Male Dysmorphic Disorder

The disadvantage of working in the mental health field is that all my colleagues like to diagnose each other....to label whatever minor or major weirdness in an effort to hone one's clinical skills and alleviate boredom during slow periods at work. One such co-worker suggested that I may be suffering from a dysmorphic disorder; more commonly known as an eating disorder due to a false self image of one's own body.

Well hell........as if I don't have enough to worry about.

I really don't think I have an eating disorder. Sure, I like food but the tendency to overeat and eat the wrong foods don't come from any deep seated psychological trauma, just bad habits. Though I often feel guilty if I've overindulged, I've certainly never contemplated purging as a means of canceling out a big pig out. I hate vomiting. Thinking about it makes me want to..well..vomit.

I also don't believe I have a faulty self image of myself. I think I'm fat but I know that I'm not near the gut dragging size of many men my age. I spent some time in the courthouse yesterday doing what I do most times when I'm summoned to testify about a case; sit in the hallway and wait, and wait, and wait. While waiting I was noticing all the lawyers scurrying to and fro with enormous bellies protruding like cowcatchers on locomotives. Even cops, who I assumed must keep some level of fitness for their jobs, looked like they were about to give birth to twins. I loved it because it made the self image I had of my body soar.

So what do I want? To be like the photo above?

Not really. I just want to have a flattened stomach. A defined chest and arms. Legs too would be nice. I want to wear clothing because I like them rather to hide my body. I want to be slimmer so that I can be more active. I want to be healthier so that I can live longer. As my role model and hero Terry says, "I want to extend my best if used by date".

I'm pretty sure that the guy at work is wrong about his diagnosis of my mental disorder. At least that's what the voices are telling me.

I Wasn't Always Fat

Lately I've been thinking about being fat and how that transformation happened while I wasn't paying any attention. Being fat is still a relatively unexplored country for me. I use to be thin. Scrawny, as a matter of fact.

I was the stereotypical 98-pound weakling for a good deal of my puberty. Right about the time of 17, I hit 120 pounds and stayed at that weight for over a decade. It was frustrating. No matter what I ate or what I did....my weight stayed a rock solid 120.

So I quit worrying about it. I ate whatever I wanted with the confidence that it would have no effect. I slowed down and pursued more sedentary activities with the thought that exercise would do nothing but make me sore. Then....little by little...year after year....calories and gravity started to do it's magic around my body's mid-section. Being nuevo fat as opposed to being a big guy in the first place, my fat is not distributed evenly. I'm not portly. I'm not chubby. I'm certainly not jolly about my body. I have a hanging gut that my frame is having difficulty supporting. The type of fat that I am actually hurts....and that pain holds me back in efforts to get back the body I dimly remember.

It truly sucks.

Sweet Dreams Are Made of This

Imagine that you sit down for breakfast one fine morning to a heaping bowl of about 46 sugar cubes. It would probably make even the least health conscious among us gag with that much sweetness all at once. Yet, this is about how much sugar a lot of us will eat during the day.

Now, imagine two 1 lb bags of sugar plopped on your table and being told that it's part of your diet for the week. Think you would start to get an idea of why it's difficult to lose weight and stave off diabetes?

Imagine up to 150 of those one pound bags each and every year.

It's easy to let sugar slip into our diet. There is sugar in everything. Lots of foods have sugars in them naturally..but food manufacturers aren't content to leave well enough alone and dump more in the form of syrups to make it more tasty, therefore attractive, so as to make money. You can't even get away with foods that declare "low sugar or no sugar added" since the alternative is artificial sweeteners that either have the same effect on your body or may do far worse damage in the long run.

It even appears that the more "healthy" a particular food product is touted as being, the more sugar it has. I was looking around in the grocery yesterday for some breakfast bars that I could slip into my desk for a quick meal when needed. All the healthy and diet bars had a sugar content roughly twice as much as a Snickers candy bar....and I'm willing to bet a Snickers would taste better, it would certainly be cheaper. It is an ongoing struggle to find foods that are convenient and cheap without being loaded with sugar.

