Determined To Succeed

Day thirty.

Do any of you gamble? It doesn’t matter really if you do or not. I guess what I am asking is if you guys are familiar with the ways people gamble in places like Atlantic City or Las Vegas. They use chips at all the table games instead of actual money in part so you feel like you are playing with “fake” cash. You may remember you are dealing with your own hard-earned cash but at least the various chips are pretty and shiny and fun to look at.

My favorite table game is Craps, a game where the shooter stands in position and rolls two dice down a long oval table while she/he and others place chips on the table betting on what number will come up when the roll is completed. I love Craps because, when a great shooter is up, you can win a great deal of money. The energy is high and everyone is excited and feeling good – as long as I remember to take it easy and place conservative and somewhat conservative bets on the table. It’s when I go and think “I’ll be O.K.” that I over bet and lose. That’s, invariably, when even the best shooters “seven out,” rolling a seven which means that round is over and EVERYONE loses EVERYTHING on the table.

There are other games of chance of course that also employ chips – various versions of poker, Roulette, Blackjack and more all use chips and you sure as hell want to have a lot of chips in the game. The more you have the longer you can stay, have fun and play. Also, the more you have the more you’re not going broke from losing your fun, pretty “play” money because it’s never fun (or very smart) to gamble using just one or a few chips.

They even mention playing chips in the movies. There’s a quote from “Clear and Present Danger,” the Harrison Ford flick based on the Tom Clancy novel. In the movie (I don’t know if this scene is in the book as I’ve never read Clancy) Ford as hero Jack Ryan is confronting the President with information he has about an operation that was illegal. Ford’s character knows that this is huge and could, in effect, bring down many people in government including the President, who turns to Ford/Ryan and says “you won’t do that. You have a chip in the big game now and when you need something I’m going to be the one to cash it in for you.” Ford then tells the President off, walks out of the room and testifies in front of Congress anyway, and you can imagine him mentally holding onto that “one chip” in his head, and you know he ain’t going to bet with just one chip.

I guess you all are wondering why I am talking about chips today. Well, I’ll tell you. Today is my thirtieth day of sobriety. I had always seen in the movies that people in Al-Anon get a chip to mark their month-iversary of sobriety. One single chip. In doing a bit of looking before writing I see that many different A.A. groups and many different companies distribute and make, respectively, different chips – chips marking everything from 24-hours of sobriety to years of sobriety. But no matter how many hours, days, weeks, months or years you are sober the idea is you carry this chip/these chips with you to remind you to stay sober.

In the movies the person who receives or has the chip will always be faced with the dillema of whether or not to take a drink, thereby negating the sobriety already achieved. They will be tempted to act out on their bottom line behaviors when faced with X, Y or Z. Most recently I saw it in an episode of last season’s “Flash Forward,” a show in which two of its main characters are recovering alcoholics – both of whom take a drink and give in to their demons.

But if I have learned anything from the movies and table games in Vegas it’s that you never, ever gamble when the stakes are that high and you have only one chip to your name. In many cases it may be all the currency you have in the world and you have to hold onto it with both hands because it’s all you’ve got to get you home.

And being just thirty days sober means I have but one, precious chip.

Is it fun to gamble from time to time? Sure it is but I ain’t ever gonna gamble with this most precious chip. It’s what I’ve got. It’s all I’ve got. And as I stand on day thirty of this sobriety I am feeling better now, more honest and free, than I ever have and I’ll be damned if I am going to gamble that away the way I’ve gambled before. Yesterday, I met a friend of mine for coffee and she has lost a lot of weight and I bet she wouldn’t bet that chip for the world since that weight loss and happiness was hard-fought-for and a long time in coming.

I may not get an actual chip today but I don’t need one. I won’t need one and I will never need one because I do not need a wooden coin to remind myself how lucky I truly am in this world. I’m going to take today and just breathe and think about what my life was like thirty-one days and more ago. Those thoughts of that old me will be all the reminder I ever need, and all the strength I need, to not gamble with my one, precious chip no matter what happens for the rest of my life.

