Psyched to Be Getting Fatter More Slowly Now

So far, so good, peeps.  There have been a couple of moments of (tiny) cheats, which I will go into detail about in true confessional style.  But all in all, I'm doing great and I'm impressed with myself.

Something I've been meaning to write about for a while is the lag time it takes for your body to reflect your lifestyle habits.  It's to be expected that it takes at least several weeks before a body begins to look and feel lighter and leaner after improving eating habits and getting some regular exercise.  What's a bit weirder is when you can still feel yourself getting fatter and fatter a couple of weeks into a stint of healthy behavior, because of the terrible things you did (and the great things you didn't do) in the "before time."

That "fat" side of the lag can be motivating, I suppose.  If you don't like the way you look and/or you're uncomfortable, there are so many built-in reminders to shape up.  The "thin" side of the lag is the one that's been tripping me up, though.  I've had several sustained periods of steady weight loss over the past couple of years, through lots of conscientious, yet temporary, effort.  Each time, I've been bowled over by how long I still get compliments on my weight loss after I've stopped exercising and watching what I eat.  I swear it goes on for like two months, all while I'm shoveling pizza and french fries in my mouth all weekend every weekend.  And even when I look at myself in the mirror, I still see all the good results of previous efforts, and I kinda think, Wow, I am tooootally getting away with this.  I know!  Maybe I have a high metabolism. Maybe I just have great genes.

It goes on and on like that for quite some time, maybe months.  Gradually (but not that gradually) I backslide and become just a little more addicted to my "trouble" foods.  Then suddenly, over the course of maybe a week or two, I get slammed by a freight train of back-ordered fat.  It's as if while I lay sleeping, little elves are sneaking into the bed at night to stuff tractor-trailers full of subcutaneous lipids under my skin.

I feel like that's kind of a raw deal.  But it's really not.  It just takes a lot of awareness and focused attention to notice the pattern and anticipate it without being fooled by what's happening before my own eyes ("I can eat and stay thin!  Yay!  More ice cream!")  Even up to this very moment though, what I really want is to have this pattern studied and recorded so accurately, that I can have the *maximum* amount of high-pleasure food without exceeding my "fatness comfort zone."

That's really not a very healthy way of looking at it, I grant you.  Those are maybe just my worse moments.  I think I'm mostly concerned about the right things - health and nutrition - but it's obviously an incomplete transition in attitude.

All this stuff is far more important than appearances.

Ideally, I'd prefer to have enough time to update this blog more often (my last post was four days ago).  It wouldn't necessarily be that interesting, but for my own purposes of coping, when I feel like I need a "sponsor," in those nail-biting moments in which nails are not enough to bite, I want some kind of therapeutic escape valve, short of gnashing my teeth on a leather strap.  

There was a bad time in between this post and the one immediately previous.  Had I done a post then, the title would have probably just been "GIVE ME SOME FUCKING CHOCOLATE."  Then the body of the entry would have gone something like, "I'd murder someone for some motherfucking chocolate.  Maybe you."   

It's just as well I didn't write that, but I wouldn't have had the energy or the levity for that.  What my intense chocolate craving was actually like was just me moaning and groaning and rocking in the fetal position (really).  I suffered, not knowing what to do.  And then, with a face as grim as death, I trudged into the kitchen and made myself a cup of hot cocoa with about seven packets of stevia (instead of sugar).  I wanted to put a lot of spice in it for some reason, so I put ginger and then nutmeg in, and then while shaking cinnamon, I forgot what I was doing (I was practically brain-dead) and because the cinnamon was brown and I thought it was cocoa, I just kept shaking and shaking it in until there was way too much cinnamon.  Then I put the actual cocoa in, and hot milk.  With resignation and self-loathing, I sipped it and savored the sweetness and chocolatey-ness, even though it had way too much cinnamon and stevia tastes like ass.  I experienced almost immediate relief.  I stopped feeling like I was being crushed in a vise and blinded by a black curtain.  So I just took a few sips.  I drank less than half of the mug and dumped the rest out.

The other time I cheated, it was with one-third of a chocolate chip Clif energy bar (off-brand). It was  the same post-dinner chocolate craving situation.  I feel like both of these cheats were a good compromise in an emergency situation.  (A compromise between doing it right and suffering unreasonably).

This blog is getting a lot more hits than I expected.  So, who are all of you people?  And why won't you leave comments?  Come on!    I realize some people can't tell how to leave comments (my own mom included).  Sometimes there is no text field displayed.  If that's the case, here's a quick tutorial:  Look for the word "comments" at the bottom of the post.  Click on it, even though you don't care about reading comments and/or there are none.  Only if you click on the word "comments" will you be taken to a page where you are invited to leave a comment of your own.  It isn't very user-friendly.  If you couldn't figure it out, it doesn't mean you're dumb.  It's really not very obvious.  But now I've taken you through it, so you have no reason not to comment away!

Feel free to subscribe!  Subscribe!  Someday I might want to start another more serious or personal blog, and it occurred to me that I can use this blog (which seems to be getting hits) to build a "platform."