After last month’s weight freakout, something’s shifted in my attitude

When I got disgusted with myself last month about the way I had been eating, I felt that way because I’d gained weight since January. I was also concerned about the health aspects of my diet, but that was ultimately secondary to my fears of looking like a beached whale.

About five weeks later, I’ve gone through a change in my thinking. I’m not sure what finally clicked, but I suddenly reached a point at which it was more about the devastating effects of sugar on my body’s organs than it was about an embarrassed ego.

I can’t tell you why my point of view changed, but it’s what I’ve been needing for a long time. We’ll talk about this in six months or a year, though, to see whether it continues.

I’ve dropped about 25 points since that night, but that seems relatively unimportant compared to the other changes I know this is bringing to my body — and I now understand that if I take care of keeping my body healthy, the excess weight will continue to disappear.

Here’s what I’ve realized about myself.

I saw excess fat as the problem, but the truth is that gaining weight was just a symptom of the real problem. I was ignorant about what was going on inside my body — how high sugar consumption was driving up my insulin levels and causing damage to various parts of my body. As long as my body was able to compensate for that damage — which our bodies can do for years — I was oblivious to everything other than the weight.

Now I see that the weight is the least of my concerns. I realize that I’ve been slowing killing myself. Looking better in my clothes suddenly seems unimportant — but the irony is that if I quit killing myself in this way, the weight issue will continue to take care of itself.

I’ve given lip service to the health aspects of my weight issue for a long time, but I suddenly realized what my priorities were. If I could have continued to eat the typical American diet — supplemented by extra large servings of ice cream, of course — I would have been happy to continue, just as long as I could have gone back to the weight I was 10 years ago.

At this point, I realize that if I could be healthy and fat — or unhealthy and normal-sized — it would be far preferable to remain chubby. But the happy reality is that better health and better physical appearance go together.

I credit a couple of podcasts I’ve listened to with changing my thinking, because they’ve given me hard science to explain the real effects of excess sugar — how sugar is an insulin problem, how I suffered from “metabolic syndrome.” I finally understood that eating sugar sends hormonal signals to the cells not to burn fat. I finally understood that my pancreas has been straining to produce enough insulin to deal with all the junk in my body. I finally understood that diabetes and various other diseases were natural consequences of what I was doing to myself.

I have always intended to live a very long life. I’ve always had a strong gut feeling that I’ll be around past the age of 100. I now understand that the changes I’m making now will make that possible — and I more fully understand that eating the way a typical American eats would put me in line for low quality of life for the last decades of my life when they arrived.

I ate a half gallon of Blue Bell cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream that night when I got disgusted with myself. That wasn’t so unusual, but something about it upset me and caused me to write about it. Then I’ve taken continuous action for something like 37 days — if I’m remembering the weeks correctly — and that’s changed a lot.

I want to live a long time. I have a lot of love still to give — and hopefully receive. I have a lot of things I want to accomplish. There are a lot of places I still want to see.

To do those things, I need good health. The changes in my attitude lately will bring those things to me — as long as I can stay focused on healthy instead of what my ego fears for my appearance.