An Uphill Climb, for a Downward Weight Change?

Stress is Not My Friend

WARNING! PROFANITY laden at times. That’s reality for me. So, I’m just “keepin’ it real!” If that is offensive, just skip to the last 9 paragraphs, where it says, “Ok. Ok. Reel it in now! What happened?” I’ll make sure it summarizes without the reiteration of the “purple words”. And please overlook my lack of proof reading. “Ain’t nobody got time fo dat!”

A new descriptor that I’ve found to help point out things that we have to endure, struggle through, overcome, or do in spite of what we would like to do is “adulting”. As I have heard that new word used, I have also discovered that it is only assigned when it is pointing out the negative things that we experience as adults. Wiping a baby’s nasty ass; cleaning up the dog’s poop off the floor; cooking dinner when you get home from a long day of work for kids who will just turn up their noses, and ask for a grilled cheese; paying bills; paying taxes; getting a colonoscopy; getting older, and losing our hearing, eyesight, etc.! You get the picture, and if you are over 50, like me, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about when I use this term, “Adulting”. 

It causes your mind to flood with thoughts of things that you loathe! Nonetheless, these are the things that as adults, we have little, or no control over. Most of the things on my list will happen to the majority of us, if not all of us! Some people will have far worse! Some will run along the baseline, and have the normal amount of crap happen to them, but that (in itself) is enough! 

As the past two weeks have progressed, I have found myself dealing with more issues that have fallen into the category of “adulting”. It’s been the sort of weeks, where I start to feel the pendulum has swung in my direction, and I’m not winning any prizes! It doesn’t just go for a few days either! There isn’t a moment of thinking, “Whew! I’m glad that’s over!”. No! Fortune isn’t smiling on me! Honestly, if I could eat this shit sandwich, I probably would at this point, just to get some relief! But even that isn’t an option I am afforded, unfortunately, or fortunately in that case. Because… Well, never mind…

So, without going into all of my daily insanity, and me throwing penalty flags on life for “piling on” in this thing some people choose to refer to as a “game”, I would have you just insert your own stressors, because I know you have them! Come on! It’s easy to find the negative! It’s easy to see all the people who piss you off, and drag you down! 

What about that “negative Nelly” that you can not stand to hear when she calls?! Someone may as well tie an anchor to your neck and drop you off in the Marianas Trench in the Wester Pacific. Even if you are upbeat at the moment, by the time you get off the phone, you are going to be reaching for that bottle of Prozac you have on the back of your shelf. 

Or maybe it’s the issue of getting old that we have as adults? Sitting in the doctor’s office and hearing for the umpteenth time that “Well, it looks like we are going to have to schedule a surgery to correct (Insert the most horribly unexpected thing).” You are numb for a while, and then pissed off! Then you have to start preparing your life for a major interruption, just because you are getting OLDER! 

Maybe it’s a family member, or a grown child (at my age) who just can’t seem to get this “adulting” thing down on their own?! We wonder if they ever will! What happened to these younger generations?! (I sound like my parents now) A few get it, but most just don’t! My famous phrase to all of my kids over the years has been, “Now, as your dad, I can save you from a lot of misery in your life, especially as a youngster, but I can not save you from your own ignorance, and stupidity. So, don’t be ignorant, and don’t be stupid!” At any rate, you get the point. We all have those periods of time when STRESS hits, and there isn’t one damn thing we can do about it. 

Switchback to the top of Multnomah Falls, Oregon

Yes the stressors will come. Those necessary, and often serious obstacles in life that make our heart beat a little faster, and create a bit of panic, or anxiety that we could do without. Some we can plan for, and reduce the stress somewhat. Others, we never plan for them, because they are by definition the “unexpected” things in life. It’s just like the day where you go 23 hours without a phone call, and you finally get up to do something truly important, and the phone rings, or worse, the doorbell rings! The unexpected nature of the coincidence makes it all the more frustrating. 

