Falling Off the Wagon

 

Following this past weekend, here’s a question I have for myself:

 

Why on earth would one start a weight-loss program and publicly blog about it in December, the time of year when most people traditionally are putting on the pounds partaking in all that holiday cheer? Isn’t this why New Year’s resolutions were invented? Buried in bills and debt and snow and extra weight and all partied out with the Superbowl barely in sight, isn’t this the preferred time to start starving oneself?

 

Of course the question doesn’t really deserve a response but here’s one: maybe it’s because I’m a bit of a masochist? Maybe because losing five to ten pounds that hasn’t budged from my bod in almost a decade isn’t challenging enough, I have to throw in the additional obstacle of trying to do it over the holidays, because I think it's actually kind of fun to watch others stuff their faces while standing in the corner nibbling on a bit of string cheese.

 

It’s a little like a compulsive gambler deciding to quit cold turkey during his once-a-year vacation to Vegas. Or, trying to quit smoking (as I once did) during a six-day cross-country car trip with a girlfriend you’ll probably break up with before you get across Kansas (and who, incidentally can’t do any of the driving, because she never learned how to drive a stick, and in a car where the radio and tape player also happen to no longer work; conversation never being her strong point).

 

All a preamble to say that I didn’t make a whole lot of progress as far as results go this weekend, and that after that quick three pounds that seemed to fall off of me as fast as honeymoon pajamas, I’m STILL stuck at 185 (Urgghhh!)

 

I will say that I don’t like the new scale so much. I'm trying to make it feel welcome and everything but it’s hard to read for one thing, being analog as it is, and the markings and numbers are small—not that it would matter since it always says the same depressing thing. The digital still works, but get this, only at night, when you least want to weigh yourself. I have no idea why this is. My wife thinks it could be a temperature thing, it works better once the house has been heated all day, as opposed to when there's still a morning chill. Perhaps I should let it sleep with a blanket?

 

What I think is an important lesson here, however, is relearning the old one that says if you fall off the wagon, you should try and get back on it as quickly as possible, leaving guilt and shame and regret and those bad carbs at the door. Some of it was deliberate, mind you: the careful reintroducing of a few good carbs back into the fold (an orange, an apple, some dried apricots, all in moderation mind you). But then there was that bit of cider I downed quickly last night, like an alcoholic swigging back two glasses of vodka, as if the faster I consumed it, the less impact it might have. But wow, did it taste a lot better than water. Even the memory of it now can make me space out in an insulin response high and a very stupid looking smile.

 

Earlier in the evening we'd gone to two parties where there was much drinking and eating going on as one would expect, but just not by me. I ate some ham, quite a bit as I remember it now, and sipped a diet coke, fun-loving guy that I am. It’s rare that my wife and I go to one party in an evening, let alone two, so this was really pushing it, especially given my lack of social stamina.

 

Sunday was Xmas tree day, something that requires a particular kind of stamina all its own, and perhaps worth its own blog entry another time. Suffice it to say that it was cold out, as it's been of late, only in the upper teens. The place (Ioka Valley Farm) was deserted as most had already gotten their trees by now. As always, we couldn’t quite agree quickly on what tree to kill and drag home despite how cold it was standing around pointing at different ones and trying to imagine how they might look in our house--like all the others I'm sure once it's decorated, so can we please get the f....out of here?

 

And, of course, I was the one freezing my knees in the snow (praying for this all to be over with?) sawing through the one we finally could agree on, receiving much criticism, I might add, from the non-sawing voices above commenting that I was sawing much too high up on the tree trunk/eventual stump and making our already boarder line short tree, even shorter. In any event, we hiked the hill, we killed the tree, we carried it down the hill. And the nice jolly looking bearded man (no he was not Santa Claus) wrapped it up for us in netting and put it on top of our car with all the ease of someone else (like me for instance) tossing an empty sleeping bag up there. He even tied it securely to our car with nice, bright blue twine. The Grinch stealing Christmas couldn't have done it any better.

 

My kids, of course, want to drink plenty of eggnog for the tree-trimming ritual. Eggnog is a particular weakness of mine. In fact, I’m not sure if there’s anything in this world I like more than eggnog, or anything that’s quite not so good for a weight loss program than eggnog. If there is, I don’t want to know because I’ll immediately start craving it.

 

I guess the point, if there must be one, is that it’s sometimes as much of a victory to merely maintain one's weight losses, retain whatever pounds one has shed in this weight-loss game, than to actually lose more of them . . . said the man who fell off the wagon this weekend. And it’s certainly more of one than backsliding and finding a few more pounds on that [new] scale [that you don’t really like or trust].

 

The mantra I keep playing over and over in my food-obsessed mind is that the faster it comes off, the faster it usually goes back on….or so say all those books. So….perhaps this slow-as-eggnog-pouring weight-loss program I seem to be mostly on, will really serve me better in the end? Slow and steady wins the race? Particularly once the damn holidays are over with and I can make some new weight-loss resolutions, ones that this time I fully intend to carry out just like the rest of America.

 

[December 21, 2009]