First of all, I'm sorry for the week long gap in the blogs. Between being in Nebraska and being super busy at work, I haven't been able to dedicate enough time to put out anything of quality. I started two entries, read them, hated them, and decided I'd just wait until I could do it right. Consider this that effort.
The following are ten things that I now know to be true as of Monday 1511:
1. Weight Loss = Good, Weight Gain = Awful
Keeping with my unhealthy habit of weighing myself all the time, this craziness has now morphed into getting on the scale in the morning, before and after every bowel movement (I mostly just find this entertaining), when I get home from work, and before I go to bed. I know this isn't good. I know my weight fluctuates throughout the day, sometimes by as much as 10 pounds, but I just can't help myself.
I subscribe to the How Full is Your Bucket? philosophy of Tom Rath and Dr. Donald Clifton. An incredibly oversimplified explanation of the theory is that any time someone says or does something good to you or you do something good for others, you get a drop of self-esteem into your mental health bucket. When something negative occurs, it takes a drop out. If the bucket gets too full, you get overconfident and trouble ensues, but if it gets too empty, you feel pretty worthless and trouble ensues. Well, I feel like when I jump on the scale that any positive number (under 275) adds about a half a drop of self-esteem to my bucket, but anything over 275 cuts the bottom out of the bucket, puts the bucket on its head like a crown, and marches down Main Street in a self-pity parade that includes confetti and antique tractors. I have to stop doing this to myself, but I don't know how. I've replaced Doritos with carrot sticks and seem to be winning that battle, but this is one fight that I don't think I can overcome because I really feel like I need immediate feedback for my efforts, even though rational me knows darn well that bodies don't work that way.
2. Changing My Diet Was Easy...
Remarkably, I don't feel like the eating thing is killing me. I bring my own lunch to work every day, and I've found a good balance between pita sandwiches, Progresso soups, and baked potatoes so that I don't get bored and I don't feel starved. I get up early in the morning and eat a bowl of 100 calorie oatmeal, or oats as my grandma would call them. By the way, the way she says oats is one of my top 10 favorite things I love to hear. If you are ever cruising through the middle of South Dakota and find yourself in need of a warm breakfast treat, feel free to stop by her house and hear it for yourself. You won't be disappointed. I digress...
Anyway, the food thing is something that I feel like I can control. I'm cooking for myself at night and having fun making up new recipes. Between my breakfast, morning apple or banana, and lunch, I'm good until the afternoon and usually only hitting about the 500-650 total calorie mark. That allows me some room at night with supper, but I feel like I'm still doing a bang up job of mixing and matching ingredients to keep my daily calories in a good range. I actually sometimes worry that I'm not getting enough calories, but I'm honestly not hungry. If I go by my old mantra that food is meant to give me nutrition and energy, then I guess I'm covered.
3. ...But Changing My Activity Level is Not
I hate exercising. Despise it, actually. The simple thought of it makes my body tense and calls out every ounce of resistance that I can muster up. I don't feel good afterward or get a runner's high. I feel tired, sore, and awful, and usually a little wheezy. I think I have legitimate reasons, but every time I say them they just sound like I'm wussing out. Let's start with why I did the Power 90 workout one whole day and quit. This workout requires a TV and DVD player which are both located in the living room that I share with another human who has to try to eat supper five feet away while I'm sweating my butt off. Also, this room has no curtains. By the time I get home after an hour commute, he's already home and it is dark out, so not only am I asking him to give up an hour of his hard earned TV time, but I'm also risking having the neighbors sit in their living rooms watching me. Paranoid? Maybe a little, but I promise you that if I looked across the street and saw my fat neighbor kickboxing the air without his shirt on, not only would I grab a chair and the binoculars, but I'd probably track down a camera. Walking/riding bike/using exercise equipment bores the heck out of me. I have a bad case of undiagnosed adult ADD. I can't focus on anything for more than seven minutes, let alone expect my body to perform the same stupid repeating task over and over again for 30 minutes while my brain races around trying to figure out how well video cameras can record through binocular eye holes. I like playing sports, but I'm so out of shape that I'm too embarrassed to go try to play basketball with the other faculty or staff or play volleyball with my roommate when he invites me along on Wednesday nights. Just typing the word exercise over and over again has zapped every inch of energy in my body. Let's move on.
4. Not Cleaning My Plate Didn't Kill Anyone (To My Knowledge)
As a follow-up to a previous blog, I ate out three times last weekend. All three times I made the decision to leave food on my plate when my brain told me I was full. I didn't see any CNN updates about a Nigerian boy dropping dead of starvation, nor did the fry cook come out and cry tears of pain and frustration into my iced tea. I still ate fast, but hey, there were french fries left on the plate when I threw the napkin on top of it. I'll take the small victory.
5. Coffee is My Lifesaver and My Enemy
I love coffee and I love it strong. I don't need or really enjoy sugar or cream. Occasionally I'll do a coffee "treat" loaded with whipped cream and caramel, but I really prefer it black. I get up every morning and brew a pot that is supposedly six cups, pour it into my Thermos, and head to work knowing I'm set. I usually drink coffee throughout the work day, mainly because it is something to do. It helps fill in those nervous boredom spaces that I used to fill with food. This is particularly helpful on my long road trips and saved me from needing to stop for food on my last trip to Jenna. However, a minute holding a coffee cup is one less minute that I am not holding a water bottle. I don't dislike water. I get bored with it sometimes, but I don't dislike it. In fact, I usually have some with me everywhere I go. My body is super sensitive to dehydration, and I've dealt with leg/back/hand cramps on a daily basis since I was a kid. If I don't get enough water, my energy disappears, my mood swings, and my skin breaks out. The problem I'm running into is that my delicious coffee, which helps keep me busy with flavor all day, is drying me up. I remember putting water in the coffee maker in the morning, watching that same water come out as a liquid into the pot, remain a liquid into my Thermos and coffee mug, and stay a water based liquid as it goes down my throat. After that, the science of caffeine makes it mysteriously turn into something else that, despite the volume going in, results in almost nothing coming out the other end. I need to drink more water. Some days I'm awesome at it, most days I'm not. This is my new challenge for the rest of this week.
6. Men's Belt Holes Should Come in Half Sizes
I wear a belt because I have no ass. The belt never quite fits right no matter how big my waist is. I am forced to live a life trying to decide between having a piece of cheap metal cutting into my skin or having my shirt come untucked every time I stand up or sit down. I usually opt for the pain because it makes me feel thinner. Life just isn't fair.
7. A Family's Love and Support Helps Make the Hard Times Easier
I'm blessed with having a wonderful family that has always encouraged me and offered me the tools to do whatever I wanted to in life, no matter how stupid they were. Weight is an issue in my extended family, so whenever I make the decision to try to address my health they always step up with words of encouragement, money to help pay for memberships, and special meals when they know I'll be around. They've all been down the same paths before, and I sometimes get the feeling that my success could be seen as an overall win for the family. They are great, I love them, and can never adequately express how much I appreciate them.
This weekend I found that the family love can extend beyond biological links. As you all know, I spent the weekend with Jenna's family in Nebraska. I'm not just shooting for brownie points here (mmm, brownies). Her family was beyond good to me. I met most of them for the first time, and with the exception of a slight point of confusion where an uncle swore he met me before (it was another guy) and a brief ten minute freak out when Jenna and I thought we might be cousins, things couldn't have gone better. At no point did I feel unwelcome or like I didn't belong. Jenna's mom made sure there was a healthier soup option at dinner. Numerous people commented on how they had heard I was a good writer and how they'd like to read the blog. I even behaved myself around all the delicious foods and managed to walk by the dessert table without grabbing more than a cookie and a half of a brownie in a six hour period. Oh, and Jenna's mom makes fantastic coffee that went above and beyond my "strong" preference. These are people that I enjoy and that I want to spend more time around, and I hope I get a lot of chances in the future. Now the family cats are a whole other story...
