I'm overweight. Most people would tell you I hide it well, but that doesn't change the fact that I can watch the NFL draft and wonder to myself when pro football players started getting smaller. My eating habits, at least until very recently have been pretty chaotic. I ate when I was hungry, I ate when I was bored, I ate when I was sad, tired, happy, wound up, worn down, or war-torn. The only time I didn't eat was when I was asleep, and I'm pretty sure I regularly dreamed about it. I love food. It's so... delicious. I love pasta, I love bread, I love cheese, sugar, salt, grease, fat, and pretty much anything that can be fried. Comedian Louis C.K. said in a stand-up routine once, "I don't stop eating when I'm full. I stop eating when I hate myself." That was pretty much me as well. I knew I could stand to lose a few pounds, but it wasn't a priority.
Now it is. On Sunday, August 8th, I took my wife and kids to DragonLand, a water park in Pekin, IL. We laid out our blanket in the grass, slathered the kids with sunscreen, and got ready to jump in. As I was taking off my shirt, I felt something crawl across the top of my foot. When I looked down to see what it was, my view was obstructed by my gut.
Let's just let that settle into your head for a moment. I was unable to see my feet because my rotund belly was in the way. To be fair, I was all relaxed and just letting it hang out there, and a quick sucking-in of my massive middle was all it took to restore visual confirmation that I still had feet, and that there was an ant crawling across one of them. That said, it was still upsetting. I had never noticed myself needing to visually negotiate my way around my own gut before. This was new. This was no good. I wanted more than anything else just to put my shirt back on, for fear of scaring the children with my Jabba the Hutt impersonation. I went on anyway, playing with Bella and Brady in the water, but that moment stuck with me for the rest of the day and into the evening.
The next morning, I got up at 5am and took my dog Simon for a walk, and I've done so every day since. Wait, let's temper that last statement a bit. Simon takes me for walks. Simon is our largest and least-well-trained dog. As such, I'm quite sure that my caloric burn is directly proportional to the number of rabbits we see each morning. I downloaded an app for my phone that lets me keep track of every single calorie that I consume, and I've gotta tell you, the math is sorta liberating. Previously, I could not have even approximated my daily caloric intake. I couldn't have remembered what I ate for the previous meal, largely because I had eaten a meal's worth of snacks since then. Now, I can pull up my caloric budget at a whim and punch in foods while I'm at the office or out and about. I feel better. I'm a little tired, but I understand that's mostly because my body is required to eat my gut to compensate for the sudden decrease in calories.
My wife, either inspired by my sudden lifestyle change or somehow guilt-tripped by it, has started working out and watching her food intake as well. We both have set calorie budgets, and work to come in reasonably under-budget every day. We made several new dinners this past weekend, all low-cal, low-fat options that we would have felt no urge to try just two weeks ago.
All of this is well and good, but will I stick with it? Well, I don't know. I'm trying not to refer to this as a diet. I'd rather consider this just a new way of thinking when it comes to eating and exercise. I'd like to think that even if I hit my goal weight, I'll just recalibrate my calorie budget with a "hold steady" plan in place. I guess we'll see how I do. I will say that at 8 days and counting, this is already the longest I've stuck with any exercise/eating plan.
No, I'm not going to turn this blog into a health journal. I'll still post largely my passive-aggressive musings on the world in general. I do reserve the right to boast if I hit any major milestones, however.