Losing a part of me

Category: Causes

  • Why Are We Fat?

    There are several reasons why people gain weight. Some of them are:

    • Lack of education about nutrition.
    • Gluttony – we just want more.
    • Stress – many people turn to food when they are stressed.
    • Emotional eating – my boyfriend girlfriend husband wife boss children or whoever have hurt me, and I am going to turn to food to relieve the pain.
    • Misunderstanding about healthy portion sizes.
    • Picking the wrong foods for more than the occasional treat.
    • Knowing what we should eat and how much we should eat… and ignoring them.

    There are myriad reasons why we eat poorly. These are just a few. However, I am not an expert on the subject. I am, however, an expert in why I am fat.

    • An abusive (first physically, and then emotionally) childhood with a mother who liked a lot of foods that were bad for us. She fed us healthy foods too, but the buffalo wings were always fawned over, whereas the fish was always just ‘Eat this.’
    • During my Army service I was able to eat as much as I wanted without gaining weight. Not only was I in my early twenties, I was also probably burning 10,000 calories per day.
    • Toward the end of my Army service I was injured, and owing to that injury, two things happened that were disastrous:
      • I stopped working out.
      • I developed a dependence on prescription pain killers, which would have a terrible effect on every aspect of my life, many of which are still apparent today (although my dependence on pills is long behind me now)
    • After the Army I was working as a radio entrepreneur with a partner. We had a lot of restaurants pay us in free meals rather than cash, and those restaurants were extremely unhealthy.
    • Many soldiers develop psychological traumas because of their service. That, coupled with the traumas resulting from an abusive childhood and a toxic relationship with a poisonous parent (long-reaching trauma that amplified the effects of the dependencies discussed in an earlier point), left me an emotional disaster zone in the personality of a rock. Outwardly I always seemed fine, grounded, stable, and reliable. Inwardly, no.
    • The same partner mentioned in an earlier point, along with a number of people I was friends with at the time, would go to restaurants almost every meal, and eat extremely unhealthily.
    • For many years I worked as a road warrior. In essence, this meant that I spent a lot of time travelling. Hotels, restaurants, airplane food, and little if any exercise is a recipe for weight gain.
    • I like fattening foods. I like sizable portions of fattening foods.

    There are probably more reasons, but they are really just excuses. I want to get to a point now where I can look in the rear-view mirror of my life on that terrible time when I was fat because I was unwilling or unable to overcome all of the obstacles that life threw at me. I have worked my buns off to get to where I am today, which is nearly eighty pounds lower than my peak. I never want to be there again. For that matter, once I get to my ideal weight, I never want to be here again. It will take a lot more work.

  • Day 40

    Today is the fortieth day of my diet. I am feeling better, my clothes are fitting better. I do not feel like a new person, but I do seem to have more energy than I did at my heaviest. I have a long way to go.

    Yesterday was not a good day for my diet. While I passed the greatest challenge (not eating any of my son’s pizza or cheesy bread), I did have a lot of chicken for dinner, and a bag of popcorn. I do not know if it was simply because I miss Leslie (who I drove to the airport yesterday afternoon), or if I just slipped. It is likely the former. Today I have to do better.

    Someone responded to a post of mine on Facebook telling me not to diet, that moderation is the key. She wrote:

    “Don’t diet. I always eat pizza fries ice cream chocolate etc. It’s the portion that matters not the food. A diet isn’t sustainable and why people gain everything back and some. Eat enjoy move on. Now that’s self-love and life.”

    I wanted to say something much harsher, but opted for the following response:

    “The preceding message works fine for people who are 10-15lbs overweight. If (as I am) you are morbidly obese, please consult medical professionals (as I have), and not people who do not understand what REAL weight issues are.”

    Believe me, the first three responses that I typed were much ruder.

    I cannot stand people trying to give me weight loss advice. Everyone seems to think they know the secret. Let me let you in on a little secret: If there was one magic bullet to lose a lot of weight and keep it off, the entire world would be slim. Hey friend, I know your heart is in the right place, but kindly keep your extremely unwelcome unsolicited advice to yourself.

