Doin' It to Death

The single funniest joke I've ever heard is from the late Patrice O'Neal, talking about his struggles with diabetes and obesity: "I have to lose weight now to stay alive...and that's just not enough motivation..."

I don't do drugs anymore, I drink in moderation, I smoke the very occasional cigarette, I don't play excessive amounts of video games, and the most I gamble is a few dollars on Gold Rush tickets once in a blue moon. But I'm far, far overweight, and it's something I've struggled with my entire life. To be so unhealthy is frustrating and terrifying. It's cost me a lot of social opportunities. It also pisses me off--someone as smart as I am should be above this shit.

Last year was extremely successful for weight loss--the first seven months, anyway. I managed to drop about 10% of my body weight. As I write this, I am ten pounds down from my starting weight, which means I've gained most of that back. It's a miserable, redundant, perplexing condition.

I'm good at identifying patterns of behavior, especially relating to self-deception or self-sabotage. I've seen people close to me unable to get off the hamster wheel of minor success--overthinking--self-defeat--social withdrawal. It irks me that a person can't intellectualize their way out of addictions or bad habits. As the saying goes, you can't think your way to right action, only act your way to right thinking.

One major roadblock is that every meaningful social interaction is based around food, beer, or sedentary activity. Whether it's dinner with parents, after-work beers with coworkers, or a sixpack and a movie with friends, each associates camaraderie and happiness with the intake of calories. Add to that stress-eating, celebration-eating, depression-eating...

So I'm starting back at square one. Yesterday I threw out all the junk food in the house, got two good walks in, and managed to weigh in without doing something drastic, like smash my head into a wall for thirty minutes. Today the calorie tracking starts.

Sorry this doesn't have anything to do with writing, other than weight loss and healthy eating allow a person to not die and therefore get more writing done. Would you believe that's actually a significant motivation right now?