Losing Weight Wasn't the Goal - Oct. 13, 2021

A vegan, a person on a gluten-free diet, and a person who does Crossfit walk into a bar. How do I know? Because none of them would shut up about it.

If you haven’t heard this joke before, you can probably relate. I know I can. I remember meeting Sarah on Day 1 at a new job. Not only did she tell me her ex-husband came out as transsexual and divorced her, she then proudly stated she was gluten-free and proceeded to reaffirm this stance to me daily during my entire employment there.

I promised myself when I radically shifted my diet in June I wouldn’t become one of those idiots. Well, I’m about to become one of those idiots. Sigh.

I stepped on the scale this morning and weighed in at 182.8. When I did the same thing back in June after wondering why I was able to fit into only two pairs of my work pants, it read 213.7. Everything felt horrible back then. I was in the midst of Longhaul Covid hell, I’d just come off a round of high-dose steroids attempting to fix a Covid-caused mouth issue that still hasn’t improved, and none of my clothes felt right. I was puffy, inflamed and jiggly.

On June 2, I went to a functional medicine doctor. She ordered a new round of different blood tests — 11 tubes in all — and a few weeks later, I saw her again to go over the results. Inflammation was my enemy. Gluten, dairy and a whole host of other things were contributing to it. So I would need to radically change my diet.

As she went over what I could and couldn’t — or at least should and shouldn’t — eat, I was panicky. No pizza? No pie? No… bacon?! When she paused, I quickly jumped in: “So, like, um, how closely should I adhere to this?” which was short for, “You’ve got to be freaking kidding, right?”

“Well,” she said, staring at me seriously. “That depends. How bad do you feel?”

Yeaaah…

I went home and talked to Wifey Poo. I told her this was what I was going to do, that I was sick of being sick, and nothing else had worked so why not try it? She immediately agreed to join me in my food overhaul.

So I did it. I cut out the things that were said to cause inflammation. I started thinking of food in an entirely different way — as fuel for the machine that is me instead of as a thing that goes with social interactions or creates pleasure or comfort.

And I became one of those annoying gluten-free people. Silently, until now, which proves it is, indeed, possible.

I didn’t do this to lose weight. I did this because I felt like shit and didn’t want to feel like shit and had tried everything else to not feel like shit and still felt like shit. I had nothing to lose and nothing else left to try.

Four months later, I feel in so many ways better than I have not just since before Covid kicked me in the balls, but in the past 20 years. I have energy that carries me throughout the day. My brain fog is largely gone. I’m mentally healthier than I have been in a long time.

And oh yeah I lost 30 pounds.

I’m happy that my pants fit — that they’re even too loose now. I’m glad I can wear my T-shirts without showing my manboobs, err, huge pectoral muscles.

But the weight loss? That’s just a by-product of changing how I look at food, how I look at myself. Instead of a dumpy old Datsun, I’m a finely engineered Ferrari that needs the best fuel.

So I don’t eat the stuff I used to love. I got through the readjustment (read: withdrawal) caused by ditching unnatural sugars. Yes, I still allow myself one cheat day a month, in which I still keep things under control but chow down on a piece of pizza or some wings or a bowl of ice cream.

But even then, I keep it in moderation. Not because I’m concerned about my weight. I just don’t want to wake up in the morning and feel like I used to feel. So that’s my motivation. That’s why I’ve lost 30 pounds. That’s why I’m confident I’ll never step on a scale and see a “2” as the first number ever again.

It’s not about the weight. It’s about living a better life.

Gas Wars

One of my earliest memories is being in the back seat of the car Mom was driving, waiting in line to get gas. Our car’s license plate — the old orange New York version — started with an even number, which meant that Tuesday was a government-approved day to fill up. The line was huge — yes, for an impatient 4-year-old, but also for an impatient Mom and a whole host of other impatient people who didn’t like the current president.

We’re in another energy crisis right now, though not as bad as the late 1970s. Prices are jumping, oil’s above $80 a barrel, and countries not exactly friendly to our ideals still are calling the shots.