    That, incidentally, is good advice for anyone who is tempted to give weight-loss advice to anyone who is overweight, and who did not ask for it. If we wanted your advice, we would have asked for it. Yes, there is the extremely small percentage of people who do not know how to ask for help, and there might even be people who will be grateful for it… although I doubt it. To help you understand, this is the conversation:

    You: “Oh, I see you are having trouble losing weight. What you should do is this. I promise it will just melt off!”

    Fat Guy/Girl: “Thank you. I will consider that.”

    But here’s the thing: What Fat Guy/Girl is thinking is: “You know what, you sanctimonious prick? I did not ask for your advice, I do not want your advice, and any implication that there is a simple way to lose this much weight implies you think that I am weak and a failure, and without your help I cannot succeed. Do you think I like being morbidly obese? Do you think I do it because it is fun, or because of how attractive it makes me to the opposite sex? You asshole, I am fat because of either psychological or physiological reasons that are none of your damned business… and if they were, I would have shared them with you long since. Also, Ass: Do you think you are the first person to tell me the secret to weight loss? You are not in the top 20. Guess what? Most of you are giving me different advice. You know what the only thing all of you have in common? I did not ask for your advice, I do not want your advice, and it is a shame that it is illegal for me to punch you in the face for giving me your advice.

    Let me make this clear. While there may be others, these are the most obvious categories of overweight people:

    1. People who are happy being overweight. While this is probably the rarest of them, it is a thing.

    2. People who are unhappy being overweight but have not started trying to lose weight.

    3. People who are unhappy being overweight and who have tried and failed to lose weight.

    4. People who are unhappy being overweight and who have lost the weight then regained the weight, often several times.

    There are others, I am sure. Unless someone from any of these categories says to you “Hey, friend… I know you are slim, and I am not, and I would like your advice on how I can become more like you” then they do not want your advice.

    As a bonus, talking about their weight issues is always counterproductive. Guess what? They will know… and it will discourage them more. Your gossiping about their weight problems is just mean and makes you sound like you are still in high school.

    You might know what the psychological trauma they faced is, you may not. Yes, everyone knows I was in the Army, and some people know (or have an idea of) what I went through. Fewer people know about my childhood. You might know it all, you might know none of it. It doesn’t matter. Unless I ask you for your advice, mind your own damned business.

    For the record: Every time you tell an overweight person that the key to life is moderation and portion control, most of them want to reach for a large all-dressed pizza, a double-cheeseburger with a side of fries, or a large plate of deep-fried breaded wings dripping with sauce. If we don’t do that, it is not because of you… any more than if we do that it is because of you. Our weight gain may have many causes, but as adults, we are responsible for it; nobody forced me to make a huge plate of extra-creamy pasta with meats and cheeses and a large plate of garlic bread. I am fat because of me.

    Now please understand the corollary of that: If we eat healthy, successfully practice the self-control that we all need, and we do lose weight, we get the credit… not you.

    Have a great day. I’m going to have my lunch, and then I need a cigar before class starts.

  • A Cause to Die For

    I have had a number of causes in my life that I have been (and am) passionate about. I have protested, I have been an activist, and I have been a soldier. I have written articles in support of the causes I believe in and against those things that I oppose. I hope that I have done that well, and I know that in some cases I have changed some minds.

    I hope I have never made my case to someone, and then, being told that it is not their fight, gotten angry with them that they would not take up my cause.

    In case you are not paying attention, there are a number of protests going on in Canada, most specifically in Ottawa and at the Detroit-Windsor border crossing. The protests are around vaccine mandates and passports, and the terrible effects that the two years of pandemic have had, and how bad the government’s response has been. “IT’S ABOUT FREEDOM!” Maybe it is, maybe it is not. I am not taking a hardline position on this. I have told several of my friends that this is not a cause that I am willing to take on as my own. It is not that I oppose their position… I am just not going to be passionately supporting them.

