Partner in the struggle

A friend who is also struggling sent me a note today.

"I have lost my mojo and need to find it again."

I suggested we meet at Shakey's where they have fantastic fried Mojo potatoes.  

Misery loves company. 

And so it goes. 

The mindset is everything when taking on a life change. 

When you want to cheat and feel like you can just deal with the consequences, you cheat. 

This has been a lousy week to try and get on track. Three dinners out and three food centered parties makes it hard to stay true and on course. 

I plan to begin anew on Saturday. 

Mojo. 

I will find it again.

Schizo Boy, The Bulge & The Spotlight

"I'm still here," I say then I disappear.

For weeks on end I go AWOL only to pop up like that rascally gopher crawling out of his hole in Caddyshack. I stick my head above ground, do a quick little dance and grin. These posts lately have felt like nothing more than me shaking my chubby hips before quickly scurrying back underground.

Frankly, the commitment has been a bit schizo.

So what happened to me? What happened to that steely resolve? What happened to that walk with my wife where I declared "we are never going back there!"

All I know is my pants are uncomfortably tight. The dedication to diet is on shaky ground and my program collapses like a house in Haiti once the tremors start.

I wish I could say that my jeans were washed in hot water and they shrunk.

Not so.

I certainly can just switch to the next size up but that would be too easy. That would be waving the white flag of defeat and surrender. I would rather live with the tight waistband that serves as the pinching and painful reminder that I gotta get a grip.

No more time outs. No more celebrations.

I am turning the spotlight back on and crawling out from underground.

It's the only thing I know that works in my battle of the bulge.

This will be the first of at least three posts this week.

Photos and written material by Steve Elzer

© Copyright, 2010

Fridays With Doctor J

I returned to the fold on Friday after nearly 7 weeks of playing hooky with the diet and the regular visits to the doctor. I was nervous as I walked thru the door and headed into the familiar routine of checking in, dropping trow, getting the b-12 shot and having the stats taken before jumping on the scale.

So when I looked down at the numbers flashing before me, I was honestly a bit surprised that I had only gained 3 1/2 pounds since the first week in January - a huge victory. Especially given the week I just enjoyed with a completely extravagant, hedonistic, and impossibly delicious wine dinner with friends in Santa Barbara.

So after this night of excess and the weeks of playing fast and loose with the plan, my little victory dance was not something to celebrate. And therein lies the rub. I considered gaining 3 1/2 pounds in 7 weeks a big win and I left cocky and perhaps not as completely committed or resolved to retrenching in the diet as I was prior to getting the news.

As a dieter, when you have had a lapse and you return to the fold thinking you have gained more that you have, and you hit the scale only to come in UNDER expectations, you can really play havoc with your best intentions.

Your mind says "well that wasn't so bad," and you give your self license to continue playing the game just as you have...

Wrong. No can do.

I am back to the doc. Now I need to get back with the exercise routine... I think I will head to the gym tomorrow and kick start myself all over again.

Finding My Way Back Home

Friday I go back to the doctor. I feel a bit like Charlie Sheen going back to rehab, except without that psychotic history of beating the shit out of a lot of women.

I know I have gained a bit. Nothing too nuts (i hope), but enough to feel it and know i need to return to basics. Getting back on the horse is harder than I thought.

How I Got Pulled Over And Detained on The Dieting Super Highway

During the last several weeks, many friends have asked about my absence from this blog.

“You really need to get back to it,” urged one colleague at a recent dinner. “Why haven’t you been writing?” asked another at a Christmas party.

I wish I could say that I have been suffering from a long-festering bout of writer’s block but that would be a lie. I have been avoiding this site because I have been avoiding my diet.

It should come as no shock that the holidays have been harder to navigate than I expected.

Heading into December, things started reasonably well. I survived the gluttony of Thanksgiving and actually lost weight. Given the way I had eaten that week, I was genuinely surprised to see I had lost a few pounds. Well, from that point on I hit a rocky road – and I am not talking about the ice cream.

With each passing party, event or dinner out, I became more daring and my gradual comfort level with tasty and all too familiar comfort foods made me feel a bit like a crook on the lam.

I say that because at some point shortly after stuffing that cocktail weenie or puff pastry down my throat, inevitably someone would take that as a cue to saunter up to me and ask about the diet or this blog.

No kidding.

Practically every time I went in for that mouth-watering bite, someone was there to tell me how great the family looked. Talk about a binge buzz kill :)

Now the good news is the safety net that I envisioned when I publicly declared this life change almost a year ago really does work. No matter where I went, no matter what I may have just swallowed, someone somewhere unwittingly was reminding me that I was supposed to be dieting.

The bad news is that safety net was not enough to support the cheaply erected platform because the diet foundation that I thought was pretty firm crumbled at the first real test of stress and pressure.

