I Ate This Summer

Today's Weight: 196

Goal Weight: 175

Ok, so I'm the worst dieter. 10 pounds in 9 months is nothing to blow up balloons and celebrate for. It's more of something I'd rather not talk about. I'd rather throw a double-cheezy Mcdouble in my mouth and tell everyone I've stopped trying than tell anyone I Really want to lose weight but have managed only 10 pounds in 9 months. But then here I am blogging about it.

Let me tell you about my summer:

I work at a group home that goes camping three times a summer. I only get to go on one of the trips, so the rest of the time I just have off. Sounds awesome (and it is), but what can you do with 37 days off in a summer when you aren't getting paid and don't really have a lot of money saved just so you can blow it on 37 days off? I actually did a lot. This has been the best summer since those summers that lasted a lifetime while I was still a scrawny 8- 13 year-old.

I went on 4 different road trips (if you include work), all of which included numerous stops at all kids of shops and gas stations which seemed to be void of anything healthy. Though I probably spent next to no time looking for apples or rice cakes while I was desperately trying to find a flavor of chips I wasn't tired of yet or picking out the undoubtedly homemade brownies gas stations are always finding and slapping price tags on.

Twice we had friends visit from Alberta. So of course we're not going to feed them all of our organic spices and lettuce. We're going to take them out to fatty restaurants so they can eat that horrible food rather than hog all of our healthy stuff that we eat (whether you believe it or not).

3 of the road trips were to go camping. Everyone knows camping is hot-dogs and marshmallows and burgers and sunflower-seeds and Cheezies and bacon and trips into town for McDonald's or Starbucks or Coke. So you walk around thinking about what you're going to cook for lunch, then you eat lunch, then you start wondering what you're going to grill for supper, then you eat supper, then you eat bedtime snacks, then you sleep and wake up to make breakfast, then you eat breakfast. Plus you can't go without stopping at all those stupid ice cream stores to test their wares or the chocolate factories or the 711's.

In other words: I ate this summer.

I think a couple blogs ago I wrote of how I was losing weight just by eating when I'm hungry and stopping when I'm full. Well... Evidently, it doesn't work that well (10 in 9). But back then I had it wrong, and I'm just beginning to figure it out. I really don't like to get all religious in my blog, but as this is (supposed to be) a blog about losing weight AND this is how I'm learning to lose weight, I'm gonna go ahead and be religious.

Yes, I eat when I'm hungry and stop when I'm full. BUT I have to fill that desire I have to eat - which, if anyone has read any of my blog, is quite something - with something else. Normal diets suggest working-out or starving or sipping herbal tea or getting a calculator and counting all the calories you've eaten, but the 'diet' my wife and I have started suggests replacing it with God.

Ridiculous, right? I thought so. Why would God really care about what we're eating. He says everything is clean so we should go eat whatever we want. Thousands of fat people have good relationships with God, I'm sure of it. Even preachers have a pound here or there they could get rid of. Why do I have to share my Twinkies with God?

Well it's simple. So far, it's been far from easy, but it's simple. God desires us more than anything. We should desire him more than anything. When we actually put him first and find satisfaction through him, we don't need Cheeseburger Doritoes while we're watching Star Wars.

As a home-grown, run-of-the-mill Christian, I've always heard we need to put God first in our lives. I think the lesson I'm learning right now, though, is stuffing the truth of it down my throat, and it's filling me up and helping me to throw the last quarter of my Double Baconator in garbage and thinking 'I probably will survive without it.' No, I think more than that. I think, 'I'm a lot better off without it.'

Of course, I'm not perfect. I expect later this week I'll sneak off to Sparky's pizza and eat an extra large on my own in the corner while the rest of the place sneaks little peeks out of the corner of their eyes. But I'll feel really rotten after, and I won't enjoy it. Because I know now that food is not the Holy Grail I seem to think it is. I need food to keep living. I don't need food in order to love the life I'm living.

It's such a freeing thing. Perhaps not everyone has this attachment to food, but I certainly do. Those dates with my wife where I think it's going to be SO fun cause we're going to The Keg and I'm going to get a 10 oz. steak and those heavenly mashed potatoes, or the trips to see my friends where I say 'we should go to McDonald's at midnight! Remember when we used to do that in High-school?' or when I can't wait for the next stop on our 4 hour drive so I can get out to stretch my stomach with another chocolate bar, these can all be enjoyed WAY more if the focus isn't on food.

I can just love being with my wife because we don't get to do things on our own very often anymore. We can laugh and talk and love each other without that brick sitting in the bottom of our bellies. I can just enjoy reminiscing with my friends without worrying if I'm going to puke up my McChickens. I can make it in 3 hours instead of 4 because I don't NEED those stops. And I can look at that way because I've found the satisfaction I need through God.

For a long time, Food = Fun for me. That may sound gross to some people. You may not believe some could be that way, but that's how I was. Thinking about it, I feel like I should be about 12 hundred pounds, like they should have video cameras in my room so they can watch me try to get all my friends to bring me some donuts. But I'm not that fat, and really I only have about 20 pounds to lose. So I feel lucky.

I can't wait til I'm at my goal weight and Mark Wahlberg is asking me to hang out, til my son wants to play catch for 7 hours and I can say, "Why not 8?" I can't wait til I'm 94 and could canoe across Wascana Lake if I wanted (as if I'd want to), til my kids are getting married and they have me there to celebrate with them, til my kids have kids and I can run around the house making just as much noise as they are so that no-one else can hear the TV.

What I mean to say is: I'm glad I'm starting to Love Life instead of Double-Cheezies. I hope you are too...

Thanks for reading