20 years of failures... Part 2.. Common Fatties

I use mean and weighted words when I speak about my struggles with weight. The list of reasons why contains both positives, and negatives. But before I get to far in to my own feelings and reactions toward myself, we need to address how I got where I am.

Perspective is created from our own personal journeys. It is no coincidence that geographical regions produce trends and cultural norms, or why religion/education/political affiliation/global outlook/etc…. tend to be passed down from generation to generation, and why progress is an evolutionary process. Our realities are born from what we perceive and experience growing up. Our realities are also born from how we define and value words. I find it lazy when people talk about “common sense”… very few things are universally accepted and understood. We evolve and develop our intellect throughout our journeys. Some things that are inherently accepted by one person, are a struggle to comprehend for another. This can be complicated further by the fact that no two people have the same starting lines…

Some people have a socioeconomic head start

Some people have an inherent intellectual advantages

Some people have a geographical advantage

Some people have biological advantages

Some people have gender advantages (based on privileges and rights and expectations that can come with gender related bias and laws)

We shouldn’t expect to be excellent at everything. We also shouldn’t gage ourselves against other people. We are not fighting the same battles. We need to understand that so many issues out of our control have shaped who and why we are. I think we need to take the positives from unity and support, while also remembering that we all have circumstances in our journey that are unique.

Have you ever met, or heard about, a “smart dumb person”. Intelligence is not universal or equally applied to every aspect of our lives. One of the most common “logical fallacies” is the appeal to authority… or false authority. Being educated in one arena, or successful, does not make a person a universal intellectual. I wouldn’t hire a surgeon to fix my car. I don’t expect that just because a person has shown excellence, or is educated in one field, that they have an equal knowledge base in all other areas of life. This can also be rephrased as “being insufficient in one area of our lives, does not make us insufficient in ALL areas of our lives”. This logical fallacy needs to be applied to ourselves as well. To expect that every aspect of my life would be handled with equal ability, or that my efforts/intelligence/and productivity would be applied equally to every aspect of my life is naïve. So why do I feel that failing in one aspect of my life, makes me a failure? Why do so many people I talk to hate to admit failure in one aspect of their lives or another? I think I do this because I feel that admitting weakness, is seen by many as being weak. This is not the case though. Denying weakness, or failing to acknowledge it, is weak. Anger is weak. Confronting your own perceived deficiencies, is hard. Working to understand how, and why, is strong.

I also believe in the power of intellectual honesty. I cant “fix” that which I don’t admit is “broken”.

With all of this being said… I can comfortably say “my brain is broken when it comes to losing weight”. This does NOT mean I am a moron. Fuck, maybe I am. No one thinks they are stupid…  I don’t personally believe I am, and I am comfortable enough with that. I do think there are things I am fucking stupid about. And what I mean by this is that I knowingly act outside my own best interest sometimes. But the point is, I get to decide if that is bad. I get to decide what is important to me. I have ideas and goals. I am not accomplishing some of these goals. The barrier is clearly a monster of my own design. I have all of the physical abilities, and gifts needed to accomplish any physical goal that I truly want.

How? How is my brain preventing me from accomplishing my goals? I actually finally believe I have an understanding of how I am stopping my progress. The problem is, I have a sprinter mentality. Some people are wired for long term thinking… some people are wired for short term focus. I am the latter. My focus is hard to keep channeled. I can’t rely on me. I will stray. The worst part is, it isn’t a conscious decision I make to eat bad. I just haven’t been able to reset my defaults. I instinctively grab horrific, nutrition free, food. I operate out of the id. Impulse react… impulse react. I also struggle with success. My struggles with weight have similar pitfalls as struggles with depression. Many people who take depression meds, go through a vicious cycle of on again off again med usage. While on the drugs they feel ok which can cause some sufferers to feel that they can stop taking the medications, and then slowly they start regress back into a state of depression. I go through this too. As I start to see success at getting my weight under control, I let my guard down and start regressing again. I need to keep working to fix the default settings in my brain. I need to develop the tools it takes to change my way of thinking. This journey I am on is to set life long changes.

