Flab for Food and Two Dumbbells

Ironic isn’t it that half the world is starving and the other half is overweight. And for some reason the diet industry is a multi-million dollar industry. Go figure.

We’re told by Health Canada we need to eat three meals a day, and oh yeah, have some snacks in between.

Millions of people in the world are lucky if they get one meal a day.

Recently, I became accountable for the volume of food I eat. Because I am one, out of that other half of the population that is overweight.

My good friend, ‘Neat Pete from Down the Street’ (I know a few Pete’s) once commented in my company upon viewing a sizeable person of the human species, “It takes a lot of work to get like that, you pretty much have to eat all the time.”

Those words resonated with me. They’ve stuck. While I never considered myself to be someone who ate all the time, I would say I am guilty of emotional eating and well, treats. So over time, what goes in goes on.

How is it we have the right to eat, to over eat, while so many don’t?

I remember my mother feeding my brother and I cereal before we went to bed. So we would sleep better she said.

Lately, I have been rewarding myself, so to speak, by enjoying a lunch out. At my favourite lunch spot, the salad with Cesar dressing includes freshly baked foccaccia bread. Why the reward? Because at my weekly Weight Watchers weigh-in, I’ve lost a pound or two.

I was astonished to learn when I first joined and did my first weigh-in that I weighed as much as a man. Also, that while friends and family may say I look great and tell me I don’t need to loose weight, I realized my weight for my height falls, sadly into the obese category. No surprise, it took 45 years to get there.

But startling for someone like me, who no matter what has always remained active and in fact can still claim to run the Times Colonist 10 km race in under an hour. Although this year, it was just. Shy at least seven minutes from a personal best, less then ten years ago.

Health Canada Guidelines also recommend drinking a lot of water – six to eight glasses - on a daily basis. We can do that. But again, for the other half of the world, not even close.

I enrolled in Weight Watchers because there’s accountability and support. Just like Alcoholics Anonymous for the alcoholic. There are weekly meetings, with resources and people to talk to.

So I claimed my weight loss goal at 34 pounds. So far, in three weeks I’ve lost 6.6 pounds. At the gym I picked up a 15-pound dumbbell. Not too bad. Then I picked up another one. 30 pounds is huge. Like moving a large cinder block. Or a big rock. Disgusting, I thought to myself. Depressing. Obese.

Then I asked myself, how could I trade flab for food? Food to help the better half…