Losing a part of me

Category: Psychology

  • Why Are We Fat?

    This is another article that I wrote two years ago, which I revisited now. Thinking back on the psychology of obesity, I thought I would re-post it here.

    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 forty 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.

  • 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 72

    One of the most infuriating parts of my life is the bathroom scale, and the unreliable floor underneath it. There are mornings when I want to drop to my knees and hug them. There are mornings when I want to set off huge explosives at ground zero and let them both leave this world to the hell that they so often make my life.

    Over the last couple of days, I was upset that I was not losing weight at the rate that I would like to, and yesterday I chalked that up to a lack of bowel movement. This morning, after a very respectable make-up for yesterday’s unproductive bathroom attempt, and after a pretty decent diet day (I did have a handful of peanuts, but that shouldn’t destroy me) I got onto the scale to see that I was actually up a pound. You can never find an M-18 Claymore when you need one. I figured it was time to give up on my diet, because obviously nothing that I was doing was working.

    After my shower, I decided to step back onto the scale. Not only was I down from before the shower, but I was also two pounds down from yesterday. I intentionally do not move the bathroom scale – not even an inch – to make sure that any inconsistencies are consistent. I do not know if the scale somehow knows that today is April Fool’s Day and decided to have a little fun with me, but I decided (against habit) to leave both weights in my register. I would usually delete the first and leave the second, so I only have one weight registered on any one day. For today, I decided to make an exception. We will see tomorrow what it says, and hopefully I will be back on track.

    Yes, I know. Either this coming Wednesday, or in the worst-case scenario on my following doctor’s appointment two weeks later, I will start to be able to register my weight on the proper medical scale. I was hoping to be able to start this coming week, but unless I lose five more pounds between now and then, it is unlikely that I will be under the limit. We shall see. In the meantime, the experts say that I should not be weighing myself every day. That has to be exponentially true for people with unreliable floors. If it wouldn’t disrupt my dog’s schedule, I would seriously consider moving the scale into the bedroom.

    I have taken a nice piece of fish out of the freezer for dinner, so my food plans for the day are to have a nice salad (with canned salmon) for lunch and a piece of fresh salmon with a side salad for dinner. I suspect though that I am going to have to start cutting down on my portions of canned salmon, so rather than having the full tin, I will use half of it, and finish it tomorrow. I might also lessen the number of pumpkin seeds I put on both my afternoon and evening salads. We’ will see. I have to find a way to lose more weight – I have been depriving myself for 72 days, and while I made good progress, it is definitely not great progress.

    Happy April Fool’s Day folks… and have a great day!

  • Day 70

    I noticed that while I am teaching, I am going through lozenges like they are candy. I have to wonder if it is because I feel the need (I do speak quite a bit while I am teaching, but not so much that I would need this many of them), or if it is just a habit. I am glad I had the foresight to purchase sugar-free lozenges.

    My weight is down nearly 1.5 lbs. this morning… and I am still nearly two pounds up from what I weighed on Friday. As I said yesterday, the system is just not fair. I know that if I was following the original program to the letter – that is, drinking four shakes per day, no meals, no coffee with milk and sugar – then the weight would be melting off. I would likely be down 75 lbs. by now. I am hoping that by doing the modified program it will allow me to maintain the weight loss long-term, rather than losing a lot of weight quickly, and then gaining it all back.

    I have noticed a couple of non-scale victories in the last few days.

    1. It is easier to stand from a sitting position than it was at my heaviest weight. Whether from my office chair or from the porcelain throne, I am no longer struggling to stand as I did for a few months. If this is not a quantifiable improvement, it is certainly a noticeable one!
    2. While I am definitely not where I want to be, I am thrilled that I can walk and maintain a slightly brisk pace. It makes a world of difference when I walk with Princess Sophie, and when I am able to start walking for exercise, it will mean even more. To be clear, I could start walking for exercise anytime I want; I am waiting for the weather to cooperate. This morning the temperatures are hovering around 0°c and with the rain the sidewalks are quite slippery.
    3. In December/January, my fitness watch band secured to my right wrist on the last hole. It was only this morning that I realized it is now on the fifth hole. That is nearly an inch of improvement… in my wrist! I am looking forward to when my gold watch fits around my left wrist. It has a solid gold band and cannot be resized. The phases to it will be: Cannot close, closes tightly, closes comfortably, closes loosely. Knowing that it was my father’s, and my father was a significantly smaller man than I was, I do not expect it will be too loose. It is the sort of watch one would only wear for fancy occasions. I was thrilled in 2020 when I was able to wear it under my suit for the High Holiday services.

    I made it through Monday with very little cheating. The jar of peanuts I bought for the ride from Montreal is half full, and I took a handful as I got into the car yesterday. I suppose that will happen from time to time until the jar is empty. I will not allow myself to buy another jar. Anyhow, I much prefer the red skinned peanuts I can get at Bulk Barn to the Planters Peanuts… and I can buy much smaller quantities when I want a small treat!

