"Be kind to yourself."

Back in July, when I started trying to change my life and lose weight, I posted about it on Facebook, and my friend Ilona said, "Just remember to be kind to yourself." At the time, I appreciated the support, but not the message. Hadn't I spent a lifetime being kind to myself by pouring milkshakes and donuts and Cheetos into my mouth? Wasn't being kind to myself more the problem than it was part of the solution? I'd been so kind to myself every time I passed the display of Little Debbie Snack Cakes in Kroger that I weighed 295 pounds. Maybe what I actually needed was to stop being kind to myself, right?

I didn't get it, but we'll get back to that.

Another friend, Anna, said, "During times when I have wanted to lose weight/get healthier, I've found it better to say I have fat instead of I'm fat." This, to me, sounded like the worst sort of semantics game, a way of prettying up my problem, like saying that I have glasses rather than that I'm legally blind. Not only did I not see the difference, but it felt like a way of sugarcoating things, saying that I was a little heavy rather than that I was morbidly obese.

I didn't get that at the time, either, but I've learned over the past four months that words are important.

I had a realization this week of how much things have changed since I started this, and it got me thinking about how much of this journey is changing myself. I was checking my Fitbit stats and my weight because I wanted to see how many more pounds I have to lose before I stop being morbidly obese, and I realized that being overweight is now my goal. How weird does that sound if you say it out loud?

"I really look forward to being overweight someday."

"I can't wait to be overweight!"

I even tweeted it, because the idea struck me as being somewhat absurd. It's like I've entered a weird Bizarro World where words no longer mean the same thing. Overweight is something that I now aspire to. It's not the end goal, but it's a milestone, and I've spent most of the week, when I think about this, trying to wrap my mind around that. After a lifetime of being a big fat person, referring to myself as "hugenormous" and "Joelba the Hutt", I've now somehow become a person who wants to be overweight, who is working toward being overweight, who is going to be so excited when I actually am overweight that I will begin booking a trip to Venice.

And that's when I realized that I have spent my entire life not being kind to myself, because I have spent my entire life calling myself fat. Even now, in writing this entry, I keep having to go back and correct my words, because keep typing things like, "The first time I realized I was fat," and then thinking, "Except that I didn't realize I was fat. I decided that I was. There's a difference." My whole life, I've been using the word "fat" both to label and to injure myself, and if I'm going to make the kind of permanent change that will keep me at a healthy weight and in a healthy mindset, then I need to stop doing that. I have to stop it, or at some point down the road this whole adventure is going to fail. I'm going to settle back into my old ways, because I will decide that it's totally ok to bake and eat a cake for myself over the weekend because hey, I'm fat, and that's what fat people do.

I can't do that anymore, and I can't be that anymore.

The first time I decided that I was fat was in the seventh grade, in 1987. I was 11 going on 12 when the school year started, and that was the year when we started getting a lot of puberty-related education in science classes. I don't remember all of the curriculum, but it was the usual things they tell you in non-"abstinence education only" states, which Alaska was at the time: you'll begin to grow hair in weird places, girls will start to develop breasts, and boys' voices will deepen and they will become more muscular. So I rolled into seventh grade, waiting for these muscles to appear (because no one told me that you had to actually exercise to get them; I believed they would just show up on their own with the rest of the physical signs of sexual maturity), and that was the first year that we had a gym class that I had to shower in afterward. That meant it was also the first time that I was around a bunch of guys my age with their shirts off a lot, and I realized something: many of the other kids had muscles (ropy little kid muscles, but they still looked like muscles), and I had a little round belly.

I didn't have any muscles, so I must be fat.

I decided.

For reference purposes, here's a photo of seventh grade me. I'm on the right:



I don't look fat in that photo. I'm not sure what I weighed, but I bet the waist of my jeans is under twenty inches, rather than my current forty-plus. In my head, though, I was fat.

Let's fast forward about ten years. Here I am in 1998, on the left:



I thought I was fat when that picture was taken, too. I had a thirty-two inch waist at the time. I went to bars and guys thought I was cute, and we went home from bars together. And still, I thought I was fat. I was excessively enamored of guys who had abs, because I've never had any.

I'd kill for that thirty-two inch waist, now.

I'm grinding myself down on the treadmill and the Greenway and the beach and wherever else I can get some steps in so that I can be that "fat" again.

In 2004, when I was a hall director, this was my building:



That's a twenty-two story residential tower, and there was a lounge called the Penthouse on the top floor. Sometimes I took the stairs to it, from the lobby. It may have taken me twenty minutes or so, but I climbed twenty-two stories worth of stairs if the mood struck me, and doing so didn't kill me. Not surprisingly, I thought I was fat then, too. My entire adult life I have considered myself a fat person, and I realize now that it's an identity that I assigned to myself whether it happens to be true or not.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because words have gotten away from me, and no longer seem to mean what I thought they meant. "Fat", whether I have it or am it, is an amorphous concept that I can't seem to hold onto, and it's not the only word I'm having trouble with. People keep telling me I look so thin, but I'm not thin. I'm thinner, but people only think I'm thin because they know me. Strangers aren't looking at me and thinking, "Wow, that guy is so thin." They're looking at me and hoping (if they think anything about me at all, which is probably actually kind of unlikely) that I don't sit next to them on the plane because even though I fit in my own seat and can buckle the seat belt without the extender, some of me is still going to spill over into their space. I still weigh over 200 pounds. I'm not thin.