When I think back on the last few weeks, I have been so good at being so deliciously bad, I have actually won awards for my misbehavior.

I shit you not.

Yes friends, I confess that during my delinquency from dieting, I entered and won a holiday cookie baking competition taking home the Grand Prize for Best All Around Cookie (the actual ribbon is posted at the top of the blog).

As you well know, any respectable competition requires practice. So, in the name of science and experimentation, I had to crank up the Elzer test kitchen and make a few batches of gooey goodness so I could determine which recipe might reign supreme in this nail biter of a cookie battle.

Of course, we are talking about trying at least one back-up recipe that didn’t quite make the cut because damnit, I have standards, and I didn’t deem the final product “award worthy.” And you know my tough "standards" bull puckey is really just code for "I wanted to scarf down as much cookie dough as humanly possible without throwing up."

Now come on! When the dieting fat guy decides to celebrate the spirit of the season by firing up the oven with a fantastic concoction of Valrhona chocolate and melted marshmallows, I dunno, something is wrong.

I am no rocket scientist, but looking back on it now, any sane person might say this whole scenario seems like a desperately bad idea. At a minimum this is a display of deeply rooted diet depravity of the highest order.

You see, when other serious addictions present themselves during the holidays, the police will step in and randomly erect one of those oh so effective sobriety checkpoints and voila -- it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Thankfully, the cops have little care for drivers with a freshly baked batch of award-winning Whoopie Pies in their trunk. For the record, they were obscenely awesome and deserving of the blue ribbon and I want to thank the committee of judges and the voting members of the Cookie Academy should any of them be reading this indecent confession.

So, instead of facing the law, I ultimately have to face the scale, which after the year we have been through is a helluva lot more sobering to me than handcuffs.

Sure, there is a certain part of me that expected to gain a little weight this month and up to a point, I would have been totally fine with savoring, the sweet and starchy rewards I have enjoyed guilt-free.

But I feel like I went about this all-wrong.

Just as I have avoided this blog, you should know I also neglected the doctor and regular workouts with my trainer and most importantly, my weekly appointment with my friend the scale. Yep. Turned my back on them all.

Then, yesterday morning, the noose tightened.

I got an unexpected call from the doctor’s office – which I guess was the diet police equivalent of a holiday sobriety checkpoint.

“We haven’t seen you in a while and we just wanted to make sure you are OK,” the nurse said.

In the time since my two missed appointments, I have experienced a trip to Vegas, extravagant wine dinners, Chanukah parties, my daughter’s birthday, an unbelievable orgy of lobster and Peking duck at a Chinese restaurant on Christmas, and lots and lots of little side celebrations. With each passing day, my belt began to feel just a bit less comfortable, so I knew the post-Thanksgiving weight loss victory was a distant memory.

Here, now, on the phone the Monday after Christmas weekend, the long arm of the doc was tapping me on the shoulder to reel me in.

“Can you come in today?” the nurse asked.

“Uh, no,” I replied.

“Why not?” she politely but pointedly chimed back.

At that point, the gig was up. She could smell the carbs on my breath through the phone 35 miles away.

I confessed to the nurse that the last few weeks had not been great and I had no intention of coming in to the office and surrendering to the scale. I didn't need that cursed needle to tell me I gained weight.

I told her I would get back to the plan in the New Year and would see her in a few weeks.

As I was spewing my best conciliatory spin, I could almost hear the nurse saying to herself "not so fast, chubby."

After a little back and forth involving whether I would check in as they wished and get on a scale, we compromised and she talked me into an office visit today.

Now truth be told, I sincerely do not want to know how much I have gained and no matter what, it probably is not as bad or dramatic as I am making it appear. My lord, I still fit into the same pants I was wearing three weeks ago, so the havoc is more in my head than on my waist. But I stuck to my guns and I did not get on the scale - though the dutiful staff did their best to coax me.

The point in making the trip back to the doctor's office an hour from my house was to reconnect with the office staff and rekindle the routine.

I promised to return to face the scale after the 1st of the year.

I know that many people struggle with weight gains this time of year. The trick for me will be to make the adjustment now and return to the regimen that has been so successful for me and the entire family (all of whom are doing extraordinarily well, by the way).

The troublesome part of this introspection is not that I gained a few. It is that I abandoned the pillars of my program so easily when I have worked far too hard to get to this place. I know I should have been more dutiful about blogging and sticking to my workout routine just as I know I should have faced the music of a potential weight gain after the first missed doctor’s appointment.

So for the next couple of days, I am gonna keep my eye on what’s important but also cut myself some slack and hit it fresh in the New Year with a new resolve to continue what I started.

To those of you who have followed the ups and downs of this journey this year, thank you for your incredible support. Whether you know it or not, you are the first line of defense and I couldn’t ask for better friends or a better safety net.

