The Triumph of Perseverance and the Glory of Never, Ever Quitting

You don't just hurriedly throw a couple rocks on top of each other and call it a castle. You don't just throw a wet paintbrush at a canvas and call it a masterpiece.

At her blog today, Chubby Chick features a great Calvin cartoon (dontcha love Calvin and Hobbes!?) It's an ironic one, and it fits her post topic of persevering in this weight loss journey.

It's funny, cause this time around, I'm out to lose SLOWLY. And that's exactly how it's going. Every other time, I've psyched myself to lose 2-4 pounds a week--really aiming at 3 or more. Haven't you done that? Said, "Oh, one to two pounds a week is great" but inside you were thinking, "No, I must lose it FASTER. This isn't good enough!" Then, once the initial phase (a week, two weeks) of fast fat loss passed, and it settled to the drudgery of the daily discipline and the minimal losses, I'd get dissatisfied, frustrated, negative, and "bored."

I'd give up. Too few immediate rewards.

That's what children do. That's not what mature people do. That's not what artists out to make something that last do. That's not what castle-builders out to save their lives behind those fortress walls did.

If it's worth it and if it's durable, it will require patience, discipline, and persistence.

Well, this time, I've told myself that I must see it differently. My daily mantra: I must be vigilant and eat smaller portions for the rest of my life.

We hear that a lot about weight loss, but it's revolutionary all the same when it registers in one's own brain.

For life. No going off. No, "This is just to get the weight off."

No, it's for life.

I got fat for assorted reasons, but mostly cause I had bad habits in terms of portions and sedentary living.

I am working on the portions and calorie limits. I am still stuck in sedentary.

It's a work in progress. But, unlike Calvin, I can't afford to get bored.


I can't see this as a sprint. It's a marathon. A marathon that may last decades, depending on how long I live. And I've no doubt my bad habits and obesity robbed me of life. Things of value--like fitness, good health, weight loss--take time to do right, to do so it lasts. Anything that stands the test of time takes hard work and time: Castles, Cathedrals, raising kids, creating the Sistine Chapel...

We're works of art.

While I was in the bathroom after waking up, reaching for the t.p., I was telling myself, "It's for life."

While I got on the scale, I told myself, "It's for life, not just this week or today."

So, it was cool to see Chubby Chick's post. And her small, shimmering motto: "It's not a diet. It's a life-changing commitment."

I can't go back to huge portions of Italian food. Of emptying bread baskets in restaurants. Or eating half a pizza. Of snarfing down a slice of chocolate cake that could easily feed two. Of eating a foot-long sub. Of eating several ounces of cheese at a pop. Of generously dousing salads with dressing. Of eating the whole chocolate bar. Of having three tacos instead of one or two. Of having humongous bowls of cereal instead of measuring out a sound, sane portion. Of drinking 16 ounces of OJ instead of 6 or, at most, 8. Of forgetting to count the calories in the sides, like cranberry sauce. Of double portions of fatty gravy. Of thinking that if I share that oversized, American restaurant portion, that it's suddenly a virtuous, low-calorie entree. Half of a triple portion is still half a portion too much.

I can't just follow my appetite, cause it leads to destruction.

No. I gotta keep working at that work of art that will be called "The Triumph of Perseverance" when the labor delivers its fruit. That will be renamed "The Continued Triumph of Perseverance" when the loss is maintained.

It's for life.

And we gotta keep telling ourselves that. We don't get to go off the diet. The diet is a lifestyle, must be a lifestyle, or we will fail, cause we won't persevere.

I'm only in the earliest phase of this artwork. It's gonna be a while here, with the dust and chiseling and sketching and all those fumblings of the brush and the hammer. Inspiration is variable. The muse is often out doing errands. Still, the work goes on: If it's a pound a week, or a half-pound, then I'll say goodbye to 26 or 52 pounds next Columbus day. The scale is my friend. The scale lets me know it's ups and downs, but there's progress in the big picture.

Art takes time. Put on some music to help you keep going. We're all of us dancing and drawing and painting and sculpting our way to a better day, and we're not dancing alone. The smells of marble dust and colorful oils and metals shaped in the fire fill the air. Smell it? Nice to have company, yes?

