Having your cake and eating it, too: The hard-to-control mental aspect of weight gain and loss

My relationship with the bathroom scale isn't especially complicated, nor is it especially healthy.

I pay lots of attention to the scale when my weight is down. I step on it nearly every day to bask in the glow of the number I apparently believe to be some reflection of my own worth.

But during those times when I know the number is going to be above what I want it to be, I actively avoid the scale.

Right now I am in one of those phases where the scale and I are not friends. This is unfair to the scale in that the number it reports is entirely a product of my own negligence and lack of discipline, rather than anything the scale itself has done.

A few weeks ago I weighed myself and discovered I had gained quite a bit of weight over the previous nine months. And it's not the first time this has happened.

I reported a similar significant gain in June 2015. In fact, if you search for the word "weight" here, you will find I've written a lot about the subject over the years.

I never thought much about my weight until I graduated from high school, when I gained far more than the standard "Freshman 15" (try the "Freshman 40"). I ballooned up in a hurry in my early 20s once my metabolism and genetics caught up with my admittedly sub-par eating habits.

Over the years I have gained and lost different amounts of weight. In fact, I associate certain years with particularly memorable weight fluctuations.

There was The Great Gain of 2012, The Big Loss of 2013, The Sneaky Blow-Up of 2015, The Even Bigger Loss of 2016, The "How Did That Happen?" Gain of 2018-19, The "This Is The Last Time I'll Go Through This" Loss of 2022, and now I guess The "I'm Not Very Good at This Weight Maintenance Thing" Pound-Packing of 2023.

Here's what I don't get: Once I make up my mind to lose weight, it's never particularly hard. And the initial phase of maintaining a healthy weight doesn't feel that difficult, either.

But then, without even noticing it, I lose interest. Other things attract my attention and, before I know it, the weight I lost becomes the weight I found.

I have already begun losing weight (again) since that disappointing trip to the bathroom scale in October, and I don't doubt I'll get back to where I should be, health-wise.

But then what? There's a mental/emotional aspect to food that repeatedly trips me up. I'm not even sure what it is, which makes overcoming it that much more difficult. How do you master something you can't even identify?

When I'm eating healthy, I love eating healthy. When I'm not eating healthy, I love not eating healthy.

Much of it goes back to my all-or-nothing personality. If I can't be perfect, then I revert to being perfectly imperfect. I slip up a few times and decide I might as well eat whatever I want, because I'm clearly incapable of maintaining a sound diet and a reasonable weight.

I can do the physical part of weight loss. It's my brain – prone to extremes as it is – I need to get under control.

With the pounds already dropping off (again), the scale and I will very likely rekindle our friendship by this spring. But I need to start working on my mental approach now because the time is coming when I'm going to be confronted by the same old challenges.

I have yet to conquer them, but I keep trying.

I know very well that striving for perfection inevitably leads to failure, but I do it anyway.

I know something has to change in my head if I'm going to keep the rest of my body in good working condition, but I'm not quite sure what it is.

What's that old saying about being your own worst enemy?

What I'm willing and not willing to do to live a healthy lifestyle

I like to read books about longevity and health. Dr. Michael Roizen is my favorite author in the space, though there are many others – Drs. Joel Fuhrman and Neil Barnard come to mind – who are also go-to sources for this type of information.

Of course, there's a difference between reading about healthy living and, you know, actually following through on it. If you were to ask people who know me well, they would say I am generally a fairly healthy individual. But I'm more acutely aware of the areas in which I fall short than those in which I'm compliant with the latest recommendations around diet, exercise, stress management, etc.

And now in my early (rapidly approaching middle) 50s, I am largely at peace with it all.

At some point, you have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice in the name of better health and what less-than-healthy indulgences you want to maintain in your life. And connected with that, you have to be ready to accept the consequences of those less-than-healthy choices.

I don't mean to suggest that healthy = boring/difficult/burdensome, by the way. That's not necessarily the case.

But the fact is, many of us naturally prefer the bag of chips over the carrot sticks, and sitting on the couch over getting out and walking.

Over the past 15 years, I've had four what I would call "significant" weight losses of 20 or more pounds each. The biggest of those came in 2016, when I started around 217 and got down as low as 166, which in retrospect was way too low for me.

