Dan Nied's Fortress of Weight Loss: Day 139

In the grand scheme of things - and is that ever a good way to begin a post? - there are problems, and there are problems.

I have no italicized problems. Let's be perfectly honest here, I live a pretty charmed life, at least as far as I can see. I might get by with few luxuries, but I have a job, a family, a few friends, and several people I truly care about and who truly care about me. I have faults, but I also have talents. I have character flaws, but I am also, at times, engaging and funny and profound. Sometimes I am great conversation, while other times I am kind of a bitch to be around.

I get high, and I get low. I feel each emotion with a certain sense of meaning. But I don't experience either extremely enough to label myself with any form of manic depression.

Nothing too crazy there, right?

Honestly, it's hard for me to take my problems all that seriously. Even when I was nearing 400 pounds and stuck in a small town on the edge of the world, I could never really get down on myself. These things that trigger my emotions are trivial to everyone but me, so how can I really put any weight behind them?

That said, I see a problem that does bear some weight to me, though I am not quite ready to italicize it yet. It sort of hit me today that this could be a real problem for a long time if I don't correct it soon.

I am a binger. When I want, I can eat and eat and eat with no regards to my physical feelings or well-being. When I am done eating, I want more food. When I can't find any more food, I wonder how long it will be before I can eat again. And I take almost no joy in these binges.

I can roll through $20 of fast food if I lose track of my order. I can eat an entire family-sized lasagna in 20 minutes. If I dedicated myself to the sport, I could become a champion competitive eater.

If I were a competitive eater, I would consider my binging abilities a gift from God. But in my current situation, I see it as a very dangerous issue.

Let's do this equation: Binging + Determination to lose weight = Binge and Purge.

I'm not bulimic, but I can see where I might slip into that area in the future. I can see myself, down to 240, torn between keeping the weight off and giving in to temptation. Ahh, but binge and purge! Have the best of both worlds! That way, I can literally have my cake and eat it, too.

This could happen. Really, it could.

But let me tell why it won't happen: I've gone through too much with my weight over the past 2 ½ years to develop another debilitating habit. It's really just not worth it. Plus, I am kind of on top of the potential problem here. Recognition is a handy tool.

Anyway, I just wanted to bring that up on the heels of a pretty bingy weekend. The lasagna thing happened on Saturday, and I was more surprised than worried about the way I wolfed that thing down. It just illustrated to me that I am going have to figure out how to keep this weight off in a healthy way. That's a task I will talk about another time.

Eating-wise, last week was ok, but not great. Minimal weight lost, probably obliterated by the weekend. You don't need to hear me say that I have to buckle down this week and get some weight off. That's the goal for now, starting Monday and carrying all the way through the rest of the week.

Also, sorry about the lack of posts over the last seven days. I got a little lazy, probably one reason this wasn't a great week. Here's to a week of regular posts.