"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me."
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
"When I look back now over my life and call to mind what I might have had simply for taking and did not take, my heart is like to break."
Akhenaton (d. c.1354 BC)
And now, the current weather, from some random person we pulled off the street:
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Weighty Problem
pon-der-ous Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French pondereux, from Latin ponderosus, from ponder-, pondus weight
1 : of very great weight
2 : unwieldy or clumsy because of weight and size
3 : how I see myself
I'm not sure when it hits me hardest.
Maybe it's when I look at the mirror and the nice image from the straight on angle is spoiled when I turn a bit to the side.
Or maybe it's when I see other people speak of how much they used to weigh, and I currently weigh that much.
Or maybe it's when I'm in a department store and the pants are all just two inches smaller than I am.
In any event, there is way too much of me, and I know it. And most days, that bothers me.
I didn't get this big until they put me on the current medicine regimen that I take. The meds made my hunger increase, my metabolism slow down, and my energy level drop. So, here I am, eating more, not burning as many calories, and sitting on the couch all day.
Can we spell "couch potato?"
I have tried all of the diet fads out there. The cabbage soup diet, where you glut yourself on roughage and flavored water. The South Beach Diet, where you try to hit a middle ground, not eating as many processed carbohydrates and concentrating on "good for you" mono-unsaturated fats. And even Adkins, where you eat almost no carbohydrates at all.
Before the meds, a lot of this stuff worked.
For example, about 15 years ago I had a really bad test result on triglycerides. Reading up on it, I found that diets high in fish and beans would drop them, so I ate only fish and beans or vegetarian five days a week. I only allowed myself one chicken and one beef or pork meal per week.
The triglycerides dropped. And so did my weight.
Problem was, you could not stay on the diet. After a couple of months, the craving for beef became so intense that I would find myself occasionally darting into a McDonald's drive through and wolfing on a hamburger.
When I first did Adkins, I was a lot happier. I enjoy all kinds of fatty meats and stuff, so the idea of living on steak, salad with heavy blue cheese dressing, and deviled eggs sounded great, and was for a while. I lost forty or fifty lbs. and got almost to the weight I wanted to be at.
But, like all restrictive diets, eventually I fell off the wagon. And with Adkins, that is a huge problem. When your body gets reintroduced to carbohydrates, and it will, it packs them on like there is no tomorrow since that is exactly what you have been tricking it to think.
Every pound I lost flew back, and brought friends.
Then the meds came.
After that, I tried Adkins again, but now my body would no longer respond to it. All I was doing was clogging my arteries.
So I went out and bought the South Beach book. Again, no effect. The meds and their effect on my metabolism were just too powerful.
Finally, in a last ditch effort, I went to Weight Watchers.
I was expecting a lot of diet stuff....eat this, don't eat that, etc. That's not what I got.
I could eat anything I wanted. No foods were "forbidden." All I had to do was pay attention to portion control, which was easily adjusted if I needed to.
Heck, the plan even allowed me to splurge once a week if I wanted to.
Slowly but surely, there's less and less of me.
And I like that.
The alimentary canal is thirty-two feet long. You control only the first three inches of it. Control it well.
Kin Hubbard
