Archive for the ‘personal’ Category
Dubious accomplishments
Sometimes accomplishments are both a positive thing, and a reminder of a negative.
What I’m thinking of specifically in my case is that is the last several months I took a firm grip on myself and got my weight down. I stepped on a scale this week, and compared it to what the scale said last time I went to my doctors; net difference: 60 lbs. Sixty!
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t regret doing it, and it gives me a certain sense of accomplishment and satisfaction to have done it. I am rather pleased with the reaction many people have given me because of it, as well. But on the flip side I’m rather appalled that there were 60 pounds to lose in the first place!
It’s kind of like the humorous tongue-in-cheek advice you might here about your resume’: avoid putting down personal accomplishments like “I was a model inmate and was released years early”, and “I finally had enough and through sheer force of will kicked that heroin habit”.
Like I said, I’m not regretting any of it — nor will I regret getting through the last stretch to an ideal healthy body type, in which I’m currently engaged.
I’ll just have to keep this in mind as a “dubious accomplishment” as a safeguard against backsliding, and otherwise let go of the past.
Sometimes you just can’t go home again
The last 6 month have seen some changes for me: lost weight, reworking of my eating habits, regular (or at least semi-regular) exercise in the form of walking partway home from work (one added “perk” of taking public transit to and from work is that you don’t have to take your “vehicle” all the way home to park it).
So there came a time when I thought I hadn’t finished (I still have aspects of my “make over” that require work yet, and work is still ongoing), but I came to the point where I thought I might let myself “swing out” a little. You know, loosen the self-imposed shackles to “treat” myself a little, occasionally, but not so much that the waistband needed loosening as well as the self-restraint.
I am astonished to find that I just can’t do it.
I mean I am capable of doing it. I have done it. I just don’t like it anymore.
Case in point, after a night at work I thought I’d just zip down the street to the local Denny’s [Home page, Wikipedia] and have an omelette for breakfast. For those of you who don’t know Denny’s they’re an American chain of “family restaurants”, specializing in what I think of as “Diner Food”. Not quite “greasy spoon” style, but close. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Didn’t taste as good as I remembered, and my system reminded me strongly for hours that it just wasn’t used to handling that much fat in one meal.
Likewise for many of my remembered “comfort foods”; I’m just out of practice.
I’m a little saddened by this. However, I’m not sure “going back” is worth it. I know that I could both acclimatize myself to eating that sort of thing again, and learn to enjoy it … but do I really want to deliberately learn to eat worse again? Somehow that seems silly. Yet I must admit I have some very comfortable cozy memories of diner style food Sunday brunches with good friends, spirited discussions, and “bottomless cups of coffee”, and somehow that just doesn’t seem the same with yogurt and fruit salad, you know?
