All the small things...

You don’t win friends with salad!

In other words, I wouldn’t succeed in my weight-loss attempt if all I ate was salad.  Yet another switch in my thinking from the past ways was the change from believing I had to eat certain foods, or eliminate certain foods in my diet, into the belief that it wasn’t what I was eating, per se, but rather how much.

Let’s go back about 20 years. In 1991, my New Year’s Resolution was to give up eating beef and pork and drinking sodas. At that point in my life, I was eating a Quarter Pounder with cheese value meal every single day for lunch (McDonald’s was right across the street from campus) and guzzling down a 2-liter bottle of Coke a day. (Neither of those is an exaggeration plus I am sure some of you can relate.) So, in an effort to lose weight, I decided to cut out beef and pork and soda. I was an “all or nothing” thinker who knew I would cheat if I allowed myself any leeway, so I decided to cut them out altogether. For example, if I knew I could eat beef on certain “special” days, then all of a sudden every day would be one of those “special” days. If I knew I couldn’t eat it at all, then, there was no excuse.

I managed to keep up the New Year’s Resolution until 2005 when Katrina hit. After we lost almost everything in our house and lost where we were living, we went to live with my cousin and several other members of my extended family. We were getting donated food and I started eating beef and pork again. I wasn’t going to turn down a donated ham from someone who was trying to help us, plus I wasn’t morally opposed to eating meat, it had just been an attempt to lose weight. When the New Year came again January 2006, I once again gave up beef and pork since we were once again self-sufficient. However, over the last couple of years, I had to reassess and come to the conclusion that the experiment had been a failure. Especially, since I realized that I weighed about 40 pounds more than when I had first given up beef and pork.

The problem was that when I gave up eating beef and pork, I hadn’t given up eating massive quantities of other foods--like Popeye’s Chicken, or ice cream or any of a myriad of other foods.

Sometimes, I see friends who want to lose weight and they tell me how much they’re eating salad or replacing meals with something like Slimfast. I can tell you this, if all I was eating was salad and Slimfast, I would not be able to keep it up and I would probably quit after a month or two. At this point, I still eat foods that I enjoy, I just eat much less of them. You have to do something sustainable, otherwise, the tiger will get you. (More on the tiger later…)

I must confess though, that this past New Year’s I did give up bread and bread-like products. I left myself a couple of exceptions though: birthday cake on my birthday and Warm Melting Chocolate Cake on Carnival Cruises. Since, those two things are not every-day items, I figured I could allow myself those. However, rather than be a weight-loss experiment, it’s more of an attempt to control my carb intake due to my diabetes. It forces me to be a little more creative in my eating habits. I did leave myself two outs: crackers and tortillas. I can see myself starting to have problems controlling my cracker intake as I work crackers into my diet more and more. I’m going to have to address that with myself at some point, because right now, I seem to have Kirk Van Houten working overtime. (If you get THAT reference, you are a true geek!)

I’m also not a big fruit or vegetable eater. I’ve been trying to incorporate more fruits into my diet. I experiment with new ones every now and then, but all I seem to like are bananas. And vegetables? I don’t think there are any I could qualify as “liking.” I need to work on that too. The closest thing I get to eating “salad” is taking raw baby spinach and putting grilled chicken on it. Then, when I eat it, I have to have a piece of chicken with every bite of leaves.

I guess the biggest lesson I’ve learned with all my experiments with food and depriving myself of certain items is that first I must cut back, then I can start to think about how to be creative with varying my diet. Because, when I cut back, I was still eating foods I liked, yet I was getting results. Now, I can be bolder and experiment with expanding my dietary horizons while realizing I can still eat the foods I like, but just in smaller quantities. I’m no longer ham-stringing myself and setting myself up for failure.

The Eye of the Tiger

I get tempted sometimes and the temptation is overwhelming. There are days when I don’t think I am going to be able to resist giving into temptation, but I always convince myself that my efforts will be rewarded.

Oh, wait, I’m not talking about food. I’m talking about weighing myself on the scale.

Yes, at a certain point in my weight-loss journey, I became pretty addicted to weighing myself. I started off at 228 lbs. on August 8, 2010. By January 7, 2011, I was 204.2 lbs. And every day for a month, I was 204.2 lbs. It was pretty discouraging, but I weaned myself off the scale and just kept being consistent with my exercise and eating habits. When I last weighed myself in mid-February, I was 200.2 lbs. I haven’t weighed myself since then and I don’t intend to weigh myself until March 31, 2011. And that brings me to my next subject:

Goals

It’s important to have goals. But you must have variety in your goals. For example, my current goal is to be under 200 lbs. I have not been under 200 lbs. in about 16 years. The last time I weighed myself, I was 200.2 lbs. I want to give myself the best chance of being under 200, so I am not going to weigh myself for another 2 weeks. If I make it, great. If I don’t, well, it’ll just take longer. My long-term goal is to be a healthy-weight for my size. That’s around 160 pounds. If I make it, great. But you know what? I’ve realized that it’s not about the goals. It’s about the little things on the way there.

In the beginning of this journey, I never would have thought that I could have ridden my bike for 60 miles at a stretch. I have done that now. Having these goals to work toward gives me big dreams. Now, I want to be able to train and ride my bike from New Orleans to Chicago. If you think I’m crazy, oh well, at least I have a goal and I am working toward it. How can you know your potential unless you try something you’ve never done before?

But like I said, it’s the little things on the way to the goal that matter.

Things like my daughter telling me she can hug me and clasp her hands all the way behind my back now. It’s actually being okay with having my picture taken. It’s checking out my body’s profile in a store window to see my progress. It’s being able to buy size L shirts instead of XXL. It’s buying a new belt two inches shorter than the old one. It’s having fingers that actually feel thinner. It’s my noticing that I am starting to have a defined jawline.

One thing it’s not: a number on a scale.

I’ve often thought about what’s going to happen when I reach my goal. Will I give up and suffer the fate of so many who’ve tried before. Will I be a part of the group that gains all the weight back? It’s a real fear of mine. That I will lose that fire and just give up again. But I think having long-term goals will help me stay focused. Let’s say I want to become a long-distance cyclist, and say I make it to Chicago, then what? Then maybe I try to go from coast to coast. I’ll just keep dreaming big and working toward those goals. That will help me keep the weight off--the constant pursuit of bigger dreams.

I’ve come to realize that there is a tiger chasing me: the weight-gain tiger. He’s chasing me and he’s never going to stop. I have to be constantly vigilant. I must never stop trying to outrun him. It’s going to be a way of life from here on out. When we slack off, that’s when he pounces, we give up and start spiraling out of control with our weight. That tiger chasing me is a reminder that I will always be a guy who’s been there.