Eventful Month

Have you ever had one of those moments where time seemed to be going so slowly that it actually passed in the blink of an eye? I know that sounds weird. I recognize that it possibly makes no sense. But I can't put any other words to how the last month has gone.

My weight battle has been up and down. After my 1-week, 11-pound loss, I posted a 6 pound gain (confirming that a lot of the weight I lost was probably do to a dehydrated state when I weighed). The week after that, I posted a 3 pound loss and have been hovering around 311 ever since.

It has been hard to gain any ground. My son ML had another seizure. It was a hard one related to a fever. We gave him the emergency med which is supposed to pull him out of it but it didn't work for roughly seven minutes. We had the paramedics there and wound up spending a good three hours (as well as another chunk of change) in the ER. I shouldn't complain about the money. It wouldn't matter how much it was we would spend it in a heartbeat. It is, however, just another stressor that adds to $4.00/gallon gas and increasing utility costs.

When I completely evaluate things, I come to the conclusion that I would spend my life in a tent as long as my family could be healthy... which brings me back to the weight thing. While dealing with ML and his issues, he went from some kind of viral fever to the croup last night (another doctor visit, shot and prescription), work and other things that seem to take the vast majority of mental fortitude I have available, I have found that my trips to the gym and trips to the refrigerator have become inversely proportional, with trips to the gym decreasing. I am in a cycle right now, I recognize it, but I don't know if I can break out while my son is as sick as he is. There is too much worry placed his direction and not enough concern placed in mine. I don't know if that is something worth correcting. I do know that I haven't been doing as well with my diabetes as I should be doing. Aside from the food, the stress certainly doesn't help that situation out either. But I don't know what to do... then I turn to prayer.

I can't explain what it is about opening up the lines of communication with my Father-in-Heaven but it brings peace to my soul. I pray and I feel more like He is in control than I am and that is a comfort. He knows what he wants my little ML to be. He knows how to get him to the place that will make him the best ML he possibly can be. I just need to make sure that I am listening when the spirit talks... a skill I hope I develop quicker than I have up to this point.

Bottom line - I need to recognize the limits of my control and turn it over to Him. I don't mean that to sound melodramatic or anything like that... I wish I were better with words but I'm not. I can't quite verbalize the thoughts in my head. I guess I'm a little sidetracked right now. ML is having a hard time breathing with the croup. we are trying to help him in accordance with doctor instructions and he doesn't seem to like it. Time to pray, time to help...

How I React to Stress

So I was at work and Debbie called me to let me know that Primary Children's Hospital called wanting to give IL another sleep deprived EEG to see if she is out of her seizure-type behavior (see my wife's blog for further detail). We set up the appointment and I immediately started to pull into stress mode with respect to the $500 to $600 we would be out-of-pocket for her EEG. What if nothing had changed and she still required meds? It would feel like a waste of money. On the other hand, there is something really comforting about knowing for sure what needs to be done. It is hard to put a price tag on that type of feeling.

Nevertheless, I found myself wandering toward our lunch area at work shortly after Debbie called. I wanted to eat something... not because I was hungry, more because I was stressed (insight number 499, I'm a stress-eater).

My food-issue today was compounded by the fact that someone had brought in a bunch of the most awesome looking junk foods I had seen since last Christmas. There were cheesecakes, pies, brownies, cookies. It was killing me!

Long story short, too late, I wound up in the kitchen but was able to mostly save myself by getting into my lunch and pulling out an apple. I say MOSTLY because three hours later, when there was nothing but crumbs left, I was back in the kitchen waiting for my lunch to heat up and I wound up eating part of a brownie. Oh well, it was far better than I would have done a year ago, and in my current situation in life, I need to look for and find the victory wherever it might be hiding.

11

I told you last time that I would post my numbers from Saturday. I went from 319 to 308. It is the most I have ever lost in one week. I had to get on and off the scale at least three times. I picked it up once and checked the bottom of it thinking that something had to be holding it up or preventing it from working correctly.

As sad as this is to say, I have not been this low since probably mid-year 1995! That being said, I regret having blown my twenties and early thirties on food. If I were to pinpoint where it all went wrong, I would have to say when I started at BYU (that doesn't necessarily imply that BYU destroyed my health. As I've posted before, I am the only one who is responsible for my weight). Prior to BYU, while down at Dixie, I played outside, I was forced to walk to work, a distance of two miles one way. I walked to school, not very far away, I played in Snow Canyon all the time with friends and roommates. I never had much money so food wasn't ever an issue (couldn't afford it!). I took fitness classes, ran, lifted weights - I did everything I should have done to stay healthy. I loved Dixie - it was as much fun attending college as I think I have ever had.

BYU was different. In order to afford Provo, I needed a good job. At first, the only job I could find was selling women's shoes at Sears - no offense to the Sears Women's Shoe Department, but it wasn't a good job for me (my roommates started calling me Al Bundy and I started acting like him - curious...)!

