It has now been eleven months since I decided to change my life and lose weight, and last month kind of ended on a cliffhanger. After the depressing month when I didn't lose any weight something worse happened, and in the tenth month I gained ten pounds and then swore to lose them again. I vowed to get back on the horse, not let it be a permanent setback, and to stay the course.
And I lost five pounds.
I now weigh 225 pounds.
I'm not celebrating, but I will acknowledge my achievement. I returned to my routine, stayed mostly on diet, made my step goals, and lost five pounds, but I'm not really in the mood to congratulate myself because I lost those five pounds already. I'm still mad at myself for spending a month making poor choices and then justifying and rationalizing those poor choices. It's not like I didn't know that I could put weight back on, as there are obvious, logical reasons why I weighed 295 pounds in the first place.
I'm not mad that I backslid. I'm disappointed in myself, yes, but what I'm mad about is the wasted effort. I spent the month losing five pounds that I already lost to get back to where I was two months ago. If I can lose five more pounds this month, then I will be back to where I was in February, but I could have spent those two months moving forward instead. I could have been two months closer to being overweight instead of obese. I could have been two months closer to Venice, but instead I will spend four months making the same progress, and that depresses and disappoints me. I made bad choices, and I have to accept responsibility for them and deal with the fallout, but I'm not happy about it. I'm not happy that I lost five pounds, because I shouldn't have gained ten pounds to begin with.
I cheated myself out of two months of progress.
But hey, I lost five pounds.
I also lost my treadmill.
Yes, in addition to the shoes I've worn down, the shoes I bought to replace them (which I am also about to replace), and dozens of outfits, I've now managed to outwalk my treadmill, too. I guess if one of us was going to break, I'm glad it was the treadmill rather than, you know, me.
I had a feeling this was coming, honestly. A couple of months ago I was finishing up a walk on the treadmill and when I got off I noticed a little plastic wheel on the floor next to the treadmill.
Oh, I thought, picking it up. That's not good.
I didn't see any obvious places that the little wheel fell out of, though, and the treadmill seemed to work fine without it, so I put it out of my mind and continued my routine. Then, a few weeks later, I noticed another little plastic wheel next to the treadmill, but on the other side. Again, the treadmill continued working, so I tried not to worry about it. I did examine it much more closely, and figured out that the little wheels helped the treadmill raise and lower the deck if you want to change the incline. Fortunately, I never walk on an incline, so the loss of the little wheels didn't seem that important. They were a warning, though, a sign that my aging treadmill might not be up to almost a year of steady usage. I chose to ignore the signs, and then the treadmill died.
The other night I turned it on and started walking, or, rather, tried to start walking. As soon as I stepped on the deck, the belt stopped turning. At first I thought, "It's broken. Better throw it away," but then I thought, "Wait... maybe I can fix it." I started consulting the internet, and was offered a range of possible solutions.
Did I need to tighten the belt? No, belt was fine.
Did I need to lubricate the belt? No, that seemed fine, too.
Was the other belt inside the casing that turns the bigger belt that I walk on broken? No, that was fine, too.
My treadmill's engine has given out. It no longer has the power to turn the little belt or the big belt, which probably explains why the treadmill has seemed slower than it says it's moving lately and why it sometimes made a random grinding noise.
The treadmill is dead, and I will have to figure out a day when I have time to move it out to the porch and then have friends come over for a minute to help me get it down the steps and into the dumpster. I'm sure my friends will line up and volunteer for this, because my friends are kind, generous, giving people, the kind of people who might have some upper body strength and might be willing to use it to help send my poor, suffering treadmill off to a farm in the country where it has room to run around and frolic in the sun and has lots of other treadmills to play with. My treadmill is going to a better place, everybody.
I, on the other hand, have been going to the fitness center in my apartment complex.
This situation is not ideal, but it is workable. I don't like the place where my Kindle fits on the fitness center treadmills, because it doesn't cover up the clock and I have to force myself not to look at the terribly slow moving numbers. More importantly, I don't know how I feel about interacting with my neighbors. I'm not used to talking to them, or being in close proximity to them, or wondering if I've been on the treadmill for too long and am supposed to share it with one of them. I don't know these unspoken rules to using a fitness facility, like if you have to bring a towel or if people will tell you when they want to use the machine you're on and if you're supposed to make small talk and who gets to be in charge of the television and what channel it's on.
I guess I'm going to learn them.
Or I'm going to last about a month, and then buy a new treadmill.
Showing posts with label weight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weight. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Ten Months
You know what's worse than not losing any weight?
Gaining weight.
I gained ten pounds this month, and now weigh 230. I don't get to start my sentences with "Seventy five pounds ago..." anymore, because I've no longer lost seventy five pounds. I've only lost sixty five, because I managed to find ten of them again and put them back on.
I knew this was going to be a bad month when I finally got on the scale the other day. I took about a week off from meeting my step goal, because I was on vacation. I've been off diet for two months because I was off of it for a month and nothing terrible happened. I didn't gain any weight, so I convinced myself that it was ok to just keep maintaining, except that I didn't just maintain. I had extra snacks. I ate snacks while watching television. I had a big lunch and a big dinner, several times. I let myself get back into bad habits.
And I gained ten pounds.
Venice is ten pounds further away, rather than ten pounds closer. I am still obese, rather than just overweight. I weight 230 pounds, rather than 220.
So, here I am, backsliding. This month I worked against my goals, backslid, and undid some of the really hard work that I've been putting in for the past ten months, or at least for eight of them. I'm not proud of this, and I shouldn't be proud of it, but I'm also not beating myself up over it too much. I am a little, because this was preventable. There's a program, and I've been off the program. Behavior has consequences, and I am sitting around with ten pounds of extra consequences, and I'm not happy about it.
So where do I go from here?
I get back on the horse and start riding. I made fantastic progress for months because I was focused, determined, and dedicated to my process. Ten months ago, I had a choice to surgically constrict my digestive tract or to exercise and I chose the exercise. I argued that I would be able to do this, and for eight months I was doing this.
I just needed a slap in the face to remind me that this thing, my journey, my goal, my quest to become a better person, is not done.
This is a bump in the road. I have a choice to look at it, accept it, and move on, or to sit on my couch and brood and beat myself up over it. I'm going with the first choice, because I really have no choice. I was very clear that I can either lose weight or die, and I still don't want to die. I want to be a healthy person. I want to be able to take stairs, and walk long distances, and go to a store and buy clothing off of a rack and be comfortable with the idea that those clothes will fit me. I don't want to have diabetes, or to have my feet cut off, or to have a heart attack.
I gained ten pounds this month.
Now I'm going to lose them.
Gaining weight.
I gained ten pounds this month, and now weigh 230. I don't get to start my sentences with "Seventy five pounds ago..." anymore, because I've no longer lost seventy five pounds. I've only lost sixty five, because I managed to find ten of them again and put them back on.
I knew this was going to be a bad month when I finally got on the scale the other day. I took about a week off from meeting my step goal, because I was on vacation. I've been off diet for two months because I was off of it for a month and nothing terrible happened. I didn't gain any weight, so I convinced myself that it was ok to just keep maintaining, except that I didn't just maintain. I had extra snacks. I ate snacks while watching television. I had a big lunch and a big dinner, several times. I let myself get back into bad habits.
And I gained ten pounds.
Venice is ten pounds further away, rather than ten pounds closer. I am still obese, rather than just overweight. I weight 230 pounds, rather than 220.
So, here I am, backsliding. This month I worked against my goals, backslid, and undid some of the really hard work that I've been putting in for the past ten months, or at least for eight of them. I'm not proud of this, and I shouldn't be proud of it, but I'm also not beating myself up over it too much. I am a little, because this was preventable. There's a program, and I've been off the program. Behavior has consequences, and I am sitting around with ten pounds of extra consequences, and I'm not happy about it.
So where do I go from here?
I get back on the horse and start riding. I made fantastic progress for months because I was focused, determined, and dedicated to my process. Ten months ago, I had a choice to surgically constrict my digestive tract or to exercise and I chose the exercise. I argued that I would be able to do this, and for eight months I was doing this.
I just needed a slap in the face to remind me that this thing, my journey, my goal, my quest to become a better person, is not done.
This is a bump in the road. I have a choice to look at it, accept it, and move on, or to sit on my couch and brood and beat myself up over it. I'm going with the first choice, because I really have no choice. I was very clear that I can either lose weight or die, and I still don't want to die. I want to be a healthy person. I want to be able to take stairs, and walk long distances, and go to a store and buy clothing off of a rack and be comfortable with the idea that those clothes will fit me. I don't want to have diabetes, or to have my feet cut off, or to have a heart attack.
I gained ten pounds this month.
Now I'm going to lose them.
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Anorak in a Sack
As I continue losing weight (or, in the case of last month, not losing any) I've been going through clothes that have been boxed up in the back bedroom for years at a time. In some cases I haven't seen these clothes since I moved here in 2006, when I opened all of the boxes to get my dishes out. (Since I packed everything myself for the move, I used my clothes to wrap all of my glassware. Some of the clothes were already too small at that point, because I'd put on weight my last couple of years in Albany, so after I got my glassware out I just threw the clothes back in the boxes for "someday" when I lost more weight.) In other cases, like the case of the hunter green Old Navy "Anorak in a Sack" that I wore today, I can pinpoint the exact last time I wore it:
Based on the receipt I found in the pocket this morning, I last wore it on Christmas Day, 2009, which I spent at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World with my friend Sean.
Look, here I am, wearing my Anorak in a Sack:
It might be hard to tell in that picture, but that anorak was a little tight in 2009. It's pullover-style, and it was starting not to be so easy to pull over, so after that trip it came out of the suitcase, got hung on the coat tree in my second bedroom, and was promptly ignored from then on.
