June 26th, 2012: Man, this is coming down to the wire. 252 today. I have 3 days to lose 2 pounds, simply to stand tall on the proving grounds. I’ve brought The Program into the ring, and we’re in the championship rounds.
The only caution so far is this realization that I haven’t fundamentally changed. I know I look different, my clothes are different, I can run further, I can breathe better, I can tie my shoes, and although I still stand out in almost all groups of people as the fattest person, I know I no longer look like I could tip over from fat-heart failure at any moment. But still my same anxieties remain, I still have fears of failure. I feel that any moment any slip could rip me right off this track.
I wonder if this ends at goal weight? I doubt it. Well, I don’t know maybe it’s easier then? There are a lot of these questions I’ll only be able to answer when I get there. For the time being, having the challenge of the remaining load of pounds to lose is something I can turn from daunting into comforting. I can do this because there’s no reason to sit back and relax and be satisfied and bored. Still much more work to do.
June 26th, 2020: Hurrying weight loss is not good. It’s one of the deadly sins of the program, and I see that this is what I was doing on this day in 2012.
I also see that I mentioned about still having the same fears, etc. at 250 lbs. that I did at 350 lbs. This is something I’ve discussed before.
So to address the first one a bit more (hurrying weight loss). You can’t hurry love and you can’t hurry loss. When I walked through the threshold of the Thunderdome, I know one of the first concepts I’d need to stifle was time dependency. I know I still dwelt on it, obviously, I was worried about 100 lbs. in 180 day. The reason for this is that I was closing in on 100 lbs. in 180 days. My dwelling on the subject was an earned reward. It was not something I allowed myself to fixate upon daily. Certainly not in the beginning.
I also knew I’d need to suppress any notions of losing weight for some particular event. As a boxer later on, it was different because I’d have to make a certain weight for a match, but on the program, I had to realize that no singular event is worth it. Nothing, no celebration, no cool life event (marriage, cruise, vacation, whatever) do you hear me (?) would come close to equaling the sustained effort required of the program. Any event as a singular reward to the program will be ANTI-FUCKING-CLIMACTIC. Remember that. The Program is not about 1 event.
The second, the one about fear. I’m likely reiterating here, but massively overweight people are very likely in that situation not from stupidity or laziness, but because of mental illness. It’s a very conspicuous manifestation of a person with an extreme personality who may have short-circuited somewhere along the line and began using food as a fire extinguisher. Stand a drug addict next to a sex addict next to food addict, and only one of them stands out. Only one of them gets ridiculed in public. Only one of them attracts constant negative attention. I’m not saying some people don’t have multiple issues, and damn that must really suck, and I’m not saying the other addicts don’t regularly beat the shit out of themselves just like an obese person – but, in general, the obese person has the added stress of going into public.
This fear, unless you had agoraphobia already (before you became obese), I am happy to report, mostly dissipates upon reaching your goal weight. This is huge, and it was game-changer for me. I got to the point where just going to the grocery store felt so goddamn humiliating, not to mention restaurants, bars, sporting events, graduations, work, etc. So to go to these places and not have the constant fear of having trouble fitting into seats or otherwise attracting unwanted attention, well, that’s almost all the motivation I need.
