By nature, I’m a very trusting person. Maybe it’s just the way I was raised – in a very small town where you knew everyone and they knew not just you, but your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc. Where nobody locked their doors or windows, and folks slept out on the screen porch during hot weather. Where everybody took care of everyone else’s kids as if they were their own, and you were always welcome at a neighbor’s house and dinner table. Maybe that’s why I have gotten hurt so many times in my life since – I always seem trust people until they prove that they can’t be trusted. You’d think I’d learn sooner or later. Looks like it’s going to be later.
Why are some people so selfish that they don’t care about what happens to someone else as long as they get what they want? How do they get to that point? Did no one care about them when they were young? Did life screw them over so badly that they feel like they deserve whatever they can get, no matter what? It’s always been a mystery to me why some people are such assholes. I keep thinking there must be a reason for it, and if I could understand it, I could deal with it. After 55 years on this earth, I still do not understand, and at this point, I doubt I ever will.
For me, life is all about loving and being loved. It’s about giving of yourself to make others happy. It’s caring about people you don’t even know – wanting life to be better for them, and doing what you can to make it that way. It’s about finding that one person that you want to spend the rest of your life making happy, and doing everything in your power to do just that. It’s about treasuring friends and family above everything else, and being there for them whatever happens. It’s about not running away from problems and uncomfortable situations with the one(s) you love, but hanging in there and fighting for the best outcome for everyone. It’s about giving love whenever and wherever you can.
Unfortunately for me, that means that I get disappointed and hurt all too often. When people tell me something, I believe them. When someone says they will do something or be somewhere, I believe that they will. And when they don’t, I’m not always half as mad at them as I am at myself for being such a sucker! Which, of course, means they win twice – once when I believe them, and once when I beat myself up for being so foolish.
Sometimes I wonder what the right answer is, here. Is it to trust no one and believe that everyone you meet has ulterior motives? Is it to “play the game back” and hurt rather than be hurt? Do I just withdraw from life altogether to avoid being hurt? Or is it my lot to keep believing, keep hoping, keep trying and, in the end, keep being hurt and disappointed.
In case you are wondering, this week someone I thought was a friend turned out to be someone who only wanted to use me to get something they wanted. They offered me some things that I value – friendship, caring and companionship – only to get me to let my guard down so that they could manipulate me to get what they wanted. I’m left feeling like dirt under their feet. And somehow, I doubt that they care one bit. After all, they got what they wanted in the first place. Mission accomplished.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Saturday, August 15, 2009
The Dreaded Plateau
Trying to lose weight is a series of occasional highs surrounded by a vast sea of frustration. At least that’s the way it works for me. When the number on the scale goes down, there’s just no better feeling. In my case, those occasions are generally spaced out with a lot of incidents of frustration when the number either doesn’t change at all, or actually goes up (temporarily). It’s so easy to get discouraged when you are following the rules and exercising frequently – and seeing no results. Perhaps part of the problem is that we live in a time when we are accustomed to immediate gratification – cause and effect being adjacent to each other in a timeline – and we don’t deal as well with the “eyes on the prize” scenario.
In the dieting world, this is referred to as a plateau. Plateaus can be anywhere from a week to several months. This is the point at which your body decides to fight back and try to maintain your weight – a built-in response to prevent starvation by holding onto the pounds. Even if you are extremely obese, like I am, your body still responds to weight loss that way. It is during plateaus that people usually “fall off the wagon” – all that hard work and self-denial and nothing to show for it. I’m no different – every diet I’ve ever undertaken has resulted in a long plateau, which ended when I decided “to heck with it – I’m going to eat whatever I want – might as well!” and that was it. Once you fall off a particular diet or way of eating, it is so very much harder to re-start – you always have that feeling of “what’s the use? I’ll just quit losing again”.
I’m a tough case, to be sure. I’ve probably lost at least 500 pounds – if not more – in my lifetime. In the end, I give up and start eating things that aren’t good for me again – and put on everything I’ve lost and more, and I do it very rapidly. It’s not out of the question for me to gain 20 pounds in a month. I had a metabolic study once, and the endocrinologist told me that I was too efficient – that my body needed fewer calories to maintain my weight than anyone he had seen in his practice (and he wasn’t a young man, either!). That’s not an excuse for giving up, but it is a contributing factor in my frustration with weight loss efforts.
This time around, I’ve hit a number of small plateaus already. So far, the weight loss has restarted in 2-4 weeks, as long as I keep working at it. There could be any number of reasons for this - for example, I have greatly increased the amount of physical activity in my schedule, and I’ve been building muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat. So sometimes, even when I don’t see the scale number change, I do see a change in the tape measure or in the fit of my clothes. Other times, I can be retaining water – this frequently happens when I suffer a bout of fibromyalgia. I don’t know what the relationship is – I just know that for me, there is one. Regardless of the reason, I can see my weight fluctuate as much as 3 pounds in the course of a few days.
