Okay, so here’s the short version of the story.
I lost a bunch of weight on fad diets and wrote about it here.
I gained the weight back to see if I could lose the same amount of weight in a similar amount of time on no diet and I wrote about that here.
It’s now a few months later and I’ve started this blog as a finale to my weight loss trilogy. I learned a lot by losing weight on the fad diets and I learned a lot by losing weight without any diet. I think both approaches have something to offer (and not just what you might think).
I had briefly considered trying to gain back all the weight I lost during the second run so I could try again from a “clean slate” for this third blog, but then I gave up on that idea. I did gain back enough weight to give myself an even 100 pounds to lose. And that’s my goal, to lose that 100 pounds over the course of the next year. 2 pounds a week, I realize, is not very ambitious. But it goes back to one of my previously espoused philosophies.
So what is Stunt Eating? Well, it refers to two things. First, it’s the remnant of my fad dieting days. I came to the obvious conclusion that fad dieting, even when it works, is a waste of time. But I do think the idea of eating only certain foods or certain types of food for a given period of time does have some benefits to weight loss because you’re exercising willpower. I’ll talk about that more in posts to come. The other reason I use the word “stunt” is because I think it reflects a certain type of motivation in regards to losing weight that I think is very helpful (more on this next week).
So, this site is pretty bare right now. I had some idea for things I wanted to do with it before I started it up officially but I have that most insidious form of procrastination that masquerades as perfectionism. And after weeks of thinking about what I wanted to do with it and not actually doing anything, I gave myself the same advice I gave myself when I started The Dead Weight: Get on with it.
In fact, I baked myself a cake to celebrate the occasion.
I’ll tell you, if you’re having a hard time committing to some new project you may want to try making a cake to get yourself moving. There’s nothing that signifies beginning (or endings) quite as well as a cake. We tend to limit ourselves to the typical birthday, graduation, wedding cakes. But I think a cake that said, “Congratulations on Starting Your Novel!” might actually compel you to start the damn thing. Or to combat general laziness and half-assery, how about a cake that says, “Get Your Shit Together, Dummy.” There’s power in cakes. It’s really the only food I can think of that we deliver messages with. Nobody ever writes “Happy Anniversary” in mustard on a rack of lamb.
Look! We’re only one post in and already I’m giving out wonderful tips like this for free! That’s exactly the type of thing you can expect from this blog. Or maybe not. I don’t know quite yet.
We will see.