About four months after I started BYU, the job of my dreams fell into my lap. I was interviewed and hired to be a Human Service Worker for a juvenile sex offender treatment facility (not everyones dream job, I know. But bear in mind that I was a Psychology major who intended to pursue counseling as a career. This was perfect for the type of experience I needed to get into Grad School). What made it further ideal is that the starting pay was more than I had ever made in my life to that point.

Still - now that I had a car payment, I needed to make more money so what started out as 24-hours a week turned into 40-hours a week plus full-time school. It made for very little time to get up and move.

I don't want what I am going to say next to be misconstrued so allow me to preface it with these remarks: The six years I spent working with the population that I described above were the most pivotal in my life. I made lifelong acquaintances and friends among the therapists and staff of that facility that irrevocably changed my life and made me a better person than I was before. That being said, I was also mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually lost during a good portion of those years. I stopped going to Church, mainly because I worked every Sunday. I started questioning my deepest beliefs and convictions, I started to lose faith in humanities inherent goodness. I began to realize that I did not have an aptitude for this type of work and it started to scare me because I had always thought that counseling is what I wanted to do.

I began to become depressed. I saw no light at the end of my educational tunnel - if for no other reason than following it toward a Master's degree would lead me into a job I despised and ending it with a Bachelor's degree would barely feed me at that point let alone a family. It was too late to turn around (I thought). My schedule was hellish, my grades began to slip... I began to eat. It was the only thing I felt like I could control. As it turns out, it was controlling me.

That is all I want to write right now. I'm tired and it is late Sunday night. Casting back and re-living some of the thoughts and emotions of that time is... arduous for lack of a better word. Maybe I will continue the story another time. As for now, it's getting late and tomorrow will start at 4:45 am with my wife exercising and me getting ready for my walk to the train station.

Goodnight. Eleven pounds in one week... it makes me happy.

Strong Support

Weight loss always seems easier when their are other people doing it with you. My sister coordinated a little weight loss program for my family over the summer. It has been motivational to recognize that my brothers and sisters are participating as well.

Also, a good friend from my area (we met in the Clearfield 1st Ward and he is one of the awesomest guys I know) has signed a bunch of us up to drop as much weight as possible over this year. He follows up via e-mail at least twice a month and most times once a week. He lets everybody know how everybody else is doing. It is encouraging to see someone else succeed, especially on those weeks where I don't.

Well, tomorrow's Friday and then another weekend begins. I've already blogged about how I feel about weekends. Regardless of how I do, I promise I will be honest in my 'online report' of how I managed my food intake through Saturday and Sunday. I'll also blog where I am weight-wise after I weigh myself on Saturday. I'm nervous. Last week I gained 6 pounds. Some of it had to do with July 4th festivities (although I did not let myself go nearly as bad as I have in the past). I also wasn't able to exercise nearly as regularly as I have on good weeks.

Oh well... whatever the results, I'm sure I earned it - good OR bad.

Weekends Are a Beachnut

Today I thought I would talk about some of the 'why' behind my ability to maintain at least 300 lbs over the last 15 years. The biggest 'why' can be associated with five little words: "I'll start again next Monday."

Monday would always role around and I would do good throughout the day. I would watch what I ate, try to get a little more activity in. Tuesday would dawn and with it the desire for a king-sized double whopper meal with a Dr. Pepper.

The following scenario would then play itself out: I would push the idea into the back of my mind and maybe make it a couple of more days into the week where I would then justify my purchase of said whopper with the thought that, "I've been so good for the last couple of days I deserve a reward." After I had indulged myself in my 'reward' I would immediately feel depressed and that my case was hopeless. Sometimes I would give up right then and there and try not to think about my size for the next couple of months. Other times I would utter words that I have thought a million times over during my adult life - I'll start again next Monday."

In rare cases, I would make it all the way through to Saturday having been a good boy the entire week. At that point, my next little cognitive distortion would come up to bat: "I've been so good, I deserve a cheat day!" And boy-howdy would I cheat! By the time Monday rolled around, I felt so absolutely awful that there was no returning back to the more healthy pattern I had initiated the week before. Things were further complicated when I would find out that despite my hard work (Monday through Friday) the following Monday would reveal that I had not lost anything! Moreover, in some cases I had gained! Why was this? The cheat day.

I recently learned that you need to burn or limit your intake by 3500 calories to burn off one pound of weight. Let's say, best case scenario, that my 'light-weight' attempt to lose weight netted me a loss of 7,000 calories in a five-day period of time. Theoretically, I'm down two pounds. Then 'cheat day' comes along and I decide to eat two doughnuts for breakfast, a king-sized double whopper meal for lunch, a couple of king-sized snickers as snacks throughout the day and a Chinese buffet for dinner. How have I done?