8. I Won't Be in Costume...
But there's no way I'm missing the new Harry Potter movie this weekend! Yeah, I'm a geek. Love me anyway.
9. Thanksgiving is Around the Corner, Whether I'm Ready or Not
Next week is going to be tough. Thanksgiving on Thursday, family birthday celebration Friday, and my birthday gathering in Sioux Falls on Saturday. Last year at this time I battled through Thanksgiving without eating a single carb, and although I was incredibly pissed by the end of it, I survived. I'm living with different parameters this year, so I'm hoping I can do everything in moderation. My goal is to be able to see some plate under the food after I get done serving myself. Nothing can be stacked on top of anything else, either. I'll have a serving at lunch and a serving at dinner to catch anything that I didn't get the first go round. I'll also watch some football, enjoy my family, spend some quality time with Jenna, and probably take a nap. I'm going to go into the holiday with the idea that those four things are what I'm most thankful for this Thanksgiving, and the food can be an afterthought. A delicious gravy covered afterthought.
10. Another Monday Has Come and Gone, And I'm Still Standing
No matter how frustrated I might be with my current results, I haven't thrown in the towel yet. In the grand scheme of things three Mondays out of 1511 doesn't seem like much, but I've decided to look at it as the first three Mondays of the next 1511. The challenge isn't behind me, it is in front of me, and right now I've got 100% success rate. Not too shabby.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
On the Road Again!
Welcome to another wonderful Wednesday. As a soundtrack to today's theme, I'm going to encourage you to sit back, relax, and enjoy a little On the Road Again!
I bet you thought I was going to go with Willie Nelson, didn't you? Maybe take the obvious choice? Well, as much as I love Willie (and I really do), Canned Heat is pretty awesome and has a much better groove to fly down the road to. You're welcome.
Anybody that knows me knows that I'm a traveling man. I originally got into the business I'm in because I liked roaming the Midwest, visiting new towns and schools, staying in hotels, and eating out in new restaurants. The best part was that it was on someone else's dime. Every continental breakfast or free lunch was one less that I had to pay for on a tight budget. In my first couple of years, I would load up a suitcase and hit the road for eight weeks in the fall and eight in the spring, only stopping back home on the weekends to wash my underwear. I went to Colorado and exotic places like eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota. I was a gypsy, usually travelling with other gypsies from other colleges, and we went from city to city to help students discover their futures. After a hard day of work, we'd find the local bar and make sure that they knew just how awesome college recruiters were, which was probably not nearly as awesome as we thought.
I really enjoyed the travel for about three years, but then the hardship of not being able to sleep in my own bed or see my friends on a daily basis started to wear on me. I finally got myself into a position where I wouldn't have to travel for work as much, so I did the only reasonable thing and traveled for my personal life instead. I bought a new car in March 2009, and I've already put 40,000 miles on it in the last 19 months. I get restless. I hate being in one place for too long. Because of career decisions, I've always lived at least an hour from friends. My family hasn't lived within an hour of me in about a decade. Now I'm currently six hours away from someone that I wish I was never more than a second away from, and although our busy lives save me from weekly trips, I still make it down there at least once a month.
The problem with being so mobile is that it has made me even more reliant on fast food and restaurants. A full continental breakfast that is hot, fresh, and ready to go doesn't make me want to get up and whip up some waffles at home at 5:30 am. It makes me want to get a McGriddle at McDonald's on my way by. The opportunity to eat at Outback or Applebee's five nights a week doesn't create a desire for home cooked meals. It creates a dependency on high calorie, large portioned dinners that someone else prepares for me. Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of healthy choices on restaurant menus, and sane and rational people are able to order one of those, or they order the big bowl of pasta and only eat until they are full. I'm neither sane nor rational when it comes to food. Eating out as a kid is a treat, so if you don't shake that mindset (which I haven't), you end up wanting every last delicious bite, even if you feel like you're about to explode. And then maybe the Double Fudge Chocolate Lava Brownie Cake with Ice Cream to wash it down with.
The other trap that I've fallen into is when I try to pick a healthy sounding option, only to find that I could have just had the cheeseburger. At Quizno's, the Chicken with Honey Mustard and Flatbread Salad has 1,110 calories and 74 grams of fat. Chevy’s Fresh Mex’s Tostada Salad with Chicken has 1,551 calories and 94 grams of fat! Aye carumba! Subway puts itself out there as the healthier choice, but you still have to know how to order. Cheese, dressings, and the wrong meats or breads can easily make a 300 calorie lunch a 1,000 calorie lunch in no time. Most places now have a light menu, and the addition of caloric information certainly helps, but it is still hard for me to order the grilled salmon and steamed veggies over brown rice when the opposite page of the menu contains the quesadilla burger with french fries and extra guacamole. That's a weakness on my part that I have to find a way to get over.
The other option is to learn to eat a little of the stuff I want and not be afraid to let the wait staff take some of my food back to the kitchen. My parents were never this way, but I guess I watched enough TV and movie families and had enough pressure from the lunch room attendants at school to think that if I didn't finish all of the food on my plate I was going directly to Hell. Starving children in Africa and such. I eventually figured out that my garbage food didn't really effect a child's provisions in Somalia, but the general message stuck. A cleaned plate is a good plate. So, instead of eating to the point of being satisfied, I eat until I'm literally physically sick. I feel my body wanting to shut down to make me stop. I get sweaty, I get tired, my pants start to cut into my skin. I waddle out of the restaurant and desperately want to lay down. And suddenly even this feeling becomes the norm. I got to the point where eating wasn't for nourishment and energy, but to give me the feeling of fullness. Tie that to my emotional attachment to that feeling and to the whole eating out experience, and that's the recipe for the disaster that I currently find myself in.
But today I'm here to announce that I'm a smarter consumer. The whole inspiration for today's post is that I'm headed to Sioux City to see Jenna after work today, so I'm officially leaving the health nest I've created for myself into a big scary world of choices for the next four days. I'm praying things are different this time. I feel the confidence in myself to know that just because I'm not at home doesn't mean I can't be in control. I've done my research. Seriously, if you have time some day go check out different restaurant's websites to see the nutritional information on your favorite foods. I would rate the experience somewhere between shocking and mortifying. I know some safe havens where I can still feel like I'm getting some bang for my buck, and I also know that I'm not insulting the 16 year old "Sandwich Artist" if I get full and throw some of my sandwich in the garbage. Part of the key to this will be just slowing down. Eating in the car, eating in between appointments, and eating on shortened lunch breaks has caused me to be the Daytona 500 of eaters. I directly tie this back to my school days where we had 20 minutes to get through the lunch line, get to our table, eat, maybe get seconds if it was chicken nugget or crispito day, dump and clean our tray and get to recess. Nobody wanted to be the kid who was late for recess. I often make convenient food choices because eating is something I've learned to see as such an inconvenience. Food is for nutrition and energy, but the process of eating that food doesn't have to be so rushed and unenjoyable. I imagine that in most parts of the world people actually taste what they put in their mouths. I'm now going to be one of those people. This is the hardest habit for me to break, but I'm going to make an effort to put down my fork between bites and take a drink of water. This will let me enjoy the food, enjoy the company around me, and give my body a chance to relay to my mind that the energy tank is full. I've tried this tactic before and failed. I also fell off my bike a couple of times, but I still managed to figure it out one day when I was a kid. That is until I flipped it end over end while I was trying to carry an overnight bag on the handle bars to a friend's house...then I learned to drive a car and said, "Screw this bike nonsense!" Anyway, I hope you get the point.