Until today, when I wore it for walking around town with my parents, and my Dad said it looked a little big.
The fact that an anorak that I wore last in 2009 is a little big should be exciting enough, but here's the thing:
I bought my Anorak in a Sack (so named by Old Navy because you can fold it into itself and zip the whole thing into its own front pocket) for hall director training in the Fall of 1999. Do I fit into all of the clothes that I still own from the last century? No, but I fit in one of them. I fit into an anorak that I purchased when some of my coworkers were under the age of ten.
I'm counting this as my win for the day.
Based on the receipt I found in the pocket this morning, I last wore it on Christmas Day, 2009, which I spent at Epcot Center in Walt Disney World with my friend Sean.
Look, here I am, wearing my Anorak in a Sack:
It might be hard to tell in that picture, but that anorak was a little tight in 2009. It's pullover-style, and it was starting not to be so easy to pull over, so after that trip it came out of the suitcase, got hung on the coat tree in my second bedroom, and was promptly ignored from then on.
Until today, when I wore it for walking around town with my parents, and my Dad said it looked a little big.
The fact that an anorak that I wore last in 2009 is a little big should be exciting enough, but here's the thing:
I bought my Anorak in a Sack (so named by Old Navy because you can fold it into itself and zip the whole thing into its own front pocket) for hall director training in the Fall of 1999. Do I fit into all of the clothes that I still own from the last century? No, but I fit in one of them. I fit into an anorak that I purchased when some of my coworkers were under the age of ten.
I'm counting this as my win for the day.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Nine Months
It was bound to happen someday, and that someday is today:
I didn't lose any weight this month.
I weigh 220 pounds, which is exactly what I weighed a month ago. I'm still obese, still not at my goal weight, and made no measurable progress toward it this month. I've had all day to think about it since I weighed myself this morning, seven hours and six miles ago, and I'm not as upset about this as I would have been back at the two month mark or the three month mark. There are a few reasons for this:
1) I didn't gain any weight. I may not have lost any, but I didn't put any back on, so even though I made no progress I am still ahead of where I was.
2) I have been way, way off diet for this month. I've eaten candy, a lot of candy. I've exceeded my 2000 calorie a day limit several times this month. By my rough guesstimate, about 20 days, actually. That's a lot of extra calories, but I also increased my daily step goal to 13,000 steps a day this month, and most days I don't just meet it, but instead exceed it.
I'm not upset because this month of dietary backsliding has proven something important: I can balance diet and exercise to maintain weight. Granted, 220 is not a weight that I want to maintain, as I am still twenty pounds from my goal weight and eleven pounds from being overweight instead of being obese, but knowing that I can maintain my weight instead of putting it back on is good to know. I don't remember which blog entry I posted it in, but several months ago I said, "I will have to exercise regularly for the rest of my life if I don't want to be obese," and now I've proven that it will work. I can slip off of my diet more days than I stay on it, but with the right amount of exercise added to that I can maintain.
I really have to buckle down and stop slipping off of my diet, though. It will be nice to maintain my weight when I get to my goal, but since I'm not there yet I need to go back to reducing mode, not maintenance. Especially since I have registered for a half marathon in September. I need to be smaller and faster by the time that rolls around, and 220 pounds is not small and fast enough.
On the plus side, now that the weather is warmer I can get off of my treadmill and start walking outside after work again. In order to do that more often and with less annoyance, I've purchased something called a "runner pack":
I now dare you, dear reader, to try to explain to me how this is not a fanny pack.
I stumbled into this because I keep hitting my hands on my legs while I walk. It doesn't happen with every single step I take, but it happens often enough that it's annoying, because it's my thumb that's always taking the brunt of it, and for some reason the angle always seems to be exactly right (or wrong) for it to be the bone at the base of my thumb that crashes into something. My left thumb gets poked and stabbed by my keys and my right thumb smacks into the corner of my phone, sometimes hard enough to pop open my phone case. It's annoying, and I needed a solution, so I asked for suggestions on Facebook. After a spirited debate about whether I needed to carry anything in my pockets at all besides the car key and a number of derogatory statements about the acceptability of fanny packs in public, some of my friends suggested something called a "runner pack", and my mom helpfully pointed out that runner packs on Amazon would have free shipping under Amazon Prime. Everyone was in complete agreement that a runner pack is totally different from a fanny pack. Totally.
They're not.
I find it kind of hilarious that everyone was like, "Oh, no, it's not a fanny pack. It's a runner pack," because now that I have one, it's a fanny pack. It's smaller and skinnier and holds less stuff, but it's a fanny pack. Denying that is just a mental exercise in self-deception.
Here's the thing, though: I don't actually care what it's called if it serves the purpose.
If I want to walk the Greenway after work, I am on a clock. The sun sets every day between 7 and 8 this time of year, but by 7 it's dark enough that I don't want to be on the Greenway anymore. I work until 5 most days, and even if I'm already changed into my walking clothes by 5 (which happens on good days, when it is slow and quiet enough in the afternoon for me to shut my door at 4:50 and get changed; I still answer the phone, but I don't answer the door because I assume the university doesn't want me to do so in my underwear) campus traffic and city traffic can keep me from getting to the Greenway and onto the path for 40 or 50 minutes, and that's if I actually get to leave right at 5. Sure, stopping to stow everything in my glove compartment and then to thread my car key through the laces of my shoe is only an extra minute or two, but for my convenience I just wanted to take everything that I have normally in my pants pockets and dump it into something else.
A fanny pack would have served that purpose, but I now have this runner pack instead.
Which, I guess, means that someday I'll have to become a runner.
I didn't lose any weight this month.
I weigh 220 pounds, which is exactly what I weighed a month ago. I'm still obese, still not at my goal weight, and made no measurable progress toward it this month. I've had all day to think about it since I weighed myself this morning, seven hours and six miles ago, and I'm not as upset about this as I would have been back at the two month mark or the three month mark. There are a few reasons for this:
1) I didn't gain any weight. I may not have lost any, but I didn't put any back on, so even though I made no progress I am still ahead of where I was.
2) I have been way, way off diet for this month. I've eaten candy, a lot of candy. I've exceeded my 2000 calorie a day limit several times this month. By my rough guesstimate, about 20 days, actually. That's a lot of extra calories, but I also increased my daily step goal to 13,000 steps a day this month, and most days I don't just meet it, but instead exceed it.
I'm not upset because this month of dietary backsliding has proven something important: I can balance diet and exercise to maintain weight. Granted, 220 is not a weight that I want to maintain, as I am still twenty pounds from my goal weight and eleven pounds from being overweight instead of being obese, but knowing that I can maintain my weight instead of putting it back on is good to know. I don't remember which blog entry I posted it in, but several months ago I said, "I will have to exercise regularly for the rest of my life if I don't want to be obese," and now I've proven that it will work. I can slip off of my diet more days than I stay on it, but with the right amount of exercise added to that I can maintain.
I really have to buckle down and stop slipping off of my diet, though. It will be nice to maintain my weight when I get to my goal, but since I'm not there yet I need to go back to reducing mode, not maintenance. Especially since I have registered for a half marathon in September. I need to be smaller and faster by the time that rolls around, and 220 pounds is not small and fast enough.
On the plus side, now that the weather is warmer I can get off of my treadmill and start walking outside after work again. In order to do that more often and with less annoyance, I've purchased something called a "runner pack":
I now dare you, dear reader, to try to explain to me how this is not a fanny pack.
I stumbled into this because I keep hitting my hands on my legs while I walk. It doesn't happen with every single step I take, but it happens often enough that it's annoying, because it's my thumb that's always taking the brunt of it, and for some reason the angle always seems to be exactly right (or wrong) for it to be the bone at the base of my thumb that crashes into something. My left thumb gets poked and stabbed by my keys and my right thumb smacks into the corner of my phone, sometimes hard enough to pop open my phone case. It's annoying, and I needed a solution, so I asked for suggestions on Facebook. After a spirited debate about whether I needed to carry anything in my pockets at all besides the car key and a number of derogatory statements about the acceptability of fanny packs in public, some of my friends suggested something called a "runner pack", and my mom helpfully pointed out that runner packs on Amazon would have free shipping under Amazon Prime. Everyone was in complete agreement that a runner pack is totally different from a fanny pack. Totally.
They're not.
I find it kind of hilarious that everyone was like, "Oh, no, it's not a fanny pack. It's a runner pack," because now that I have one, it's a fanny pack. It's smaller and skinnier and holds less stuff, but it's a fanny pack. Denying that is just a mental exercise in self-deception.
Here's the thing, though: I don't actually care what it's called if it serves the purpose.
If I want to walk the Greenway after work, I am on a clock. The sun sets every day between 7 and 8 this time of year, but by 7 it's dark enough that I don't want to be on the Greenway anymore. I work until 5 most days, and even if I'm already changed into my walking clothes by 5 (which happens on good days, when it is slow and quiet enough in the afternoon for me to shut my door at 4:50 and get changed; I still answer the phone, but I don't answer the door because I assume the university doesn't want me to do so in my underwear) campus traffic and city traffic can keep me from getting to the Greenway and onto the path for 40 or 50 minutes, and that's if I actually get to leave right at 5. Sure, stopping to stow everything in my glove compartment and then to thread my car key through the laces of my shoe is only an extra minute or two, but for my convenience I just wanted to take everything that I have normally in my pants pockets and dump it into something else.
A fanny pack would have served that purpose, but I now have this runner pack instead.
Which, I guess, means that someday I'll have to become a runner.