For more on perseverance--though she might tag it "never, never, never give up-ing"--visit the terrific blog Escape from Obesity.

Things To Do With $60 Instead of Buying a Kimkins Membership

Since the Kimkins folks are spamming the web with the above heading, I decided to give other options that won't damage your health and put you in close contact with a con artist and her henchpeople:

1. Join a free low-carb forum, like Active Low-Carber or Low Carb Friends, do your low-carbing safely and with cheerful support, and donate $60.00 to people who are starving in the third world, not out of choice (ie, doing the strict Kimkins starvation diet), but cause they just plain don't have enough food.

2. Try a different healthy eating plan by visiting sites online and finding one that suits your personality and tastes, and donate the $60.00 to your local community food bank.

3. Spend sixty dollars on healthful groceries and feed your body moderate portions.

4. Buy a cool anime bento box and have fun with smaller portions of vegetables and whole grains at lunchtime. Smaller portions of Japanese style food (ie, greens, veggies, fish, etc) equals losing weight. Heck, with sixty bucks, you can buy more than one anime bento and share the joy.

5. Buy 4 exercise DVDs and use them every day.

6. Buy a steamer for your kitchen, and steam those veggies!

7. Make sixty bucks worth of ham or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pass them out to homeless people. Seeing folks who are much, much worse off than you may give you a dose of perspective that'll keep you from obssessing so much about your weight that you'd easily fall prey to the alluring promises of the Kimkins Diet.


8. Buy a nice Bible or Torah or whatever holy book suits you, and read about behaving like a decent, respectful, upright, honest, non-scamming person who will seek moderation in all pleasures of the flesh--like eating--but excess in joy and benevolence and holiness. The sort of book that espouses fasting for spiritual reasons and to benefit the world, not for shallow reasons such as wanting to look hot at a high school reunion or in a red dress. Holiness, spirituality, moderation, unselfishness, divinely-inspired self-control: There's a diet plan Kimmer wouldn't recognize if John the Baptist whacked her on the wig with his staff.

9. Find another dieter who needs support and buy 60 bucks worth of encouraging cards, and mail one out every week to keep him or her motivated.

10. Buy 4 or 6 paperback books written by bona fide professionals on how to make healthful life changes or how to sanely and effectively strategize to get control of eating, and then read a chapter every morning and a chapter every evening.

11. Buy a new nifty scale and do what every every reasonable professional has recommended to overweight people since time began: Eat less. Move more.

12. Buy sixty dollars worth of lemons and paper cups, then make fresh lemonade with no sugar. Go to some park where kids and families are hot and sweaty from playing in the sun, and, cheerfully, pass out free beverages to the thirsty who'll accept your offering. Just lugging and dispensing all that will burn off a quarter pound of fat, and you'll feel better. Then go back to the park every day and walk.

13. Sponsor a poor child for a couple months. At thirty dollars a month, you can sponsor a poor child who would stare stunned at a Westerner who would voluntarily NOT EAT GOOD FOOD cause some con artist said there is no such thing as "starvation mode" and, gee, you can lose a pound a day.

14. Buy a pair of walking shoes. And use them.

15. Buy simple hand weights--the colored ones are fun!--and use them every other day.

16. Buy a quality exercise mat...and use it.

17. Buy a dress two sizes too small, and put it right in front of your closet so you can't miss it. Make it a red dress, like the one Kimmer ISN'T REALLY WEARING in her after picture, because it's not her, cause she never lost a bazillion pounds. Eat sensibly as you use the dress for motivation. When you fit into that red dress, go dancing with someone you love. And while this may seem to contradict a comment in #8, I will only say I am vast--really vast!--and I contain multitudes. Find the balance between feeling good about being a girl and wearing a nice dress and the obssession of vanity. So there.

18. Pay for a session with a dietitian and discuss how to lose weight sensibly.

19. Pay for an introductory session with a therapist to figure out why you binge eat or are attracted to disordered starvation dieting.

20. Buy $60 worth of music downloads of really high-powered tunes and just dance, dance, dance away in your house and in your yard and on the roof! Do this often.