So, wish me luck! Not only am I making the trip down south, but I'm meeting her extended family for the first time. I'm always super calm, collected, and totally in control in new situations. Also, the Pope is Jewish. If I make it back to Minnesota without having to stop for a Brownie Batter Blizzard to calm my nerves, it will be a small miracle. But I'm going to make it for my loyal readers and friends because I know you guys are all rooting for me. I'm going to do it for me and my healthier future. And if I don't, hopefully we'll at least get a funny story out of it.
Your 40 Ounces of Canned Heat,
Jeff
I bet you thought I was going to go with Willie Nelson, didn't you? Maybe take the obvious choice? Well, as much as I love Willie (and I really do), Canned Heat is pretty awesome and has a much better groove to fly down the road to. You're welcome.
Anybody that knows me knows that I'm a traveling man. I originally got into the business I'm in because I liked roaming the Midwest, visiting new towns and schools, staying in hotels, and eating out in new restaurants. The best part was that it was on someone else's dime. Every continental breakfast or free lunch was one less that I had to pay for on a tight budget. In my first couple of years, I would load up a suitcase and hit the road for eight weeks in the fall and eight in the spring, only stopping back home on the weekends to wash my underwear. I went to Colorado and exotic places like eastern South Dakota and western Minnesota. I was a gypsy, usually travelling with other gypsies from other colleges, and we went from city to city to help students discover their futures. After a hard day of work, we'd find the local bar and make sure that they knew just how awesome college recruiters were, which was probably not nearly as awesome as we thought.
I really enjoyed the travel for about three years, but then the hardship of not being able to sleep in my own bed or see my friends on a daily basis started to wear on me. I finally got myself into a position where I wouldn't have to travel for work as much, so I did the only reasonable thing and traveled for my personal life instead. I bought a new car in March 2009, and I've already put 40,000 miles on it in the last 19 months. I get restless. I hate being in one place for too long. Because of career decisions, I've always lived at least an hour from friends. My family hasn't lived within an hour of me in about a decade. Now I'm currently six hours away from someone that I wish I was never more than a second away from, and although our busy lives save me from weekly trips, I still make it down there at least once a month.
The problem with being so mobile is that it has made me even more reliant on fast food and restaurants. A full continental breakfast that is hot, fresh, and ready to go doesn't make me want to get up and whip up some waffles at home at 5:30 am. It makes me want to get a McGriddle at McDonald's on my way by. The opportunity to eat at Outback or Applebee's five nights a week doesn't create a desire for home cooked meals. It creates a dependency on high calorie, large portioned dinners that someone else prepares for me. Don't get me wrong. There are a lot of healthy choices on restaurant menus, and sane and rational people are able to order one of those, or they order the big bowl of pasta and only eat until they are full. I'm neither sane nor rational when it comes to food. Eating out as a kid is a treat, so if you don't shake that mindset (which I haven't), you end up wanting every last delicious bite, even if you feel like you're about to explode. And then maybe the Double Fudge Chocolate Lava Brownie Cake with Ice Cream to wash it down with.
The other trap that I've fallen into is when I try to pick a healthy sounding option, only to find that I could have just had the cheeseburger. At Quizno's, the Chicken with Honey Mustard and Flatbread Salad has 1,110 calories and 74 grams of fat. Chevy’s Fresh Mex’s Tostada Salad with Chicken has 1,551 calories and 94 grams of fat! Aye carumba! Subway puts itself out there as the healthier choice, but you still have to know how to order. Cheese, dressings, and the wrong meats or breads can easily make a 300 calorie lunch a 1,000 calorie lunch in no time. Most places now have a light menu, and the addition of caloric information certainly helps, but it is still hard for me to order the grilled salmon and steamed veggies over brown rice when the opposite page of the menu contains the quesadilla burger with french fries and extra guacamole. That's a weakness on my part that I have to find a way to get over.
The other option is to learn to eat a little of the stuff I want and not be afraid to let the wait staff take some of my food back to the kitchen. My parents were never this way, but I guess I watched enough TV and movie families and had enough pressure from the lunch room attendants at school to think that if I didn't finish all of the food on my plate I was going directly to Hell. Starving children in Africa and such. I eventually figured out that my garbage food didn't really effect a child's provisions in Somalia, but the general message stuck. A cleaned plate is a good plate. So, instead of eating to the point of being satisfied, I eat until I'm literally physically sick. I feel my body wanting to shut down to make me stop. I get sweaty, I get tired, my pants start to cut into my skin. I waddle out of the restaurant and desperately want to lay down. And suddenly even this feeling becomes the norm. I got to the point where eating wasn't for nourishment and energy, but to give me the feeling of fullness. Tie that to my emotional attachment to that feeling and to the whole eating out experience, and that's the recipe for the disaster that I currently find myself in.
But today I'm here to announce that I'm a smarter consumer. The whole inspiration for today's post is that I'm headed to Sioux City to see Jenna after work today, so I'm officially leaving the health nest I've created for myself into a big scary world of choices for the next four days. I'm praying things are different this time. I feel the confidence in myself to know that just because I'm not at home doesn't mean I can't be in control. I've done my research. Seriously, if you have time some day go check out different restaurant's websites to see the nutritional information on your favorite foods. I would rate the experience somewhere between shocking and mortifying. I know some safe havens where I can still feel like I'm getting some bang for my buck, and I also know that I'm not insulting the 16 year old "Sandwich Artist" if I get full and throw some of my sandwich in the garbage. Part of the key to this will be just slowing down. Eating in the car, eating in between appointments, and eating on shortened lunch breaks has caused me to be the Daytona 500 of eaters. I directly tie this back to my school days where we had 20 minutes to get through the lunch line, get to our table, eat, maybe get seconds if it was chicken nugget or crispito day, dump and clean our tray and get to recess. Nobody wanted to be the kid who was late for recess. I often make convenient food choices because eating is something I've learned to see as such an inconvenience. Food is for nutrition and energy, but the process of eating that food doesn't have to be so rushed and unenjoyable. I imagine that in most parts of the world people actually taste what they put in their mouths. I'm now going to be one of those people. This is the hardest habit for me to break, but I'm going to make an effort to put down my fork between bites and take a drink of water. This will let me enjoy the food, enjoy the company around me, and give my body a chance to relay to my mind that the energy tank is full. I've tried this tactic before and failed. I also fell off my bike a couple of times, but I still managed to figure it out one day when I was a kid. That is until I flipped it end over end while I was trying to carry an overnight bag on the handle bars to a friend's house...then I learned to drive a car and said, "Screw this bike nonsense!" Anyway, I hope you get the point.
So, wish me luck! Not only am I making the trip down south, but I'm meeting her extended family for the first time. I'm always super calm, collected, and totally in control in new situations. Also, the Pope is Jewish. If I make it back to Minnesota without having to stop for a Brownie Batter Blizzard to calm my nerves, it will be a small miracle. But I'm going to make it for my loyal readers and friends because I know you guys are all rooting for me. I'm going to do it for me and my healthier future. And if I don't, hopefully we'll at least get a funny story out of it.
