April 28th, 2012: Well there must be something to the calorie reduction. If nothing else, it works for my brain today. I’m down another pound to 272. A great week followed a tough one. Still got 83 more lbs. to go, but hell, I’m in the double-digits instead of the triples!
Do you have someone special who’s fighting this battle right alongside you? I’m fortunate, I have a wife who supports me in all I do, and that includes telling me like it is when I need to hear it. She is not my steady psychologist, nor is she there to be my constant shoulder to cry on, and that’s only way I’d have it. I feel like my bitching and moaning is best aired out with writing, except in the worst of times, and those better be brief and irregular occurrences. I ain’t engaged in a weight-war to burden people, on the contrary…
The program is expensive, both in terms of money and time. Juliana gets that. The program doesn’t do its thing overnight. Juliana gets that. The program sometimes seems to make me a grouchy asshole. Juliana gets that.
I hope you’re as lucky as me when it comes to your battle buddy.
April 28th, 2020: In all past relationships I’ve had, it seems like I’m the liability. I’m the one who usually has the addiction problem. I’m the one with the skeletons. This isn’t to say I ain’t no fun, or I’m worthless, I’m just saying it’s always me who’s working on reversing course due to extreme behavior choices that have led to less than stellar health.
In all the relationships I had prior to my marriage, my significant other has eventually begun to ride my ass about what those choices have done to my waistline. My family – parents and brother, though maybe well-meaning, took an approach that only added to my guilt, which as you oughta know by now, only makes me want to dive further into the abyss. Same has gone for past girlfriends.
My wife, though, she knows I know I have a problem with food, but she trusts that I’m doing my best, and never tries to advise me, or guilt me, and takes a very thoughtful approach with me that never does anything but help me. Not sure if there’s a manual for how to handle your significant other when he’s battling food addiction, but if there is, she follows it to the letter.
I don’t really know what it’s like to be the one without the weight problem in a relationship, but I’m quite experienced as far as being on the other side. I wish I could say for sure as a more experienced individual that I’d tell my significant other to shut-up and trust me if that person rode my ass about losing weight. I do know it has to be that way, or it just doesn’t work. But like I said in the 2012 post, I have the full support of my wife, who let’s me pick my way through the minefield of food-demons.
I’ve learned that the moment I’m told to do something about my weight, or guilted about it, or given unsolicited advice about it, that person who just gave it to me is no longer my friend, even if they thought they were being my friend by puking those words out. Extreme – yes. Unfortunate – yes. True – yes because from then on all the “misery” I have to go through has his or her dirty fingerprint on it – just a little, but also just enough, and nobody is worth that. It also means from then on I will never again sit down at a table and eat with them.
