What Will It Take to Get You to Lose that Miserable Weight?
Have you ever been so ashamed of the excess weight that you won’t take off your shirt in front of your cat?
I have. Let me tell you a story. A story about pain, loneliness, and ultimately a decision that changed my life. And it can change yours, too.
I grew up in one of the most dysfunctional families you can imagine. My dad was a genius, literally, a genius. But like many uber-intelligent people, he walked that fine line. You know the line I’m talking about. And he usually strayed on the wrong side of it.
He would get high-paying career jobs in a heartbeat but quit them because he didn’t like the fact his supervisor didn’t meet his specs. You know. The boss had to be a genius, too, and definitely not black or a woman. He was a real winner.
He left so many of these jobs that we ended up living in a car when I was five. Five is the age that one of a child’s most important personality traits develops — self-esteem. [1]
Guess what? I didn’t have a good image of myself. Imagine that.
Who Am I?
At five years old, I didn’t understand enough to ask this question, let alone answer it. But the ramifications were that the most important developmental step of my psyche was stunted and warped.
Kindergarten was a blast for me. Still living in the car, my parents made up an address for us. That way the school could put it down, allowing me to attend and them to avoid Child Services.
My most vivid memory of kindergarten is cutting paper hearts. I didn’t understand the directions the teacher gave, so I was lost.
Then a little girl at our table named Katy helped. She cut my heart out for me and when the teacher asked if I’d done my own work, I did what any red-blooded-five-year-old boy would do. I lied. But she had seen the events unfold using her MI-5 Level spying. So what did she do when I fibbed?
She slapped me across the face with an open hand. I WAS FIVE! I fell off my chair, scurried out of there, and ran up the hall to the principal’s office where, later that hour, my parents and I would sit and be told that my teacher was having emotional issues. I didn’t have to come back until first grade. Hey! Six months off!
So, now I was ‘the kid who got slapped by a teacher in kindergarten.’ That, coupled with being a kid living with his mother, father, and older sister in a car (my older brother stayed at a friend’s)helped hone my identity.
My parents were deathly afraid I would be taken from them and placed in an orphanage by the state, and they argued this in front of me…daily. Fear, poverty, and being ‘that kid who got slapped’ swirled in the depths of my young psyche.
Moving On
Up next was leaving Ohio for first grade in Massachusetts, where my parents fought daily and I became fearful of not being picked up after school. My dad often threatened to leave the family, and this added to my stress growing inside.
Then, we came back to Ohio (in and of itself enough to stress a person out) where we lived in deep poverty and welfare housing until my dad finally got a great job, then had a major breakdown and lost it…again.
I started to gain weight at about ten, a lot of weight.
At thirteen, I entered my high school years a chubby, poor, highly intelligent introvert. No way the kids would be cruel to me, right? Right? It was a living, waking, hellish nightmare for four years.
I gained more and more weight until I topped-out at 244 lbs. That would be an okay weight if I was 6'5" and muscular. I was barely 6' and ‘average’ in the muscle department. Not okay. Very not okay. This weight kept me from experiencing a time of self-discovery and adventure. Of learning more and more about the world and how I fit into it.
My dad told me to drop out when I hit eighteen. I didn’t need much prodding. The ridicule, humiliation, fear, poverty, stress, lack of ANY nurturing at home, and the general state of my life made my decision easy. I walked into my guidance counselor’s office — a great guy who had been my accounting teacher — where he tried to talk me down.
He went so far as to pull out test results I wasn’t privy to which showed I had a 185 I.Q. ONE EIGHTY-FIVE! But all I wanted was to go back to the less stressful angst-filled house we were currently renting. I would get my G.E.D. without studying after my class graduated that summer. Ninety-eighth percentile. Not bad for a drop-out.
Where Do We Go Now?
The fact of never being encouraged to play sports, join school groups, learn how to earn a living, go to college, or even make friends began to rub salt in my wounded mind. As for my self-image, I saw an eighteen-year-old whom I considered “a fat slob.”
No true friends, no extended family, and being told daily that life isn’t worth living. Just do nothing. God’ll be back any day now (did I mention he found his TV religion?). These lessons, along with verbal and emotional abuse, took their toll.
And the chocolate got me through it all.
My sister, the oldest, got a dog. He was her life until she met a man, and then the dog was left with us. My brother, also older, became a violent alcoholic, often getting DUI’s. My mother went into a shell and worked outside of the home at menial jobs for long hours. Probably to avoid my dad. Wouldn’t you?
Me? I became the unofficial Hostess taste-tester. Food was my substitute for a normal, healthy, nurturing family. It became my friend. My one shelter from the storm. A vicious cycle had begun to whirl. A hurricane of suppressed emotions that had but one outlet: F…O…O…D.
Think Svelte
Nineteen years old. I’d just finished my first year at a tech college studying corporate accounting (I would later hate accounting.) It was the end of May 1988.
I had never had a girlfriend. Not even a date. My weight was always the number-one issue. I was lonely. Pure and simple.
Did you ever read the comic strip series “Bloom County?” I loved it! And the most famous character was a chubby penguin named “Opus.” And there was a time he was trying to lose weight, too. In a text bubble above him, was this phrase, “Think svelte.” Great stuff.
I adopted this motto along with others and wrote them on a whiteboard in our cold, smelly basement. And in that little basement room, I put a cheap weight bench, a rowing machine, and other free weights. You see, I was finally ready to do something about my weight.