Your 40 Ounces of Canned Heat,
Jeff
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Everything and the Kitchen Sink
As a follow up to my post earlier, I'd like to offer two other good reads courtesy of my friend Amy:
http://jcdfitness.com/2010/09/clean-eating-is-a-scam-and-why-you-should-abandon-it/
http://jcdfitness.com/2010/09/clean-eating-false-beliefs-and-pulling-the-emotional-trigger/
I'm well aware of how my brain and body work, and I know that I'm going to have to plan to include normal junk food into my diet in a reasonable way from time to time in order to make me successful. My favorite line that I took from the first post is:
“Food is neither clean nor unclean, but merely energy my body needs to function and survive.”
Hello mantra!
Anyway, I guess my frustration with the junk food diet guy and everything else is deep rooted in my past failures. I'd like to offer you a glimpse into my history with weight loss:
- Shape Up: Age 9 or 10
My earliest attempt at dieting. As I remember, we kept food journals and went in once a week to learn something new, try out a new healthy snack we could make at home, and then do some sort of activity like swim or play with the big parachute. My mom saw that I was starting to get husky (she kept having to buy me jeans with an elastic waistband, which probably tipped her off), so she decided to try to be proactive and nip it before it got out of control.
Excuse for stopping: I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing it had something to do with this complex mathematical formula: f(ail) = (cost of program) x (hassle of getting kids to Sioux Falls from Hartford) x (general lack of available nights with everything else we were involved with)/(Jeff ) - (effort)
- Grapefruit Diet: Freshman year of high school
I had gained a Freshman 15, but the problem was that it was in high school. The diet started when Mr. Guse, our freshman basketball coach and a personal hero of mine, told me there was no way that I was going to be the team manager and that I needed to get my butt to practice and join the team. The first day of practice I made it about ten minutes before I puked. Clearly something had to give. I'd estimate that I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5'8" and 200 lbs when I started. The diet itself consisted of drinking lots of grapefruit juice, eating bacon and eggs, and well, that's all I really remember. Maybe some kind of tomato soup that my mom used to make in bulk. I'd have to verify that with her. It was kind of like an early version of the Atkins diet. Anyway, whatever it included worked. It was the perfect storm of an increase in exercise (besides basketball practice I was using a Nordic Track at night), a growth spurt (I managed to make it to 5'11", one inch short of only real goal at the time and probably my biggest regret in life thus far), and a crazy bacon-grapefruit diet. I whittled myself down to a lean, mean 165, and I managed to stay there for the next couple of years while going back to a normal teenage diet. It probably had more to do with puberty, but I'll give the grapefruit a little love.
Excuse for stopping: Being a teenage boy, it eventually became inconvenient to maintain that diet and lifestyle. My friends ate pizza, so I ate pizza. I maintained the weight loss for awhile with a junk food diet, so bye bye grapefruit, hello Mountain Dew!
- Weight Watchers: Off and on, but never officially
I don't want to drag other people's situations into the blog without their permission, but I think my mom would be okay with me saying that she has struggled with weight the majority of her adult life. She has bounced around on crazy diets, and as her food intake changed, so did the rest of the family's. As I said before, she did everything she could to help keep my sister and I off the same path. Weight Watchers has always been a favorite of hers. I think it works for her and my sister the same way this blog works for me; it holds them accountable to someone. I think it also works because it allows people to eat normal food as long as they keep within a daily amount of allotted points. I remember having the same frustration with this as I did with the guy from Kansas State. My sister would eat a Snickers bar in front of me and say, "It's okay, it is only 6 points and I get 38 today." This made no sense to me and my FDA programmed brain. "You can't lose weight eating Snickers bars," I'd always been told.
Sorry, I got off the point and almost went back into a Thanksgiving filled rant again. I never officially joined Weight Watchers because I didn't want the stigma of being a teenage/college aged guy at the WW meetings. When I went to a weigh-in with my mom, I didn't see people who looked like me. So, instead I would just hijack all of her materials and try to run the program on my own. This current effort is more or less my attempt again to change one of the most popular programs in the world into something of my own instead of just manning up and going to weigh in. I'm almost 30 now, and I know that there are people there that look like me. I'm just not ready to take that leap yet.
Excuse for stopping: Since I've never officially done the program, I didn't have the support group to keep me going. When I just needed to feel like I was making an effort, I'd resort to the basic methodologies long enough to feel better about myself, but then I'd go back to a 70 point a day diet.
- Nutrisystem: Age 25
I've got to hand it to Nutrisystem's marketing team. They knew exactly how to recruit males to buy a product. Dan Marino, Don Shula, Mike Golic...all of these football greats told me during every commercial break of every show on every channel about how they used this new product called Nutrisystem to lose 20, 30, even 50 lbs! The meals were designed for men and could be ready in minutes, and the pictures showed pizza, lasagna, chili, and cheeseburgers. Don Shula's elderly wife even wanted to have more sex with him! Not your traditional steamy tie-in, but hey, sports stars + convenience + greasy man food + increase in nookie = a winning marketing effort.
I decided to give it a try and logged online to make my own personal menu. The food options sounded fantastic! I tried to mix it up as much as possible to try as many different foods as possible. I waited a couple of days before I received a couple of large, heavy boxes. I opened those boxes up to find smaller containers with those same great pictures on the front of them. Unfortunately, after months of digging through those containers, I never found that delicious food. Everything tasted the same, like a Vienna sausage covered in brown gravy. Even the oatmeal had a funk about it. My first clue came when I realized nothing needed to be refrigerated, including the hamburger patties. Through a space-aged technology, all of the food had been vacuum packed and could sit in the cupboard at room temperature. If that's space-aged technology, I feel awfully sorry for the astronauts.
Still, I was a trooper. I got my first order in January (the Monday of months), and with the support of my friends at work I stuck with it. I even started getting active again and had regular racquetball games. I made it until the middle of March before I decided I could wean myself off and go to a normal, food pyramid inspired diet. All in all, I dropped somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 lbs in two months. After I started introducing carbs back into my diet, I gained back about 45 lbs over the next four months.
Excuse for stopping: What prompted my breakup with Nutrisystem was the blandness of the food and the cost. I was pretty hard strapped for cash at the time, and while my parents always help support me with healthy endeavors, it got to a point where I couldn't afford the over $300 a month in food. Also, my brain can only pretend for so long that dog food tastes like a filet mignon. I even tried keeping the picture of the food in front of me while I ate in hopes that by some magic of science my brain would ignore what I was holding and replace it with the food on the box. No such luck.
- Ideal Weight/Ideal Protein - Age 28
My latest attempt at following a corporate diet plan. I was inspired to try this one out after I saw tremendous results in a couple of friends. The amount of weight they had lost was astounding, so I figured I better get in on it. This program had it all: weekly weigh-ins for accountability, pre-packaged high protein bars, shakes, soups, and other foods for convenience, and a natural step back process to get you transferred from their foods to a normal diet. On paper it had it all.
I started this diet in mid-November last year, a tough challenge considering I had both Thanksgiving and Christmas ahead of me. I was best man in a wedding in January, and I was not going to be in wedding pictures weighing 294 lbs. That and a stable full of cute bridesmaids was the motivation I needed to weather Thanksgiving, a birthday dinner, and Christmas. The nice thing about Ideal Protein is that it allows you to eat vegetables and meats off of a regular menu, but just asks that you not take in any carbs. When we went to a steak house, I would be able to get an 8 oz steak, the steamed vegetables, and a trip through the salad bar. You topped that off with a night time granola bar that was actually pretty tasty. I was not starving on this diet by any means. The results came fast and in big increments. I was shedding pounds and inches like a mad man. I went from size 42 pants to a pair of 36 jeans (they were a little tight, but they buttoned and I sucked it in and walked around in pain with a proud smile on my face). I went from 294 down to 246 at my last weigh-in in February. I started working out again and with the help of my office full of angels, I was even training for my first 5k. Life was pretty good.