What I can say this time around is that there has been a change in my attitude. While I’d love to see the scale show weekly progress, I have committed myself to doing this even if I don’t see it. I’m determined that this will work and I’ve gained an understanding that it may not happen quickly. I truly believe that this time I will be able to take off a large chunk of my weight. Maybe not all that I’d like to see gone, but a significant amount – enough to allow me to have the knee surgery I need and regain some mobility. I want to enjoy whatever years are left to me, and part of that enjoyment would come in being able, not disabled, if there is any way I can accomplish that. And so now I’m going off to the gym to run 35 laps and 30 minutes of resistance training in the warm water pool.
In the dieting world, this is referred to as a plateau. Plateaus can be anywhere from a week to several months. This is the point at which your body decides to fight back and try to maintain your weight – a built-in response to prevent starvation by holding onto the pounds. Even if you are extremely obese, like I am, your body still responds to weight loss that way. It is during plateaus that people usually “fall off the wagon” – all that hard work and self-denial and nothing to show for it. I’m no different – every diet I’ve ever undertaken has resulted in a long plateau, which ended when I decided “to heck with it – I’m going to eat whatever I want – might as well!” and that was it. Once you fall off a particular diet or way of eating, it is so very much harder to re-start – you always have that feeling of “what’s the use? I’ll just quit losing again”.
I’m a tough case, to be sure. I’ve probably lost at least 500 pounds – if not more – in my lifetime. In the end, I give up and start eating things that aren’t good for me again – and put on everything I’ve lost and more, and I do it very rapidly. It’s not out of the question for me to gain 20 pounds in a month. I had a metabolic study once, and the endocrinologist told me that I was too efficient – that my body needed fewer calories to maintain my weight than anyone he had seen in his practice (and he wasn’t a young man, either!). That’s not an excuse for giving up, but it is a contributing factor in my frustration with weight loss efforts.
This time around, I’ve hit a number of small plateaus already. So far, the weight loss has restarted in 2-4 weeks, as long as I keep working at it. There could be any number of reasons for this - for example, I have greatly increased the amount of physical activity in my schedule, and I’ve been building muscle. Muscle weighs more than fat. So sometimes, even when I don’t see the scale number change, I do see a change in the tape measure or in the fit of my clothes. Other times, I can be retaining water – this frequently happens when I suffer a bout of fibromyalgia. I don’t know what the relationship is – I just know that for me, there is one. Regardless of the reason, I can see my weight fluctuate as much as 3 pounds in the course of a few days.
What I can say this time around is that there has been a change in my attitude. While I’d love to see the scale show weekly progress, I have committed myself to doing this even if I don’t see it. I’m determined that this will work and I’ve gained an understanding that it may not happen quickly. I truly believe that this time I will be able to take off a large chunk of my weight. Maybe not all that I’d like to see gone, but a significant amount – enough to allow me to have the knee surgery I need and regain some mobility. I want to enjoy whatever years are left to me, and part of that enjoyment would come in being able, not disabled, if there is any way I can accomplish that. And so now I’m going off to the gym to run 35 laps and 30 minutes of resistance training in the warm water pool.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
When Words Hurt
I hate prejudice! Prejudice against obese people is the one that hits me where I live, but I truly hate any type of prejudice, and I find myself becoming angry about it more frequently as I get older. Prejudice is a close-minded, irrational bias against some group of people – usually based on some cultural or societal perception – that leads, or allows, people to express themselves in a way that is demeaning and devaluing to those about whom they speak. Sometimes, this prejudice is so ingrained in their background that their expression of it becomes natural and without forethought. But words can hurt others deeply, and even jokes made at the expense of others are unkind and unacceptable.
This was brought home to me this week by a blog post by someone I know (I won’t name the person, so don’t ask) who posted and publicized (on Twitter) her newest rant, which she referred to as “FAT, STUPID People”! I was absolutely shocked and frankly, didn’t know what to think. However, I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, so I read her post. Her subject was an incident that she said happened at the grocery store, where she was confronted by a “fat beluga” for taking all of the sale pasta, which the woman went so far as to take away from her. She ranted on and on about how huge the woman was, using all sorts of nasty, vituperative and vulgar clichés. Reading it made me want to vomit, it was that nasty.
Now, this person is what is generally called a “drama queen” – someone who can take a small, seemingly insignificant incident in her life and turn it into a huge, nearly international incident – always with her as the innocent victim. But even if every word she wrote was true, the size of the woman she referred to had nothing at all to do with the situation. The woman was pushy and incredibly rude, yes – but she could have as easily been a normal sized person and acted the same way. Her size didn’t cause her to grab the pasta, as the writer assumed – it was most likely her desire to feed her family for less, rather than her being a greedy pig, as the writer characterized her. The woman was wrong to do what she did. But the writer was also wrong to unleash such a stream of invective about the woman’s weight.
