Dan Nied's Fortress of Weight Loss: Day 33

Note: Good news people. We have officially turned on the comments for these posts. However, I can’t fully grant you instant gratification. In order to avert spam, comments must be approved by me. However, I promise that any comment you leave will be approved no matter what you say. I also promise to check for comments throughout the day, making sure to approve them as quickly as possible. That’s it. Go nuts telling me how much I suck.

There is one thing that I have to deal with this time around, that didn’t exist during the 100 days.

This diet, for some reason, is an emotional rollercoaster. I am up, I am down, I am focused, I am not. I have really been all over the place with this. One day, I am going to get to 270, the halfway point, by the middle of February. Other days, I am doomed to live life at 290 pounds.

So of course, there are swings of successes and failures to go with the emotions. Though I should say, for the record, the successes have been much more plentiful.

During the 100 days, there was never a sense of pending failure. It kind of just all felt right.

I am not really sure why that contrast exists between the two diets. But I have a few theories.

The “THE WORLD IS AGAINST ME” theory
I don’t really believe the world is against me. Just certain factions when it comes to this diet.

The real problem here is that it is much more difficult to tune out others this time around.

Back in old Sterling, Colo., there was really only one person I hung around with. And though he was morbidly obese, he respected the diet.

I lived alone, and there was no real social life to speak of. I had no problem sitting around in my apartment on the weekends and going to the gym when I had some free time.

In fact, the gym was much easier back then. If I went directly after my morning shift at work (I split the shifts up), when I basically had the place to myself. Add to that the fact that the people who ran the gym were coaches for teams I covered, and generally people I was friendly with. Because of that, there were always words of encouragement flying at me. They wanted to see me succeed, and I sometimes felt like I rewarded them by letting them see me succeed.

Here in old Vallejo, Calif., I live in a much different world. While, on the whole, it might be a better place for me to live, it is an atmosphere much less conducive to weight loss.

First, there are people here. Theoretically, I could pick up the phone and call a few people to go drinking on my night off. I haven’t done that yet, but I am sure I will someday.

Second, I have roommates, and they eat like shit and offer me their leftovers. I usually appreciate that. But right now, I do not.

Third, I work in a place where people love to bring in food. Though that happened in Colorado from time to time, the food was usually tucked away in the break room, where I could ignore it for the two hours per day I was in the office.

Here, that food is out in the open, taunting me every chance it gets. Damn food better shut its mouth.

And those are just a few things in the world that are against me now.

The “THIS JOB IS HOLDING ME BACK” theory
Let’s go back to that job I had at the Sterling newspaper.

I was the only sports writer on staff. I did the work of at least three people, and I did it damn well. The only perk was that I got to make my own schedule.

So I was in the office only from 10 a.m. to noon most days. Then it was to the gym and back home. I worked out nearly every day because it became part of my schedule. Since I couldn’t take overtime, and because I had to work every day of the week, I usually worked for only four or five hours per day.

That left a lot of time for focusing.

Here, I am on a set schedule and other people depend on me. Sadly, I don’t make the rules anymore.

I’ve mentioned my work shifts, usually 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. four days per week. I might not have mentioned that I hate doing anything before work. Why? I don’t know. Laziness is one answer. Probably the right one.

Though I have done a great job of going to the gym on my days off (went last Monday, and then on Friday and Sunday, and I am going today), it’s been a struggle to go on work days. It’s hard to find the time, really.

But Dan, you say, you have until 1 p.m. to go to the gym. Why aren’t you getting off your ass and going on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday? A fair question, and one that really has no good answer. The bad answer is that I get up too late: around 11 a.m. And by the time I eat breakfast and shower and catch up on the news, it is 12:30 p.m. And then I have no time.

But like I said, there really is no good answer for that, and it is something I need to start getting into the habit of doing.

Likewise, work days leave too much room for eating screwups. And though I have become better about planning out my day’s meals, I still slip up from time to time and find myself going to the vending machines for pretzels at 8 p.m. because I am hungry.

The job is certainly not an insurmountable problem. In fact, it is quite surmountable. It’s just a matter of surmounting it.

The “SENSE OF URGENCY” theory
Two years ago I was super fat. I mean, I was very nearly morbidly obese. If I had been 46 instead of 26, I likely would have had a heart attack.

I can’t stress enough how fat I really was. I couldn’t weigh myself on the scale at the gym. The 370 pound number I have used as the starting point? That’s totally made up. Or, I should say, that’s an estimate. I really had no clue how much I weighed, because I didn’t have the machinery to weigh myself. (Oddly, I do now, as the scale at the new gym goes up to 500 pounds. Where was that thing when I needed it?) So I chose that phantom number 370 because I knew I was more than 350 (the limit on the old scale), and I knew it wasn’t even close. But I also knew that I wasn’t 400 pounds because… well, actually I might have been 400 pounds.

So I needed to lose weight. Not only was I going down a very dangerous path, but I was also throwing away any chance I had to get laid again. When you are 400 pounds, generally the only women that will have sex with you also weigh 400 pounds. At least that’s what my experience tells me.

That might be why it was so easy. It was totally clear to me that I was wasting, not to mention shortening, my life. I had become a lot of things I never wanted to become. It was just time to do something about it.

But now, that’s not really the case. Do I think I am too fat right now? Yep. But I also remember the celebration I had in April 2006 when, on the 100th day of the diet, I weighed in at 299.8 pounds. That was one of the happiest days of my life. How can I complain about it now?

So I know how bad it really could be. The reason I started the blog up again wasn’t because I was getting too fat. It was because I wanted to eliminate the possibility of ever getting that fat again.

To be honest with you, 299 is kind of a misleading starting point. I’ve fluctuated between 275 and the 290s ever since I moved to Vallejo. When I showed up in July 2006, I was around 275 and looking pretty good. Though the working out stopped, resulting in some muscle loss, I managed to keep the weight off. But last summer I let myself go, and crept back up to about 295. It took about a month of exercise and eating right to get back down to around 280.

The only reason I got back up to 299 around Christmas was because of surgery. I haven’t talked about it yet, because I was planning on making it a blog entry at some point. I still am, so I will only gloss over it at this point.

But in early November, I had surgery to remove my gallbladder. The 100 days diet, and the speed with which it was done, gave me gallstones. I am happy to say that was the only negative of the entire process.

The problem was that fatty foods caused very bothersome stomach pains that lasted up to 12 hours. The stomach pains were mysteriously talked about at length in the 100 days blog. When the attacks came, it crippled me for the day. That led to bouts of purging after I thought I ate too much. Trust me, the bulimic rout was necessary to stave off these pains.

So anyway, after the surgery (I weighed about 280 or so at the time), I could eat whatever I wanted with no fear of stomach pains. I decided to go crazy for a month or so. That stretched to two months, and I gained 20 pounds. Not surprising. Actually, I had planned for it, and I didn’t think it would be all that hard to rebound from it. (I know this brings up a lot of issues: like maybe I kept the weight off because I couldn’t eat fatty foods, the fact that it is unhealthy to gorge for two months, and the idea of a 28-year old male bulimia survivor. But trust me, all of those issues will be addressed when I write the entry, which will probably come later this week.)

But my point is that I could have just lost that 25 pounds quietly and been fine with it. Instead, I chose to go through another major life overhaul. Where the last one was totally necessary, I can safely say that this one is more cosmetic.

Cosmetic means less urgency. Cosmetic means more cockiness (after all, I don’t really need to lose weight, right?). And cosmetic might also mean less focus.

All of that plays into the emotional roller coaster of this whole thing. I’m focused on this, but maybe not as focused as I was two years ago. So I should really work on that.