This is it. I've had enough. Too many times where my stomach has been pressed up against the front button of my pants, too often jiggling my beer belly when I'm sitting and bored, and getting pissed off that I suddenly now feel both full nearly all of the time and out of breath when I sit down.
I finally caved into Father's exhortations and weighed myself on a scale, which the JW Marriott furnished because it is the JW Marriott. (Last night Mother told me how much they paid for our three rooms for two days, and she blew a damn gasket. So we'd better have a scale.) I weighed, get this, 187 pounds. For God's sake, I did so much damn walking in Toronto and Chicago and I actually gained weight from when we started our roadtrip.
This was my tipping point. Earlier in the trip My Father said I should get on a diet as soon as I got home, and even though I hate saying he is right, he was right. I vowed near the end of the trip to go on a diet, and I have started to go on it this week.
This might be a situational problem. As a family we eat a lot, and the vacation was no exception, so maybe it wasn't too far-fetched that I would put on the pounds. There was the State Fair I went to before we hit the road. And even though I should stop putting all of this on my parents, it doesn't help that Mother's food is so goddamn good I couldn't stop eating it for dinner. (When my parents left last fall, my weight dropped.) I was fortunate that Mother didn't pack me a full lunch for "work" and that I finally decided I couldn't have fast food for lunch every fucking day. Without making those two decisions, I likely would have cracked the 200-lb. barrier.
Still, getting up to 187 shocks me. As a kid I was a stick, and a proud one, too. Sometimes I would look at myself in the bathroom mirror and breathe so deep that I could see my ribcage. For some reason I wanted to see it. I was less than 100 pounds when I hit high school, then slowly creeped all the way up to about 125 by the time I left for college. I don't know exactly know when, but in adulthood my metabolism was zapped out of me, and I no longer was able to blast all the food that I ate through some powerful furnace in my stomach. I developed a gut instead.
At least I have an excuse to finally push back from the dinner table instead of giving in to eating Mother's food. I really believe that with her, food = love. When I was a kid I didn't eat because I wasn't hungry, and I kind of feel that lent to her resenting me and not my fatter brother. But at this point even she could see that I am bloated, that I can barely fit into my pants and that something has to change.
The coming down will be difficult. I once attended a lecture by Henry Rollins, who rolled out his diet plan in six words: "Eat less, eat better, exercise more." That really is it, but it is far easier said than done. I think I've been pretty diligent in working out, and as long as I don't have an actual job, I will have plenty of time to get on the elliptical, which is good. But I still get those cravings, man, and that leads me to eat in the hopes that I still don't balloon because I haven't eaten a ton as opposed to a lot. For example, on Tuesday, after working out in the evening, I couldn't help but go to Taco Bell and try out that new Cheesy Core Burrito thing and wash it down with a Coke. (Verdict, BTW -- overrated; the cheese was pumped into the side, not in the middle of the burrito like it was supposed to.) I felt that in my gut all night. Wednesday afternoon my fat bomb occurred in the afternoon, where, after seeing my IRA advisor, I decided to swing on over to Hooters, where I ordered a full plate of nachos. At least that was in the afternoon; I exercised at night, and have contended myself with just water after coming home.
Mother, however, still clings to the notion that I need to eat something, and therefore, the "eat less" part of the Hank Rollins Diet Plan is still being worked on. Mother said that she will now make salads for me, and the first one will be flecked with chicken from Popeye's. OK, maybe not the healthiest thing, but I like to eat chicken, and so long as it's a salad it'll be fine, right? But when I came home, I see that the salad is in one of the big pho bowls she uses. Oh, crap. She knows I need to eat healthier, but either she doesn't understand or that she still can't help but think that it's also important to eat smaller meal portions. This is Mother's way of overcompensating. And that is not good, because it took me 90 minutes to eat that gigantic salad bowl. (Granted, I ate nachos at Hooters a couple hours before. It didn't help, and it also doesn't help that 20 or even 10 years ago I could've eaten both without a problem.) I didn't want to finish the salad but did -- another bad sign. And I also felt the lettuce and tomatoes and chicken travelling to my belly. Tried to work out extra hard afterward.
This will be rough. This is The New Normal. It's not as if, after I reach my goal weight (and I don't know if I want to lose 10 or 15 or 20, but 25 wouldn't be bad) I can just go back to eating everything Mother makes at night because I would be right back where I started from. Last night was the only time this week where I would be having "dinner" at home. My parents understand the reason why, but will they understand that I really need to skip dinner at home for multiple times a week -- and not just eat less, because Lord knows I won't be able to control myself -- seemingly forever? I don't like doing that, and for sure they don't like me rejecting food they made for me. But they don't like me getting fat either, and so, at least for now, I have some leeway in just not eating home with them. Just drop the pounds -- that's the objective.
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