One of the reasons I found this so difficult to take was that I thought she was someone who was aware of my battle and would not have deliberately said something so hurtful. She not only did that, she was angry when I confronted her about it and asked her to stop being so offensive. She ranted on and on about how I was just another fat tub of lard and I had no right to tell her what she could or couldn’t write. In that respect, she is right – I probably should not have gone as far as to ask her to stop. I probably should have stopped at telling her that she was offending me and others. She has a right to write anything she chooses, just like the neo-Nazis, the KKK, terrorists and I do. We all enjoy the freedom of speech that we find on the internet. In the end, I exercised my right to not subject myself to that type of offensive negativity – I “unfollowed” her on Twitter so that I didn’t have to be poisoned by her venom any longer. I hope that someday she might find some peace in her life, but that won’t happen until she learns to take responsibility for herself and her actions and stop blaming others and “acting out” to get attention.
Remember the old saying “Sticks and stone will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? I guess words will never put a cast on my leg or stitches in my arm. But they certainly hurt me emotionally, as I’m assuming they do you, as well. I experienced that from the other side this week when I called a friend an unflattering name – I was only joking, but he was in a bad place and didn’t get that. I hurt and angered him, something I would NEVER do deliberately. But it happened, and I learned from that experience as well. Words can hurt you and others. I know a lot of people who rant and rave about having to watch what they say because of PC (political correctness). Sometimes they’re right, and there certainly are people who LOOK for things to be offended by. But everyone needs to be at least somewhat conscious of how their words may be received and interpreted by others. When in doubt, please don’t say it. It isn’t worth hurting someone – whether it’s someone you love, or not. There is enough hurt in this world already.
This was brought home to me this week by a blog post by someone I know (I won’t name the person, so don’t ask) who posted and publicized (on Twitter) her newest rant, which she referred to as “FAT, STUPID People”! I was absolutely shocked and frankly, didn’t know what to think. However, I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, so I read her post. Her subject was an incident that she said happened at the grocery store, where she was confronted by a “fat beluga” for taking all of the sale pasta, which the woman went so far as to take away from her. She ranted on and on about how huge the woman was, using all sorts of nasty, vituperative and vulgar clichés. Reading it made me want to vomit, it was that nasty.
Now, this person is what is generally called a “drama queen” – someone who can take a small, seemingly insignificant incident in her life and turn it into a huge, nearly international incident – always with her as the innocent victim. But even if every word she wrote was true, the size of the woman she referred to had nothing at all to do with the situation. The woman was pushy and incredibly rude, yes – but she could have as easily been a normal sized person and acted the same way. Her size didn’t cause her to grab the pasta, as the writer assumed – it was most likely her desire to feed her family for less, rather than her being a greedy pig, as the writer characterized her. The woman was wrong to do what she did. But the writer was also wrong to unleash such a stream of invective about the woman’s weight.
One of the reasons I found this so difficult to take was that I thought she was someone who was aware of my battle and would not have deliberately said something so hurtful. She not only did that, she was angry when I confronted her about it and asked her to stop being so offensive. She ranted on and on about how I was just another fat tub of lard and I had no right to tell her what she could or couldn’t write. In that respect, she is right – I probably should not have gone as far as to ask her to stop. I probably should have stopped at telling her that she was offending me and others. She has a right to write anything she chooses, just like the neo-Nazis, the KKK, terrorists and I do. We all enjoy the freedom of speech that we find on the internet. In the end, I exercised my right to not subject myself to that type of offensive negativity – I “unfollowed” her on Twitter so that I didn’t have to be poisoned by her venom any longer. I hope that someday she might find some peace in her life, but that won’t happen until she learns to take responsibility for herself and her actions and stop blaming others and “acting out” to get attention.
Remember the old saying “Sticks and stone will break my bones, but words will never hurt me”? I guess words will never put a cast on my leg or stitches in my arm. But they certainly hurt me emotionally, as I’m assuming they do you, as well. I experienced that from the other side this week when I called a friend an unflattering name – I was only joking, but he was in a bad place and didn’t get that. I hurt and angered him, something I would NEVER do deliberately. But it happened, and I learned from that experience as well. Words can hurt you and others. I know a lot of people who rant and rave about having to watch what they say because of PC (political correctness). Sometimes they’re right, and there certainly are people who LOOK for things to be offended by. But everyone needs to be at least somewhat conscious of how their words may be received and interpreted by others. When in doubt, please don’t say it. It isn’t worth hurting someone – whether it’s someone you love, or not. There is enough hurt in this world already.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
