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I love food. My relationship with food is somewhat like the one Mike Birbiglia has with pizza: “I love pizza so much that I would marry it, but it would really just be an elaborate plot to eat her whole family at the reception.” My relationship with food is a wonderful one--but also a destructive one. I made one of my resolutions this year to get down to 180 pounds, something I haven’t been at in about eight years, although I came within about six about a year-and-a-half ago (that’s what happens when you are deployed for six months with no family and no worry about leftovers).
Today I have to squeeze into my jeans. I won’t buy a bigger size, because to me that is just permission to gain more weight. Tomorrow I start to work out. Once I set a goal and have specific rules to follow, I do pretty well. The problem is one, that if I get off course, I often let myself stay off course, and two, I have a major feast-or-famine problem.
By feast or famine, I mean that I can either go without eating hardly anything or I end up eating thirds on meals and then throwing dessert on top of it. I just have a problem with excess (the bags of Diet Coke cans in recycling, 99.9% of which are mine, give proof to that). So if I’m gonna eat, I’m gonna eat.
I think my issue with excess is why I haven’t done many things that others might experiment with. I have never done a drug that been for medicinal or Diet Cokian purposes (although, if you ask my wife, she will tell you I often don’t take those medicinal ones, even if I should). I joined the Air Force when I was 19 and was often subject to drug testing, so that pretty much guaranteed I wouldn’t do them even if I wanted (drug testing was supposedly random, but, man, did I get picked a lot). I don’t have any of those things blocking me, but I also don’t have any desire (and if I did, I would have the fear that trying once, even once, would turn me into an addict...but, hey, maybe it would end up making me skinny). Even if I wanted to smoke (as my wife has said she wants to do about two dozen times this week), I would not because of the price. And because I can’t stand the smell.
I had my first drink when I was 18. On average I only drank about four times a year until I was 26, but when I did drink, I drank to get drunk (until I discovered rum, I didn’t understand any other reason, as I thought most alcohol tasted horrible). When I was 26, I got my first hangover. I stopped drinking after December that year and ended up not having another drink for seven years. I haven’t really made a conscious decision to keep alcohol out of my life right now, but I still haven’t had a drink in two years (six months in the Middle East helped with that, too).
So again I take up my suit of armor (with stretch lining) to battle my excess. I have a fresh notebook to keep track of my food and exercise (I’ve found I always underestimate the former and overestimate the latter if I don’t).
Today I have to squeeze into my jeans. I won’t buy a bigger size, because to me that is just permission to gain more weight. Tomorrow I start to work out. Once I set a goal and have specific rules to follow, I do pretty well. The problem is one, that if I get off course, I often let myself stay off course, and two, I have a major feast-or-famine problem.
By feast or famine, I mean that I can either go without eating hardly anything or I end up eating thirds on meals and then throwing dessert on top of it. I just have a problem with excess (the bags of Diet Coke cans in recycling, 99.9% of which are mine, give proof to that). So if I’m gonna eat, I’m gonna eat.
I think my issue with excess is why I haven’t done many things that others might experiment with. I have never done a drug that been for medicinal or Diet Cokian purposes (although, if you ask my wife, she will tell you I often don’t take those medicinal ones, even if I should). I joined the Air Force when I was 19 and was often subject to drug testing, so that pretty much guaranteed I wouldn’t do them even if I wanted (drug testing was supposedly random, but, man, did I get picked a lot). I don’t have any of those things blocking me, but I also don’t have any desire (and if I did, I would have the fear that trying once, even once, would turn me into an addict...but, hey, maybe it would end up making me skinny). Even if I wanted to smoke (as my wife has said she wants to do about two dozen times this week), I would not because of the price. And because I can’t stand the smell.
I had my first drink when I was 18. On average I only drank about four times a year until I was 26, but when I did drink, I drank to get drunk (until I discovered rum, I didn’t understand any other reason, as I thought most alcohol tasted horrible). When I was 26, I got my first hangover. I stopped drinking after December that year and ended up not having another drink for seven years. I haven’t really made a conscious decision to keep alcohol out of my life right now, but I still haven’t had a drink in two years (six months in the Middle East helped with that, too).
So again I take up my suit of armor (with stretch lining) to battle my excess. I have a fresh notebook to keep track of my food and exercise (I’ve found I always underestimate the former and overestimate the latter if I don’t).
If you came with in 6 pounds of 180 when you came back from Qatar then that was to skinny! You need to weigh more than that. You were TO thin!