It’s not often we get to time travel. No, you didn’t read that wrong. I did say time travel…a mix between the H.G. Wells kind and the “Flash Forward” kind.

Let me explain…yesterday I had the absolute honor of speaking with the first person to sign up for my personal one-on-one weight loss motivation sessions using Skype. While we were talking he told me about how he connected with me because, in me, he saw himself. He said looking at me let him know there was someone just like him who went through the exact same thing with the almost exact same set of circumstances. We discussed foods (including our likes for certain fast foods), clothing (and the need to shop in certain stores that carry that size) and the emotions we feel – about how being overweight can act as a shield to protect us from being hurt by the stinging words of others.

While I was listening to him and his story I felt a kinship to him, too. And this is where the time travel bit comes into play. As much as he saw me as the man he wants to be in terms of clothing sizes (I now wear a large t-shirt and have a size 36 waist) I saw how far I’d come (we wears the exact same size clothes I used to wear). It was like he and I both looked into a double mirror of sorts – him peering into his future and me into the past.

It was a remarkable conversation and made me think back to a few things…

…like the fact that if my current self went back to talk to my past 400-pound self I don’t think I could have believed I would have been able to lose that much weight.

…like the fact I needed to take a good, long look at myself and see me as other saw me, the big 400-pound man I had become – the first time in years I faced reality and the cold, hard and bitter truth.

…like the fact it took me bottoming out and saying “I won’t ever be heavier than this ever again” after taking a good, long stare at my aquarium photo to really begin my weight loss journey.

…like the fact I had to say “I want to be thinner more than I want that plate and/or kind of food,” and really stick to it pushing through the temptations to reach my goal (again, applying the Zen principle of removing clutter to best see the goal).

It was also a remarkable conversation because it made me think about the present and appreciating what I’ve already accomplished and, again, how Zen I need to be about all this. I have really and irrevocably changed my lifestyle for the better and it will be that way for the rest of my life. And while I still have to make choices every day about exercise and eating right, I don’t just know the path…I am walking the path. Thank you for reminding me of that, my friend.

So today’s weight loss blog is dedicated to my new friend, my new brother on this weight loss journey. Dude, you did a brave thing yesterday opening up and talking, and now you need to take that next, brave step and look at yourself and be honest with you about how much you weigh and how you look. It will hurt but it will be OK. It will be because you got a glimpse at the future. The future you want. The size you want to be. There will be stumbling blocks, too. I guarantee that. But how you deal with them will determine your success. If you stumble get right back up. It’s OK. I’ve stumbled and I’ve gotten right back up, too. Hell, I continue to stumble (as you read here in these virtual pages) but I still get up and back on track. You are so worth the pain, effort and commitment this will take. Trust me.

I’ve always said to everyone on a weight loss journey “we are all in this together.” And my friend, we are, and you will never have to feel alone again. I got you.

Do you guys ever watch Fox’s “Family Guy” TV show? Not only is it consistently funny but it has, pound for pound, the most references to pop culture of any show ever. And as its male “lead” Peter Griffin would say – “that’s freakin’ sweet!”

There was an episode a few years back where Peter, fed up with some such thing I can’t remember in my sleepy haze,” gets his own segment of the evening news called “What Grinds My Gears,” a segment where Peter just goes off on his idiotic rants about everything from people in the 19^th century to Lindsay Lohan.

Last night as I watched “Family Guy” I got to thinking about something that really, AND ABSOLUTELY TRUTHFULLY, grinds my gears – prejudice. It comes in all shapes and sizes, figuratively and literally, and is alive and well and living on network television. Yes, you may or may not be aware of this but while sitting and watching some of your favorite shows like “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol” you see (or in this case don’t see) the results of prejudice – prejudice against people of size. Yep, what “grinds my gears” are the networks who show my favorite shows (“V,” “Flash Forward” and ironically “Family Guy”) actually turned away a Lane Bryant ad because it was deemed “too racy.”

