Sustainable Weight: Solutions for You to Achieve Sustainable Weight Loss & Physical Conditioning

By Rick Ray

Losing weight and toning up are so easy that many people––agonizingly––chase their weight loss with weight gain as if they cherish repeating the cycle.

“Oh joy … let’s lose this weight again! At least I know how.”

Author Rick Ray lived four of these cycles before coming to grips with the paramount issue: sustainability. Focus on this simple profundity set Ray loose on the mental adventure of analyzing and cataloging thought processes and management principles sustainability demands.

SustainableWeight tells a story of an obese adolescent and the self-image problems that condition festered. The story then pivots to yield the elements necessary to achieve sustainability, in the form of Truths, Rules and Tactics.

Cutting through the cacophony of claims of “quick-fix” weight loss, the messaging is to you, the recipient and dedicatee of this work. You, the one suffering through uncontrollable weight loss and gain, are taught and provided tools and checklists so that you may also achieve sustainability.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483577272

Book preview

it.

Part I

The Early Years

I was a latchkey kid. I arrived home from junior high and high school to an empty house. The two things that came to haunt me were isolation and loneliness. How did I react to those emotions? I ate. I ate compulsively. I ate abundantly. I grew fat, and I didn’t like myself. I didn’t feel good and despised the way I looked. As it became more evident to others that I was fat, there were plenty of kids around to ridicule and make fun of me. And who was my biggest tormenter and ridiculer? I was, of course. I disliked myself so much that I would drive others—even those who were friendly—away from me, because surely they couldn’t like me either. The sweetest relief would come when someone who was fatter than me was around, because then maybe they would become the target of torment, taking the heat off of me. Surely I even taunted and called them names as well, just so I could feel relief of not being as bad as they were, a pathetic gesture that briefly made me feel superior for a change. Thus began the first cycle of putting on weight, and experiencing all the physical, psychological and emotional trauma that comes with being an obese youth.

This story reveals the seeds that were planted for a head game that I would play the rest of my life, frequently losing.

So what about you? Were you the fat kid? Or maybe the kid with the glasses that everyone teased? Maybe you were the quiet kid, the new kid, or the shy kid. The specifics of the story will vary, but many of us who struggle with our weight and self-image can trace it back to pain and fear born out of being, in some way, different from the group.

While most of this story involves my problems stemming from obesity, there is a parallel component, which is simply that I was not, and still am not, in any serious way, athletic. Few things in elementary school were as horrifying and terrible as the dreaded presidential fitness program. That was the program where you had to do a number of exercises, and then you were scored on how well you did. The top performers would receive patches for various superlatives. (Now some of you are probably saying, Wait a minute, I used to like that program. If you are, I simply invite you to re-evaluate whether you are reading the right book. Or perhaps you are one of those who put on weight later in life.)

The point is that by the sixth grade, the weight was coming on, and it made the torture of the 600-yard dash (Dash? Really? 600 yards???) a heinous torture that had to be endured twice a year. But I was no fan of the dreaded run in my earlier days when my weight was quite normal. (I started off as a skinny kid.) Oh, but slogging around that field with all of that extra weight was both physically painful and psychologically traumatic, as the effort to move all of that flapping flab yielded simply awful results that further cemented the humiliation. The only consolation, looking back on it, was that by the time I actually finished the course, everyone else was already done and heading inside, so it was usually a time of quiet isolation crossing the finish line. I learned to recognize the pity in the physical education teacher’s voice and expressions, as he contemplated the pathetic sight before him, the out-of-shape kid dragging himself to the end of this misery.

The fitness award program may have been intended to promote physical fitness, but for those of us who could have benefitted from encouragement, I wonder if it didn’t do more harm than good. For me personally, they were periodic reminders of how physically fit I was not, which just reinforced the negative self-image.