But there are still moments of levity in it for me.

There are two gas stations at the exit I take to get home after work. Mr. Fuel is on the left side of the road. I remember when Mr. Fuel was built. I would see it when I would come to Future Wifey Poo’s house while we were dating. Gas was $0.98. Booyah.

On the right side is Travel America. I’m not sure when that was built, but it’s a bit down the service road, and it’s the favorite of truckers traveling down Interstate 70. I don’t go there often because getting in and out behind slow 18-wheelers is annoying at the end of a long day.

But.

Every once in a while, Travel America sticks a big middle finger up in the direction of Mr. Fuel and drops its gas prices a few cents lower than its rival. And then Mr. Fuel, not being one to take that shit lying down, drops his prices a few cents below Mr. T&A. It happened again yesterday.

I love this. And not for the economic benefit I get by being able to fill my tank for less money. After all, it’s a freaking Nissan Versa. It has a 12-gallon tank and gets 6 billion miles a gallon. Fuel isn’t a huge expense in my life. No. I get the joy from knowing — or at least imagining — there’s someone at each station looking across at his rival and getting all Yosemite Sam when the other guy lowers his prices.

The ‘Don’t Blame Me, I Didn’t Say It’ of the Day

‘I’m sorry, I never meant to hurt anyone.’
Jon Gruden, after resigning from his job as coach of the oakland los angeles oakland las vegas raiders

So here’s the thing: There aren’t too many people out there who mean to hurt someone. You’ve got your loony-toons, bullies, murderers and that one girl who took the heartfelt letter I wrote her in ninth grade and read it to her entire school bus. But in general, the vast majority of people hurt others without intending anything ill.

That doesn’t absolve them from the responsibility for the hurt they caused, and “I didn’t mean to” isn’t a good excuse.

If you want to say that cancel culture, in some circumstances, goes too far, I’ll allow you to take a step down that plank. If you’d like to follow up with, “But he wrote it 10 years ago,” hey, have at it… that board gets kinda shaky when you’re at the end.

Nevertheless, the way Gruden handled the situation once his first comment dropped about the size of a Black man’s lips — by saying it had nothing to do with race but rather was a little quip he frequently used to refer to people he thought were lying — was something I, as a crisis communicator, knew wasn’t going to end well. It was a good try to play the “The Lips Are Close Enough to Pinocchio’s Nose That Maybe People Won’t Notice The Difference” defense. Bonus points for the bold attempt.

But Gruden knew — or should have known — that more damning information was coming. So what Gruden’s initial explanation amounted to was, well, let’s all take a look at the size of his lips.

Whiskey From the Boss

I might have unwittingly given myself a gift yesterday. As part of my job, I’m assisting our Director of Growth with our recruiting strategy. She asked for some input, so I developed a six-step plan. Step one is to reduce turnover on our team in an industry notorious for lots of it. And strategy No. 1 in doing that is to think about the people who, if they left, would hurt to lose and then go make sure they feel like rock stars.

“How can we do that?” she asked.

“Well, how do Division I schools treat top high school football recruits? Go do that.” Without the strippers, of course.

So I surveyed the team: “What’s a gift you could receive that would really show you that someone sees you.” The answers were varied, which is the point: One-size-fits-all thank-yous don’t work in business.

And so it came to pass that Big Boss and the Director of Growth, who happen to be married, gave me a card and a bottle of whiskey to say thanks for everything I’ve done for the team so far. I’ve only been there two months. I wasn’t thinking about me in the least when I suggested she go to great lengths to keep good people. It’s humbling and flattering to be thought of in that way.