Or sodium....but don't get me started on that.

Monday Cat Blogging

Emotional Eating

A drug is typically defined as a substance that produces a metabolic change in the body. Sometimes those changes affect the chemistry in our brains and can alter our mood. That's why alcohol has been so popular since humans first stumbled across it; despite the fact that it really tastes downright nasty. Don't give me any of that connoisseur crap about fine wines and beers...it's all flavorings to mask the fact that you are drinking spoiled grapes and grains. People drink for the effect of alcohol, period, and that effect is that it makes you feel good. The trap many people find themselves in is using alcohol to feel good, then using it not to feel bad, then using it whenever they do feel bad because they seem to feel bad pretty much all the time.

It's very much the same with food. Our brains have been hardwired by evolution to respond in a positive manner when we eat. When we have stress or feel lousy, our brains send out signals to do something to fix the problem. The brain doesn't really know the difference between the discomfort of having your leg bitten off by a saber toothed lion or anxiety of a boss chewing out your ass at work. All the brain knows is that it is uncomfortable...and the brain is all about comfort.

Of course, what's more comforting than eating? Your mouth is engaged. Your stomach is getting filled. Your brain is happy....and when your brain is happy, so are you.

Yet we slip oh so easily into the same trap with all other drugs. Over the years, you find yourself eating as a response to any emotion. We no longer eat because we are hungry. We eat as a coping mechanism.

We get fat.

We feel depressed about being fat.

So we eat because we are depressed.

We get fatter.

One hell of a merry-go-round that some of us ride trying to figure how to get off. The only way I have come up with is to take a pause before I go after that donut, or bag of chips, or soda....and ask myself why I am eating. Usually, I come up the answer that I'm bored or stressed. Hardly ever is it because I am actually hungry.

The pisser is that one cannot quit eating like we would tell an alcoholic or crack addict to quit using their drug of abuse. Still, it is fairly accepted theory in addiction treatment that it's not the drug that causes our addiction but a developed mindset that links emotion to the use of a drug. Addicts are not treated by simply taking away their drug but by helping them change the way they think.

No easy task...whether it be heroin or nachos.

I Know How to Cook

strips of lean pork
greeen and red pepper
red cabbage
edamame
water chestnut
snow pea pod
daikon radish
...over a bed of rice

with a bit of hot sauce, of course

Monday Cat Blogging

Monday Cat Blogging

Super Duper Bowl

I've never been able to get worked up about Super Bowl Sundays. My friends think that I'm just kidding when they ask me "which team I'm rooting for" and I reply that I don't even know who is playing. I find watching football on TV to be rather boring. In fact, watching just about any sport on TV pretty much fails to hold my interest. There is something intrinsically weird about sitting on one's rear end and shoveling junk food down one's throat while watching athletes perform. Going to a game at a stadium is a bit different; it's more of an event and I can appreciate the entertainment value though it wears thin for me after an hour or so.

I actually wish I did like watching sports on TV. I would always have something to watch. My cable has about a dozen channels with some type of football game going on 24/7.

But maybe that would be a bad thing. Can I afford to spend every evening and day-off plopped in front of the tube watching athletes rather than trying to become one?

Transformation Day 27

Where does the time go? Already January has come to an end. Winter is starting to ease off a bit and, though there is still snow here and there, a few days hint at the return of warmer times. It seems that weeks just fly by in a blur.

Still transforming. I believe I overdid it on crunches in my desire to get rid of TDG (the damn gut) and have quite a bit of soreness to contend with. TDG is kind of a blessing and a curse for me. Having TDG out there for me to see all the time is somewhat motivating. I keep reminding myself that I didn't always have TDG.

