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I saw a thread on why losing weight is so hard. It seems so simple, but then, why isn’t it? Well, there are complex internal mechanisms and how your brain is wired which made me think of a slinky.
When you get a slinky (the good metal one) it’s smooth, runs up and down, opens and shuffles and makes the slinkedy sound. But then, with some repeated abuse, it gets tangled and out of shape. There might be parts of it that still work as it did out of the box, but now the middle is a giant knotted mass of wire.
If you decide you still want to play, you have some choices. You can hurriedly untangle it and press it hard so that the metal strands are pushed back into shape and line up again. As long as you don’t release the pressure it looks like you’ve accomplished your mission.
What happens though then you run to the top of the stairs? You set it down, let go with both hands… a springy boing sound and you are back to a knotted mess. Many times it’s worse than before. You also need to deal with the disappointment and without a good understanding of metal memory you might just decide to chuck the whole thing and just revel in stories of slinkies past, Christmas morning and a flight of stairs… like was so great then.
Or, you can take it to your workbench, find some tools. Slowly and methodically start untangling and re-curving the metal. Heating and bending layer by layer. Being careful not to move too quickly or try and attempt too long a stretch, you slowly work on it over time. At points you wonder, what’s the point? But every evening, you hammer out another couple of inches of spring steel. After awhile, you start to notice the progress. But you need to keep going, or you’ll never have it walk down stairs, alone or in pairs.
At some point you get good at it and things speed up, they get easier. As you move past the worst and most misshapen parts, it gets easier.
Then, at some point, you’re done.
You look back at your work and if you look closely, you’ll notice some wrinkles and discoloration on certain stretches. But amazingly, it still looks like a slinky. And when you shuffle it between hands, it has that telltale sound.
Then the real test, to the top of the stairs. And, believe it or not each end flips one after another slowly walking down the entire flight. Pride and joy knowing how hard you had to work to just get it back to normal. Probably not quite as good as new, but unique and identifiable and more than serviceable. But you know this time, you need to care for and protect it. So you never have to go through that again.
But it’s rewired, it can be maintained.
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346.0 lb
Lost so far: 111.0 lb.
Still to go: 66.0 lb.
Diet followed reasonably well.
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steady weight
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