Two medium cake doughnuts: 175 calories a piece (total of 350 calories) and a shlode of fat, sugar and carbs;
King-sized double whopper meal: Double whopper - 1,010 calories; large fries - 600 calories; king sized Dr. Pepper - 600 calories;
King sized Snickers - 2 at 537 calories a piece for a total of 1074 calories.
Chinese buffet: 3 plates of a combination meal (fried rice, noodles, spring roll, lemon chicken, sweet & sour pork) - 2,700 calories; Dr. Pepper - 600 calories.

So what did my cheat day net me? 6,934 calories! It should be noted that I never went for cake doughnuts - if I was going to cheat it was going to be cream filled! Also, my philosophy on Chinese buffets was to not stop at feeling full, but stop at feeling tired. Several times I went back for a fourth or fifth plate.

So, 7,500 calories to lose 2 lbs, and 6,934 calories just in meals associated with a 'cheat day'. Imagine how much more weight is added on due to all of the water weight I'm now going to retain from the nuclear blast of sodium that I chose to intake over the day. No wonder I got nothing out of it.

That has been one of the major paradigm shifts I have had to make in the last six months. There ARE NO CHEAT DAYS! Only days that cheat you. I'm not saying that the occasional high-calorie meal is bad. What I am saying is that it should still fit within the realm of reason! Again, there are no cheat days! you either choose to eat healthier and make the sacrifices necessary to do so, or you continue on pushing it off until the next Monday. If you choose the latter path, I promise you this - one day, you're gonna run out of Mondays...

About... Time

How do I begin? I'm not quite sure. Honesty would probably be a good place. Unfortunately, honesty is not something I have wanted to face for at least a decade now. For whatever reason, it is easy to blind ourselves to what we see in the mirror - easy because we just avoid looking in the mirror.

So - honesty... Here's honest: I'm 36 years old (37 this year), I have spent the better part of 15 years weighing up above the 300 lb mark. At my heaviest I was 370 lbs. I am currently 319. I can eat an entire large combination pizza and still have room for a dozen doughnuts. There is nothing I would rather do than sit in front of the TV and watch science fiction/fantasy shows all day long.

I used to have hobbies. I used to like astronomy. Me and my friends would go to the top of the Nebo Loop (in Utah County - if you've never been, go! It's beautiful!) around midnight in the middle of summer and wait for Jupiter and Saturn to rise over the eastern horizon. It was thrilling to look at the planets, see the surface of the moon in close detail. One time we saw one of Jupiter's larger moons pass right in front of the planet! It threw a shadow on the planet and everything! It was spectacular.

I used to play bagpipes. I don't much anymore and what I've learned will take some effort to re-learn. Quite frankly, I don't like calling attention to myself... bagpipes are a BAD way to blend into the background.

I liked to write. I quit. Writing makes you search yourself and there is nothing about me I have wanted to 'find' in a long time.

Thankfully, late last year, I was diagnosed with Diabetes. I know what you're thinking - odd thing to be thankful for. I wasn't at first. At first, I wished I could just quickly die and get it over with. I felt broken, like I had trashed my 'body-machine' (as my oldest daughter calls it) beyond all repair.

It was at this point in time (around the beginning of this year) that I had an epiphany - I had been dying for the last decade-and-a-half. Maybe it was time to start living again. They say that the true definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. Eating, sleeping, sitting and dying wasn't working anymore. It was time to get up.

And so I have. It has been a lot of work with just as much failure as success to get me down the fifty pounds I am right now. But it has been an important fifty pounds. I'm starting to feel alive again. I'm starting to... I don't know how to describe it... wake up? I feel better, I sleep better, I'm more productive at work. I'm definitely a better father and husband than I was before.

With my own personal 'awakening', I'm discovering slowly and surely that there is an undiscovered ecology amongst us. Obesity is an epidemic. It is stealing our lives and loved ones and the environment we live in is allowing (even fostering) this subtle destruction.

Advertisers and marketing companies tell us to, 'Obey your thirst', or 'Just do it'. They've asked us, 'Where's the beef', and, 'Do you want that supersized?'.

It's just been recently that I have actually started to pay attention to the programing and I don't know if I like what I am hearing. For too long I allowed my thoughts and actions to be engineered by my environment and perhaps, a little something in my genetic 'soup' made me more susceptible to it. Regardless of nature, regardless of nurture, I allowed it to happen. And just as easily, I am putting a stop to it. For my kids, for my wife, for my mom and dad and brothers and sisters.

This post is for those of us who are a part of this 'Undiscovered Ecology'. I invite you to reply to what I write and start your own blogs. Invite me to be a member as I am inviting you to subscribe here.

For the first time in human history the generation coming next will not have as long of a life expectancy as their predecessors. If ever there was an undiscovered ecology, surely it is them. Surely it is us.

Let's wake up - let's do it together and help others to do so as well. I know I'll need the help. It would be much appreciated.