Saturday, January 05, 2008

How to Become a Grumpy Old Man Through Dieting

My mom (72) still thinks of herself as middle-aged and me as young, but I'm almost old enough at the age of 53 to be a grandparent to my students. That makes me old in their books. Mine too.

Most of the time, I stay in a chattering, laughing, good-spirits kind of mood--even when I'm under a lot of stress like I was last semester. After years of therapy, it turned out that the thing I wanted most of all was to be happy. So I became the kind of happy, laughing person Jesus warns against when he says: "Woe unto you that laugh now for ye shall mourn and weep." (Luke 6: 25)

Ah! Christianity.

Anyway, I have a feeling that those happy days are going to be over for awhile. After all the stress of last semester, I now weigh 240, need to lose 60 pounds, and know that the only way that I can accomplish that is to stop eating like I've been eating almost my whole life.

I may be the hungriest person I know. I love food, crave food, and want to have food almost all the time. Outside the period when my food allergies hit, I've always eaten an enormous amount of just about everything. Even then I ate 1 1/2 pounds of meet and six pounds of vegetables a day and I only weighed about 150 or 160.

Given my food allergies, the only way I'm going to lose weight is to go on something like my allergy elimination diet. That means I'm back to sweet potatoes, squash, meat, and rice and doing my best to like it. That means no more ice cream, no more Hershey's bars, no more Italian cuisine at Melini's, and no more of Mary's cupcakes, cookies, and biscuits. In other words, lots of craving and no satisfaction.

It also means a lot more exercise than I'm either used to or like.

It means I'm going to be a grumpy old man.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have tremendous sympathy for the food delima. I love to eat good food, and I have a weakness for cookies, cakes, and anything chocolate. That said I have to disagree about the negative mindset regarding exercise. Exercise does not have to be invasive, can take multiple forms, as long as it raises your heart-rate and burns calories, and it will help combat stress. Besides it is really hard to laugh and be jolly if you develop significant health issues. Lastly, you are a former football player, suck it up, and go exercise.

Ric Caric said...

Well said.