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Eight Months
I could start this with “eight months ago” or with “seventy five pounds ago”. I’m really only considering the second one because it seems like a fun way to start a sentence.
Seventy five pounds ago, I started my journey to lose weight and become more fit.
It really rolls off the tongue a little more impressively than just “eight months ago”, doesn’t it? Eight months would have happened either way, just stumbling and creeping along, but seventy five pounds didn’t happen by itself. I’ve been working pretty hard for those seventy five pounds. I’ve deprived myself of things for those seventy five pounds. I’ve walked when I’m tired and when I’m sick and when I just don’t want to do it anymore for those seventy five pounds. They are my seventy five pounds. I’ve earned them. So if I want to start a sentence by mentioning my seventy five pounds, then I’m going to. I believe I’ve earned that.
Seventy five pounds ago, I weighed 295 pounds. I now weigh 220. I’ve moved from morbidly obese to just regular obese, and in eleven more pounds, I will just be overweight. Eight months have been spent burning seventy five pounds. It has taken eight months to undo a little over eight years of gaining weight.
Some things will never be undone, unfortunately.
The brown spots on my shins are permanent. They will never go away. Every time I look at my bare legs for the rest of my life I’m going to remember that I let myself get so unhealthy that I caused a permanent physical change, and on some level permanent physical damage, to my body.
And that’s not even talking about the rest of my body. From my collarbones to my knees, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on. I don’t usually talk about my body, but I’ve been honest about my journey so far, and some parts of that journey are not pretty. For starters, I have stretch marks on my belly. They’re like weird cracks in my stomach, which is oddly pliable right now. I can feel the structure of my body underneath my stomach if I push down: something that might be abs, ribs, firm things beneath a layer that feels weird and crumbly and sort of hollow. If I suck in my stomach now, it actually moves. Seventy five pounds ago, that didn’t happen, but now I can suck in my gut and my gut shrinks. If I don’t suck it in, though, it hangs. It stretches.
It’s not comfortable.
I’m not always comfortable in my body right now.
I know that this condition is temporary. Some of the extra skin will always be there but some of the wrinkles and cracks will eventually shrink and contract and go away, but right now there are days when I have trouble with the weird things that are happening to me. I’ll lean or twist to reach something when I’m already sitting down and part of my thigh will lean with me, but part of my thigh will just hang there, almost pooling up on the couch, and it’s weird. I stare at myself sometimes because my body is doing weird things, and it makes me a little uncomfortable. It also makes me a little sad, because I wasn’t comfortable with my body when I weighed 295 pounds, and now, seventy five pounds later, I’m still not comfortable. Eight months and seventy five pounds, and all I’ve done is trade one misshapen torso for another.
I don’t feel this way all the time. A good night’s sleep, or a nice word from someone, or trying on some old clothes that I can fit into again usually cures it, but sometimes losing seventy five pounds in eight months makes me sad. It also makes me feel guilty sometimes, because there’s the constant reminder that I did this to myself, and it takes a little time to process that through, too.
On the other hand, there are days when I look at my body and feel wonder, and joy.
I have ankles all the time now. Defined ankles. Ankles where I can see the ligaments and the bones and the flexing of the joints. They’re not swollen or puffy or cankles. I don’t have to sit on my fainting couch with my feet up for an entire weekend to see them. I have ankles all the time.
My arms hang straight down now.
My shoulders are wider than my hips.
My blue glasses have to be resized because they fall down my face if I look down. I’ve lost so much weight that my head shrank, and I sit and wonder sometimes, “How is that even possible? Did I have fat temples?”
I see myself in mirrors and I stop to look. For years, I’ve trained myself not to see myself in mirrors, to observe myself only in parts. Brushing my teeth, I only saw my mouth. Shaving, I only saw my jawline. I learned to narrow my focus and push any glimpse of the rest of my body and how big it was and how round it was and how unhealthy it looked to my peripheral vision.
But now, I glimpse myself in mirrors and reflections, windows and glass and the side of the car, and often I look.
I see myself and, more importantly, sometimes I want to see myself.
Seventy five pounds ago, I didn’t.
Seventy five pounds ago, I started my journey to lose weight and become more fit.
It really rolls off the tongue a little more impressively than just “eight months ago”, doesn’t it? Eight months would have happened either way, just stumbling and creeping along, but seventy five pounds didn’t happen by itself. I’ve been working pretty hard for those seventy five pounds. I’ve deprived myself of things for those seventy five pounds. I’ve walked when I’m tired and when I’m sick and when I just don’t want to do it anymore for those seventy five pounds. They are my seventy five pounds. I’ve earned them. So if I want to start a sentence by mentioning my seventy five pounds, then I’m going to. I believe I’ve earned that.
Seventy five pounds ago, I weighed 295 pounds. I now weigh 220. I’ve moved from morbidly obese to just regular obese, and in eleven more pounds, I will just be overweight. Eight months have been spent burning seventy five pounds. It has taken eight months to undo a little over eight years of gaining weight.
Some things will never be undone, unfortunately.
The brown spots on my shins are permanent. They will never go away. Every time I look at my bare legs for the rest of my life I’m going to remember that I let myself get so unhealthy that I caused a permanent physical change, and on some level permanent physical damage, to my body.
And that’s not even talking about the rest of my body. From my collarbones to my knees, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on. I don’t usually talk about my body, but I’ve been honest about my journey so far, and some parts of that journey are not pretty. For starters, I have stretch marks on my belly. They’re like weird cracks in my stomach, which is oddly pliable right now. I can feel the structure of my body underneath my stomach if I push down: something that might be abs, ribs, firm things beneath a layer that feels weird and crumbly and sort of hollow. If I suck in my stomach now, it actually moves. Seventy five pounds ago, that didn’t happen, but now I can suck in my gut and my gut shrinks. If I don’t suck it in, though, it hangs. It stretches.
It’s not comfortable.
I’m not always comfortable in my body right now.
I know that this condition is temporary. Some of the extra skin will always be there but some of the wrinkles and cracks will eventually shrink and contract and go away, but right now there are days when I have trouble with the weird things that are happening to me. I’ll lean or twist to reach something when I’m already sitting down and part of my thigh will lean with me, but part of my thigh will just hang there, almost pooling up on the couch, and it’s weird. I stare at myself sometimes because my body is doing weird things, and it makes me a little uncomfortable. It also makes me a little sad, because I wasn’t comfortable with my body when I weighed 295 pounds, and now, seventy five pounds later, I’m still not comfortable. Eight months and seventy five pounds, and all I’ve done is trade one misshapen torso for another.
I don’t feel this way all the time. A good night’s sleep, or a nice word from someone, or trying on some old clothes that I can fit into again usually cures it, but sometimes losing seventy five pounds in eight months makes me sad. It also makes me feel guilty sometimes, because there’s the constant reminder that I did this to myself, and it takes a little time to process that through, too.
On the other hand, there are days when I look at my body and feel wonder, and joy.
I have ankles all the time now. Defined ankles. Ankles where I can see the ligaments and the bones and the flexing of the joints. They’re not swollen or puffy or cankles. I don’t have to sit on my fainting couch with my feet up for an entire weekend to see them. I have ankles all the time.
My arms hang straight down now.
My shoulders are wider than my hips.
My blue glasses have to be resized because they fall down my face if I look down. I’ve lost so much weight that my head shrank, and I sit and wonder sometimes, “How is that even possible? Did I have fat temples?”
I see myself in mirrors and I stop to look. For years, I’ve trained myself not to see myself in mirrors, to observe myself only in parts. Brushing my teeth, I only saw my mouth. Shaving, I only saw my jawline. I learned to narrow my focus and push any glimpse of the rest of my body and how big it was and how round it was and how unhealthy it looked to my peripheral vision.
But now, I glimpse myself in mirrors and reflections, windows and glass and the side of the car, and often I look.
I see myself and, more importantly, sometimes I want to see myself.
Seventy five pounds ago, I didn’t.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Seven Months
Today marks the end of the seventh month of my fitness journey, and I'm going to start with a high and a low:
The Low
I only lost three pounds this month.
The High
I got in some guy's pants!
More specifically, this guy:
That's me. It was taken at a restaurant that is no longer open (I forgot the name, actually) out in West Knoxville, on the weekend that I moved to Tennessee in 2006. I've now unpacked and started wearing jeans that I last wore in 2006 and 2005. I only lost three pounds this month, but since July my total weight loss is now 70 pounds even. I've also lost ten inches of waist so far. For the sake of reference, here are some things that weigh 70 pounds:
An average sized Irish Setter
4.7 cubic feet of snow
$4536 in Canadian loonies (those are the Canadian $1 coins, for people who aren't familiar)
8.5 gallons of water
3 adult male bobcats
A ten year old boy
I laughed today when someone said, "You've lost, like, a whole person!" but seriously, I've lost the weight equivalent of a ten year old boy. On one level, that's hard to bend my head around. I've lost a kid who's old enough to stay home alone without a baby sitter. You can buy outfits for the amount of weight that I've lost. 70 pounds sounds great when I say it, but when I actually translate it into an object or person, like saying I've lost a little more than three of my car tires, then it becomes a hard concept for me to understand. Those three tires could be sitting around my living room right now, getting in my way while I try to watch TV. That, to me, is slightly confusing on a few levels: on one hand, I can't believe that it's gone, but on the other hand, I can't believe that in nine years I let myself gain three car tires.