21. Join a health club. That sixty bucks can pay for at least a month during which you can exercise EVERY DAY to build up muscle, burn off calories, and make fitness-minded friends who will happily support you on your weight loss journey. Maybe that month will turn into a year...but sixty bucks can get you started.

22. Buy rubber ducks for all the kids in your family. Make bathtime quacky fun. Plus, we love Ducky!

23. Buy original art online and support a "starving" artist. If you like wacky alien and zombie and monster art, try Monster by Mail. You can get TWO original art pieces for 60 bucks. Or just do a search for "original art" on eBay. You'll be surprised how affordable original, fun, non-caloric art can be. And if you want quality prints, then sixty buck easily gets you 2 letter-sized or 3 smaller archival quality prints form one of my fave artists, Sara Butcher. Just staring at Sara's art for a few minutes is sure to relax you enough to decide to have fruit instead of Doritos. Most days, anyway.

24. Upgrade your plus-sized work-out wear.

25. Sign-up for Weight Watchers online, or eDiets online, or The South Beach Diet online, or The Biggest Loser Club, or some other SANE subscription diet program that lets you eat a wide variety of wholesome foods in proper portions.

26. Go buy some yummy ChocoPerfection chocolate.

27. Go buy some yummy Vitalicious Vitamuffins in deep chocolate. Sixty bucks lets you buy several flavors--enough to share!

28. Go buy some fabulous Torreo coffee in Mocha Java or Mountain Blend or Yemen Mattari. (My faves.)

29. Go buy some lawn game gear, such as badminton, and work off some of your weekend caloric intake by swatting shuttlecocks around.

30. Buy a hula hoop and remember what it was like to be 8 years old and much slimmer. You were slimmer then cause you jumped rope, ran around bases, played hopscotch, pounded tether balls, climbed jungle gyms, and hula hooped. (Pictured left, the cool, top-of-the-line hulas from www.hoopgirl.com.)


There ya go. THIRTY things you can do with 60 bucks that will improve your--or somebody else's--life. None of the above items or activities or organizations will contribute to stuffing money into the scandalous pockets of a diet scammer named Heidi Diaz aka Kimmer of Kimkins.com.

If you have other fabulous things one can do with sixty bucks that promote your health or somebody else's health and does not promote quack diets and their shady promulgators, why not comment and let everyone know.

Happy and healthful spending!

Encourage a Dieting Friend: An E-Card

Our Lady of Weight Loss--an art-oriented, humor-filled, motivational site for those on the journey to fat loss--has e-cards you can send.

Know a pal online who needs a dose of motivational art and humor?

There's a great e-card at left. It's the "Love Thyself" card, and the little scribblngs say:

"Exercise is my middle name."
"Yes, I can."
"Fruit over cake."
"No matter what, I'll stay the course."
"Love Thyself."

~~and my fave of all:

"I do not accept delivery of my ancestors' fat genes."

While the e-card is free, there are cool greeting cards and motivational objects for sale, and I just bought a bunch of them.

I especially am wild about the one at right. It's not ARTISTICALLY the neatest one. But the message is spot on. When you make a mistake. When you eat that bit of crap food. When you go over your calorie count. Sit, take a breath, assess the whys of it. Think of strategies for future avoidance and triumph. But, most of all, remember to say:

"All is Forgiven. MOVE ON."

Don't get ovewhelmed. Don't get depressed. Don't beat yourself into a bloody psychological pulp. "All is forgiven." You are human. You are complex. You have to struggle and strive. "Move on."

I am human. I am complex. I must struggle. And I must strive.

And I must move on.

Love that. Good to remember. Always, keep moving on. Leave the guilt and shame behind and MOVE ON and tackle the next snack, the next meal, the next hour, the next day, the next weigh in.

ALL IS FORGIVEN...Move on.

His Most Important Self-Portrait

An artist creates with sight and sound his own unique bit of art that focuses on his realization of life-affecting, health-destroying morbid obesity. He charts his progress in a "round"-about way.

He did a great job, I think.

Makes me wish I had artistic skills (I can barely draw a stick figure.)