Slimdude

WARNING : If you taped or TiVO-ed it for later, do NOT read this post because it will spoil it for you.

 That being said… thank you all for reading my below post and leaving supportive comments. It is mucho mucho appreciated!

Now I am feeling better mentally. Maybe not physically. But mentally I’m in a better place. I think seeing my wife and son all evening helped. My son was in a great mood for his bath time. My son barely says anything but he knows so many words because he’ll point to just about anything you can name and he’s started counting on his fingers.

But the boy just won’t talk. He just goes “uhn” and points to what he wants.

Oh well.

This afternoon before I had Blogged I had already done five miles on The Gazelle and then this evening I did TEN miles while watching TV. Now, listen up ya’ll! I know some of you think gliding along for ten miles is no big deal, and perhaps that is true for some folks. But for me it is a huge accomplishment because my stupid body is utterly failing me, it snaps and pops and groans and aches. I’m trying to increase my distances on the Gazelle because on Nov 2nd I’m gonna try and do 13.5 miles in a row and then on Nov 9th I’m going to try and complete a “marathon” on the Gazelle.

Anyway.

The Biggest Loser was absolutely insane tonight. The product endorsement of the evening was a little bit better. Rememeber a few weeks ago Bob plugged the 100-calorie snack packs? That was weird, because it’s still 100 calories of junk food. But I guess portion-controlled junk food is better than nothing. It’s a start. And we buy them, too.

Then last week Jillian whipped out that sugarless gum.

But the Weight Control oatmeal Bob had tonight is great. In fact, it’s what I had for breakfast today, mixed with some Lite N Fit yogurt and frozen fruit. They have three flavors and all of them are great and is very very fillinf because of the fiber and added whey protein, plus no added sugar. They flavor it with sucralose. Definitely consider picking some up. Mix one packet with some water and microwave for a minute and it is a great breakfast, or part of breakfast if you want to eat other things with it. I just wish they wouldn’t call it “Weight Control”. That seems so clinical and boring.

Okay well of course it made for great TV, but seriously… has Neil completely lost his mind? The entire blue team must be C R A Z Y because this show is supposed to be about getting healthy and losing weight, not nefarious plots and backstabbing!! Poor Jez even tried to divide up the teams fairly and what was his reward for his integrity? Being voted off! have they all lost their minds?

If I wanted this crap, I could watch “Survivor”!! But I don’t.

I would never ever ever sabotage somebody else’s chances to live a better life, and i really thought that aspect came first and all the competition would be healthy and friendly. It would be like if I was on a weight-loss team and I went to other teams’ blogs or forums and messed with them or left negative comments. I would never do that, even if I was competing against you, because the BIG PICTURE is you want everyone to succeed in their goals, and that goal for us BSers is WEIGHT LOSS and WEIGHT MAINTENANCE and GETTING FIT and HEALTHY.

Ridiculous and I was really really pissed off that Neil did not get his fat ass kicked off. Maybe that sounds harsh, but it is the way I felt.

I hope I am wrong and next week I find something to redeem Neil. But I’m not holding my breath.

—Matt

I am really sorry that this post is probably going to be a “downer” fellow BSers. I try so hard to be positive but I have just had a bad day, period.

I was feeling so great about everything, including weight loss… depending on when I weigh myself it’s around 146-150 and that is lower weight than I have had in over a year at least. It’s not quite to my goal, but hey… down from 172 in Jan ‘06 and down from 163 since I joined BuddySlim so I’m NOT knocking that.

Anyway, it’s become pretty obvious that I will never get to my goal weight and maintain it no matter how healthy I eat and how active I am if I can’t break the “binge” habit… or snack habit or however you want to put it. Plus, even if I could lose weight and binge like that… there are other factors besides weight loss… it is not good from a health and psychological standpoint to sit there and eat 1000s of calories in one massive go.

 So I was on sort of a good streak starting Saturday… well… yesterday (monday night) work was just insane. I work on Jets for the USAF and my job is to fix the computer systems on them. This requires a lot of physical work anyway. It’s a lot of walking around and carrying laptop computer and climbing up and down  the ladder over and over to work in the cockpit and hooking up massive power lines and hoses to the plane… anyway the point is, when I say I work on the computers and electronics… don’t think I am sitting on my butt all night. Sometimes I do if we don’t have any work.

But that is rare. Complicated jet fighters break a lot. And it’s my job to fix them. We only have about 8 people on MidShift. Dayshift has about 30 and SwingShift has 20. Nevertheless, we had a TON of jobs last night. Keep in mind that the Air Force almost always works in pairs in flightline maintenance. It’s part of our wingman concept and it’s just the way things are done. Two people work a job. And many jobs actually need two people (such as component replacement) because you need the hands and the help. But lately we’ve been working one to a job.

