So, when we left our hero, poor Captain Dadbod was in a pretty dark place. Heck! He wasn’t even Captian Dadbod yet! He was – okay. I can’t do this. I’m narrating my story from the 3rd person like some egomaniacal jackass!

Bottom line: I was in the midst of a sad transition period. Kinda like Ozzy Osborne when he was no longer releasing albums and had to do that reality show with his family. Or, Macaulay Culkin…ever.

Thankfully, things did eventually improve. I did meet my lovely life and found some semblance of normality in my non-superhero daily existence. But I never really got control of my health the way I wanted.

It was an endless cycle, really. I’d do the diet deprivation thing and run my butt off with the help of health supplements. For instance, HYDE energy drink, a “booster” with enough caffeine to turn a person into, well, a monster.

Typical of a man on a treadmill, in every instance, I lost weight as quickly as I could. The goal was ever-present, and I did what was “necessary” to stick with it.

So, yes, I’d drop the weight and declare myself “lord and victor of all I survey.” 

SEVERAL TIMES.

Of course, with no plan to maintain what I’d lost, I’d eventually give up the “specialized diet gruel,” blow off the gym and go back to eating tons of whatever I wanted. I’d usually kick that off with a celebration of my successful attempt, rewarding myself with copious amounts of sugar, fat, and whatever else my body had been craving for months – all dumped down my pudgy powered gullet in one night.

Two of three turns on that rollercoaster ride and I eventually settled into a state of complacency. For all you superhero aficionados out there, think of this as that moment at the drive-through where you’ve pulled up to the outside menu and you hear: “Good evening, sir This is General Zod. May I take your order?” You don’t even care. Every shred of good judgment has been Thaos-snapped away. You think to yourself. “Tell hell with the menu. I’ll take it all! TWICE!”

Rock. Meet Bottom.

The day I truly hit rock bottom was when I stepped on a scale at the doctor’s office. Now, anyone who had a check-up in the last decade knows that the scale at EVERY GP’s lair is ten pounds heavier than the reality of your bathroom Richter scale at home. It’s how they justify your reason for being there before the doctor even walks in the room.

Sneaky, huh? 

Well, even though I was cognizant of that when the scale read 200lbs, I still freaked out. Which, of course, is the reaction they wanted. Now, in my experience, the shelf life of a person’s state of panic peeks walking out the clinic doors and subsides by the time they reach the closest Duncan Donuts.

But not me! I let it ruminate. I did what I always did. Went home, told the wife to hide the candy, cease production of every sweet treat she’s ever made for me, and put a parental lock-out on any website that offered pizza, cookies, cake, or any other form of sustenance that might provide the slightest shred of pleasure. Even the grocery store’s frozen freezer crap pizza-in-a-box.

What do I want on my Tombstone? “I told you I was sick!”

The Temple of Noom

So, before I go any further, let me say that this is not a paid endorsement. However, if something from Noom wants to pay me money to promote em’, I’ll be their Huckleberry.

I said the ads just like you, and, while sincerity can be faked by paid actors, I got the sense that the testimonials were coming from real people. And, the fact that they were talking about what, where, and why you eat was a novel concept.

Let me also say, I don’t care for “diets.” However, a lot of them have good ideas that you can pull from to create a manageable way of getting a handle on the whole “getting in shape” thing.

Truth is, the secret is about 80% diet and 20% workout plan: a fact that I discovered over the last eight months. In that time, I was able to lose the same amount of weight that I’d lost in half the time on those rollercoaster diets. So, why so sluggish this time? Well, if you’ve seen the news in the last week, you know it’s not because of a middle-aged metabolism.

Can’t lean on that one anymore.

Truth is, I put the Noom app to the test. I decided to take my time. I wanted to make sure whatever food and exercise I added, modified, or removed could be something I could maintain over the long haul once I reached my goal.

I purposely screwed up, blew my calorie budget, stopped the gym for a few weeks, quit weighing myself etc.

Then I got back on track and clocked how long it would take me to rebound. That’s where the Noom platform worked because I could keep a log of what I was eating, how many calories I could consume and still lose.

But more importantly, in “doing the Noom thing,” as I like to say, I figured out why I had so many issues with what and why I was eating.  Forget the scale, there was a ton of internal work for the head and heart too. I realized that I’m an emotional eater, a reactionary eater. Piss me off and pass the sugar. That was my MO.

Insane in the Maintain

I’m still struggling with that now. Likely will for the rest of my existence. Even though I’m probably in the best consistent shape of my life since arriving on this planet, I still have to check my motivations before I shovel it in. Yellow sun or no, sugar is my kryptonite. But that’s ok. I’ll commit to reasonable maintenance. Turns out that’s even harder than losing weight.

But, that’s okay. Too fat to fly or not, I think this challenge is more important. If I never get my powers back, I’ll be cool with it. Because this is one I can create on my own. And if I’m successful, that means I’ve proven a very important point.

ALL of us have a superpower waiting to be used. It’s called human will, and if used correctly, it can make us unstoppable.