    I have three friends – none of whom are only Facebook friends – who are extremely passionate about the cause. Each of them has tried to convince me, in their way, that this cause is the most important thing in the world. Each of them has equated the Canadian government of 2022 to Nazi Germany, and each of them has told me that if I am not willing to stand up and fight for this then I am as bad as the people who stood idly by as Jewish businesses were being shut down, leading eventually to the deportation of the Jewish population to the death camps at Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Belzec, Majdanek, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Each of them has told me that if I served in the Israeli Defense Forces and am not willing to stand up for their cause then it is obvious that the IDF does not stand for freedom.

    Each one of them is infuriating.

    Firstly, and I cannot stress this enough, I served 2.5 years in the IDF and rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant. While there is an official position and mission of the IDF, it is not set by Staff Sergeants… certainly not by one who did his conscription service and was discharged twenty-five years ago. On top of that, if you have ever tried to get ten Israelis to agree on anything, from the peace talks to the lunch order, then you will know that it is a futile task at which kings and deities have failed.

    I have tried to tell each of them that I am not taking a strong position on this movement. Each of them has tried to guilt me into it. Each has tried to convince me that I am letting another Holocaust happen and standing by passively.

    I respect that some people are against getting the Covid-19 vaccine. I do not agree with them, but hey, it is their choice. To equate them to Jews in Nazi Germany is absurd. Jews did not have a choice. It was not only Jews who wore the black hats and shtreimels and wore side locks who were sent to the gas chambers; if you had one Jewish grandparent, you were considers tiersch untermenschen and would be cleansed from the face of the earth. That was Nazi Germany. In Canada, if you want to be able to eat in restaurants, if you want to be able to travel to the United States (a mandate from the US, by the way), then get the vaccine. It’s as simple as that.

    Two of these friends have told me that for the people not getting the vaccine it is like trying to tell a Jew to be Christian. I’m sorry, but for me that is a ridiculous comparison. We are dealing with a global pandemic, and the only way out is through a combination of science (by doctors and scientists), and the cooperation of the rest of the population. If you are unable to get the vaccine (and there are people who have legitimate medical reasons) then that is one thing. If you just do not believe in the vaccine and do not want to get it, well that is also legitimate… but it can be helped.

    I have a friend whose son was laid off from Canada Post because he is unvaccinated, and he accepts that. When we take a stance and are willing to accept the consequences for that stance, then it is commendable. Mohammed Ali refused the draft; he was stripped of his title and went to jail for his principles. He did not flee the country or hide in some underground, he stood up and said ‘I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.’ You may or may not agree with his position on the war (which is much easier to look at as black and white in 2022 than it was in the heat of 1966), but you have to respect his actions.

    In the middle of a global pandemic, anyone who refuses to get vaccinated (simply because they do not believe in the science) but expects to be treated like everyone who did get vaccinated, is taking a stance but is unwilling to accept the consequences. ‘You must be vaccinated to cross the border.’ That is (a very simplistic wording of) the law right now. Will it change? Maybe yes, maybe no. If your job requires you to cross the border but you refuse to get the vaccine, then you cannot break the law. Can you protest the law? Absolutely. Is it a just and fair law? I don’t know. Do you have the right to require me to protest the law? No. Do you have the right to take over an entire city, or blockade international border crossings? To make your point, I suppose you do… but do it for a weekend and then go home. When protesting the government, you have a better chance of winning widespread public support if you do not inconvenience the people who you think you are fighting for… at least, not beyond the time it takes to make your point.

    I am not saying that ‘I do not work in the auto industry, and so my livelihood does not rely on the Ambassador Bridge traffic, and so I am not protesting.’ I am not saying that ‘I do not live in Ottawa, therefore I have not been inconvenienced by the protests, and so I am not protesting.’ I am saying that while I understand why people are protesting, I am not going to get worked up about it, and I am certainly not taking a strong position either way. Trying to force me to do so will not change that, and that position does not make me ‘just like those who stood by and let the Holocaust happen.’ That, my friends, will raise my hackles, but not in favour of your cause, rather against you for having the nerve to equate pandemic measures to the worst crime in human history.