No Fad Diets, No Exercise, Yet Still Lose Weight!

Over the past three months or so, I've managed to lose enough weight that I've gone from wearing my 36 jeans back to my 34s. It was quite a happy moment on Monday when I decided to see if the smaller jeans (I won't call them skinny jeans, but you know I want to) would fit, and they did. Without cutting off my breath, I might add. I managed all this week to wear 34s to work. I'm just hoping I can maintain this size.

You may be wondering what I've been doing to lose the weight. Well, I haven't been exercising, that's for sure. I've spent a lot of my free time since March sitting on the couch (lying on the couch might be a more accurate description, actually). I couldn't go to the gym because when I started to sweat, the bandages on my nose tended to come loose. So I've stayed home and rested. And not worked out. At all. I watched television, old movies mostly, but I don't think I'd recommend that to others as a way to lose weight.

I haven't tried any particular diet, either. I'm not eating only grapefruits and bacon (although some bacon sounds good right about now). I didn't try South Beach or Jenny Craig or that one where they deliver a huge box of food to your door that's supposed to last for a month. Some of the people in the building have that service (NutriSystem?), so I've seen those massive cardboard boxes in the hallways. I still go shopping for myself and still try to cook dinner for myself each night.

No, I just stopped buying some things. I don't bring home soda any longer, for example. I gave up caffeine last year, November to be specific, and now I'm trying to give up the sodas altogether. I may still have one when I'm out at a meal or something, but I just don't buy them and bring them home to drink. I figure if I can eliminate high fructose corn syrup, I'll probably keep my waist smaller. That stuff is everywhere.

I also don't buy sweet stuff. I have an incredible sweet tooth; I love desserts. But if they aren't in the house, I won't go out late at night to buy a candy bar or a slice of cake. Again, if I'm eating in a restaurant, I might have one now and then, but I'm trying to change those habits as well. My guess is that I will miss that more than I miss soda.

So the kitchen now has lots of fresh fruit for me to snack on, all organic. The refrigerator is stocked with lots of water and very little else to drink except for milk and some juice for breakfast. I've got the fixings for salad, which I'm trying to enjoy at least a couple of times a week. I did say I'm trying. Each time I sit down with a salad, though, I remember my grandfather always calling it "rabbit chow." There's no red meat in the house. I only have a hamburger about once every couple of weeks. It's all fish and some chicken here at home.

Obviously, it's true that changing the way you eat can make a difference. Because I didn't like spending a lot of time in the grocery store when I was bandaged up, I didn't purchase a lot of stuff that I used to buy. Those were some very quick shopping trips. I would be in and out of the store in under thirty minutes. When you're not allowing yourself to make impulse purchases--"those look awfully good"--maybe you eat better.

I'm just grateful to be able to wear a smaller size again after a year of feeling fat. I know I'm not really fat, but I'm what I've dubbed "California fat." Here, if you have more than 10 percent body fat, you're considered grossly overweight. And in the gay community, it's probably more like 5 percent. I'm still way over that threshold, but I do like to eat and I am not planning on switching from food to those protein shakes any time soon. Or some very restrictive diet. I saw a very skinny guy in Trader Joe's one time who bought nothing but soy milk and frozen salmon. There was at least a week's worth of both in his cart. There might have been a vegetable or two in there as well, certainly fated to be steamed, I'd imagine. I remember thinking to myself, "What kind of life is that?" I wouldn't want to spend my days eating pretty much the same thing.

Of course, he was a handsome man and very thin with a well developed upper body, just the sort of look everyone wants these days. And the sort that everyone wants to be with as well. I'll likely never get to that stage, but as long as the DVR still has some old movies saved, I'll be just fine. And maybe I'll even keep losing weight by lying on the couch watching them.