“[...]bad, really bad, abominably bad, bad, bad, bad!”Well, maybe not that bad, but Lord! it wasn’t good!”

I don’t even know if I can describe what has been going on. I did a better job of it on my personal journal. The core issue is that I am afraid of what I was becoming. What in the world do I do if I keep losing weight? What happens if I am no longer the big fat guy? What happens if I can buy clothes off the shelf? What happens to me? Who would I be?

Scary, scary questions!

I have been sub-consciously sabotaging myself for a while now. Not just small things, like sneaking a candy in here and there. Really bad things, like having a half-dozen donuts one day ‘cuz someone brought some into the office. Like stopping at a convenience store on the way home and having donuts, candy and chocolate milk. Like having a giant milkshake plus loaded fries plus a cheeseburger for a meal. Insane things, things that are obviously done to hurt myself, now that I can look back at them with an honest eye.

These are all stupid things. These are all demons from my past. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done these. How many times I’ve failed in exactly the same way. It’s not that I should know better than this. It is that I do know better than this. I know damned well the effects of my behavior.

One of my tweeple, @dabobie, suggested that I might feel like I don’t deserve to be healthy, don’t deserve to lose weight. There is definitely a lot of truth in there. I alluded to much of that in a previous entry here, where I suggested that I am a fraud. I had lost a pound even though I wasn’t being very good… At least this time I’ve earned the weight I’ve gained.

It’s hard to say exactly how much I’ve gained without going to WeightWatchers every week. From our home scale, it looks like I’ve gained 7lbs since June. So I have to lose that just to get back to where I was in spring.

Yeah, all in all, I’m not feeling good about myself right now…

- M

Image via Wikipedia

I am not exactly sure why, but I’ve been a bit reticent to set new goals. I haven’t had a real goal since the end of last year. I’ve made some uncertain ones – like losing my vacation weight, moving closer to my 10% goal, etc. But I haven’t made any concrete goals since then. That is not good.

Goals are important. Specific goals are even more important. Saying “I want to lose 100lbs” is great, but how do I get to that point? It doesn’t just happen overnight. There are intermediary steps along the way. These are goals that I need to keep in mind, that I need to work towards. “Losing a lot of weight” is a platitude. “Hitting my 10% target by the end of May” is a specific goal, one that I can concentrate and focus on, and strive towards.

Image via Wikipedia

That’s my first new goal, by the way. My 10% goal is 298.6. I am currently around 302. That gives me two weeks to lose four pounds. This is well within Weight Watchers guidelines for safe weight loss. This is an attainable goal. This is an easily-measurable goal. And it will be mine.

Oh, yes, it will be mine.

My other goal is an ongoing one that might be a little harder to hit in the long term: average 1lb lost a week. That’s the equivalent of losing 52lbs a year: you don’t see too many people doing that. [grin] As with everything else, doing something long-term is harder and harder to do as the term grows longer and longer. I can easily keep the 1lb average over the next few weeks. My goal is to do that over the next few months. Slow and steady.

I should throw in some exercise goals, too, but I am not quite ready for that. Soon, compadre, but not today.

- M

Fortunately, there is one place where I am guaranteed to get some activity in, and I love to go there: the zoo!

Before you scoff, consider this: a day at the zoo forces you to walk. To walk a lot. At least at the Denver Zoo, if you want to see a lot of the animals there, you have a lot of walking to do. The elephants are at one area, birds off to another side, the polar bears and seals are completely across the zoo, etc. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the zoo’s map!

Lemme tell you, that is one heck of a walk. Especially when pulling a wagon that is loaded down with diaper bags, water bottles and children.

EXERCISE!!!!

One other suggestion for zoo-going: prepare your meal and snacks! Food at the zoo (or at least here at the Denver Zoo) isn’t too horribly priced, but it also isn’t the healthiest food. Instead of using up all of the exercise calories/Points by having a meal rife with fat (e.g. pizza, a burger, chicken strips), plan ahead. Pack a good, healthy lunch, along with lots of fruits and pretzels or the like for snacks. Kiddos will eat pretty much anything you give them at the zoo because of the wonders of the environment. And it may just build a life-long association between fun and healthy eating.

Or at the very least, you can enjoy the day, knowing that you’ve taken care of your body, and your weight-loss needs.

- M

Do you have similar experiences at the zoo? Or other places that also force you to get in a lot of exercise? Please share your story in the comments below!

A typical example is for Halloween. In the first cell, one would draw a picture of kids trick-or-treating. The next cell would be a picture of the left-over Halloween candy sitting in a bowl on the table. The next cell would be your strategy for avoiding the trap. For example, you might draw a picture of you grabbing an apple. Or taking the candy to the dentist for a candy buy-back program. Maybe throwing all the candy into the trash.

That is a very good storyboard. If you want to storyboard but haven’t done so yet. Or aren’t sure exactly how to do a storyboard, steal that previous paragraph. It’s good stuff, trust me. This can be done mentally, of course. If you think visually, that is a strategy that will work well.

I have to be contrarian, of course. I build storyboards in my head. But those storyboards are exactly wrong. I picture stopping at a gas station, going into the convenience store and grabbing a package of Zingers and a big carton of chocolate milk, and then snacking all the way home. I can visualize each step of the process. The sound of the bell when I open the door. The crinkles of the Zinger’s wrapper. The cold of the milk carton. The sound of the cash register. Hearing the clerk say “have a good day.” And then the feeding frenzy.

This is the kind of thing I have to fight against. Almost every week. Somewhere along the way, I am able to shake the cobwebs out, realize that I cannot give in to those thoughts. I have to rely on an impulse to kick in, to keep me from giving in.