Yesterday's meals:

Grapefruit
cottage cheese and yogurt
wrap with veggie dog and swiss, salad
V-8 and small handful of nuts
wrap with turkey and salsa
chocolate and peanut butter bar (I ain't perfect)

Transformation Day 24

I grew up in a small town in the Texas Panhandle. It wasn't a bad place to be as a kid but was very boring as a teen. Nothing to do. Nowhere to go. Same people every day that you have known your whole life. While I was in High School, there was literally nothing at all to do on a Saturday night but hang out. Most of the places that we hung out at were along back roads. Me and my friends would all park our cars at night along side some road away from town. Drink some forbidden beer, lie about our sex lives, and brag about what we would do once we managed to get out of school.

On one particular night of drinking and lying and bullshitting, one guy decided that he needed to relieve himself. Not just with a beer induced whiz, but with what is sometimes euphemistically called a number two.

Well...this guy seemed to have some aversion to snakes, of which there were plenty of in that part of the world, so he decided to take advantage of the clear and varmit free area offered by the paved road we were parked alongside. Just us guys. Nobody ever used the road during the night. Somebody had a stash of napkins from a local drive thru. So off he went into the middle of the road to do his bizzness.

Right about half-way into the process.....headlights come up on him from around the corner.

The guy frantically tried to pull up his pants but was so flustered that all he managed to do was get them twisted up around his ankles. In a desperate attempt to get out of the way of the car that was quickly approaching, he started doing a mad hop and shuffle to the side of the road. The car zipped by and I remember a flashbulb image of an older couple staring open mouthed at some kid with his pants off dancing on the road. The guy managed to get to the side of the road where he promptly fell into a culvert covering himself with stickers and mud.

The rest of us were roaring. I thought I would never again laugh so hard in my life.

Until somebody yelled "snake".

Transformation Day 23

Well now, it's a pretty significant day for me. I just received the last payment notice for my beloved red pickup. I've been paying on it for nearly six years. Every month, year after year, though divorce and marriage...I've paid on this thing. I am the only person to own it and, other than whoever put twenty miles on it getting it to the showroom floor, I am the only person who has ever driven my little red truck.

Is it silly to be happy about completely owning a vehicle free and clear? Is it prideful to have the smug satisfaction that every single bolt on my pickup is my property alone and belongs to no one else?

I dunno. All that's really going through my mind as I write the final check to Ford Credit is....

Monday Cat Blogging

Transformation Day 16

If you look up at the top of my blog page you'll notice a little quitmeter that shows how long I've gone without smoking and how much money I haven't spent on cigarettes. You may also notice, if you happen to have been visiting for the past couple of weeks, that it has been reset.

Yes...dammit...I relapsed....but like any desire to make a change in one's behavior, sometimes it takes multiple efforts to get it right. So I tossed out the cigs, slapped on a patch, and am giving it another go. Being a non-smoker is critical to my goal of being fit in my fifties. All the right eating and intensive exercise doesn't mean squat if I continue to suck on those coffin nails.

Trouble is, I do so many activities while smoking...especially writing. Right now I keep wanting to reach for a cigarette and a lighter every time I have a pause in my typing.

I'm going to the gym. It's probably the one place and activity that I've never associated with smoking.

Monday Cat Blogging

I normally don't keep track of what I eat on free days, hence the name free day, but I wanted to see in print just what I do on Sunday's. My suspicion is that I'm probably undoing a lot of work during the week by overdoing it on one day. Sure 'nuff, after looking at the list, I'm thinking I need to tone down the day-long food orgy.

Yesterday's meals:

apple turnovers
half box of Girl Scout cookies
yogurt
nachos
ham and cheese sandwich
chips and dip
bowl of peanuts
three soft tacos...loaded
chips with meat, refried beans, and lotsa cheese

Transformation Day 14

I love coming across stuff that helps me in my quest for becoming less than I am. Today I picked up something that I'm really pleased with; It's called Stevia. I bought the box of packets above and I think I may just do without sugar from now on.

I've never liked saccharin or Sweet N Low. The stuff always tasted more bitter than sweet to my tongue. Aspartame or Equal is just evil. I always imagine tumors growing in my brain when I ingest that crap. Sucralose, or Splenda, has never thrilled me. It has a slippery soapy feel in my mouth and I suspect it of giving me headaches.

