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.