Hmmm… maybe I should storyboard a strategy for dealing with negative storyboarding…

Tuesday’s entry was all about eating too much when dining out.  When I am on top of things health-wise, I never have a problem with this. I stop eating when I am full, whether I am at home or eating elsewhere. My tummy and my mind are in harmony. Each knows what the other is doing. Both work together. Things get easy. Well, easier anyway. Dropping weight and keeping it off are never truly easy. But I digress.

Everyone who tries to lose weight knows the old adage: it takes 10-15 minutes for your tummy to tell your brain “Okay, that’s enough food, I’m pretty satisfied right now.” Those of us who end up very overweight ignores this adage in one of two ways

1. we eat too fast, and then we keep eating more and more and more before the signal between tummy and brain is received.
2. we ignore that signal

I’ve been down both routes. Fairly recently, too. Eating too fast is my normal problem. I can inhale food, if I am really hungry. There are also a few types of food that I eat super-fast, even when I try not to. (PB&J sandwiches, I’m looking right at you.) The end result is: I eat too fast, feel like I am still hungry, so I eat some more. By the time I get the signal that my tummy is full, I have eaten a lot of extra food. And I feel like a blimp.

The second trap plays most into my problems. There are certain foods or certain times where I simply will continue to eat. Even if I am stuffed to the gills. Even if I really don’t even want to eat anymore. A country breakfast (eggs, bacon, hash browns and pancakes). Apple crisp. Jumbo shrimp. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Sitting in a movie theater. Eating a dog at Coors Field. All very dangerous, because I cannot stop myself. I know that I should stop. I just choose not to.

These are what I must work on. I cannot allow myself to get too hungry, because then I eat too fast. I can’t get my “usual” at a breakfast joint, because I’ll eat every single crumb on my plate. I have to be smart about these things. I have to plan strategies for when (not “if” but “When”) these situations arise. Be ready for them.

You know the Boy Scouts motto? Be Prepared? Same thing.

One way that I slipped up is the amount of food I let myself eat when we would dine out. Normally, when I am behaving, I don’t come close to eating a full portion at a restaurant. Depending on the restaurant, sometimes I can’t work my way through a half-portion! As the media has pointed out a time or two, restaurants have increased portion sizes to ridiculous amounts. Nowadays, it is expected that a person cannot finish a whole entrée.

Yet that was exactly what I was doing. No matter where we went to eat, I would sit at the table and eat every damned thing on my plate. My plate would be practically clean! That isn’t like me… It’s like the me from my past, the me that I am trying to move away from. That I thought I had moved away from.

Though – obviously from my current weight – I was totally being that guy again.

As I work my way back into a healthy mindset – as I try to get myself back on-track – I have to remember the small things I can do to keep from falling back again. Leaving food on my plate at a restaurant? That should be an easy small thing to do.

Strike that: it will be an easy small thing to do.

Seriously, what is wrong with me?

I am breaking all of my rules here. Drinking soda instead of water. Eating crap that I don’t really like. Spending empty calories on mediocre foods instead of saving those for something that I really want.

In case you didn’t notice, I have a recurring theme here: What is wrong with me?

I sat down and mapped out a long term goal, and have that chopped up into a couple of short-term goals:

Long term goal: Lose 35 pounds by Halloween. The date is easy, since it is close to my son’s birthday. And he is part of the reason I really want to start getting back on track. I am picking the weight goal for a pragmatic reason. I want to have a heart scan done. The tables only hold a max weight of 300lbs, though, so I have to be under. 35 pounds would put me at 295, so I’d have room to spare.

Long term reward: Picking an appropriate long-term reward is kind of hard. It’s a guilt thing. Two-pronged actually. Guilt that I don’t really deserve a reward, since I’ve been a lot lighter than 295 in the past couple of years. That’s bullshit, of course. This is a new goal, it stands separately from everything except for my current weight. 35 pounds is a very good goal, and deserves to be celebrated. (The other reason I feel guilty is I hate spending money on myself.)

Okay, add all of that up, and I still need to set up a reward. And there’s only really one thing that stands out in my mind. If I am at 295 (or less) on Halloween 2010, I am going to buy myself a complete set of Legend of Zelda games for the Wii. This includes LoZ: Twilight Princess, and the earlier LoZ games on the Wii Virtual Console (I already have The Wind Waker). And no, I really don’t mind being labelled such. [grin]

Short term goal: There are seven months ’til Halloween, which  makes short-term goals easy.  5 pounds a month – approximately 1.25 pounds per week – and I am there. It sounds so easy on paper! It looks so easy on the computer screen. And it should be easy. At my weight, losing a pound or two a week should be a breeze. One less pop-tart, an extra 5 minutes walking a day, any of these will allow my body to get rid of this weight. It’s not natural to be this overweight, and one’s body will automatically start shedding weight if I just get out of its way.

Short term reward: At the end of each month, if I lost the 5 pounds I needed in that month, I’m gonna allow myself to buy any book I want. No guilt about spending the money, and no guilt about how silly or popcorn-ish the book might be.

Here’s to my first book!

Of course, this journal isn’t supposed to be about just the fun stuff. It’s supposed to be about the bad stuff, too. And I’ve had a lot of bad stuff going on. I am just so used to dealing with stress with eating that I don’t even notice it anymore. Busy work week? Eat an extra pastry at the coffee shop. Snow outside is making me nervous about driving? Carton of chocolate milk and a donut or two.

Then, for some reason that I cannot remember anymore, I stopped exercising. No more 45-minute walks at lunchtime! What the hell is wrong with me? That was cheap, easy exercise. I would combine that with a treat (say a non-fat latte from the former Peaberry Coffee), listen to some tunes, and just enjoy. Now it is hard to get myself out of my office chair at all. Seriously, wtf?

[le sigh] More sometime later.