Musical chair

At lunch today somehow my boss and I got to talking about relationships and marriage. Neither of us believed in soul mates, but him even less so. The French in general are quite skeptical about marriage, and I don't blame them. 50% of marriages in France end up in divorce, so if those statistics are to be trusted, the odds don't look good.

This said, my boss got married 6 years ago and had three beautiful girls out of it. So I just had to ask why he decided to get hitched anyway despite the odds.

"You know, when I was your age, I fell in love all the time. I could fall in love 10 times a day, and I'm not even exaggerating. At any given moment of my youth I'd have a girlfriend, and with every girlfriend I thought it was going to last. I really loved every one of them, and I could never understand people who complained about not being able to find love because I was in love all the freaking time. But I've never really had that one Earth-shattering relationship where my girlfriend was my everything, where I was ready to die for her, where being with her trumped everything else in the whole wide world. Maybe I'm just unlucky, or maybe that kind of love only happens to very few people."

I said nothing. I just wanted to know where he was going with it.

"And you know why it tickles me when people talk about soul mates and tell me that they've met theirs? It's the fact that these so-called soul mates always happen to live in the same city, or work in the same industry, or studied in the same university. For all I know, my soul mate could be somewhere in freaking Nepal and there's no way in hell I could meet her. But for some of these people, their soul mates happen to grocery shop at the same store or go to the same bar as they do. Isn't that convenient?"

Still not seeing where he was going with this.

"What I'm saying is, even if my soul mate were somewhere out there, I would never cross path with her. Now, does that mean I should never settle down with anyone? Just because destiny hasn't been all that nice to me, does that mean I can't get married?"

"So you're saying that you settled for the next best thing?" I chimed in.

"No, not really. If you think about it, love is like a game of musical chairs: you turn round and round, and all of sudden you realize time is running out so you decide to settle for the chair you have at the moment and hope for the best. That's all there is."

Then our conversation was cut off by this other dude who started going off at a tangent and veered away from our initial discussion, so I never got to hear the end of my boss' interesting train of thought.

I don't really know why I find his words fascinating. Maybe it's because I know for a fact that he's a devoted husband and father, which means that he makes do with the cards he was handed, and play them off magnificently well.

It's the kind of honesty and clarity of mind that I find essential, yet lacking, in our society today.

Keep calm and keto on

There are upsides and downsides to everything, including weight loss. The upsides include a boost in energy, stamina and confidence. The downsides, however, have been unexpected. For one, I need to buy new clothes, and tonnes of them. I just bought a new pair of Pepe Jeans two months back that set me back a pretty penny, and now I no longer fit into them. I currently only have one pair of jeans that fits.

The most surprising bit, however, is that my shoes are getting too big. I've always thought that your shoe size remains the same no matter what, but it is actually not the case. My running shoes are getting loose, and my everyday shoes as well. I've been gradually tightening the laces for weeks now, until today during my daily run when I realized that the laces couldn't be tightened any further. Same goes for my running pants.

My spending this month has shot through the roof so I can't really afford to revamp my wardrobe. Besides, I'm thinking of losing another 4 inches around the waist for the upcoming months so it wouldn't be wise to splurge on new clothes only to say goodbye to them a couple of months later. Thank heavens for belts, though. I've added two holes to my belt, and tomorrow I'm going back to the leather store to add another one.

It has not been an easy journey so I'm quite pleased that I've been able to stick to it. As a go-getter who never deprives himself of anything, my life motto has always been "if I want it, I'll get it" and that includes food. To be able to just restrain myself from eating whatever the hell I want is a huge accomplishment. Having a health freak for a boss has been a huge help too. Every time we bump into each other we'd be talking about yesterday's running session, or arguing about healthy meals, or just discussing running shoes brands. He's 8 years older than I am and has three kids, but he doesn't look a day over 27 and could outrun me any day. I'm really looking forward to the day when I can run at his pace without panting like a pig.

Another unexpected downside to weight loss is the flabby skin. I was convinced that the human skin is supple enough to just balloon up or shrink as needed, and that if I lost weight, it would just magically tighten itself. Fat chance. I currently have flabby belly skin that just hangs there, and Google told me that the only way to tighten it was by doing sit ups and crunches in order to build abs and fill it up. I was appalled. I have an imaginary list of things I despise with a passion, and those two things are way up there along with "waiting" and "people with bad breath".

So today I started working out to Jillian Michaels videos on Youtube, and it's been a bitch. I've been phasing out simple and complex sugar and running 4.5km almost every day, but this was the first time I actually felt my body hating me. Every muscle in my body just vibrated with utmost contempt towards its host, so much so that when the excruciating workout session was over, I could hear applause from every fibre of my body followed by a brain impulse saying "never again!". I swear, even my damn brain was in on it.

I say, fuck you body. I'm powering through, and you're going to power through with me, like it or not.