Learning to be Fat

Current Weight: 220.6 lb

“Like everyone else you want to learn the way to win. But never to accept the way to lose. To accept defeat — to learn to die — is to be liberated from it. Once you accept it, you are free to flow and to harmonize. Fluidity is the way to an empty mind. You must free your ambitious mind and learn the art of dying.” –Bruce Lee

Maybe I’m going about this all wrong. One school of thought is that overeating is a way to cope for something tucked neatly away in the subconscious mind. Another school of thought is that overeating is simply a negatively reinforced behavior and has to be modified. Yes, I did get that from the show Frasier but stay with me here. Personally, I think it’s both. I do have my issues and tend to eat as a way of coping. Ironically, though, as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve got obsessive compulsive disorder, which definitely qualifies as “negatively reinforced behavior.”

I know the quote seems rather cryptic, doesn’t it? Especially coming from a guy who died before his time. But Bruce Lee does offer a valid point. I remember when I was little, I was asked, nay, forced to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star on stage… by myself. Who does that to five-year-old? So I did what I had to do. I sucked it up and let out the biggest fit in my life and managed to convince my dad to take me home so I wouldn’t have to do it. Fast forward a few years into the future and I decided that the only way to get over looking foolish is to look foolish on purpose. I saw my shortcomings in public speaking and turned it into a strength. Now, I’m actually quite the ham (mmmmmm Ham… okay, that’s not helping my situation).

I could quote everyone from Aristotle to Sharon Osbourne describing the same philosophy. But Bruce Lee just so happens to be at the top of the cool list. Why? Well, I’ll get to that later. As you might have deduced from the title of this post, I want to try and learn to be fat. Bear with me. What Bruce Lee is saying is that once you fully experience failure than there’s nothing left to lose. And as weird as the semantics may contradict: when one has nothing to lose, they’re not afraid to give it their all. But what would they give if they had nothing to lose?--- Well, whatever.

The point is that I want to learn how to be fat with pride. I don’t have to repeat how much the media and popular culture glorifies a specific type, but it bears repeating. After consulting with Google, I was hard pressed to find more than five images of plus-sized male models. I’m not saying there should be anymore; it’s just an observation. And I’m sure many people have noticed the lack of “plus-ness” in plus sized female models, but I digress.

Looking back at my track record, I was depressed when I was fat, depressed when I was not so fat, and still depressed now that I’m in between. In fact, I argue that the reason I yo-yo’ed back to my current state is because I couldn’t cope with the fact that I wrongly associated being thin with being happy. Happiness is a state of mind. Being slender is a physical state. Why would I connect the two dots? The answer is actually quite simple and a bit disheartening: I’m shallow. I said as much in my last blog, but I just hate myself for it.

I’m not shallow in my perception of other people, but I’m afraid that I’m horribly small-minded when it comes to my own body. In retrospect, it actually makes me seem like a bit of a narcissist. I might be looking too much into this but this is how I see things are working in my head. I don’t judge people on their looks, but constantly think people are judging me by mine. Why? I think I’m better than everyone. Here’s how it sounds in my unconscious mind: “I’m not judging you by your appearance but that’s because I’m more capable of seeing you that way, therefore you must be judging me by my appearance because you, mortal, are inferior to me.” Apparently my unconscious thinks I’m a deity.

Where does this come from? I’m not entirely sure. It could be from the fact that I grew up in a very, very tightly knit family. All that positive reinforcement is good, but I never really received any feedback from outside that very small circle of people. It could be from the fact that when I was a child someone told me that nobody likes to be friends with fat people. Maybe it’s from years of growing up in front of the television in constant exposure to the media’s definition of what a “perfect” body should look like. Ironically, in said situation, I led a sedentary lifestyle while stuffing my face with snacks (I loved my cheese ballz).

I’ve got to admit that this blog is going in a direction that I totally did not expect. I’m not exactly sure what to think of this knew psychological approach, but it is something new. After all, it isn’t until writing this did I realize that my body had gone through some enormous changes in the past few years. But I never recognized the fact that my mental state had declined steadily and didn’t reflect my physical health. Now that I’ve pushed all my emotional baggage in the forefront of my quirky mind, maybe I can get over those issues and actually get my life back on track.

And if you’ve stuck with me this long your reward is the answer as to why Bruce Lee makes the top of the cool list. Well, let’s just say I measured his coolness not in units of Fonzy, but in units of Norris. And everyone known that 100,000 Mega-Fonzy’s is equal to 1 Norris unit. Take a look at the video below… QED (I’m fully aware how many nerdy references I made in this last paragraph).

Dear Journal, This Time It's Personal

Current Weight: 220.1 lb

It’s been four months since my last post and, for better or worse, I’m still within the 220 lb range. I warn you though, numbers can be deceiving. Oh, so deceiving. Between the months of January and April, I have managed to actually get my weight down to a number as low 214.7 lb. That only lasted a day, but I digress. For the past few weeks I have hovered over the 215-217 mark. And then I made the mistake of going to a seafood buffet. That’s when I learned an important lesson: When you put the word “buffet” in front of any food type, it negates the beneficial qualities of said food.

For whoever may be reading this, you may be wondering why I haven’t been posting on a regular basis. Well for the first week of the New Year I managed to gain weight, and I was too bummed to post it up for the world to see. Then when I started to lose weight, I was just too lazy to post anything. Lately it’s been getting harder and harder to lose more weight. I started the year at 220 lb and am currently at 220 lb, not very productive.

