Tag Archives: overweight

One thirty down and I have some thoughts…

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It’s been just about a year since I made the conscious decision to get my weight down towards something that wouldn’t trigger such a serious lecture every time I walked into a doctor’s office. Realizing that I was, in fact, both destructible and well past the demographic definition of middle-age gave me a level of motivation I’d never had before. Score one for the motivating power of fear and self-preservation. 

In any case, dropping 130 pounds over the last year hasn’t exactly been an adventure. I’m agitated every day about the foods – and lifestyle – I had to give up in order to achieve what would be easy to assume was purely a vanity exercise. I won’t pretend I don’t have my vanities, but none of them have ever been tied to my appearance, which is probably for the best.

I’m sure when I wander back to my doctor for my next scheduled checkup, he’ll make all the appropriate approving noises. My most recent bloodwork came back with significantly marked improvements over its historic baseline. Even if we haven’t gotten to the root causes of what was causing my heart to ramp up to a sprint of its own accord, it’s hard to argue against my innards being healthier than they were a year ago. 

What no one mentioned as they encouraged me through this process, though, was all the minor annoyances that would accompany this process. I just did my second cull of the clothes hanging in my closet and came to the unhappy realization that I only have eight shirts and two pair of pants that fit now. The rest – some of my favorite shirts mind you – are now comically oversized on my new frame. 

I’m going to have to take some time during this little Independence Week vacation for clothes shopping. I spent time doing that already this spring. This means I’ve spent more time shopping for clothes in the last three months than I have in the last three years. In fact, it will probably account for more time than I’ve spent shopping in the last decade.

I used to know the brands I liked and the appropriate sizes. It was easy enough finding them online and reordering as needed. Now, every damned shirt is a roll of the dice. It’s an enormous pain in the ass and feels a little bit like adding insult to injury. Sure, I’ll do it because wandering around naked is frowned upon by western civilization (and winter is coming), but there’s no power in heaven or earth than can make me enjoy the process. 

Overweight…

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As far back as elementary school, I remember various “tests” aimed at assessing basic health. Is the President’s Physical Fitness program still a thing anyone does? I have some vague recollection of calipers and some kind of devious box we dutifully stretched our hands over to determine how flexible we were. Those and the damned timed mile run were the only tests I never really did well on in school. Gym classes are not among my cherished childhood memories in any case.

I assume the calipers were there to make some measurement of our body mass index. As the years have screamed past, even the AMA has admitted that BMI is not a particularly unproblematic measure of health. The fact remains, however, that it is still what’s used by most of the American medical establishment to apply some statistical analysis to body composition. Like it or not, there is a correlation between high BMI and adverse health outcomes, so it endures.

Here we get to a bit of surprising news. Apparently when I stepped on the scale Saturday morning, I magically qualified to be simply overweight instead of obese. Now, that’s still not medically ideal, but feels like it should be a reasonably significant improvement from ranging into the morbidly obese category. At least in terms of where I fall on someone’s wall chart, there has been demonstrated progress. I’d probably be more impressed if I the net result to date was, “well, I don’t feel any worse.”

The helpful BMI charts online still say I should be somewhere down around 185 to be “normal weight.” I’m still not convinced that is in any way a reasonable target. The fact is, I remain a little sore at the doc for his latest bait and switch, so as far as I’m concerned 200 is the new “final” number. If I can manage to do that without chewing off my own arm, the saw bones just might have to learn to accept a final form of me being slightly overweight and devise his treatment strategy from there.

At some point, likely sooner than later, I’m just going to decide I’ve had enough of this and get on with things on a maintenance level instead of giving a damn about whether I’m losing weight or not.