The other hand is the thing that I continue to struggle with. Sometimes I am very, very excited to have lost weight. Going to the Gap, or Old Navy, or outlet shopping, and being confident that there will actually be clothing in stock that will fit me is very exciting. Most stores, especially outlet stores, don't seem to carry over a 2 XL (and only a limited selection of those), and until recently I hadn't even been able to fit into a 2XL for a couple of years. I've gone clothing shopping in the mirrorless, dimly lit shame caves that are the "Big and Tall" sections out of necessity, but I haven't enjoyed, really enjoyed and looked forward to, going to buy clothing for several years. Being able to do that brings me immense joy now, but it's also sent me into some rather dark moods. I have no one else to blame for the size that I became, and sometimes I've struggled to be nice to myself because of that. I didn't have a medical condition or an injury that prevented me from exercising or anything like that. I allowed myself to become an overweight, morbidly obese person, and sometimes now I have trouble not berating myself for it.
Guilt is a powerful, terrible thing.
Losing 70 pounds is also a powerful thing.
I've done that, and will continue to maintain that, but I think the dazzling days of "Holy shit, I lost twenty two pounds this month!" are definitely behind me. From here on out, it's only going to be little increments of three pounds, or two pounds, or, some months, there might even be a weight loss of no pounds, and that's ok. The goal here is a lifestyle change and a level of fitness, and even though I'm not at my goal weight yet I am feeling better. I can take stairs without getting out of breath. I walk faster, and I enjoy walking as much as I can. I actually get a little annoyed now if we decide to drive to something, and today when I told some coworkers I would meet them at a meeting on the other side of campus because I wanted to walk it, I got there in less time than it took them to drive over and park the car. (This is not intended as a criticism of them, but is instead intended as a reflection of my sudden speed.) When I first started talking short breaks to walk my building, a full circuit took me 12 minutes and left me a little sweaty. Now I walk it in 9 minutes and don't break a sweat or get short of breath. My boss suggested a parking spot even farther away than the one I've been using, and I excitedly started using it.
I am excited to exercise.
That's the better part of only losing three pounds this month: I am a better, healthier person.
And I fit into my really sharp looking winter coat again.
I'm not at my goal weight yet, but I think it's time I filled out a passport application, and got my photos taken.
Venice waits for me.
The Low
I only lost three pounds this month.
The High
I got in some guy's pants!
More specifically, this guy:
That's me. It was taken at a restaurant that is no longer open (I forgot the name, actually) out in West Knoxville, on the weekend that I moved to Tennessee in 2006. I've now unpacked and started wearing jeans that I last wore in 2006 and 2005. I only lost three pounds this month, but since July my total weight loss is now 70 pounds even. I've also lost ten inches of waist so far. For the sake of reference, here are some things that weigh 70 pounds:
An average sized Irish Setter
4.7 cubic feet of snow
$4536 in Canadian loonies (those are the Canadian $1 coins, for people who aren't familiar)
8.5 gallons of water
3 adult male bobcats
A ten year old boy
I laughed today when someone said, "You've lost, like, a whole person!" but seriously, I've lost the weight equivalent of a ten year old boy. On one level, that's hard to bend my head around. I've lost a kid who's old enough to stay home alone without a baby sitter. You can buy outfits for the amount of weight that I've lost. 70 pounds sounds great when I say it, but when I actually translate it into an object or person, like saying I've lost a little more than three of my car tires, then it becomes a hard concept for me to understand. Those three tires could be sitting around my living room right now, getting in my way while I try to watch TV. That, to me, is slightly confusing on a few levels: on one hand, I can't believe that it's gone, but on the other hand, I can't believe that in nine years I let myself gain three car tires.
The other hand is the thing that I continue to struggle with. Sometimes I am very, very excited to have lost weight. Going to the Gap, or Old Navy, or outlet shopping, and being confident that there will actually be clothing in stock that will fit me is very exciting. Most stores, especially outlet stores, don't seem to carry over a 2 XL (and only a limited selection of those), and until recently I hadn't even been able to fit into a 2XL for a couple of years. I've gone clothing shopping in the mirrorless, dimly lit shame caves that are the "Big and Tall" sections out of necessity, but I haven't enjoyed, really enjoyed and looked forward to, going to buy clothing for several years. Being able to do that brings me immense joy now, but it's also sent me into some rather dark moods. I have no one else to blame for the size that I became, and sometimes I've struggled to be nice to myself because of that. I didn't have a medical condition or an injury that prevented me from exercising or anything like that. I allowed myself to become an overweight, morbidly obese person, and sometimes now I have trouble not berating myself for it.
Guilt is a powerful, terrible thing.
Losing 70 pounds is also a powerful thing.
I've done that, and will continue to maintain that, but I think the dazzling days of "Holy shit, I lost twenty two pounds this month!" are definitely behind me. From here on out, it's only going to be little increments of three pounds, or two pounds, or, some months, there might even be a weight loss of no pounds, and that's ok. The goal here is a lifestyle change and a level of fitness, and even though I'm not at my goal weight yet I am feeling better. I can take stairs without getting out of breath. I walk faster, and I enjoy walking as much as I can. I actually get a little annoyed now if we decide to drive to something, and today when I told some coworkers I would meet them at a meeting on the other side of campus because I wanted to walk it, I got there in less time than it took them to drive over and park the car. (This is not intended as a criticism of them, but is instead intended as a reflection of my sudden speed.) When I first started talking short breaks to walk my building, a full circuit took me 12 minutes and left me a little sweaty. Now I walk it in 9 minutes and don't break a sweat or get short of breath. My boss suggested a parking spot even farther away than the one I've been using, and I excitedly started using it.
I am excited to exercise.
That's the better part of only losing three pounds this month: I am a better, healthier person.
And I fit into my really sharp looking winter coat again.
I'm not at my goal weight yet, but I think it's time I filled out a passport application, and got my photos taken.
Venice waits for me.
Saturday, November 15, 2014
4 Things I've Learned
I've talked a lot about this whole walking and trying to lose weight thing since I started it in July, but I realized this week while talking to a friend that there are some things I haven't talked about. You learn a lot about yourself and your friends when you try to turn your life around (or at least part of it) and, while some of those things are hard to mentally wrestle with and some of them are annoying to listen to, some of them are also kind of amusing, at least to me.
In no particular order, here are some things I'm learning during my journey that are amusing me:
1) The top of my head doesn't sweat.
Every time I walk outside, I wear the same hat. It's the gray Old Navy hat I bought for Alternative Spring Break in 2013. We were going to some service sites that said we could wear hats instead of hair nets, and I didn't own any hats, so I got this little gray one at Old Navy. It's been riding around in my car since then, because sometimes I go outside and walk around and I don't want the sun to burn the top of my head, so it was natural that when I started walking around outside regularly I put on the hat.
And I sweat in it.
A lot.
And over the course of four months, this happened:
The top of my hat is the only part that is still the same color it was when I started walking. My sweat, soaked into it over the course of days and miles, has slowly bled all of the dye out of the hat except for the top. The top of it does touch the top of my head; I've checked when I have it on. One of my friends has argued that what's actually happening is that the sweat all rolls down my head and the bottom of the hat, which is tighter, soaks it in, but I have chosen to believe that the top of my head doesn't sweat.
2) I'm going to donate clothes that I have worn less than five times.
I bought a lot of clothes on my way to 295 pounds. I had to, because the old clothes stopped fitting. The pants wore out, but the shirts didn't. I just kept putting them away and buying newer, bigger shirts. This happened gradually, over time, so it never seemed like, "I just bought this. Shit. It doesn't fit any more," but now? Let me show you something:
I bought a red, white, and blue shirt in June, a 3XL, with the idea that I might wear it for the 4th of July with a patriotic tie. When I tried it on, though, my 3XL shirt was too tight when I sat down. It looked fine standing up, but when I sat and my belly spread the buttons were straining and about to let go, like the unmarried sister in a Tennessee Williams play, so I couldn't wear it with one of my patriotic ties and I put the shirt and the idea away. After a few weeks of walking, though, I could wear it on July 29, and look how cute it looked! I looked adorable and patriotic, but a bright red and white shirt isn't something you can wear every day, so it turns out that I didn't wear it again until Tuesday this week. It was so big that when I tucked it in I had to unbutton the bottom button, because it now hangs so long and billowy on me that I have to tuck the bottom part not just into my waist, but past my groin and into the legs of my pants. 55 pounds will transform a shirt that had tight, straining buttons into a tarp with buttons.
It's a great problem to have, but it also means that I am going to take a shirt that I wore twice and put it in my Goodwill pile.
3) Cramps hurt like hell.
One morning, I snapped awake out of a dead sleep and sat up in bed somehow managing to both scream and to gasp for breath. God only knows what the neighbors thought if they heard it, because I'm pretty sure that I've never made a sound like that in my life.
Probably because I've never had a cramp like that in my life.
My calf was fully constricted and rock hard. Like any sane, rational person who went from sound asleep to maybe a six on the pain scale (possibly more; it felt like more, but I don't want to belittle people who have been impaled by things or had limbs violently removed) in under a minute, I sat up in bed and began punching myself in the calf. This was purely instinctive, because it took me at least a minute to think, "Oh, this is a cramp. You need to massage that out."
I've never exercised enough to get muscle cramps before.
When I finally got my calf to unlock, I staggered to the living room to google "cramps", and then to google "leg cramps" because I'm not menstruating. Now I eat at least one banana every day, and I haven't woken up with horrible leg cramps again.
4) My tailbone hurts.
This is my living room furniture:
That's not the way my living room looks most days, because it is both spotless and organized in that photo, but you get the general idea. That chaise lounge piece on the right is my favorite piece of furniture. I love that couch. I refer to it as my Fainting Couch, and it is the piece of furniture that I sit on every day, because the other couch is usually hosting a big pile of laundry that I need to fold and put away.
It is no longer comfortable, because I got so fat that I broke it.
