I started off my day with a weigh-in, my first one in over four months, and the results were worse than I thought. Eating without restraint, not exercising, not really caring how much I was eating, I have gained an additional 15 pounds since the Summer, coming in at 323.8 pounds.
In perspective, this was my weight when I started my second semester at Divinity School in 2003, a weight that was 30 pounds higher than any weight I had previously seen, and a weight I didn't get below again until 2009 when I had been on Weight Watchers for seven months. This also means that since returning from India in January of 2011, I have gained 90 pounds total (though, actually, I gained 10 my first year, maintained my second year, and the other 80 are from the last two years alone).
Yesterday I managed to stop eating by 7:00pm, a monumental task of strength at this stage, and didn't eat until this morning, when I had 2 pieces of my homemade Vegan banana nut bread, an iced coffee as well. I felt like, when I woke up this morning, that I was RAGING a bit, really struggling with addiction issues, and I felt pretty unpleasant and out of control. Lunch ended up being a Coconut Juice, 1.5 fresh spring rolls with tofu, and a Vegetarian Pho soup. The dinner I have planned are leftovers from yesterday. I'm planning on clocking in at around 2500-2600 calories today, lower than the 3000 I have been attempting to get down to over the last week or so, and hoping that doesn't trigger withdrawal that is too far out of control.
I have been thinking more and more about how to approach this new lifestyle. There are definitely many components to making the changes that need to be need, and the first start is having an increased dialogue with my partner, making sure that I keep my needs to make changes front and center, and demand that those changes be honored and taken seriously. While I am in control of my actions and decisions, I do know that I often make decisions to make others happy, and I am also making decisions because of issues that are not making me happy.
Weight gain and food addiction is, front and center, a cry for help, a cry for help in the midst of feelings of helplessness and despair, and it takes a lot of strength to be able to vocalize and demand that what you are feeling and dealing with be taken seriously; hopefully, it won't ever have to come down to making a choice between my life and my relationship--I think that sort of thing happens in relationships where the love is gone, and where the two people are looking for ways to exit beforehand. As for me, I'm looking for a way to express some of the issues in the passage I went through leaving Asheville and getting through Portland, the changes in lifestyle, the changes in belief, and some other things that I don't feel like I have put to the side or processed as of yet that I really need to.
On the application front, I need to start whittling my eating down from this 4000-5000 a day streak that I am doing to a zero gain number: my zero gain number, the amount I can eat without gaining or losing weight, is currently 2894 calories a day. Conversely, if I want to lose 1 pound a week, then my calories need to come down to 2584 per day, 2264 per day for two pounds. Neither of those numbers include any exercise being a part of the equation. My current effort is to get myself to that 2584 mark, and then at the start of the New Year, make 2200 my line, adjusting that line once I am below 300 pounds again.
For a counting system, I am currently using the LiveStrong Gold calorie counter, which seems like a great compromise between the various counting systems. It's more accurate and easier to use than Fit Day, it's mostly free ($50 for a year vs $49 a month for WW meetings, $19 a month for WW online tools), but it lacks the community that Fit Day has, or the ease of combing calories with low fat, which is what the Weight Watchers Points Plus system does for you.
Exercise.....first off, it is hard to move around at this weight. I waddle like a duck when I try to walk, I move slowly, my belly and thighs are in the way of EVERYTHING, and all of my clothes fit like shit. After being thin for so long, after losing 143 pounds between 2009-2010, keeping it off for nearly two years, I am still not used to moving around in this body and it feels like I am carrying eight potato sacks with me everywhere I go.
My Yoga path, which once liberated me so, has become more of a burden than anything else. Once I got to Maine, bad Yoga schools, bad relationships with Yoga teachers, cold Yoga studios, getting a little beaten up in the Boston Yoga market, watching Yoga destroy and damage friends of mine, getting an inside look at how damaging the commercialization of Yoga has been to this practice (and since I'm sensitive to that sort of stuff already, it really does rub me the wrong way), realizing that I didn't have the life I once had for doing Yoga and not wanting to risk my relationship with a Yoga life, all have been considerations in what the hell happened to my practice. I keep thinking that I'm going to go back to martial arts someday, really interested in a vigorous Daoist practice, maybe even a sword-based Daoist or Japanese system, and I've also considered a Russian-style heated kettle bell workout, but there is definitely this hole inside of me that keeps thinking I regain the innocence, lose the critical mind, and get back to a supportive Yoga practice that gives me a Yoga life, but allows me to maintain a life, and with my wife, as well. I don't think that I can just count calories and really make a complete body and lifestyle transformation, so figuring out some way to get my body heated, get it moving, and adopting it into my life as a change in lifestyle, is something I still need to figure out. I've been considering sneaking into a heated Yoga class once this semester ends, just get there, sweat, suffer, push through, and then see how I can coordinate a regular practice that supports my health, my body, my lifestyle, and my relationship. If I can't find a way to make this change, then getting into something heated and strength-building has to be undertaken before winter really gets going.
So, it's 2:06 pm, another three hours until dinner, and food cravings are driving me CRAZY. I have a lot of homework in front of me, lots of grading and emails to get to, and really, I just want to eat, sleep, crash out. I feel like I am coming down from heroin right now.
There is a whole, spiritual, component to this as well, but I don't feel like I have the strength and clarity to talk about it right now, probably in another post soon. This is already more than enough to work on and contemplate and struggle through for the entire week.
