Happy New Year, y'all!
Happy Belated Holidays as well.
It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post, and like everyone I got caught up in the holiday season’s craziness. Jennifer and I went to visit her family in Massachusetts during Christmas week. It was a good trip, but we were soooooo glad to be back home. My back was bothering me in the days leading up to our trip and it was excruciating for most of the trip. I slept so badly in the bed at her parent’s house on that trip that if I had had the funds I would have gotten us a hotel room, and I would have packed a hefty zip-top bag full of (legal in Illinois now) edibles to deal with the anxious times we had under her parents’ roof. I do not want to air family business on this blog, but know that Jennifer never exaggerates about how extra her parents are—if anything, she undersells them. They cannot help it, but they are not people who expertly put others at ease. They are the exact opposite, actually. Jennifer and I had our shoulders up around our ears almost the entire trip. And we could feel it.
YES, ACTUALLY! Thanks for asking.
This is the time of the year where people make resolutions. The gyms are full. The fat free sour cream inexplicably gets purchased. Fools quit caffeine for a few weeks (or days). Smoking cessation patches, gum, and mints sell out. Folks try on veganism or at least Meatless Mondays. Et cetera, et cetera. I wish them all the luck. Truly. For all my curmudgeonly ways and grouchy manner, I retain an optimistic core that loves when people attempt to better themselves. Not because the self-improvement/weight-loss/lifestyle guru axis shames them into it, but because they want to change something for the better for themselves. It’s a strong fuck you! to the implacable entropy that eventually destroys us all. I try to think of self-improvement as a mitzvah that one does out of self-love, and as a bulwark against the cynicism and apathy that says that one’s life doesn’t matter. So much tells us that we do not matter, and that caring about our own wellbeing is selfish and foolish. I reject that categorically. That said, I am not making any resolutions this year. Obviously, I have the ten resolutions/challenges for this project that I will continue to work on, but I am making no new ones.
This sign is not here for Lincoln-Douglas debates.
I’m not making any resolutions this year.
Save one.
I resolve not to follow any diet, weight-loss program, eating plan, proscribed food system etc. I will count not calories, carbohydrates, fats, or proteins. I will not have a list of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ foods. I will not obsess or perseverate on food. This I resolve.
As a ‘husky’ little boy, I was first put on a diet at nine years old and I have never gone a calendar year without trying some sort of diet since my teens. I have lost and (mostly) gained many pounds over the years, but I have never felt better or been healthier with any diet plan. Thirty-plus years of dieting has only taught me one thing:
Dieting is utter and complete bullshit.
Mark me. Anyone that tells you otherwise is either deluded or about to try to sell you something. Again, mark me.
For a gravely obese person like myself, making a resolution to not diet sounds like the slogan on a bad t-shirt that my terminally unfunny cop cousin owns.
Not my cousin.
I’m sure people are thinking, ‘How hard can not being on a diet be?’. I’m serious when I say that this is a very difficult resolution. Probably the most difficult one I have ever made. The temptation to try anything to lose weight is soooooo tempting. It also feeds into the denial about the body I actually inhabit/hate.
What if I took good care of and loved this actual fat body that I have instead of the theoretically thin one that this diet/program/regimen is going to surely give me? What if I loved this big hairy body with all its flaws and took it out for a walk everyday? And helped make it stronger? What would my life be like then? We’ll find out.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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