Update, Part Three: The path of excess leads to the temple of wheezing. Trust me.
I've used the opportunity of the move to start changing my eating habits, albeit slowly. I've realized that if I change everything at once, I can't stick with it for longer than a couple of weeks. If it's going to be permanent, then it has to be in increments. However, I can't plan out everything or I'll lose focus of what I'm trying to do right now, simply get depressed about the big picture and stop the whole damn thing. So I just came up with Phase One and Phase Two.
Phase One is "Enough With The Sugar, Already". I started realizing just how much sugar I was ingesting in a day, and it floored even me. From the sugar in my tea, the muffin with breakfast, the donuts with lunch, the chocolate bars in the afternoon, the two litres of pop with dinner, the dessert, and the late night snack, I was probably having half a pound of sugar daily. Sure, I'm eating poorly in almost every category, but this was truly insane. So after I moved in to the new place, I went almost cold turkey. No more pop, no more candy, and no more sugary foods. I say almost because I still had sugar in my tea for a while, although I cut that down from two sugars to one, and then after Easter down to none. I'd have regular peanut butter, but I stick with the regular kind instead of the lighter version because, oddly enough, there was a lot less sugar in it. If there was ketchup or relish on my burger, then I wasn't going to freak out. I'm still eating plenty of crap, mind you. I don't eat any less pizza than I did before, nor do I cook many more meals for myself, much less healthier ones. Sooner or later I'm going to have to tackle that as well. I just felt that in my mental Cost/Benefit analysis, sugar came in dead last, so it had to go first.
The hardest thing to do was to stop drinking pop. At first I thought I'd just switch to juice, but then I realized that two litres of juice with dinner isn't better at all. I didn't want to just flip over to diet soft drinks, as I had done that previously and it didn't really work. (and I swear it made me thirstier than before) So I just started drinking a lot of soda water, since I really enjoyed the carbonation. To supplement it, I got a bottle each of lemon juice and lime juice. A couple of squirts of either and I discovered that it was very satisfying. Now I enjoy it by itself, and I often don't even bother to put any lemon or lime juice in. From time to time I'll still have diet pop, like at the movies, and I've noticed that while Perrier tastes a lot better, club soda is a lot cheaper.
I can't deny that, for the first couple of months, the sugar cravings were absolutely brutal. I commented to a friend at one point that it would sometimes get so bad that I would want to make out with a woman just to taste her lip gloss. I'm not usually one for self-discipline, especially when it comes to my appetite, and it took a lot of active concentration to get my mind off of chocolate. Unlike pop, I've yet to find a suitable substitute for that. A slip-up I had a week ago, where there was a little tub of Hershey's Kisses left over from a KFC order I brought home, turned out to be a good reminder of why I'm doing all this in the first place. The first one I had tasted awesome, but I don't remember what the tenth one tasted like. I wasn't even paying attention to them anymore. I was watching TV and just eating them like popcorn. There was no joy at all. Moderation is what I think I'll have to focus on if I reintroduce sweets down the road.
I just remembered a pseudo-related story from when I lived in Ottawa. My roommate Jay and I were smoking a couple of his cigars on the porch. "Take the band off the cigar before you light it. Only assholes want to show off what they're smoking" he said, as he passed me the matches. "Well how do you know when to stop smoking a cigar then?" I asked. "That's simple, Jon. When you stop enjoying it." Sure enough, the taste of the cigar seemed to change at a certain point, so I just stopped. I can be such a hedonist at times, yet I can't seem to figure out long-term pleasure from short-term effort, particularly from such mindless eating that I let myself do. To put it more plainly, I can't stop being so fucking lazy.
That, of course, is the monkey gnawing on the back of my neck when it comes to Phase Two, "Get Ass Off Couch, Repeatedly", which I've yet to truly start. My work ethic is so poor that even the fear of an untimely and unseemly death at an early age due to my obesity doesn't override the fact that if I'm not truly enjoying an activity that involves exercise, I'll stop doing it. Sure, I love to ski, but I ski in Ontario, where the hills are so small that the effort ratio is 30 seconds of work down the hill to 10 minutes of chairlift rest up the hill. Not very effective. A few years back I went with some friends on a ski trip to Whistler, and it was awesome, but my eastern-taught legs were simply not prepared for true mountain skiing in real powder. Fifteen minutes of continuous skiing and we aren't even down 1/3 of the mountain? Aw, crap!
I suppose the obvious answer would be to try cross-country skiing, but since it's May I'll have to look elsewhere until winter comes around again.
Nonetheless, I really need to start this soon. Hey, it's been really nice to lose 20 pounds so far without changing anything besides my sugar intake, but I realize that it's not even 10% of my body weight, so it's not as monumental as one might think. Also, I'm pretty sure that I've reached a plateau, being that my body has adjusted to the lack of sugar and is now able to keep my weight steady. (at least at my current daily routine) I'm not lacking in ideas as to what I could do, I live next to High Park for chrissakes. It's lacking in effort that's the problem. When I started writing this, I was hoping that I'd somehow have a moment of inspiration come through the screen as I tapped this out, but unfortunately no. More to come later.