Today’s Reasons to Keep Living

Boy The Younger’s fall baseball season came to an end tonight. He played the team that scored 17 runs in the first inning the last time they met. This game didn’t look much better, though they held them to 13 runs in the first inning. Winning! And then, down 14-0 in the top of the last frame, something clicked. A team that had scored no more than 1 run in a game all season suddenly put up a 10-spot. The Super Team went through five pitchers. Their fans grew restless. One dad even walked away. Now, it wasn’t a win, but in Little League, moral victories count for something.
I’m going out to lunch with a colleague tomorrow. We’re talking about how he can build his social media presence as a new Realtor.
Wifey Poo and I have a date Friday night.

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🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Poor Puppy 🐶Romeo and Juliet 🤴👸Meta Mistake 🙊 Disturbing news out of Washington, D.C., today as Republican Congressman-elect George Santos (if that’s his real name) brought a 6-month-old puppy to the house floor and screamed “Hey, look at me!” before slitting its throat and lapping up its squirting blood like a…

Institutions — Jan. 4, 2023

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Pretty Good Rant 😠Tesla Plunge 🚗Missed Lasts 😥 Those of you who regularly read my drivel (I see you, DirtySciFiBuddah) might have become aware of the fact over the past year or so that I am not a huge fan of our world’s modern institutions. All of them might, in…

Finishing — Jan. 2, 2023

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Incomplete 🕮Frustration 😠Bowl Bust 🏈 To say that I know how to write is like saying I know how to breathe. No one considers that they know how to breathe. They just … breathe. No one is particularly good at breathing or bad at breathing. Again, they just … breathe. I’ve…

Fifty Intentions for 2023

Welcome to Issue No. 15 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. So last year, I had a list of 100 intentions for 2022, and I did fairly well,…

Vision Board — Dec. 30, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩2023 📅Helping 🧠The Universe 🔭 I’m not much for long-term plans and goals. This isn’t to suggest I don’t think they’re important. I just think that spending a lot of time on them is futile. What’s the saying? Man plans, God laughs. Something like that. Anyway, I’ve learned through experience that…

The Point of Suffering — Dec. 27, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chain Links 🔗”Work” 🧑‍💼Popular Toys 🧸 After my first son died in December 2000, I spent a lot of time wondering why. Why me? Why Wifey Poo? Why Jacob? Why this level of suffering in a world supposedly created and run by an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful God? So I did what…

Freezing Fans — Dec. 26, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Chiefs! 🏈Indy Tickets 🏎️Bank Visit 💰 When I bought the tickets to the Christmas Eve contest between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Seattle Seahawks as a gift for Boys The Elder & Younger, it was sometime in September and temps hovered around 90 degrees. The thought that the game might…

Jacob at 22 — Dec. 20, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Timelines 👶Extinctions 🌋Sin City 👌 As I fall deeper down the rabbit hole learning more about theories on space and time, the concept of alternative timelines comes up again and again and again. Whether it’s the stuff of science fiction or one day will be proven to be the stuff of…

Joe(y) the Comedian — Dec. 18, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩’Cousin’ Laughs🎤Improv!?!? 🎭Drake Hoops 🏀 Back when I was a boy, I had a favorite Cousin-Who-Wasn’t-A-Cousin. His name was Joey DeVito, and he was in no way a blood relation to me, though I called his father Uncle Frankie and his mother Aunt Celia. I’m pretty sure this is an East…

Doughnut Guy — Dec. 17, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Glazed 🍩Bingo! 🖥️Disappearing Christians ⛪ I didn’t intend to bring doughnuts for my co-workers yesterday morning. It just sorta happened. How it happened and how it played out is a window into my weird mind. First, an explanation: I have a card purchased from Boy The Younger that entitles me to…

James and Stinky — Dec. 15, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩STL’s Homeless 😥Snake Hoo-Hoos 🐍That Was Epoch 👴 I found James huddled underneath a blanket as he sat, knees to his chest, head bowed, just outside the doorway of a CVS in the Delmar Loop section of St. Louis. If you’re not familiar with the area, it’s a fun place filled…

