Permission to Override Default Settings?

So, I recently crossed the 100 pound weight loss mark. Yay, me!

The thing is, I’ve done it before. Twice. Both times, 100 pounds was right around the halfway mark or so, give or take. And both times, there’s been an unfortunate convergence of factors that has led to me gaining it all back, and then some. I mention this because sitting here at that same point, I can feel the factors swarming around me, coming at me from all sides. Or at least that’s what it feels like.

The first frontal attack comes from the realization that I’ve lost my enthusiasm for the widely heralded “lifestyle change” that I’ve made.

I’m not sure why that is. Change is hard, that’s for sure, and I don’t think anyone really likes it. Heaven knows I don’t like it one little bit. I am a critter of habit, and it seems in my case, changing bad habits into good ones takes a hell of a lot longer than 30 days, that’s for damn sure. My lifestyle change started on November 17th of last year. I’ve been at it for almost a full year, and while parts of it have become second nature, the main core of it has not. Living like I do is not a habit for me, it’s a conscious daily choice I make. And lately, it’s been a hard choice to make.

I know it seems like it should be a no-brainer. THIS SHIT WORKS. I have lost 100.8 pounds through nothing more than a change of diet and regular exercise. No drugs. No surgery. No hypnosis. No mystery extracts from the Amazon or dubious injections. Every day, I eat three healthy meals and write them down in my food journal. I drink a lot of water, get out and move my body around for a bit, and really, that’s about it.

To do all those things, though, I have to override my default settings. Sometimes I’ll go long stretches without questioning the override. It seems like it just happens naturally. It doesn’t. But the decision isn’t always a fully conscious one. Some parts of my thinking have become  habit.

The other day I was in the grocery store and it’s Halloween candy season. I fucking LOVE Brach’s candy corn, and this is the time of year to get it. And I found myself walking past it without slowing down before I could even form the entire thought process of leaving it in the bin. Which I realized was a good thing. The entire thought process involved me understanding that I can’t have a few candy corns and move on. I will eat the whole bag in a sitting. So it’s best to leave it there and not even taste it. All that went through my head in less than 5 seconds.

And yet, as I walked away, I was sad. Like my-dog-just-died sad. I mourned the candy corn. I mourned the fact that I will never again sit here happily munching away on a whole bag of candy corn. That fact made me sad. I overrode my default setting successfully, but the system wasn’t happy about it.

What should have been a NSV (non-scale victory) felt like anything but.

I missed my old life of gluttony. For a few minutes, I really wanted it back. I wanted to eat without counting the cost. I missed that so much it physically hurt.

I’m not sure why my default setting is Fat , Gluttonous, and Lazy, but it certainly seems to be the case. I mean, I don’t like the results of having the appetite of a barnyard sow, but hells bells, I do love me some shit food. I want to eat, and what’s more, I want to eat CRAP. I crave junk food like no one’s business. Don’t get me wrong, I like good food. I am a good enough cook. And I eat so well that I’m almost never hungry. I won’t lie to you: most days I make it look easy.

But shit. My dirty secret, thanks to my default setting, is that I want to eat fucking Little Debbie oatmeal creme pies until I puke. I want to scarf a whole bag of cheese doodles and eat at least half of a large, greasy meat-lovers pizza in one sitting. And don’t skimp on the breadsticks.

I don’t know why this is. I just know it’s the way I am. And l have no solid evidence to support that I can ever change myself into someone else.

There are people in the world who never crave junk. They don’t drive past a McDonald’s and actually mourn the greasy goodness that they’re not eating. You ask them if they’d like a snack and they ask if you have any apples. And not because they’re dieting–because they actually like apples. They prefer the taste of a fresh piece of fruit to a bag of cheap Halloween candy.

Freaks.

So every day is an exercise in overriding my default setting of Gluttonous. Every day, no exceptions, every single meal.  And as days turn into weeks into months into almost a whole year, it’s getting harder to hit that override button. The longing for the foods I used to eat is so strong right now. My desire for food that does NOTHING but serve to make me (and everyone who eats it) fat is sometimes so overwhelming I can barely stand it.

So what happens is I start to give in a bit. I have some ice cream after dinner at my mother’s house. I pop a couple of chips into my mouth when I hand Larry his sandwich. I ask for a bit of his pizza, and I take the biggest one I can manage. Bites don’t count, you see, so I don’t write them. (Only they do count, trust me on this one.) And while ice cream once a week after dinner doesn’t seem like much, especially since I measure it and count it and write that down, it’s ceased to be a once-in-awhile treat and is slipping into a habit. And “I can have ice cream once a week” turns into me allowing myself junk foods more and more often because what’s the harm, right?

Yeah, that line of thinking got me an ass with its own weather system.

So I guess the best way to put it is that mentally, I’m struggling with the fact that at the moment, the desire to be healthy and fit is not much stronger than my desire to eat a whole pint of Ben and Jerry’s while watching Firefly. And when the desire to EAT ALL THE THINGS is stronger than being fit and healthy, the slips start happening.