Phase One is "Enough With The Sugar, Already". I started realizing just how much sugar I was ingesting in a day, and it floored even me. From the sugar in my tea, the muffin with breakfast, the donuts with lunch, the chocolate bars in the afternoon, the two litres of pop with dinner, the dessert, and the late night snack, I was probably having half a pound of sugar daily. Sure, I'm eating poorly in almost every category, but this was truly insane. So after I moved in to the new place, I went almost cold turkey. No more pop, no more candy, and no more sugary foods. I say almost because I still had sugar in my tea for a while, although I cut that down from two sugars to one, and then after Easter down to none. I'd have regular peanut butter, but I stick with the regular kind instead of the lighter version because, oddly enough, there was a lot less sugar in it. If there was ketchup or relish on my burger, then I wasn't going to freak out. I'm still eating plenty of crap, mind you. I don't eat any less pizza than I did before, nor do I cook many more meals for myself, much less healthier ones. Sooner or later I'm going to have to tackle that as well. I just felt that in my mental Cost/Benefit analysis, sugar came in dead last, so it had to go first.
The hardest thing to do was to stop drinking pop. At first I thought I'd just switch to juice, but then I realized that two litres of juice with dinner isn't better at all. I didn't want to just flip over to diet soft drinks, as I had done that previously and it didn't really work. (and I swear it made me thirstier than before) So I just started drinking a lot of soda water, since I really enjoyed the carbonation. To supplement it, I got a bottle each of lemon juice and lime juice. A couple of squirts of either and I discovered that it was very satisfying. Now I enjoy it by itself, and I often don't even bother to put any lemon or lime juice in. From time to time I'll still have diet pop, like at the movies, and I've noticed that while Perrier tastes a lot better, club soda is a lot cheaper.
I can't deny that, for the first couple of months, the sugar cravings were absolutely brutal. I commented to a friend at one point that it would sometimes get so bad that I would want to make out with a woman just to taste her lip gloss. I'm not usually one for self-discipline, especially when it comes to my appetite, and it took a lot of active concentration to get my mind off of chocolate. Unlike pop, I've yet to find a suitable substitute for that. A slip-up I had a week ago, where there was a little tub of Hershey's Kisses left over from a KFC order I brought home, turned out to be a good reminder of why I'm doing all this in the first place. The first one I had tasted awesome, but I don't remember what the tenth one tasted like. I wasn't even paying attention to them anymore. I was watching TV and just eating them like popcorn. There was no joy at all. Moderation is what I think I'll have to focus on if I reintroduce sweets down the road.
I just remembered a pseudo-related story from when I lived in Ottawa. My roommate Jay and I were smoking a couple of his cigars on the porch. "Take the band off the cigar before you light it. Only assholes want to show off what they're smoking" he said, as he passed me the matches. "Well how do you know when to stop smoking a cigar then?" I asked. "That's simple, Jon. When you stop enjoying it." Sure enough, the taste of the cigar seemed to change at a certain point, so I just stopped. I can be such a hedonist at times, yet I can't seem to figure out long-term pleasure from short-term effort, particularly from such mindless eating that I let myself do. To put it more plainly, I can't stop being so fucking lazy.
That, of course, is the monkey gnawing on the back of my neck when it comes to Phase Two, "Get Ass Off Couch, Repeatedly", which I've yet to truly start. My work ethic is so poor that even the fear of an untimely and unseemly death at an early age due to my obesity doesn't override the fact that if I'm not truly enjoying an activity that involves exercise, I'll stop doing it. Sure, I love to ski, but I ski in Ontario, where the hills are so small that the effort ratio is 30 seconds of work down the hill to 10 minutes of chairlift rest up the hill. Not very effective. A few years back I went with some friends on a ski trip to Whistler, and it was awesome, but my eastern-taught legs were simply not prepared for true mountain skiing in real powder. Fifteen minutes of continuous skiing and we aren't even down 1/3 of the mountain? Aw, crap!
I suppose the obvious answer would be to try cross-country skiing, but since it's May I'll have to look elsewhere until winter comes around again.
Nonetheless, I really need to start this soon. Hey, it's been really nice to lose 20 pounds so far without changing anything besides my sugar intake, but I realize that it's not even 10% of my body weight, so it's not as monumental as one might think. Also, I'm pretty sure that I've reached a plateau, being that my body has adjusted to the lack of sugar and is now able to keep my weight steady. (at least at my current daily routine) I'm not lacking in ideas as to what I could do, I live next to High Park for chrissakes. It's lacking in effort that's the problem. When I started writing this, I was hoping that I'd somehow have a moment of inspiration come through the screen as I tapped this out, but unfortunately no. More to come later.