The true ongoing story of a man trying to beat Type 2 under difficult domestic circumstances.
I’ve never been skinny. It’s taught me how to lose weight.
Chronic fat boys learn early on how to lose a few pounds as the need arises, or when the waist arises, especially if they want to get dates. And I was girl-crazy from the moment I realized those giggling, tribal creatures weren’t just short guys with round bottoms. They were girls!
My wife, however, is naturally skinny. Thin people have no idea how to lose weight. Slap a few extra pounds on her and it’s like a spider just landed on her shoulder: “Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!” Followed by much flailing around.
She’ll jog in the park at the cusp of dawn, do crunches in the afternoon. I try to tell her, and anyone else trying to lose weight, that it’s far more efficient to never take in the calories in the first place. I know this because I know how to drop some pounds.
According to www.nutristrategy.com, an hour of brisk walking by a 205-pound person burns 354 calories. The website www.calorieking.com reports that a slice of pepperoni pizza from that famous Hut that delivers them to your door has 310 calories. That’s one slice. I’m sure you well remember that time you opened a pizza box, sat down, and had just one slice. Or that time you briskly walked for an hour.
Maybe you do, but for me they’re both equally as unlikely.
I’m not stopping at a single slice of pizza, and I’m not walking briskly for any length of time, if I can help it. I hate exercise. When my doctor told me I was going to have to exercise, I told him I’d rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick. But then I thought, “First I’d have to go out and find a stick, then sharpen it, and then poke myself.”
And that sounded like way too much exercise.
I live with a woman who likes tasty food ─ meats and cheeses, high-end chocolates, and anything coming out of the frying pan with a crispy golden crust. And the carbs! Chips, hash browns, fries, brioche and croissants ─ dripping with butter ─ endless bowls of pasta. Meanwhile, I’m on the couch with my brown rice, mixed veggies and hot sauce.
It’s hard.
Especially since I’m the one cooking around here. You know the phrase, “She can’t boil water?” It doesn’t apply to my wife. She could boil water, sure, but she’d just manage to burn our house down around us while she did it.
I love to cook. And I love to eat. These two facts, plus an almost supernatural aversion to moving myself around, are what got the Type 2 tag slapped on me in the first place.
I’ll be writing more about living the diabetic life in a house full of traps and forbiddens in the coming weeks, and I’ll have resources you might not know about. I’ve lost 50.2 pounds since the beginning of the year, so listen to me; I’m on your side. See you soon.
This post was previously entitled “The Balancing Act”.
