Tag Archives: losing weight

Challenge

Challenge: (n) something that puts us to a test

Things that challenge me often make others snicker.

Perhaps they try to be open-minded and kind, but they find my challenges to be silly. Not wanting to be left out of the game, I turn around and find their challenges equally as dopey.

When I was five years old, the biggest challenge in my life was swallowing pills. I could not do it. Everybody thought I was mentally
retarded. (That was back when you could use that term.)

Each person I knew tried to teach me how to swallow pills, and always started out with a grin of hope and ended with a grimace of despair. I think I was fifteen years old before I conquered pill-popping.

Now, when I was fifteen, my biggest challenge was to do a forward roll in high school. My body did not want to roll over the top of its head to end up flopping on its ass. (Imagine that.)

Once again, many people tried and many people failed.

I’ve always had the challenge of losing weight. So I take the precaution–when I get that sideways glance from people obviously expressing disapproval over my magnitude–to explain to them that I am in the middle of a diet.

It makes them feel good and sometimes I actually believe it myself.

 

 

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Awkward

Awkward: (adj) causing or feeling embarrassment or inconvenience.dictionary with letter A

I suppose I could take the popular position and insist that “I was born this way.” I would receive empathy and maybe even support from those who would agree with my assertion or share my dilemma.

I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not fat.

Yet I have to tell you that taking personal responsibility for it and realizing that even if my body has a predilection towards obesity, that I can discourage its wishes, is powerful.

The truth is, being fat is not only unhealthy, it’s a constant burden placed on your torso, lending itself to many an awkward situation.

  • As a child I ran and played but not without wheezing.
  • I wasn’t fast enough to get to first base on a hit called a single. For me to get to first base, I had to hit a double.
  • I’ve never been comfortable with my clothes off.
  • Generally speaking, I made sure that every place I was seated would be wide enough or hold my weight.
  • When rejected by a girl, I needed to question whether it was because of my blabber or my blubber.
  • Until I was twenty-five years old I never wore a pair of shorts in public. Much too awkward.
  • Until I was forty years old, I refused to get into a swimming pool until everybody around had turned their heads and were involved in some other activity.
  • And today, because I have led an active life, my knees are worn out, causing me to use a wheelchair to handle long distances.

It’s awkward.

I’ve never been able to sustain myself on my visuals only, but have had to rely on my emotions, spirit and mind to compensate for my body.

Now, before you go to weeping or preparing a lecture about my eating habits, let me tell you that I’ve already cried enough tears and pursued enough diets.

Now I try to eat as healthy as I possibly can, exercise to my capability and realize that awkward does not need to be a nasty situation.

Actually, awkward gives us enough vulnerability that people understand our humanity instead of resenting our perfection.

 

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Attempt

Attempt: (v) to make an effort to achieve or complete something, typically a difficult task or action.dictionary with letter A

In a recent article by a young blogger, I read his assessment of what he considered to be the summary of life.

He stated that on each of our tombstones should be carved one of two words: success or failure.

He contended that the determination of that inscription was totally our decision.

The wonderful thing about being young is that you have many years to correct your dumb assertions.

There are many things that can be our final epitaph–not just the issue of success or failure. And honestly, much of the success or failure we experience is based upon what the market will endure.

Are people ready to hear? Are people prepared to change? Because the failure of one crusader in his time becomes the common knowledge of the next generation.

So here’s what could be written on my tombstone–preferably in crayon.

Attempted.

  • I attempted to play football, and was quite good until laziness took over.
  • I attempted to be a good father considering the fact that I was more suited to a Bohemian lifestyle.
  • I attempted to take my talent and use it to benefit human beings.
  • I attempted to be a good lover, though sometimes I felt I lacked the necessary equipment and opportunities.
  • I attempted to be solvent, bouncing between abasing and abounding.
  • I attempted to evolve my thinking in a day and age when getting older is equated with stubbornness.
  • I attempted to lose weight and so far have only succeeded in preventing myself from ballooning to circus proportions.
  • I attempted to travel the country from town-to-town with a Johnny Appleseed approach for my message.
  • I attempted to be a generous human being, reaching into my often-meager pot to distribute my goods
  • I attempted to stop lying because it was my reasonable service.

I attempted.

Success is over-rated because it is often determined by others who desert the ship when there’s a “new skipper in town.” And of course, failure can often be just a lack of ears to hear.

I am an attempter.

I am proud of it.

It fulfills me.

I need no other praise than the confidence that sweeps my soul when I have completed that which I have been challenged–by myself–to do.

 

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Abeyance

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abeyance: n.  a state of temporary disuse or suspension.

I’m not positive. Oh, I have inklings.

I certainly am aware of little monsters that try to come into my life and leave their footprints all over my freshly cemented ideas. But I’m not really quite sure how to bring all of these munchkins under abeyance.

I don’t know about you, but I always start out really well. Matter of fact, I cruise brilliantly in the middle of the road. But somewhere along the line, I despair over well-doing. It’s not because I don’t have evidence that such actions are beneficial to me. It’s more that the celebration of my victories begin to mingle with the temperament of my bad habits and create a climate of self-righteousness, causing me to temporarily believe that I have arrived at my destination, when actually I am five hundred miles from home.

Yes, there are tiny, little cracks in my armor that welcome the arrows of failure.

Recently, I’ve been trying to lose weight. First of all, I’m not quite sure it’s possible. My body has never been completely amicable to the idea of dropping what it views as my “support system.”

I persevere–but I do see these tiny little inclinations, which I would like to catch early, showing that I am weakening to the severity of discipline and gradually nurturing the need for self-hugging.

Last night it was eating a mozzarella cheese stick–about fifty calories. Sometimes it’s an extra handful of walnuts–about eighty calories. As you can see, neither one in itself amounts to a hill of beans (about 3000 calories).

But the problem is, without me pursuing abeyance in this matter, somehow or another I get from the cheese stick to belching on top of that hill of beans without ever exactly knowing what calorie increases I have consumed in between. It would be freaky if it weren’t so predictable.

So how can I bring this particular appetite in my life under abeyance? I know this–the enemy of any change is to remain silent.

So thanks for the talk.