2009 proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone is capable of change if you set your mind to it. The last few weeks prove that you can give in but you can never give up.

I wish you and your family only the best in 2010 and the years ahead.


Copyright, 2009
Steve Elzer
All Rights Reserved

Two by Two

Two weeks ago we celebrated Hannah's Bat Mitzvah. During the service, she read from the torah about Noah's Ark.

As all my theologian friends know, Noah took two of every kind of animal on board his little boat.

I feel like I have been stuck in a numerology game because during the past two weeks, I gained 2 pounds.

My 1 by 1 turned into 2 to lose.

This week, I lost the two pounds and I am back to where I was on October 16th.

So tomorrow, I am playing the lotto and my numbers will be 2, 22, 10, 16, 1 and 32.

The 2 represents the pounds I just lost. The 22 signifies the 2 weeks I gained 2 pounds. 10 and 16 is the date I was last at this weight and 1 and 32 reps the 132 pounds lost to date.

I know I am not winning the lottery, but let's face it. I have already won so much more than I could ever gain playing numbers.

That said, a nice fat check would be pretty damn skippy too!

The Tao of Stress Eating

“Stress eating.”

The dieter’s crutch, excuse and curse.

These are really just carefully crafted words that, when used together, somehow magically communicate that whatever binge you are on is justified.

So, if , for example, the last few weeks I have overindulged on an assortment of gateway snacks like roasted, salted peanuts by the bag full – well, calling my behavior “stress eating” should not make the behavior seem so marvelously understandable.

It’s not ok.

Deep down inside, I knew last week when I stepped on the scale, my day of reckoning was upon me. I gained my first pound in a year and it bummed me out.

Sensing this genuine disappointment, a few close friends chalked up the uncharacteristic gain to a host of recent events: my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah party; hiring a trainer and converting fat to muscle; not drinking enough water; Lucas’ hospitalization; my birthday, too much anxiety at the office.

Now while all of these factors may have come into play in some way or another, the plain truth is that weeks ago, I opened a door that I have yet to shut.

Even as I type this sentence, I am nourished by the sweet, chewy tang of my favorite pineapple flavored Haribo Gold-Bears: “The Original Gummi Candy.” And isn’t that the surest sign that the heart and head are no longer in full alignment. Here I sit typing away knowing I shouldn’t be gobbling a gummi and yet, what the fuck? You will be happy to know the rest of the ½ ounce bag just went in the trash.

For two weeks, my forward momentum has stalled and I have taken two-baby steps back.

I feel like Winnie the Pooh after gorging on honey and condensed milk at Rabbit’s house. After binging on all the snacks his host could muster, a fat and sated Pooh headed out of the house only to get stuck in the hole.

Watching Pooh struggle to get out, Christopher Robin said:

“There's only one thing to be done. We shall have to wait for you to get thin again.”

'How long does getting thin take?' asked Pooh anxiously.

'About a week I should think,' said Christopher.

'But I can't stay here for a week!' Pooh exclaimed.

You can stay here all right, silly old Bear. It's getting you out which is so difficult.'

###

True dat, Christopher! You are a wise character of literature.

Getting out of a rut is always the difficult part of recovering back to the core of the diet.

But really, it’s not about how much time you put into your diet, because it can never be over.

When Pooh asks “How long?” the answer is forever.

Like Pooh, I know that I can make great progress in a week if I set my mind to it. I also know that the two pounds I gained in the last few weeks can and will disappear if I really focus on what got me here. And what got me here was a strict dedication to my diet, writing down everything I was eating, exercising, and drinking lots of water. All of that has changed of late. I have become lax. Back to basics.

Last night I was invited to a Hockey game with some business colleagues. At the event, I met a stranger who was no stranger at all. She knew me and my family from this blog. Someone who knew me shared it with a friend who shared it with her and suddenly it was as if I was conversing with an old friend. It was surreal to meet a person who I had never met yet knew so much about me and this part of my life.

We spoke for awhile about the diet and were deep into the discussion when our host interrupted with news that a dessert cart was outside the door of the suite. We both passed, yet we both wanted that damn carrot cake!

As much as she said I had inspired her, she inspired me to really try and look forward again.

And today, when I stepped on the scale knowing that the news was not going to be good, I greeted my second consecutive one pound gain as a lesson to retrench myself.

The holidays are just around the corner and when I hit New Year’s eve this year, I want to look at myself in the mirror knowing that the resolution for a better, healthier me was a promise kept throughout the entire year.

I have been stressed and strained and full of worry about so many things – all of which are either behind me now or truly beyond my control.
Time to say oh, bother to those two pounds.

I can feel the little dark rain clouds lifting already.

© Copyright, Steve Elzer, 2009
All Rights Reserved