I don't mean that it is physically broken, in the sense that the frame remains solid and I didn't get so heavy that I actually cracked my furniture by sitting on it. I did, however, wear a bit of a rut in my fainting couch. It was a really comfortable rut, actually. I'd come home, sit on my fainting couch, stretch out, put up my swollen ankles, and settle in for the night. I might fall asleep while I was watching television, but eventually I would get up and go to bed after spending a night not moving, sunk into my rut on my fainting couch.
And now, I can't sit on it for more than an hour or so at a time, because it hurts my tailbone.
Because my smaller ass no longer fits in the rut.
In no particular order, here are some things I'm learning during my journey that are amusing me:
1) The top of my head doesn't sweat.
Every time I walk outside, I wear the same hat. It's the gray Old Navy hat I bought for Alternative Spring Break in 2013. We were going to some service sites that said we could wear hats instead of hair nets, and I didn't own any hats, so I got this little gray one at Old Navy. It's been riding around in my car since then, because sometimes I go outside and walk around and I don't want the sun to burn the top of my head, so it was natural that when I started walking around outside regularly I put on the hat.
And I sweat in it.
A lot.
And over the course of four months, this happened:
The top of my hat is the only part that is still the same color it was when I started walking. My sweat, soaked into it over the course of days and miles, has slowly bled all of the dye out of the hat except for the top. The top of it does touch the top of my head; I've checked when I have it on. One of my friends has argued that what's actually happening is that the sweat all rolls down my head and the bottom of the hat, which is tighter, soaks it in, but I have chosen to believe that the top of my head doesn't sweat.
2) I'm going to donate clothes that I have worn less than five times.
I bought a lot of clothes on my way to 295 pounds. I had to, because the old clothes stopped fitting. The pants wore out, but the shirts didn't. I just kept putting them away and buying newer, bigger shirts. This happened gradually, over time, so it never seemed like, "I just bought this. Shit. It doesn't fit any more," but now? Let me show you something:
I bought a red, white, and blue shirt in June, a 3XL, with the idea that I might wear it for the 4th of July with a patriotic tie. When I tried it on, though, my 3XL shirt was too tight when I sat down. It looked fine standing up, but when I sat and my belly spread the buttons were straining and about to let go, like the unmarried sister in a Tennessee Williams play, so I couldn't wear it with one of my patriotic ties and I put the shirt and the idea away. After a few weeks of walking, though, I could wear it on July 29, and look how cute it looked! I looked adorable and patriotic, but a bright red and white shirt isn't something you can wear every day, so it turns out that I didn't wear it again until Tuesday this week. It was so big that when I tucked it in I had to unbutton the bottom button, because it now hangs so long and billowy on me that I have to tuck the bottom part not just into my waist, but past my groin and into the legs of my pants. 55 pounds will transform a shirt that had tight, straining buttons into a tarp with buttons.
It's a great problem to have, but it also means that I am going to take a shirt that I wore twice and put it in my Goodwill pile.
3) Cramps hurt like hell.
One morning, I snapped awake out of a dead sleep and sat up in bed somehow managing to both scream and to gasp for breath. God only knows what the neighbors thought if they heard it, because I'm pretty sure that I've never made a sound like that in my life.
Probably because I've never had a cramp like that in my life.
My calf was fully constricted and rock hard. Like any sane, rational person who went from sound asleep to maybe a six on the pain scale (possibly more; it felt like more, but I don't want to belittle people who have been impaled by things or had limbs violently removed) in under a minute, I sat up in bed and began punching myself in the calf. This was purely instinctive, because it took me at least a minute to think, "Oh, this is a cramp. You need to massage that out."
I've never exercised enough to get muscle cramps before.
When I finally got my calf to unlock, I staggered to the living room to google "cramps", and then to google "leg cramps" because I'm not menstruating. Now I eat at least one banana every day, and I haven't woken up with horrible leg cramps again.
4) My tailbone hurts.
This is my living room furniture:
That's not the way my living room looks most days, because it is both spotless and organized in that photo, but you get the general idea. That chaise lounge piece on the right is my favorite piece of furniture. I love that couch. I refer to it as my Fainting Couch, and it is the piece of furniture that I sit on every day, because the other couch is usually hosting a big pile of laundry that I need to fold and put away.
It is no longer comfortable, because I got so fat that I broke it.
I don't mean that it is physically broken, in the sense that the frame remains solid and I didn't get so heavy that I actually cracked my furniture by sitting on it. I did, however, wear a bit of a rut in my fainting couch. It was a really comfortable rut, actually. I'd come home, sit on my fainting couch, stretch out, put up my swollen ankles, and settle in for the night. I might fall asleep while I was watching television, but eventually I would get up and go to bed after spending a night not moving, sunk into my rut on my fainting couch.
And now, I can't sit on it for more than an hour or so at a time, because it hurts my tailbone.
Because my smaller ass no longer fits in the rut.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Four Months
One of my friends asked the other day if, since I've had to buy new pants, I was going to take one of those photos where you smile at the camera and stand in your old pants and hold the waist out so that people can see how far the waist of your pants is from your actual waist. If you were hoping for such a photo, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but it's hard to take one of those pictures by yourself. I guess I could take it in the mirror, but this isn't Myspace and I don't want to show you my (nonexistent) abs. I also don't feel like inviting anyone over to take such a photo, so anyone who wanted one is going to have to live without.
You can look at this photo instead:
The khaki pants on the bottom are the pants I was wearing in July. They were tight in July, but I was wearing them. The charcoal pants in the middle are a pair of the new pants I ordered at the end of September, a little over a month ago, which I mentioned above. The jeans on top? I wore those on Sunday. Last time I wore those, as far as I can remember, was April of 2012.
That's what progress looks like.
How much progress?
In July, I weighed 295 pounds.
In August, I weighed 273 pounds.
In September, I weighed 260 pounds.
In October, I weighed 248 pounds.
Today I weigh 240.
I have lost 55 pounds.
This month was a little rough for me, because I was out of town for a lot of it. I enjoyed my trips, and found the conferences educational, but I had trouble sticking to my calorie limits. It's really hard to maintain control of your food when you have to pick it off of a conference buffet, and options are very limited. I don't think I'm going to have the same problem when I am home visiting my family this month, because we'll go grocery shopping and I can handle eating out here and there, but trying to manage food for two straight weeks was a challenge. Walking was less of a challenge, and in both places it gave me a chance to get out of the hotel and see things that I probably would not have seen otherwise. I hit my step count every day, and most days exceeded it (one day I even doubled it, and walked ten miles), so I feel like travelling was ok, for the most part.
I also struggled a little bit with people at conferences. A lot of these people are friends that I only run into once or twice a year, usually at these conferences. It's nice to see them, and many of them told me how good I looked and how much thinner I looked, but a lot of them were also a little less supportive when I didn't want to go to happy hour before dinner because I wanted to go walk on the beach for an hour and a half instead. I didn't ask anybody to walk with me, because I think you should make your own choices, but I also don't appreciate being told, "You're no fun! All you do is walk on the beach!" by surly drunk colleagues. It's a problem that I talked about before, but that doesn't make it less annoying. Fortunately, I've always been willing to stop talking to people if they annoy me, and I found some other friends to hang out with instead. I might even like them more.
This is not to say that I am surrounded by unsupportive friends, because the opposite is actually true. I did the Race for the Cure this month, and enough friends donated to sponsor me that I made my $500 fundraising goal.
Even better, I came in at 47:10. That's four minutes faster than the race that I did in September. I have another 5K this weekend, on Sunday. I'll let you know how that one goes.
My friends have also been supportive in other ways, and I don't know if I've thanked them enough. Many people have stopped to tell me how proud they are, or that they are inspired by my journey, or just that they support me. Larry (actually Mike, but I'll always think of him as Larry), Sara, Ilona, Erin, and Leonor all sent me books for my Kindle. My friend Lauren sent me an Amazon gift card, and in addition to spending some of it on books, I also spent part of it on a calendar for the Inspiration Wall across from my treadmill:
It's a calendar of Venice.
I am 40 pounds away.
You can look at this photo instead:
The khaki pants on the bottom are the pants I was wearing in July. They were tight in July, but I was wearing them. The charcoal pants in the middle are a pair of the new pants I ordered at the end of September, a little over a month ago, which I mentioned above. The jeans on top? I wore those on Sunday. Last time I wore those, as far as I can remember, was April of 2012.
That's what progress looks like.
How much progress?
In July, I weighed 295 pounds.
In August, I weighed 273 pounds.
In September, I weighed 260 pounds.
In October, I weighed 248 pounds.
Today I weigh 240.
I have lost 55 pounds.
This month was a little rough for me, because I was out of town for a lot of it. I enjoyed my trips, and found the conferences educational, but I had trouble sticking to my calorie limits. It's really hard to maintain control of your food when you have to pick it off of a conference buffet, and options are very limited. I don't think I'm going to have the same problem when I am home visiting my family this month, because we'll go grocery shopping and I can handle eating out here and there, but trying to manage food for two straight weeks was a challenge. Walking was less of a challenge, and in both places it gave me a chance to get out of the hotel and see things that I probably would not have seen otherwise. I hit my step count every day, and most days exceeded it (one day I even doubled it, and walked ten miles), so I feel like travelling was ok, for the most part.
I also struggled a little bit with people at conferences. A lot of these people are friends that I only run into once or twice a year, usually at these conferences. It's nice to see them, and many of them told me how good I looked and how much thinner I looked, but a lot of them were also a little less supportive when I didn't want to go to happy hour before dinner because I wanted to go walk on the beach for an hour and a half instead. I didn't ask anybody to walk with me, because I think you should make your own choices, but I also don't appreciate being told, "You're no fun! All you do is walk on the beach!" by surly drunk colleagues. It's a problem that I talked about before, but that doesn't make it less annoying. Fortunately, I've always been willing to stop talking to people if they annoy me, and I found some other friends to hang out with instead. I might even like them more.
