Specifically my own self control, not so much the self control of others, nor telling you how good or bad your own self control is.

This is mainly going to be centered around what could be termed diet I suppose, but for reasons I actually prefer to refer to this as a lifestyle change.

Because that's what it is. Or, rather, what was (is?) needed.

I understand that a lot of people out there don't want to be reminded about food and relationships with food, so I guess consider the title of this post your content warning.

I don't recall for sure if I've written - on this incarnation of the site - about my lifestyle change when it comes to food and weight. Perhaps a quick bit of history is warranted then.

Never was I ever one to turn down a meal, nor was I ever one to care about whatever it was that I was currently stuffing down my gullet. I never attempted to lose weight, never did the diet thing, just really didn't put a whole lot of thought into it.

I would not say that I ate all the time, but when I did eat it was - shall we say - not the most healthy of choices. Lots of carbs, lots of fried stuff, I loved baking (still do), sweets, cookies, candy, cake, you get the idea. Some of my absolute favorite foods were pizza (from scratch, of course), biscuits and gravy (flour and more flour? sign me up!), pancakes, waffles (round? square? who cares!), pasta, potatoes (all the forms). Stuff that was going to send me on a one way trip to diabetes and an early grave.

Every so often I'd watch either the weight loss shows, or more likely, the transformation videos that people would post on the Tube. Every time I'd think to myself, "Self, that's amazing. Just imagine if you could also do that." Every time, I'd just click on through and go on with my day.

My wife and I had looked into the ketogenic lifestyle over a decade ago, so it was something that we had considered and were aware of the ability of what it could do for ones health. But it would be a large expense to change out all the food in our lives just to wind up failing.

Failure. Failure is never a good reason to put off doing something that is this important. Especially when it's as important as our health.

One day, my wife decided that she was tired of being obese. She had slowly been working towards going the keto route, so I decided that I was going to do the same.

In August of 2019 I too was going to take that plunge. Now, for shits and giggles on the day before I started I was going to use an app to track all the food I ate in a day. After measuring out my morning cereal I have to admit that I "noped!" out of that choice for the day. The next day I started.

I do actually have photos of myself - though I started taking them a couple of days later. I knew that I would want to track my progress visually - you know, to kind of compare alongside with those users who's videos I'd watched in the past.

I find that I'm starting to ramble on this so I'll try to accelerate the story a tad. My weight started out somewhere in the vicinity of 330 plus pounds. I had just moved into a size 50 pants. My goal at the time was to drop 100 pounds in a year.

My personality is one such that I go full speed into whatever it is that's occupying my time. I absolutely "gamed" the keto lifestyle. In well under a year I was already down that 100 pounds. I kept going, eventually getting into "one-derland", seeing the 1 as the first digit on the scale. It was amazing. Within a year I was basically into maintenance mode.

My lowest weight was in the high 160s. I don't think I looked good there, but it's tough when you've had a poor body image your whole life, you still think you need to lose. I'm currently back in the 190 range and really prefer the look of myself in the 180s. It's a challenge.

The self control thing. It's a two lane street. I had excellent self control losing the weight. It's the "stay in the healthy range" part of the program that takes even more self control. I was never one to eat my feelings, luckily, so while I did have to change my relationship with food, it wasn't the drastic change that others have had to go through. I ate out of boredom. Now, it's getting that self control back to only eating when I'm hungry.

Dropping the weight (I don't refer to it as "losing", because I really don't want to find it) was - for me - not difficult. Shockingly easy actually. Seeing the scale slowly work its way back up is what messes with my mind. I've managed to keep in the same high 180s, low 190s for a couple of years now. I look better, I feel better. I no longer have to sleep with a cpap or Bipap (my sleep apnea went away after the first few months). My joints no longer ache. My back is so much better.

Even with all that, I still have the feeling that I'm lacking in self control at this point. There are still snacks that I get. Junk food. Granted, the junk food that I eat now is nothing compared to before: peanuts, peanut butter, cheese, silly "keto" bars and cookies. A lot of stuff that didn't exist before we started the life change. A lot of higher than I prefer calorie items. It's a self control thing.

What was the point of this post? I guess for myself more than anything I just needed to get this out of my head. I am proud of what I've been able to accomplish - it's a tough, challenging thing that not everybody is able to do. I can buy clothes most anywhere, assuming I can find them tall enough. Was it expensive? Yeah, it was. In more ways than one. However, the alternative would have been even more expensive.

This is post 87/100 of my #100DaysToOffload posts. You can read the other posts in this series here.