Being Fat Stinks

I’ve been a bad boy.

Maybe it is the Christmas season, but I’ve consumed a lot of bad things recently. Not that I’ve gained weight - I have been holding steady - but I know that my eating habits have just plain stunk.

For example, last night I did something that I haven’t done since July.

I had a piece of pizza.

I have just felt so bad since. Maybe that is why I haven’t slept. My mind is just upset that I fell back into that old way of eating.

Today, everything changes. And I mean everything.

OK. This has nothing to do with weight loss, fat, eating too much, fast food, my lack of exercise, and the like.

However, it got me thinking.

Martin Lindstrom on the Op-Ed page of the NY Times today opines that those scare tactic anti-smoking commercials and warning about cancer have little positive effect on a smoker to get them to stop; in fact, Lindstrom says that after studying the brains of smokers who are exposed to these warnings, they actually cause their brains to make them want to smoke.

We found that the warnings prompted no blood flow to the amygdala, the part of the brain that registers alarm, or to the part of the cortex that would be involved in any effort to register disapproval.

To the contrary, the warning labels backfired: they stimulated the nucleus accumbens, sometimes called the “craving spot,” which lights up on f.M.R.I. whenever a person craves something, whether it’s alcohol, drugs, tobacco or gambling.

All I know is that those anti-smoking commercials makes me, a non-and-never-was-a-smoker, to wonder what people who do smoke think about when they are inhaling?

Why don’t they think of that guy with a hole in his neck who is starring in those NYC anti-smoking commercials?

That’s what I think of when I see a smoker. I can’t get that man’s image out of my head, the one where he is talking through an electronic voice box he holds to that hole in his throat. He says that cancer has robbed him of two great loves in his life - umpiring baseball (can’t umpire if you can’t talk) and swimming (you can’t swim if you breathe through a hole in your throat).

Yes, every time I see a smoker, this man’s image goes through my brain.

I guess those anti-smoking commercials have worked on me - I can’t understand why anyone would smoke after seeing that ad.

As I was reading that op-ed today, I couldn’t help but think about the heart disease commercials that people could air about being fat. Imagine - a guy sitting alone on a park bench, throwing crumbs to pigeons as he tells us his story of his heart by-pass surgery. “I ate fast food like it was going out of style. It tasted great, but my arteries clogged. Instead of climbing Mount Everest, I am forced to sit here in the park feeding pigeons. Oh, I better get home. Today I am having flax seeds and water for lunch. Mmmmm.”

It shouldn’t take a brain surgeon to figure this one out - eating fast food, though easy on the wallet, is bad for your overall health.

And they spent money on a study to figure this one out?

I’ve made a commitment - to write everyday for the rest of the year. As I mentioned in my previous post, my motivation to keep going seems to be tied to my consistency to write here on the fat blog. I cannot understand why I have become so lazy when it comes to the lifestyle change or my writing habit, but I don’t have to get to the heart of the problem right now. I need to kick myself in my own rear end and get my life into gear.

So, I made a few of goals for December:

• 1. To write everyday here at the fat blog and over at my Pastor’s Blog;
• 2. To keep my food diary and post it every day with the best calorie count numbers I can find.
• 3. I want to lose at six pounds this month.

All of these goals are laudable and doable. I must keep myself on the path to a better me. Make that a healthier me.

This also means I need to read more about being fat - it will help me keep my grasp of my final prize. During the past month, my reading on health-related issues has dropped dramatically. When I was keeping closer to the lifestyle change I crafted months ago, I was reading many health stories in newspapers, on blogs, and watching individual news stories on the boob-tube or Internet. However, my November is one to forget - I didn’t read or watch a lot of anything concerning health.

When I did so, it kept me striving for a better me. The stories kept my mind on getting healthier and lighter. However, as I have gravitated away from this part of my lifestyle change, my mind got lax.

That ends now.

My schedule has been busy, but I’ve been lazy.

Not just with my diet — I’ve consumed more calories than I should have — but also with writing.