Excuse for stopping: I just lost motivation, pure and simple. The intrinsic drive to be a healthy person wasn't strong enough to make up for the extrinsic losses. The wedding was over and I struck out with the bridesmaids. I wouldn't have to photographed again in the foreseeable future. The 5k was in May, and I was convinced I could still run it in 30 minutes by only training for the two weeks before it (uh, not even close). Also, the nearest office was in Sioux Falls, which was about an hour and a half drive for me. It was difficult and expensive for me to make a three hour round trip once a week just to get on a scale in front of someone else. Also, this plan wasn't cheap. Between the food and the supplements, it was in the Nutrisystem neighborhood of expense. $300 a month in health meant $300 a month less in fun. I dropped it, got a bad case of the winter blues, decided I needed to get out of Iowa and applied for a job in Minnesota, and the rest is history. Through the stress of making the decision to leave and getting settled in my new situation, I've gained 40 lbs back.
So, there it is. I know this isn't a complete list of my efforts, but it catches all of the big ones (for instance, I was meeting with the school nurse in college once a week to help monitor my weight and keep a food journal until she used me as an example in class and embarrassed me out of continuing). I hope Dr. Haub of Kansas State can forgive me for my rantings and ravings before, but when you have lived a life filled with struggle only to have someone point out something that should have been fairly obvious, like lower daily calories of any kind equal lower pounds, it is easy to lose your mind a little. I'll be happy with my morning oatmeal and my cucumber/tomato salad for lunch, but I'll stop beating myself up so much for that handful of pretzels I ate last night while waiting for my tuna salad pita to cook and contemplating Dr. Haub's demise. After all, “Food is neither clean nor unclean, but merely energy my body needs to function and survive.”
Mantra + Yantra = Tantra
Jeff
http://jcdfitness.com/2010/09/clean-eating-is-a-scam-and-why-you-should-abandon-it/
http://jcdfitness.com/2010/09/clean-eating-false-beliefs-and-pulling-the-emotional-trigger/
I'm well aware of how my brain and body work, and I know that I'm going to have to plan to include normal junk food into my diet in a reasonable way from time to time in order to make me successful. My favorite line that I took from the first post is:
“Food is neither clean nor unclean, but merely energy my body needs to function and survive.”
Hello mantra!
Anyway, I guess my frustration with the junk food diet guy and everything else is deep rooted in my past failures. I'd like to offer you a glimpse into my history with weight loss:
- Shape Up: Age 9 or 10
My earliest attempt at dieting. As I remember, we kept food journals and went in once a week to learn something new, try out a new healthy snack we could make at home, and then do some sort of activity like swim or play with the big parachute. My mom saw that I was starting to get husky (she kept having to buy me jeans with an elastic waistband, which probably tipped her off), so she decided to try to be proactive and nip it before it got out of control.
Excuse for stopping: I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing it had something to do with this complex mathematical formula: f(ail) = (cost of program) x (hassle of getting kids to Sioux Falls from Hartford) x (general lack of available nights with everything else we were involved with)/(Jeff ) - (effort)
- Grapefruit Diet: Freshman year of high school
I had gained a Freshman 15, but the problem was that it was in high school. The diet started when Mr. Guse, our freshman basketball coach and a personal hero of mine, told me there was no way that I was going to be the team manager and that I needed to get my butt to practice and join the team. The first day of practice I made it about ten minutes before I puked. Clearly something had to give. I'd estimate that I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5'8" and 200 lbs when I started. The diet itself consisted of drinking lots of grapefruit juice, eating bacon and eggs, and well, that's all I really remember. Maybe some kind of tomato soup that my mom used to make in bulk. I'd have to verify that with her. It was kind of like an early version of the Atkins diet. Anyway, whatever it included worked. It was the perfect storm of an increase in exercise (besides basketball practice I was using a Nordic Track at night), a growth spurt (I managed to make it to 5'11", one inch short of only real goal at the time and probably my biggest regret in life thus far), and a crazy bacon-grapefruit diet. I whittled myself down to a lean, mean 165, and I managed to stay there for the next couple of years while going back to a normal teenage diet. It probably had more to do with puberty, but I'll give the grapefruit a little love.
Excuse for stopping: Being a teenage boy, it eventually became inconvenient to maintain that diet and lifestyle. My friends ate pizza, so I ate pizza. I maintained the weight loss for awhile with a junk food diet, so bye bye grapefruit, hello Mountain Dew!
- Weight Watchers: Off and on, but never officially
I don't want to drag other people's situations into the blog without their permission, but I think my mom would be okay with me saying that she has struggled with weight the majority of her adult life. She has bounced around on crazy diets, and as her food intake changed, so did the rest of the family's. As I said before, she did everything she could to help keep my sister and I off the same path. Weight Watchers has always been a favorite of hers. I think it works for her and my sister the same way this blog works for me; it holds them accountable to someone. I think it also works because it allows people to eat normal food as long as they keep within a daily amount of allotted points. I remember having the same frustration with this as I did with the guy from Kansas State. My sister would eat a Snickers bar in front of me and say, "It's okay, it is only 6 points and I get 38 today." This made no sense to me and my FDA programmed brain. "You can't lose weight eating Snickers bars," I'd always been told.
Sorry, I got off the point and almost went back into a Thanksgiving filled rant again. I never officially joined Weight Watchers because I didn't want the stigma of being a teenage/college aged guy at the WW meetings. When I went to a weigh-in with my mom, I didn't see people who looked like me. So, instead I would just hijack all of her materials and try to run the program on my own. This current effort is more or less my attempt again to change one of the most popular programs in the world into something of my own instead of just manning up and going to weigh in. I'm almost 30 now, and I know that there are people there that look like me. I'm just not ready to take that leap yet.
Excuse for stopping: Since I've never officially done the program, I didn't have the support group to keep me going. When I just needed to feel like I was making an effort, I'd resort to the basic methodologies long enough to feel better about myself, but then I'd go back to a 70 point a day diet.
- Nutrisystem: Age 25
I've got to hand it to Nutrisystem's marketing team. They knew exactly how to recruit males to buy a product. Dan Marino, Don Shula, Mike Golic...all of these football greats told me during every commercial break of every show on every channel about how they used this new product called Nutrisystem to lose 20, 30, even 50 lbs! The meals were designed for men and could be ready in minutes, and the pictures showed pizza, lasagna, chili, and cheeseburgers. Don Shula's elderly wife even wanted to have more sex with him! Not your traditional steamy tie-in, but hey, sports stars + convenience + greasy man food + increase in nookie = a winning marketing effort.
I decided to give it a try and logged online to make my own personal menu. The food options sounded fantastic! I tried to mix it up as much as possible to try as many different foods as possible. I waited a couple of days before I received a couple of large, heavy boxes. I opened those boxes up to find smaller containers with those same great pictures on the front of them. Unfortunately, after months of digging through those containers, I never found that delicious food. Everything tasted the same, like a Vienna sausage covered in brown gravy. Even the oatmeal had a funk about it. My first clue came when I realized nothing needed to be refrigerated, including the hamburger patties. Through a space-aged technology, all of the food had been vacuum packed and could sit in the cupboard at room temperature. If that's space-aged technology, I feel awfully sorry for the astronauts.
Still, I was a trooper. I got my first order in January (the Monday of months), and with the support of my friends at work I stuck with it. I even started getting active again and had regular racquetball games. I made it until the middle of March before I decided I could wean myself off and go to a normal, food pyramid inspired diet. All in all, I dropped somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 lbs in two months. After I started introducing carbs back into my diet, I gained back about 45 lbs over the next four months.
