Do you ever have one of those days where you stumble out of bed, stagger into the bathroom and stare at the mirror and ask yourself, “Who are you and what have you done with Jeff?” Well unless your name is Jeff you probably haven’t had one of those days and I’m here to tell you that you’re pretty lucky that you haven’t.
Today was one of those days where I didn’t even recognize who I was any more. It’s not so much the weight loss although I am getting more and more comments about how thin I am getting especially in my face and neck. No I am talking about something much more sinister and thought provoking.
For the first time I think I have realized that this weight loss journey is changing who I am as a person. Before when you would ask people to describe me you would get things like: technology geek, baseball nut, that crazy guy that lives down the street that talks to his car. You know, the normal stuff. Now though as I looked in the mirror I didn’t see any of those adjectives. Instead I was seeing someone that I had never met before.
I began to look at my life from an outside perspective and wondered whether others who are on a weight loss plan feel the same way. Let’s take a few simplistic examples to describe my theory. Before the diet my prized possessions were probably my laptop and my team autographed Diamondbacks baseball from the 1998 Inaugural Season. Now if someone asked, those items likely wouldn’t even make it in the top five.
Instead I would likely go on and on about our salad spinner and how it makes washing and cleaning lettuce easier and more efficient. Oh and who could possibly forget the digital kitchen scale that I interact with every day measuring out proteins like a drug dealer measures cocaine.
That’s not normal. No mainstream guy has a man-crush on a lettuce spinner or a digital kitchen scale. The most frightening part is that it doesn’t end there. I could go on and on about my FitBit pedometer or my Withings Wi-Fi Scale. Let’s see a show of hands; who here worships a bathroom scale? Yeah that’s what I thought.
Because of this diet I now know what the nutritional labels actually mean beyond just the calorie number. I have engrained in my head how much salt intake is appropriate for an average man and I have honed to a science the proper ratio of carbohydrates, fat, and protein.
Oh sure, this is useful information and will likely save my life by making me healthier but seriously if I start going out in public telling people how much I love the way lettuce spins around a bowl or how my bathroom scale broadcasts my weight to the Internet and that’s a good thing I am likely going to have to see some sort of medical specialist.
So while I am feeling great about the weight I lost and being able to fit into clothes that would have seemed impossible two months ago I have to wonder whether I am actually losing part of my mind along with the excess fat. Heaven help me if I start to blabber on about hypoglycemic indices that will place the body in “fat burning” mode or whether it is better to measure food portions by weight or volume.
0 Comments