Paul Silas — Dec. 14, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Knicks Memory 🏀JBM LLC 🧑🏼‍💼Brain Drain 🧠 My most memorable interaction with Paul Silas occurred when I was a 17-year-old kid with big dreams of being a sports reporter. I’d talked with Paul before — his wife and Mother Dearest were active in the local Make A Wish Foundation chapter and…

Humbug — Dec. 13, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Piped-In Music 🎵Astronomy 🔭Fusion ☢️ Here’s the thing about Christmas: I want to love it, and in many ways, I do. I love giving gifts and, to be honest, I love getting gifts. There’s something so cool about the magical times when someone knows you well enough to get you that…

Aunt Pauline — Dec. 9, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Familial Reflections 👪Career Rebuild 🛠️Andrea 📱 It’s hard to think of my Aunt Pauline as old, hard to imagine how it is that she’s just about to leave her 80s and, thus, it’s hard to understand how she could be in such poor health right now. Aunt Pauline is Father Dearest’s…

Bye-Bye, Zombies — Dec. 8, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩The Walking Dead 🧟Nose B Gone 👃Turkey Trouble 🦃 I spent Tuesday night watching the final episodes of The Walking Dead. I have always been the type who can get so lost in a good story that I have really strong emotions (shocker, I know) when it ends. It happens with…

Redefining Family — Dec. 6, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Who’s Family? 👪Music Speaks 🎵Wedding Websites 👨‍❤️‍👨 I was raised as an East Coast Italian, despite being a mixed bag of ethnicities born in Denver, Colorado. That meant that there was this huge importance placed on family that’s not necessarily shared with the same ferocity by others. Yet as I grew…

Grief — Dec. 5, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Messy Grief 😔Hear Ye! 👂Die Trump Die 😡 I am acutely aware that I am hardly alone as a 48-year-old man when I say that I am well acquainted with grief. I’m not sure if it was always this way — though I imagine it was — but I don’t think…

Human Jewel Beetles — Dec. 3, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Beer Bottle Connections 🍺Ear Concerns 👂BTE vs. Deer 🦌 What exactly is reality? Is there a limit to the universe? How can something as heavy as the Earth be just sort of suspended … and what exactly is it suspended in? This is the rabbit hole I’ve fallen down, all while…

Be Yourself — Dec. 1, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Good Self 👋Urgent Care, Revisited 👩‍⚕️Slow Down 🐢 I remember this time back in sixth grade when a trusted adult was talking to me as I struggled through what turned out to be a pretty life-defining traumatic experience. The friends I’d grown up with since I was a small boy…

Metallica! — Nov. 29 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gods of Music Deliver! 🎸Insta-Anger 😠Unpleasant 😓 I was in need of something good to happen yesterday. Desperate need. The gods of music delivered. Metallica is coming to St. Louis in concert in 2023 for a two-day show at the Dome at the America Center. I found out about this at…

Double Ear Infection — Nov. 27, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Urgent Care 👂👂Alone Update 😔Rest 🛏️ It’s never a good sign when, less than two seconds after sticking a light in your ear and gazing through the little viewfinder thingy (patent pending), the doctor says, “Oooooooooh.” That was followed by a diagnosis of a “nasty” left ear infection and the question,…

Fitting in — Nov. 25, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Alone 😔Christmas Changes🎄My Two Skillz 🔪 I would venture to guess that most of us like the feeling of fitting in somewhere. Even the most self-confident, secure person likes to have a tribe. We’re social creatures, and to have a place we just seem to slide into safely is a blessing.…

Spouse+ Subscription — Nov. 23, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Marriage Talk 💑Requesting Money 💰Murder-Free 🔪 If you’ve been married as long as I have (rounding the corner and heading toward 26 years), you understand that conversations between spouses can sometimes be awfully weird. I mean, Wifey Poo and I have known each other more than 30 years now. How much…

Coffee Hand — Nov. 22, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Man Cold? 🤒Balloon Analogy 🎈World Flop ⚽ If you want to know how my Monday started yesterday, I poured coffee all over my hand. It isn’t that I don’t know how to pour coffee. I’ve done it a billion times. It’s that, on this particular Monday, somewhere in between the start…

