paranoia as a hurtle and as a motivator

So I'll be in Zanesville Saturday night through Monday morning. Which means I'll miss at least my treadmill Sunday morning, maybe Monday morning too... depending when I get home, and likely my Sunday evening workout. I should be able to get in Saturday's before I leave. (Though as an aside, I'll have to remember the gym closes at 4:30 on Saturday!)

As to points... one challenge will be that I'm away from my spreadsheet, and a bigger challenge is that Monday is Thanksgiving in Canada, so Liz's family (her parents are down for the holiday) will likely want to do a Thanksgiving style meal Sunday night. The good news is that they're fairly healthy cooks, the bad news is that they're also really good at it :)

I still haven't quite figured out the whole weight loss thing where it comes to eating with people who don't know I'm trying to lose weight. I mean, obviously I "could" just say, No thanks, I don't want any X, I'm watching my calories.... but I feel somewhat ridiculous doing so. I mean, I know that I've lost 40 lbs in the past 6 weeks, but you can't tell that just by looking at me. I still look like a guy who's at least 150 lbs over weight.

Whenever I order fresh veggies (with no added salt, please) or order off the "light and fit" portion of the menu, I feel somewhat like a fraud. I'm sure you've heard some comedian or whatever comment on the habit of a lot of overweight people to walk into McDonald's, order a big mac, large fry and a "diet" coke. Well, my very physical presence is my "big mac and large fry."

And I even know that it's all in my head. I felt the same way about joining a gym, and everyone there has been nothing but polite to me. And even those people who do judge me, it isn't as if that should have any effect on what I do. And beyond even that... the only way to stop people thinking that way is to lose weight. It isn't as if I wouldn't look equally ridiculous going back to my eating like a teenager days. I can't just wake up tomorrow and leave my fat suit at home.

On a somewhat related point... I sometimes wish that restaurants would just charge for ice water. Not that I'm all that eager to give away my money, but I guess I feel somewhat cheap in the current system. Unless I'm in that extremely rare restaurant that serves skim milk, there is simply nothing on the menu to drink that is both allowed on my diet plan and at all tempting to me. I honestly like water, and I drink a lot of it at meals. So here I am, asking for a fourth, fifth, sixth refill on my free drink. I do try to make it up in the tip, and I guess that's better than the restaurant charging for it when the only real cost is on the server.

This particular neurosis I can somewhat blame on my childhood. Basically, growing up we always got water in restaurants, not because we didn't drink pop (did we ever), but simply because it was free. So as I got out on my own, it was to a certain extent a point of pride to me that I didn't have to worry about that buck or buck and a half extra and could just get pop with my meals. Then I made a decision that I couldn't drink pop any more (back around the time I graduated from lawschool). Ever since then, I've (almost) always had water with meals. And I've always been vaguely unhappy that I was taking advantage of the system.



So moral of the story (looking back at the entire entry)... I'm quite paranoid and care far too much about what other people think of me. Even this blog can be seen as a symptom of that. Or, rather, a means of my using my own weaknesses against myself to produce a positive effect. If I can't show progress or if I stop updating, my own paranoia that the two or three people who had been reading regularly will think poorly of me would shame me into working harder.

So I guess if you can't beat em, join em.