Ok, that's a cheap and clichéd headline, found on scribblings about weight loss ever since the real Battle of the Bulge was fought, but I gotta tell ya -- it really is a battle.
On the advice of one of my doctors (and I have several), I've taken up calorie-counting. I also keep track of my daily steps on the Fitbit tracker my wife bought me for my last birthday. It's been great for my weight. It's been murder on my nerves.
It's easy to get obsessive about every excess joule and every moment spent seated. I overheard someone at a gathering recently declare, "sitting is the new smoking," and I've been antsy in my chair ever since.
Eating had been a reliable, pleasurable experience for me once, when I was young and my metabolism could handle it. Now it's an exercise in getting enough exercise to indulge myself, and even my self-indulgence is greatly tempered. I went out for a couple of beers the other night, but I was unable to bring myself to order more than one, fearful that an additional 148 calories would prove fatal. The idea of one more beer was almost as mortifying as the thought of ordering a light beer -- and my gut is telling me, figuratively and literally, that that day is coming very soon.
The flip side of this is that all of my angst has brought about considerable weight loss. I don't want to say exactly how much I weigh for fear of putting a whammy on my ultimate goal, but I'm down more than 20 pounds in the last few months. But the discipline required to achieve that loss has not come, as many insisted that it would, with some sense of Zen generated by treadmill-boosted endorphins. If anything, it's been the opposite.
In short, I've traded stress eating for stress dieting.
I suppose I could just take off the damned Fitbit, which I wear day and night (to measure the quality of my sleep), but it has somehow psychologically fused itself to my left wrist. I've convinced myself that life as we know it, perhaps even whatever life exists throughout all dimensions of spacetime, will come to a screeching halt if I don't make it to 70,000 steps every week.
I'm also become convinced that the food industry is entwined in a vast conspiracy with the pharmaceutical industry. If you eat stuff that's bad for you, there's no shortage of drugs to combat your diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, intestinal gas and halitosis. Eat stuff that's good for you and there's no shortage of mind-altering meds to ease the depression caused by a constant diet of stuff that tastes like cardboard or artificial turf.
Plenty of healthy foods that taste good, you say? It's a con, I say! If it's low in carbs, it's probably high in sodium. If it's low in sodium, it's probably high in sugar. Fruit, you say? Fruit's fine. I like fruit. But one plum too many and you're doubled over from the bloating. Insane in the methane!
Yes, there are foods that are low in carbs, sodium and sugar that don't generate enough gas to power a small car. All you have to do is develop an affinity for the taste of wallpaper paste.
If not for nuthin' else, at least I've figured out why I've had severe writer's block in the last few months. I'm hungry!
Anyway -- gotta stop now. Off to the gym. I have 7,757 steps to go today.
