Week #27 Weigh-in…and mental illness never goes away!!!

So, I’ve mentioned before that extreme obesity really ought to have its own place in the DSM-V. And I’ve got a case study for you to consider.

On Thursday, after a week of stress worrying about budgets and staff, but also a week of crazy, over the top exercise, I stepped on the scale at 323.8#, a gain of 2.8#…in a week in which I exercised for 587 minutes and burned over 10,000 calories. My thought as I stood on the scale was, “Are you flipping kidding me?”

So I came back up to my office, and saw a box of donuts. I walked past it and on to my desk, where I turned around and went back and had a unfrosted cake do-nut. I ate a do-nut because in my head I was saying “I can starve myself and spend hours exercising and still gain 2.8#? Why am I working this hard? Might as well have a do-nut ” But I ate an un-frosted one, because I wasn’t ready to totally give up.

An hour later, I walked past the break-room and stopped to pick up another do-nut; this time a chocolate frosted one, but I broke it half. Again, because I wasn’t totally giving up. Fifteen minutes later, I stopped back and ate the other half the chocolate frosted do-nut. Fifteen minutes after that, I had a serving of pecan coffee cake. And fifteen minutes after that, I had a second serving of pecan coffee cake. Then, an hour after that, I ate a chocolate fudge brownie to end my binge.

The thing that brought me out of it was that I entered every one of those things in myfitnesspal.com and I saw that I had consumed 1,290 calories of sweets in a little over 165 minutes. The shame I felt for the next couple of hours at my obvious craziness was high, but then my lively wife/life coach sent me this picture:

That’s me in a picture taken in June when we were in Japan. You can see the Japanese Judo athletes shaking my hand. I’m the classed-up sumo looking dude. And so you can see what dropped me out of my funk, here’s a picture I had taken today to put on our school’s website:

 

Seems to me, like maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about 2.8#. Thanks to Michelle, my mom and my sister for the support as they saw me spiral out of control yesterday. I worked out like a madman after work, so I still finished the day with a calorie surplus. Good time, good times. But at the end of the day, whether it’s as stress relief or because I somehow equate happiness with food, there’s somethings going on in my squash that certainly seem to rate a diagnoses to me. But what do I know?

I know that I’m down 57.2# in 27 weeks. I know I have 15.2# to lose in the next 25 weeks. I know that my BMI is 41.9 and it started at 49.4 27 weeks ago. I know that I have raised over $1,000 for breast cancer and that I have 24 weeks before I will walk 60 miles in 3 days with some other amazing people. I know that I am healthy. I know that many people have worse problems than I do and that I can succeed despite my obvious issues. I know that my all-time record binge lasted 7 months and that I gained 42 pounds in it. I know that a 3-hour binge seems like a hiccup in comparison. I know that I look a hell of a lot better than I did in June and I know that I’ll look even better come next June. I know that lots of people love me, no matter what size I am, and that they’ll get to love me longer if I stay smaller.

That seems like a lot of knowledge. Thanks everyone. Be careful out there.