One year and 141 pounds later

Today's weigh in marks one year of living a healthy lifestyle. One year ago I was still in Indianapolis coming off a wicked 6 month depression that kicked my ass. I had just turned 30 and knew that I couldn't keep living the same life I was living in the same unhealthy body I had been living it in. I don't want to make it sound dramatic, like I was sitting under a tree while a warm summer breeze blew my hair around my face with a John Williams score playing in the background when it suddenly hit me that I want to become a healthy person committed to a healthy lifestyle. There was no thunderbolt moment but instead a series of moments that made me realize how much I hated myself and my body and how it didn't have to be that way. I realized that I was 30 years and morbidly obese. That combined with my family history was completely setting me up for either early death, or if I didn't die young I'd be one of those old people that are really old. You know what I mean? One of those old people that can barely get around and are pretty much house bound. A year ago I said "Fuck that. Fuck early death, fuck being old and frail before my time." Now, I know that even with my healthy lifestyle I may still die young or become feeble. But a healthy lifestyle certainly gives me much better odds.

During this first year of my healthy lifestyle I've lost 141 pounds, become mostly vegetarian, and learned an insane amount about food, nutrition, exercise and how my body relates and reacts to all three. In this paragraph allow me dramatic license to say that it's been an incredibly rewarding experience to learn about healthy eating and living a healthy lifestyle and just how damn good both of those things feel. I feel good almost all the time. Seriously. If I'm not sick or having cramps (TMI? I can't decide) then I probably feel pretty good on any given day. When I don't eat right or I thoroughly overeat I pay for it. I feel sluggish and bloated and just generally yucky. I avoid the yucky as much as I possibly can.

Interestingly enough though I had a bought of the yucky over my birthday weekend. For my birthday and B's birthday my mom likes to take us out for a fancy dinner. This year was no exception. For a couple weeks before my birthday I scoured the online menus of lots of fancy restaurants here in town. Louisville has a great dining scene so naturally I found a lot of insanely delicious sounding dishes that a year and two months ago I would have been salivating over. I didn't walk away from my menu perusing with visions of tastiness in my head though. Instead I was lamenting the fact that gourmet/fancy vegetarian cooking doesn't really have a place here, save Asian restaurants. We're a Southern town that loves its pork, its steak, its chicken and even its frog legs. I can't fault anyone for loving those things, they just aren't for me much anymore. When I want things like steak or fried fish or some kind of pork I don't typically want it at a fancy restaurant. Instead I want it someplace where it's going to be prepared in comforting and familiar ways. So what I should have done was explained to my mom that while I appreciate her springing for fancy dinners let's instead hit a favorite burger spot or load up on insanely good pub grub at The Irish Rover. If I'm going to eat beef 5 times a year I'll take the backyard barbecue burger over the beef tenderloin with prosciutto, Parmesan and asparagus almost every time.

So I should have told my mom that I wanted to hit the burger place or the Rover but I didn't. I knew she really wanted a nice dinner out, as did B, so we went to a very popular old school place called Jack Fry's. There was literally one vegetarian entree. I can't recall there being a single vegetarian appetizer. So I had the above described beef tenderloin. It was good, very good, but I definitely wish that I had chosen to consume those calories elsewhere. I don't have any guilt over eating a beef based, decadent meal every once in a while, I just wish it had been a different one. The point of this story is that I knew I didn't want to go to this restaurant, I knew that I didn't want to eat that kind of meal but I did it anyway to make other people happier. What I knew but re-learned from this experience is that my eating habits and healthy lifestyle are incredibly important to me and I can't allow other people to dissuade me from the path I've chosen to be on. My mom would have been a bit disappointed had we gone to a more casual restaurant but she would have gotten over it and we still would have had a good time. It was my birthday and my caloric expenditure and I should have placed my wants in this situation first. That sounds selfish I know but taking care of yourself and making healthy choices everyday is a selfish endeavor, one that I think everyone should undertake.

Losing 141 pounds is probably the most selfish thing I've ever done. I did it just for me. I did it to make myself feel better, look better, give myself a better shot at aging healthily. It was and is all about me. I hope to lose another 40-60 pounds. I can't say for sure I'll reach that goal range and it's ok if I don't, but if I do those next 40-60 pounds will be just as selfish. I hope to maintain a healthy lifestyle including good eating and exercise for the rest of my life, this too will be completely selfish on my part. I like feeling good, I like looking good, I like moving my body. Maybe that selfishness should be the theme of my responses to questions like "how have you done/how do you do it/what should I do?" Maybe I should say "I love myself enough to know that I deserve a healthy body and I'm selfish enough to adhere to a lifestyle that helps me get one." I like that answer.