Zoo Signs — Nov. 20, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gorilla Harassment 🦍Brother Love 👨‍👦‍👦True Crime 🔪 My love of wild animals was fostered early in my childhood. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was appointment viewing for my family. I grew up with scenes of hungry cheetahs chasing down baby gazelles that included what’s not included on nature shows today ……

No Slides Allowed — Nov. 17, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Presentation Skillz 📽️No Tribe 😔Fuck 45 🖕 There was a time not all that long ago, cosmically speaking, that the mere thought of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a talk would have made me want to throw up in my shoes. In fact, there has been a…

What’s Funny? — Nov. 15, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Boss Kudos 🙌Chill Time 😌One In 8 Billion🧍 It always feels good when the Big Bossman comes up to you and shakes your hand for a job well done. That happened last night when El Presidente of our company congratulated me on the video I wrote, shot and produced for our…

Engaged — Nov. 14, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩BTE and Div 💍Brother Greetings 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦Travel Day ✈️ The morning after Boy The Elder was born, I awoke in the hospital to his sweet cooing and his momma’s deep-sleep breathing. Scooping him up carefully and holding him nervously, I sat in a rocking chair in the pre-dawn darkness and talked to…

Dying Democracy — Nov. 11, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Election Message 🗳️School Priorities 🏫Tickets Aplenty 🎫 It would seem to me that if a common sentiment from wise people following an election is that it’s a good thing the results were so muddled because it means not much will get done in the next two years, you’ve got yourself a…

Fairy Tale — Nov. 9, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stephen King 🕮Legal Weed🌿Public Schools🏫 I read my first Stephen King book when I was in high school. It was summer, if I remember correctly, and everywhere I went, I carried a worn library copy of Pet Sematary. Since that time, King’s words have been a regular companion through every stage…

Year In Music — Nov. 5, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Craze 🎵Back Crackin’👩‍⚕️To-Dos Done🚗 My year of music is over. And, my God, has it been good. It started on a sweltering mid-July afternoon at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in which Wifey Poo and I watched my Backup Wife Jewel do her thing. It ended last night on an evening that…

Update: My Favorite African — Nov. 3, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Little D’s Return 🏥Irony 🔨Planet Killer 🌎 Being a host parent to a little boy from Africa (Burkina Faso, to be precise) was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life. And now, that little boy is returning to the United States. For those not…

Mega Billions — Nov. 2, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stupid IT Rules 🖥️The Bend 🚑Is The War Over? ✌️ Tonight, there will be a lottery drawing in which someone could win $1.2 billion. That someone won’t be me, as I didn’t buy a ticket, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about what I would and wouldn’t do with that…

Fun Family — Nov. 1, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Family Dynamics 👪New Mattress 🛏️To Share Or Not To Share? ❓ Let’s say the only cracker you’ve ever eaten is a Saltine. You have no experience with any other crackers. In fact, you don’t even know that there is such a thing as other crackers. You might not love the Saltine,…

Halloween Haters— Oct. 31, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ghosts of Halloween 👻Wrinkles 👴Words Spawn Action ✍️ Wifey Poo made a bold declaration about her opinion of Halloween on our drive back from Springfield, Missourah, Saturday afternoon: “Halloween is a great time for kids to dress up …” If you think there’s more to that statement, nope. She added: “Period.”…

How I Do Me — Oct. 27, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Empath Life 🤗Earthquake 🌎Revolutionary Failure 😶 About six months after I started my career as a professional journalist, I started walking past this job opening in our company every time I walked in and out of the building. It was for editor of a weekly paper routinely ridiculed by those who…

School Shooter Match Game — Oct. 24, 2022

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Game Time 🎮Family Picture📸Marriage Tips 🪢 I remember when it was simple. Horrible, yes … but simple. There was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and they matched up with Columbine — which, side note, would have been my high school had my parents not moved to NY when I was 2.…