The slips are happening, and I kind of hate myself for it. Every time it happens I can almost picture the window popping up in my head: “Permission to Override Default Settings?” and every time I mentally click “no”, I die a little inside. I lose a little more hope. I sink a little deeper in the quicksand. So far, I’m hanging on, but sometimes, just barely. I can correct for system overrides, but wonder when the day will come when I just can’t be arsed.

I know failure is not actually inevitable. But some days it feels that way. Remember that I have no success to go on. I have never lost all the weight I wanted and kept it off. Ever. I had to fight hard to even begin the process because the idea of setting myself up for that kind of failure yet again is soul-crushing.

The second attack comes at me and makes me not want to go to the gym. This one is sneakier. Because when it comes to eating shitty food, the excuses for not doing it are pretty damn lame, and I almost feel like an asshole using them. I mean, it’s actually easier for me to live with myself when I admit I ate something because I just wanted it, because trying to rationalize it by saying it was too hard to find a good food that fit into my eating plan is just fucking stupid. At the end of the day, you still had a “Fuckit” moment and ate it because you wanted it, so stop trying to rationalize that shit.

But the gym. Ah. That’s different. Head cold? Better stay home. It won’t be a good workout because I can barely breathe. Done right, you can drag that out for a few days. Maybe a week if it’s a Man Cold. Tummy bug? Ooh. You don’t want to spread that nasty shit to other people, and it’s going to be a couple of days before you can trust a fart completely, so staying home is a good bet. You can get a few extra days out of that if you play the Weak and Dehydrated card.

My right knee is feeling the effects of hauling my fat ass around for all these years, and there are days I really do have to rest it. I do NOT want to have to sit out weeks of recovery after I blew out my knee. There are things you just should not ignore, and times when rest is what your body needs more than a workout.

I’m at the point where I’m latching onto any little excuse and making it into a reason.

“I can’t get there until after supper and I hate working out that late because I can’t sleep.”

“My knee hurts.”

“I overdid it yesterday.”

“There’s no time.”

Bitch, please. I’ve got a million of them. My 6 days a week workout schedule wants to be five in the worst way, and from there it’s a slide to four, then three…one day I’ll realize that going back after a few days off is just too hard, and I’ll stop going.

A third attack comes from my own demons. Body image is kicking my ass. It was easier to love myself and how I look when I had accepted Fat as who I am. I admit I’m happier with how I look with clothes on. I’m more confident. I like fitting into chairs without a second thought and the idea that the next time I get on a plane I won’t be crowding the person next to me at all is a happy one.

And I know the majority of folks don’t love how they look naked.

I look like a human mudslide. There’s no way to put it more gently than that and be descriptive. And I know it’s temporary. But to look at myself in the mirror when I get out of the shower and not see how far I’ve come but how far I have to go before I resemble anything less than truly hideous is daunting. It’s disheartening.

I hate my weight. I currently weigh 257.9 pounds. That’s still morbidly obese. It still feels like I’m running with sandbags tied to my legs. I can’t do squats or any number of weight based exercises because I just weigh too goddamn much. My weight is holding me back from all the things I want to do. All that is left to me is plodding along at what feels like a snail’s pace.

I’ve been the same weight for two weeks now. Not gaining, but not losing, either. The dreaded plateau might be here. Maybe it’s the slips, or the blowing off of the gym too often, or a combination of the two. Or maybe it’s just my body readjusting for a bit before letting go of the rest of the weight. Or it could be that I’m eating too much. Or too little. Or building muscle. Or retaining water.

IT COULD BE JUST ABOUT ANYTHING, BUT ALL I KNOW IS THAT THE SCALE IS NOT MOVING AND I’M WICKED PISSED ABOUT THAT.

Simply put, it feels like I am never going to get there, wherever “there” is. And it’s so much work to go nowhere.

Logically, I know that going back simply is not an option. Like it or not, being 360 pounds again cannot happen. I will die. And the only thing between me and losing the next 100 or so pounds that will get me into the healthy weight range for my height is my own determination to make it so. It is entirely up to me whether I fail or not, whether I choose my default settings because it’s easier, or if I make the hard choices. But where the hell did my determination go? Why doesn’t it just hang out with me all day like it used to, and more importantly, why are there moments where I can’t I call it up anymore?

Why do I keep wanting to go back to my default settings of Fat, Gluttonous, and Lazy? Jesus, I wish I knew.

I wish I knew how to stay motivated for the long haul. I’d like to find that mojo again because the holidays are coming up and I know it’s the perfect time for me to go right to my default settings. So much good food, and everyone in the world splurging because “Hey, it’s only once a year!” They don’t understand that for someone like me, once a year can lead to a string of failures that cause a total system crash. I just need the power to maintain my control over food–to not let it control me. I’m losing that battle more than I’d like these days, and I’m a little scared.

I wish I knew why it was so hard right now. I wish I could just get a bit of that momentum back that’s allowed me to cruise along for months at a time. I know I’ve made a positive lifestyle change, and the results have been nothing short of stunning, but right now I’m struggling with it, and just wish I had some way of knowing that this isn’t going to be another failure on my record. I wish I knew that at some point, the changes will become permanent and I will have changed my default settings.

I just can’t say it for certain at the moment. And I wish I could.