This past week the Columbus, Ohio-based clothing retailer charged that ABC and FOX rejected a commercial for its new Cacique lingerie line because of a bias against plus-sized women. The ad features size-16 New York fashion model Ashley Graham enjoying feeling sexy inside a hotel room in her Lane Byrant bra and panties, receiving text messages and arranging a “nooner,” a lunchtime naughty “rendezvous” with a lover. The company wanted to place the ad on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” and FOX’s “American Idol.”  However, ABC refused to show the commercial during “Dancing with the Stars” without restricting the spot to the final (least-watched) moments of the show,” and Fox demanded excessive re-edits and rebuffed it three times before relenting to air it during the final 10 minutes of “American Idol,” but only after we threatened to pull the ad buy.

As Peter Griffin would say, “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

According to ABC Vice President Julie Hoover. “We were willing to accommodate them (Lane Bryant), but they chose to seek publicity.” And I am so glad they did.  It’s hard enough in this word to be big as it is. However, without publicity, how can we know how people of size are treated in the consumer world?

Take director Kevin Smith’s recent woes aboard a Southwest Airline plane. Even though Smith acknowledge it was his wanting to take an earlier flight (one on which he purchased two seats) he was booted from a Southwest flight because he was allegedly deemed to large to fly “comfortably” in one seat. The situation may have died down since February but was, until now, the most recent (read, most visible) example of a (no pun intended) growing intolerance against people of size. If it wasn’t for the fact of his celebrity and his widely-read blog this situation would never have been known and brought into the light.

The same thing holds true for the Lane Bryant ad. Why does Lane Bryant have to extensively have to re-edit their ad (which is embedded here for you to see) when Victoria’s Secret runs ads that can be viewed as way racier? After learning about this prejudice I purposely watched spots for both and the Victoria Secret ad shows way more skin on way more women. It just so happens that those women are thin while the beautiful, full-figured model in the Lane Bryant ad is a size 16 – WHICH AIN’T THAT BIG TO BEGIN WITH!!!!!

Graham, in the New York Post, said she was shocked to learn the networks couldn’t and wouldn’t handle her ad. “I was very surprised,” she said. “The first thing I thought of was Victoria’s Secret commercials, and how they’re just as racy, if not more racy, than Lane Bryant.[The models are] just a lot smaller than what I am. They can’t handle bigger on TV, bigger boobs on a normal-sized woman on TV.”

That sucks. Why do I bring this up today? It’s not because I wanted to talk about scantily-clad women prancing around in underwear (well, OK. Maybe a little) It’s because we are heading into the weekend, prime shopping time for most people. It’s on my mind because people of size are beautiful, no matter the package in which they’re wrapped. We shop, we go out to eat, we see movies and we have feelings. We, too, like to see people like us on TV, both in shows and in ads, because we are a part of society. Some of us might be on a weight loss journey, and I fully recognize what got me to be 400 pounds was my own fault – overeating and lack of exercise – but that doesn’t mean we have to be re-edited and shuttled to the “back of the bus” in a TV show’s time slot because some of us are more “real” than the skinny so-and-sos in a Vicky’s Secret ad. Further, why can’t we be “normal characters” in ads or on shows – those who have just as much drama, laughter, sex and life – just like the thinner main characters on shows? We always seem, more times than not, to be the non-sexual, non-threatening comic relief in movies and shows. That sucks, and I, for one, am sick of it.

A Fox representative told AOL’s PopEater blog that the network did “balk at airing the Lane Bryant spot at 8 p.m. without edits,” but will air it uncut during the 9 p.m. hour of “American Idol” next week. Funny how it took some publicity to make them do this. Shame on you, Fox and ABC. That’s why I freaking “flash forward” through your commercials anyway.

We may be big but we sure as hell are beautiful. And good for Lane Bryant for sticking to it’s guns.

And that’s what “grinds my gears.” Back to you in the studio.