The day I got fat

Posted on August 24, 2010 by Daniel

egg-mcmuffinI can tell you the exact day I started to get fat. I must have been 6. My Aunt Ree (as we called her) was watching me that day. We went for a walk downtown and as a special treat she bought me an Egg McMuffin. I had never tasted anything like it. I gobbled it down and in an uncharacteristic act of greed that changed my life forever, I begged for another. I could have eaten twenty of them.

I remember it so clearly, because I had never experienced such a need for food before. Flavor exploded through my developing mind and seemed to fill a void I didn’t even know I had. I was in full psychophysiological overload and food would never be the same for me. To this day, I have never found a food or drug to duplicate that experience and something about it changed my brain dramatically. It was like a gene kicked in and I was from that moment on utterly addicted to food.

The story is mostly down hill from there. I remember becoming increasingly demanding at breakfast. Nothing was good enough if it didn’t have an egg, cheese and meat. My grandmother perfected them adding a richer,creamer cheese and buttery bread to the mix. Breakfast became at least two of these sandwiches and sometimes a third. I would throw a fit if it was anything else.

Later on, I would come to understand this behavior as binging, but not until I was much older. I soon found other foods that I could not resist. Each filling the void just a little and leaving me momentarily sated. I recall one time, eating a jar of peanut butter on a dozen heavily buttered English muffins. I would routinely eat three of four.

In my adult years, it became a joke to me. I mean, I knew something was wrong. People don’t eat a 2 pound burrito with a 32oz soda and then order a foot and a half long hot-dog from the cart outside. But it was a joke non-the-less. I laughed about it and indulged the behavior. I bragged about how much I could eat and reveled in the awe people showed when I lived up to my boasting.

When I was 30 I was 330 pounds. In pictures of me from my 30th birthday party, I had a bushy beard and looked more like a gorilla than a human. I had high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and fatty liver. My doctor at the time told me, if I did not loose weight I was going to die of cirrhosis. I believed her. I panicked. She told me I would probably need a gastric bypass, but first I had to “try and fail at a couple of diets first.”

Relating this to my friend Vinny, he suggested that I try Atkins. I have to tell you, it sounded moronic, but on my doctors advice, I had to fail at a couple of diets before I could get the help I needed and I was sure this one was going to fail fast and hard. Was I ever wrr wrrr wrrr — poorly informed.

Those of you who know me, know that the years that followed were the healthiest years of my life. I lost 132lbs. I exercised daily. I ran. I danced. I played Ultimate Frisbee and I walked everywhere. This was a magic time for me and it lasted a few years.

I put a few pounds back on because of stress and a few more because of life style changes, but I had it under control. In three years I put on about 40lbs, but I felt fantastic and with a net loss of 90lbs I still felt successful. Then my Grandmother died and I started eating.

Two years ago, at 280lbs I found out I have Type II diabetes — the kind people get from eating too many carbohydrates at too many meals, over too long a span of time. My body just could not keep up with the amount of simple carbohydrates I ate. My health went though a number of minor and major setbacks and by 37 I was resolved to a sedentary life strung out by a hand full of pills three times a day.

Last August I got married. I was 320lbs on my wedding day. All of my groomsman looked sharp and sophisticated in their tuxes (and Jeff in his uniform) and I felt like a clown in an ill fitting suit with a backless vest and a puffy shirt. I didn’t get to enjoy the first year of my marriage the way I should have. I was too busy locked in my head eating myself to death. I didn’t want to do anything. Ashamed of what I had become (again), I didn’t want to socialize. I stopped doing the things I love to do and replaced them with couch time.

A few months ago, it came to a head. I was eating every meal until my sides hurt and my chest ached. My blood sugar was so high, that the pills stopped working. I was facing insulin. My liver was fatty again. I was on two pills for blood pressure, pills for sugar, pills for migraine headaches, pills for aches and pains and a CPAP machine to keep me breathing in my sleep. I was a mess. But worst of all, my brand new marriage and my beautiful and loving wife suffered for my sins.

