consumed

"Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us."
-Peter De Vries

"Well, I hate myself.  I already have a pint of ice cream, a pizza, and mini eclairs.  I don't need these cookies.  I'll have to put something back.  Pizza.  I'll put that back.  I have pizza at home.  But no, that's why I came here.  I want this kind of pizza, not the kind I have at home.

"I'll just put back these eclairs.  I can do without them.  Yes, I feel good about this.  Actually, no, these eclairs remind me of the time when I was in college and went to Publix and bought eclairs and ate them all in my car to soothe the pain of being a gigantic loser.  Those were good memories and I think I want to re-capture them.

"And I really want this ice cream.  And the cookies.  I haven't had the cookies in a long time.

"I'll make chili dogs when I get home.  I don't need this pizza.  But if I bought the pizza, I could have that the day after.  That way I could satisfy my cravings for chili dogs and pizza.  Yeah, I have to keep the pizza.  But I have one at home.  But this one has a cheese stuffed crust.  I'm definitely keeping the pizza.  Nah, the one at home is just as good.

"Okay, pizza is gone.  Too many sweets here.  Okay, ice cream gone.  Just eclairs and cookies.  That's not too bad.

"Okay, the ice cream is back.  I know I can do without it but it will literally be on my mind, making me crazy, until I eat it so it's better to go ahead and get it so I won't drive myself nuts.  But that means I'll have to, have to, put back the cookies.  I've got to compromise.  I don't want to spend too much money.  Or calories.  But my diet is already shot.  What's another weekend binge?

"Damn it.  Okay, keeping the eclairs for sure.  It's just...I'm so annoyed right now and these frozen foods, these processed pizzas, is what soothes me.  I know I'm hurting myself.  This is not normal, healthy behavior.  But I'm sad and so I just don't care.

"Screw it, I'm gonna get the pizza too."

This is an average conversation I have with myself when I go to the grocery store, except I use a lot more foul language and stand around being indecisive for a longer period of time.  People passing by probably think I'm lost.  And in a way, I am.

I've struggled with my weight over half of my life.  You'd think it would be easier to deal with by now but it's not.  I think about food and my weight every single day.  I think about everything I put in my mouth.  I chastise myself for the bad things because I know it will lead to weight gain and I complain to myself about the good things because I know it won't bring satisfaction.  I have to assess my wardrobe every day and wonder what I can or can't wear because I've gotten too big or small.  It's a struggle between calories and comfort.  I get lost in the swirl of butter cream and bat shit crazy and there are days when I wish I could just get it under control.  There are days when I wish I didn't care so much.  Or at all.

There's the logical part of my mind that knows I can lose weight.  I've done it several times before.  But there's the insecure hurting child deep inside that craves the satisfaction that only sugar can provide.  And when it comes to logic and pain, pain will always win out.  It's the underlying weakness that's the strongest force within me, popping up and making its way to the surface during my struggles, filling my cells with the urgent need for food, any carb to curb the current crisis.

It's embarrassing to lose weight and have people notice...and then gain it back...and have people notice.  It's like, "Have you seen Brannon?  He's getting fat again.  He was doing so well.  It's a shame he's letting himself go."  But they just don't get it.  I didn't suddenly find myself overweight and then took control of my body and lost it and that's the end of the story.  It's a constant, brutal struggle to stay sane, slim, and satiated.

It's made even harder because you can see my struggle.  I wear it around my waist.  I feel exposed, like my pain and shortcomings are out there in the open for everyone to see.  It gets tiring and I think it's especially hard because I can't avoid food.  It's in ads in magazines and on television.  It's in my kitchen.  It's always in my head.  It's cultural.  It's social.  Celebrate with food.  Gather the family around a buffet. 

But for me, it's not cultural.  It's not social.  It's emotional.  It's sacred.  It's spiritual.  When I meet someone for dinner, I'm more excited about the meal than the company.  And I want to gather my food and go into a private room and eat it alone.  I want to go through my ritual of chewing and swallowing and savoring, of experiencing different combinations of condiments and mixing all the sides and seasonings.

