It Is What It Is

Hi, I'm Charlie, and I'm a compulsive overeater.

::Hi, Charlie!::

Today is Day Eleven for me, I think, and I'm very grateful for that. I have a sense that this time it's gonna work. Ha! How many times have I said that? A thousand? Two thousand?

And yet...

Something about starting this blog up again, something about having a consistent spiritual practice of reading scriptures, journaling, praying... for more than one day... It's feeling like there is some real surrender happening this time. Some real recovery.

And just today on the scales... a little gift. I think today I was 211.6 pounds. Let's revisit my weight history:

Most of my life I was slightly overweight... In college I probably hovered around 190-200 pounds. When I got married I started to slowly put it on, getting up to around 230 pounds by about 2000. I was 29 years old, had been married 7 years and had 2 kids. My first significant weight loss was right after my twins were born in 2001. I really buckled down and made it happen... Counted calories like a madman - no more than 2000 per day - and worked out about 90 minutes a day, 5 days a week. And yes, I lost weight. I looked and felt great. I got down to, I think, 185 pounds.

So, victorious over fat, I stopped working out so regularly and started eating more food again. As you know, that didn't work. I got fat again, this time topping out at 236. And more than the fat, I was completely out of control and compulsive in my eating.

My eating got crazy back then - sneaking food, charging food, lots of fast food, eating 5-6 meals a day, making and eating entire boxes of mac-n-cheese in one meal, eating multiple bowls of cereal covered in sugar, late at night... and then, of course, eating sensibly in front of other people.

And I shouldn't talk about this as if it's all SO FAR back in my history. Truth is, I've done some of this in the past couple years as well, on and off.

So then I found OA. In 2006 I went to some meetings and then ended up starting my own group. I found real, true abstinence. God removed my cravings, my obsession around food. I was free from sugar and refined white flour for seven months. I ate only three meals a day and non-caloric drinks. I lost 64 pounds, the most I had ever lost in my life at one time, and finally realized, for the first time since - probably - high school, my goal weight of 172.















And again... I had arrived. It was a wonderful achievement, a banner moment in my life. I really felt serenity and I had experienced a lot of freedom from the physical effects of compulsive overeating. I was actually... skinny! I still had some flab around my waist that I didn't like. I didn't like the shape of me, but I was a shadow of my former self, and I loved it. I relished it. I wore cool shirts that were tight on me. I was wearing some size 34 jeans. Insane.

And then I had a milkshake at Baskin-Robbins. You know, because this time I could handle it.

Here I am again, two years later. Over the last two years I have gained and lost, gained and gained and gained and gained and lost, gained and gained and gained and gained and gained and lost again...

In fact, since I started recording my weight on Skinnyr.com, back in October '07, I've bounced around from a low of 191.6 on January 22, 2008 to a high of 222.2 on February 8 of this year. My lowest weight in the last year was on July 24, 2008. I weighed in at an astonishing (for me at the time) 195.8. Why did I stop? I was doing pretty well... Lots of reasons. Mostly I think because some compulsive eaters I love a lot came to visit for a week, and I basically got sucked back into their addiction along with them. That's OK. It is what it is. Now we move on. For Today, right?

Here's my Skinnyr chart:








Crazy, huh? But no shame... It is what it is. And there IS a solution. And I'm taking the right steps, one day at a time, to find serenity and freedom and, yes, weight loss.

Like I was saying at the beginning of the post. This morning, I weighed 211.6. That was a gift. It's going to come off. Stay on the plan. Do the right thing. God, remove my excess weight as you remove my character defects and my cravings! Amen...