Recently, I started dieting again. At first I did it for my wife and the new life we are trying to make together, but now I’m doing it for myself too. Feeling this good again is a huge motivator. Atkins may not be right for everyone, but it’s right for me. I’ve lost 45lbs. I’m off all of my medications. I am becoming active again. I can walk and jog and play without getting winded. My sugar is under control. My blood pressure is down. My cholesterol and liver are normalizing and I feel great.

I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the weight drop off, becoming more active and being the person my wife deserves to be married to. There will be pit falls ahead. I fell in one on Sunday, which is what inspired this post. Thirty minutes of rapturous Chinese food in enormous quantities has been followed by two and a half days of chest pain and depression. But no matter what traps I fall into, I am committed to reclaiming my victory over food. I’m confident that I’m going to get back down to a healthy weight and be in fantastic shape for whatever is next.

I remember the day I started to get fat and in ten years I hope to be writing a blog post about the day I chose to change my behavior and lived to tell about it.

Cheers,

-=Daniel=-

Posted in Bio, words on a topic | Leave a comment

Creation, Evolution, and a little Science Fiction

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Daniel


I’m not sure how to address this rather delicate topic, so forgive me if my introduction is a bit clumsy. It’s not my desire or intent to be inflammatory, and yet I find myself wanting to talk about a topic that few people seem to be able to discuss rationally. I will site the american political theater as an example.

I have never understood why some people insist that creationism and evolution are incompatible. To me the conflict only arises when people over reach the perspective they are supporting and try to assert dominion over the opposing theory. For example, when the creationist says that we were created by God and so did not evolve from monkeys, they are claiming to know the methods used by God to create man and all of the steps in the processes and all of the forms of man between dust and what we are now. The last time I checked the bible does not go into such detail. Even if we were “fashioned from dust” or made from a rib, there is not a lot of description to suggest how that fashioning occurred. This is precisely where the conversation gets interesting to me and the point at which most people assert inherent incompatibility where neither belief supports it.

Now, the inherent contradiction and inconsistencies in Genesis have been argued to the point of absurdity, so I wont dwell on this, instead I am going to focus on the argument that because there is so much evidence to support evolution, creationism cannot be true. I find this argument to be, well, overreaching and absurd. And so to show how there is really no contradiction here, I’m going to delve into a little science fiction.

Growing up, I always loved Star Trek, and if you are a fan, you may already know where I am going with this. On the show, there was a device, which while not talked about often was the single most important device in all of Star Trek. More so even than the warp engine, the replicator is the key to all of Star Trek. This device supports the Federations economy freeing them so spend seemingly endless resources on space exploration. So even in those simple terms, its of monumental importance.

The idea of the replicator seems to make sense, even from a Scientific perspective. The idea is simple. Everything is made of atoms and molecules, and therefore with sufficient power and an understanding of how the molecules are arranged in an item, it could theoretically be constructed from raw energy. The idea sounds reasonably sound, and while well past the scope of modern technology, the logic certainly follows. If you understand all of the parts of a thing, what it is made of and how those parts are ordered and held together, than you can replicate that thing. Pretty straight forward.

Now, if you are still with me, I would like to present as an example, not a watch — that’s been done, but rather a cherry pie. “Computer. Cherry pie. Hot. Ala mode.” Yummy. Too bad we are not going to eat this cherry pie. We are going to bring it to a lab and let some scientists analyze it. That is after all what scientists do.

We ask the scientist, to tell us everything they can about this cherry pie. The scientists take our cherry pie and first analyzes it for content. They find sugar, salt, flour, cherries, eggs, butter and a whole host of other common cooking ingredients and as long as they are naming these parts, they seem right on track. They tell us about the chemical composition, the arrangement of the atoms and the molecules and how all the pieces work together to form, not just any pie, but a cherry pie. They use empirical evidence to deduce the nature of the pie and the information we get is of a first rate quality and we are pleased.

Now, we say to the Scientist, can you tell us anything else about the pie, and here is where things get wonky. Using inductive reasoning, the Scientist begins to tell us the story of the cherry pie. Their story, includes, bakers, ovens, pie plates, cherry trees, fields of wheat, chickens farms, salt mines and other things that a rational mind is likely to invoke when telling the complete story of the pie. Moreover they tell us a story that occurs in time and offer a suggestion about the age of the pie they are examining.

