Only One More Day to Go By Jimmy Mehta
There are always ironies in life, or perhaps all life is an irony that makes God smile an inconsistency between what He expected from the Creation and what actually occurred. Ah, such are the thoughts that provoke us when the late-night film on the TV is one of those straight-to-DVD epics that can only be shown on terrestrial channels when all sane people have gone to bed. Whod be a night owl when the public library is closed and you cant pop round to borrow the next few unread tomes from the shelves. So we have only one more day to go in my diary. As the cycle goes around and comes around, the seasons change. This year, Christmas on phentermine meant no alcohol for me. Curiously, Ill be starting the Acomplia at the beginning of Lent which poses the question of what I am to give up. Its supposed to be something I do a lot of and find pleasure in. When youve just spent nearly two years reducing your lifes focus to the bare minimum of eating something which I used to take enormous pleasure in doing the idea of giving up something else does produce a slightly less than divine smile. Forty days of additional self-control for the good of my soul. Now thats a real challenge for someone whose whole life has become one long act of self-denial. Perhaps I should consider the idea of not starting the Acomplia. As a real test of my will power, could I really keep going without the crutch of medication? Theres my husband, family and friends to help me. But, somehow, the idea frightens me. So many other people seem to fail. They give up on the exercise first and then the diet slowly slips until theyre eating as they did before and, before you can say, “Its Palm Sunday”, all the weight has crept back. I wonder why that is. Why does the habit of eating less not stick? Its all very strange. A habit is something we learn (or should that be “acquire”) through frequent repetition so that it becomes an often unconscious pattern of behaviour. To be a habit, we should do it without thinking. So why dont good food practices become habits? Are those hormones in our heads so powerful that, through hunger and more subtle manipulation of our desires, all our best intentions can come to naught? After all, thats how Acomplias supposed to work. All that clever chemistry to block our hunger, to limit the way in which the pleasure centre in our brain rewards us. Now, thats fighting fire with fire. All those natural little cannabis-like chemicals floating around in our brains that would make us feel good are stopped in their tracks. You know, when I come to think about it, thats one of the reasons why I feel uncomfortable about taking either phentermine or Acomplia, or any medication truth be told. I liked the way my head worked before I started taking all these magic CB1 blockers. Now Im never really sure what is me and what is the pill. Perhaps thats why Im sitting here actually toying with the idea of not going on with these weight loss medications. Perhaps my will power is strong enough. And what better time to find out than during Lent?
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