Day 39... If it aint broke don't fix it.

I'm almost at the half way mark. Almost there. But where is 'there' and why am I going 'there' in the first place? It's hard to say, not because I don't have the answer to that question, but because the answer would take a chapter (and perhaps a whole book) to explain. There are many things wrong with me. Obesity is just a symptom of the problems I have. And as much as I like eating vegan, all I'm really doing is treating one of the the symptoms of my problem. Well, actually I am treating many of the symptoms. There is blood pressure, blood sugar, triglycerides, cholesterol and obesity. Then, by going to the gym every day I am getting even better results, meaning my energy is elevated and the gains I have made far exceed what I would have accomplished had I been just a vegan couch potato (and by the way, the potato is a vegan food).

But going to the gym isn't really a requirement for being vegan either. Actually this blog is really about experimenting with the vegan lifestyle as a way of helping me achieve my goals in overcoming obesity. So you see, this experiment can also be termed as seeing what would happen if I went to the gym every day, and whether or not I could do it while maintaining a vegan lifestyle. It's really a combination of both, and what I also failed to mention is that going to the gym also treats another major symptom in my malady -- that in participating in all the classes that are available to me, I have developed new acquaintances and I am far less lonelier than I have ever been. Most of the classmates I work out with are women, all of whom are very attractive, and most of them have flirted with me in one way or another, which I find very flattering. It may be a while before I actually date any of them, but in the meantime I find myself making a lot of progress in every area of my life.

Still, I have to ask myself, what is the underlying problem. What mechanism or feature (whether it is genetic, mental or physical) is broken or not working properly such that I have ended up being 42 years old, utterly alone and isolated from the world and morbidly obese? Why is this part of me broken? When did it break? How did it break? Who or what was the accomplice in this tragedy in my life? What circumstances along the road of life brought me to the place where I was willing to go to the gym every day and suffer the embarrassing task of lumbering through our exercise routines to work up a sweat while being surrounded by so many super healthy and energetic people? What circumstances had led me to believe that 'eating vegan' will aid in the cure for my malady? And last but not least, how is the veganism and the exercise working? Am I making progress?

This weekend I was pretty down on myself, and I found myself asking some of the same questions I've mentioned above. I figure, at 42 years old, even if I turn my life around, I estimate that I may only have few good years in me before I start to get old. Never mind getting married, having children and putting up the white picket fence. Any woman that will have me is already going to have grown children, and quite possibly her house already paid off. And then I peruse the Internet and see that the rules of the game are changing, and that more and more women my age are dating younger men. And then I think, well, perhaps nobody will have me unless I make my standards impossibly low (and they can't be possibly lower than they are now). I actually worked with this man who was in his early sixties and running marathons. He was very healthy for his age. It was funny, I would think that if I could 'get it together' then I have a pretty good idea of what I have to look forward too when I reach sixty. And then I laugh because I think that at least he's running marathons. I'd like to run marathons when I turn sixty.

But I remember, now even more than ever, what the sounding drum of my commitment has been from the beginning. I quote myself as saying, "If I had the choice of being fat and miserable or being skinny and miserable, I'd rather be skinny and miserable". I know a lot of good looking, well-to-do people who are miserable. I look at them and think, I wish I had there good looks, their health, their money. Yet I don't have any of those things and yet they are so miserable I almost think I'm better off than they are. At least I have an excuse for being miserable. At least I have a reason.

So I'm committed to the cause and I'm making progress. I'm treating nearly all the symptoms of my malady. What then is the underlying cause of all this? What part of me is broken and can it be fixed? This is what I was thinking about on my way to work this morning. Something about my machinery is not working right. Some part of me has made me obese.