But I'm trying really, really hard not to say that I'm fat.

Lent 2013: Stairway to Heaven

I've challenged myself to blog every day in April, and asked my friends on Facebook and in a few other places to suggest topics and ideas to inspire me for thirty days. Today I'm not using any of the suggested topics, because yesterday was Easter Sunday, and I gave up something for Lent this year, and wanted to talk about it.

Last year I gave up candy, and argued that it sort of made me a better person. The year before I didn't give up anything, but I explained why I didn't, and I still stand by that choice. The year before that I gave up pop tarts, and that had about as much impact on me as giving up candy did: I learned that sometimes I want something and can't have it, but I'm not sure that really went very far toward bettering myself.

With that in mind, I decided to be thoughtful and deliberate about my choice this year, and do something that might actually lead to self-improvement. After thinking about it right up until the night before, I gave up sloth for Lent. That's not as easy as it sounds, especially for someone like me, who totally loves being slothful. I gave myself some guidelines, and tried to follow them:

1) Take the stairs whenever possible.

2) At stores, park far away from the door, for more walking.

3) Walk to meetings on campus, rather than driving from one side of campus to the other.

4) Get on a regular treadmill routine.

Now that Lent is over, I can report on how I did:

Not bad, but not that well. I was not nearly as successful as I have been with past resolutions.

Taking the stairs: This is where I was most successful. I learned this year during Lent that there are 77 stairs between my parking space and my office, and most of the time they look like this:



While I did take the stairs every morning to work, I didn't always take them everywhere. I was successful here, but not always consistent. For example, last week on break I didn't take them in the church. I also didn't always take them at lunch.

Park far away: This worked when I remembered to do it. It wasn't always first in my mind, so it didn't always happen.

Walk to meetings on campus: I was pretty consistent here, with the exceptions being that I accepted rides when they were offered and that I drove a few times when I wouldn't have made it in time on foot. I learned that I don't walk very fast anymore, and that I don't always wear the best shoes for it. I also learned that getting from my office to the University Center is sometimes a pain with all of the campus construction, and have a much better understanding of why our students are so irritated by it.

Get on a regular treadmill routine: I'm sad to report that this was a complete failure. I'll keep trying, because I really do need to exercise more, but I just haven't gotten there with this yet.

Overall, like I said, I was only partially successful this year. I did lose some weight, but not so much that people are like, "Oh, wow, look at all the weight you lost." I tried to use this to spur some new habits, but will have to watch over the next few months to see if any of those habits stick.

The main question, though, is the same one I've asked every year that I've done this: What, if anything, did I learn? I learned that giving up something that requires deliberate thought and consistent consideration is actually really hard, and I also learned that keeping a vow like this requires deliberate focus. I didn't always have it, but I can work on that.

I can also keep taking the stairs.

"Race" implies "speed"

This year, like I did last year, I participated in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure here in Knoxville. Backed by my sponsors, I raised $300 to help fight breast cancer, and I got to go for a brisk walk in the early morning.



The really early morning. It was cold, dark, and foggy when I left the house, and the sun was just coming up when I reached World's Fair Park for the race:



Last year I got there right before the race started, so there wasn't time to look around, but this year I got to stand on the Clinch Avenue bridge and watch people gather, and it convinced me of one important lesson:







When I do this next year I definitely need more pink than just the shirt and my bandanna. Given the slight difficulty I had purchasing a pink shirt, I'm thinking that for pink warmup pants I'm probably going to have to go ahead and just buy some from the women's department. Female friends, if there's anything I need to know about ladypants prior to purchase, please, feel free to offer some pointers.

The first pointer is probably going to be to just call them "pants".

Anyway, people eventually started lining up for the race, with the timed runners moving to the front:



and the rest of us massing behind them for the second start:





And then we were off!



At first, I was excited. I was moving at a steady, almost brisk pace, passing the river:



and the cheerleaders:



and then I got passed:



by a girl on crutches.

Let me repeat that, in case I'm not humiliated enough yet:

I got passed by a girl on crutches.

Not only that, but we weren't even at the first mile yet:



Another mile:



or two later:



and I still never caught up with that girl on crutches.

She didn't just pass me. She stayed ahead of me for the entire race.

ON CRUTCHES.

The loss of all that self esteem that was apparently weighing me down may have worked to my advantage, because I ended up with a decent time:



and a horrible sun flare in that photo.

Anyway, here I am at the end of the race:



I have no idea where the girl on crutches was, or what her time was, but clearly, I need to make better life choices.