God, I would kill for some cookies right now and I have a whole container of them on the table right now.
In perspective, this was my weight when I started my second semester at Divinity School in 2003, a weight that was 30 pounds higher than any weight I had previously seen, and a weight I didn't get below again until 2009 when I had been on Weight Watchers for seven months. This also means that since returning from India in January of 2011, I have gained 90 pounds total (though, actually, I gained 10 my first year, maintained my second year, and the other 80 are from the last two years alone).
Yesterday I managed to stop eating by 7:00pm, a monumental task of strength at this stage, and didn't eat until this morning, when I had 2 pieces of my homemade Vegan banana nut bread, an iced coffee as well. I felt like, when I woke up this morning, that I was RAGING a bit, really struggling with addiction issues, and I felt pretty unpleasant and out of control. Lunch ended up being a Coconut Juice, 1.5 fresh spring rolls with tofu, and a Vegetarian Pho soup. The dinner I have planned are leftovers from yesterday. I'm planning on clocking in at around 2500-2600 calories today, lower than the 3000 I have been attempting to get down to over the last week or so, and hoping that doesn't trigger withdrawal that is too far out of control.
I have been thinking more and more about how to approach this new lifestyle. There are definitely many components to making the changes that need to be need, and the first start is having an increased dialogue with my partner, making sure that I keep my needs to make changes front and center, and demand that those changes be honored and taken seriously. While I am in control of my actions and decisions, I do know that I often make decisions to make others happy, and I am also making decisions because of issues that are not making me happy.
Weight gain and food addiction is, front and center, a cry for help, a cry for help in the midst of feelings of helplessness and despair, and it takes a lot of strength to be able to vocalize and demand that what you are feeling and dealing with be taken seriously; hopefully, it won't ever have to come down to making a choice between my life and my relationship--I think that sort of thing happens in relationships where the love is gone, and where the two people are looking for ways to exit beforehand. As for me, I'm looking for a way to express some of the issues in the passage I went through leaving Asheville and getting through Portland, the changes in lifestyle, the changes in belief, and some other things that I don't feel like I have put to the side or processed as of yet that I really need to.
On the application front, I need to start whittling my eating down from this 4000-5000 a day streak that I am doing to a zero gain number: my zero gain number, the amount I can eat without gaining or losing weight, is currently 2894 calories a day. Conversely, if I want to lose 1 pound a week, then my calories need to come down to 2584 per day, 2264 per day for two pounds. Neither of those numbers include any exercise being a part of the equation. My current effort is to get myself to that 2584 mark, and then at the start of the New Year, make 2200 my line, adjusting that line once I am below 300 pounds again.
For a counting system, I am currently using the LiveStrong Gold calorie counter, which seems like a great compromise between the various counting systems. It's more accurate and easier to use than Fit Day, it's mostly free ($50 for a year vs $49 a month for WW meetings, $19 a month for WW online tools), but it lacks the community that Fit Day has, or the ease of combing calories with low fat, which is what the Weight Watchers Points Plus system does for you.
Exercise.....first off, it is hard to move around at this weight. I waddle like a duck when I try to walk, I move slowly, my belly and thighs are in the way of EVERYTHING, and all of my clothes fit like shit. After being thin for so long, after losing 143 pounds between 2009-2010, keeping it off for nearly two years, I am still not used to moving around in this body and it feels like I am carrying eight potato sacks with me everywhere I go.
My Yoga path, which once liberated me so, has become more of a burden than anything else. Once I got to Maine, bad Yoga schools, bad relationships with Yoga teachers, cold Yoga studios, getting a little beaten up in the Boston Yoga market, watching Yoga destroy and damage friends of mine, getting an inside look at how damaging the commercialization of Yoga has been to this practice (and since I'm sensitive to that sort of stuff already, it really does rub me the wrong way), realizing that I didn't have the life I once had for doing Yoga and not wanting to risk my relationship with a Yoga life, all have been considerations in what the hell happened to my practice. I keep thinking that I'm going to go back to martial arts someday, really interested in a vigorous Daoist practice, maybe even a sword-based Daoist or Japanese system, and I've also considered a Russian-style heated kettle bell workout, but there is definitely this hole inside of me that keeps thinking I regain the innocence, lose the critical mind, and get back to a supportive Yoga practice that gives me a Yoga life, but allows me to maintain a life, and with my wife, as well. I don't think that I can just count calories and really make a complete body and lifestyle transformation, so figuring out some way to get my body heated, get it moving, and adopting it into my life as a change in lifestyle, is something I still need to figure out. I've been considering sneaking into a heated Yoga class once this semester ends, just get there, sweat, suffer, push through, and then see how I can coordinate a regular practice that supports my health, my body, my lifestyle, and my relationship. If I can't find a way to make this change, then getting into something heated and strength-building has to be undertaken before winter really gets going.
So, it's 2:06 pm, another three hours until dinner, and food cravings are driving me CRAZY. I have a lot of homework in front of me, lots of grading and emails to get to, and really, I just want to eat, sleep, crash out. I feel like I am coming down from heroin right now.
There is a whole, spiritual, component to this as well, but I don't feel like I have the strength and clarity to talk about it right now, probably in another post soon. This is already more than enough to work on and contemplate and struggle through for the entire week.
God, I would kill for some cookies right now and I have a whole container of them on the table right now.
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