I have found something interesting: When I was writing this blog consistently, my diet was tighter. I kept myself free-and-clear of junk. However, during my last month of inactivity to post regularly, my diet has become more lax, and this failure of mine must stop.

Right now!

I haven’t posted in more than a week – my bad.

Actually, I have been “bad.” Not that I’ve gorged myself to a higher weight – I’ve just gotten to the point where I am eating too varied a diet, meaning varied in eating too many “bad” things. I knew I would eventually hit this point.

One positive thing — I have gotten through this bad time and have not gaining weight.

My doctor warned me that I would hit a point in my weight loss where I would plateau, not so much weight loss-wise, but mentally. Essentially, I would hit the wall and start crunching on things I know I should not eat. Throughout this process, I knew I had to me smart and arrogant to keep myself on the straight and narrow. However, now that I hit this wall, I needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps (if I had bootstraps) and get back to being level-headed.

Early last week, I started feeling bad about myself. I knew I was eating too much of the bad stuff (though not all that much) and not exercising enough. What I needed was a coach to kick me into gear.

And like God sending me an angel, that “coach” came into focus. Late last week, a friend reminded me that exercise should not be a chore. She told me that I if I just start to exercise, after a short while I would eventually want to exercise. Plus, she said I should change up what I do to keep it interesting.

That’s what I have to do. If I am getting my home and work life organized, I need to get my personal life set, as well.

Yes, this morning I woke up and stared at my bathroom scale…and I was afraid to get on. (No, the picture above is not of my scale or of my feet)

I haven’t been the best at keeping up with my eating less, moving more weight loss program since the “moving more” has been hard to come by these past couple of weeks. Add to the fact that I ate WAY TOO MUCH yesterday, I am getting that bad feeling that my brain is sabatoging my weight program.

Oh, I kid you not.

I need to bash my head against the wall, or something more drastic, to get my brain on the right track.

I read an email from a friend today where she wrote that throughout this week, she has scheduled at least 16 hours of grueling, intense exercise. Sixteen hours!! 

Martial arts, hockey, bike riding … it made me tired just reading it.

She has jumped onto a weight loss program to lose a few nagging pounds. And she is succeeding! She’s losing weight consistently, but not as fast as she wants. Everyone falls into that mental trap. However, she is dropping those nagging pounds steadily. I’m happy for her.

I had to admit to her — if I had one-tenth of her exercise motivation, I would be a completely different person. Oh, I walk, I clean the house a lot, I’ve been on an organization kick for a week. When I go out, I park far away from the doors of all stores and homes. The extra steps are good. And yes, I know that all of that is “exercise.” 

How do I get motivated to do any kind of continuous exercise program?

Aaarrgghhh!!!

I’ve been a little tired today … I mean A LITTLE TIRED ALL DAY. When I woke up this morning, I felt more tired than I did when I fell asleep last night. As my day has gone on, I have felt more tired and more tired. 

My food consumption has been relatively normal - nothing between meals, except a can of Diet Dr. Pepper and two cups of tea. My breakfast consisted of a Lean Pocket breakfast sandwich, 140 calories. I ate a turkey sandwich - lettuce, tomato, turkey on a 6″ roll. It is now a bit past 4 and no hunger pangs.

This is good. For the past week-plus I have been eating too much (relative to what I had been eating). Nothing too dramatic, except for falling off the wagon last week when I had potato chips and French fries. Of course, I blame my terrible mood last week for that.

For dinner I am going to make salmon with vegetables. Relatively healthy. This will mark the third time since Sunday that I have eaten salmon for dinner. My gills are starting to hurt…

…and the angels sang …

This morning, I walked over to vote at Gibbs elementary school. OK, it isn’t the longest walk (a bit more than a mile), but at least I went out and walked.

Breakfast this morning was simple, yet again: another one of those Lean Pocket breakfast sandwiches, clocking in at 140 calories, 4.5 grams of fat, and 1 gram of fiber.

Last night, I ate a lot of fiber — more than 10 grams with beans, 6 grams with whole grain pasta, another 10 with vegetables. That’s a whole lot of fiber for a short period of time. But it did fill me up and actually made me feel better this morning … (yes, read into it)