My least favorite subject is me. In fact, it only occurred to me now that I’m lacking a category for any posts that might be considered autobiographical. I suppose I could take this as a sign that I shouldn’t even attempt writing this post, but I will and I’ll categorize it as ‘travel’ because, well, I guess this is about a journey. This morning, after yesterday’s alarm-went-off-in-silent-mode-and-I-have-six-minutes-to-get-ready panic, I was feeling unusually relaxed with a whole thirty minutes to complete my morning routine and decided to step on the scale resting ominously betwixt my desk, bed, and air-conditioner window. I say “ominously” because – even in the context of what follows – I hate stepping on scales. I feel like no matter what the result, I end up feeling really good about myself (and potentially eating something I do not need to, like a cup of buffalo-wing pretzels) or really bad about myself (and then eating apples, oranges, and bananas for several meals); there’s rarely an in-between at which I can pat myself on the back just stand fast. But this morning, with “Up All Night” in the background waking me up (this really has no significance to the story other than being stuck in my head lately), I noticed that I am fifty-one pounds lighter than I was six months ago.
It all started with a clove cigarette. Not a went-to-the-doctor-and-found-out-something-terrible-and-had-quit-smoking-slash-lose-weight cigarette (I don’t smoke and can count on my fingers the number of occasions I’ve had one), but a walking-down-Comm-Ave-in-the-freshly-falling-snow-at-midnight-with-one-of-my-favorite-people cigarette. I can’t put my finger on exactly what about that evening made me decide to make a concerted effort at getting in shape (my less-than-stellar recall might have something to do with ‘gansetts we had enjoyed earlier), but I somehow got the idea stuck in my head long enough for me to do something about it.
To be totally honest, I suppose the wheels had been in motion for a while. Around this time last year, I lead a field trip for the then-Candidate class to the Museum of Natural History and just for fun decided to hop on the ‘What You Weigh on the Moon’ exhibit on which the kids were taking turns. I stepped on it, saw what my weight would be, did the math on what that converted to here (an impressive feat in itself for me), and thought, “Well, fuck me” – I was almost fifteen pounds heavier than I thought I was (even minus that fifteen pounds, I was not in the shape I should have been. I see no point in a drawn-out explanation of how I got there, but in a nutshell, I was still eating as if I was a two-sport athlete and referee when I was no longer any of the above). And so, when I moved up to Boston to begin anew at BC, I decided I would just be more mindful of what I was eating and try to avoid snacking (I gave into pretzels and Cheez-Its occasionally, and still do) without doing much else differently. This was also partially budgetary – Star Market is absurdly expensive on many things and buying better and less food was almost a necessity. It was a good start to have a real breakfast in the morning (cereal, but it was a metabolism-starter), a small sandwich at work (and with fresh italian bread available everyday, why not?), and a smaller dinner (though this was often pasta or chicken-and-rice, which, while definitely smaller and better than take-out, was still kind of high in calories). I didn’t see much of a difference, but as I think back on it, I was at least establishing some discipline; eating wasn’t something that had to accompany watching TV or a rainy day or a suceess or stress or a night out.
This food discipline wasn’t something I had mastered growing up in my Italian-Ukranian-English-Irish house. On my mom’s side (the Italian-Ukranian), successes were celebrated with a big, homemade meal; disappointments were made better with a big, homemade meal; a visit home from college or a departure to Scranton was marked with a big, homemade meal; holidays were centered around really big, elaborately-made meals; and stress, of which I always had plenty (much self-imposed, I’ll admit) was always a good reason to eat. On my dad’s side (mostly the Irish one, as the English are pretty boring food-wise save for Boddington’s and Newcastle), once I was of-age, all of those dinners also meant adding a drink or two to the meal and trips to hockey or baseball games meant pre-game drinks. And to make it even tougher, these are AMAZING meals I’m talking about. Granted, I am a little biased on this, but I really think that the combo of Italian and Eastern European cooking makes for some of the best carb-loaded meals out there. Nothing in these meals was inherently bad for us, but the more-than-generous portions of pasta and perogie I was more-than-happy to eat certainly packed on the calories (albeit delicious calories). And let’s not even talk about the 5-5-5 deal at college or working for a year a stone’s throw from one of the best Greek delis in Manhattan – both are, as they say, bad news bears.