Be A Wizard
No one can tell you to lose weight and, presto, you do it. It has to come from inside. You have to want it so bad it takes precedence over all else.
If you’ve read Harry Potter, then you know that to conjure a Patronus — a silver shining animal that fights off Dementors and can send messages — a wizard has to concentrate with all his mind on a happy memory. And Harry didn’t have too many to choose from.
The first ones he tried didn’t quite do it. It was only when he thought about the night he learned he was a wizard, and would temporarily be leaving the horrible foster family he was with, that he could make the spell work. And work it did! [2]
What Is Your Patronus Going to Be?
And that’s the answer to the question of how to lose weight. You need a Patronus.
OK, not a real one. Well, not a shiny silver animal from the brilliant mind of J.K. Rowling.
No. You need a REASON. A real, personal, lifelong dream of a Reason. Without one, you’ll most likely fail or quit or even gain more weight.
Your Reason must be so powerful, it has a life of its own. A future you can glimpse. A new beginning. A new…IDENTITY.
But it HAS TO come from inside! No one could help Harry get his happy memory, and no one can change you except you. The Reason is personal and can be life-transforming. But external sources, like ads or your boyfriend’s grumbling, won’t work. YOU have to want the change, then the Reason will take shape and protect you from the enemies of doubt, fear, and self-abuse.
But back to me. I had to have my Patronus…my Reason.
Mine developed in the first week of summer vacation that year. My life had reached a crossroads. The choice was before me: Do nothing and eat myself into oblivion, never having gotten the girl, or make up my mind, put my foot down and say, “Enough!”
Mind Over Matter
The human mind is an incredible powerhouse! It can make your physical body do things it never thought possible. Like losing ninety pounds in three months. 90 LBS.!
I decided back in ’88 that my Reason was I wanted a girlfriend>fiance>wife. This mystical faceless person became my Reason. It got me through the 5 AM workouts before commuting to college and the days when I was sick as a dog and still did my two hours in the basement.
My Reason gave me the ability to say, “No,” to food I really wanted, and put my hunger to use on the bench, the rower, or going out and jogging around the garage.
The daily calorie counts and workouts began to take effect. The weigh-ins became moments of immense self-worth and pride. No one can ever take those away from me. They’re mine, forever. And they can be yours, too.
What Are They Talking About?
Have you noticed all the complicated and convoluted language and names of supplements all meant to help you be healthy and reach your ideal weight? As Charlie Brown would say, “Good grief!” [3]
All the terms and products and infomercials are enough to drive you to, well, eat more. Is that what they intended?
Look, I found the simplest way to lose weight is a three-step process. And anyone can do this. You don’t need scientists telling you which superfood will activate this key enzyme to…Stop it!
Here they are:
- Find your goal, your Reason. Without it, the Dementors of self-doubt and failure will glide in and finish you off.
- Eat less. That was a biggie, huh? You already know where and when and what are your weak points when it comes to food consumption. Just begin cutting out as much as you can reasonably cut to help you reach your Reason.
- Exercise more. Get yourself moving. Overcoming inertia is always the hardest. What do the scientists say?
What inertia is
As Newton put it, inertia is the resistance of an object to a change in its state of motion. Newton’s force law
is a consequence of the definition of momentum,
(which in a way is more fundamental since it directly ties in with conservation laws). The mass in the formula is the inertial mass. Mass is a measure of how much there is of matter, and we normally multiply it with a hidden constant of 1 to get the inertial mass — this constant is what we will want to mess with.
However, Einstein threw a spanner into this: gravity also acts on mass and conveniently does so exactly as much as inertia: gravitational mass (the masses in
) and inertial mass appear to be equal.[4]
See? Simple. Okay, in layman’s terms, it means getting your fat a## off the couch in the first place is the tough part. It’s like your car at a stoplight. When the light turns green, you put down your cell phone, no, wait…you push on the gas pedal (and release the clutch if you drive a stick). Your car takes off. This act of getting moving after being stopped is overcoming inertia. And it burns more gasoline than just cruising down the road.
You need more power to start out than you do to keep going.
So do something…anything…except just sitting there. This is why a Reason is so important! If you don’t have a strong enough come-from-inside goal, you won’t be able to overcome inertia. That’s just a fact.
And that’s where mottos and slogans can come in handy. I used to say them out loud when I’d throw off the covers in the morning. I’d look at them on my whiteboard when I worked out. See, these little reminders were reminding me of my Reason.
If you want some math, here you go:
R=Reason + E=Eating Less + XC=Exercise = your goal achieved.
Do it at your pace, not anyone else’s. Their way won’t work for you as well as your way will. And you’ll know deep inside if you’re slacking. Your Reason will fizzle out. That’s why it has to be so strong, it needs to keep you going through the toughest of days and nights.
Conclusion
As for me, I’ve continued on with my weight management for three-plus decades after that first diet ended. Why? Easy. I like the thin me over the heavy me. I know who I am.
And I DID have Reasonable success. I had a few dates and some breakups, and then she came along. My Reason. I’ve been married to her now for over twenty-seven years. 27!
No matter what you have hanging over you or how you got to where you’re at today, you can do this. You can. Like me, realizing I was using food for comfort and a substitute for love, find your weak spots, and conjure up your Reason to drive them off.
You — the real you — will be glad you did.
[1] https://www.realsimple.com/health/mind-mood/emotional-health/kids-self-esteem
[2] https://www.wizardingworld.com/news/discover-your-patronus-on-pottermore
