Brahnamin
“The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.”
- Saint Jerome
To say I am a thin man in a fat man’s body will seem cliche, but that’s pretty much how I feel. And that’s pretty much how I’ve felt my whole life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not delusional. I know I’m fat. The mirror doesn’t offer any surprises for me.
But I don’t think of myself as fat.
Likewise, while I don’t claim to be happy with my weight, I’ve never really felt angsty over it. I’m not in loathe with myself for being fat.
Neither am I content to keep ignoring the issue.
Old Habits
Q: What do you do when you’ve spent a lifetime cultivating bad choices and bad habits?
A: You reap the reward.
This is something I know a thing or three about. I am pretty sedentary, if not outright lazy. I’m fat. I’m diabetic. I have high blood pressure. And I spent nearly a decade in prison. Bad choices. Bad habits. Old friends.
Not so friendly, actually.
But bloody dependable.
And I am a creature of my culture. I have hared down many a rabbit hole after the *quick-fix* but the simple fact of the matter is I’ve spent a lifetime building these habits, making bad choices, and cultivating the me that they made of me.
There is no quick fix.
But there is a fix.
New Motivations
My biggest motivation? My kids. I don’t fit onto a bunch of the rides at the bloody amusement park and as a consequence, I am left standing on the sidelines instead of sharing the experience with them. And quite frankly, that sucks.
I also have health reasons to get my arse in gear. As I said, I’ve been diagnosed with high bp and diabetes. I may never have bothered to try to lose weight otherwise. This isn’t cosmetic for me. It’s a practical necessity for both health and functionality.
People see a fat person and hear they have diabetes and they aren’t surprised, confident of the causality between the two.
But did you know only a tiny percentage of fat people will ever develop diabetes? On the other hand a huge percentage of diabetics will become fat.
About 85% of diabetics are overweight to some degree. But less than 10% of overweight people have diabetes. So contrary to popular myth, fat probably doesn’t cause diabetes, however, diabetes – or the underlying causes of diabetes – may well contribute to how fat you are.
Regardless: diet, exercise, and weight loss are the only real tools available for actually combating diabetes. The available drugs do nothing for the disease beyond holding back its symptoms while you do what needs doing.
Diabetics who don’t do what needs doing end up on tighter and tighter regimens of pills and (eventually) insulin . . . but they don’t. get. better.
I want to get better.
There is no quick fix.
But there is a fix.
And that fix requires a 180 degree turnaround in the way I think, in the way I act, in the way I live.
I turn 40 this October (2009).
At the date of starting this blog I have about six months before that eventful day.
My midlife crisis really doesn’t have room for hair plugs, plastic jugs, or a 400 horsepower candyapple-red phallus replacement. I’m more interested in keeping up with my kids and the grandkids that will follow. I’m more interested in being a lover and a husband to my wife and to be there to annoy her for her when she gets old.
That’s my motivation.
That is what keeps me going no matter how much I want to quit.
I fully expect it to be the journey of a lifetime, but that’s okay. The alternative is blindness, kidney failure, loss of limbs, and ultimately an early death. In the grand scheme of things, what’s a few carrot sticks and an @ssload of sweat to that?
My daughter faced cancer and survived. I can certainly face this.
Snapshots Of My Life
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They had to cut out her right iliac crest in October 2006
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Tired, but in Love – a recent picture of my Wife & I
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My Wife and I @ Relay for Life last spring
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Our lovely spawn . . . erm . . . children [innocent as rattlesnakes]
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The puppies . . . yes, yes they are shorter than grass
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My last [aborted] attempt to grow my hair out.
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My wife and I in our younger days (@ her junior prom)
(For those of you who are wondering, I’m 5′11″; She’s 6′1″ [+heels])
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Miscellaneous Carp
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Password Protected Posts
Every now and again I’ll do a post that requires password protection.
This doesn’t mean I don’t want people to read the post. It’s just my way of keeping casual viewing to a minimum as well as to provide a barrier to let you know when something might not be safe to open up at work or in front of your kids.
So if you come across a post that is password protected, just shoot me an email or grab me on the Contact page and I’ll send it off to you.
The password is the same for every post, so if you already have my password, it hasn’t changed.