I have taken two programs of that diet that I mentioned a few months ago, and managed to lose almost 20 pounds while under their watchful eyes and it has thankfully stayed off. But those programs are expensive, and I have yet to get a job. Here I am, all by my lonesome, trying to lose 35 more pounds. Obviously, I’m no longer putting myself under the time limit of 10 weeks to lose that weight. However, suffice it to say that I don’t want to wait until I retire to reach my weight goal.

To help police my actions, I have gotten myself a journal. Well, let’s put it this way. I got a notepad about a year ago and never really used it. Earlier this week, when I found out that my weight had returned to the 220 mark, I decided to use that notebook to chronicle any huge changes in my eating activity. When I opened to the first page I saw that I had already started to use the notebook. My first entry was on December 2, 2009. The interesting thing that I found in it was the last statement that I made:

Thought for the day: Losing weight is a mental illness, not a physical one. Fat is incidental to chemical dependency.

It was my way of saying that I knew exactly why I’m fat. It’s because I eat! I know, that doesn’t seem all that innovative but I’m telling myself that I know exactly how to lose weight. I’ve done it. I know how to maintain weight. I’ve been doing it. But why do I eat?

To tell you the truth, I’ve never really given it much thought. I just know that I’ve always been that guy that cleans his plate despite what my stomach might be saying. Fortunately for me, summer is approaching which means there is an abundance of weight loss articles telling people to get in swimsuit shape. Screw them; I just want to be happy in my own skin.

For the past month or so I have been experimenting with my behavior as far as eating is concerned. I’ve been determined to find out why I don’t lose weight, or gain it back when I do manage to lose it. I can’t say that I’ve entirely figured it out, but things are starting to make a little more sense.

I started writing in my new weight control journal this week and tried something different. Instead of writing out sentences and counting out calories, I’ve decided to be as brutal as I could to myself. Sketched out pictures of myself and took pictures of my body (get your mind out of the gutter) and I looked at myself through discriminatory eyes. I took apart everything about my body that I hated and I wrote out exactly why I hated what I saw. It was then that I realized that I didn’t really give a crap about my health. I was obsessed with my own body and how ugly I thought it was.

I’ve got to admit that I was rather disgusted with myself when I came to the realization that I could be so shallow. Don’t get me wrong, I have no obsession with other people’s bodies. When it comes to a girl I’m attracted to, physical appearance has little to do with it. In fact, I made that observation in my journal the other day. I’ve convinced myself that the reason I’m alone is solely because of my weight. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but I suspect that it isn’t.

What’s interesting here is that I forced myself to look at my body and be as unforgiving in any of the observations that I made. All I see is the gut. And that’s it. I feel awful. All these years, that I’ve expressed the horrible way mass media portrays the idea of an “ideal” body type, it turns out that I’ve succumbed to it.

Looking back at all the times that I overeat to the point that it feels like I’m going to have a moment similar to the chest popping scene in Aliens, I realize how I would eat to give me something to do. Keeping the mind preoccupied meant it didn’t have to deal with whatever was right in front of me. Whenever I felt lonely, I stuffed myself. Whenever I was stressed, I stuffed myself. Whenever I was depressed, I stuffed myself.

Everyone has an emotional crutch, and I happen to have two. One healthy, the other… not so much. One of my crutches is a release of tension and a way to get the jumble of a Rubik’s cube that are my thoughts into some semblance of order so that I can think more clearly. That release is writing. I’ve been doing it since about the third grade. In fact, I’ve got another blog that I dedicate to my writing endeavors (QuixoticStories.blogspot.com). I’m a self promoting whore, I know.

My second is retreating into my head by way of eating. I’ll be honest; I get anxious in big crowds where I have to act myself. To be honest, I really don’t think the real me is all that interesting. I don’t do what most people my age do for fun. It’s incredibly hard to relate to somebody and when I find someone that I think I can connect to, I’m scared to death to do anything that would totally screw that up and put me in a different light. But I’ll leave my crippling fear of rejection and failure for another blog.

Of all the times that I cram food into my chubby little cheeks, I can’t ever recall feeling guilty. And yet when I get out of the shower, I go out of my way to avoid looking at my body. I know that when people see me, they don’t see the fat or what I call my “melted nipples” (Alright, I know that sound gross but I think I’ve made it clear that I’ve had some mental issues). But my point is that there are some serious mental issues that I think I have to resolve, or at least bring to light, if I am to consider myself successful as far as getting back to 180.

I started this blog to honestly keep me on track as far as being a healthy person and I’ve come to the realization that mental health is just every bit as important as physical health. I apologize if this isn’t as light hearted as my usual entries but being unemployed for a year has really gotten to me. And that hasn’t helped the diet situation.

To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure why I still keep up with this blog. Only about two or three people actually read it, and I’m pretty sure I had the selfish wish of wanting to become famous when I started (I think my subconscious wants me to be a douche-bag). I suppose it’s the illusion that there are strangers actually paying attention to my doings that keeps me coming back every so often to post.

To wrap things up, I know what I want. I want to be happy. I want to be satisfied with the way things are. A part of me is ecstatic that I’m so obsessed with my body. The only upside to being superficial is that it’s a great motivational tool for losing weight. I hate the way I look and I want to change that. I still intend on getting back to 185 pounds. I’ve lost 20 pounds since I’ve started posting and I have 35 more to go. I’ve been thin before and I know I can get back there again, but with two differences. (1) When I get rid of all that fat, I’m keeping that fat away for good. (2) The second time around, I’m going to be happy.