Day 1… again… I am back baby!!!!!!

Weight has been an issue for me all of my life. A theme. Everything I have ever done has been set against a back drop of insecurity. In school I was always one of the overweight... no... FAT kids. Anxiety has forever been associated with what should be innocuous activities. As a kid, there was always the fear of being picked last, even though I never was. My anxiety is rarely cloaked in reality. It is born and thrives in my own perceptions of how my fatness was… fuck, “is”… perceived. I have NEVER sat on a piece of lawn furniture without the overwhelming fear that those tiny plastic legs would EXPLODE under my weight. This has never happened (oh, this is absolutely a lie… but I don’t have it in me to admit I once had the frame of an old metal lawn chair crumble up like a wet towel under me). Truth is, 99% of my lawn furniture experiences have been uneventful, but I still sit down at the speed of 1 inch per minute as I test the structural integrity. Even when it appears I am sitting, I am actually holding myself up with my legs for the first few minutes. Literally everything I do or say is effected by my current feelings about my physical condition.

I don’t think being fat has ever really held me back, and I wasn't morbidly obese, I was just fat. After I finished high school I became determined to lose weight, and get in shape. I don’t know what happened. I just woke up and said, “here we go”, and corrected all of my unhealthy behaviors. I started working out, eating healthy, and the weight disappeared. Just randomly, when I was 18 I set out on a one year journey, which ended with me losing close to 100 lbs, and finally I was one of the physically fit. ß I totally just lied here too. It was 110 lbs. Admitting this shit is hard. Admitting I even needed to lose over 100lbs is hard. The problem was, once I reached a weight I was happy with, I treated my weight loss as the end of a journey. My dedication to eating right and exercising gave way to my old habits. I found out the hard way, that there is no end to the journey. The journey just changes, the old goals  need to morph into new goals. From 19-20 years old, I weighed in at a dream boatish 170 lbs. I went from being addicted to food, to being addicted to mirrors. Then when I was 21, I was overweight again. Now I am 40 years old, and once again, I am the fat kid.

Am I as big as the people on TV weight loss shows? No! Few of us are. Biggest Loser, My 600lb life, 1 ton family. I watch these shows, not because I can relate to what they are going through. It’s a fish bowl viewing. I hate myself for watching these shows, but I can’t stop. I am a fat, fattist. These shows are not educational. I can’t relate my struggles to the struggles of someone who can’t stand up on their own. I am not 400 lbs +. I am one of the unfortunate majority who fall into the overweight category. However, “unfortunate” may be the wrong term. I did this to myself. I am not a victim. No one stuffed pizza into my mouth against my will (god, that would be awesome though). Lack of knowledge, and societal pressures did not lead to this. I eat a lot of deliciously bad food, and I love my sofa. That is why I am fat. I am the funnest guy in the room. I live to eat drink and be merry. But inside, I am sad that I have failed to be better. That I have allowed myself to be unhealthy or less attractive than I believe I could be. I feel a lot of people can relate to this. By the way, the fact that so many fat people are funny, or fun, isn’t an accident. Becoming funny is a mask for our insecurity. Its either learn to be funny or feel invisible to the opposite sex forever (a feeling born from reality). Teenage mental issues don’t magically disappear when you hit your 20’s. In fact, the mental aspect of being fat is much more of a factor than anything physical. My body works pretty damn good. I am not physically unable to work out or eat right. My brain gets in the way. I find that intellectual dishonesty and depressed thoughts are the biggest road blocks to my physical health. I allow other people’s perceptions of me, and semantics to define me. “Fat”, “obese”, “overweight”, “plump”, “porky”… these are all just words. Words are such unnecessary things to worry about. They only define me if I give them value by allowing them to define me. The worst feeling in the world, for me, is to be marginalized. Someone dumbing down their terminology to make me feel better, makes me irate. It tells me that you stopped believing in me. I am not overweight… I am fat. Who fucking cares?! I guess I do. We all do, but we shouldn't. It’s time to start taking back the power to define ourselves. Remove the value of the words we believe others may be currently using to define us, by not giving a damn. That’s why I will never use sunny, sugar coated words to describe myself or what upsets me. I don’t see feeling marginalized and allowing myself to remain overweight and unhealthy, as being easy on myself. I see it as giving up on myself. When people use "sugary words" there was a process they went through mentally to get to those words: 1) see the overweight person, 2) have a judgement about their physical condition, 3) decide the proper terminology as to soften the blow. This hurts way more to me, than had someone used a throw away term. The language we use, and definitions that others use to define us do not create reality. The facts do not change with the words we use. The reality is that there are some very dangerous health risks that come with being fat. Instead of spending my time fighting the terminology, I would rather spend my time repairing my physical and mental health.

I have attempted this journey so many times. I have failed every time. I almost always lose significant weight, and then gain it back. I have dress shirts in so many sizes (this really only is noteworthy because I love great dress shirts, and I hate that I can’t wear some of them). The continual ups and downs of trying and failing, and losing and gaining is fucking humiliating. I believe most people in my situation face sooooo many mental blocks at the start of a life change; Intellectual dishonesty, humiliation from the “here we go again” feeling, the sea of misinformation, the feeling of desperation, and most of all the lack of belief that this can be done. In fact, this isn’t even the first rendition of this blog. The mental blocks have had a hold of me for 20 years now. For me, writing about this process was the most cathartic thing I have ever done. I had so many people message me that they felt exactly the same things I was expressing. Solidarity in numbers.

Over the next year, or 18 months, or however long it takes me to lose 75-100lbs, I am going to document my journey. This time the journey won’t end when I reach my goal... it will just change slightly. And unlike the "reality weight loss shows" I don't have 5 hours a day to dedicate to training, or a nutritionist making all of my meals. I have a life. I have responsibilities, stress, and real world idiocy to deal with. I am taking a strategic approach to this process:

1)     Consult a Dr and make sure my body is working correctly.

2)     Consult a nutritionist

3)     Consult hot dudes at the gym to see what makes them so dream boaty

4)     Fix my brain, which is what is broken

5)     At some point I will probably have to work out and eat well… fuck