Every time I eat, it's a religious experience.  Pasta is like a prayer.  It calms and centers me.  It takes away the hurt and the pain.  How could I not want to recapture that transcendence again and again?  Especially when my head is in chaos most of the time.  It's a legal high, a harmless elevation.  But it's only harmless when experienced occasionally.  Otherwise the side effects add up and suddenly I can't button my pants anymore.

I don't want to blame my crappy job or lack of friends for my unhealthy relationship with food but those things really do drive me to eat.  I'd like to say if things were better, I would eat better.  I don't know if that's true.  It's not even a good excuse.  We all have our problems but not all of us deal with them in such unhealthy ways.  Sure, a lot of us do but a lot of us don't.  I just wish I could be one of the healthy ones.

But it hasn't all been a series of failures.  Through writing about my struggles with food and emotional eating, I think I've come about as close as I can to identifying why I eat the way I do.  Unfortunately, that's about as far as I've come.  Despite determining many of the causes of my caustic relationship with food, I have yet to find a way to fix it.  All the multiple episodes of weight loss have occurred despite my bad habits and habitual cravings.  I never cured them, only temporarily deflected them.  But there comes a time when I feel too good, too accomplished, and the ugliness, that weakness, bubbles up again and I'm put back into the clutches of agony and the resulting addiction.

Eventually my body is going to give up.  How many times can you bounce back from extreme weight loss to extreme weight gain?  I also fear eventually my heart will give up.  How many times can you bounce back from extreme accomplishment to extreme failure?

It's mind over matter, food vs face, health and heft.  It's nothing new.  But it doesn't get easier with your head in the way.  And no one understands unless they've been there before, as many times as you have been.  Can I beat it?

I want to sit down to dinner with someone and not have food be the main course.  I want to be satisfied with one slice of pizza.  I want to skip dessert without feeling like I have deprived myself.  I want to go to the grocery store without getting into a mental argument with myself.  I want to be able to skip the candy and enjoy a glass of water.  I want to use food to celebrate, not medicate.  I want to feel normal.

I don't want to starve anymore.

cacao kapow!

Valentine's Day hit me like Chris Brown in a Bronco.  I'm not talking about just being alone (although that did have a lot to do with it).  I'm talking about the enormous amount of crap I ate.

I won an entire plastic container full of Hershey Kisses from work and then the store gave everyone a box of chocolates and my mom bought two boxes of chocolate for me.  After consuming that much sugar and chocolate and lard and fat and lard and sugar and chocolate and fat and lard and more lard and the occasional coconut cluster that slipped past my security measures (yuck), I felt like total garbage.

It's kind of amazing how you don't realize how bad you stopped feeling until you start feeling bad again.

I always thought I was impervious to sugar, caffeine, Aspartame, vitamins and minerals, love, legally obtained prescription drugs, etc.,  because I can have that stuff and it doesn't make me more energetic or foggy or good or bad.  I've always walked around generally feeling like crap.  So, when I started exercising and eating less greasy, fast food-type items, I didn't feel more energetic or "alive" or better physically or even mentally.

All it took was a near month-long binge of boxed chocolates to make me realize I didn't feel as bad as I believed.  And you might say a month-long binge of chocolates will make anyone feel that way, no matter what condition they started in.  Even the most lethargic sloth would come away from three boxes of cocoa-coated caramels feeling worse.  But that chocolate wasted feeling was how I used to feel all the time before I started dieting and exercising.

I felt bad that I indulged so heavily.  I write these entries about doing well.  I write about moderation and it's okay to cheat every once in a while and you just get up and do better the next time around.  And then I binge.  And it happens to everyone but I still feel like I should be a better example.  I've battled food and my weight and my addiction to food for years and you'd think I'd develop some sort of resistance to the constant cravings.  But, no.  In a lot of ways, I'm no better now than when I was seventeen and bingeing on Doritos and Diet Coke.

I also feel like I'm not as in touch with my body as I should be.  I don't know what's going on inside.  I can't detect the changes in my mood or my middle.  There's a giant disconnection there and I don't know how to harmonize my senses and awareness. 

