Part 13 - November 9, 2002

Weight: 202         Weight Lost: 158 lbs.

It's ten months since I had my surgery.  I'm still getting used to the things I can do now that I couldn't even imagine a year ago.  Activities seeming mundane to others have become a pleasure, a delight, for me. 

I love going to the outlets to shop for clothing.  Here in Myrtle Beach outlets abound.  We go to the Tanger Outlet stores looking for a fleece or velour warm-up for me.  The one I've been wearing for the last two years or so falls off me when I put it on.  I can't get the waist tight enough to keep it from slipping.  Izod, Vanity Fair (what a name - it's a fair, a bazaar, for satisfying vanity), Addidas, Nike, Nautica.  A year ago I was limited to what The Casual Male - Big and Tall had to offer.  Now, with my waist measuring 38 inches, I fall into the middle of ordinary sizes.  I don't need to look at 2X or 3X any longer.

Actually, by November last year, 3X was too small for me, but I refused to buy anything larger.  Four X big men's clothing was an insult.  Even so, I found myself buying huge V-neck knit shirts I could wear outside my huge shorts.  Wal Mart had them on sale.  During the past ten months, as I've needed smaller clothing, I've shopped at Wal Mart because the clothes were cheap and I would only need them for a month or so before they, too would be discarded.  Now I can wear BRAND NAMES!  I walk past racks of blazers at Ralph Lauren.  I try on a 42R, which is still a little tight, but the 44R fits like a glove without even a hint of wrinkle across the shoulders at the back of my neck.  At $199 it's too pricey to purchase because my weight is still changing, but it gives me real pleasure merely to try it on.  I finger sweaters piled on a table and try a couple on.  I don't need much and don't buy any today.  Let the pleasure linger and wait a few days before buying one knit shirt or a crew neck sweater.  At Nautica I buy a gray warm-up to replace the outgrown one.  Another day we go to Sam's and I buy a gray sweat suit because I'm getting ahead of Irene's laundry by sweating them at the gym.

Across the street, in the campground, is the recreation building containing a gym.  In the exercise room are a treadmill, a rowing machine, a peddling machine, a universal gym, and a marvelous cross trainer that seems to split the difference between a skier, a step climber, and a treadmill.  It has a built in computer allowing the user to adjust the climb, resistance, and speed of the workout.  I start at a 30 minute workout and soon increase it to 35 minutes.  At the end of the workout I can push my pulse up to over 160 without pain or difficulty. I breathe hard, but I'm not breathless.  Another day I do half an hour on the treadmill, much of it walking fast, but some at what, for me, is a run.  Later, I work out on the universal gym, pulling weights down, pushing them out, lifting them up, feeling the burn as I do light weight repetitions in progressive sets of ten, fifteen, twenty.  My resting pulse is down to around 50 beats per minute. 

On several days I get on my bike and ride.  The terrain here is flat. The riding doesn't give the workout the machines do, but it has more variety and interest.  I ride west across Route 17 and the bridge crossing the Intra Coastal Waterway into Barefoot Resort, a golf development done by Centex.  The four golf courses, not all finished wind around single unit housing, condos and even a huge, high rise condo building looking out over the waterway.  One course, designed by Pete Dye is practically empty as I ride past it.  On all the roads touching it, there is only one house built.  These roads give me the opportunity to find a peddling rate that elevates my pulse without tiring me out.  I go twelve miles without difficulty.  One some days, Irene rides with me.

On one day, we put out kayaks into the water at a launch ramp along the Waccamaw River, which runs roughly parallel to the seacoast for about 55 miles before dumping into the ocean near Georgetown.  We head upstream and soon find ourselves meandering through a Heritage Preserve past cypress knees, small swamps, on tea colored water against the current. We move smoothly and easily.  Along the way we see a deer, a great blue heron, several kingfishers and hear a small turtle plop off a branch into the water as we approach.  After two hours on the water, I'm a little tired, but exhilarated, too.  A few hours later I can feel the thousands of strokes in my arms and shoulders.  I can scarcely lift my arms up, but I feel good.  A year ago I wouldn't have been able to fit in the cockpit.  The boat would have been overloaded.

And with all this success and new activity, how do I feel?  Angry! Angry?  Why Angry?  Mostly because of the waste.  Waste of time, waste of energy, waste of health, waste of relationships.  That's a lot of waste.  Here I am, sixty-one years old and slender (not thin - never thin, or skinny) for the first time in my life.  I've spent the past fifty years struggling against myself and imposing that struggle on those around me.  Irene and I have been married for 38 years and she's had to live with diets and binges, with lassitude and stubbornness, with having to stop for me to eat right now or go to the bathroom even more urgently.  Two kids who had to live with my temper and my constant needs and try to stay loyal at the same time.  Angry at myself for pushing the limits of loyalty, of commitment, of love through massive pillows of fat and neediness.  How did earlier anger and self-loathing contribute to my making myself fat?  How does the food contribute to the anger and the anger contribute to the food?  How do they all come together to create misery?

Meanwhile, I can't resist a mirror.  Can this be true?  Is that really me standing there making faces at myself?  Have I gone back to my real size while I wasn't looking?  Is my stomach almost flat?  Has my butt stopped pushing out behind me as I waddle down the street?  Do my muscles really show?  I keep looking in wonder and joy and a degree of self-congratulation, but never satisfaction nor taking this new vision of me for granted.  Never! 

I still have goals - weight loss and activity oriented.  Meanwhile, life is good and looks like it may last a while.