Layers of the Funion

 

Fun fact, over the last eight years I’ve lost forty pounds, gained back thirty pounds, and lost thirty pounds again. I’ve gone through a series of fad diets partly to lose weight and partly to just see what it’s like. I never thought once about a diet growing up. I mostly just sucked down just about every soda pop I could get my hands on. When I turned twenty one that then became true for beer. Needless to say I was bound to be overweight at some point but having been skinny during the entirety of my childhood I figured turning things around and thinning out again would be no problem.

I learned I was wrong about that “turning things around would be easy” bit. It actually became pretty challenging. Losing weight is an effort in and of itself, but keeping weight off is always an interesting game. I figured it’s about habit. Just eating salad from here until death. Those things were sort of myths I’ve glomed onto about other people losing weight and gaining it back, then losing it and gaining it back.

In January of 2019 I tried out the whole 30 for 30 days. It went so well I kept going through February and most of March. In the first 60 days I lost 30lbs. That’s a simple math rate of half a pound a day, but in reality I lost the first 20lbs in the first 30 days of the whole 30. A friend of mine once asked me what it felt like to lose that much weight and my response surprised me even. I simply replied “emotional”. She was inquisitive and asked me to explain. I didn’t really have the whole thought put together at the time but basically I was very topsy turvey emotionally. I would go through lows of sadness and peaks of maddening rage. Sometimes I’d be vehemently angry but other times I would lay in bed and be really weepy.

The instability of my emotional states might have been written off as some form of “hangry” playing out which I guess is a common excuse for being an asshole when your blood sugar gets to low. I thought it might be that simple when I was first starting to experience it and it really wasn’t until I gained the weight back and started to lose it again that I gained a little bit of clarity. To me it seemed like there was more going on.

When I sat and thought about it I started to realize there was a reason why I was over consuming. There is a reason why I gained the weight in the first place. Sometimes I eat because I’m hungry, often I eat because I am seeking comfort. I try to alter my internal emotional state using an external resource. So it seems to reason that if as I lose the weight that was protecting me from those internal states I was avoiding then those internal states would come back up when I lose the weight. Those emotional states can either be processed now or I could bury them again with more over consumption.

An easy way to look at is to ask the question “What was my life like the first time I weighed this much?” It’s sort of like imagining having to wear a uniform for a job you hated and never wanted to go back to. It’s an outfit that’s associated with a specific state, but instead of clothing it’s my body.

When I looked back at how my weight gain happened I always jump off at my high school graduating weight of 145lbs. Even though I drank soda all the time I was in great shape because I rode a bicycle everywhere. Then I shot up from 145lbs to 155lbs once I got my license. I wrote it off simply as a part of trading constant exercise for convenience. Then after getting married about three years later I gained another 10lbs which isn’t that uncommon. My life was changing rapidly. I was working full time, had a wife, a house, and for the first time I could keep liquor and beer around instead of just drinking when I go out or to a friends.

About a year and a half into my marriage my wife became very sick. Near death sick. Assumed to be dying sick. I became a care taker. I worked 60ish hours a week and took care of her to the best of my ability. I sometimes cooked, but for the first six months after her diagnosis I think we also ordered Chinese food upwards of three times a week. This is where I ballooned from 165lbs (upper end of optimal according to this bmi chart) to a 205lbs (lower end of obese according to this bmi chart). This was a result of the combination of over eating to my life into manageability and getting started with alcoholism so I could drink it back into unmanageability.

It took me a while to realize that the sadness and anger that was experienced when my friend asked me what it’s like to to lose 30lbs in 60 days was really from the time past of my marriage. Losing weight back down to 165lbs which is what I weighed just before I experienced some of the most difficult times of my life. Those times were fraught with anguish and really a sense of preemptive grief. Watching a spouse go from being lively to sleeping 18 hours a day as their body rapidly changes to fit their disease is like watching the door of life swing shut on them. I would have been a monster if I didn’t experience grief, but in order to appear super human and remain a viable caretaker I attempted to subvert that grief. I did so largely through the use of calories and alcohol.

When I lost 20lbs in 30 days I actually lost the weight faster than I could process the emotions that were being excavated. Losing the weight it turns out was actually not that hard. A strict diet and exercise seemed to do the trick. Without fail however I ballooned back up to 180lbs. So as far I’m concerned the fad diets seemed to be working, but my ability to keep weight off has been unstained. It is my belief that this is because I am unable to sit still with the past. I unable to simply be. A skill that I could probably spend a lifetime acquiring.

The irony of writing this article now is that in the month of January of this year I established a commitment to doing the whole 30 with a partner. I stuck with it for straight through. I continued again into February and lo and behold I hit that shiny number of 165lbs, and then by March I was inevitably struck by the overwhelming craving for french fries and milk shakes (preferably from Smash Burger). Pints of ice cream come home from the grocery store but seldom make it through the night. Basically I’m actively watching myself play through the process again. At the beginning of relieving this experience I would stop and think okay I don’t really need food. I’ve eaten plenty today I’m just going to lay on my bed and try to figure out what I’m really experiencing inside. Now I barely put up a fight. I think about ice cream, I have ice cream. I hope not to balloon back up but we’ll see what happens. Until then their is a pint of Rocky Road to murder. Ta ta.