Excuse for stopping: What prompted my breakup with Nutrisystem was the blandness of the food and the cost. I was pretty hard strapped for cash at the time, and while my parents always help support me with healthy endeavors, it got to a point where I couldn't afford the over $300 a month in food. Also, my brain can only pretend for so long that dog food tastes like a filet mignon. I even tried keeping the picture of the food in front of me while I ate in hopes that by some magic of science my brain would ignore what I was holding and replace it with the food on the box. No such luck.
- Ideal Weight/Ideal Protein - Age 28
My latest attempt at following a corporate diet plan. I was inspired to try this one out after I saw tremendous results in a couple of friends. The amount of weight they had lost was astounding, so I figured I better get in on it. This program had it all: weekly weigh-ins for accountability, pre-packaged high protein bars, shakes, soups, and other foods for convenience, and a natural step back process to get you transferred from their foods to a normal diet. On paper it had it all.
I started this diet in mid-November last year, a tough challenge considering I had both Thanksgiving and Christmas ahead of me. I was best man in a wedding in January, and I was not going to be in wedding pictures weighing 294 lbs. That and a stable full of cute bridesmaids was the motivation I needed to weather Thanksgiving, a birthday dinner, and Christmas. The nice thing about Ideal Protein is that it allows you to eat vegetables and meats off of a regular menu, but just asks that you not take in any carbs. When we went to a steak house, I would be able to get an 8 oz steak, the steamed vegetables, and a trip through the salad bar. You topped that off with a night time granola bar that was actually pretty tasty. I was not starving on this diet by any means. The results came fast and in big increments. I was shedding pounds and inches like a mad man. I went from size 42 pants to a pair of 36 jeans (they were a little tight, but they buttoned and I sucked it in and walked around in pain with a proud smile on my face). I went from 294 down to 246 at my last weigh-in in February. I started working out again and with the help of my office full of angels, I was even training for my first 5k. Life was pretty good.
Excuse for stopping: I just lost motivation, pure and simple. The intrinsic drive to be a healthy person wasn't strong enough to make up for the extrinsic losses. The wedding was over and I struck out with the bridesmaids. I wouldn't have to photographed again in the foreseeable future. The 5k was in May, and I was convinced I could still run it in 30 minutes by only training for the two weeks before it (uh, not even close). Also, the nearest office was in Sioux Falls, which was about an hour and a half drive for me. It was difficult and expensive for me to make a three hour round trip once a week just to get on a scale in front of someone else. Also, this plan wasn't cheap. Between the food and the supplements, it was in the Nutrisystem neighborhood of expense. $300 a month in health meant $300 a month less in fun. I dropped it, got a bad case of the winter blues, decided I needed to get out of Iowa and applied for a job in Minnesota, and the rest is history. Through the stress of making the decision to leave and getting settled in my new situation, I've gained 40 lbs back.
So, there it is. I know this isn't a complete list of my efforts, but it catches all of the big ones (for instance, I was meeting with the school nurse in college once a week to help monitor my weight and keep a food journal until she used me as an example in class and embarrassed me out of continuing). I hope Dr. Haub of Kansas State can forgive me for my rantings and ravings before, but when you have lived a life filled with struggle only to have someone point out something that should have been fairly obvious, like lower daily calories of any kind equal lower pounds, it is easy to lose your mind a little. I'll be happy with my morning oatmeal and my cucumber/tomato salad for lunch, but I'll stop beating myself up so much for that handful of pretzels I ate last night while waiting for my tuna salad pita to cook and contemplating Dr. Haub's demise. After all, “Food is neither clean nor unclean, but merely energy my body needs to function and survive.”
Mantra + Yantra = Tantra
Jeff
A Heart Attack in the Making
Let me start with a quick weight update because I'm still obsessive about getting on a scale, especially after my speed bump this weekend. I'm happy to report that I was at 275 again this morning, down two pounds and back to where I was before my Saturday night shenanigans.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's get to what is really burning my biscuits. There are four things in this world that make me angry enough that I scream and feel like punching a wall (for the record, I've never actually punched a wall because I don't know how to patch drywall and can't imagine paying someone to do it). These four things are as follows:
1. When someone intentionally hurts my family or friends
2. When the Minnesota Vikings fumble/throw an interception/drop an interception/challenge a stupid play/waste a timeout/only run the ball 10 times when we have the best running back in the league/go for short yardage first downs and not make it. In other words, pretty much an entire Vikings football game.
3. When Sarah Palin says something. Really, just about anything. I'm not anti-Republican, just anti-her.
4. When I read the following article:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html
Now, some people would read that and be delighted. You know what has two thumbs and was less than delighted? This friggen guy here! I was so angry when I finished it that a cuss word filled tirade filled my brain. I dwelled on it all the way home last night. I sat down and pounded out a blog entry about it. Then, after I read it, I decided I better sit on it for a night so as to save the youth of our nation from being tainted with such foul language. Well, I woke up this and I'm still unhappy about it. So, in the spirit of good taste and decency, I present one of the finer segments of my rant. In place of the swears, you'll find Thanksgiving words to help brighten your November. Enjoy!
So, I just read an article on CNN about a nutrition professor at Kansas State University who ate junk food for 10 weeks and lost a total of 27 pounds. Are you pumpkining kidding me? Who does this Pilgrim think he is? I've busted my fat turkey for the last 20 years of my life to lose weight and be healthier, and this guy strolls into town and tells me that I should have been eating Twinkies, Doritos, and Ding Dongs? Well, I've got a Ding Dong for him. I looked up the nutritional facts online, and he could eat roughly 10 Twinkies a day to meet the calorie goal he was shooting for. 10 pumpkining Twinkies?! Are you kidding me? I'm sitting here as we speak eating a tuna salad pita with a diced cucumber and lettuce salad. Don't you think I'd rather be eating a bag of Doritos? You bet your turkey I would. And it isn't just his weight that is Mayflowering me off right now. All of his vitals got better! His cholesterol dropped, his triglycerides dropped, his blood pressure dropped, and his body fat dropped. This was not what I needed to hear right now. I'm trying to follow the food pyramid, lower my calories and fat content, and exercise. This mother pumpkiner is sitting on his turkey eating Ho-Ho's and losing more weight than me! At least this saint of man is eating vegetables at the table so as to not give his kids the wrong idea...you know, like that eating junk food can actually make you healthier and that the FDA is a sham. Yeah, that's right FDA! I'm calling you out, too! For years you've been pumping this impossible to live by data about serving size, calories, fat grams, and the merits of fruits and vegetables into my head, but it was all a pumpkining lie! I didn't send a message with my vote this time around, but you better believe that in two years my ballot will have a write in candidate named Jeff Pool, and his sole goal will be to take that food pyramid down. Ugh! It is just so pumpkining frustrating sometimes. I mean his study confirms what my goals of this project have been: You don't need a fad diet to lose weight, just watch your calories and fat intake. But man, this Pilgrim took it to another level that will now give me every excuse in the book to go ahead and have that 1200 calorie large Blizzard for supper because all I ate for lunch was a stalk of celery and three Twinkies. I'm torn between giving this guy the first ever Fat Kid and Stoner Hero Award or locking him away from society before he can do any more damage. I'm a strong believer in civility, but at this exact moment I'd like to say: Pumpkin you, Mark Haub. You can kiss my turkey for getting me as Mayflowered off as I would be if Sarah Palin stripped the ball from Adrian Peterson on the 1-yard line and then gave a victory speech while stomping on my sister's head. Pilgrim.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's get to what is really burning my biscuits. There are four things in this world that make me angry enough that I scream and feel like punching a wall (for the record, I've never actually punched a wall because I don't know how to patch drywall and can't imagine paying someone to do it). These four things are as follows:
1. When someone intentionally hurts my family or friends
2. When the Minnesota Vikings fumble/throw an interception/drop an interception/challenge a stupid play/waste a timeout/only run the ball 10 times when we have the best running back in the league/go for short yardage first downs and not make it. In other words, pretty much an entire Vikings football game.
