That No Yo-Yo Stuff

I was saddened to learn that Don Van Vliet, the artist formerly known as Captain Beefheart, died on Friday. During the late 60's and first half of the 70's I met him sufficiently often to be recognised and remembered, which was fine by me. He was one of the most dazzling, puzzling people I have ever met, a complex mish-mash of huckster and seer, with an underlying innocence and directness that was at the same time disarming and alarming. He also had a disconcerting ability to manifest something pretty damn close to magic powers; I twice saw him apologetically interrupt conversations with 'Excuse me a moment while I get that' just a second or two before the hotel room phone rang, and I saw him greet people by name who walked into a room behind him whom he could no way have seen. Coincidence? Probably, but downright eerie when you see it repeated. Ill for a long time with MS, gone a few days before his 70th birthday, and a day or two too late to make this year's Time obituary. RIP, Captain.

I'd been thinking of Don on Friday when I came up with the title for this piece. It's a pun around the title of a track on Don's Clear Spot album, which I can't be bothered to unpick right now, but it's one of the things which is obsessing me at the moment (along with 'my panniculus and how to resolve the impending and inevitable problem', worrying for the first time since university what grade I'll get....) - the need to ensure that this time really is the last time, and there's no backsliding into weight gain. When I get where I'm going, I've simply got to stay there. No alternative is acceptable.

I'll get back to this in a moment.

Lately, though, I've been reading a lot of weight loss journals kept on line by fellow strugglers against the avoir du pois and the adipose. I know it's strokes for folks, but there's one thing I see all over the place, don't understand and which makes me come out in a terribly judgemental rash, which I know is unfair and wrong of me but I can't hold it back. It's this.

I can't get a grip on how someone can go down the dieting route without committing to it 100%. What's the point? Some of the journals I've seen have rolled on over years with people making only modest losses over that time. Yet the fact that they are not only 'dieting' but have announced publicly that they are doing so, must mean that they are worried/concerned/unhappy with how they are, and suggests they are similarly oriented towards who and what they are. So why the dilettante dieting? Why the abject failure to really get a hold?

Is it that the demons are too powerful to effectively confront them ('I know that my really bad thing is soda, but I crave it so much?'), or is it a fear of really getting to grips with change ('I know I'm unhappy where I am so I'll aim to lose all this weight. Only what if I still don't like me when I arrive?'}. I think in most instances, it boils down to one key element: a lack of commitment, backed up by confusion or ignorance how to proceed.

This next bit is neither an advert nor a recommendation: it's just the way my thoughts run around this topic. If you're going to do this thing, it only makes sense to do it as thoroughly and as quickly as possible, get where you want to be, and then stay there. It's the reason I chose to kick start my weight loss with LighterLife, because it's radical, demands you step away from your old habits, and works bloody fast. I can't understand why people, sometimes with more to lose than me, choose routes which demand more of them for the diet to succeed. With LL it's easy: in its pure form it goes 'stop eating anything, except for our magic powders'. Keep taking the powders until you've landed at your target, and then manage the transfer to proper eating. The thing is, when you put yourself into their hands like that, trusting them to see you safely home, you're accepting the need for strict discipline throughout the diet process, which lays down some good principles on which to structure future eating. It's the Paresh Principle again: SDCM - self determination, control and motivation.

Where folks are spending for ever to shift twenty or thirty pounds, SDCM isn't working. They are not committed to what they are doing, and are failing to tackle the root causes of why they put that weight on themselves in the first place. Nobody did it to us but ourselves, and we can only undo what we did, and prevent its repetition by making some pretty fundamental changes. The trouble is, I'm not sure we're all sufficiently conscious of this, and I'm not sure we always know where to turn for help. Case in point, I mentioned the online forums earlier; there is a lot of good and positive support to be gained there, and also a lot of potentially damaging nonsense. How to distinguish? Ultimately, I suppose, you'll get as far into this stuff as the questions you allow yourself to ask.

While I was writing this, I received notice of a new posting from one of my forum friends, the redoubtable Mama Sebo. I hope she will forgive me if I quote her in full:

'I read the following today on a blog I have subscribed to for close to 10 years now -- always interesting and challenging -- what do you think is the subject of the blog?

'Quote:

Determination must be fed or it will fade.

Commitment, on the other hand, is settled, secure, irrevocable. Costs are no longer counted.

You’ve heard me say many times that one of our society’s most costly mistakes is this misbegotten belief that passion produces commitment. America’s high divorce rate testifies to our error.

Commitment, I believe, produces passion. I often meet people who sigh, “I just can’t find my passion.” To them I say, “Make a commitment. Fling yourself into it. Passion will make its debut soon after.”

When a commitment is fully settled in the heart, all concerns about time and money are erased; “It will take as long as it takes and it will cost what it costs.” When the objective is clear and your commitment is absolute, schedules and budgets no longer apply.

'He goes on to discuss his sense that actiing with determination can bring one to a state of commitment.

'MondayMorningMemo© of Roy H. Williams

'The blog is about marketing, about caring about your product enough to tell other people about it in a way that helps them to truly understand what you are selling. I was amazed as I read this at how it applied to my struggle here.'

It is only by commitment, to yourself and your hopes and aspirations for yourself, to your belief in the value that is unique within you, that you stand a hope of making this thing work, not just getting down but staying there.

This, really, is the bit I said I'd get back to. Our biggest challenge, food addicts all, is to redefine our relationship to food, to reset our perspectives, to allow ourselves to do this thing right, once and for all. Applying SDCM with single-mindedness and purpose, and each day growing stronger in our resolve to become the person we want to be, because really successful, lasting weight loss requires more of us than just losing weight.

Which brings us back to poor old Don. His was the singlemindedness of the artist fighting to enunciate his vision. This caused massive problems for those around him, not least his band-members whose tales of cult-like abuse, starvation, and harassment (especially during the creation of Trout Mask Replica) are legion. John French's book tells it all from the inside; not nice, but, having spoken to many of the people involved, they knew that what they were doing was bringing into reality a new vision, and they were willing participants, even though it hurt.

Some of Don's paintings, and the Magic Band on the beach at Cannes during the 1968 Midem, with the first song I ever heard them play. Along with hearing Little Richard shout A-wop bop-a loo-mop, a-lop bam-boom! some twelve years earlier, it was one of those rare moments when my earth tilted on its axis.

Another minor tilt occurred this morning, when I dressed. I put on a new pair of trousers, for the first time in years regular trousers bought from a regular High Street shop (M&S, to be specific) as opposed to a horrible, specialist dealer in shapeless clothes for the really fat bastard, one of the worst of which (I am almost ashamed to admit) is located here in Worthing (but the other end of the town from us, thankfully). A perfect palace of polyester. We wouldn't allow that to lower the tone of West Worthing, and certainly not here on the seafront.

Till the next time, by when we will both be a bit smaller,

Your old pal,

Fred


PS (about an hour later) the wonderful Mojo have just tweeted announcing their '13 Reasons Why We Love Captain Beefheart', loads of wonderful musical video for the adventurously inclined. Enjoy!