Sure most “normal” and healthy people can shake a few things off, but when they come in seemingly rapid fire succession?! THAT is when my mind shifts in to a totally different gear. THAT is precisely where I tend to lose all my “give a shits” about dieting, or as I should say, “eating healthy!” It drops in importance like “a rock through a spider’s web” to borrow a partial phrase out of context from Johnathan Edward’s “Sinners in the hands of an Angry God”. We just don’t care!

Sure grandma has to go to dialysis today, and there just happens to be no-one else to take her, and they call you on a moment’s notice, and you are knee deep in a project for work! Of course that project has a deadline looming, and you can’t really afford to take off work, at least without notice! Not since your help on the project has taken off early for four days straight with some “personal issues”. 

So, forget about working through lunch to try to make up ground on that damn deadline! Then here come grandma and her failing ass kidneys! (Misdirected anger here. See?! We think this only in frustration now…right? We are really more compassionate in reality! Right??? Mmmm hmmm.) But we take off the rest of the day, drive across town, and do what is necessary, putting off other necessary things, just because someone didn’t plan well. 

Then you get mad at the person who is really responsible! The other family member, or so-called “responsible party”. Then you find out that they decided to go to the beach, and left early with some friends to get a good seat at a concert this weekend! THAT is when you completely lose your shit, and things get out of hand. You’ve had it! Is anyone responsible these days?! Aaaaaaahhhhgh! 

You drop grandma off at the dialysis place, get her signed in and tell her that you are going to go grab a bite to eat, before you pass out, and that you’ll be right back! Certain she is fine, you jump in the bat-shit-crazy-mobile, and zip off, not knowing where you are going. You yell to SIRI for directions to the nearest restaurant. You are now starving, and “Hangry”! Your blood sugar has dropped, and your are sweating, and cussing under your breath like a Tourettes patient standing in a fire ant bed, and thinking about how much farther behind you are getting at work, every minute that you are gone! Your mind is racing!

So, SIRI’s exhaustive list shows only one “restaurant”. It’s McDonald’s. So, you drift into the parking log, and screech to a halt at the drive through behind a minivan full off kids! Damn! DAMN DAMN!!! You’d leave, but it’s the only damn thing within 10 miles of the dialysis place, and for just a second you think about healthy options they talk about, and then get a whiff of those french fries, as you hang out the window waiting and staring down the minivan, and cussing beneath your breath! Out the window goes all your care, and the last shit you had to give!“FUUUUUCK! I deserve to get whatever in the hell I want to get! I’m starving!” 

Life is now driving you, and your are out of control! You are plowing through the menu like a rhino plowing through natives in an old Tarzan movie! I’ll have two McDouble Cheeseburgers, a Big Mac, a large order of onion rings, fries, a large milkshake, a large Mcfuckin’Nugget, make that a meal with a Coke, THE REAL THING, and fries! Large! And give me one of those, NO, TWO! TWO apple pies, because they are two for a dollar! Do you have Cherry too?! Yeah?! Give me two of those for later. Grandma might want one. Got to round that .50 off to a dollar you know?! It’s such a good bargain! And the voice over the speaker asks, “Will that be all today?” You pause a moment, and stare at the menu. Ummmm… Now the sugar drop starts talking to you! “I’ll eat this, and dive back around and get a parfait, I wouldn’t want it to melt.” “Sure! I’ll be back later.”

And THAT is how it happens, folks! Notice that there is NEVER a thought about the Weight Watcher’s app, points, tracking foods, exercise, going to a meeting, weighing in, etc. Why? Because “Fuck checking points!! When you go off the rails, all caution and concern is thrown to the wind!” You just ran out of “fucks” to give, and you have now QUIT “Adulting” for the day! Maybe the week! 