If anything, I guess this overindulgence was a good lesson.  There might be something to this diet and exercise after all, folks!  Maybe it does make a difference, even if the differences are subtle and fluid and not easily recognized by those who aren't in touch with themselves.    

i am not my beard

I buzzed my beard off the other night because I was tired of the rough texture.  I went to work the next day and was met with audible gasps.  Not good audible gasps, either.  More like shock and terror.

"What did you do to your face?"

"Where's the beard?"

"You...you shaved it?"

"Grow it back!"

People acted like I was missing an eye or a nose instead of facial hair.  I know they didn't mean to make me feel bad but they did.  I didn't realize I was some gargoyle and the only thing that kept people from bursting into tears at the site of me was my beard.  It was a mask, a filter, a softening lens that cranked down my deformed face.

Or maybe it was just the shock of seeing my face look so different so fast.  As I grew the beard, everyone was slowly introduced to bearded Bran, including myself.  And taking it all off with a few strokes of the clippers was a bit jarring.  I had the beard for nearly three months and it just became a part of me as if it were always there and suddenly it wasn't.  I didn't recognize the smooth stranger in the bathroom mirror.

I didn't like everyone's reaction.  I didn't even like my own.  I didn't regret buzzing it off but I do like the way I look better with a beard.  But my face feels so much better without one.  When I had the beard, I combed and clipped and conditioned and even through in some argon oil to soften the facial hair but it still felt too rough for my liking.  And sometimes when I slept on my side or stomach, the facial hair against the pillow really irritated my cheeks.

I also realized maintaining facial hair was actually more intensive than just shaving it clean off.  There's a lot of maintenance involved.  Clipping.  Washing.  Conditioning.  Keeping the neckline even and clean.  Trying not to get food or bugs or girls' fingers caught in it.  Serious upkeep.

Yes, the beard will come back but I won't do it for anyone else but myself.  This is kind of a big deal because I've always been so used to doing things the way others wanted, living and looking the way others have dictated.  But I'm not doing that anymore.  In fact, I am thinking about holding off on growing the beard back even longer than I normally would just out of spite!  Take that, jerks.

It's gonna be my choice, no one else's.  And I'm going to rock it either way. 

I think just about every guy has done this at least one time when debearding.

devil on your back

"And every demon wants his pound of flesh..."
-Florence and the Machine, Shake it Out

Do we all have demons?  Are we all required to claim a vice at the beginning of our lives?  The world is stained red and we have to suit up with sex or alcohol just to make it through.  We all feel the pull of pain and we choose different methods of self-medicating.

My method's with the marshmallows.  I eat my feelings.  I stuff down my pain with pasta.  I'm fat.  I'm in the fat group.  That's my addiction.  That's my comfort.  That's my demon.  And it's disheartening to know I'm a part of such a problem.

I'm the fat stomach the camera from one of those news segments covering "Fat America" zooms in on as I walk across the street.  I'm the open mouth stuffing fries into my face.  I am the target audience for diet pill advertisements and fat burning exercise infomercials.  I am inundated with Burger King coupons and thin model magazines.  I'm torn between the temptation and the torture.  My brain is assaulted by all these mixed messages of decadence and deltoids.

The holidays hit me pretty hard.  I have to admit, despite my weight loss and my new healthy attitude toward food, I'm still addicted to the (good) bad stuff.  And for the past two months, I have shoveled food in my mouth at any given opportunity.  Naturally, I let myself go during Thanksgiving and Christmas but I also went wild in the days between.  Let's not forget my birthday was also wedged in there so I had to celebrate with a gigantic pizza and cake.  I ate a lot of fast food and couldn't wait until dessert so I could dig into marble cake with whipped icing or Mom's homemade peanut butter balls with almond bark.  I ate with abandon and didn't give a crap.

I always justified my eating habits by saying it was a temporary holiday thing and I would go back to normal after Christmas.  But now that it's the new year, things are hard.  All I want is more cake and that's something I wouldn't have dreamed of five months ago.  Did I somehow change my chemicals by eating healthier and then changed them again by eating garbage?

If so, the transition begins yet again.

vent-ricles

Feel free to skip this as it has no significance other than me ranting about retail and who really gives a crap?

bran before and after

I waited a whole year for this picture.

