Saturday, September 29, 2012

A Rainy Day In September

Today's random thoughts.

 I recently passed another milestone that I intended to write a major blog post about, but didn't.  I now weigh less than I did when I graduated high school.  I was going to talk about being this weight now... versus being this weight then...   but I didn't get around to it for a number of reasons.
 In the early 1980's when I graduated high school at 260 pounds I was the fattest kid I knew in my school.  There were other fat kids, and looking through the historical data I know that by the 1980's obesity was already on the rise, but there are degrees of obesity and there weren't many young people who were as fat as I was.  Compare that to today...   Just in my neighborhood there are enough high school aged kids that are fat enough that I would not feel the least bit out of the norm if I graduated today at 260 pounds. 
 There were people fatter than me back in the 1980's.  But not many, and they were few enough that when I saw them I'd make a mental note of it.  In today's world I don't have to go looking...   People weighing 250 pounds or more are everywhere.  People weighing 350 pounds or more can be seen on a regular basis.  If you're out in public on a daily basis, you're likely to see at least one. 
 It is a sad and tragic commentary on our modern culture.  

 I continue with eating a lower volume of food, and I am still clueless as to what hunger really is.  Tomorrow marks six weeks and I am no closer to knowing what hunger is than when I started.  Thankfully, the gnawing obsession to overeat is gone.  I still have the urge, but urges are much more manageable than gnawing obsessions.
 Yesterday was interesting.  I actually did physical labor all day long yesterday.  I had a project at hand and wanted to get as much of it done as possible.  I fully expected that with the expenditure of so much energy that I would have the urge to eat a greater quantity of food.  Yet I didn't.  In fact, the opposite occurred.  At noon I ate a banana because I hadn't eaten anything yet.  Then around 1pm I came home and fixed what I'd normally eat for breakfast and took it back with me and slowly ate it while I worked, even though I perceived no hunger.  At dinnertime I again felt no urge to eat any more food than normal, and in fact, didn't feel like eating any food at all.  But I did.  I not only ate the volume of food that has become my "normal" dinner, but I ate twice that because my experience over the past six weeks told me that given that level of physical exertion I would lose more weight than I wanted to on what has become my "normal" volume of food.  I was expecting to feel stuffed eating that much extra food.  I didn't. 
 Did I learn anything?   Yeah, I guess so.  I learned that I still don't know what hunger is, and that not even extreme physical exertion will trigger it...  but yet I fairly accurately decided on the right amount of food to eat, based entirely on learned experience over the past six weeks. This morning I weighed one half pound less than yesterday morning, which is acceptable. 

 Ever onward!

Happy Eating!

-Norm  aka John Smith

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