No Loss; No Gain

I felt so sure of everything
My love to you so well received
And I just strutted around your town
Knowing I didn't let you down
The truth be known, the truth be told
My heart was always fairly cold
Posing to be as warm as yours
My way of getting in your world
But now I'm out and I've had time
To look around and think
And sink into another world
That's filled with guilt and overwhelming
Shame, boatloads of shame
Day after day, more of the same
Blame, please lift it off
Please, take it off, please make it stop

Here it is.  Eight weeks into the process today.  To date, this has been extremely successful.  So, why do I feel so bad?  Why do i still feel like I haven't made much progress?  I should be running around, dancing in the streets.  I guess, part of it, is that I've been here before.  I've lost boatloads of weight before.  I know of three different occasions that saw me losing fifty pounds.  I've weighed less than this as an adult.  Basically, I've just gotten back down to my STARTING POINT from a few years back.  I still look like a big fat guy.  Unless you have seen pictures of me from this past fall, you would think I was just a big guy who has no control.  I'm sure people who haven't seen me since high school would be shocked at how I've almost doubled in size.

But there is something more.  I celebrate the victories often on this site.  I have mentioned dropping four shirt sizes and pants sizes.  I talk about my newfound discovery of vegetable based dishes.  It has seemed that most of the cravings and addiction parts of this were subdued.  But, for the last few days, I have been frustrated and irritated about this whole thing.  I'm not like, "Screw it.  Give me a donut."  I'm just angry.  You want to know what triggered this?  On Friday, I weighed.  And I hadn't lost anything at all since Monday.  Now, usually, I drop about two pounds between weigh-ins.  So, not losing anything is a bit of a surprise.  I sat there and analyzed what I had eaten and tried to figure out what I was doing wrong.  I should still be melting before your eyes like a butter sculpture.  I guessed that maybe it was the face that I had a bunch of lunch meat, with its salt lick worth of sodium.  That and too little water.  So, this weekend, I tried a lot harder.  I weighed on Saturday - same weight.  Sunday - same weight.  I had gone a whole week without losing anything.

That frustrated me.  I have big plans.  I want to be under 300 by my birthday.  I want to be 220 by Christmas.  I can't afford weeks with no weight loss on the relative front end of my battle.  That won't do.  Heather tried to encourage me by telling me sometimes bodies just go through plateaus.  And she got onto me about weighing every day.  I thought, "Oh what do you know, doctor to be."  Then I talked to Charles Wise, my accountability partner through this.  "It's probably your body adjusting to all of this."  I looked away and thought, "Oh what do you know, counselor man."

But a long drive has a way of making you think.  And, yesterday I had a loooong drive all by myself to think a lot.  I was driving from Tallahassee to Orlando for a Defender Ministries event.  Four and a half hours down what could be called "the mind numbing roads of boredom and despair."  (I swear, if the River Styx doesn't resemble I-10, they need to redecorate it.)  Something kept rattling around in my head.  It was a song.  As is often the case, music speaks to me better than many speakers.  And this song came from my new "Top Five Band" - the Avett Brothers.  It is called "Shame" off of their Emotionalism album.  I have included the specific lyrics at the start of the post.

What I began to realize is that, although I had successfully put a new food approach into place and lost a ton of weight, I had still failed the first two months of this process.  There were several reasons for this failure.

First of all, I had said from the very beginning, this was not supposed to be about the weight loss.  I had said that if I didn't lose a single pound, I wanted to do this to break the unhealthy and sinful hold food had on me.  But, here I was, two months in, and I was getting furious because I hadn't lost anything in six days.  I still had lost 41 pounds, but that wasn't enough.  My focus had subtly shifted to the scale.  The rest of this was a means to an end - and no longer the end itself.

Second, I still haven't broken the attraction of food, as much as I have improved.  I was finding myself craving "okay" foods.  I was excited to head down to Orlando.  Usually, that would be because I had free reign to eat like a college student again.  This time, it was because I knew there were acceptable places to eat.  I still don't think that it is wrong to be excited about food and enjoy it.  But there is a line that gets crossed.  I had crossed that line again.  Sure, it wasn't about pizza and breakfast sandwiches.  It was about meat.  Honestly, I am having a hard time with this issue.  I love cooking and being creative.  I enjoy food.  How do I break that?  Or, how do I make sure it doesn't turn from enjoyment into obsession?

