Gaining a Little Insight on a Late Tuesday Night

Currently, my biggest problem is that I have stabilized in my current weight still between 15-22 lbs off my goal of 225 lbs!

What I am doing is living a healthy lifestyle, and sometimes I feel satisfied with my achievement, but my goal is not met! The issue is clearly human nature to barter and deal and reward myself. What that does is keep me at a manageable weight, while eating mostly a plant-based diet, but incorporating some less than healthy options to satisfy an urge, and also bring back social drinking. Basically, that is akin to running for a touchdown and on the 10 yard line short of the goal you spike the ball in celebration. I need to refocus on my end goal, not be merely satisified with my new lifestyle. I already know that I can live a healthy life - so no worry about gaining it back, I just want to get down to 225 lbs!

I am on vacation this week so I hope to use it as constructively as possible - my goal is to write, work-out intensively, and resist the temptation to celebrate too much.

Yesterday I drank lots of water, had a Chinese lunch of grilled vegetables and shrimp with no rice, met a kid as a favor to a friend to impart some advice on the advertising trade, then went to a birthday party under slightly false pretenses, then found myself listening to rather mediocre band at Otto's Shrunken Head Tiki bar on the Lower East Side. There were as many people listening in the audience as there were on stage singing. It was a trio. But what I found interesting on this quiet Tuesday night in a small place tucked into the concrete near Stuyvesant Town was that I was not judgemental about the place or the people who were a far cry from my fellow reprobates, nor my typical theatre of operations.

I have been pretty hard on myself, and in the midst of my self-centered tough love about my weight there was some collateral damage in words about other people who struggle with weight. I feel bad about that. I've been too judgemental.

Last night the bouncer who checked my ID commented that we were the same age - he was bearded, gray, balding, and tattooed and pierced like, well, a Lower East Side dive bar bouncer. Me: khakis, bucks, and a Brooks Brothers button-down -- otherwise known in this seedy part of NYC as a preppy @#$hole. Although I acknowledged the startling difference in how much older and less healthy he looked than me, both 42, I didn't think long enough to make a judgement about him, instead I was quite friendly to him. When the Trio abruptly stopped playing I got my fellow habitues (all of whom looked like a Andy Warhol canvas) to cheer them on for an encore. The band was a bit startled, but thrilled to continue on. I enjoyed going to a place wildly different from my normal haunts, and feeling comfortable and not judgemental.

Trust me, these little changes are significant because it continues to open my mind on the way to live. Remember, giving up my addiction to meat was an assault on my manhood and patriotism. It was great to learn that eating more like a gorilla strengthened the man I was. Giving up my habit of drinking every night was an assault on everything who I thought I was ... it was great to learn the answer to striving to be a good writer is not found on a bar stool, nor is abject happiness.

Right, now, although the original Hawaii Five-O is currently on TV much to my utter delight, I must steal myself away and get to the gym, and then the store to buy more vegetables!