Yeah! The whole week! The kids can get their own damn dinner tonight! Maybe I’ll order “them” pizza! They keep sending me e-mails from Domino’s. So, I’ll get two large two toppings, and add those delicious molten chocolate cakes to the order, and some of those dang cinnamon things, and that icing to dip them in, and a 2 Liter Coke! Who cares if I gain a couple of pounds this week! I’ll tell everyone at the WW meeting to kiss my ass! It’s not like I’m not dating anymore! I’m not a young 30, or 40! I need to be enjoying life, and eat whatever the hell I want to eat, and NOBODY is going to tell me different! (Sound familiar?) I’m tired of everyone else leading me around by the damn nose, being tied to an app. I can’t make a single damn decision for myself, because everyone else shoves their shit my way! Even that asshole at work, who left early 4 days in a row! Now we are behind on the project! Crap! I forgot about that!

Ok. Ok. Reel it in now! What happened? 

Now, that is a fictitious account, but you can see how it escalates? Did you see how easy it was to empathize, and feel the stress and tension rise? Well, that’s been my two weeks. I didn’t go off the rails that bad, but I did drive through Chic-Fil-A, and not order the “healthiest” of their choices. I was still within my points, luckily. 

The worst thing was that I really didn’t track all of my foods. So, I have been on the borderline at best. Now, I’ve been well below my weekly points every other week, which they don’t really advocate, but I had been doing fine! I’ve lost between 15-20 lbs. in four weeks. This week, however, I may break even, or gain a lb. I have no idea. I just know that it is a common occurrence. It’s going to happen to most of us, but especially to those of us for whom stress is a trigger to eat! 

In my case, it’s been a gradual “piling on” that has taken place. The changes are subtle! So, the falling off the wagon is slight, at first. I need to get it under control, and I need to be able to do it on my own. Sure, it’s easier with Cherie’ here, but she isn’t always here, and lately she has been having to travel a great deal. She may be gone one, or two weeks at a time. This makes it hard on both of us to remain “honest” with ourselves. It is so easy to go too long without food, and then make a rash choice.

We have both found that the solution to the lack of accountability will ultimately lie within ourselves, and not with the external, be it Weight Watchers, our spouse, friends, or with my blog. Having all of these for whom I have made myself accountable does make me more likely to think about my variances in my program, and it helps! So, it is important to reel it back in when we go too far, and fall off the rails. We are the only force that can bring things back in line, and stay on a healthy track. 

Even with such a connected program as WW, I have found that, as in life, we are ultimately responsible for our own choices and actions. It is a simple rule of the universe that seems to be lost in the ether in this technological age. I can’t blame Weight Watchers. I can blame my wife, or my dog. I have only me to account for success, or failure. 

Being in the process of learning how to eat healthier, and making the right choices my first choice is tough! Sure! Changing a lifetime of eating anything I want (with the exception of during a Crohn’s flare) is not easy. So, I need to TRACK with my app. That isn’t really difficult. It isn’t really inconvenient either, because we typically have our phones all the time, now days. So, the first thing I’ll do, is make sure that everything I put in my mouth is assigned a point value. THAT is crucial, because that is the first thing I threw out when the stress came raining down. That is when accountability started to fail, and now I know that fact about myself, I must be more accountable for it. 

This is a learning process! Added stress has a time limit, unlike living with chronic pain. If I have learned to live with daily pain, I can learn to better cope with added stress, when it comes. I failed once, but I have been winning for four weeks. I have to remember that, and remind myself of it. 

Planning ahead helps. Knowing what I SHOULD eat, whenever I am put in unpredictable time lines, or long, drawn-out days is an ongoing learning curve. It’s going to be an uphill climb, many days of my life. Most days, though, I can add to the win column. So, I should not have eater’s remorse over a failed day!

By the same token, I can’t make the “It’s going to happen” an excuse to overeat! What does that mean? Again, it means that I am ultimately responsible, and accountable to myself, and nobody else. If I’m not doing this for me, I’m not doing it for the right reason. So, with all the failsafes, and people knowing what I’m doing, it still falls back into my hands. Accepting those facts in the worst of times has to be my “new normal”. 

~Smyly