Yet, if you go by the BMI charts – and believe me, I'm well aware of the limitations of BMI as a measurement of overall health – 166 pounds for someone my height is within 10 pounds of being "overweight." So what's the answer?

As I type this, I'm approaching significant weight loss #5. I've dropped about 17 pounds since the first of September through my method of choice, Weight Watchers. It's a system that works well for me whenever I make up my mind to follow it.

I also benefit from the gender biology of weight loss, in which men generally have an easier time dropping pounds than women do. You ladies get screwed in a lot of ways, and this is one of them.

Last Saturday when I weighed in at the local Weight Watchers studio, the scale read 187.2. My official WW goal weight, as prescribed by my primary care doctor a decade ago, is 185. Once I get there, I'll switch to maintenance mode and try to stay around that number for...well, for the rest of my life.

Because you see, when you're someone who has had a number of successful weight losses, it also means you're someone who each time has put the pounds back on. I have never in my adult life been able to maintain a healthy weight for more than a year at a time. So my next big challenge is learning how to keep myself where I should be in terms of overall body mass.

I'm willing to make the mental and physical sacrifices necessary to do that. In fact, here is a complete list of the things I'm willing to do to live as a healthy person:

• Cardio: I power walk (usually just over 12 minutes/mile) five days a week, generally covering a total of 12 miles every seven days. I'm very consistent with this, and it's largely because I love getting out and moving.
• Eat leafy greens, beans, nuts, fruits and veggies: These are all staples of my daily diet, as they should be.
• Don't smoke: Not a problem. True story - I've never even tried it. Not even once. I have never inhaled smoke from anything and have no desire to try it.
• Keep my weight down: See above.

Those are admirable, but they do not cover all of the bases, health-wise. There are other habits we should be forming if we want to live longer, happier lives, at least from a physical standpoint. Here are the things I should be doing that I'm not:

• Strength training: The truth is, I hate lifting weights. I just despise it. I know I should be doing it, I know it has amazing benefits. Yet I can't seem to get myself to do it with any regularity. It's the one thing on my "bad" list that I hope to change. Maybe it will be my 2023 resolution.
• Meditation: I don't "feel" like I'm stressed, but the recommendation is that we should all be doing something to manage stress in our lives. Deep breathing is another popular technique. I don't make the time to do any of it.
• Getting enough sleep: I rarely sleep more than 7 hours, and most of the time it's more like 6 to 6 1/2 for me. I feel OK, though, or at least I think I feel OK, since there may be a higher level of "OK" of which I'm not even aware that I would experience if I just went to bed earlier. But as well as I sleep, I just don't love it as much as a lot of people do. I would rather be up and doing stuff. If there was a way to live without sleeping, I would jump on it. As it is, I should be getting more shuteye.
• Inserting even more healthy foods into my diet: I love fish, but I rarely eat it. Too much trouble buying and cooking it. I also don't do a good job with the "healthy gut" foods like yogurt, kimchi, etc., nor do I drink nearly enough water.
• Having a social life: I hang out mostly with Terry and my son Jack, the two people with whom I live. You're supposed to have a wider social circle than that, and men in particular tend not to be very good about building and maintaining friendships. I don't know, there doesn't seem to be enough time, though I know the reality is that I could make time if I really wanted.

I could go on, but the point is, I miss the mark on more items health-wise than I hit. That doesn't bother me as much as it used to. I'm doing what I can manage, and if that means a few years off the end of an otherwise healthy and happy life, so be it.

Or at least that's what I say now. Check back with me in another decade or two.

It's August and I've been wearing sweaters for a month.

I've dropped some weight over the past few months. Nineteen pounds as of yesterday, to be exact.

I won't get into the weight loss thing, as I've covered it to death on this blog over the years. I shouldn't even have to be worrying about it right now, given that I achieved a healthy weight back in 2016 and had no real reason not to maintain it.

But I didn't, so here I am.

Anyway, if you've ever lost weight, you know there's a point where you start feeling the effects yourself but no one else yet really notices. That point varies from person to person, but for me it's right around 15 pounds.

Pants and shirts are looser. I have more energy. I'm walking faster in the mornings with the same amount of effort. That sort of thing.

