220.2 (There and back again...)

Well, the progress continues.  It's slow going, but that's not really discouraged me at all.  I really do not care one whit how long this takes me to accomplish.  I just want to keep moving in the right direction.

I have been flirting with 220 for a week or so.  Haven't broken it yet, but I suspect that I will sometime this coming week.  The trend is downwards, even with the occasional up-tick.  As I still weigh myself daily, I see all the numbers, not just the over-all trend.  Some say that's not a wise thing, but I appreciate doing it.  It keeps me ever-mindful of what I'm doing.  Not to the point of obsessiveness, but simply focused on what I'm doing, and that's very helpful to me.

I do need that, and I admit that I do.  Old habits are hard moles to truly whack, and I still have troubles or challenges with stress eating and/or eating later in the evening.  For the latter, I've taken to eating dinner rather late (7:30-8pm) so that even if I get snacky, I have the reality of having just eaten (what is typically) a largish amount of calories, and simply can't conscience eating a bunch more, so it's a motivator to not eat again.  Combine that with being (typically) really tired from the physical labor of the day, and I'm asleep on the couch before I want to eat again.  Sleeping through the munchies is helpful.

I'm still working on what my final "goal" weight should be.  I'm thinking 170lbs.  160 is still sort-of inconceivable to me.  In the end, it's not really all that important.  The trend continues, and that's all I really care about.

223.4 (Nothing pithy to add to that...)

What to say here?  Not much, really.  After the hospitalization and mondo-depressing near-instant balloon-up from that whole deal (roughly 11 lbs in 24 hours!) this feels like the penultimate victory.  Since I've begun counting calories and logging food with MyFitnessPal, I've lost nearly 20 lbs (which I should do by the end of this week).  Yeah, it was a hard twenty, and has taken me about as long to drop it as the previous forty or so, but that's as it should be.

Diet and exercise are the ONLY WAY TO DO THIS.  PERIOD.  I still wince from time to time when I think of how bloody long it's taken me to understand that.  But I do now.

Food is so different a thing to me now.  It used to be the go-to.  For everything.  Happiness, sadness, ecstasy, depression, relaxation, stress, you name it.  But now, food is sustenance.  Doesn't mean that I don't still enjoy eating, and it doesn't mean that all the old habits have been banished, but it does mean that something in me has changed radically.  And that's good.

I enjoy my food even more now.  I savor it.  I eat it more slowly.  I try and be much more mindful about it, and how I eat it.  I'm still a damn fine cook, and still can whip up a fancy-assed this or that, but I'm even more happy that I like--really like--simple foods.  Gimmie a well-made burrito and I'm happy.  A perfectly made BBQ bacon cheeseburger?  Just leave me alone.  I'm busy.  I buy the highest quality ingredients I can afford.  For example, even though it's about 50% more expensive, I only buy Angus beef, mostly because it's grass fed, and as far as red meat goes, I eat it really very sporadically.  I eat a lot of chicken breasts.  Good thing I really like chicken.  I grill out on my smoker about once a week, and make a week's worth of stuff at a time, then simply reheat it.  Grilled flavor all week with only a day of work.

In the morning, I've started making breakfast burritos with two eggs and two slices of bacon, refried beans and queso.  They're really filling and give me a decent dose of energy as I leave to go work at the Zen temple I'm helping renovate.  Another lesson or two I've learned.  I really need to eat breakfast if I'm going to go do anything substantial, and that includes walking more than about a quarter mile.  That breakfast routine has also helped with the constipation/irregularity issues.  Again, I feel dumb.  It's taken me how long to figure that out?  Regardless, lesson learned.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get the steak fajitas made...

227 (The New Frontier...)

Well, it's official: I've never weighed this little in my adult life.  I have an old driver's license from back in the late 80's that lists me as 260lbs.  Back at the beginning of high-school, when I was playing freshman football, I remember weighing in at 230lbs.  15 years old, 5'9" and 230.  I should have been ashamed then.  Actually, I was, but that's a different matter, I suppose.

Frankly, I don't have much room in my life for shame.  I find it a really counter-productive and useless feeling.  It doesn't really bring out good things.  Admitting when you did something or someone wrong?  Good.  Wanting to make things right?  Good.  Shame?  Meh.

Frankly, shame has actually helped perpetuate my lack of weight control.  It has perpetuated and exacerbated the feelings of helplessness and worthlessness that have kept me turning to food for comfort, the tiny feeling that comes from not being able to do what others apparently have no trouble doing, and that's staying in control.  When it comes to addiction, shame really does more damage than anything else.

More than anything, I just feel kind of dumb.  Not in a hyper-critical way.  More in a "Wow, I get it now.  How did I not see this, not grok this, not understand this all this time?" sort-of way.  Be active, eat properly and in the right amount, and weight just kind-of falls in place.