    I have a number of errands to run today so I will be out and about a lot. The first of those is a doctor’s appointment for HRF… it is a routine seasonal visit to prepare her to start with the flea and tick medications. She spent most of her life in sunny Southern California, and this winter was the first season that she did not need those meds. With spring in the air, she will get them again. Hopefully they have the same gummy option that we had in the US. I know she liked those much better than the stuff we used to have to apply to the back of her neck. I suppose we will find out in an hour or so!

    After that I will bring her home, and I have to go back out. I have a few things I want to pick up at the hardware store, and I will do a little grocery shopping as well. I will likely do those errands after lunch.

    I noticed Monday that when I picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy, there was one that was missing. My doctor had refilled my prescription for colchicine, but he had mentioned that he would be taking me off that, and putting me on a pill called allopurinol, which would help to prevent gout inflammations by keeping the levels of uric acid in my system low. There was none of that, so yesterday I called the doctor’s office, and sure enough the nurses had no record of it. The doctor is on vacation this week, but I will be able to see him next week when I go in to get weighed. As long as the colchicine is working, I am in no rush for it… but I would like to start this new regimen, which if my father’s history is any indication I will be on for the rest of my life.

    I dug up an article I wrote a couple of years ago which I decided to republish today. It is one of those encouragement articles that I felt I needed to reread over the last couple of days, knowing that I am only losing so much per week now… It is called One Pound Lose is Three Pounds of Progress. It will go live on my blog at noon today.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 69

    After the disaster that was the weekend, I am happy to report that I did not veer from my program at all on Monday. A shake for breakfast and for my evening snack, a salad for lunch, and chicken with a salad for dinner. I went to bed a little peckish, but overall, I am happy with how the day went. I only wish it was not quite so cold, or I might have been able to go out for a walk.

    HRF Princess Sophie came home right about the time I was set to start teaching, and she had eaten and been for her walk. I suspect she was tired from a fun-filled weekend with Natalie… we had a wonderful reunion (as we always do), and then she spent most of the evening in her daybed supervising as I taught, until it was time to move into the real bed for a proper night’s sleep with Daddy. I won’t lie… I have missed having her next to me at night. She gave me a little bit of love, but mostly lay down at the foot of the bed. I think she is a wee bit upset with me that I left her for three days.

    The bathroom scale is heading in the right direction again, but I know it will probably take a week to recover the progress that I lost in just a few days.

    It is not fair. Over the course of three days, I did not eat well but I also did not eat too badly, and yet I still gained something like four pounds. It is now going to take at least a week of assiduous dieting to lose those four pounds. That is simply unfair. The math simply does not work. Let’s be honest: If I had gorged myself on some of my favourite foods – Montreal Smoked Meat, Buffalo Wings, Pizza, and things like that – then I would understand. I just do not see how it is fair that I ate a little bad and have to pay for it for so long. Where’s your manager? I would like to file a complaint!

    Okay, let’s get down to it. I am going to stick to the program again today, and hopefully get back down to where I was… before I can continue to move forward.

    Once again, I am reminded that I just do not understand women. I just don’t get them. I don’t think I ever will. FML.

    I was going to write about some of the non-scale victories I have noticed over the last few days, but all of a sudden, I just don’t feel like writing so screw it.

    Have a great day.

  • Day 65

    I am off to Montreal this morning. After my shake (which I am drinking as I type) I will pack HRF Princess Sophie into the car – her kit is already packed and ready to go – and I will drive her to the dog sitter’s house. From there, I will drive straight east – I have a couple of stops to make along the way, but all in all it should be a rather quick drive.

    Yesterday had some difficult moments for me. My empathetic side can get the better of me, and when those that I care for are unhappy then I am too. It is maddening when there is nothing I can do to help them. I know that things will get better… but the bad days are bad.

    I kept to the program yesterday, although I was downing the lozenges like candy as I taught last night. I do not know if that was a result of the trauma, or if it is just that they were there and readily available. I also do not know if it is the reason my weight was up this morning. I will endeavour to do better today.

    It will be a long but relaxing drive to Montreal, with only my audio entertainment and my cigars to keep me company. Have a great day folks!

  • Day 60

    There was a bit more temptation at Ryan’s place than I was comfortable with, but I got away nearly unscathed. We had a wonderful day smoking cigars and throwing darts, and then they decided, rather than going ahead with the pork chops for dinner as they had planned, they were ordering fish and chips. Glenn was as insistent as ever that I take some, but I insisted that I was on a diet and couldn’t have it. ‘But fish is healthy!’ Yes, Glenn… but dipping it in an inch of batter and deep-frying it is not. ‘You just scrape the batter off!’ Yes, but the frying oil is in the fish, and thank you, but no thank you. I did indulge in a handful of peanuts… but that was the only cheating that I did.