What also happens around 15 pounds is that my temperature tolerance shifts, and it shifts dramatically. I go from wearing thin dress shirts to multiple layers, even in July and August.

Most of the time when I'm at Goodyear, I wear a fleece pullover or sweater. Otherwise I almost freeze by the time the day is half finished.

It doesn't help that they really crank up the air conditioning there (which I think is uniquely an American office thing, though I can't be sure). I would be fine if they weren't constantly pumping Arctic air into our work environment.

But as it is, I'm always cold. So I bundle up and look like Nanook of the North when others around the office are wearing polos and short sleeves.

It's a small price to pay to be healthier, I know, but I'm kind of looking forward to that September-ish transition when we go from AC to heat.

And the inevitable trip to Kohl's to buy some new winter clothes, one size down.

Many of us are trying to get ourselves together, health-wise...again

I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago and then, a few days later, completely erased it and started over.

The original post was a whiny rant about how my weight has yo-yo'ed over the years and how I have a hard time creating lasting change when it comes to weight blah blah blah. It wasn't fun to write, nor would it have been fun for you to read.

Not that this will be particularly "fun" for you, either, but in the days after I wrote the first post, my wife started a 28-day transformation program bought for her by some of our kids as a Mother's Day present. She had to scramble to align with the timing of it, as it has a real-time online component and officially began the day after Mother's Day. But Terry did the requisite shopping and food prep in short order, and she has stuck with it well and is seeing great results.

This was inspiring to me, so I went back to the only method of weight loss that has ever truly worked for me, which is Weight Watchers.

"WW" is how they brand themselves nowadays, and I should mention that it works for me only when I do the in-person program (i.e., go to weekly meetings and weigh in, which creates a certain level of accountability...the online-only version doesn't really go well for me).

So I've been attending meetings and weighing in at my local WW "studio." And of course I'm losing weight, because all it is, really, is a well-designed system that makes you do what you already know you should be doing: Eat less food, eat healthy food, eat tasty food.

If you do that and move more, and you have weight to lose, you're going to drop pounds, guaranteed. We just all have different mental and emotional make-ups that necessitate different approaches to achieving that goal. They're different paths, but they all travel in the same direction and all lead to the same place.

Will I get back down to my goal weight? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I will. I started around 208 a couple of weeks ago and will aim to get back into the 185 range.

The question is, though, will it be permanent? That remains to be seen. But before you can answer that question, you have to start down the path. And that's what I'm doing.

Some thoughts on weight, health and BMI

Every once in a while, I come on here and talk a bit about my personal weight loss (and gain, and loss, and gain, and loss, etc.) journey, in the hopes that it will be somewhat interesting to you and that you'll at least read past the headline.

This is one of those days.

I went to my Weight Watchers meeting last Saturday and got back to within two pounds of my goal as a Lifetime Member, which means I don't have to pay to come to meetings and to access the E-Tools on my iPhone that allow me to look up the point values of various foods, track my eating and activity, etc. It's a nice little incentive to stay at or around your goal weight: Eat too much and you end up paying.

My weight losses have always been followed by weight gains. It's a reality that many, many people face, and that I may face for the rest of my life, I don't know. But looking back over just the last nine years, I've had significant weight losses at the following times and gained much or all of the weight back each time:

2008: Lost about 30 pounds, gained it all back by 2010

2011: Lost 15 pounds or so, gained it all back by 2012

2013: Lost something like 45 pounds, gained 25 of it back by early 2016

2016: Lost that 25 I had gained back PLUS 25 more. Yes, a 50-pound swing, though that took me down into the mid-160s by last fall and, honestly, as much as it pains me to say this, that was just too much.

2017: By the early part of this year, I had gained 25 of the pounds back again, and now I'm starting to lose it again.

I weighed in at 186.4 this morning (Saturday, April 1st), a figure that would surprise many people just looking at me. I don't look like I weigh 186 pounds, though I will say that much of it is in my legs. I've told you before that we Tennants carry a lot of weight in our thick English-German calf and thigh muscles.

Still, I really don't think I'm quite yet at a medically ideal weight. What that weight should be, though, constantly baffles me. It's not 165, but it's also not 185.