It's not that this is effortless.  I've actually worked rather hard--diligently, even--to get here.  But I've had to do so to un-do the badness that excess has wrought; to get back in alignment with my body.  It makes me wonder what life would have been like were I to have simply grok'd this back when I was young.  That's just as it goes, though, I suppose.  20/20 hindsight and all that.

Anyway, the work continues.

242.2 (A funny thing happened on the way to 228...)

Well, not funny.  Serious.  And seriously bad.  Last week I wound up in hospital for a rather nasty case of cellulitis.  As a result, I was taken off my diuretic for a while, spent most of four days generally immobile, and packed on 11 lbs in the matter of 36 hours!  You can read more about that adventure on my other blog found here.

Now even though this is a bit discouraging, that doesn't mean I'm off the weight-loss train, though.  I'm back on half a diuretic dose to help remove the excess fluids in my system, and that's helping.  As of this morning, I'm back down to 239.0, which is good.  And I'm not using this convalescence as a reason to eat up (although that's been a challenge from a "I wanna be comforted!" sorta way), but I am allowing myself more food in a day.  My body needs calories and nutrition right now, and trying to keep the weight-loss active in this time is actually not very helpful to the healing process.  In fact, it can directly hamper healing, especially since I'm fighting an infection.  The antibiotics I'm taking screw with my gut flora, and make certain vitamins and nutrients hard to absorb (particularly Vit. K—or potassium) which in turn leads to things like nose-bleeds and trouble clotting, so what I eat is really important.

So this is a time to relax a bit on the 1500 kCal a day diet and heavy-duty labor that was working so well.  I need to get past this infection and heal, and to do that, I need to eat more.  Not crazy more, but more than I have been.

But one thing I haven't lost is confidence that I can and will see 225lbs by the end of summer.  Diet and exercise works, and I got it to work all on my own, eating a varied diet that was very satisfying.  But wisdom is illustrated by knowing when to relax as well as when to put in lots of effort.  Rest=healing.

229.6 (Into uncharted teritory...)

This is officially the least I've weighed since high-school.  And while I feel achy, banged-up and exhausted from all the hard work and physical labor, I also feel revitalized, energized, and happy.

Sometime back around February, 2011 (a period of Fat Man blogglessness), I hit 254 again.  Wasn't too happy about it.  But I just got back at it.  This means I've dropped 25lbs this calendar year.  This shows what effort and simple acceptance can accomplish.

230.8 (stedy as she goes...)

A quick update:

Well, as I said in earlier posts, I'm done with two major things: (exclusively) low-carb, and getting the weight off fast.  This isn't a race.  This is a complete change of life, and while at times speed is helpful, for the most part, true change takes time and effort.  The former I have in spades.  The latter's taken time to root, but I think I have indeed sunk a tap-root.

Wanting to be healthy.  Wanting to not be so limited.  Wanting to not have to eat only certain things.  Wanting to live longer.  These are things that sound obvious, but when you're twice the size you should be, they seem so far away, so pie-in-the-sky.  You want them, but they seem to live on the other side of Mars.  So you wish.  You pray.  You look for things to help, to speed the plow.  But there is no plow to speed.  There's only you.  You and your determination to do the right things for yourself.  The hard things.  The things that takes prolonged, ardent effort.  The things that hurt, inside and out.  True in Dharma, true in weightloss.

One thing that has helped the past few weeks is activity.  Real activity.  Hard work.  My sangha is renovating a 100-year-old church as our new zendo.  It's a TON of work.  Back-breaking, knee-aching, elbow-scraping, finger-smashing work.

It feels so good to work hard again.  To feel that full-body exhaustion at the end of the day, but lay in bed thinking of what I've accomplished, is a gift I'd allowed myself to forget I've been given.  I really treasure that it's back in my life.  That it's helping me drop more weight is sort-of a bonus, but only insofar as it's a reconnection to something.  I like working with my hands.  Even with all the physical limitations due to my disability, I have skills and talents that have languished over the years, primarily due to my voluntary disability.  Obesity had been a fetter--an albatross--that I willingly wore for the majority of my life.  Shaking it off, laying it down, casting it aside is still challenging, and at times I find myself still desiring to comfort myself with food and over-indulgences.  But more and more I'm finding myself saying "no thanks".  That's for one reason alone: a desire for something more gratifying, and more healthy.  The desire to be strong and able again. As able as my limitations allow.

As I've said before, I have nothing better to do.  I have never said anything truer in my life.

236.8 (To the future, and beyond!)

Well, I found a few helpful resources for crunching numbers, with the primary one being HealthStatus.  Trying to figure out how many calories are burned doing various activities, Basil Metabolic Rate, true BMI, average weigh by body-type, etc.  Very helpful.  Anyway, one of the things I was able to do was make a projection with regards to potential weight-loss if I stick to my plan and caloric deficit goals.  It is as follows:

---

Current Weight	Goal Weight	Weight Loss	Daily Calorie Deficit	Time to Reach Goal Weight
236.8 lb	160 lb	76.8 lb	1000	8 mo 29 dy
236.8 lb	180 lb	56.8 lb	1000	6 mo 19 dy
236.8 lb	200 lb	36.8 lb	1000	4 mo 9 dy

---

Now, as pie-in-the-sky as these numbers and projections may be, I am at least encouraged by the fact that a) no matter what my final target weight goal may be, I'm closer than I've ever been, b) my next "goal" is less than 40lbs and about 4 months away, if I can keep this up, and c) this actually looks possible for me.  And yes, I'm well aware that this may be optimistic time-wise, but even if I add 50% more time on, it's still achievable within about a year or so.  I'll take it.

