MY WEIGHT LOSS JOURNEY: PART III

Addition by subtraction" is a phrase used in sports coaching and other areas of life to describe the idea that removing things can lead to improvement. In sports, it can mean that a team can improve by removing players or practices that are hindering their success, rather than adding more talent. In other areas, it can mean that removing things you don't want or need can create space for the things you do, leading to clarity, efficiency, and a renewed sense of purpose. This principle can be applied to many areas of life, including: Physical possessions, Time, Energy, and Space.

I'm not sure precisely how it happened, but at some point in the last eight years I let this blog become a little more than merely a place to shove my unsolicitied opinions about everything into the ether. It has evolved (devolved?) into a kind of annex to the private journals I have kept since 2006, a place where I can discuss aspects of my life which I feel might possibly be of use to others. If this sounds pretentious, well, it probably is: on the other hand, I am someone who is quite literally compassionate for a living. As an advocate for victims of crime, it's my job to do whatever I can, however little it may be in the moment, to help others, and while nobody is ever entirely free of selfish or otherwise unworthy motives even for their noblest actions, I refuse to diminish the actual good I do in real life because I possess, like everyone else, dark corners in my heart. So you will forgive me if I add a third chapter to this particular story, the story of how I am, at the age of 51.9 years old, reclaiming my fitness, my health, and some of the self-esteem I now realize I was missing when I let myself go.

The year was 2023, June 19 actually, and I stepped on my just-purchased electronic scale, the one I got so I could record every detail of the weight loss journey I had just decided to take. I'd recently been to the doctor, and their scale read 196 lbs, which was not terrible given my unusual muscle density, so you can imagine my shock when the verdict was...207 lbs.

I was incensed. I'd just paid hard cash for this scale and clearly the fucking thing was not working properly. I was so goddamned mad I bought an analog medical scale, calibrated precisely with a dumbbell, weighed myself, and found out was in fact...207.5 lbs.

Maybe it was that last .5, the final insult heaped upon the injury in question, but I'm damned if I didn't have a temper tantrum right out of the spoiled rich kid playbook. [Note for the literal-minded reader my people were never rich] I lost my shit. In my life I had never weighed more than 205 and even that was a freak instance brought about by heavy drinking and a careless diet. And that was twenty years ago, when I knew nothing at all about nutrition or how the body processes food. It was painful and humiliating, not the leastwise because I'm someone that prides himself on staying active and maintaining a tough discipline, and not conforming to the stereotype of the writer as a broken-down drunk whose breakfast consists of cold cheeseburgers and stale beer.

So the journey began. I enlisted a nurse who specializes in coaching weight loss to remind me of the basics and add a few pointers, and over the next half-year or so I managed to lose seventeen pounds. My goal was to hit the mid-high 180s and stay there, but I found I could not break the barrier of 190 no matter what I did. I came close more than once, sometimes to within just a few ounces, but 190 presented a barrier that just refused to yield.

Nature, nurture heaven and home
Sum of all, and by them, driven
To conquer every mountain shown
But I've never crossed the river
Braved the forests, braved the stone
Braved the icy winds and fire
Braved and beat them on my own
Yet I'm helpless by the river
Angel, angel, what have I done?
I've faced the quakes, the wind, the fire
I've conquered country, crown, and throne
Why can't I cross this river?

Whenever you're stalled before your goal, especially if the stall is a long one, you tend to lose your edge. At least I do. And over the next few months I noticed my weight creeping up slowly, very slowly, but steadily nonetheless. By June of this year, a year after I'd started almost to the day, I was 197 and a quarter. Trends are everything in life: it's not the peaks or the valleys that matter, the steps forward or sideways or even back, but the general direction in which you're headed. And the direction was wrong. So I decided to double down. Instead of throwing another tantrum, I took a deep breath and considered the words of David Goggins, who is always reminding everyone that 40% of effort will not yield 100% results. And while I don't know if I was working at 40%, I sure as hell knew it wasn't much farther than that, so it was time to up my game. I stopped cooking lavish meals for myself simply because I have learned to enjoy cooking as a kind of Zen exercise; I fed myself a lot more protein and fat and a lot less carbohydrate; and I began to add 30 - 60 minute calisthenics drills, four times a week, to my almost daily regimen of hiking for one hour regardless of the weather. And lo, the direction changed. And not merely on the scale. I found that embracing the discipline of which I so often speak in these pages (from my comfortable office chair), made me more courageous in my personal life and more aggressive in my professional one. I started pushing boundaries and doing things I had never or rarely done before, at least not consistently: I have seen some results already. Not tectonic results, but measurable ones. I asked the doctor the embarrassing questions. I told the girl I loved her. I knocked on Hollywood's door again, and I pushed the writing in every direction. On and on. In short, I started acting on my desires instead of brooding over them. Whether any will actually and ultimately be satisfied is another matter, but as the cliche goes, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

This morning, August 3, just five days short of my 52nd birthday (and how in the fuck did that happen?), I stepped on the scale and bang, there it was: 189.9. The barrier was broken. It may reassemble itself tomorrow, but that doesn't matter. Once it breaks, I know I can break it. I want to shed five more pounds and then stabilize, afterwhich I'll set a new goal: more muscle, perhaps. The point is that I didn't do what I've done in past lives, which is let discouragement trick me into quitting entirely, or perhaps even worse, accepting mediocrity as an outcome. That's growth. We can always learn to grow, at any age and any time and any place in life no matter how bleak it might appear, but we have to humble ourselves first. We have to accept that sometimes we are not enough and need assistance, whether it is moral or physical or intellectual. We have to shrug off the albatross of egotism that weighs us down. That takes emotional honesty. If you're fat, don't say you're overweight, say you're fat. Don't blame your schedule, blame yourself for not carving out the time -- admit that you're lazy and don't want to do the work. Humble yourself. The results will amaze.

Pay no mind to the battles you've won
It'll take a lot more than rage and muscle
Open your heart and hands, my son
Or you'll never make it over the river

Of course life is nothing if not tireless when it comes to throwing 100 mile curveballs directly at your head. I recently had a whole slew of blood tests at my physical and my cholesterol levels were terrible, worse than the year before and the year before that. I know why, of course. I've spent a year eating huge amounts of proteins and fats, so even as my body slimmed down and my muscles hardened up, my veins were filling with sludge. I was dismayed to say the least to see the numbers, but instead of indulging in my favorite pastime of past times, bitterness, I took a deep breath and said, "Fuck it -- you'll just have to change your diet, starting now."

And that's what I'm doing as of this morning. Just trying to adapt and overcome in the face of frequent and lively discouragements. Just trying to set aside the pride that prevents growth, and the bitterness that threatens to choke me absolutely dead when people, when life itself, lets me down. I share this not because I'm deluded or egotistical enough to think anyone cares what I weigh, but because it's a cold, cruel, capricious world out there, and it's easy to feel alone in your struggles. People in my place of work sometimes look at the totality of my life, the time in Hollywood, the time in law enforcement, the travels, the books and writing awards, the martial arts journey, and say, "What a life you've led!" They don't understand that I like most people tend to view my existence merely as a series of defeats and lost opportunities, missed marks and broken connections. I give in to despair more than anyone, and in my despair tend to isolate and thus deepen the gloom. That's why I'm here. If I can set a goal and achieve it in the face of all my weaknesses and stupidities, goddamn well anyone can do it, but goddamn well anyone can't do it alone. In other words:

Open your heart and hands, my son
And together we'll cross the river.