Weekly Weigh-In

Starting weight: 240
Current weight: 233
Change this week: +5
Total change: -7

Well, the damage wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It’s clear to me, though, that family visits (and in particular, those that involve my father) are going to pose a challenge that I need to figure out how to navigate. I returned home last Tuesday evening, and it took me until Saturday sometime to begin to feel a sense of inner equilibrium again. This is embarrassing to me—I’m 40 years old, and I’m so easily knocked out of whack by my father.

During my flab-blasting adventure of 2000, somehow I was able to do better with the visits home. There were a few things that were different. One was that I began to exercise and change my eating habits in August, and I didn’t venture home that year until the holidays in December. I had lost 20 lbs or so at that point, and I had quite a bit of momentum behind me. I remember resolving to eat however and whatever I wanted, comfortable with the knowledge that I’d get back to my own life and repair any damage that had occurred. Certainly, things were less stressful with my family; my father was in better shape than he is now, and my brothers both lived closer, so we all saw each other more often, and all of us siblings shared similar perspectives on how to deal with father-management issues when they arose.

But the family-stress issue isn’t the real problem, and I know this. The truth is that back in 2000, the weight-loss thing just clicked with me somehow. I got into a groove where it made sense, I felt motivated and I was able to make healthy choices even in the face of the stress inherent in the life of a graduate student.

You know what else it was? I had fallen in crazy, unrequited love. Every time I wanted a bowl of ice cream or a slab of garlic bread I would think “What do you want, the ice cream or …HIM?” Just about every time, I chose him. He lived in my neighborhood as well, so I was motivated to go out for walks by the chance of running into him, which I did fairly frequently. The interesting thing is that, while we had a fairly intense friendship, our relationship remained non-romantic, and this turned out to be unbelievably productive, from a weight-control standpoint. I yearned and pined and lost weight, feeling that I’d be more attractive to him.

Ultimately, I came to my senses and realized that for various reasons, he was not the one for me. I ended up meeting someone else, with whom I also fell in love, but this time it was mutual. And in the course of that four year relationship, I regained all the weight I had lost, and then some. So here’s the part that I’ve been thinking about lately. There was something energizing about pursuing this guy. The chase gave me the motivation to do good things for myself, even if the surface motivation was to land me this big ol’ fish o’ love. But then I actually do land a love-fish, and I start sabotaging myself. Insecurity? Basic fear of being committed to someone? This bears more thinking about, I believe, but not tonight. It's late and I'm ready for bed.

Have a happy week!