This stevia is great though. Natural. No calories. No carbs. No glycemic index. Best of all...it's actually sweet!


Yesterday's meals:

oatmeal
yogurt
turkey and green beans
V-8
chicken with spinach and pasta
yogurt

Transformation Day 13

Yeah, I've got a few boxes of Girl Scout cookies in my house. It's taking a great deal of will-power to stay out of them until my free day. It helps when you look at the nutrition label on the boxes....fat city. I know that I can't just eat a couple and, once I open a box, I'll munch on the cookies until they are gone. The thing is...the cookies are really not very good. They're dry with no taste other than the sugar. Plus, they are way overpriced, about a quarter per scrawny little cookie.

So why do I buy them?

It's not because I want to support young girls in their fundraising efforts. Heck, I haven't bought a box of Girl Scout cookies from an actual Girl Scout in thirty years. I buy them from parents, usually at work. The parents corner me with an order form and browbeat me into buying a few boxes for their little darlings. I took the boxes home so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat them at my desk.

My wife's only response when I lugged all the cookies through the door was "what...no Thin Mints?"


Yesterday's meals:

oatmeal
cottage cheese and yogurt
fish and veggies
V-8
spaghetti and meat sauce
2 cookies (I know, I know)

Transformation Day 12

I hate phones. Well, I don't really hate phones in and of themselves, I just hate talking on the things. I hate answering phones. I hate calling people on phones. I would rather do just about anything at all than spend time with a phone next to my ear.

Which may seem a bit odd considering that my job requires a great deal of work with a phone

Maybe that has something to do with it? I mean, to me, talking on the phone equates to work. At work, every phone call is a demand upon me to make decisions. When the phone rings in my office it's not because somebody wants to chit chat and pass the time of day. I'm on the spot. I'm required to resolve some type of problem. I HAVE to answer the damn thing.

Off work...I have no reluctance to let my phone ring without the slightest urge to respond. I guess I also project that feeling toward others by assuming that they would not necessarily want me to give them a little ringy dingy out of the blue. This causes some problems with me; such as other people thinking that I just don't want to talk with them or that, maybe, I don't even like them.

no, no, no

Phone phobia is my little personality disorder. Most of my family and friends understand and tolerate this idiosyncrasy of mine. It's also not as if I'm some type of Luddite either....email is the best thing to come along since sliced bread. Email, IM, YouTube; I love all that stuff.

You want to talk to me? I want to write to you. There's a happy medium in there somewhere.



Yesterday's meals:

oatmeal
yogurt and cottage cheese
tuna and rice
small bowl of chili with lots of jalapenos
chicken breast and potato
pear

Transformation Day 10

I am so jazzed. I managed to talk my wife into joining me at the gym yesterday. I'm hoping to make it a regular thing.

Today is also my little sister's birthday. She's FIFTY!


How 'bout them glasses. hahahahaha. Happy birthday Sheryl.


Yesterday's meals:

oatmeal
cottage cheese and yogurt
tuna sandwich
handful of nuts (not hungry)
roast, potato, brussel sprouts
pear

YAAAAAHHHHH!

I was going over all my stock investments this morning. It's a little thing I have in case I ever retire and wish to purchase a higher grade of dog food or splurge on medication to keep me alive. Last year sucked! I lost over 40% of my portfolio value. I would literally have done better if I had just spent the money on lottery tickets.

Then I switch on the news for more reports of massive multi-billion dollar bailouts for all the a-holes that have been sucking dry my pension and are responsible for the economic meltdown in the first place. It's so nice that our taxes will ensure they will not face any financial hardship.

You can probably guess what the government bailout plan is for regular folks like us.

Sigh. All the more reason, I suppose, to keep myself as healthy as possible for as long as possible. Obtaining a transformation to become physically fit is, for me, much more of an imperative than simple vanity. Oh...looking better would be a plus. I'd love to get into smaller clothes and see a lascivious leer in my wife's eye. But there is a more basic need to achieve this goal of health and fitness.

Survival.