A bit additional:

I have an acquaintance that I follow on a web community who just underwent gastric surgery (sleeve, I believe).  This web community allows for uncensored images to be put up, and I've been seeing rather candid images of her as she loses weight.  I do observe that I feel a tinge of jealousy seeing the pounds fly off her body.  She was a very large woman (admittedly, she's about 6' tall to boot) but even with that, she easily weighed upwards of 300lb.

Now this has nothing to do with attractiveness, per se.  I always considered her rather pretty, and yes, the weight-loss improves upon that (as I'm sure it does in my case as well).  But for some reason, the whole weight-loss surgery just... really puts me off.

I've thought about weight-loss surgery.  A lot.  Over and over.  The last time I truly considered it, it was bypass.  Roux en-Y (proximal) or something similar.  In reading her reasons for chosing the sleeve, she states that she didn't want something so invasive, extreme or potentially fatal, so no fault there.  One thing she mentioned was that it she considers her sleeve "forced evolution because we don't need large stomachs anymore".

Wow, do I not buy that concept.  For a number of reasons, this is just not a good way to look at this.  First, while it is true that the only way to reduce the size of the human stomach after adulthood is via surgery, in my eyes, the human stomach is designed to be very flexible and adaptable to change.  One of the main reasons for this is not holding varying amounts of food, but for gas.  Eat something that interacts with the stomach acids in a certain way, and gas is produced.  With a restricted stomach, that gas has no place to go, and will cause great pain, discomfort, and illness/vomiting.

Secondly, the large stomach was caused by something, and that something is over-indulging and over-eating.  It didn't happen by itself.  It happened because the stomach owner in question had an underlying issue that caused it, and that is a hunger of a different type.  Mind hunger, heart hunger, eye hunger.  None of those hungers will be reduced by reducing or restricting the physical stomach.  So, bariatric surgery is a surgical procedure to correct an emotional or mental condition?  Nope.  Doesn't work that way.  If you don't address the emotional, mental or spiritual issues that underlay the behavior, what actually changes?  Sure, you'll drop weight rapidly, and may even keep it off, but what really changes?  Interestingly, one of the major issues with GBP is one most doctors and surgeons  don't talk about, and that's depression.

[From Wikipedia:] "Gastric bypass surgery has an emotional, as well as a physiological, impact on the individual. Many who have undergone the surgery suffer from depression in the following months.^[13] This is a result of a change in the role food plays in their emotional well-being. Strict limitations on the diet can place great emotional strain on the patient. Energy levels in the period following the surgery will be low. This is due again to the restriction of food intake, but the negative change in emotional state will also have an impact here.^[14] It may take as long as three months for emotional levels to rebound."

Wow. Talk about a grave solution!  Being depressed about your weight is bad enough.  Now you get to be depressed over food for the rest of your life?  Not being able to truly enjoy your food?  I'll pass.

Back when I was 17 or so, I actually had a gastric balloon inserted into my stomach.  I lost about 20lbs, expressly because I didn't change my behavior.  Even with that failure, as I said, I recently thought about GBP and bariatric surgery again.  A lot.  But the thing that I always came back to is a knowledge that food didn't get me here.  Hunger did, and not physical hunger.  I got myself here, and the only way to truly fix this problem in my life--the only way to deal with this issue long-term--is to address it head-on.  To see that I am the problem.  That's not blaming myself.  That's owning it and taking responsibility.  This constant emotional hunger that I allowed to ride roughshod over me is what did this.

In Buddhism and Zen--as I said--we have this tenant to "seek its source".  Over the past two or so years, I've really decided to seek the source of that damaging hunger.  As I have, I've gotten closer to understanding where it lives, what it wants, and how to properly deal with it.  Is it still hard work?  Hell yes.  But it's not anything that a doctor can deal with or treat.  It's only something that can be managed with a great and abiding faith in the Three Treasures, the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path.

Everything I need to be healthy and happy I already have.  I have always had it.  And I need not pay someone thousands to short-cut the sanctity and sacredness of my body in order to change the outside of me, when the inside is where the issue truly lies.  Every time I've ever tried to short-cut things in my life, bad things have resulted.  Every time I've stuck it out--I mean really stuck with it, be it meditation, sesshin, work, or what-have-you--I've always felt better as a result.

I fault no one for having GBP or other bariatric surgery, but I know it's not for me.  My illness is inside, and only truth, openness, metta and a radical acceptance of the moment as it is serves to heal me.