Too Angry to Diet

I'm done dieting.

No seriously. It's pointless. Ten years. One #diet or another, on and off. Where has it gotten me?

It's gotten me angry.

It's gotten me frustrated.

It's made me feel stupid & useless.

All the money I've spent on this gadget & that product have made me poorer.

What I haven't gotten is lighter or healthier. Not a bit. All of the above stress, all the anger at my inability to win this fight - a fight with my own body. I feel like a big pile of fail. A Fail Whale indeed.

Then, we find the fight is rigged. Read this article. I'll wait.

That's not the first time I've heard this kind of thing. I've heard this a few times. Certainly my anecdotal evidence backs it up. Even the numbers I got out of the weight loss surgery seminar were telling. On average, at the five year mark, people that get WLS have kept off 70 to 80% of their goal weight. The numbers on average at the ten year mark are 60 to 70% of their goal weight. At the time, those numbers sounded fab. But, spending tens of thousands of dollars and still, in my case, being 100 pounds overweight sounds, now, in the cold light of day, utterly ridiculous. At the time I was thinking, well, heck, there are 50% of people above that average that lose a lot more, right? The problem is that there are 50% below that average, too. Imagine the soul crushing horror of taking off 250 or 300 pounds only to watch it all come back.

I can't be that guy. I refuse to be that guy.

I haven't been able to lose weight. The game is rigged, I likely can never get down to my goal weight. What's left?

I see two options:

Option 1
Eat donuts until I explode.
Option 2
Do anything but Option 1.

Option 1 sounds like it would be fun in the very short term. Frankly, I think mostly due to my recent, but failed, Anger Diet, I have shrunk my stomach significantly. The mere thought of a dozen donuts is nearly nausea inducing. I cannot commit "donut suicide" with three Krispy Kremes ...

That leaves us with Option 2. What exactly is Option 2?

I've spent most of this week eating everything in sight, making myself sick (seriously shrunk my stomach!) and considering the above question.

Yesterday, Friday, I came to a conclusion. As we said above, I can't commit donut suicide and go to donut heaven. Further, I don't wanna die. I want to hang onto my life, such as it is, for a few dozen more decades or more. Being alive is all I know and apparently I'm a glutton for mediocrity. Losing weight, as we discussed above, is also a bit of a far fetched idea. So, all that is left is health.

That's right. Health.

For ten years I've been chasing the number on the scale. Every time some restrictive diet fails to give Instant Gratification Lad (that would be me) huge, lasting results, I give up and go eat everything. I've been on this stupid roller-coaster for far too long. Look at this blog. What's at the top? Before any content, there is a weight tracker - obviously I'm a bit obsessed. I'm tired of chasing the number. The scale has made me nothing but unhappy.

What makes me happy?

I have to admit, not that I haven't admitted it here before, but I like to go to the gym. The getting up early is the part that sucks. But, when I am done, the rest of the day usually feels a hell of a lot better. And going to the gym later in the day never seems to end well, if it happens at all. I like eating right. I usually feel better, well, after my body gets past some of the gastrointestinal issues of upping one's veggie intake. I like doing active things, I just hate the aches and pains, sometimes severe, that show up afterward. Going for a walk sounds like fun, until the skin on your sole separates and turns into a giant blister that keeps you off your feet for a day or two.

Oh, yeah, what makes me happy ... right! Eating right, going to the gym and being active. Losing weight, like a donut, only feels good for a moment. Eating right feels good all day, having gone to the gym does, too.

So, to sum up, here's the new plan:

1. Tell my brain, over and over, that losing weight, chasing the number, is a bad plan. Reduce looking at the scale to once a month. I think the end of the month. I may not even set a day.

2. Eat. Just eat. Lean meats. Veggies. Fruit. Small portions. The Big-ish Breakfast, Big-ish Lunch, little-or-no dinner thing has been good in recent attempts. Usually when I do this, I can barely choke down 2000 calories. If I fall off, get back on. Not the following Monday, but the following meal.

3. Gym. Lots of it. Really ramp up the gym attendance. Five, six, seven times a week. And why not? Just do it. I'd like to get back to Simple Cardio Monday, Wednesday & Friday with Lifting Tuesday & Thursday and a Cardio, Lifting & Swimming thing on Saturday and/or Sunday. Lots of gym time. Nothing that will kill me, just regular, everyday movement. Slowly ramp up the cardio & weight. I am envious of people with muscles, not to mention useful, flexible bodies. I want that. I can give myself that.

4. Activity. Go be active. Go swim after work. Go for a walk. Why am I watching six TV shows back to back? Go walk!!! Already went to the gym today? So?!? GO WALK!!!

5. Measure. My metric up to this point has mostly been weight. I have been good on and off keeping track of what I eat, but, frankly, it was a pointless chore. When I am careful, I eat about the same stuff everyday, I was just cutting and pasting from the previous days in my diary. Not to mention, it all felt like guess work. Was I eating 100 calories of grapes every time? Not likely. It was annoying. I think I'm gonna drop that. But, I am going to buy myself a new blood sugar meter or two. I need to get my sugga down. That will get measured and tracked daily. I will certainly track my exercise. I may not track my activity. So what if I went for a walk after work? If I am just out walking, looking at stuff, stopping here and there, that's not really organized effort. It's just being active. I want "being active" to be fun, no stress, just something I do because I can. I think I may try to keep myself active at work, maybe track my steps, try to spend 10 minutes out of every hour standing, stop being a lump in a chair.

If weight comes off, great. If not, I don't want to care. If I am still 450 pounds, but can walk 4 miles in an hour, I'll be a heck of a lot better off than I am now. That's new hotness: Health.

I'm pretty sure that if +Tonja Davis  is reading this, she's thinking "Told you so!", likely +Advocata Vasquetzl as well. Well, sometimes I'm slow, it takes a while for the wisdom to sink in. But, here I am, older & wiser.

Sick; As Predicted.

I hate this.

Every time I start a new diet, it seems like about a week in, I get sick. Some kind of sick. Never the same type of sick, but it always seems to derail me.

This time was pretty bad.

Ever had a sulfur burp? An egg burp? A burp that smells like rotten eggs? You feel bloated. There might be some diarrhea? Yeah ... it's a common problem with high protein diets. The protein doesn't get digested properly and causes a sulfurous gas to build up. There is bad stomach cramps and diarrhea. It's only happened to me one time before. But, yesterday, it started early. I had a lot of protein on Saturday, so no shock. It wasn't too bad at first. I drank a lot of water to flush my system. It seemed about done. So, I ate some eggs. Essentially I threw fuel on the fire. It got really bad. The eggs came back up. I was up every hour, running for the toilet. This went on all night. By 10 AM this morning, everything was back to normal, except I was weak as hell. I feel better now.

I got on the scale. 436. I lost 15 pounds. Mind you, a lot of that is likely dehydration. I bet if I got on the scale tomorrow I'll have put five pounds back on. Either way, that's the number. We'll see where we are next week. I plan to keep going with this diet for as long and as far as I can. At least a couple more weeks with this big calorie reduction. This is the lowest I have been in four years.

400 pounds has been a long term goal for me, pretty much since I started dieting. It's as much a physical barrier as it is a psychological one. No diet that I have been on in the last ten years has gotten me below 400. The closest, and this weight was also aided by being sick, was 418. That was also about four years ago. Here I sit, just 36 pounds from 400. I want it this time. I want it hard.