3. When Sarah Palin says something. Really, just about anything. I'm not anti-Republican, just anti-her.
4. When I read the following article:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html
Now, some people would read that and be delighted. You know what has two thumbs and was less than delighted? This friggen guy here! I was so angry when I finished it that a cuss word filled tirade filled my brain. I dwelled on it all the way home last night. I sat down and pounded out a blog entry about it. Then, after I read it, I decided I better sit on it for a night so as to save the youth of our nation from being tainted with such foul language. Well, I woke up this and I'm still unhappy about it. So, in the spirit of good taste and decency, I present one of the finer segments of my rant. In place of the swears, you'll find Thanksgiving words to help brighten your November. Enjoy!
So, I just read an article on CNN about a nutrition professor at Kansas State University who ate junk food for 10 weeks and lost a total of 27 pounds. Are you pumpkining kidding me? Who does this Pilgrim think he is? I've busted my fat turkey for the last 20 years of my life to lose weight and be healthier, and this guy strolls into town and tells me that I should have been eating Twinkies, Doritos, and Ding Dongs? Well, I've got a Ding Dong for him. I looked up the nutritional facts online, and he could eat roughly 10 Twinkies a day to meet the calorie goal he was shooting for. 10 pumpkining Twinkies?! Are you kidding me? I'm sitting here as we speak eating a tuna salad pita with a diced cucumber and lettuce salad. Don't you think I'd rather be eating a bag of Doritos? You bet your turkey I would. And it isn't just his weight that is Mayflowering me off right now. All of his vitals got better! His cholesterol dropped, his triglycerides dropped, his blood pressure dropped, and his body fat dropped. This was not what I needed to hear right now. I'm trying to follow the food pyramid, lower my calories and fat content, and exercise. This mother pumpkiner is sitting on his turkey eating Ho-Ho's and losing more weight than me! At least this saint of man is eating vegetables at the table so as to not give his kids the wrong idea...you know, like that eating junk food can actually make you healthier and that the FDA is a sham. Yeah, that's right FDA! I'm calling you out, too! For years you've been pumping this impossible to live by data about serving size, calories, fat grams, and the merits of fruits and vegetables into my head, but it was all a pumpkining lie! I didn't send a message with my vote this time around, but you better believe that in two years my ballot will have a write in candidate named Jeff Pool, and his sole goal will be to take that food pyramid down. Ugh! It is just so pumpkining frustrating sometimes. I mean his study confirms what my goals of this project have been: You don't need a fad diet to lose weight, just watch your calories and fat intake. But man, this Pilgrim took it to another level that will now give me every excuse in the book to go ahead and have that 1200 calorie large Blizzard for supper because all I ate for lunch was a stalk of celery and three Twinkies. I'm torn between giving this guy the first ever Fat Kid and Stoner Hero Award or locking him away from society before he can do any more damage. I'm a strong believer in civility, but at this exact moment I'd like to say: Pumpkin you, Mark Haub. You can kiss my turkey for getting me as Mayflowered off as I would be if Sarah Palin stripped the ball from Adrian Peterson on the 1-yard line and then gave a victory speech while stomping on my sister's head. Pilgrim.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Welcome to Monday 1510: Thunderdome!
First, let me send out a big old THANK YOU to everyone who has been reading my ramblings and encouraging me to continue. When I started this blog, I honestly didn't intend to post on here every day, but maybe just two or three times a week. I quickly found this to be a great outlet for my thoughts, and I also found that in relieving my stress, I might be at least a little bit entertaining. I had 13 different people text/e-mail/Facebook me this weekend asking where my weekend posts were. That made me feel amazing! And as of 8:30 this morning, the blog has had over 700 views for the six posts I did last week. Pretty nifty. Anyway, since I didn't post all weekend, I'll give you guys a supercharged Monday report.
In the 72 or so hours since my last post, a couple of things happened.
1) I went grocery shopping
2) My new workout arrived in the mail
3) I found out that old habits die hard
As a follow-up to Jeff and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Friday, I went to Walmart Saturday morning to get an eye exam and pick out some new frames that didn't sit half-cocked on my face. I've been rocking the same frames and lenses since November 2005, so this appointment was long overdue. I went through the appointment and quickly remembered why I hadn't gone to the optometrist in five years. The first thing they did was the air blast in the eye deal. In middle school I decided that having a big round face was not helping me in the coolest kid category. So, in my hormone-riddled pubescent brain, I decided that it was surely my lack of glasses that was keeping me from making the leap into whatever being popular meant. I talked my mom into taking me to the doctor where I fully planned on half-assing the exam to get glasses, but being this was my first eye exam, I didn't know what was coming. They made me sit in terrifying chair in a poorly lit room, put my chin into a holster that looked like it was a torture device from the Middle Ages, and proceeded to shoot air into my eye. I hated it then and I hate it now. After about six months of realizing that being the fat kid with bifocals wasn't helping me out with the ladies, I ditched the glasses and swore I'd never go through that again. That is until I started sitting at a computer for 16 hours a day and slowly went blind. After the doctor got done torturing me (I can't be sure, but I think he asked his helper bees to bring in the water board equipment when I got up to leave), I walked out into the bright lights of Walmart to pick new frames. At this point, my eyes were fully dilated, and while I could see well enough to not run into the table, I was far from being able to make a solid decision on the future of my eyewear for the next five years. I fumbled through pair after pair, struggling to tell if they made me look like a young George Clooney or an old Kathy Bates. I finally settled on a pair that probably makes me look more like Drew Carey (pre-weight loss) than I already did, but they fit my face and my style. Walmart also carries the Randy Jackson line of glasses, and I think the nice girls there had me try on every single pair. But, and this is just me dawg, I just wasn't feeling them. They were a little pinchy in the middle, so, yeah, um, for me they were just aight.
Anyway, with my pupils still fully black, I stood in the middle of the fluorescent lighting capital of the world and I decided I should probably pick up groceries to get me through the week. I decided that my baked potato idea was grand and was definitely something I'd like to keep in my repertoire, but I was going to need to mix it up a little to make this thing work. I had looked around some other sites to see if there were any good options for me, and I decided that I'd start with Progresso soups and pita pocket sandwiches. I started with the soup aisle, but as I stared at the rows of cans I realized I couldn't see well enough to know my split peas from my chicken noodles. I picked up the cans and tried bringing them closer and further from my face to get a better idea of what I was buying. I found that distance was the key, so I turned the cans I was interested in around to the nutritional values, took a couple steps back, and then leaned and squinted to make out the calories/sodium/fat. As I was doing this, I heard a loud, high pitched "Yep!" I turned around to see a woman standing there next to me, also looking through the soups. I thought maybe she was on the phone or something, so I didn't think anything of it. Twenty seconds later I heard it again. It was clear this time that she wasn't on the phone, so I looked up and down the aisle to see if there was anyone around her that she could be sending her loud affirmation to. No luck. Was she mocking me? So, back to my squinting I went, only to be interrupted for a third time. It was at this point that her kids came running around the corner with hands filled with cereal and chips. She talked to them in an average voice and sent them back to find other goods from other aisles. In the process, she also yelped. Thanks to MTV's True Life, I figured out that the woman was probably suffering from Tourette's syndrome. I started to feel bad for questioning this woman's sanity and motives for yelling in the soup aisle, so I hung my head a little bit as I turned back to focus on a chicken gumbo. It was at this time that her husband came up next to her. Together, they walked past me, excused themselves, and let out a little giggle as I heard her try to explain the crazy squinting person standing three feet away from the soups trying to figure out how many servings were in a can. I quickly grabbed three of whatever was closest to me, made a dash to the pita aisle and through the vegetable section, and headed to the self checkout.
