It's been well over a year since I've written an entry in this series, and probably 11 months since I was in peak physical condition. After the marathon and the wedding, I got out of a lot of good habits and replaced them with things like "working more" and "bringing home work" and "maybe going to bed". Depending on the day, I might describe my current health/wellness/fitness situation in one of any number of ways, ranging from "on the up and up" and "clawing desperately at the cliff-face as I topple off the mountain of awesome down into the valley of expanding flesh".
Last Friday, I bought the wrong donuts. It was National Donut Day, which apparently is a thing, but instead of going to a Dunkin Donuts for a freebie, I snagged a box of Entermann's at the grocery store whilst shopping for other, more standard fare. I've never been obsessed with donuts or anything. More than once, I've gotten an emergency chocolate stick (nee cruller) from the kiosk in Government Center, when that T station actually existed, and powdered donuts are one of my convenience store weaknesses, but if you asked me to name my favorite foods, donuts wouldn't even be in the top 25. Nevertheless, I was hungry (never a good condition for grocery shopping) and the donuts looked good. I considered my options with great care, greater than was truly necessary.
In the end, I decided on the tried and true staple: yellow cake with chocolate exterior. I like to dip them in milk piece by piece and devour them soggy and cold. It had been months or possibly years since I had eaten them. I was more than a little eager to get to work on them, perhaps the next morning to kick the weekend off right.
It wasn't until I got home that I realized I had purchased chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. They're delicious, of course, but NOT what I wanted. When I realized my error, I became viscerally upset. Mad at myself, mad at the injustices of the world, mad at the death of the golden-donut-eating dream I had indulged in all the way home from the store. Part of me wanted to hit up the local CVS to get the right ones, but even the fattiest fat kid could feel shame at such a thing. I didn't need 12 donuts before, and I definitely didn't need 24 now. I mourned the fantasy I had created, and I mourned it hard.
I didn't bother eating any of them until Sunday morning, when I ate 3 of them, or 150% of my standard complement. I gorged myself on the wrong donuts. I don't know why. Maybe I was trying to get rid of them faster, whether to erase my mistake or to bring about the appropriate correct-donut-buying time. Maybe I felt the need to punish myself for buying the wrong ones, so I ate an amount that I knew wasn't healthy and would probably make me sick. I haven't had any since.
It's now Wednesday night. I'm still unhappy about the wrong donuts. I know why. In the weeks and months before now, I have been slowly realizing and reconfirming how much my emotions are tied to my relationship with food. I don't know if there's really a term that covers everything, but we'll just say I got me some disordered eating. You name an emotion and I'll tell you why it justifies the most horrific eating you can imagine. I couldn't get closer to eating my feelings if I decorated a cake with emojis.
This is why, despite several weeks of a revamped effort to run and weightlift multiple times a week, I haven't lost a single pound. Exercise has always been the easy part for me. I enjoy it, genuinely. Yes, I'm often too lazy to initiate it, and if I give myself the option to go home instead of to the gym, home usually wins. But I actually like working out, both for the experience and the results.
The real hard work for me is mental and emotional. It's getting into good habits of mind, not body. I remember this lesson from the first time I learned it, a few years ago when I was pushing 200 pounds and decided that I needed to change some shit. Frankly, the closer I treat my relationship to food to the way an addict views his/her drug of choice, the more successful I am. It's not that certain foods are the enemy - behaviors and decisions are. Giving in to impulses to overeat. Making poor choices when out in the world. Deciding not to care about calories and long-term results. Those are my real addictions.
I remember, years and years ago, I thought that I'd rather be happy and fat than miserable and skinny. But that was a false dichotomy. I have been miserable and fat, and I have been happy and skinny. The happiest I've ever been in my own skin was when I worked on my own health for hours every week, put on a loose-fitting pair of size 6 shorts, and strutted around like I was hot shit (I was).
Now, I'm still down over 40 pounds, but up about 20 from my lowest weight. I don't really care about the number, but I do care about fitting into clothes and feeling good. I have a LOT of summer clothes that fit be beautifully last year but are now sitting in a storage bin because there's no point in taking them out right now. Before marathon training took up the vast majority of my time and energy, I was very close to being able to do a full push-up and a full chin-up. I was excited about the possibilities of what my body could do. Now I'm halfway back to the start, doing 45ยบ incline push-ups and 60lb lat pulldowns. My longest run in the last 10 months is under 5 miles. I don't know whether I feel motivated or discouraged. Maybe both, which is why I can't seem to shit or get off the pot.
I don't particularly enjoy the mental work associated with successful weight loss. I have trained my body to feel happy when I engage in unhealthy eating habits, ergo making smart choices feels like a bummer. "Yeah, I guess I really should just eat a chicken breast for dinner and call it a day. Sigh." "Dessert? I don't have the calories for that." "One cup of milk will have to do because I can't swing one and a half." Calorie counting and portion control sound all well and fine now, but that's because my belly's full. It feels a lot different when I'm hungry and starting at a wall of food.
Even so, I have a Muhammad Ali quote hanging in my classroom: "I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'" The hardest part of this is getting into the good habits. Maintaining them is not nearly as difficult. If I really want what I say I want -- a healthy body capable of feats of strength, the ability to push myself physically and mentally to new heights, a bitchin' silhouette -- then I really need to do the work. I already overcame the fear and uncertainty when I lost 65 pounds over the last couple of years. This is well-worn ground, or at least not entirely uncharted territory. I did so much hard work on so many fronts to get to this point, and it would be a disservice to myself to fall apart now.
So when I buy the wrong donuts and find myself asking, "Why me, God? Why??" what I really should be asking is, "Bitch, whatchoo need 12 donuts for anyway? You got 11 friends coming over tonight?"
Wednesday, June 11, 2014
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