Early in the new year, fresh off holiday eating and drinking, I saw an article on CNN about a so-called Twinkie diet. Put briefly, a professor had decided to test the limits of calorie counting as the most important means to weight-loss. To wit, he began eating almost exclusively junk food to account for his daily caloric requirements and, from a weight-loss perspective, it worked quite well. He had to supplement it with vitamins and fruit juices to stay on a healthy course, but he was thinner and, for the most part, healthier than when he began. At that point, the article only struck me as a small inspiration, a karmic pat-on-the-back that showed me I was thinking along the right lines with the plan I had been sticking to since the fall, but it was only in the snow-filled light of that night that I decided I wanted to take it a step further. Maybe it was the pleasure of walking a distance I would normally have taken the T or the ice skating I had recently gotten back into or a major stressor I had begun shedding from myself, but something clicked and this time it stuck.
A few days later (it very well might have been the next day, but that almost seems too cinematic to commit to even if I was sure about it), I made my first real shopping trip to Trader Joe’s and with that began a real kick into culinary high gear. Imagine my surprise when I found that I could eat a dozen pot stickers (which I love) and almost-a-cup of broccoli with sesame oil for less than five-hundred calories. Or a pack of boneless, skinless chicken thighs covered in fresh peppers and drowning in Frank’s hot sauce for less than six hundred. And cherry vanilla yogurt (<3) and organic gala apples (also, <3), only eighty calories each! It suddenly seemed possible, so possible and undepressing that within a few weeks I was down that fifteen pounds that had driven me nuts. Then, just as I started to feel good about my it-was-even-though-I-wouldn’t-have-called-it-a diet and the ice skating I had been doing, the rink closed for the “spring” (n.b. there was more snow and cold to come anyway). On one of the spontaneous whims I sometimes get (others include flying across the country for a concert), I decided I would buy a bike. The timing was actually pretty good because being that there was still snow on the ground, anyone looking to sell a decent bike on Craigslist was probably really desperate to get rid of it and would accept a decent (if not good-for-me) price. And so, on a too-cold-to-ride-a-bike-anyway night on which I should have been writing a paper, I met an only-slightly-sketchy guy at Kenmore and bought a mountain bike; even though it was less “like new” than his ad had promised, I wound up paying just about of what the retail would have been, so I can’t complain. I can, however, complain about the fact that I could not take my new purchase on the Green Line, which was news to me (complete and utterly b.s. news, on the scale of say getting an open container ticket when there are dozens of people around you with open containers), but as cold and perilous as the five-mile ride back to Cleveland Circle was, it also reintroduced me to how much I enjoyed that a good bike ride allowed me to really clear my mind. Before I knew it, I was hooked and biking a little (not far, at first) every day (I also realize at this point that it might seem I simply traded one addiction – snacking, stress-eating, etc. – for these others in Trader Joe’s food and biking and that might be [read: probably is] true, but it’s not like I traded alcohol for crack or something. I’d say it was a better-than-fair trade for me).
The final nail in my motivational coffin came when I decided to make the aforementioned cross-country-concert trip. By the time I had booked this trip, I had lost enough that my all-XL shirts and t-shirts and jeans were starting to look really baggy on me, but I also wasn’t quite at a point where I wanted to start investing in a new wardrobe yet. I was browsing around though and I noticed that American Eagle (don’t judge me – I have plaid button-downs and they have more plaid button-downs than I could ever afford) had this one shirt I was absolutely in love with. I don’t get excited for clothes very often, but I saw this and knew it had to be mine, in L rather than XL for a change. And so, I set a goal – get in good enough shape by my trip (roughly three weeks) to be able to wear this shirt out there. In hindsight, this was a completely arbitrary goal to set and contrary to much of the still-not-willing-to-call-it-a diet advice I have read, but it worked – I was biking longer and harder, expanding my repertoire of healthy-yet-delicious cooking, and dropping more weight than I had ever anticipated to the point that my new, sixty-dollar-and-two-sizes-smaller jeans were soon too big (last time I shop at the Gap, but I don’t feel like I’m missing much there anyway, besides the dress-and-look-like-vampire counter girls).
People started to notice too, which was not what I was going for (okay, maybe a little), but didn’t mind too much either (except when the person telling me I was looking great is the same person whose computer I had recently cleaned of a gig of hardcore porn; that was a little weird). I still wasn’t quite buying it myself, though. I would look in the mirror (another side effect of the compliments was a hint of vanity on my part) and still not really see a difference. I felt better, people told me I looked better, but I was still seeing the same old thing. I was really starting to wonder if I would ever see (in the most literal way) a difference. And today, fifty-one pounds lighter, I did. I was on a surprisingly-empty-for-eight-in-the-morning A train and, thanks to the odd slant of the doors across the car, was able to get a neck-down-only glimpse of myself as we sped (i.e. did slightly better than crawl) between 42nd and 59th and I couldn’t help but think to myself, “Damn, you look pretty good.”