This is not to say that I am surrounded by unsupportive friends, because the opposite is actually true. I did the Race for the Cure this month, and enough friends donated to sponsor me that I made my $500 fundraising goal.
Even better, I came in at 47:10. That's four minutes faster than the race that I did in September. I have another 5K this weekend, on Sunday. I'll let you know how that one goes.
My friends have also been supportive in other ways, and I don't know if I've thanked them enough. Many people have stopped to tell me how proud they are, or that they are inspired by my journey, or just that they support me. Larry (actually Mike, but I'll always think of him as Larry), Sara, Ilona, Erin, and Leonor all sent me books for my Kindle. My friend Lauren sent me an Amazon gift card, and in addition to spending some of it on books, I also spent part of it on a calendar for the Inspiration Wall across from my treadmill:
It's a calendar of Venice.
I am 40 pounds away.
Friday, October 3, 2014
Three Months
It's now been three months since I began discussing my severe weight problem and resolved to do something about it. As you may or may not recall, I started out morbidly obese at 295 pounds with no viable options other than to change my life, and I've been working on that as best I can.
It has not been an easy journey so far.
There was a day this month when I ran out of motivation, utterly and completely. It was a Wednesday, which is typically my longest day of the week because I have a full day in the office, then I teach my class, then I swing by the meeting for the student group that I advise. That particular Wednesday I was trying to complete several large projects at once and doing my best to put out the daily fires that pop up in our office (not literal ones, although at this point I won't be surprised if, someday, something does just burst into flames), so I didn't get to walk the halls as much as I do on a normal day, and I had to go to the grocery store on my way home as well. This left me stressed out, tired, hungry, frustrated with myself for being behind on steps, and standing in the potato chip aisle at Kroger, because that's also where the squirt bottles of water flavorings are. I was even more down after getting to Kroger, because even after two and a half months of parking as far as I could from every store, I somehow managed to forget and park only three spaces into the row in the parking lot on a day when I was already behind on steps.
The whole way into the store I mentally berated myself because after two and a half months I still hadn't managed to make parking far away a habit. After two and a half months, I still had to be consciously vigilant all the time against finding ways to backslide. After two and a half months, I had lost weight but I hadn't managed to actually change anything, and every day was still a constant struggle to remember that I needed to get steps in, and that I couldn't eat that candy, and that I was only going to get a small dinner when I got home because I had a big lunch to tide me over until I could leave campus at seven. After two and a half months I was somehow still failing at this even though I was succeeding, and then, more than anything, I suddenly wanted chips.
Not baked chips, or a small bag of chips, or a serving size of chips. I wanted a family-sized bag of rippled chips, and a pint-sized container of ranch dip, and I wanted to take that home and have it for dinner. And it wasn't just a want, either. I could taste those chips. I knew exactly how the container of dip would feel in my hand, and that if I sat on my fainting couch with it, all stretched out and comfortable, I could rest it on my stomach while I dipped and ate and dipped and ate until that entire pint of dip was gone and all that was left in the bag were crumbs. I could taste the salt and the ranch and feel the crunch in my mouth and I knew how good it would all feel because I've had that dinner more times than I can count.
I almost started crying in the potato chip aisle at Kroger.
And I don't mean that in the "that Upworthy video made me choke up a little" way. I mean that I actually had my head down, and my eyes were watering, and I had to take a minute to catch my breath and think about what I was doing. After two and a half months, I was going to burst into tears at the grocery store because I wanted chips and I knew I shouldn't have them. I wanted them, though. I wanted those chips really, really bad. I wondered what I was doing, and why I was doing this to myself, and what the point of all of this was if I was just going to spend the rest of my life wanting to eat things and not being able to. I know now, rationally, that I can have chips and dip in moderation, but at that moment I was so physically and mentally exhausted that all I could think about was wanting chips and not being able to have chips and still needing to make 4000 more steps once I got home, and I was done. That was it. There wasn't anything left inside of me.
I didn't buy the chips and dip.
When I got home, I changed, walked on the treadmill until the moment that my Fitbit buzzed 10,000 steps, and immediately got off the treadmill, showered, and went to bed.
The next day I hit 12,000 steps by the end of the day. I had a bad day and I got through it without giving up, and the next time that happens, I can get through it again. I know this now, but I had to get through that day to learn it. Some day, I will have (a reasonable portion of) a big bag of chips again. Some day I will also have a bad day again. I will survive both of these things.
And how is surviving going?
Well, I'm still overweight. I'm still considered morbidly obese, but I'm becoming less so. At the end of the first month I was down to 273, a loss of 22 pounds, and I had walked 324 miles. I'm getting a little doubtful of the Fitbit's mileage calculations, though, because I feel like 324 miles in one month means that I should have been over 600 miles the next, and I'm not. Instead, at the end of the second month my total distance was calculated at 522 miles. I'm not sure how the math of that works, especially since at the end of this month I am now allegedly at only 568 miles.
Fitbit thinks I only walked 42 miles this month, which is insane since I walk 5-7 miles a day.
I don't think I'm going to trust their mile count anymore.
I trust the step count, though, because it's working. At the end of the first month I was down 22 pounds, and at the end of the second month I was down 35 pounds to 260. Today, according to the scale, I weigh 248. I've lost 42 pounds in 3 months. I've walked a 5K, and trimmed my time walking a mile from over a half hour a mile to about sixteen minutes. I bought new pants finally, and while it has shown people how much weight I've lost now that I'm not swimming in billowing fabric pantaloons, I'm still not in wonderful shape.
This is something else I am struggling with, physically and mentally.
Physically, I am in a weird in-between size with shirts. My 3XL buttondowns are big on me, but some of my 2XL buttondowns are still too tight to wear. At the same time, I'm down to an XL in t-shirt sizes, so I have no idea what's going on. I've always know that an XL at Express and an XL at Banana Republic and an XL at Old Navy are not the same sizes, but I seem to be in between several sizes depending on where I'm shopping and whether I'm standing or sitting. I also still have a muffin top (I made corn muffins just to have that picture), but it has a weirdly folding, deflated feeling. I definitely still have a lot of belly fat in the front, but on the sides I just have a weird skin fold. I'm not taking a photo of that for you, so you get the picture above, but you get the idea.
Mentally, I'm grappling with compliments, and not saying horrible things when I'm given one. People keep telling me how thin I am, but I'm not thin. I'm thinner. There's a difference. A total stranger looking at me on the street isn't going to think, "Look at that skinny guy." My friends only think that because they know I was even more enormous. When they say, "You've lost so much weight!" I agree, and I appreciate it, because I have lost so much weight. (Not quite enough. I was really hoping to hit 50 pounds, so now I feel like Regina George walking around all the time going, "I really really need to lose three pounds," but 42 is still good, too.) But anyway, when they say, "You're so thin now!" it's taking almost all of my willpower to say, "Not yet!"
But I'm working on it.
This month, I'm walking in the Race for the Cure, because it is a 5K and because my mom is a breast cancer survivor. If you'd like to support me, or would just like to fight cancer, my donation page is here. I'd like to thank everyone who has already donated, and would also like to thank my friends Leo, Sara, Erin, Jackie, and Larry (sorry, Mike; you'll always be Larry to me) for sending books to my Kindle this month to keep me fully engaged on the treadmill.
Every little bit helps, and I appreciate the support.
It has not been an easy journey so far.
There was a day this month when I ran out of motivation, utterly and completely. It was a Wednesday, which is typically my longest day of the week because I have a full day in the office, then I teach my class, then I swing by the meeting for the student group that I advise. That particular Wednesday I was trying to complete several large projects at once and doing my best to put out the daily fires that pop up in our office (not literal ones, although at this point I won't be surprised if, someday, something does just burst into flames), so I didn't get to walk the halls as much as I do on a normal day, and I had to go to the grocery store on my way home as well. This left me stressed out, tired, hungry, frustrated with myself for being behind on steps, and standing in the potato chip aisle at Kroger, because that's also where the squirt bottles of water flavorings are. I was even more down after getting to Kroger, because even after two and a half months of parking as far as I could from every store, I somehow managed to forget and park only three spaces into the row in the parking lot on a day when I was already behind on steps.
The whole way into the store I mentally berated myself because after two and a half months I still hadn't managed to make parking far away a habit. After two and a half months, I still had to be consciously vigilant all the time against finding ways to backslide. After two and a half months, I had lost weight but I hadn't managed to actually change anything, and every day was still a constant struggle to remember that I needed to get steps in, and that I couldn't eat that candy, and that I was only going to get a small dinner when I got home because I had a big lunch to tide me over until I could leave campus at seven. After two and a half months I was somehow still failing at this even though I was succeeding, and then, more than anything, I suddenly wanted chips.
Not baked chips, or a small bag of chips, or a serving size of chips. I wanted a family-sized bag of rippled chips, and a pint-sized container of ranch dip, and I wanted to take that home and have it for dinner. And it wasn't just a want, either. I could taste those chips. I knew exactly how the container of dip would feel in my hand, and that if I sat on my fainting couch with it, all stretched out and comfortable, I could rest it on my stomach while I dipped and ate and dipped and ate until that entire pint of dip was gone and all that was left in the bag were crumbs. I could taste the salt and the ranch and feel the crunch in my mouth and I knew how good it would all feel because I've had that dinner more times than I can count.
I almost started crying in the potato chip aisle at Kroger.
