I quit.
I’m taking a big risk by writing this immediately after my post about how complaining makes you a pussy, but I’m going to do it anyway. I figure that with a bit of misdirection, I can convince you all that not only am I right on both sides of my apparently contradictory opinions, but that I’m actually capable of achieving any goal three days before I make that goal. And that I’m Superman.
So anyway, a while back, I made a pledge to lose 22 pounds. I started out at 212, which is a tad heavy for me. I stepped up my workouts, reined in my diet, and very quickly got down to around 202. Then I stalled.
So I kept at it. Reined in the diet more. Worked out harder.
And stayed right at 202.
At this point, I realized exactly what I would need to do to get down to 190. My natural set-point is currently around 204, meaning that I can do quite a bit or I can do very little and still hover right around there. So to get down to 190, I would need to eat in a very particular, anal sort of way for six weeks or so, greatly limiting carbohydrates for five days out of seven. I’d need to track everything I ate in a food diary. Every time I’ve wanted to bust through a plateau, that has been the procedure — and it always works.
So I found the diet online that has worked for me in the past. I checked to see if my FitDay.com food diary login was still active from years ago.
And then I said, “Fuck it; I want some Oreos.” And I quit.
That’s right, I quit. I am quitting. I am a quitter. You hear me, @recodingjim? I’m bailing on this goal. Finished. Gone. Done. Eating chocolate and bacon again, preferably together and in massive quantities.
I promised the blogosphere that I would weigh 190 by October 15th, and I do not. I weigh 204 again, right at my set-point and well short of my goal.
And I’m proud of it, because I did what I set out to do.
Let me explain. And I think Coach Tim will back me up on this, because it all goes back to values and deep motivations, and because I’m his customer and the customer is always right.
You tell these life coach types that you want a million dollars, and they’ll say, “No, you don’t really want the million dollars. You want what you think a million dollars will give you.”
You work through a process and you determine that what you actually want is freedom, or security, or love. The money is just the vehicle to get there. If you want security and can find it another way, the million dollars is irrelevant.
So going back to my publicly-stated goal of losing 22 pounds, I had to ask myself, What did I really want? Because it sure as hell wasn’t to look down and see 1-9-0 in that order on a digital readout. If that was what I wanted, I would never have peeled off the sticker that was over the display when I bought the scale. That said 190 all the time, and I didn’t even have to be standing on the scale.
So here’s the facts — just the facts, ma’am — about my weight loss goal.
What I really wanted was a sense of control. If you read through the post, you’ll see that I actually knew that when I started this whole thing. I was feeling all over the place at the time, and enforcing some physical discipline was a reliable and comfortable way for me to grab my life by the nuts and tell it who was boss.
That control I wanted? Yeah. I got it. I feel much more in control than I did in August. Things are hectic, but much more reined in.
The “vehicle” goal wasn’t objectively necessary. True, I had eaten too many Doritos over the summer, and true, 212 is a bit too heavy for me. But by “a bit,” I mean like 10 pounds tops. I never did look fat. I didn’t have a bad lipid profile or elevated blood pressure. No doctor had told me to slim down. I have a resting pulse rate of around 50. Even 212 would not have been an unhealthy weight for me, and 202 certainly isn’t. It’s spot on.
The secondary goal actually conflicted with my primary goals. I wanted control and satisfaction (primary) and was going after them by losing weight (secondary). But I’m not a typical person, who only has his cheeseburger-to-miles-run ratio to consider. I’m a weightlifter, and other factors enter into the picture. Other things that make me feel in control and satisfied are lifting heavy things — and, frankly, being kind of big. When, in the midst of losing those pounds, I was suddenly able to deadlift 50 pounds less than normal, that didn’t ring up nicely for me. And seeing a one as the first number on the scale? Okay, truthfully that was causing a bit of approach-avoidance.
And still, if a certain freakishly strong librarian who somehow can’t spell for shit reads this, he’s absolutely going to call me a big pussy for nixing my goal. (Although it’s really a toss-up, because he also says that any man under 200 pounds is a Hobbit. He’s a strange guy, Dan the Librarian.)
But screw it. Screw it, because goals are living, breathing things. When a politician changes his mind, they call it “flip-flopping,” and that’s bullshit because when the situation changes, reevaluating your position is not flip-flopping. It’s being flexible, which is something that I personally would like to see in a leader. And by contrast, holding tight to a no-longer-defensible position “just because” is idiotic.
So yeah, I quit. I absolutely quit, and I’m now back around 204, and it’s cool because I feel happy and healthy and in control of things again. I get to eat shitty but delicious food now and again, and when I go to the gym, I can lift heavy things. Life is good.
Sometimes quitting means you suck. But sometimes, if you don’t quit but should, that’s when you suck. It’s a delicate balance in life, trying not to suck. You just have to do your best, and keep your level of suck to a minimum. And sometimes eat Oreos. Mmm, Oreos.
