Unrealistic expectations plague me. "Before" and "after" characterize advertisements for personal transformation. What happened to "during"? Where did "moderation" go? Come to think of it, I never saw an ad for "moderation". How decidedly unglamorous!

I am still grappling with the concept of "moderation". As an overweight young man sporting size 42 pants, I sought to become a 38. I acquired no transition wardrobe and the weight melted. In a size 32, I wanted to wear size 28. I wanted to be extra-small. I wanted to look at life from both sides.

I liked being a size 28 for five minutes, which was convenient since I was only able to stay a size 28 for five minutes. Even then, dizzied from malnourishment, I wanted more! I never learned to feel full, and it was almost natural that I hungered for more. That's the thing about addiction – you can never get full of something that offers you nothing. You always want more!

I can always go back to the diet ads that depict “after”. The joy! The triumph! The celebration! The liquor ads offer the promise of fun, the allure of another party is just a sip away. The cigarette ads beckon that you too should come to “flavor country”. Is that all there is? What if there were no liquor and no smoke to be had? Would life be a somber, bland happening (and how interesting that in our language, “sober” is a synonym for “somber”)? If only someone told me that achieving a size 28 waist would grant me nothing more and nothing less - no instant gratification, no dreams or schemes realized. I got hungry! I wanted that “after”. I wanted to celebrate the triumph in not using food, but I’m not sure I learned to genuinely experience happiness. This was never an issue raised at any Weight Watcher meeting I had attended; how do you begin to genuinely experience feeling when you’ve spent so long feeding instead of feeling?

These days, I am fashioning myself a realist. I can hold my own on the elliptical machine and I can comfortably lift 140 pounds on the butterfly press. I will also never have six pack abs or an absence of stretch marks. These are my battle wounds – and I won! There is definite fulfillment in that.

Abstaining from anything can be like holding your breath; you can only hold it for so long. Fully exhaled, I am now a size 32 and appalled by what I characterize as my own neo-obesity – this size 32. I kick myself! The false expectations I bought into had set me up for disappointment with healthy moderation, but I am learning… and if that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing!

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