    Princess Sophie and I arrived home around 9:00pm and I prepared the chicken and salad which I had already defrosted and planned. It was quite good… if not as satisfying as the deep-fried fish and chips might have been. I was rewarded for my discipline by another low number on the bathroom scale. Although I am still not sure how accurate it is or might be, I know it is in the same spot on the floor as it was yesterday, and so it should be as consistently accurate or inaccurate as it was yesterday. Down is down, and on a weight loss program down is good.

    I woke up at 5:45am to do what one does at that hour before returning to bed on a Sunday, but I could not sleep after that for a spell. Upon realizing that I would not easily get back to slumber, I donned my spectacles and checked my phone. I answered a couple of emails, I played my game, I checked Facebook. After maybe forty-five minutes or so I realized my eyes were finally growing heavy again, and I got another three hours of sleep.

    Usually when I cannot fall asleep like that, there is something weighing on my mind. In August when I suddenly and abruptly found myself back in Canada, knowing I had to find an apartment and get settled… not to mention coordinate with my friends in California getting my apartment closed out and my stuff shipped. That kept me awake. There have been a couple of relationship issues that have kept me awake. Last week, there was one night when I was so obsessed by my Government of Canada security clearance going through. All of these and more have been reasons that I have been unable to get back to sleep in the past 7-8 months. Last night there was nothing. Rather, there was something that I was thinking about, but it is simple and meaningless and irrelevant. I was telling Leslie this morning that I think sometimes my brain said ‘Well, all of the pieces of your life are in order right now, but I don’t want to sleep so I am going to make you obsess about something that is really nothing.’

    I did consider for a brief moment getting out of bed and looking into why one of my credit cards was declined on Friday, but I decided that if I got my mind really working then I would never actually get back to sleep. I took care of that this morning – their fraud department thought that I might not really be me. Believe me folks, if I was using stolen credit cards then I would not be looking at every gas station in town for the lowest price, and then buying regular. Dude, if I am using a stolen credit card then I promise you I am putting the premium gas into my Subaru!

    Because I got a later start to the day than usual (yay lazy weekends!) I will finish up some personal stuff on the computer, and then after lunch I will probably sit on the balcony smoking cigars. While it will not be nearly as pleasant as it was Thursday, the forecasted high today is 11°c, and the rain should have ended by now. I will take Her Royal Floofness for a couple of walks of course, and then dinner and an early bedtime. I have some reading to do to prepare for a course that I might be asked to teach toward the end of April (and for which I will have to create the courseware, before you wonder how far in advance I start preparing to teach a class), so that will be done on the balcony with a cigar as well. If Leslie is not too busy, it would be nice to have a chat with her as well.

    I really do miss her and am counting down the days until she comes for her next visit. I am not just saying that because she is the most loyal reader of this blog (Hi Sweetie!!) but because I mean it. Time with her is better than time apart from her. Had she been in bad with me when I couldn’t sleep this morning, she would have snuggled with me, and things would have been better.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 54

    Happy Pi Day! As there is not a pie known to me that would be acceptable to eat within the parameters of my diet, I am going to stick to the mathematical formula.

    I did not do as well food-wise yesterday as I might have, but I certainly had the opportunity to do worse, and so I will declare victory.

    I took my sons to my usual breakfast spot in Burlington. The younger son had an Oreo concoction that looked absolutely sinful. The older son had a corned beef hash which looked a lot more up my alley, and he allowed me to take a taste. I had an omelet with cheese and onions, eschewing both the hash browns and the toast for sliced tomato. To compare my plate with theirs was akin to comparing Charles Atlas to the 98-pound weakling. I was comforted by constantly reminding myself that this is what I need to do in order to achieve my goals. I did add some hot sauce to spice it up a little…

    We returned to my apartment and watched the video of my father’s speech. Gilad was tired, and a little saddened by the video of his grandfather and went to sleep in my arms. It was one of the most heartwarming things I can remember. Aaron was glad to hear the stories and wondered aloud to me why Zaide never shared some of them while he was alive. I told him that I had heard most (but not all) of the stories… and what he did not share, he probably just thought he would have more time.

    When the video was over, Gilad was still an immoveable object. Aaron and I went onto the patio for a cigar, and we had a conversation about many things… some of which were painful for him. I will not go into details. It was still not a warm day, and after half a cigar we decided to go back inside. By this point we were able to roust Gilad, and they went home. I made a salad with a can of salmon. It did not satisfy me. I then decided (maybe 90 minutes later) to prepare my dinner (it was 4:30pm) and so I had another salad with a fresh salmon tail. I was still not satisfied. Over the course of the evening, I had one meal replacement shake and one meal replacement bar. All in all, I ate more than I should have, but not terribly so.