When I saw the picture of my sister and me together last Christmas, I was heartbroken.  I was so big.  How did I get that large and not notice?  I'm sure I was in denial, sure I could ignore it until things in my life changed for the better so I could focus on bettering myself.  But nothing changed and when I saw the photo, I knew I had to be that change.

I told myself I would not repeat that Christmas picture looking the way I did.  Long time readers will know I've been dieting and exercising all year.  I've lost approximately 50 pounds.  I've probably gained at least 10 of them back in the past 2 months (I've been too ashamed to weigh myself lately so I don't know the exact number) due to birthday bingeing but that's another entry for another time.  For now, I want to focus on the positive.  Yes, I actually can do that sometimes.

I was excited to take this year's Christmas picture, anxious to see the changes.  It wasn't as big of a transformation as I was hoping.  Sure, clothing and lighting and angles play a significant role in revealing the body but I thought 50 pounds would show a more dramatic change. That's not to say I'm not happy with the difference.  I definitely look better and I'm happier where I am right now.  I can mostly tell in my face, which is good.  But I still have a belly.

I'm working on it, though.  I didn't put the weight on in a year and it will take more than a year to lose it.

I'm cool with that as long as I'm always making progress.

Starting January 1st, I'm going to begin my diet and exercise anew and at the end of the year, I'll take another Christmas picture and hopefully I'll see more positive changes.  And no man boobs.

Left: Christmas 2011 with my sister.  Right: Christmas 2012 with my sister.

beard is good

Having lost a little over 50 pounds and wishing to change my appearance further, I wanted to grow a beard.  No Shave November was coming up so I thought it would be a great time to try it.  I have always wanted to, mostly just to see if I could, but also to see how I'd look with one.

I thought growing a beard would reduce blemishes while covering up current ones (which it has).  I thought having a beard would save time not having to shave (which it hasn't because trying to groom the beard is just as time consuming as shaving it off).  I also thought it would be cool to grow a thick beard and use it as a shield.  You know how some people can hide behind their glasses or heavy makeup?  I don't have those options so I thought I could keep people at a distance with my beard.  For a dude who sometimes strongly craves a connection with others, I also want to push myself away a lot of the time.  I know.  It's messed up.

I actually stopped shaving mid-October when I took my staycation because I have never grown one before and I knew Thanksgiving was coming up so I wanted to try to get a pre-beard going so I could shape it up and make it presentable in front of the relatives in time for the holiday.

After a week of not shaving, I went back to work and was surprised to find a positive response.  For me, I thought I looked just kind of dirty.  But all the girls not only approved but gave me a lot of compliments.  It was nice.  It was also very surprising.  I always thought girls generally shied away from fuzzy faced men.  Sure, there are ladies who are happy with hirsute gentlemen but I thought they were in the minority.  I was wrong.

Amazingly, the general consensus was that my beard is good.

I've learned a lot about my beard this month.  First of all, it's a multitude of colors, ranging from brown to blonde to-get this-red!  In fact, a large patch of hair on my right cheek is a nice coppery color.  Who knew I was a ginger?  I guess that partly explains why I have no soul.

Also, it grows in every direction possible.  The hair on my left side grows down.  The hair on my chin grows to the right and the  hair on my right side actually grows toward horizontally across my cheek.  This has made it difficult to maintain the uniformity of the beard while trimming.  I don't know if trimming is allowed during No Shave November.  It probably isn't but I work with the public so I have to maintain some sense of being groomed.

Not only did I want to cut down on the mountain man look but I also hoped frequent trimming would tame the quickly growing hairs while allowing for the tiny baby hairs to catch up and fill in.

Now, No Shave November is over and although I didn't exactly grow the beard just for November but in some ways, I'm ready to shave it off.  Now I face a seemingly unimportant decision:  do I shave or do I keep it?  It's not a decision I'm taking lightly.  I'm not developing an ulcer over it or anything but I've worked really hard on this bad boy.  I've clipped and trimmed and plucked and sculpted and shampooed and washed and itched and scratched and sure if I shave it, it will grow back.  But it took a long time to get it the way it is now and I don't want to have to go through all that prep again.

Plus, I'm saving a lot on razors.