"Hey John! John, get your butt in here! We gotta get this fat guy moving so he can lose some weight!" These are the first sentences that some dude that I just met and would be working the next hour with has ever said to/about me. I rationalized with myself and thought that this guy (we will call him Herby to protect his innocence) just gets comfortable with people really, really, really fast. So I chuckle and say "Well, Herby unloading and demonstrating these tools and then reloading them is my Summer weight loss program." This garners a few good natured laughs from the growing crowd surrounding Herby and myself. "It's not working." Herby says flatly. There are no laughs, no winks, no friendly nudges and certainly no follow up 'Just kidding!'s. Herby, a guy in arguable worse shape than myself and no less than three times my age just took a shot at my weight. Time to die Herby, time to die.
Like a great white shark hunting seals off of the tip of South Africa, I explode into Herby with the force of a thousand freight trains. He is gone before he hits the ground, and a burly electrician curls into the fetal position and sobs in the corner.
Like a fat and manly Ally McBeal, I wake up from my daydream to realize that: A) I didn't destroy Herby and B) Everyone is waiting for me to start my sales presentation. When reality sets in I say a prayer of thanks that I am not Ally McBeal (and will never write that name again!) and can see that I'm feeling a bubbling of emotions, none of which are good. This does not bode well for me.
A strong argument could be made that until recently I eat all the time. That creates issues all their own, but my eating habits get decidedly worse when emotions are involved. When tubby is both hungry and depressed hide the children because everything is fair game. The sad person stereotype is to feel better via some delicious nutricious ice cream. When my smile turns into a frown a red phone rings at Ben & Jerry's world headquarters and production is boosted by 500%. Unfortunately these feelings occur whether or not I am on a diet. The only difference between being on a diet or not is that when I am not dieting an incident like this is merely accelerated self destruction, while when I am on a diet this is called a rage quit.
Scene: It is the end of a very long night at work a few years ago. As I walk from the movie theater that I was managing to my car I feel stress start to bubble up. I open my car door and see an unopened Slimfast in the cup holder. I grab hold of the Slimfast at the same time I see red and a second later there is a strawberry Slimfast sailing through the air into the darkness. I see it reappear in the light above a lamp post 15 yards away and then again when it explodes against another lightpost about 45 yards out. Like the Shot Heard 'Round the World, this explosion marked a point from which there is no return. Minutes later the good person at Wendy's late night window told me to "Be safe!" when handing me the half a cow in a bag that I destroyed shortly thereafter. When I quit a diet in anger, I quit with the kind of tenacity usually reserved for Nathan's Hot Dog eating contests. Kobeashi has nothing on me.
We all have our little triggers and I think that it is a universal truth that when we are on diets or trying to quit something we really like doing those little triggers turn into big triggers, and big triggers make a big bang when set off. In starting a diet I have nearly come to the conclusion that there is wisdom in treating that situation as though I have entered a monastic order. Specificly, sequester myself and take a vow of silence, at least for the first three weeks.
Things are different this time around though. I have entered a physical crossroads: At the age of 28 I still have time to lose weight and return to a semblance of my former physical glory. On the other side of the coin, my weight is making itself manifest through a higher cholesterol and some liver enzyme issues. If I don't make changes those will get worse. So now is the time to make a change.... again.
I have my goals, I have a support team and I potentially have a medical condition that will help me lose weight by taking all of the fun out of eating: Gluten Intolerance. So wish me luck my friends, and watch for flying Slimfasts.
