1/11/04
Sean just wrote an interesting blog about weight gain/loss in which he says one of the worst days of his life was when he lost a bunch of weight that he was trying to lose, looked in the mirror, and realized he wasn’t any happier. I suppose I’m the experiment that botches the hypothesis, but when I lost 22 pounds in the spring of 1995, I looked in the mirror and said “HOLY FUCK YEAH!!!”
I did it in what was soon to be a terribly unfashionable way: Slim-Fast. I had one or two of those motherscratchers for breakfast and lunch, and then ate a large portion of something sensible for dinner. Oh yeah, I worked out every other day (almost) and gave up french fries for a year. It was amazing how quick it came off.
Then again, I had the determined dogma of the deeply depressed, and I was unemployed, making for plenty of free time to do all these workouts. We were living in a farmhouse for $117 a month, rendering a real job hardly worth it
I just checked the link for middle-aged white fucking schlub to make sure it wasn’t a link to my blog… Whew, dodged a bullet on that one! :)
So, Ian, I know it worked for you last time, but lost 20 pounds once by replacing one meal a day with an Oreo Blizzard from Dairy Queen. Seriously. Look at the label of your dear Slim-Fast and notice the sugar content. Sugar is the first ingredient, after water! That stuff is TERRIBLE for you, and doesn’t help you keep the weight off once you stop drinking them, and god knows you don’t want to keep drinking them. It’s a liquid diet, one that is easier to digest, and you certainly are not of a weight that requires a liquid diet. Anyway. Slim-Fast is part of What’s Wrong With America. It’s one of the Big Lies. Don’t do it, Ian! Don’t!
Oh, yeah, so, wait, obviously I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But I stand by my opinion of Slim-Fast.
Ian, keeping a healthy weight means not messing with your metabolism. (Waiver: I am no doctor but I do have a UNC-CH Exercise Science degree.) Eat your food early in the day, limit alcohol because it slows down your metabolism, don’t eat when you’re tired, don’t eat when you might just be thirsty or a little dehydrated. Don’t eat low-fat food if it means you’ll eat more calories. Don’t give yourself a hard time about not exercising (if that’s the case) because anti-depressants can make you feel so very much NOT like exercising but try and push through it by just remaining active. By the way, you don’t look particularily unhealthy but looks are not indicative of one’s health necessarily. Peace! (PS my own blog as suffered due to health reasons – get a good stomach virus and the pounds will just fall off, but you’ll feel like hell.)
pps — when i say don’t eat when you are tired – i meant don’t replace sleep with food or caffeine which was my college days habit. I swear that Laura Greene and I thought Saltines could keep us awake. I eat now when I am tired because I am running out of calories. I used to eat when I was tired because all I ever ate was empty calories and I chose not to make sleep a priority and I couldn’t sleep for that matter. Take your vitamins dude. Have I annoyed you yet? ;)
Steph, you could never annoy me. I wonder if you’re talking about the Laura Greene I knew, or sorta knew.
What irks me about weight loss is that basketball doesn’t help. Three games a week, full court, and though it makes your metabolism quicker, you generally don’t lose an ounce.
if you’re not losing weight after regular exercise.. it’s probably because you’re replacing fat with muscle which is more important that losing weight. It means you’re getting healthier! I am impressed with the 3x’s a week basketball. I consider my vigorous vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, raking, laundry-folding, and toddler-lifting a new sport by the way. Though I am not sure I am hitting my target heart range.
my friend in minneapolis who thinks yer a self involved jerk is on the basketball weight loss plan. but he keeps hurting himself — he spent the last 2 weeks in a lazy boy gorped on muscle relaxers. I’m trying to talk him into a trip to NYC so you guys can go head to head on the court. I’ll warn you that he’s 6’3″ 190 and plays in a gym with Minnesota Timberwolves players, but maybe raw aggression can win over physical conditioning.
It’d help if he’s still stuck in the La-z-boy on painkillers when he comes to play :)
Tapeworms. Scientists in Scotland (yes, the same dopes who cloned Dolly) have genetically engineered tapeworms to “excrete” vitamins (lay people call it “shitting”). Theoretically, once these altered parasites are introduced into nature they will give those olde-tyme tapeworms a bitch slap, and malnourishment won’t be nearly as prevalent as it is currently. And then Ms. Boyle and Ian can eat like hogs and still look kickin’. Thank you, tapeworm.