The depression hit this weekend.
Being a primarily contract employee, I’ve had plenty of stints at being unemployed, so I knew it was coming. I even thought I was prepared for it. I can tell you with absolute certainty, though, I was really not ready. It started with the insomnia, and quickly progressed to stage 2: Comfort food and alcohol.
Being a man on a diet, neither of these things are good for me, a fact I was aware of even as I was shoving cheese fries down my gullet. This lead to the self-loathing, which of course lead to stage 3: Depression. By yesterday morning I was sure my diagnosis was terminal. I was going to spend the next forever wrapped in a wet, comforting blanket of grossly underserved self-pity.
Then I ran three miles...
I am unemployed again. Last time this happened, things got... dark, like the beginning of Apocalypse Now, but with less heroin. And more League of Legends. Last time I went off the work wagon it was sad, I was sad. I don’t mean in the frowny face and bad poetry kind of way (to be clear that was also true), but I mean specifically my writing and my body were just kinda pathetic.
That’s not going to happen this time. I have a plan.
Goals are great, especially in weight loss. I’ve tried to lose weight before without any real goals, figuring I could just Spicoli my way through with no worries. It bombed, every time. This time I set goals, but they've tended to slide from specific “I want to do this by the end of the month” goals to the more general “I would like to not be fat in the near future.” I don’t think this is a negative, but I do feel it’s not very productive.
I want to make smaller, more frequent goals, maybe in week-long or even daily intervals. I still have Light Club, but it’s not the cutthroat competition I wanted it to be. Now it’s full of feelings and positive re-enforcement. Ugh.
I have a couple of ideas, though...
I gained 10 pounds last week. I tried to figure out how I could sugar coat that, but it wasn’t happening. That’s a large newborn, just hanging off my gut.
I knew this was going to happen, I fucking called it. I’m clairvoyant, like some sort of palm eater, and I can’t even be smug about it. It wasn’t even like this was some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy; I didn’t break keto once. In fact I’m pretty sure I had my best week so far regarding the diet. So, this (literal and figurative) bump probably isn’t related to the food I shoved in my maw.
Or maybe it is.
I feel optimistic and this distresses me.
Last week I was convinced I hadn’t lost any weight, and was proven wrong. This week I’m pretty sure I’ve lost weight, which, if history has taught me anything, the scale tomorrow will display a =( and snap into two sad pieces. It’s hanging over my head like some sort of cream cloud.
So, I’m optimistic about the weigh-in, but also dreading it. I’ve created my own paradox in fact, but first a little background:
No matter how well I do with any sort of weight loss measure, I’m always acutely aware of being half a step away from falling off the wagon so hard I break something. When I was 18 or 19, I went on the Atkins diet, and lost quite a bit of weight. I can’t give you an exact number because I was scalephobic at the time, but I was definitely looking trim, relatively speaking. After about a month and a half of pure shrinking, my family went to Hawaii for a wedding....
I’ve had weight progress two weeks in a row. I should be ecstatic, but I just feel anxious. The scale says 268, which makes 14 pounds in about as many days. I don’t feel like I’ve lost any weight, but my girlfriend says my boobs look smaller, so... yay.
My clothes still don’t fit right yet. It’s an incredibly awkward experience. I feel like in the cartoons when Donatello would put on an overcoat and pretend to be a human, like no one could tell it’s a fucking turtle with a hat on. The only hint I have that I’m actually losing body fat is my underwear and its departure from my waist. They stayed true to me when I was 260, and they hung on for the ride when I ballooned up to 280, but now they just droop down my waist like a really said waterslide.
About a month ago, my girlfriend and I made a promise. When one of us hit our goal weight, the other would have to spend astonishing amounts of dollars on a prize for the other one. When Bakery hits her goal, I have to buy “an entire wardrobe” for her. I am operating under the assumption that this means 70 dollars worth of Target gift cards. I may be mistaken.
When I land on my goal weight, she will have to buy me a TV. She currently believes she is getting the better end of the deal, as a TV can only cost so much. Right? She has not taken into account my incredibly broad definition of “Television,” or the model of Lexus it will be embedded inside of. I will bankrupt her.
That agreement still stands, but it felt very much like a pipe dream, a distant light at the end of a ridiculously long tunnel. So we revised the bet. We call it Light Club.
The rules are simple. Any number of participants can be included. The only requirements are a scale, an Amazon wish list and a piece of paper.
Hi.
Let’s get that out of the way. I kind of disappeared for about a month and a half. Disappeared doesn’t really feel like the right word for it, though. I mean if you at any time happened to look south towards the horizon you would have seen the pulsing glow that is a human life going super nova. That was me -- if it kept you up at night or scared your dogs or something, sorry.
I could go on and on and make excuses about what the fuck happened with this, and me, but I won’t, because it’d be kinda pathetic, and also a bummer. If I were to frame the last couple months as it pertains to my diet, it would read like this:
So some dudes at the University of Alabama released a study that claims to smash a bunch of weight loss myths. This should be a really cool article, but everyone has been quick to point out that many of the authors of this thing are so financially tied to weight loss companies they’re probably wearing Slim Fast t-shirts under their lab coats.
By far the most interesting myth to get debunked was that sex apparently isn’t the calorie-shredding marathon we all expect it to be. On average, sex lasts about six minutes, and burns as many calories as a brisk walk to the Taco Bell. I’m not going to make everything awkward by commenting on that statistic, but who admits to six-minute sex? Poll your local locker room and you’ll find that, on average, no sexual encounter lasts less than 48 minutes -- the approximate runtime of Crazy Town’s “The Gift of Game.” I don’t know what angle these research guys are playing, but I’m wary.
I guess also gym class isn’t actually super impactful for weight loss in kids, but whatever. Even before you know what calories were, you knew you weren’t burning them under that giant parachute thing your P.E teacher pulled out like twice a year. (I don’t have any kids, so I don’t know if that’s big news to some parents out there.)
The article does manage to do a very good job of illustrating my biggest issue with weight loss as a product, though.
Gavin Haggith, a 30-year-old Bellingham man, will be serving 29 months in the pokey for reportedly punching a jogger in the mouth so hard his jaw broke. That seems a little extreme for my tastes, especially given the circumstances.
According to Haggith, he got into an altercation with the “walker” after the pedestrian flipped him off as he drove by. During said altercation, a bit of “spittle” got onto Haggith’s face, so he had no real choice but to clock him in the jaw.
Seems reasonable, but it should be noted that witnesses described a very, very different course of events. In their version, Gavin is a huge jerk who swerved at the jogger, and then after receiving the rude gesture, slammed on the brakes so hard his Taurus fishtailed, and then ran back to the jogger to assault the shit out of his face. Then he ran away. For like 4 days. Gavin is also in trouble for stealing tools from a Habitat for Humanity worksite (dude, really?), as well as for rioting during a previous stint in jail.
The Comeback Kid
