Regulars

18 March 2010

Back In The Saddle Again



I recently started on an heroic quest to lose all of the weight I gained over the last 17 years of marriage...and then some.

Hi, I'm AQ and I'm trying to get right with myself.

Here is my most recent photograph (from 2006, after my beloved Hurricanes won the Cup):

AQ with the Cup

My goal is to get down to 190--from there, everything else is gravy. The hard part was starting. I've already started modifying my eating habits so that I'm eating more of what I like (greens, fruit, nuts, other stuff that's good for a body), and no more of what my husband likes (TV dinners, nasty Kroger chicken, fast food, and so on).

For so many years, it was easier for me to just shut the fuck up and eat what Genghis put in front of me rather than bitch and wind up having to deal with drama about "spending money" and raving about how "we need to eat cheap food", or put up with insane jealousy every time I even so much as said hello to a guy on the street. I knew it was bad, I knew that the fact that I have PCOS made it far far easier to gain than to lose, but I did it anyway because it was the only way to avoid getting shit on by somebody with his own set of insecurities.

I complained (oh man did I complain) to my friends, my friends said WTFHUSBAND? (and a few said WTFDIVORCE?) to me--my best friend on the whole planet flat told me he was afraid I'd wind up dead if it didn't stop (I believe the phrase he used was "fatted to die")...and that was 13 years ago. I think that when the two of us re-established contact after so long, he was surprised to find out I was still 1) breathing and 2) ambulatory. Even my family practice doctor and my endocrinologist at Duke U. said something to me and to Genghis...and he just didn't get it, even after Dr. Brown (my endo, not my best friend or the dude from the Back To The Future movies) told him that I fit the criteria for Type 2 Diabetes and things had to change immediately.

I'm still surprised she didn't slap him when he flat out said "Well, we don't have a lot of money and we need to economize. We need to eat cheap food." Hell, I'm surprised I didn't slap him.

I wanted to stop for years, but didn't find the strength to cut loose with my Voice of Appropriately Righteous Indignation until about a month ago, when I finally stood up to Genghis and told him that at long last I was through getting fat for him; that I was going to lose weight or die trying. I told him he basically had three choices:

1) Get on the bus
2) Get out of the way of the bus
3) Get run the hell over by the bus

And I would start spending my paychecks on stuff that I prefer to eat, whether he likes it or not. I talked to my family practice doctor about the LAP-BAND and getting in with a nutritionist, and I've also started taking antidepressants (but that is another issue that I've been dealing with since I was a child, and solving that will only help with everything else). And I started walking everywhere again.

Oh gods, the walking. That was where the gravity of the situation was piledriven home to me. I couldn't even get to the mailbox at my apartment complex (which is roughly 1/4 mile away from my apartment) without feeling like I was going to fall over. Now the only trouble I have is getting back to the apartment--hills still kill my legs and back, but at least I can get there without feeling like my heart is going to explode from my chest by the time I'm halfway. Breaks and lunchtimes at work see me walking laps around my office building, both inside and (at lunch) out. Sodas, gone. Junk, gone. Nasty Kroger Chicken, gone. Stouffer's dinners, gone.

And by Yule I will have a Hammer tattooed on my collarbone to remind me that I can overcome my own messed-up orlog through this heroic effort.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hell fucking yeah.