Third, a big part of this is learning discipline.  I am not disciplined in any way shape or form.  I am a terrible organizer.  I forget things all the time.  I wait until the last minute - because I can.  This is the curse of a talented and smart person.  You can excel with little or no effort most of the time.  In college, I had a class with just one assignment - a big paper.  I literally waited until the last day to START it.  I didn't even unwrap my textbook until the day before the paper was due.  I got a B - and was angry because it wasn't an A, and the teacher told me she was grading me as a grad student (which is why I got a B, and which I thought was horribly unfair).  At the last church I worked at, when people came in to ask for stuff, I would write it on a little piece of paper.  These papers were all over my desk.  The only negative thing I ever got in my reviews was how nervous my boss was about this habit.  I finally got a PDA.  It was very helpful - the papers could get stacked on it and not strewn all over the desk.  I really believe that this entire Med School/me staying home/food effete thing is supposed to teach me discipline.  I am at the point where I need to start working out.  Even though I literally have no deadlines in my life, I can't find time to go walking.  I make excuses.  I HAVE to do this.  At the hotel, I went down this morning to the fitness center.  I tried to get on the treadmill, but was too heavy and the thing wouldn't go.  I tried the stair master, but my knee started screaming in about two minutes.  And I went on the Lifecycle.  After the FIVE MINUTE FIT TEST, my heart was beating so fast I thought it wisest to quit.  You know, rather than dying in a fitness center at a La Quinta.  Discipline is more than just avoiding the cookies.

The fourth reason is the most humiliating.  I was finding myself taking great pride in what I had done.  I enjoyed the comments on Facebook and the "Wow, you are doing great" emails.  I was stunned, and thrilled, at the number of people who were finding this blog an inspiration.  I tried to keep the pride monster in check, but it was beginning to rage out of control.  There even was a little bit of sick joy from doing better than other people - not enough to undermine them, but a satisfaction that I had done something they hadn't.  I had cracked the weight code and didn't use anything out there.  It was my own doing.  No books.  No Master's Diet.  No Atkins.  My own plan and execution.

Writing that, it makes me ill.  But it is true.  I had claimed ownership of this process.  Just like everything I have ever succeeded at in my life - my grades, my graphic design, my writing, my teaching, my national championship rumba dancing - I reached my little hand out and grabbed the credit.  And that is where the song hit me.  I was strutting around, proud of the fact that I had not failed or cheated or anything.  For two solid months, I had not come close to blowing it.  But, just like in the song, I looked inside and realized that my heart was not much better off than at the start of 2010.

When I started this process, I realized perfectly well what it would take to succeed.  It wasn't a superior plan or better ingredients.  It wasn't creativity or any of that.  It was quite simply that I fell on my face before God and begged Him for mercy.  I cried out and said, "I can't do this.  I will eat until I am dead.  Please give me the wisdom, the strength, the freedom I need to do this right."  I prayed that.  I wrote that in this blog.  I read verses about freedom and food.  I had my closest friends praying for me all the time.  I  was a broken man looking to my Savior for help.  And as soon, as I got that help and healing and started running towards a new future, I shoved the Creator off the track so I could get the laurel for myself.  What a stupid selfish arrogant jerk I am!  How dare I steal credit?  But, there I was, doing it again.  Sure, I knew the things to say.  I have been a Christian long enough.  I have been a teacher and pastor for years - I know how to say things to others that I am not doing myself.

Last week, I had to write some lessons for this Defender Ministries event this week.  I was writing about freedom.  And, as I was sitting at the table, writing about these beautiful concepts, I was stealing credit.  I was using this to puff myself up.  And, when I finally realized what I had done, I was full of shame.  Boatloads of shame.  It was like I was a poor and homeless child.  I was taken in by a kindly older man, who provided what I needed.  Not only that, but he helped me to learn a trade - one that I was very good at.  When it came time to display our wares, to earn what was sure to be a great income, I pushed him out of the carriage so I could keep all the money myself.  And, the thing is, this is not the first time.  I have done this so many times with God.  I am a serial old-man-pusher (still working on that title).  I have done it with my struggle with the computer, with my struggle with movies, with my teaching, with my writing, with my preaching.  You know how many times I have prayed about this issue in the past month?  ZERO.  Not once.  Some would say, "Well that is because you are at the place where you don't need to."  Actually, I was saying that.  Can you actually get to a point where you don't NEED to pray?  You don't NEED to pray about overcoming a consistent point of failure?  That weakness is always going to be a weakness.  I may learn to live with it, to ignore it.  But it will never completely disappear.  How arrogant do I need to be to believe that I don't NEED to lift that area up?  That I don't NEED help.  What I NEED to do is get over myself and get back where I started.  I NEED to get back on my face before God and beg for mercy.  I NEED to pray for Him to truly break the ties - so I am not relying on my own methods for how to just live with them.  I NEED to ask Him to help me overcome what I have realized is my biggest addiction - MYSELF.  If I don't learn that lesson through this - my biggest challenge ever - the end result will be failure.  I will just be a thinner, more in-shape stupid selfish arrogant jerk.