It’s time to face the beast within, but he’s somewhere under all this blubber

 

This isn’t a Halloween-themed blog, but in honor of the recent holiday I snapped this photo of myself (to show my niece Sophia my new monster t-shirt) and quite honestly was surprised how chubby I looked in the picture.  Okay, fat.

What makes it particularly disheartening is that last Friday was the final weigh-in at the office for myself & some of my coworkers—we started a ‘Weight Race’ 3-4 months ago, and my final weight was 4 pounds more than when we began!  My heart wasn’t in it.  In fact, I rebelled & spent this past summer picking up a tub of ‘banana split’ ice cream every time I went to the market, and got into the habit of snacking on stuff like Ore-Ida Gourmet Onion Rings (what makes them gourmet is that they’re made with real onions—hmph) along with other fun fare like “State Fair Corn Dogs” and Tyson’s Buffalo Chicken Wings—in the Family size bag.

And then there’s “real food”; after years of asking my mom or my sister Shawn to fix my favorite meal (pot roast) on my visits home, I finally perfected my own version of the recipe—an unfortunately all too simple meal to throw together (oh it’s really yummy when you bake it in a mixture of cream of mushroom & onion soup mix).  This is one I made last weekend; it would normally serve 3-4… normal people.  I had it eaten in 2 days.

So what’s the answer here?  I just turned 50 this past Monday & God help me, I don’t want to be this round on my next birthday.  But diets are useless (my metabolism knows all my tricks and adjusts accordingly) and the current way of thinking (don’t diet, change your eating habits for life) just makes me panicky & depressed and craving stuff like candy bars, which I normally don’t eat anyway. 

At the same time, I can no longer take solace in the fact that 2/3 of the population is seriously overweight or obese, and I’m just a face in that crowd.  I’ve been over 200 pounds for over a decade now, and over 225 since my niece Sophia was born 7 years ago.  That kid has never seen me as a thin person!  

 

Speaking of Sophie, here she is at last weekend’s Halloween party, dressed as Dorothy Gale from ‘the Wizard of Oz’

 

I’d love for her to see her Uncle Doug in the 1990s; I was cleaning out my bedroom closet a couple weekends ago, and behind a couple old winter coats were 3-4 heavy hangers with a half dozen dress pants (from the days when I wore a shirt and tie to the office).  I held one pair of pants up against me and both marveled & grimaced at their size.  The waist was six inches smaller than what I wear now, and they don’t even have a hidden expanding waistband! 

I need to come up with a game plan here, and after some real thought I’m going to do 2 things right away:

1. STEER CLEAR OF THE FROZEN FOODS AISLE AT THE MARKET—well, avoid the corndogs & chicken wings at least.  And no more Hungry Man dinners!
2. POST MY WEIGHT ON A WEEKLY BASIS FOR EVERYONE TO SEE.  If you look at the right hand side of this page, where it says ‘Labels’, I’m adding a new one—where I’m going to post my weight every Friday & hopefully embarrass myself into dropping 25 pounds! 

To be honest, I really debated writing about this—not because I’m embarrassed about my jelly belly, but when someone asks “Hey Doug what’s up” & I reply “Well, since you asked...”  all I want to hear back is “ok, have a good one” or “Well, I like chubby guys”.  What I usually get is lots of unwanted advice (drink water, eat 6 mini-meals daily, walk more) from peeps that are either bigger than me or 15 years younger & don’t understand that I knew about the benefits of skinless chicken & brown rice when they were still chowing down on mother’s milk.  Thanks, but no thanks.  

I have the answers, I just need to find the initiative!