I had a 'fat' mind...

Hey all,
Howsit going?
Today was a good day..
had a 600 calorie burn with elliptical and upper body weights.
My food consisted of chicken pecans and egg white omelette and a big @ss salad for dinner with the same ingrediants.
all told 1467 calories.
No vitamins again because I forgot to buy them.
Will get some tomorrow because I will be taking a family portrait.
This is our first family portrait.
You do the math.
My oldest daughter is 16.
I kept telling myself I would get a picture when I got skinny.
It took a while.

I left a comment on another blog about having a fat mind.
I used to.
What I meant was, If by magic I would have been able to wave a wand and get skinny..
I would have just gotten fat again.
Before this journey I had a fat mind.
symptoms of a fat mind.
Thinking food will cure a non food issue.
Using food to replace companionship or to make me feel less _________.
Or more__________.
Food is just food.
But you couldn't have told me that.
I don't know what I was expecting from food.
IF my food could have talked it would have said "I am here to fuel your body, not fix your life."

I also felt like I had no control over the food.
That somehow what I picked up with my hand and put in my mouth had nothing to do with my free will.
That my hand and my mouth and my body were somehow operating outside of my control.
It was my slow metabolism.
It was my _________.
I couldn't really tell you now.
The excuses old chris used to use are excuses 'new chris' would laugh at.
They don't work anymore.
They don't fit inside my new wineskin.
If I eat something now that I don't need to fuel my body...there is no play acting and there is no fakery.
I simply ate it because I wanted it and if I do it I ENJOY it.
I don't make excuses or fob it off as some sort of emotional meltdown.
I wanted it.
I ate it.
I am over it.
It's as liberating as it sounds.
ITS JUST FOOD NOW.
It has the weight and the value and qualities you imbue it with.
The calories you eat, the way you deal....they are choices..not moral failures.
moving on.
before, I would use any inappropriate eating as an excuse to spiral even deeper into poor eating and a kind of self fulfilling failure thing.
I would use eating crap as a cudgel to beat myself with...probably so I could do it some more.
I have such a hard time with remembering.
YOu know how when you are struggling you can't remember what it feels like to be able to control something.
Well, to be quite frank.
When you get a grip on the food.
On your daily life and your new lifestyle.
When this becomes second nature,
it gets harder and harder to remember what it was like when you didn't have a handle on it.
It is like black is white, and white is black.
Even when I maintained my weight, I never went back to the place where I used food like I used to.
Not once did I binge. Or eat till I was sick.
I just ate a bit more but kept to my exercise.
I can't remember the last real binge I had.
I still remember the first time I got through half a plate of food and left it there even though I still had room in my stomach.
I just didn't want anymore and I stopped eating.
I wanted to feel satisfied, not 'full'...not sick.

Here is an excerpt from one month into changing myself.

I am not doing a program. I know a lot of people like programs, I am just not much of a joiner. I like being at home and don't run around much. I have tried programs before, not weight watchers...but the kind you get in the diet of the month books...like atkins or south beach.

I have tried just exercising, or eating 1200 calories and sucking down what I thought were "healthy foods" whether or not I liked them. I have gone through periods of being a gym rat. No program has ever, ever, ever lasted.
I inevitably got sick of ....meat, cheese, yogurt, arugula, gym equipment, full lenth mirrors in the weight room, driving somewhere to work out, fake hype, false hope, sweating with strangers, magic pills, locker room nudity.....you name it. I kept doing things I hated.
I hate salads with lite italian dressing. I hate rice cakes. I hate full length mirrors in the exercise area. I resent skinny women complaining about how fat their thighs look when my thigh is the size of their waist. I hate how military gyms always have the weather channel or the news on with NO SOUND. I loathe yogurt, wheat grass, green tea, tofu and starving myself. I hate "diets" where you eat meat and three cups of vegetables and stink just so you can lose weight. I hate spending money to "look good at the gym" and never again will I plop down one more dollar for a self help diet book telling me, (when you strip away the bs and you look at it's essential message) that you need to watch how much you eat and you need to exercise more. So I prefer to count. Count calories, count the miles as I walk and count the pounds I drop and count the dollars I save because I no longer buy books hoping they will make me thin.


Funny reading this...
I now run around a lot, go to the gym and eat yogurt....but I digress.
You see I had dieted for years. dieted in the short term sense...in the sense that someday the diet would end. That I would be normal and then being normal...I wouldn't ever have to pay attention again.
That is the fat mind.
Thin people do pay attention. They eat a light lunch if they are going to have a heavy dinner.
They exercise.
They skip fatty foods.
And coming into this this time.
I was in it for long haul.
I decided that I didn't give a rats @ss how long it took.
I was going to live healthy day in and day out.
Adjusting as I went to make sure I didn't fall off track.
I was going to lose and hold and not slip back.
I was going to calculate...and if I never lost a flippin pound I would keep walking and keep eating right because I knew it was the right thing to do.
I didn't want to feel OUT OF CONTROL anymore.
I wanted to be proud of myself.
I also decided to LIVE. and to FEEL, AND TO TRY.
To put my self out there and stop hiding.
To wake up and give it all I had.
and I have...and I always will.
This isn't a sprint...it isn't a marathon and
IT ISN'T A GAME.
It's my LIFE.
And it's your life.
Live it.
FULLY.
Hugs,
Chris