    I mentioned that the restaurant is one that I often frequent. I found it heartwarming that one of the waitresses told me she had planned to email me this week to see if I was okay. I told them I was, but that my weight-loss plans did not include breakfasting out. She congratulated me on my efforts, although there was no ‘Well you look great…’ I suppose despite losing 35 pounds so far (approximately) I have a very long way to go.

    In the evening, Leslie and I were discussing our upcoming trip, and we got on-line to order my beach shirts. I have a tradition of wearing very floral, Hawaiian-looking shirts when I am in Cuba. We found seven that we loved, but one of them will not ship until May, and so we ordered six of them. I also tried on my bathing suits, disappointed that neither of them will likely fit yet by the time we go, and so we found a couple of bathing suits that should do me well. It is much cheaper to buy these things in the US, and so I ordered them to Leslie’s place. The added benefit of this is that she will be here in a few weeks and will bring them all. Anything that does not fit, I will send back and order the right size.

    I then decided to try again. You may remember that I have one pair of pants in Size 44 that did not fit me yet. They are the same brand as a couple of the other pair that I have been wearing but are a smaller cut. I tried them on last night. Lo and behold, they are tight… but they fit! These non-scale victories are so much more rewarding than the numbers on an unreliable scale.

    Speaking of the scale, this morning my weight was down once again… almost half a pound from yesterday. There were a couple of bad weeks, but I am back on track and hope to stay that way. I am going to the tailor the end of next week, and I hope to be in a good place. I have decided, however, that I will likely buy fewer clothes than I originally had planned. I do not want to spend too much money on clothes that I hope to no longer be able to wear in a couple of months. We’ll see… I have ten days to make up my mind. I will definitely be buying some shirts, but suits? We’ll see.

    The weather is warming up. Today’s high should reach 8°c, dropping to 3°c tomorrow… then up to 10°c and 16°c for Wednesday and Thursday. In fact, the ten-day forecast only has one number below zero, the -3°c that is today’s low, which is what it was when I took HRF out for her walk this morning. Being mid-March, it is not unheard of that the below-zero weather is officially behind us for the season, which means that cigars on the balcony will become even more commonplace than they have been over the winter.

    Have a great day folks!

  • Day 50 (Part 2)

    I cheated again today, within the confines of the diet program. Actually, that may not be entirely true. You see, I usually have a salad (with a can of salmon or something) for lunch, and then a piece of fish or chicken for dinner. As a friend was coming over, and I had several errands and appointments today, I skipped the lunchtime salad and had a meal replacement bar. For dinner I had a piece of fish. I was still hungry during my class break, so I made a salad with canned salmon. I did have an extra meal replacement, but that is not the worst cheat.

    Somehow, I get to the end of the day, and I feel like I have failed. I ate too much. I cheated. Yes, I had an extra meal replacement… but I am still under 1500 calories today. I might be up half a pound or even a pound tomorrow morning, but that is only because of the substantial drop I registered today, and not because I cheated.

    I have to get out of this mindset that if I have more than 900 calories in a day then I am a failure.

    I just dismissed my class, and next week I start a new class, with mostly the same group. This coming class is way more in my comfort zone… I’ll be teaching Microsoft stuff, which is where I live and breathe. With the last few weeks there were portions of the classes I was less comfortable with. That will not be the case with a Windows 10 class. In the meantime, I have a weekend to look forward to. I have a meeting tomorrow morning, but I should be on my cigar perch by noon.

    Time for bed.

  • Day 48

    “The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.” -Truman Capote

    This quote came to me as I was pondering what to write about yesterday. There are two ways to look at yesterday:

    1. It was a total failure… insofar as I ate more than I should.
    2. It was a complete success… I did not eat anything that would be considered verboten.

    Which one is accurate? I don’t know. When I was originally doing the program religiously in Canada, you were allowed to buy enough shakes for the week… and not one more. While there was nothing stopping you from eating other foods off the program, you could have four shakes per day, and that was it. In the US when I was doing the program religiously, I had the option to buy as many products as I wanted… but the cost kept me in line. Now that I am doing a hybrid program, I can allocate X number of meal replacements per day, but I have to self-police with regard to foods not on the program… my salads, my proteins, and so on. I had a day last week when I probably had two more meal replacements than I should have, on top of the salads and proteins.

    Where yesterday was a resounding success is in comparison to the weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday were terrible cheat days – I drove the program right off a cliff, eating chips and fast foods and deep-fried Chinese food smothered in sugary batter. Yesterday I had a shake for breakfast, a salad with a can of salmon on it for lunch, two large pieces of chicken and a salad for dinner, and another shake in the evening. Did I stick to the script? No. Did I drive off a cliff? No. In contrast, I will call yesterday a success.

    There are days when we will fall down. The trick is to get back up again before the ref counts to ten.

    Have a great day folks!