A new threshold of torment came with the introduction to locker rooms in the seventh grade. Now, not only did this boy with the obese body have to contend with his peer group, but in this new environment he had to walk from his locker to the shower in his birthday suit, regardless of the condition of that birthday suit. It was painfully obvious to all who was in good shape and well-conditioned, and who was not. It was amazing how quickly I learned to strip down, get through the shower, dry off and get some clothes back on my body. I guess this is all very normal stuff and just part of growing up, but it sure did seem traumatic at the time, and I carry vivid memories of some of those locker room experiences with me even today.

As I reflect back writing this book, it also dawns on me the us and them nature of relationships as related to being obese. Take for instance my best friend Billy. This is being shared as a memory and an insight, and not to throw Billy under the bus. Actually, Billy was demonstrating great compassion for me, but didn’t know how to deal with my situation. We had been talking about getting something to eat, and an option I mentioned was probably fast food. Billy said something to the effect of, Well, you know you’re putting on weight so you might want to be careful about what you eat. I was stunned and hurt, not so much by the comment itself. I was stunned because Billy—in just that moment—no longer was a part of we; he had become one of them. He was no longer safe to me. How dreadful was that simple statement to a vulnerable adolescent?

On the flip side, it’s true that I was never lovingly confronted about my obesity by my family or other friends, and I’m not sure their words would have been helpful. The point being this stuff cuts both ways, and oftentimes family members and dearest friends are the least able to help us because they are the closest to us—meaning they pose the greatest threat. Often times your family is in a no-win situation because whether they choose to bring the weight issue up, or choose to leave it unspoken, either can have unfavorable outcomes. Is this stuff significant to our personalities and souls? Well, this event happened many decades prior to this writing, and it still is a clear memory. We all know how major events tend to etch themselves in our minds.

This is the stuff of our story.

What about you…is this your story, too?

Stacy Peters was a friend during high school, and my experience with her has provided me with tremendous insight into my own psyche and behavior as an obese kid, how I viewed myself, how I was viewed by others, and how much of my own torment was self-inflicted.

Stacy (not her real name) was a heavy girl, and we tended to hang together, at least partly because of our both being overweight. Ironically, while I was completely awkward and a total non-starter with girls, I was quite friendly with Stacy. We had daily breaks during school (there was a time where we had five or ten minutes to hang out in a common area waiting for the next class to begin), and we often would sit on a table, me with my arm around her, and both of us carrying on jokingly about being boyfriend-girlfriend, and even husband-wife. There was substantial side-to-side physical contact, and we were both completely relaxed with my arm around her, and her leaning into me. There was nothing romantic between us beyond those simple physical gestures, and the joking was surely masking the fact that, despite anything else, we felt safe with one another. We both felt safe with the other because we were both similarly overweight; we felt safe because we did not judge each other. We accepted each other, and the humor was surely masking much deeper issues.

The summer before our senior year, something happened that would forever alter our relationship. Stacy lost weight, and when she arrived back in school in September, she was a sleek and slender stone cold fox. She looked great. Stacy was hot.

Can you see it coming?

I was stunned. All of a sudden, the larger version of Stacy had disappeared, the version that I felt safe around. The new version of Stacy was beautiful, and all of a sudden she was the target of interest of the smooth, good-looking guys. The ones that had it all together – you know, the popular ones. Stacy was immediately welcomed into the popular groups and would hang out with the girls of the in crowd. How could she resist? All of a sudden she was finding herself popular and welcomed into circles that were formerly out of reach, groups of people she never would have dreamed of associating with before her transformation.

What was my reaction? I pulled away. Right away, it was not safe to hang with Stacy, and the thought of putting my arm around such a beautiful girl occurred only in the realm of fantasy. I’m sure that we had some brief, cursory conversation when contact was unavoidable (by me), but the openly flirtatious, side-hugging snuggling that had occurred was never to be known again. I have memories of passing her in the hallway and seeing something in her eyes that was uncertain. Was she bewildered by the dynamic that had occurred? Was she confused? Was she hurt by my pulling away? Did she realize the loss of something between us that had occurred and not know what to do about it? I never again spoke to Stacy, so only she knows what was going on in her heart and mind.

