“They” — that great ethereal, widely cited, never seen body of sages — say that madness is doing the same thing again and again while expecting different results. Well in that case this dieting lark is madness. So I’m going to stop (again). I’m not giving up on losing weight, but I’m not banging my head off this wall any more. I have another plan which I’ll explain in a bit. But first, a bit of catchup for any new readers, followed by the recent damning evidence that prompted this post.
Catchup
I’ve always considered myself fat. To me the world has always consisted of two kinds of people – fat and normal. I am in the fat class. Simple. And there must have been some truth to my diagnosis, because my classmates would remind me of it. My surname is “Kelly”, which rhymes, unfortunately, with “Jelly” and “Belly”. So you’d get:
“Big fat Kelly, has a rubber Belly, watches Telly, eatin’ Jelly”
(They’d also occasionally throw in clever references to “Welly” and “Smelly”.) I don’t remember the tune, and I doubt it was intentionally iambic pentameter, but it’s creative, and quite endearing. I did once punch a sixth grade classmate in the eye for saying it (sorry David), but I don’t think it really bugged me much. And I’ve often wondered how different whatever emotional scars I developed would have been had I been raised in the US, where Jelly is Jell-O. Loses its impact a bit, no?
Anyway since then, with one brief period of svelte-ness, I’ve been Fat And Getting Fatter. That brief period was my 11th and 12th grades in high school, where I took up weight training and running, and pretty much slimmed right down to jock level. But after that, through university, early marriage and kids (well, you always gain weight when you have kids!), to present day, I reverted to what I’ve always considered to be “type”. Over the past 27 years, I’ve made *umpteen* attempts to lose weight. Simple calorie control, low carb, weight watchers, etc. Also scam-esque diets like the “Sacred Heart Soup Diet” (or some such name). Plus a weird thing called “The Manorama Formula” from a book by M. Legha. I still think she had a bit of a clue, but not enough for me. And then, most recently, the E2 Diet, a plant-based approach.
Every Single Attempt has failed to produce lasting weight loss. Now of course you may argue that it wasn’t the diets that failed — well, not the “good” diets. No, it was only *me* who failed to follow them. To which I’d reply, well duh! Of course I failed to follow them; that’s why they’re failures. If that — large scale failure on the part of participants to follow the diet in question — is not a sign of dietary failure then, as I’ve said before, the three words “Stop drinking alcohol” constitute an effective cure for alcoholism.
OK, so fast forward to this year. Several months ago to be precise. Once again, I was the heaviest I’d ever been. That’s nothing new of course; I’m regularly the heaviest I’ve ever been (each time being heavier than the past time). I weighed 286.6lbs. At a mere 5’8″ or 5’9″ (my tape says the former, the doctor’s the latter), that’s a BMI of something like 43.6 kg/m^3. In medical terms that’s known as a … actually at this point, it may be useful to develop a simple Obesity Classification Scheme. I think we can divide fat people into three broad classes, the fattest of which is further subdivided into three types:
Class 1 – Stop Moaning; You’re NOT FAT
It’s easiest to describe this in terms of women. You’re class 1 if your fat level is such that you are “technically” overweight, but if you were to stand in a bikini and ask a passing bloke if he thought your tummy looked fat you’d quickly realize he wasn’t looking at your tummy.
Class 2 – OK, you’re not skinny, but who’s complaining
This is easy to diagnose. Stand naked in front of a mirror. Rise up on your toes. Fall down heavily onto your heels. If anything wobbles that shouldn’t wobble, you’re Class 2. Note that I said “wobble”. If you actually see standing waves set up in your adipose tissue, you’re probably Class 3.
Class 3 – Big Fat Lard Arse.
There are three types.
A Type 1 BFLA is someone who may have some difficulty closing the safety bar on a roller coaster.
You’re a Type 2 BFLA if when flying in a small plane with a 1-2 seating configuration, the stewardess has to remove the arm of the 1-side chair so you can sit down. Type 2′ness should also be suspected if you have to roll over onto your tummy (as opposed to your side) to get up after lying on your back.
