Dearest Rachel –
I know that, over the past year or so that I’ve combined watching what I eat with a regular pattern of exercising, I’ve managed to get myself down to a reasonable (if not yet necessarily ideal) weight. I’ve shed more than fifty pounds, to the point where I’ve spent the last couple of months hovering within a few pounds on either side of two twenty-five, after topping out at just about two-eighty at the time of your departure (ironically, nowadays I probably would have the energy to take that “one last ride” down the hill that I couldn’t bring myself to bother with back then. What that would have resulted in is anyone’s guess). While the progress has been gradual enough that I don’t notice it on a day-over-day basis, I’ve been aware that I’ve needed to tighten my belt on my 40-inch waist pants, with the promise to myself that I’ll do something about my wardrobe at some point in the near future – maybe even on this cruise, as I travel to various places where much of the clothing we wear here in America is made.
What hadn’t occurred to me was just how much of a difference had been made to date. I spent the better part of our marriage with a 38-inch waist, and it was only perhaps in the last decade that I’d conceded the battle of the bulge, and switched to something larger and more comfortable – to say nothing of something that wouldn’t make me look like “ten pounds in a five pound sack,” as your mom would say. To be sure, it made it easy to remember my dimensions – forty by thirty, a couple of nice round (even if that felt a little too ‘on the nose’) numbers – when it came to buying clothes. But much like when I went on blood pressure medication for the first time, it was with a certain amount of chagrin, knowing that this change was probably going to be a permanent situation.
To be sure, I didn’t dwell on it too much; you probably recall me commenting many times over about how “living right” – watching one’s diet and exercising regularly, stuff like that – didn’t mean that one would live longer, but that it would just feel like it, due to all the self-denial. I enjoyed being able to eat, and conversely, didn’t really enjoy putting myself through anything to burn it off. Granted, I also didn’t think that putting myself through such a regimen would have these kind of results, either, and concluded that the level of mortification I would have to put myself through for the limited results I expected to get wouldn’t be worth it. So, sure, there were twinges of conscience that told me ‘I really ought to do something about this,’ but much like you and your struggles with keeping the house in order, I gave it up because, upon weighing the anticipated effort against the expected effects, I assumed the former would overwhelm the latter. With that sort of cost-benefit analysis, does it come as any surprise that we both let things slide?
But with you going, and a new motivation to get myself into shape, I discovered that I had overestimated the amount of effort (or maybe not; there were times when the workout was… challenging… but it did get easier over time) and underestimated the results. There was, if you recall, a period where I was losing ten pounds a month for several months in a row. Granted, that’s tapered off over the last month and a half, but that could just as easily be attributed to the fact that, between the holidays and my gym membership expiring, I haven’t tried nearly as hard to do everything to stay in shape. As a result, I haven’t been dropping the weight I used to, but I’m not putting it on either. So that’s something.
All of which brings me to yesterday afternoon, when I returned to the folks’ house on my way back from seeing Dad. As I left, mom mentioned that there were a couple of pairs of pants that they had bought for him a while back only to find out that he was still losing weight himself, and they no longer fit him. Would I be willing to try them on, and if so, and they fit me, did I want them?
Well, you know the answer to those questions, both the initial and the final one. There’s no point in letting stuff like that go to waste, especially if they fit around my waist. And since I had plans to take care of a few things while I was at the ‘office’ anyway, I made sure to pop them on, and see how they fit. I expected them to be a bit snug, since I was accustomed to my 40 inch pants (which, to be fair, I have to belt rather tightly in order to keep them on, and the inches that fold in upon themselves make them seem more tight than you’d expect them to be). But, apart from a little difficulty in getting the fly button fastened, they didn’t feel what I would call snug at all. Just… secure, I guess I’d call it. All well and good, and since I needed something a little dressier than my blue and black jeans, I decided I could even take them with me on this trip. So I followed them up, put them back on their hangers, and set them on the bed while I got my jeans back on.
And that’s when I noticed something strange about these hand me downs from Dad:
Do you see it, honey? These pants aren’t a reduction by the usual two inches from my previous wardrobe; this is a drop of four inches. I’m wearing thirty-six inch pants, and they’re comfortable.
I never would’ve expected this.
Come to think of it, I was also a little surprised to see that the inseam is twenty-nine inches as well; have I lost an inch off my legs or something? I would’ve expected these to look like ‘floods,’ but no, not really. Maybe I haven’t concerned myself with this measurement before, since off-the-rack stuff tends to vary in increments of two inches. But hey, maybe this fits just that much better.
It’s just one more pleasant reminder that I’m on the right track. Not necessarily on the mend, but doing better. Just make sure to keep an eye on me, honey, and wish me luck. I’m still going to need it.
Letters to Rachel 