A question of semantics

As regular readers of this blog are aware, I have been on an over-year-long quest to reduce the avoirdupois I have been carrying around for the past 35 years.

When I graduated from college in 1975, I weighed 150 pounds.  It was a good weight for someone of my bone structure and musculature.   Like many people, however, when I got married I immediately put on about 10 pounds in a few months.   When I realized this was going on (after I had gained 20), I tried to put a stop to it, and went on a draconian diet.   I managed to get my weight down to 160, but as soon as I stopped dieting, I immediately put it back on, and more.

What followed was a very slow accumulation until I finally reached my peak weight of 227.  About 5 years ago, I lost 52 pounds.  Although my aim was to get back to 150, I got stuck at 175, and then it wasn’t long before I had gotten back up to 195.   I called a screeching halt to that and managed to hold that line for a few years.   Then one day after a couple of birthdays and parties I realized that I was back at 198.

Well, I wasn’t happy about that, especially since my mother had recently undergone a knee replacement surgery.   I could see that the excess I was hauling around was putting stress on the old skeletal system, and I determined to rectify the situation before I had destroyed my own knees and hips.

By increasing my activity and decreasing my intake I managed to successfully get down to 160 this June.   That didn’t last long, and once I had gotten back up to 164 I got very strict with myself.   I held that weight all summer and fall.

But as usual, the holidays were filled with luscious cheeses, exquisite chocolates, and parties with the requisite alcohol and party food consumption.  At the end of it all, I have gained another three pounds.

I was reading Norwichrocks blog, in which she states that she dropped weight over the holidays, which I consider to be something of a miracle.   I jokingly said in a comment that I had managed to find the weight she had lost.

Suddenly a bell went off in my head.

We always talk about wanting to lose weight.   I’m thinking that perhaps this is the wrong word to be using.   After all, what do we do if we lose our glasses or our wallet?   We go looking for them right away, don’t we?  And we are so happy when we find them again.

Perhaps “Losing weight” sets up a subconscious message in our brains.   Sure, we want to weigh less if we are overweight; we all know it is good for our bodies and longevity and general health.   But if “losing” something implies a desire to “find” it later, perhaps we should stop referring to our plans to regain our formerly svelte selves as “losing weight.”

After all, I don’t know about you, but after going to all that trouble, I don’t want my subconscious helping me “find” what I have so laboriously “lost.”

So I am trying to retrain my mouth and brain.   I’m going to shed it, drop it, become thinner, get rid of my belly, lower my body fat percentage, whatever other phraseology my imagination can come up with.  But I’m no longer going to call it “losing weight.”

So I’m off to burn some calories while walking Ruby, who really cannot understand why I haven’t left this stupid box already to do just that.

Tomorrow I have a cute story to tell on her.