So, my first DietBet game starts in a mere five days. I decided to try a Transformer game on for size (pun intended), meaning I'll have to lose 10% of my body weight in six months. Based on my most recent weigh-in at my gym, that equates to 24.3 pounds in six months. That should be easy, right?
I am worried.
I've struggled with my weight for as long as I can remember. I've been told that there was a time when I was thin, but that must have been when I was a small child, and it was certainly not so by the point that I was aware enough of my surroundings to know that I was being ridiculed for being fat. That was always my bullies' main weapon against me, and I internalized that hatred until my weight, and, by correlation, food, became an obsession. At those times when I felt particularly fat, I starved myself, I went on crash diets, I overexercised, and I saw my weight drop before I inevitably binged enough to gain it all back, and then some.
In short, I have never had a healthy relationship with my weight or with food.
This is not to say that I've never been healthy. The bizarre thing about my body, and the thing that has made it so difficult for me to acclimate to a healthy lifestyle, is that the scale might say I'm overweight, or even obese, but every other manner of physical tests proves that I am healthy as can be. By way of example, one summer in college, I joined a gym that required new members to undergo physical assessments before exercising. A nurse administered the test, which measured things like weight, body fat percentage, oxygen levels, flexibility, and strength. The first thing the nurse measured was my height and weight--160 pounds at 5'3". I got a stern look and a monologue about inching too close to the obesity end of the BMI scale. Then the nurse measured my body fat percentage: 22%. As in, "fit," and just a couple percentage points from "regular athlete" level. Six weeks later, when I re-did the test, my body fat percentage had dropped to 19%. Oh, and I had gained weight.
The problem, then, is pretty clear: my body doesn't make much sense. If the above example isn't enough, there's also the fact that I once dropped 70 pounds in the span of a few months while eating McDonald's and ice cream daily and not exercising. (My vitals, like blood pressure and cholesteral, were perfect.) Oh, and there was the time that I gained 30 pounds in a little over a month despite no changes to my diet or exercise schedule. Because there was never any rhyme or reason to what my body was doing, I didn't know what would work and what wouldn't. And because I am an overworked, perpetually stressed-out person, I decided I didn't have time to figure it out and just assumed everything would sort itself out. After all, hadn't I weighed 155 pounds for years?
Yeah, about that. I don't weigh 155 pounds anymore; it's been nearly a decade since that was true. I haven't seen the south side of 200 pounds since early 2007. It's been three years since I made a sustained effort to control my weight, and since then my weight has ballooned from 212 to 243. I've gone from a size 12/14 to a size 18/20. My physical health is rapidly deteriorating, and my mental health is suffering as well. I ignored the signs of impending war, and now there are barbarians at the gates.
And that's why I am here. I will be turning 30 in about six months, which coincides neatly with the end date of the Transformer game. I do not want to enter my third decade of life unhealthy, in pain, and with no clear way of turning back. I've tried and failed so many times to make this change, and I am hoping that money proves to be the catalyzing incentive that I need. And in case it's not, or that I need more, I'm going to also write out some other motivations to remind myself that this isn't just a matter of fitting into a smaller pant size but also a matter of so, so many other things that, taken together, will markedly improve my life.
Six months is a long time. Anything can happen, really. Here's to hoping it'll turn out to be the first step towards a healthier rest of my life.