Day 40... Just beyond the hill.

Am I really that fat? Am I really over the hill at 42? It’s not just being fat, and looking at myself in the mirror. It’s the inability to walk on so much as a level gravel road, let alone the trails in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It’s actually feeling sick every day for the last nine years. Even sitting is uncomfortable because I carry the equivalent of a dry bag of Portland cement every where I go and with everything I do. The only two women who ever wanted to have anything to do with me were either struggling with a major mental illness or old enough to be my mother (with children who are my age). I am over the hill, and I will be that way for some time I guess, until all of this changes.

I have found during the course of my experiment that I have had to replace bread with broccoli, rice with cauliflower and pasta with green cabbage. I have also found that these are the foods I should eat either raw or blanched or lightly steamed if I am ever going to make any gains or maintain any weight loss for any length of time. I also have to go to the gym often to make all of this work. The other day I received a card from my former community chorus I once attended, sharing how much they missed me. Well, I can’t go any more. I can barely fit in choir practice and Sundays at church. The solution to my problem has taken over my life. The solution to my problem has become my life (which gives me new meaning to ‘living in the solution’). It’s hard, because I just can’t take a break and go eat a cheeseburger. I have to be vigilant for this to work. It just seems all too hard for me to deal with. In the beginning it was easy. Just eat like a vegan. That was easy. I could go to health food store and eat vegan cookies all day long. Well, I can’t do that any more. I have to save what’s left of my life. To go back to what I was before, or to crack the door open by easing up on me is to embrace medication for diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol – all in my early 40’s. That’s what the doctor was proposing before I went on this crazy experiment. The fact is, I don’t want to be a vegan and I don’t like going to the gym. But now I have to do this to save my life. It’s actually very depressing when I think about it.

It almost reminds me of when someone describes the relief they felt when their parents got divorced. They would say, yeah, I wanted them to stay together, but it reached a point where I was glad they divorced. It just was not working out. Would I feel the same way if I decided to ‘live for today’ and think, well I’m going to have pizza or Chinese take-out for lunch, and then I’ll have spaghetti for dinner, but on my way home I’ll need to go to the pharmacy and get my antidepressants, my diabetes and cholesterol medication. I can still make it home in time to watch Seinfeld – boy I am glad I don’t have to go to the gym anymore. My two big monster dogs, my ‘girlfriend’ and our six cats will all be waiting for me (if she’s not drunk). I feel so much better now that I have learned to love myself ‘just as I am’. I really wanted to make the vegan lifestyle work out for me but it was just too much. I feel a whole lot better now that I have learned to love myself. Oh shoot, I think I’m out of cigarettes.

Well, I don’t love myself. I hate myself. I am at war with myself. And I would encourage anyone who’s in my shoes to do, feel and be the same way. I’d rather die than be the over medicated slob I just described. I feel that I’m in the wilderness with Jesus, with John the Baptist, Mohamed, Gautama Buddha and others. I am not eating locusts, but I’m pretty close to it. If I had to eat locusts, I would – only it’s not a vegan food because the locust is a living creature. I wonder if John ate locusts ‘with’ wild honey to hide the taste? Honey too, is not considered a vegan food because it exploits and kills bees. Anyways, I am in the wilderness and it is what you imagine it to be, a harsh, lonely landscape. But the idea is to come out of the other end of it as an enlightened man. The intent is to be victorious, and if I believe correctly, to truly receive a sense of god deeply into one’s bosom. It’s just a hard thing for me to do. That’s why at times I seem so negative about it.

I just want to be normal.