Rock Bottom

I got on the scale this morning and this is the heaviest I’ve ever been. 

I’m too embarrassed to throw out an actual number, but suffice it to say I’m 25 pounds more massive than I was in my twenties.  That’s like a pound a year.  Most of it’s in my belly, but I can see it in my face and neck, too.  The woman who owns the company I work for is into feng shui, so there are mirrors everywhere.  Believe me, I don’t like seeing Fat Hopper everywhere I turn.

Of late I’ve had no energy.  Zero.  My sleep is always disruptive.  I am always overtired.  I eat emotionally, as a form of stress relief, and I instantly reach for the sugar and the starch, the more the better.  The blood sugar roller coaster is burning me out.  I eat two fruits a week and maybe five servings of vegetables that same time frame.  I eat more slices of pizzas than servings of fruits and veggies every week.  Heck, in Fosters oil cans alone (my favorite form of stress relief) I consume 1400 calories a week.  That’s twenty pounds a year right there.

Being sedentary doesn’t help matters either.  I work nine hours a day at a desk in front of a computer.  I go home and write another hour at another desk in front of another computer.  My favorite activity is reading, which I do about ten or twelve hours a week, minimum.  Maybe I should read on a stationary bike.  I do go through phases where I work out, both aerobically and anaerobically, the latest being from St. Patty’s Day to Memorial Day, but there are longer stretches where I don’t do anything.  Except eat.

Tomorrow, August 2, is a special day for me.  It will be TEN YEARS SINCE MY LAST CIGARETTE!  See here for a write-up I did three years ago on this day.  So I decided tomorrow will be my first official day of a new lifestyle of eating.  It has to be.  I can’t go on living much longer like this.  If I want to live a long, healthy, productive life where I have the energy to conceive, pursue, and attain worthy goals and dreams, I have to change my self-destructive habits.  Start from scratch, start at the bottom.  Have to.  As the saying goes, you can’t run a Lamborghini on cheese and beer.  (Is that how it goes?) 

So today I’m eating lightly and healthily to prepare for tomorrow.  Went to the grocery store this morning and bought three organic apples and a tossed salad.  Yesterday I borrowed a half-dozen medical and dietary books from the library to study.  I’m using an index card every day to track what I eat, how many 8 ounces of filtered/bottled water I drink (aiming for 13 cups a day), how many times I stretch and do deep breathing exercises.  Tonight I warned the ladies that instead of my customary Fosters, I am going upstairs to meditate for 20 minutes. 

I know the headaches from sugar detox will come.  Probably by Monday morning, just in time for work.  I know I’ll be moody and grumpy and have to bite my tongue a hundred times.  But I also know, from past experiences, that things will get better in four or five days.  The longest I’ve stuck on such a diet is twelve days, and they say it takes at a minimum 21 days, and preferably 30, to establish a habit.  I have an intuition that it’s now or never, right now, so I’m going to do whatever it takes.

So, sparse posting in the next few days as I work through all this.

Update in one week’s time.