We, however, know that this pie came from a replicator and is little more than an arrangement of molecules put together in a way that duplicates some specific cherry pie recipe. We know the exact age of the pie, because we were there when it was replicated and we know that contrary to the very sound inductive reasoning telling us the story of the pie, the story quite simply does not match the true story of the pie, because the pie was created as whole, all at once, and did not evolve over time from a collection of parts — at least not in the conventional way.

The argument between Creationists and Evolutionist is much like the confusion over the origin of our replicated pie. Even though there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to support the idea of evolution, there is nothing in that evidence to preclude the possibility of creation. Any story extracted form the evidence is inductive and goes beyond the deductive information gained from the empirical approach or the scientific method.

More over, if you accept the concept behind the replicator, the possibility of creationism stops being so controversial and becomes a matter of scale. “Magical,” only in that the “technology” is so far advanced. In sort, there is no real conflict between these two ideas so long as the evolutionists stick to the deductive data and don’t delved off into story telling and the creationist don’t claim to know the methods by which the universe was created.

Cheers,

-=Daniel=-

Posted in Faith, Philosophy | Leave a comment

Depression

Posted on July 31, 2010 by Daniel

blue fire

blue fire

I cannot even imagine what it must be like living with me. If you know me, you know I have a very large personality and I don’t get smaller when the room gets more crowded. I believe that I’m kind, friendly, and likable and if the quality of my friends is any testament to the quality of my character, I could not ask for better references. If fact, when it comes to friends, family and my wife (who is both), I may well be the luckiest person alive.

But for all I have going for me, I cannot imagine for a short minute how anyone could stand to live with me. Let me try to explain. If I have any particular gift in this world and skill that out shines all the others, it is the ability to imagine everything around me, every feature and facet of my life different — better. I see the flaws in every thing. I see how everything can be improved. The things I have, the things I do, the things I see — are always overshadowed by the things that could have been that should have been, that could be.

That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate or value the things I have or the things I do. No that’s not the case at all. It’s just that I see everything as something in progress. Nothing is ever the final product. In a sense, I’m an eternal optimist, because I believe in the unfailing ability for things to improve, to be improved to change for the better.

When a see a flaw in something, it strikes me on an intellectual level and I gain a lot of pleasure from thinking about how it could be better. Flaws in things engage my imagination, give me things to think about, occupy my mind and challenge me to improve. My dark vision is a central player in my inner life, in my inner struggle and in my inner movement. All of my motivation for as long as I can remember, has been pulled from this pool of critique and a strong desire to improve my world. This can be my greatest source of joy and happiness, but from this inner truth, three problems emerge.

The first and probably the most obvious is that I don’t typically express my critique with any elegance or grace. In my mind, I may look at something I have done and think about how I could improve upon the process, but by the time it gets to my mouth, I may bark out “It’s shit.” Strike one. Of all the bad traits to bring to a relationship, wow, that HAS TO top the list. But that’s not even the worst of it.

The second and less obvious way my dark vision presents a problem is that I cannot turn it off. It’s always there sucking the life and the joy out of everything. I see the flaws in most things and I cannot turn it off no matter how I try. Typically, while everyone is standing around with joy and wonder at some great event or object, I pray that no one will force me to lie by asking my opinion — or worse, that I wont be able to lie and I’ll ruin someone else’s happiness. I cannot count on one hand how many times people have been celebrating all around me and I feel like the only person who was not invited to the party or didn’t get the joke, because I cannot see past some glaring flaw that doesn’t seem to bother anyone else; or if it does, they have no problem ignoring it. In these moments, I just don’t get how people can be happy with mediocrity. I want to shout, “don’t you see it? Don’t you get it? You’re happy for nothing! It’s all wrong!” I miss out on a lot of joy because if this. Strike two.

