I have fat days. Days I know that I'm not going to wear anything button up. Days where I'll pull one of my large and comfy t-shirts out of the closet at drape it over me like a tent. If I were to make that joke out loud I'd get a glare from Anne, my wife. She looks at me as handsome and desirable and it never fails to blow me away. I have secret fears that one day I'll be laying in bed and my body twists in a certain way, my large belly will ripple just the wrong way and it'll open her eyes. She'll see that she can do better. I know this is a silly thought, though I'm writing this on a non-fat day, so that may help matters. I know she won't wake up one day and suddenly see me as some monster from the fat lagoon and want to leave me. She's seen me at my worst and still loves me. I know this, but as some of you may know, logic has nothing to do with how you feel.
I use humour as a defence mechanism and it's worked for me for years, it's not an easy habit to get out. My humour is self-deprecating. It's the same logic behind the climatic scene in the movie 8 Mile. I'll be mean to myself first so when someone else is, it will take the sting away. But the thing is, I no longer surround myself with people who are mean to me like that. The attacks have stopped but the walls are still up. And the walls go up even higher on a fat day.
There are days that these walls feel unscalable. Spider-Man himself (or Spider-Gwen if you prefer a female example), would take one look at the wall and just walk away. How am I supposed to climb it? Or an even better question, how am I supposed to break the walls down? My question, my conundrum, is this: can I even tackle this problem when I'm my own worst enemy?
I want to live a long time. I want to start a family and grow old with my wife. I want to have grandchildren and spoil them like milk left out in the sun. But the statistics, and my doctor, can't help but remind me that the way I'm going I'd be lucky to see sixty, and that'd be fine if this was still the 1930's. I know I have a lot of work to do, work I need to do if I'm going to keep a promise I made Anne. But here's the sick part. My mind, you know, the thing that gives me fat days, that puts up walls, then cuts me down with attempts at humor? It also works against me when it comes to being healthy. You're having a fat day. Why eat a salad? Let's eat a huge double hamburger with extra cheese. Why stop at one beer? Have three! You deserve it! Let diabetics and heart disease be future Bill's problem. You could eat healthy today but what good would it do?
I'm going to say something here that only two other people in the world know. Those people are my wife and my doctor. I'm the heaviest I've ever been. I know a change needs to be made and the diet starts tomorrow. But the problem is, tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow is always tomorrow, today is always today, and the diet, the change, is a lot like Sisyphus, going no where fast. Though I'm not pushing a boulder up a hill forever, I'm just doing constant battle with my inner demons.
I have fat days. Some of you may have fat days too. I wish I had an answer. I wish I had the magic words that would turn every dark day light and make ever cloud blow away. But I don't. If I ever find it I promise to come back and tell you. I'd bottle it and sell it for cost. The only thing I can do is try to be better every day. Even if it's just a little. Even if I was just nice to myself for fifteen minutes longer than I wanted to. That would be progress. It's not some overnight sensation. It's not the kind of change that makes headlines. “California Man Was Nice To Himself For A Whole Hour.” No, that's not a headline. But it's a start.
Maybe it's the start we all need. I need to start working out, I need to start eating better, but I can't do that if I don't start thinking better. You can't always stop your mind. Maybe I'll look in the mirror tomorrow and see nothing but cottage cheese stuffed into a sausage casing. I can't help that. But what I can do is find something I like. Even if it's just the way my beard looks fantastic after I brush it. It may be small, but it's a start.
Tomorrow could be a fat day. But tomorrow will be the day that I take a little step forward and be proud of myself no matter how tiny a step it is. Rome wasn't built in a day and a person can't change the way they view themselves overnight. Baby steps.
This post was kindly written by the handsome BilliamSWN who you may know from his podcast Future Flicks With Billiam. He also writes blog posts which you can find on the SomewhatNerdy site, I strongly recommend you do.
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