And a Type 3 BFA is where you’re beginning to resemble a sofa with a head and you become the star of a voyeuristic TV show with a title something like, “The Thousand Pound Man”, or “Big Fat Arses R Us” or “How the F*ck Did That Dude Get So Fat, and What the F*ck Is His Wife Still Feeding Him Acres Of Peppef*ckinroni Pizza For, and Holy Cr*p Is That a F*cking Cheesecake She’s Just Forklifted Onto His Plate? OMFG!!!”
I, my friends, am a Type 1 BFLA. I almost did get excluded from a roller coaster, at Six Flags in San Antonio. But I have good lungs, so I breathed in a lot and the safety bar went down. But I was maybe 14 lbs lighter then than at 286.6 lbs. Had I tried the coaster last April, I may have had a problem.
Cruel? ‘Course it’s cruel. I’m allowed to be cruel. I’m *in* the BFLA team; I get to call a spade a … Fantasy Implement For Shoveling Custard Into My Fizog. Just like black dudes get to call each other the N word, we BFLAs get to call each other the BFLA words.
So, as I say, I’m Type 1. But mark my words, the only thing separating me from Type 2′ness, or maybe even Type 3′ness infamy, is time. And it was that scary prospect that triggered my interest in the E2 diet, and in writing this blog. So here’s the recent sorry tale.
April 13th, 2009: I start the E2 diet. Weight is 286.6 lbs. (That’s just shy of 20.5 st in English)
May 11th: 28 days later I’m down to 265.0 lbs, having lost 21.7lbs. A rate of 5.4lbs per week. And, intriguingly, the whole four weeks of veganism has been pretty pleasant and relatively easy.
May 12th: Since I have a long way still to go, and since 4 weeks, while impressive by my standards of persistence-in-dieting, is not really long enough to be called a lifestyle change, I begin what I call Phase 2 of E2. It’s just more of the same, but is intended to see me sustain the diet for the magical 13 weeks that “They” say is needed to turn a fad into a habit.
June 24th: 44 days into the 63-day Phase 2, and I’ve effectively fallen off the wagon. Whatever was keeping me focused and motivated during Phase 1 seems to have gone. I can’t explain it, but Phase 2 is effectively over. Weight loss for the time I did manage — 3.6lbs. A rate of 0.57lbs per week. Weight is now 261.4 lbs
August 3rd: Hope springs eternal, and I decide to have another try. I call this “E2 Take 2″. This Time, it’ll work. Surely. Weight at this point is 268.8 lbs, so I’ve managed to maintain the weight loss of my first attempt (gained 3.8 lbs back really, but let’s not haggle). But while lack of increase is good, it’s loss I’m after. So Take 2 begins.
August 12th: Wagon. Off. Fall. Again. In fact I’ve managed to drop 7.6 lbs in 9 days, down to 261.2 lbs. By many dieters’ standards, that’s highly cool. But what’s uncool is that I basically cease and desist the diet from that date. There are no other measurements in my log (and that means, basically, I was out of diet mode) until last week – Monday, September 7th.
September 7th: Weight is 266.2 lbs. A gain of 5 lbs since August 12th when I aborted E2 Take 2.
Summary. I’ve been in and out of diet mode for the past 153 days. I lost a good chunk in the first 28 days. After that, pretty much nothing. I have achieved effectively nothing in weight loss terms in the last 125 days.
So I’m not doing it anymore. The wall is hard, and my head is bleeding and sore. I am going to stop hitting one off the other. And remember, this is not just a giving-up after 153 days of trying. I’ve been trying for TWENTY SEVEN YEARS. Let’s face facts people, dieting — i.e. sustained calorie restriction, or some other form of forcing me to eat/not-eat stuff — does not work for Yours Truly.
However, there’s hope. I have discovered what may be a new, dieting-free way to achieve weight loss. It doesn’t involve punishing restriction of food. In fact, I am going to eat whatever I want, whenever I want it, and as much as I want. And it doesn’t involve any surgery, or drugs, or dancing naked around Maypoles. The method is so simple that it is either a bunch of New Age Hokum, or it is The Answer to millions of obese people’s problem. I (very) strongly suspect the hokum, but I’m sufficiently intrigued as to give it a go.
I actually started it last Monday and have lost about 4 lbs since then. I’ll tell you more about it if it turns out to be real and not New Age Hokum. Contrariwise, if you hear nothing more from me after today, you’ll know I’ve slunk into a corner with my bowl of double chocolate fudge ice cream while waiting for the Maypole to be made ready.
