Last week did not bring a
large amount of weight loss. Actually, last week came with the gain of one
pound. Its not like I don’t have excuses. I know you don’t want to hear them,
but I practiced them, so you have to read them: It was Kim’s birthday week. We
bought a cake. I cooked a big birthday dinner. We had friends over for a
whiskey tasting. It was national tequila day. We spent a day on the lake. Last
week had days that ended in y. I have more, but you get the idea.
I have over 100 pounds I
need to lose…again. That is really defeating to say. I have done it four times
in my life. Once in high school. After the end of football season my senior
year I decided to just kill it. I hardly ate and I worked out all the time. By
the time graduation rolled around I was almost half the person I started out as
that year. The second time was the year Kim and I got married. I could not let
her look better than me in the wedding pics! She still did, but I was at a
decent weight. The third time was when I started this blog in 2006. I decided I
wanted to run a marathon, so I lost 145 pounds or so (380 to 235) ran a couple of marathons and did a couple
triathlons. Most recently, I worked with a doctor in Arkansas and lost about
110 pounds back in 2014. I was able to keep it off the longest, but it came back.
Not as high, but still unhealthy.
I mentioned last week, I
was reading a book by Dr. Nick Yphantides. It chronicles his journey of going
from 467 pounds to his ideal weight over a baseball season, Seriously, he quit
his job, bought a van and went to every major league park over an entire
baseball season drinking only protein shakes to lose weight. What is so interesting
about his story, is that he has kept the weight off ever since, we are talking
almost 20 years. He admits he had to do something drastic to stay engaged because
he had so much to lose, but he also started formulating the plan to keep it off
from the very start. Do you know studies suggest that only 5 to 10% of people who
lose over a 100 pounds keep it off for more than a year!
I can’t quit my job and I
could not see a baseball game right now if I wanted to. However, I do have a
doctor friend to help make sure I don’t kill myself and I can stop eating solid
food and stop drinking calories of any kind and only drink protein shakes and
water to lose weight. I have aligned my time frame with the election. I started
a couple days ago. It was 100 days until the election. As anyone who knows me
well knows, I have at least 100 days of crazy in me.
The election time frame
works well for me symbolically. I realized our country was not made up of the people
I thought it was, and I realized our systems were not always good. I lamented
this realization and I daily lament the difference between what I thought
leadership looked like and what has been rewarded. I use food to cope with or
distract me from that at times, and it got really bad after 2016.
Finally, letting you know
this is a little scary for me. I may see you; you may come over. It is really
hard to tell people you are going to do something and then not do it. I guess
that is why I am putting it in writing. No bourbon, no Big Green Egg steaks, brisket,
or butt until the election. As crazy as it sounds, at this point, it is better
than the alternative to me. I will celebrate on election night, hopefully in
more ways than one.
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