"Hey, Scott, here's a thought: How about splitting the difference and stopping at 175?"

Yes, yes, you're probably right. It's just that I have a hang-up about being in the "overweight" or "obese" section of the Body Mass Index (BMI) charts.

People attack the BMI scale all the time, claiming it's unrealistic. But I think that's because most people don't understand exactly what BMI is.

BMI is not a set of numbers designed to make you feel like a fat slob. As I understand it, it's simply a table based on straight actuarial data. It's telling you, in essence, "Look, you do what you want. We're just saying that people under this particular weight for your height tend to die early a lot less often than people who are over that weight. That's it. That's all we're saying. It may seem like an unrealistic number to you, but the stats are the stats."

Yes, I know that people who are especially muscular get thrown unfairly into the overweight/obese category on the BMI chart. I understand it's not perfect. I'm just saying its purpose is really only to show you how likely you are to suffer an early death based on your height and weight. There are, and always will be, exceptions.

Of course, there are many things that contribute to being "healthy," and maintaining a proper weight is just one of them. But it's an important one, to be sure. For my height (5-9 1/2), I don't enter the "normal" weight zone on the BMI chart unless I'm under 172 pounds. My 186 weigh-in this morning puts me at about 27.1 (under 25 is healthy/normal). A 27.1 BMI is classified as "overweight."

Do with that information what you will. We all have to make our own decisions. I'm just having a hard time balancing the medical "hey, you're in good shape" with the subjective "hey, you look too gaunt" from family and friends.

The more important question I should be asking myself is how I'm going to go about maintaining that true goal weight once I get there. And I'm looking into that now. A different maintenance philosophy and a whole lot of prayer seem to be the preferred strategy.

One key thing for me, as Terry told me countless times as I refused to listen, is that I need to show up at weekly Weight Watchers meetings. I just have to. They keep me accountable and motivated. When I stop going, I gain weight. It's a simple pattern, not hard to recognize, yet time and again I try to do it on my own. Dumb.

OK, I've written more than I should have on this. I wanted to talk about healthy eating apart from weight, but you know what? I'll do that in tomorrow's post. I really need to go grab an apple (and not a Twinkie) right now.

I don't want to harp on this losing weight thing, but if you're someone who needs to do it, here's one hugely important thing you should know

I feel like I've mined Weight Watchers, weight loss and general health topics for all they're worth when it comes to blog material over the last few years. And I honestly wasn't looking to write about it anymore, but something occurred to me that I think is important for people to know.

First off, please know the last thing I want to do is to discourage anyone. Weight loss and maintenance is NOT an impossible dream. You can absolutely do it, and I don't mean that in a fake inspirational way. You really can.

But there's a cold truth that has to be faced.

If you're going to put your body into pound-shedding mode, you of course have to eat less than you are now and likely move more than you do now.

You already knew that.

What you may not know, if you've never done the weight loss thing successfully, is what that means in practicality. It means you're going to want to eat something that you used to eat all the time, and you're going to have to say no.

Then you're going to have to do that again, probably an hour or two later.

Then you're going to have to do it again the next day. And the next. And the next.

For the rest of your life. Or until you give up and decide you didn't mind being overweight.

Because for most people, those are your only two choices.

Again, I'm not here to discourage you. You will be amazed at the capacity you have to make the correct food choices, and to do it again and again. I don't care who you are, you can do it.

But it takes a willingness to change your thinking, both about food and about yourself. And about the things that make you feel good and get you through the day.

It takes the ability to understand the worth of health, and of feeling and looking good, over the momentary pleasure of that chocolate cake. You can and should still have that cake on occasion, but in reasonable portions. And sometimes not eating the cake at all is easier than trying to confine yourself to a single small slice.

The point is, you will face a hard reality, and you will face it continuously. How you react to that reality and the choices you make in those moments will define whether or not your weight loss and weight maintenance will be successful.

If you acknowledge now the difficulty of doing the right thing, and you still make up your mind to say "It doesn't matter how tough it may seem, I'm going to lose the weight once and for all," you will be successful. I guarantee it.

It's a mental game, and one you can win.

So go do it. Seriously, go do it. I finally did, and it has changed the game for me in many ways. The same will happen to you, too.

I just thought you should know.