By James Allorski
I CAN TALK about goals until I see them in my mind.
I can become things I never was: responsible and clean and dressed well.
I can learn new skills, date new women, pay bills on time, be nice to old people, kiss babies in nonsexual ways.
I can do all this, but it won’t make a difference in my life if I don’t lose weight.
Weight loss has always been the starting and stopping point for me. I see it, rightly or wrongly, as the key to my happiness.
I grew up the big kid. A few inches shorter than my 6-foot-3, and I would have been the fat kid. My weight – 306 pounds by my sophomore year of high school, 370 by the time I was 25 – will always be the biggest issue in my life.
Even if I do lose weight, get down to that ideal goal, I’ll have to worry about putting it back on. In fact, just over a year ago, I was 260 pounds. Today, I am 315.
And as this journey towards mandom slowly takes shape (and it is taking shape, I assure you), the one thing I can’t seem to make any progress on is my weight.
Not a pound since Day 1. Even worse, not one day of an honest effort. Tomorrow is always there, so why not indulge today? Tomorrow is the enemy. Tomorrow provides insurance against the future and the excuse for my behavior in the moment.
But tomorrow never comes unless you call for it. Always sits just out of reach until the time cycle is done. Always presents itself as a false bottom.
And yet here I am, 2:09 A.M., and I’ve just finished $12 worth of Jack in the Box. Oh, I worked out today, and I ate relatively healthy. But when that craving came late at night, I didn’t fight it nearly hard enough.
That’s been a recurring theme of the last year. Not fighting hard enough for what I need. The motivation is there, but the willingness to capitalize on it isn’t.
What will it take? In the past, it’s just taken a clear mind. And I should have a clear mind now. With my job gone, no woman on my arm, no family holding me back, I have nothing to do but lose weight.
I have nothing to do but work out and tone up. Do cardio and eat healthy, ingest as much fiber as possible and drink 64 ounces of water each day.
There’s no excuse for this, either. As much as I’ve changed myself these last few months, I have left my biggest problem alone. No effort to find the willpower to change this one thing. Figuring it will eventually take care of itself.
But if it doesn’t? If I can’t find that effort? Then what? Then I’ll always think of myself as second best. I’ll always believe that the woman of my dreams doesn’t want a 300 pound behemoth, that being funny is all I have, that I did this to myself and I was too lazy to change it.
Man up? Man down. That’s what I gotta do. Where is the willpower? Where is tomorrow? When do I embrace myself and become what I know I am: A well rounded, healthy man?
