Yo-yo

I'm definitely a yo-yo. As an adult I put on a little weight with each of my babies. Even though I wasn't pregnant, I ate when my wife ate and gained when wife gained. I generally took most of it off, but never as good as my wife and slowly on the approach to our third pregnancy, I blossomed out to my biggest weight to that point in life. We then moved to Florida, and once here i needed to buy new clothes to fit in for work.

Being a yo-yo like me means keeping a closet full of clothes of various sizes. After our third kid, i was looking at how large i had gotten and dieted over the span of a year get down to fit into the smallest clothes in my closet. But a bad bout of bronchitis and a month worth of steroids and i had put back half of what i lost. 9 months of diet and 4 of it gone in 30 days.

I began to realize that there really was no thin or fat. I was simply a fat person all of my life with small moments of thin punctuated throughout.

I have lost 29 pounds since August yet i don't have any confidence that this will be anything more than a comma in the sentence of being big.

I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention how amazing it feels to put on some of my skinny clothes. It's like those commercials where the super skinny chick puts on those super skinny jeans and they end up being a little loose. That may be what i feel like, but that isn't how it works. I put them on when I am too big, and watch them slowly start to fit. Then I begin to negotiate with myself about when they look ok to be seen outside of the bedroom.

Again, that distorted view.

Enough for now!

Being a fat kid

If you were a skinny kid, or just an average kid, you will never know what it means to be a fat kid. Until the 9th grade, I was a fat kid. I lost a lot of weight the summer before my 9th grade year, so although still a geek, I was just a slightly wide geek, not obese.

The one thing that no one around me seems to understand is that i have no idea what I actually look like. In my imagination, I'm thin and in shape. As a chubby kid, you tend to only see the parts of yourself that you find to be ok. Looking in the mirror is deceptive, since you angle yourself so that your clothes hang just right at this certain angle. You then walk out the door thinking you look one way, when you actually are much different.

Then you see a picture and you can't figure out how you look so bad from that angle. It was never enough for me to change my habits, besides I was a kid. How was i to change my eating habits without the help of my parents. My brother wasn't fat, my parents weren't fat. It was just me. They never suggested that I was fat, but there were hints that maybe I eat too much dinner.

When i was finally inspired to loose weight, I realized that girls saw me different and that motivated me to at least keep some of it off for a while. I was never in shape, but I wasn't fat. This of course meant I looked ok, but wasn't taking my shirt off for anyone. Why? Because now I knew i was fat before. Loosing weight made me feel better about myself, but also pointed out how distorted my view of myself was. So, in comparing my body shape to others, I realized I was smaller, but not thin. For the rest of my life I would never be able to look at myself realistically again. It's the mirror problem all over again, except this time, I amplify every flaw and do everything to hide them. Neurotically checking myself in every window I walk by, looking at the tightness of my pockets in my dress pants, the amount of shirt I pull above my waste to hide my muffin top, how I angle my head so that my jowls don't show etc...

People who were not fat as children, don't have this same distortion. It's the combination of both lying to yourself about your looks while secretly knowing there is something wrong and dreaming always to be thin.


Food for life

Running the marathon.

I decided to blog about this, mostly because, as I run my mind wanders. Early this year, after starting yet another attempt to be thinner, I decided that I would set a goal to run i n a 5K. I was inspired by my wife who was using this couch to 5k program to get into better shape with a bunch of dance moms at the kids dance school.

I had already committed to loosing a few pounds and thought it would be fun to try this with her. Eventually that blossomed into a half marathon. After finishing my first 10 mile run last night I thought it would be fun to track my progress. However this won't be so much a keeping track, as a bit of therapy.

You'll see. Since I'm not writing to anyone in particular, just know that each article is what comes to my mind while running, or thinking about running, or putting on clothes for the day, or standing on the scale etc.....


-food for belly