Then there is the third way that this way of seeing the world affects me. I think its depression. I start to think about my life as it is compared to my life as I believe it should be and they don’t match up. I think about all the things I’m doing right and all the good advice I’ve taken. I think about all the promises I believed, and all the hoops I’ve jumped through. I think back on all the turns I’ve taken through the maze and when don’t feel any closer to the cheese, my dark vision turns inward and I cannot be reasoned with. There is no light bright enough, joke funny enough or no poem enchanted enough to get through to me and I consume myself in monstrously vicious circles of logic trying desperately to see the pattern, the flaw, the mistake, the wrong turn, the one thing or trait that will explain why things that are so glaringly self-evident to me are missed by those with the power to give opportunities. I have a huge blind spot. I cannot see the one flaw in myself, that’s holding me back. I must be doing something wrong and it eats me alive. Depression. Strike Three.

And there is the problem. Is there something wrong with me? As I tear through myself trying to find the thing I’ve done wrong, or over looked — trying to find the way up and out of my situation, am I even looking in the right place? Maybe I am doing everything right. Is the problem external and out of my control, or am I somehow sabotaging myself? Is it possible that there just are not enough opportunities to go around or am I some how closed to the ones that are there? Could I be sending out energy, vibes, or maybe signals, that keep the things I want away, or is it because I live in a pond that doesn’t have enough food for all the fish?

I don’t know. I may never know. But what I do know, is that I cannot even imagine what it must be like living with me and my depression.

Posted in words on a topic | Leave a comment

Will you sign my Kindle?

Posted on July 30, 2010 by Daniel

Kindle with signature "To my biggest Fan yours always Daniel J J Lefebvre

I’m going to start by disclosing my bias. I love books. I read all the time, and getting rid of a book is one of the hardest things for me to do. At one point, I had several hundred books all neatly arranged in my basement office and others scattered around the house. I’ve always felt that a book was a treasure — something to be valued and held on to.

I’ve always enjoyed reading books, but they are not perfect — in fact, they are far from it.

For starters I lost that entire collection when the basement flooded. Even the books that did not directly get wet absorbed so much moisture that they were swollen and musty. Then there are the books with spines so tight that you wind up breaking the binding just to see what’s on the page. Books don’t have sizable fonts and they don’t come with their own lights for night reading. Books collect dust, turn yellow and get brittle with time. Books also take up quite a bit of space.

On the other hand, E-books readers don’t take up much space, are easy to dust and your entire library can be backed up and carried around. They pretty much succeed in every way that books fail — provided you remember to keep the batteries charged. But as I was reading a kindle file on my Droid X today and I thought, “I wonder if I’ll meet this author at the convention next week… I could have them…. Oh Crap.” No. I cannot have them sign the book, because I don’t own the book. All I have are these bits on a hard drive,

Suddenly, the kindle file I was reading became very impersonal. I realized that the very nature of an e-book, the thing that makes it so handy, so compact, so easily replaced keeps it from being a treasure. Keeps it from having value beyond the words and pictures inside. No, e-books are not trophies and don’t have much value as collectibles. Like so many things in this new world, they are just bits that you use up and then erase.

With this realization, I also realized that I wont stop buying e-books. I’ll always want a portable reference library in my pocket and the convenience of reading in other wise inconvenient places, under otherwise inconvenient circumstances. So for me, there is a place for kindle, even though I’ll always prefer books. And I guess if an e-book is good enough, I could always say “Excuse Mr. Author. Will you sign my Kindle?”

Posted in Technology, words on a topic | 1 Comment

Philosophy…

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Daniel

Philosophy is: unrequited love.
An echo down an empty canyon
Man crying out to a god
Who’s reply is a poem
Written in wind and water

Only a painter: knows God
Can put shadow next to light and say
“It is good” “There is a plan”
“Stand here and you will see that”
“There is no tragedy here”

Only an Artist: loves truly his work
Walks away from it to let it stand
On its own to find meaning
Weeping when loves work is mocked
By those standing too close to see

Philosophy seeks for wisdom and truth
But the artist knows it’s not lost
It is just too big for words
Life is just too big for words
And we are all standing too close.