So first of all right there I’m doing this one job solo which means I am doing all that physical stuff myself. And as the night wears on, I could really start feeling my body giving out. Then I tried to push on a piece of equipment and something in the upper rib bone structure of my chest kind of popped. It doesn’t hurt too much but I can’t really put any weight on it.

I really think there is something wrong with me that I am falling apart like this. I feel like Mr. Glass in that movie “Unbreakable”… the Samuel L Jackson character.

On top of that, the computer system on the jet I was working was kicking my ass. I have been doing this for about two and a half years now and I was trying everything I could think of and I could NOT bring the Avionics “on-line” which means the jet could not fly. I worked on this for 8 hours straight and I barely even took a lunch break. Just enough to wolf down my salmon and veggies but they were good.

So here I am, sore body—popped chest— bad jet — and then after I came home and went to bed at about 8:30am… well at 9:30am I woke up with this weird massive frenzied urge to binge and I totally caved in. I ate about 1200 calories I estimate, which actually is a lot less than I can eat. When there is peanut butter in the house or ice cream I tend to eat those right out of the carton and I could easily rack up 5000-6000 calories in about ten minutes. Sounds bad but it’s true.

Anyway, here I am stuffing my face and I had just sat down with a Lean Pocket when I saw my wife pull up in the car outside and I was embarrassed about being up and eating so I was rushing to “hide” my hotpocket and I went into the bathroom in our master bedroom and I knew she would not come in there at all because she would think I was sleeping and my wife is so good about not waking me up during the day… she is such a sweetie… (okay that’s a positive thing right there!)…

sorry about this post being long, BSers… but bear with me!!!

And I dropped the plate and it broke. So here I am thinking “This is so ridiculous, a grown ass man hiding his worst habit and now I have to clean up this plate and I should have just drank some water or diet cola and gone back to bed!”

I really have to stop this.

Well I did fall back to sleep at about 10am, and when I got up at 3pm I decided not to beat myself up about it and just try to mitigate any damage. So I’m just gonna lower my calories a little to about 1200 today but still eat normally, about three hours apart.

And I will try and do the Gazelle for about 12 miles. So I’m essentially trying to burn off the binge from earlier in an easy , non-guilty way. One thing I have never done is throw up. I don’t know that I could do it but I could see how people get themselves into that situation.

Anyway my wife came home while I was Gazelle-ing and we talked and it was SO SO SO hard to admit to her but I told her about the incident with the plate this morning. She could always read this Blog she knows about it but I don’t think she ever does. So I told her and she was like “Oh, honey you know I never judge you for that…” and it’s true. She knows I struggle with my eating… she knows it bugs me that I gained all that weight and lost my abs. But she has never ever made me feel badly for it.

I think I am at least a little bit eating disordered because it does bug me so much that I used to be slim and have abs and everything and now I don’t and in the quest to get that back I seem to have developed this whole binge at night thing. But really I have tried everything and every little trick I have read and people have suggested and I admit it…

I am at the point to where suggestions from others bug me. I appreciate they are only trying to help but really what I need to do is break the habit and on nights when I really want to eat I should eat my celery or pickles and maybe a few sugar-free things. I have proven to myself over and over again that if I can get through that first urge, it goes away and even when I wake up for the day I’m usually not hungry.

I have a theory as to why this happens. I think that about an hour after I fall asleep, my body realizes it will have to dip into fat stores and it releases chemicals that say “NO NO NO! Keep your fat! Wake up and binge!” and that’s why I wake up with a feeding frenzy mindset. But once I ignore it… give myself some water to feel full or maybe some diet soda to satisfy the sweet tooth my body does start to metabolize fat and that causes the hunger to stop.

So : stressful work day plus a binge plus I had to call Medical a million times to leave a message so they will call me back with my lab results. And I bet you anything they don’t ever call me back. I am going to have to go over there I bet.

Okay as if that was not enough, my baby python died. I found him in his cage biting himself. I wrote that he finally ate the other day after a month. Well, I think it was too little too late and he was starving and could not metabolize the mouse fast enough. That is the only thing I can think of since, like I said… the position I found him in he was trying to eat himself it looked like.

And I know to some of you it probably sounds ridiculous but I really really liked the snake and I am very saddened that he died. I want another one but it doesn’t take away the sadness about him dying.

Oh well. At least I still have my wife, my son, television, The Gazelle.

Oh and hey The Biggest Loser comes on tonight and I love that show!

The rest of this week will be better.

I know it was a long post, and I know it was mostly a downer but thanks for reading BSers.

—Matt