I Blame The Girl Scouts.

Right now I am taking a break from my school work (I have been at it for seven straight hours so far) and I was just reading an article about how to quickly lose ten pounds.

Yesterday I bought new batteries for my scale and today I discovered to my horror that I am ten pounds heavier than I was before my scale batteries died in December. Going into Christmas I was finally down in the range of what I consider to be an at least okay weight range, though still not great. I have recently organized myself a life routine (using a couple of spreadsheets, naturally) and so I have been working out significantly more the past couple weeks, I am in a hurry to get back down into a lower weight class, so I am reading about weightloss on Prevention.com and one of the things they suggest doing is starting a blog about one’s diet and weight loss. The idea here is that if you post things for your friends and family to read, then it will keep you honest in your eating habits. To me this just sound embarrassing. For instance, in the last 24 hours I have consumed:

• A Gatorade whey protein bar
• Somewhere in the range of 30 ounces of coffee
• A bunch of tortilla chips at a Chilis
• Some of one of those chocolate chip cookie and ice cream dessert things
• Five or six whiskey and cokes
• A Slim Rite meal replacement bar
• Some mixed nuts
• An entire box of Girl Scout cookies

Now, it has been an unusual couple of days, but as I sit here typing out this list I am forced to wonder how the hell I’m not dead yet, to say nothing of ten pounds heavier.

I swear that my diet normally consists of salads or rice and chicken and veggies, but I guess that I had not realized how unconscious I have been about what I have been eating lately. In my defense, I have had trouble getting back into a routine since I came back from the East last month. Hence the time management spreadsheets.

Also, it does not help that things were pretty stressful last month and that the Girl Scouts seem to have staked out my grocery store.

Anyway, guess who is going to be eating salads for the next year or so?

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A Report about My Weight/Ongoing Mental Problems.

If you have known me a little while then it is possible that you know I have (more than once) been diagnosed (by non-medical-professionals) as having something called body dysmorphia.

It is a terrible thing! Not as bad as starving or freezing to death or going to prison or anything, but just utterly wretched on all other accounts.

Basically it means that my brain thinks that my body does not look the way that it actually looks. My brain thinks my body looks way worse than it does. This is at the heart of most eating disorders and (I think) has a lot to do with why people get into extreme body modifications (like those weird tribal loops people put in their earlobes).

Thankfully I know that I’m not as fat as I think I am, but there is still a part of my brain that is all like, “How did you get to be like this you fat, disgusting jabba?”

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I TOTAL jelly-rolled-out when I was younger. By like 23 or 24 I weighted nearly 250 pounds, which simply does not look good on a guy who is 5 foot 6. Here is a god-awful picture from back then (I'm the fat one on the right, not the strappingly handsome one on the left). Feel free to laugh and laugh and laugh …



Okay, are you done laughing? Thanks … jerk.

Anyway, it has been a concerted effort to get and stay skinny over the last six or seven years. I don’t drink soda (unless it’s a mixer!) and I don’t eat potato chips (much at all, unless I’m like at a Superbowl party or birthday or something). Every day I eat Slimfast bars for lunch and have long since given up on eating breakfast (who needs the calories when you can just drink coffee?!).

I’m sure you find all of this fascinating.

Well last year I started running and I have seen some benefits from it, though not nearly as many as I would like (given how fricken’ hard it is to run!). I’m not yet lean like a runner, but it has helped me lose some more weight and actually start to feel kind of like I am in shape. But then, recently, … disaster!

In late November I was handed a whole lot more responsibility at work, which has translated into longer, more exhausting days and so I just haven’t been able to run as much recently. Well the inconsistency is killing me, because now if I don’t get to run for five or six days, I start to FEEL all loose and pudgy and disgusting and like no one will ever love me again. And because of the dysmorphia thing, I look in the mirror and go, “OH MY GOD! WHAT HAPPENED!?” See, because in my head being even somewhat heavier than I was a week or two ago is tantamount to turning into one of those bed-ridden people that the fire department has to rescue by cutting a Volkswagen-sized whole in the side of a house.

The reality is that my weight tends to fluctuate by only five pounds or so if I don’t run for a week. So this week I have been running and running! Even if I stay late at work, I still go out. Even if it is all dark and scary! (What? It is totally safe; I have a red blinking wristband and everything!) Even if I am still sore from running yesterday!

This is a commitment I have made to myself and which I am trying very hard to keep. What I really want is to be able to say, “I am in the best shape of my life,” and I’ve gotten to the point where I could actually say that, but don’t because I still have this issue when I look in the mirror; my brain says, “Really? This is the best shape of your life?”

Some people live their lives subconsciously trying to please a mother or a father or some childhood sweetheart, well I go through life trying to please that little part of my brain that simply doesn’t ever seem to like me very much. I’m luckier than most though, because most of the rest of my brain thinks I’m awesome. So I have that going for me. I just have to avoid mirrors.

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Acai Berries

Here is a picture I thought was pretty.

Apparently, the Acai berry is currently being hocked as some kind of weight loss miracle fruit or some such bullshit. But don't hold that against the poor thing.