2-15-2016

Weight Loss:

When I first came to prison I was almost at 300lbs. Embarrassingly. I hated myself at that weight and now that I have lost most of it, I hate the way my body looks now too. I have been trying to get that last little bit off my mid section to reveal the highly formed muscles underneath and every day that I look in the mirror it just pisses me off when I don't see the result that I am wanting...
I don't want to be rail thin skinny, but I want that flat stomach and a waist that's not 37". That number plagues me. I am around 185 lbs now and I float between 180 and 189. But the trade off is that I basically eat what I want. Which isn't above and beyond anyone else, I am highly active and eat around 2500 calories a day. Now I know that if I go down to 1500 calories a day and stay at my current activity level I will lose weight again. But like I said, I don't want to rail thin. I just want that little belly fat gone.
I run 3-5 miles 5 days a week, I do high intensity cardio in the gym probably another 3 days a week and I eat 6 servings of fruit daily to help with my metabolism. I work so hard on getting it gone the healthy way, meaning I'm not starving and I am not breaking my body down doing crazy amounts of burpees every day. So why can't I get that little bit gone? It's like God made me and said "this ones gonna have a little pudge pudge!" NO!!! No more pudge pudge! Change it God, change it! LOL! Grrr!
I am lost with it and I know that the issue isn't my body, it's my thinking. I know that at this point its a body image issue and not a physical problem. Over all I am a healthy person. Except for the two cookies I eat daily. But in my defense I crave some fat because our diets in here are so strange. We don't ever get real food, by real I mean non-processed. With the exception of fruits and veggies and beans a rice. Every kind of protein is processed and cooked at least twice, at least.
So what do I do when I look down at my body and see a morbidly obese man who has failed in life? I look in the mirror and see a man who has a little left, not much, maybe 5 lbs to lose. But then I look down again and I see that grotesquely overweight man I used to be. Fat belly and all. It's like my mind plays tricks on me. It's strange because when I look at a recent picture of me I don't recognize the man that is in them, I am still expecting to see a morbidly fat man and I see someone quite the opposite. So how do I change that?
I think that part of it is to first ask for help. Or maybe what I am doing which is recognizing it for what it is, which is a mental problem and not reality. It has been several years since I have lost my weight and I still think I am fat, how long do you have to be at a healthy weight before your mind realizes that you are fine?
I don't have the answers to these questions but it is a journey for me. I am not going to let myself travel down an unhealthy road again, not in any capacity. I think that what I ultimately want is to be attractive, not skinny. Being attractive in my eyes is confident of yourself and kind, patient. That's attractive, but the body never hurts...just sayin. I have never had someone tell me that I look good and really mean it, I guess I am wanting that?

With Love

Jeff Utnage