On Sept. 11, as I told you in the last post, my weight
dipped below the 50% mark on my weight-loss plan — for the first time. Yes, you
read that right. The next day, for some unfathomable reason, it shot up again a
whole two pounds. I’ve said before that fluctuations like this can happen even
when you do everything right. So, after screaming in my head about the
unfairness of it, I shrugged and went on with my program. On Friday, it dropped
back down 1.6 pounds, which was good even though it didn’t completely erase the
jump up. Back a little across the halfway line.
The people on Lose It! cheer every little drop, no matter
how small, and offer encouraging thoughts for holds and upticks. One friend,
Marjorie, joked that she was “totally jealous” about the drop. When I said I
didn’t know why she was jealous, she replied, “Because I get excited when I
lose 0.5 lbs. in one day so to drop 1.6 lbs. is wishful thinking for me and totally
awesome that you did!” (I have to think Marjorie is an age peer because of her
use of ’80s lingo. When I’m not writing and with my friends, it all comes out: totally,
fer sure, excellent, bogus, gnarly, “I’m like”, dude (regardless of sex or
gender), etc. Totally for us is what literally is for
young millennials — a clean all-purpose intensive.)
I reminded Marjorie, “If you lose [an average] 0.2 lbs. per
day, you’re losing 1.4 lbs. a week. That’s a great, safe rate to drop. Again, I
don’t know how much of the ±
1-lb. fluctuations I sometimes (SOMETIMES) get are scale wackiness and how much
are body wackiness. Don’t envy me; you’re doing great!”
Wackiness … what a terrific word to describe the
effect of imprecision on weight loss. It’s like playing blackjack: Even if you
don’t cross the (objective) “bust” line, you still have to beat the dealer,
whose hand is also variable. Nevertheless, there are winning strategies that
don’t guarantee victory in every hand but can generally lead to leaving the
table with more than you sat down with.
But in sensible weight loss, you’re not really competing
against another person. The complete set of physical, emotional, and social or
environmental challenges each person faces in weight loss is unique. Put
differently, we all play against different dealers under house rules that vary
slightly from table to table. That’s why, while group goals and challenges can
be motivating and fun, you should never take them so seriously that you
interpret someone else’s progress as an implicit reflection (and judgment)
against you.
Who knows?
On the one hand, the taller one may find it easier to
subtract the necessary calories from his daily intake and increase his activity
level because his weight gain was due more to inattention than anything else —
he still eats the way he did when he was younger and more active. On the other
hand, he may not take the challenge as seriously as would the shorter one, who
may be trying to drop the weight as part of changing his life. Or, perhaps the
shorter one has plenty of social functions connected with his business life and
which revolve around food in amounts and calorie contents difficult even to
guess let alone know. Or, perhaps either or both could have some physical
disorder that impedes their progress in different ways.
Again, who knows? The bare facts given in the original
scenario are too few to make an educated guess. And even an educated guess can
be wildly wrong.
I don’t discourage weight-loss competition as such. What
I discourage is competing with people who don’t know they’re competing with you,
according to rules set by your personal demons. Your real, ultimate goal is to
lose the weight. Period. It is not to lose it as fast as (or
faster than) your frenemy Joe Schmuckatelli, or to duplicate the success of
famous actress/model Aldonza Q. Kurtzberg. Jealousy — or, to be more accurate, envy
— is a self-sabotaging attitude.
When you compare yourself with other people, you often see
only their successes and their achievements. What you don’t see are the failures
behind those successes and achievements: the times when they slipped, the times
when they fell short, the times when someone else just barely edged them out at
the finish line, the times when factors beyond their control combined (even
conspired) to hold them back. In some cases, you may also not see the ethical
or legal shortcuts they took, the personal demons which eat them from the
inside, or the cost to their personal lives their successes imposed. Many people
who are at the top today are no more than one or two steps away from the
mistake which will topple them or the revelation which will destroy them. Robin
Williams. Bill Cosby. Jeffrey Epstein.
What you should see, though, is their persistence.
Because no one ever succeeded at anything without it. Whatever else you believe
is admirable about them, you should want to emulate their determination to keep
trying, keep pushing, keep working toward their objectives despite the
obstacles and setbacks. Self-doubt and self-hatred wear away at determination. Don’t
let them use competition or comparison as an excuse to sabotage your program.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds …; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. (Theodore Roosevelt)
You are the person in the arena. Strive valiantly.
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