And I don't mean that in the "that Upworthy video made me choke up a little" way. I mean that I actually had my head down, and my eyes were watering, and I had to take a minute to catch my breath and think about what I was doing. After two and a half months, I was going to burst into tears at the grocery store because I wanted chips and I knew I shouldn't have them. I wanted them, though. I wanted those chips really, really bad. I wondered what I was doing, and why I was doing this to myself, and what the point of all of this was if I was just going to spend the rest of my life wanting to eat things and not being able to. I know now, rationally, that I can have chips and dip in moderation, but at that moment I was so physically and mentally exhausted that all I could think about was wanting chips and not being able to have chips and still needing to make 4000 more steps once I got home, and I was done. That was it. There wasn't anything left inside of me.
I didn't buy the chips and dip.
When I got home, I changed, walked on the treadmill until the moment that my Fitbit buzzed 10,000 steps, and immediately got off the treadmill, showered, and went to bed.
The next day I hit 12,000 steps by the end of the day. I had a bad day and I got through it without giving up, and the next time that happens, I can get through it again. I know this now, but I had to get through that day to learn it. Some day, I will have (a reasonable portion of) a big bag of chips again. Some day I will also have a bad day again. I will survive both of these things.
And how is surviving going?
Well, I'm still overweight. I'm still considered morbidly obese, but I'm becoming less so. At the end of the first month I was down to 273, a loss of 22 pounds, and I had walked 324 miles. I'm getting a little doubtful of the Fitbit's mileage calculations, though, because I feel like 324 miles in one month means that I should have been over 600 miles the next, and I'm not. Instead, at the end of the second month my total distance was calculated at 522 miles. I'm not sure how the math of that works, especially since at the end of this month I am now allegedly at only 568 miles.
Fitbit thinks I only walked 42 miles this month, which is insane since I walk 5-7 miles a day.
I don't think I'm going to trust their mile count anymore.
I trust the step count, though, because it's working. At the end of the first month I was down 22 pounds, and at the end of the second month I was down 35 pounds to 260. Today, according to the scale, I weigh 248. I've lost 42 pounds in 3 months. I've walked a 5K, and trimmed my time walking a mile from over a half hour a mile to about sixteen minutes. I bought new pants finally, and while it has shown people how much weight I've lost now that I'm not swimming in billowing fabric pantaloons, I'm still not in wonderful shape.
This is something else I am struggling with, physically and mentally.
Physically, I am in a weird in-between size with shirts. My 3XL buttondowns are big on me, but some of my 2XL buttondowns are still too tight to wear. At the same time, I'm down to an XL in t-shirt sizes, so I have no idea what's going on. I've always know that an XL at Express and an XL at Banana Republic and an XL at Old Navy are not the same sizes, but I seem to be in between several sizes depending on where I'm shopping and whether I'm standing or sitting. I also still have a muffin top (I made corn muffins just to have that picture), but it has a weirdly folding, deflated feeling. I definitely still have a lot of belly fat in the front, but on the sides I just have a weird skin fold. I'm not taking a photo of that for you, so you get the picture above, but you get the idea.
Mentally, I'm grappling with compliments, and not saying horrible things when I'm given one. People keep telling me how thin I am, but I'm not thin. I'm thinner. There's a difference. A total stranger looking at me on the street isn't going to think, "Look at that skinny guy." My friends only think that because they know I was even more enormous. When they say, "You've lost so much weight!" I agree, and I appreciate it, because I have lost so much weight. (Not quite enough. I was really hoping to hit 50 pounds, so now I feel like Regina George walking around all the time going, "I really really need to lose three pounds," but 42 is still good, too.) But anyway, when they say, "You're so thin now!" it's taking almost all of my willpower to say, "Not yet!"
But I'm working on it.
This month, I'm walking in the Race for the Cure, because it is a 5K and because my mom is a breast cancer survivor. If you'd like to support me, or would just like to fight cancer, my donation page is here. I'd like to thank everyone who has already donated, and would also like to thank my friends Leo, Sara, Erin, Jackie, and Larry (sorry, Mike; you'll always be Larry to me) for sending books to my Kindle this month to keep me fully engaged on the treadmill.
Every little bit helps, and I appreciate the support.
Sunday, September 28, 2014
New Pants
I got new pants this week. Five pairs of new pants, to be exact, and I wore them every day this week. Monday? New pants. Tuesday? New pants. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday? If you answered, "New pants," then you are correct.
The new pants are exciting for two reasons:
First, I had to buy new pants because my old pants are too big. Remember that time that my shorts fell off in public? My pants started falling down, too. Not in public, mind you, because I always go out with a belt on, but if I got home and took my belt off and then tried to walk across my living room, the pants were on the floor. It didn't matter if they were still buttoned and zippered, either. As soon as the belt was gone and I wasn't standing perfectly still, BAM! PANTS ARE DOWN!
This stops being funny the first time they trip you.
I have a glass-topped coffee table, and I'm not Heather Chandler. I would prefer not to be the white whale that drank some bad plankton and splashed through a coffee table.
By the way, the pants I have on in the picture in that blog entry? They're too big. So are the jeans that I bought for Alternative Spring Break in 2013. I wore them today and had to belt the hell out of them.
With my brown belt.
Which now fits again.
That means that I can wear brown shoes to work again, with my new pants. I had to stop wearing brown shoes when I got a bigger black belt last year because I was raised properly, and understand that belts and shoes should match.
A couple of friends, who admitted that I desperately needed new pants, asked why I didn't just wear the ones that I've outgrown over the past few years, and I explained that I didn't have them anymore. I didn't explain that the reason that I don't have them anymore is that, over time, my thighs destroyed them. All of my old pants eventually wore out and were replaced because the friction caused by my thighs rubbing together made the inner thighs of the pants get thinner, and thinner, and thinner, and when you took them out of the dryer to fold them you could see light through them but most people couldn't tell when you had them on, because really, who looks at your inner thighs unless you're sitting across from them playing "Basic Instinct" games? Eventually, every single pair of pants I had surrendered to the unending stress and friction, and the inner thighs ripped out.
Usually this happened in the washer or dryer, but once it happened in my office. I was coming back from lunch, sat down, and heard the inner thigh of my pants split. I went home for the rest of the day, allegedly because I needed new pants but also because I was sad inside that I'd gotten so fat that my pants exploded when I sat down in them. I probably coped with that by laying on my couch without moving and eating a family-sized bag of Doritos, which didn't really solve the problem.
But now I have new pants.
The other reason why the new pants are exciting?
This is, by my estimate, the first time I have bought new pants that are not the same size I'm currently wearing or larger in over a decade.
Think about that. What were you doing ten years ago? The freshmen in the class that I teach on Wednesday nights this semester were looking forward to turning ten years old. Facebook went live. Seriously. I haven't bought smaller-sized pants since before Facebook was invented. I hadn't moved to Tennessee yet, or finished my master's degree. The last time I bought smaller-sized pants, Julia Child died.
I'm hoping there's no causality on that last one.
But now I have new pants, and I wore them with pride all week.
The new pants are exciting for two reasons:
First, I had to buy new pants because my old pants are too big. Remember that time that my shorts fell off in public? My pants started falling down, too. Not in public, mind you, because I always go out with a belt on, but if I got home and took my belt off and then tried to walk across my living room, the pants were on the floor. It didn't matter if they were still buttoned and zippered, either. As soon as the belt was gone and I wasn't standing perfectly still, BAM! PANTS ARE DOWN!
This stops being funny the first time they trip you.
I have a glass-topped coffee table, and I'm not Heather Chandler. I would prefer not to be the white whale that drank some bad plankton and splashed through a coffee table.
By the way, the pants I have on in the picture in that blog entry? They're too big. So are the jeans that I bought for Alternative Spring Break in 2013. I wore them today and had to belt the hell out of them.
With my brown belt.
Which now fits again.
That means that I can wear brown shoes to work again, with my new pants. I had to stop wearing brown shoes when I got a bigger black belt last year because I was raised properly, and understand that belts and shoes should match.
A couple of friends, who admitted that I desperately needed new pants, asked why I didn't just wear the ones that I've outgrown over the past few years, and I explained that I didn't have them anymore. I didn't explain that the reason that I don't have them anymore is that, over time, my thighs destroyed them. All of my old pants eventually wore out and were replaced because the friction caused by my thighs rubbing together made the inner thighs of the pants get thinner, and thinner, and thinner, and when you took them out of the dryer to fold them you could see light through them but most people couldn't tell when you had them on, because really, who looks at your inner thighs unless you're sitting across from them playing "Basic Instinct" games? Eventually, every single pair of pants I had surrendered to the unending stress and friction, and the inner thighs ripped out.
Usually this happened in the washer or dryer, but once it happened in my office. I was coming back from lunch, sat down, and heard the inner thigh of my pants split. I went home for the rest of the day, allegedly because I needed new pants but also because I was sad inside that I'd gotten so fat that my pants exploded when I sat down in them. I probably coped with that by laying on my couch without moving and eating a family-sized bag of Doritos, which didn't really solve the problem.
But now I have new pants.
The other reason why the new pants are exciting?
This is, by my estimate, the first time I have bought new pants that are not the same size I'm currently wearing or larger in over a decade.
Think about that. What were you doing ten years ago? The freshmen in the class that I teach on Wednesday nights this semester were looking forward to turning ten years old. Facebook went live. Seriously. I haven't bought smaller-sized pants since before Facebook was invented. I hadn't moved to Tennessee yet, or finished my master's degree. The last time I bought smaller-sized pants, Julia Child died.
I'm hoping there's no causality on that last one.
But now I have new pants, and I wore them with pride all week.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
The Elephant In The Room
I've learned something in the past week:
Nobody wants to agree with me that I am fat.
