Back to Habits

Sunday I officially signed on to Busan's Biggest Loser #5, a diet competition based on the television show. I checked my weight: 103.5 kg (228 lbs). I have been stalled at this weight for about five months now, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Considering that seven months ago I weighed in at 117 kg (257 lbs). holding steady is a good thing; the usual pattern after weight loss is to gain some, if not all of it back.  So something had definitely changed.

I decided to join BBL5 about four days before the first weigh-in, and remembered that the organizer, Mike, had told me that previously contestants spent a lot of money on buffets before the contest started. After all, the more weight you have to lose, the more you can lose, right? So I decided to take a page from that playbook:

I ate a lot of tasty bread. The local French Bakery (featuring a real, live French guy you can see working in the second story kitchen) makes a lovely olive bread stuffed with cheese. (Give me a second to clean the drool off of my keyboard.) There is a corner stand that sells boneless fried chicken on a stick, with sweet chili sauce, please! There are coffee drinks that are prepared with all manner of sweet ingredients and whipped cream on the top. And candy bars. I drank four cans of Pepsi that week, as well as drinking cola with a meal. The worst was at meal time, when I ate until I was full, then ate just a bit more.

Until April I was drinking only a can or two of Pepsi a week, but the rest of those habits were totally mine. Then I did the juice thing, and dropped that down to once a month, and then as a mixer. My eating habits changed as my stomach got smaller, and I consciously avoided the larger portions I was accustomed to. Eventually I became accustomed to smaller portions, and stopped thinking about it at all.

So last week I broke all the "rules" and went back to my old habits. When I mentioned this in the office, one of my coworkers asked me, "Doesn't it feel good?"

My immediate answer was "No. I feel gross."

"I mean the taste, in your mouth!"

"Yeah, that's good for the first drink, and the first few bites. But as I drink cola and stuff myself with food, I just start to feel yucky. I've been doing it for just two days now, and I feel like a big block of lard."

It occurred to me that I must have felt that way all the time when I ate that way all the time, I just never noticed. I like to think that if I had noticed myself feeling that nasty, I would have lost weight just to avoid that feeling, but I would not wish that constant awareness of one's body on my worst enemy.

Just imagine if you were aware of every bit of discomfort in your body: even mosquito bites would be intolerable. A broken leg would drive you to madness if you could never get comfortable with the pain. I understand that some people with autism are acutely aware of the feeling of their clothes against their body. Time to move to a tropical country with a high tolerance for scant clothing.

Being comfortable with your current condition is a survival skill, but being uncomfortable with it is the path to progress.

I am on the path to progress. I have dropped one of the three kilograms I picked up last week just by reverting to my old new habits: eating less, fewer carbs, more vegetables. Today I made vegetable juice, hoping to spend a few days on a juice fast. I have enough to get me through tomorrow and into the next day, but unfortunately I tried to juice a peach pit. Bit mistake, juicer out of commision.  I will make the juice last a couple of days and try to get a replacement part soon, but in the mean time it is more raw veggies, more exercise, and no more tasty olive bread for me.

Oh yeah, we went to Gumi for Chuseok. Here are some pictures.

A cousin's home

The church built on the site of my father-in-law's home

Heading up Gumo Mountain

No, we are not walking all that way up.

Entrance to a Buddhist Temple

Maxine and I further up the mountain

This was a good trip, and deserves its own write-up, but this will have to do: the last time I went to Gumi was in 2002, I think, the Chuseok after we got married. I vowed to never again make that trip during Chuseok, as the traffic was so terrible. It took us 2.5 hours to get there, and six to get back. This time both legs of the journey were about the same. Korean highway driving is still no fun, but at least it wasn't bumper-to-bumper.