As for me, I look back and take full responsibility for my own pulling away. My memories of Stacy Peters are both happy and sad. I’m happy for the times we shared together, giving each other safe refuge for friendship—awkward as it was—to occur. I’m sad that I pulled away from her and blame only myself for what happened. It was my own poor self-image and self-destructive behavior that caused me to pull back from her. And isn’t that just how it works? Some people will ostracize overweight people because of their appearance, and those people are wrong to behave like that. But for me, I did far more damage by preventing relationships that were there to be had with people who were not unkind to me because of my condition. As a fat kid I knew what it was like to be unpopular. What I didn’t know what that I inflicted far more damage on myself than others did to me.

As a fat kid, I didn’t like myself, so why would anyone else like me? There was something wrong with me. And if they had no reason to like me, I might as well be unkind to them for not liking me. What twisted logic. What self-destructive behavior. And oh, how typical.

As for Stacy, surely we never would have had the same cuddling banter of her heavier days, but we still could have been friends, and she would not have just cut off our relationship. Of all people, Stacy could relate to my own situation and recall her own recent history when she had not been welcome with the popular kids because of her physical appearance. I tend to think that the strained, sad look in her eyes was her not knowing how to bridge the gap that I had created, while knowing full well why I pulled back. She could identify with my situation, and probably knew she would do the same thing. If the roles were reversed, would I be concerned about her thinking I was showing pity for her still being heavy while I had lost weight? I can easily see how I would be, as a teenager, at a loss as to how to deal with the situation graciously. My goodness, those years are so full of awkwardness, it’s a wonder teenage relationships thrive at all.

Do you hear the head game in all of this? Do you hear all of the tortured logic? Do you relate on some level?

While the story of Stacy Peters is an isolated example in my life, it fits into a broader theme that was pervasive in my adolescent and teen years: loneliness. Much of that loneliness was born out of isolation brought about by my weight. Some of it was being unwelcome in the popular groups, and much of it was self-inflicted withdrawal from what were surely available relationships. But the results, whether self-inflicted or not, were isolation and loneliness. That was not to say I didn’t have friends. I did have friends, and the ones I had tended to be very strong friendships, oftentimes because they were so few.

All right, I’ve told a lie. That realization just dawned on me as I wrote the prior two or three sentences. I did have strong friendships with a few people, but I was often a mean-spirited bully, and oftentimes I would take it out on my friends. We’re back to the self-destructive cycle of me not liking myself, so they weren’t going to like me either. So I would lash out—even at friends—to make myself feel better by putting them down. Oh, there are some dreadful memories now dredged up, and so much of them go back to insecurities born of poor self-image and self-worth.

They say that the music you grow up with is the most personally powerful and influential because you associate it with happy memories from your youth. That concept struck me as funny because most of my favorite music, particularly from my teen years, tends to be deeply emotional (that’s a funny phrase when considering a high schooler…deeply emotional? Profound? Oh please, I’m cracking myself up), to the point of tears when I listen deliberately to the songs from that era. I don’t know what conclusions are to be drawn from that, so I’ll just leave it at loneliness was a pervasive theme that I’ve always associated with my poor self-image.

Being overweight, especially in adolescence and the teenage years, brought with it all kinds of hurtful and embarrassing situations and memories. The story of my youth was about being socially awkward, bumbling, and bully-some. I look back and cringe at some of the situations involving girls. I would be far too humiliated to share them here, even after all these years. Of course, I’m sure there are skinny kids lined up with the same problems, so much of it was just being that age, and not weight-related. Come to think of it, most of my weight-related girl-problems revolved around a lack of girls, not the poor handling of same. And there was the jerk in band who would say to me, broadcasting across the room, of course, Get a bra! There is nothing more humiliating for a boy (heck, or young man, or mature man) than the collective fat in the chest