-=Daniel=-

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Superman

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Daniel

I’m not superman.
Fuck that
Guy in red tights afraid of little green rocks
I’m a different sort of hero
One with no power of my own
No magic hammer or horn
No power to feed the masses
Or heal the sick

I’ll never fly like Superman,
Fight like Batman
Swing free like Spiderman
Go into a rage like the Hulk

I’ll never paint like D’Vinicci
Sculpt like Michael Angelo
Write like Tolstoy
Or make music like Beethoven

I’ll never heal like Jesus
Transcend like Buddha
Walk through heaven like Mohamed
Or wrestle daevas like Zoroaster

I am weak, and humbled by life
I fear bullets and snakes,
I give in to temptation
My head and heart are human

I am weak and mortal
Too fragile for this world
In the darkness I cry out
And I am too frightened to hear a reply

Then I reach my hand to God
Through his touch I can do anything
Through his grace I can heal the sick
In his arms I know love and have love to give
I’m a different sort of hero
One with no power of my own

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

The Actor

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Daniel

I am the actor
The Thespian
The Fool

To the world a cat
Looking at the Queen
Not a man
With Longing in his heart

I smile and laugh
While I die
I die and rot
While I heal

I am the leper
With a face
I starve while
While I feed

I am the actor
The Thespian
The fool

I am the unloved lover
Moved by the unmoving
The Unthought thought
Known by all — held by none

The prince of lies
Telling truth
The prince of peace
Locked in battle

My face famous
My skill unknown
My deception complete
My pain mine onto me

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

The Dance

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Daniel

Two lovers dance with swords held tight
Will their thrusts find flesh this night?
They circle, dodge, jab and leap
Yet between them, there is distance deep

Yearning passions swinging wide
Yet parried, blocked and turned aside
They spin and twirl yet never touch
Avoiding what they want so much

Exhaustion threats to end the dance
Mistakes are made in rushed advance
Careless moves bring tensions high
Two lovers leave with no goodbye

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Come Row With Me

Posted on July 28, 2010 by Daniel

We have seen such wind and storm
As man or beast has ever known
And I ask of you this love
Send me not to shore alone

And leave me not at sea to drown
But row with me forever more,
Until our souls find paradise
And we serenity ashore

Hold me true throughout the day
In sunlight dance in summer’s heat
Feel the wind-song in your hair
And earthen warmth below your feet

Then come to me when light is gone
Mourn with me the passing day
Take shelter in my open arms
And pass with me the night away

Come row with me on waters calm
To land ahead and watch the tide
Where we can weather any storm
While gently rowing side by side

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Hello World

Posted on July 1, 2010 by Daniel

Funny thing happened on the way to my blog — all the funny, interesting, intelligent and highly articulate thoughts and insights rolling around in my head found better places to hangout. My mind went blank. I regularly participate in forums. I post on other peoples blogs, and micro blogs daily. Ask me about anything I find interesting and I’ll jabber on until your ears bleed and there is no shortage of things that I find interesting. I’m a thinker a writer and a teacher by nature. What’s in my head is always looking for new ways to get out — writing, music, art, web programming, good conversation and now blogging. But somehow on my way here I forgot what I wanted to say.

So I’ll start with a confession. Blogging is not exactly new to me. I was a contributing editor on a ‘Zine,’ which if you don’t know was the internet precursor to the blog. I wrote regular editorials, some of which were picked up and debated all over the internet, some of which were quickly forgotten (for which I’m grateful) and some of them were lost with various system crashes on various systems. All that being said, the writing I did there, was very much akin to what’s come to be called blog writing. So, to say this is my first day with my new blog, is only true in so far as this blog is new.

So, here I am writing about the topic I know best — me. This is my first post after all, and I should be telling you about me, so you can decide whether to keep reading or move along and so, a brief bio seems appropriate; but alas I have nothing keen to say. I could say that I’ve been a CIS teacher for the last ten years. I could say that I have a BA in Philosophy or I could say that I have done graduate work in Education and computer programming, but somehow that doesn’t quite measure up to the grandiose plans I had for my first posting. All that cleverness gone, I’m inclined to just say “Hello World” and be done with it.

Eventually, when the nerves settle and the noise in my head starts firing on all cylinders, I’ll fill these pages with all sorts of interesting commentary, but for now in this post I think I’ve said enough to let you get a feel for my rhythm, and to tell that I’m probably neurotic enough to be interesting, if not inherently worth reading. So that said, I’ll take the advice of a good friend and say:

#include
int main()
{
printf("hello, world");
return 0;
}

-=Daniel=-

Posted in words on a topic | Leave a comment