I see this as my brain being “broken” in regards to my own health. Acknowledging that I struggle with the mental skills it requires to maintain a healthy lifestyle, is the first step in repairing my habits. I don’t believe in sugar coating words. I don’t say my brain is broken out of self-pity. I don’t say my brain is broken to remove personal responsibility. I don’t say my brain is broken as a reflection of my overall intelligence or self-worth. I say my brain is broken because I have goals, and I haven’t figured out how to make myself accomplish these goals. My thought patterns and mental nature are getting in my way. I have found that adding patch worked fragments of information and haphazard application of  healthy habits, don’t work on for me in the long term. I need to rip the structure apart and rebuild. I need to completely rewire how I operate in terms of health habits. I need to retrain my brains defaults. I need to create healthy habits AND make these habits become lifelong behaviors. This doesn’t mean I think I am a dolt. Intellect isn’t applied evenly. My patterns and habit related practices were not set correctly in terms of my health. This is not a reflection on any part of my life other than my health.

I sometimes feel that there is disconnect between some healthy people and some obese people. I don’t know that people who have never been obese can understand the feeling of desperation, and hopelessness that comes from being drastically overweight. It’s the whole empathy vs sympathy discussion. Fit people can hear stories of fatties eating ice cream and crying in the closet, but they cant know the grip that being overweight has on us. When a fit person discusses obesity, and gets in the mind of an obese person, they are a tourist… I fucking live here!!! Everything I do, is done under the shroud of being overweight.

The best example of this, is when I spent two years in shape. I felt more uncomfortable as a fit person, than I did ever did as an overweight person. At least as a fat ass, I knew who I was. Those two years I spent in shape, were spent in disbelief. I never trusted anyone who said they were proud of me. I would stare at myself in the mirror. Being fat was part of me. The neurosis surrounding being fat, that I had carried my whole life, didn’t disappear just because I was in shape. I was a fatty in sheeps clothing. I felt I was wearing a disguise. I believe this contributed to me reverting back to my comfortably disgusting habits. In order to make this a life time fix, I need to fix the cause, and not just address the symptoms. Fat isn’t the cause, fat is the symptom of unhealthy habits. I need to fix my brain… I need to change my sense of identity, as well as give myself the tools required for long term change. Repairing 38 years of bad habits, will require work. Whenever I think about this topic, I think of the song ‘Common People’ by Pulp

She came from Greece she had a thirst for knowledge,
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College,
That's where I,
Caught her eye.
She told me that her Dad was loaded,
I said "In that case I'll have a rum and coca-cola."
She said "Fine."
And in thirty seconds time she said,

I want to live like common people,
I want to do whatever common people do,
I want to sleep with common people,
I want to sleep with common people,
Like you.

Well what else could I do
I said "I'll see what I can do."
I took her to a supermarket,
I don't know why,
But I had to start it somewhere,
So it started there.
I said pretend you've got no money,
She just laughed and said,
"Oh you're so funny."
I said "Yeah?
Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here.
Are you sure you want to live like common people,
You want to see whatever common people see,
You want to sleep with common people,
You want to sleep with common people,
Like me.

But she didn't understand,
She just smiled and held my hand.
Rent a flat above a shop,
Cut your hair and get a job.
Smoke some fags and play some pool,
Pretend you never went to school.
But still you'll never get it right,
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night,
Watching roaches climb the wall,
If you called your Dad he could stop it all.

You'll never live like common people,
You'll never do whatever common people do,
You'll never fail like common people,
You'll never watch your life slide out of view,
And dance and drink and screw,
Because there's nothing else to do.

Sing along with the common people,
Sing along and it might just get you through.
Laugh along with the common people,
Laugh along even though they're laughing at you,
And the stupid things that you do.
Because you think that poor is cool.

Like a dog lying in a corner,
They will bite you and never warn you,
Look out, they'll tear your insides out.
'Cause everybody hates a tourist,
Especially one who thinks it's all such a laugh,
Yeah and the chip stain's grease,
Will come out in the bath.

You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go.
You are amazed that they exist
And they burn so bright,
Whilst you can only wonder why.
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school,
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
And watching roaches climb the wall,
If you called your dad he could stop it all