This road to getting healthy has so many pitfalls and booby traps, I feel like Indiana Jones sometimes. In fact, I often fall asleep envisioning a huge red stability ball breaking loose and rolling toward me, Raiders of the Lost Ark style. That could be a metaphor for how overwhelmed I feel, but I think it's just because my husband has chosen to store my huge red stability ball on top of the bookcase by our bed. Seriously, if I wake up with that thing on top of me, I'll never get over it. But I digress. Fat Jesse, I have been in a slump. A major what's-the-point-of-all-this-effort slump. This is probably why we haven't spoken in days, but I think I've figured out where this slump is coming from and I'm ready to talk about it.
This Saturday will be the two month mark from the point my family changed our lifestyle. Two months is significant. It's the weirdly coincidental amount of time that I have been able to last on any fad diet I have tried. Low-carb cheese and pork rind diet? Two months. Low-carb cheese and pork rind diet cleverly disguised as a healthy belly fat solution? Two months. The two shakes and a never-sensible dinner, the fast until dinner, the lemon juice and cayenne pepper. Two months, two months, and....well, five days on that last one. Just too weird for me. This is what that tells me...
Fad Diets Are Like an Affair
You know the story of the diet book. You see its stunning spine from across the bookstore. The bright letters, the holographic detail. You open it and...oh my! Are those full color illustrations of all the yummy meals I can prepare? The grocery lists, the before and after pictures, all luring you into their web. It's time to buy the book and live on its promises and attractive ease.
Yes, Fat Jesse, fad diets are like an extra-marital affair. Most times, they begin by chance and cause a tingle of excitement at something different. Something easy. And it is easy...at first. Yes, at first, that book is beautiful. It keeps you company at the grocery store. Sure, it has expensive tastes and you can't afford or even find most of the ingredients for those beautifully pictured recipes. But you can grab other (unhealthy) stuff that follows the same principle. The book even makes it up to you and gives you huge gifts on the scale. This relationship is perfect! All you have to do is listen to what the book says, and you'll score. But after a while, things slow down a bit. Those scale presents have all but stopped and the book has a perfect explanation: it's time to move to phase 2. Wait, what? I don't remember reading anything about phases when I was leafing through this at the book store! But, Fat Jesse, they ALL have phases. When it's time to move onto phase 2, you realize that this book wants a commitment. And that commitment doesn't look much different that just simply eating healthy and getting some exercise. You now feel silly, because you've abandoned all common sense for a phase. That phase was just a ploy to drop some instant pounds and eventually reach the conclusion that the only thing that works is hard work. It's in this moment of crystal clear regret, befitting the ending to a fantastic Tyler Perry movie, that you realize...
The Journey to Getting Truly Healthy is Like a Marriage
I've made a point of it in my adult life to not hang out with any single woman who goes on and on about how great marriage is. Number one, because she has to be off in outer space and I generally don't get along with space aliens. And two, because I'm convinced that a single women who spends her time raving about how lucky I am because I'm married is a closet home wrecker. But that's a debate for another day and time, F.J. (one that I, of course, have plenty of scientific evidence to back me up). The fact is, any married person (especially this person with one divorce in her repertoire already) would agree that marriage is hard. Now, before that army of unmarried space cadets pops out to gasp and say things like not if you find the right person-or my favorite- not if God pens your love story, I have a question. Why is it so wrong to say something is hard, anyway? Especially something so monumentally important like living with another human being and making every waking decision with them? Or something like making sure you don't die of preventable diseases before your time? As a society, we don't like to hear about stuff that is difficult. We have the collective attention span of a fruit fly, and our life spans aren't far behind because of it. It is cliche, F.J., but it really is true that the most important things in our life were never meant to be easy. They take commitment, patience, and a lot of flexibility. A marriage that goes the course of fifty years will see changes, some that are life-defining great and some extremely difficult to the point of wanting to give up. And, what do you know? I'm finding out that being a healthy person--and not just a person on a diet-- is turning out to be exactly the same way.
As we approach this two month mark, Fat Jesse, I realize that my former affection for diet books has programmed me to get discouraged with anything that doesn't resemble a passionate honeymoon of weight loss. So now it is time to set my commitment in stone, and promise to stay the course even when it gets hard. Or worse...when it gets boring. Slump. Over. Time to renew those vows.
For Better or For Worse,
New Jesse, -16 lbs
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