I'm serious. Last Friday we were out for a going away lunch for a friend who is moving (by now she's moved, actually), and I was debating whether or not I should get a salad. One friend asked, "Why are you looking at salad?", so I answered, "Because I'm fat," and another friend immediately said, "You're not fat."
I'm not? I'm 5'10" and I weigh 295 pounds. It certainly isn't muscle.
The same thing keeps happening in the office. I never noticed before how much food there is just floating around our office, although I had an inkling of it that time I gave up candy for Lent. I went to a meeting this week where there were three dozen cupcakes. I went to Orientation twice, and sat across from a table covered with brownies, cookies, mixed nuts, and fruit. I've been offered birthday cake, granola bars, Pop Tarts, raisins, pistachios (which I am allergic to and contemplated eating because yay, sick day!), and mini candy bars, just because I showed up for work.
"Oh, no thanks. I'm morbidly obese."
No one knows how to respond to this. Shocked laughter, wide eyed silence, uncomfortable giggling... I've seen them all this week, and it fascinates me. Why won't anyone agree with me? I get (and appreciate) that no one wants to be the first to say it, because no one wants to insult me or suffer a possible verbal lashing because they said it at the wrong time, but if I say it first, why are people so uncomfortable? Why won't people agree that I am dangerously overweight? If we're talking face to face, the evidence is kind of hard to miss for a sighted person.
This has been on my mind because I started a diet a week ago, and six days ago I bought a Fitbit flex to help me track and be deliberate about exercise. Some of my friends have asked what brought this on, which is not an unreasonable question given how often I mention that I need to lose weight and I need to exercise without ever actually trying to do either one. Just ask the treadmill gathering dust in my living room, supporting a collection of laundry, jackets, and scarves.
My answer would be that it was a cumulative thing, but the main straw that broke the camel's back is that two weeks ago I went on Ignite Summit. I love Summit, and have gone multiple times. Every time we go, I always get a team photo and a photo with my Team Leaders, and there are always people there taking candid photos and shots of us participating in the activities. When I got home, we all started uploading our photos to Facebook and tagging each other. It's clear that I'm having fun in our photos, but when I looked at them I only saw one thing:
Belly.
A lot of belly.
That's actually a picture where I look thin(ner), because I'm not bending. I can only imagine what the photos of me on the ropes course look like. Possibly no one took any because they were all busy making sure I wouldn't crush a 95 pound spotter to death when I fell.
Anyway, I looked at the photos, and I sighed, and looked around my living room and said, "This cannot continue to be my life."
Something has to change, so I started working on it. I'm still amused by the responses to the obvious fact that I need to work on it, though. Again, why won't people just agree with me?
One of my friends suggested that I was just being self deprecating to be funny.
I learned the value of self-deprecation in seventh grade, in Journalism class. Tina, an eighth grade girl who was very pretty and very popular and dating my friend Reuben (in seventh grade everyone was my friend), and I were working on numbering photos for yearbook pages, and she kept dropping them.
"I'm so clumsy," she sighed. "I make fun of myself for that all the time."
"I don't have to make fun of myself," I said. "Everyone else does it for me."
She made a sad face, and that day at lunch she gave me the cookie from her tray.
As I said, I learned a valuable lesson. Too bad I ended up not liking girls.
That's not what I'm doing when I say I'm fat, or that I'm a large person, or that I'm morbidly obese.
Another friend said that it's just depressing to hear, and that I must be depressed to think that way about myself.
You know what's depressing? The "Big and Tall" section for men at JC Penny's. The one at Belk is less depressing. It's kind of mixed in with the rest of the menswear, so that you're walking along and you sort of stumble into and out of it, like, "Ooops, I wandered into big and tall," and then you're gone. The one at Penny's, on the other hand, is a shame cave. It's in the very back on the men's department, so you have to walk past all of the clothes that won't fit you, and then when you get there, it's in a recessed alcove. If you're not looking at the clothes, you'll immediately notice two things:
1) There are no mirrors.
2) There are fewer lights.
If despair was a store you could shop in, it would be the dimly lit "Big and Tall" section at the back of Penny's.
My friend is also a little right, though. I do get a little depressed when I think about my weight. I cover it with jokes, but it was depressing to have to ask for a seatbelt extender on one of the planes when I went to visit Long Island. It's depressing not to be able to comfortably fit in the seats in the University Center auditorium. It's depressing that the thing I buy most at thrift stores isn't Pyrex or ties, but is instead five dollar 3XL shirts. It's depressing thinking about how I'm at risk for diabetes, and how I can't climb stairs without getting winded, and how I break a sweat just walking across campus. It's depressing that part of the reason why I wear sweater vests in the fall and winter is that I can unbutton the bottom of the shirt under them and no one will know.
It's depressing, but I am not depressed. I'm determined to change.
I need to change because I have a problem: I'm fat.
And politely ignoring my problem isn't going to help it go away.
Nobody wants to agree with me that I am fat.
I'm serious. Last Friday we were out for a going away lunch for a friend who is moving (by now she's moved, actually), and I was debating whether or not I should get a salad. One friend asked, "Why are you looking at salad?", so I answered, "Because I'm fat," and another friend immediately said, "You're not fat."
I'm not? I'm 5'10" and I weigh 295 pounds. It certainly isn't muscle.
The same thing keeps happening in the office. I never noticed before how much food there is just floating around our office, although I had an inkling of it that time I gave up candy for Lent. I went to a meeting this week where there were three dozen cupcakes. I went to Orientation twice, and sat across from a table covered with brownies, cookies, mixed nuts, and fruit. I've been offered birthday cake, granola bars, Pop Tarts, raisins, pistachios (which I am allergic to and contemplated eating because yay, sick day!), and mini candy bars, just because I showed up for work.
"Oh, no thanks. I'm morbidly obese."
No one knows how to respond to this. Shocked laughter, wide eyed silence, uncomfortable giggling... I've seen them all this week, and it fascinates me. Why won't anyone agree with me? I get (and appreciate) that no one wants to be the first to say it, because no one wants to insult me or suffer a possible verbal lashing because they said it at the wrong time, but if I say it first, why are people so uncomfortable? Why won't people agree that I am dangerously overweight? If we're talking face to face, the evidence is kind of hard to miss for a sighted person.
This has been on my mind because I started a diet a week ago, and six days ago I bought a Fitbit flex to help me track and be deliberate about exercise. Some of my friends have asked what brought this on, which is not an unreasonable question given how often I mention that I need to lose weight and I need to exercise without ever actually trying to do either one. Just ask the treadmill gathering dust in my living room, supporting a collection of laundry, jackets, and scarves.
My answer would be that it was a cumulative thing, but the main straw that broke the camel's back is that two weeks ago I went on Ignite Summit. I love Summit, and have gone multiple times. Every time we go, I always get a team photo and a photo with my Team Leaders, and there are always people there taking candid photos and shots of us participating in the activities. When I got home, we all started uploading our photos to Facebook and tagging each other. It's clear that I'm having fun in our photos, but when I looked at them I only saw one thing:
Belly.
A lot of belly.
That's actually a picture where I look thin(ner), because I'm not bending. I can only imagine what the photos of me on the ropes course look like. Possibly no one took any because they were all busy making sure I wouldn't crush a 95 pound spotter to death when I fell.
Anyway, I looked at the photos, and I sighed, and looked around my living room and said, "This cannot continue to be my life."
Something has to change, so I started working on it. I'm still amused by the responses to the obvious fact that I need to work on it, though. Again, why won't people just agree with me?
One of my friends suggested that I was just being self deprecating to be funny.
I learned the value of self-deprecation in seventh grade, in Journalism class. Tina, an eighth grade girl who was very pretty and very popular and dating my friend Reuben (in seventh grade everyone was my friend), and I were working on numbering photos for yearbook pages, and she kept dropping them.
"I'm so clumsy," she sighed. "I make fun of myself for that all the time."
"I don't have to make fun of myself," I said. "Everyone else does it for me."
She made a sad face, and that day at lunch she gave me the cookie from her tray.
As I said, I learned a valuable lesson. Too bad I ended up not liking girls.
That's not what I'm doing when I say I'm fat, or that I'm a large person, or that I'm morbidly obese.
Another friend said that it's just depressing to hear, and that I must be depressed to think that way about myself.
You know what's depressing? The "Big and Tall" section for men at JC Penny's. The one at Belk is less depressing. It's kind of mixed in with the rest of the menswear, so that you're walking along and you sort of stumble into and out of it, like, "Ooops, I wandered into big and tall," and then you're gone. The one at Penny's, on the other hand, is a shame cave. It's in the very back on the men's department, so you have to walk past all of the clothes that won't fit you, and then when you get there, it's in a recessed alcove. If you're not looking at the clothes, you'll immediately notice two things:
1) There are no mirrors.
2) There are fewer lights.
If despair was a store you could shop in, it would be the dimly lit "Big and Tall" section at the back of Penny's.
My friend is also a little right, though. I do get a little depressed when I think about my weight. I cover it with jokes, but it was depressing to have to ask for a seatbelt extender on one of the planes when I went to visit Long Island. It's depressing not to be able to comfortably fit in the seats in the University Center auditorium. It's depressing that the thing I buy most at thrift stores isn't Pyrex or ties, but is instead five dollar 3XL shirts. It's depressing thinking about how I'm at risk for diabetes, and how I can't climb stairs without getting winded, and how I break a sweat just walking across campus. It's depressing that part of the reason why I wear sweater vests in the fall and winter is that I can unbutton the bottom of the shirt under them and no one will know.
It's depressing, but I am not depressed. I'm determined to change.
I need to change because I have a problem: I'm fat.
And politely ignoring my problem isn't going to help it go away.
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