half of melba toast, a third of a portion of a Jello Gels cup. I mean we’re not talking a phenomenal amount of food here. An extra pound per year over a twenty year period and it’s suddenly clear why your high school physique is a distant memory, or in my case, a sign post from a past life. On the other hand, if I don’t start watching those 30-calorie servings, I’m going to be in a much more difficult place both physically and emotionally before I know it.
I haven’t tried “everything”—I won’t claim that, but I am getting a little exasperated at this point. As we all know, I’m a four time failure at Weight Watchers, one of the more respectable programs out there (speaking of which, we will be getting back to our guinea pigs very soon), and the Weigh Down Diet requires some level of faith in God—difficult since I’m agnostic (though it did work for a while when I was Christian). I’ve never tried anything that sounded remotely like a crash diet because I’ve always wanted to be responsible about it, but no matter how responsibly you lost the weight, when you gain it back the yo-yo has the same detrimental effects on your body. While exercising is a good thing and you should do it, I haven’t yet managed to find a form of exercise that I don’t loathe. I’ve “learned to run” with the Running Room three times now. One would think I’d actually be capable of running at long last. Walking buddies have kept me going for a time but that’s never quite stuck for me either. I have owned a variety of helpful DVDs in my time. The most amusing of the lot is one by Carmen Electra. I lasted two sessions of yoga before boredom forced me out of the room. African dancing is next up on the chopping block. Having said all that though, most experts agree that long term permanent weight loss has more to do with diet than exercise. Ultimately, if I’m to be victorious, I have to resolve my screwy relationship with food.
I eat when I’m hungry like most people. But I’m also very likely to ignore hunger and be all martyr-like about it when I’m busy, especially at work—kiss of death for a fat chick. Eating to deal with hunger is incidental; in fact when I’m not eating, even though I’m hungry, I feel this wonderful sense of control. But when I’m bored, or watching TV, or rewarding myself for surviving some form of stress, or anxious, or wired at two a.m., the urge to eat is seemingly uncontrollable. I don’t know if I can actually sit through a movie in a theatre without something to eat. I could have eaten a seven course meal just before the movie and I still *have* to have my popcorn. And it’s not like I’m eating my way through a vat of ice-cream in one sitting or anything outrageous for the most part. But taking into account that I only need to eat 10-30 extra calories a day to put on some pounds, then that 200-calorie personal size serving of popcorn, or that 300-calorie cup of ice-cream, or 100-calorie chunk of sausage, or the 270-calorie shandy—and oh, do I love a shandy—really add up to something special.
I’m not under any illusion that my weight gain isn’t in direct correlation to how much I eat, but I also know that the drive to eat is all in my head and has little to do with the actual food itself. So being all super strict about what I eat and how much I eat solves the problem for as long as I’m willing to feel punished; but at some point I have to change the relationship between me and food.
Enter neurolinguistic programming. It’s the concept behind that creepy fucking show that aired on TLC earlier this year, I Can Make You Thin (with host Paul McKenna) and the book of the same name. Some of the techniques pop up in The Weigh Down Diet but with God added to the mix. In general NLP has a pretty good reputation and it makes good sense at least theoretically: change the way you think about food and you change the habits around it, thus making the weight go away. So despite the creep factor of the show, the somewhat hard to find book is on order and will hopefully have me feeling a little more positive about this whole thing in the near future (4-14 business days according to the “seller” on Amazon). Unfortunately NLP ain’t gonna have me thin by the time I roll up in Myrtle Beach in my generous tankini at the end of July, but I hope that by the end of the year I’ll be seeing some concrete results. You will be kept posted.
As for the other fear—that if I lose weight and meet Mr. Right, he’ll dump me if I gain weight again—well that’s for another post. For now, let’s see if Paul McKenna can, in fact, make me thin.
