Day 217: Go Waste, Young Man... Go Waist

I heard a story - and maybe you have, too - about a man who had worked for many years for a construction company. He worked selflessly and hard, but eventually he had had enough and went to his boss. After explaining that he was ready to retire, his boss requested that he do one last favor for him and build one final house.

Reluctantly, this man begrudgingly built the final house; cutting corners and doing shoddy work. The house was finished quickly... perhaps too quickly... and the man's boss came for a final inspection. At the conclusion of the inspection, the man left the house with his boss who took a folded piece of paper and handed it to him. His boss mentioned how much he had appreciated his work over the years and to please accept this gift in gratitude for all his hard work and diligence.

As the boss walked away, he left a stunned man looking down at a set of brand new house keys.

Now think about the human race. We stroll blithely through our lives in the most amazing and complicated collection of mechanics and systems ever created; so balanced and so fragile, yet so absurdly resilient and diverse - the human body. We have been given such a gift in the form of the human body and yet we think nothing of it and treat it with such disrespect.

What about this idea... you are building and shaping the house you live in. Now think... what kind of job are you doing?

Last week, I made a huge and significant commitment to losing the rest of my excess weight; I joined Tidewater Bariatrics' Decision Free diet plan. Tidewater Bariatrics is a weight-loss clinic providing rapid weight-loss programs with medical supervision and high levels of accountability and support - they even supply the food you eat.

I went through medical and psych evaluations, talked with the doctor and nurses, and had lots of labs and medical panels drawn. Needless to say, I was absolutely fascinated by the entire process. I love numbers and data and medical stuff; this was right up my alley. Results of the labs reported I was in good health, with all numbers (except for my weight) being good. I did have a Vitamin D deficiency (a 14 when 35 is normal). Apparently, many overweight people going for gastric bypass surgery suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency and I have to wonder if their obesity is linked to the depression and low energy that surfaces as a symptom of Vitamin D deficiency. Feeling low? Might want to get that checked.

Anyway.

Yesterday I completed my first week of official dieting and have decided I love this program. There is so much accountability and so many ways to share your successes and progress that I find myself quite motivated, not only to participate, but also to lose weight and remain compliant with the program.

Every week, we have a two-hour class to educate us on various areas of weight loss... both physical and mental aspects. Honestly, I was arrogant enough to think that I already knew what we were going to talk about this past evening. I have a lot of curiosity and some training in the medical arena and I assumed that since the group leader had said we were going to talk about proper choices in eating that I already had a firm handle on what she was going to say.

I was not prepared for the depth of insights I gained while in class that night!

During the course of the evening, the topic of discussion turned toward fantasizing and dreaming about food. As a patient of Tidewater Bariatrics, you have a limited amount and variety of food from which to choose and the temptation to imagine what you will eat when off the diet is strong, as is desiring food that you may not have if you wish to be compliant.

I giggle here because every time I hear (or read) the word "compliant," I have a visual of being strapped into a cyborg suit and regeneration chamber or of tottering mechanically through a green-hued, smokey atmosphere while hearing a multi-layered mechanical voice proclaim, "We are the collective; you will comply."

But I digress...

What struck me so strongly was the propensity for people to dwell on food in their minds. So... they're not eating it anymore, but what are they still doing? Dreaming and fantasizing and desiring. Wait. What is wrong with that? Could it be that food is taking the place of things we should be dreaming about? of goals that we could be achieving? of relationships with family and friends we should be nurturing?

How many times have you heard someone say they "love" a particular food item or that a certain toothsome pastry "made their day"? What about the whole "I'd kill for a donut and coffee right now" mentality? Or "I was dreaming about eating this chocolate cake allllll day today." Can you see how this is just a little bit wrong?

Here's a more frightening thought. Is this the group of people Paul was talking about in Philippians? Those who were "the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things."? Perhaps what alarms me the most is: Am I one of those people?

So save your daydreams and fantasies for actual people and goals. Food won't love you back. You cannot have a normal, human-style relationship with comestibles. Stuff you eat should never be a life goal. Also, if you are plugging in relational gaps between you and your loved ones - spouse, children, relatives, friends - with food, you are not fixing anything or solving root issues. What is worse, it's like painting over mildew so everything will "look" beautiful.

We are each building the house we live in.

What kind of house are you building?