I decided at some point last week that I should probably find some sort of exercise to work alongside my new healthy lifestyle. My friends and I have been fascinated with P90x for quite some time, so I decided I'd start shopping around on eBay and Craigslist to see what I could find. In the product reviews, I noticed that a lot of people commented on the intensity of the workouts and the time commitment, but I knew that going in. After all, how was I going to go from a keg to a six pack without a little burn? I decided to head over to the P90x website to see what they had to say on the subject. I read product descriptions and user comments and realized I was probably getting in over my head. The site said something to the effect of "This routine is intended for people who are ready to take their workouts to the next level and transform their bodies in 90 days. However, if you are obese and haven't done any activity in the past 15 years, it will kill you. Proceed at your own risk." Maybe it wasn't quite that harsh, but that's how I read it. Instead, it pushed me towards a different product, the original Power 90 workout. This workout was for everyone! I read through the comments, and middle aged women, 73 year old men, and the morbidly obese all were having great success. It was so easy to do that one 90 year old grandmother was now bonding over it with her four month old grandchild! So, I found a used copy on eBay for $20 and had it rush delivered. I wrestled with whether to do it this weekend or not. The routine calls for six days on, one off, and the total workout is around 40 minutes. I decided to skip it Saturday because I was already exhausted from my 100 yard dash in Walmart, so I decided I'd give it a shot on Sunday afternoon. The kit came with a measuring tape to get a starting result, 2 DVD's (one beginner, one advanced), a recipe book, and a calendar to monitor my progress. I started with my measurements. No big surprises there. The tape was long enough to go around all my biggest areas, so I was feeling pretty good about that. I put on a pair of shorts and a hooded sweatshirt (no sweat, no sexy) and popped in the DVD. The video featured three people. There was a man and a woman in phenomenal shape standing in the back, and a super chipper man in front leading the party. They were all smiling and laughing it up. This was going to be fun. We started with a stretch to loosen up our muscles. The four of us bent to the left, bent to the right, and then three of us successfully touched the floor without bending our knees. I could tell my muscles hadn't been used in some time as everything seemed to pull and ache. By the end of the stretch, I noticed the first beads of sweat starting to drip down my face. No big deal. I sometimes sweat getting off the toilet. Next, we transitioned into Power Yoga. I've done yoga before and always seemed to enjoy it. I'm not sure I've ever done Power Yoga, though. We were flying from the Downward Dog into an Upward Snake, then throwing our legs back and somehow ending up in a Warrior. I felt like I was in a turbo charged game of Simon Says, only I didn't know what all the commands meant. "Okay, gang, swing your arms around and into the Flying Squirrel, now crouch down, bend over backwards, let out a grunt and we're in the Moose." On the flexibility scale, I'm somewhere between iron and diamond. I kept imagining a little old woman standing next to me flying through the poses as I wondered how much longer it would be before my hip went out.
After Yoga, we jumped into the cardio. Jumping jacks, running place, lunges, jumps...pretty standard fare. The nice man on the screen kept telling me that I didn't have to go at their pace and that if this was my first workout, I shouldn't be ashamed to hit pause and grab some water. I took this as a challenge. By this time my sweatshirt was living up to its name and was adding about 20 pounds to my frame. I huffed and puffed my way through the jumps, all the while praying that my neighbors couldn't see me through the giant picture window in our living room. After the first round of cardio and hearing multiple times that I should probably just hit pause, we were granted a 45 second break to grab some water, towel off, etc. I also decided I should probably ditch the sweatshirt. The two people in the back of our ring leader were starting to show some signs of exercise, and I might have even seen a bead of sweat run down one of their faces. I was starting to hate these people. Next up was more cardio, this time in the form of kicking and boxing. I shadow fought for about five minutes while trying to keep up with the folks on TV. Suddenly, I found myself in a daydream where the smiling face on the TV was standing in front of me and I was making him hurt as much as he was killing me. So was the imaginary old woman that showed me up during yoga. And then I suddenly felt like I was fighting me. I saw a reflection of shirtless big Jeff in the window, and I got mad. Even more angry than I was at the yoga lady. I didn't like that person in the window. I didn't like the way he jiggled every time I threw a punch in the air. I hated the way his face was all red and wet. My punches suddenly got crisper and more concise. I was using my whole body on the uppercuts. The old lady and the chipper dude didn't make me so out of shape that I couldn't do a workout that had been touted for everyone. I did. So, I decided I'd start with the man in the mirror, and I'm asking him to change his ways. One air punch and high kick at a time.
The workout ends with some quick ab exercises, and I did as much as I could. I finished the DVD feeling tired and disappointed in my overall performance, but also optimistic that this was something I could do as long as I kept at it. I need to prove to myself that I'm not in worse shape than a 42 year old morbidly obese man in Kentucky. I feel reinvigorated and ready to tackle this week. If I had only done that workout on Saturday...
After I left Walmart on Saturday, I went home and took a quick power nap on the couch. I had invited one of my friends over for a night of video game entertainment, so I needed to have my mind fresh for the upcoming marathon. I had been good all day. I ate a chicken sub with lots of veggies and no sauces at Subway for lunch. I had a big glass of tomato juice to get my vitamins. I was rolling. My friend arrived and we jumped right into the fun. At some point, I realized that I was eating a bag of chips that I had purchased in an effort to be a good host. No big deal. A couple of chips never killed anyone. Then we popped a couple of Tony's pizzas in the oven. Hey, we were working hard! I had been good all day, so a couple of slices of 'za weren't going to derail me. Next thing I knew we had devoured two pizzas (of which I easily ate an entire one plus some) and a thing of cheesesticks. And I'd drank 3 tomato beers. And I'd eaten half a bag of pretzels. It was so natural and happened without me even thinking twice. This is what I do, this is who I am. My friends come over or I hang at their place, we play some games, munch on some snacks, drink a few beers and have ourselves a good time. Nobody worries about calories, nobody stops to count carbs. We just have fun, and usually food is tied into this fun. Now my friend is probably 6'2", 140 lbs, and he downed three 24 oz Mountain Dews while I had my beers. I'm pretty sure he didn't think twice about how empty the calories in pop are. After he left and the full reality of the night set in, I thought about how unfair it was that he didn't have to think about these things. In fact, it never feels like anybody has to think about these things but me. I've never heard a friend order at a restaurant and ask for the dressing on the side or if there is a steamed vegetable substitution for the smothered baked potato. Maybe they just aren't as vocal about it, or maybe they really do live active enough lifestyles that they burn off all the crap they put into their bodies. Maybe they secretly sneak late night spinach or carrot sticks into their lunches the same way I sneak a Snickers bar or a double cheeseburger. I don't know, and I've never known. Don't get me wrong. I'm not angry at my friends, and I don't ask them to change their ways as I go through my yearly diets. I don't ask them to keep certain foods away from me or change menu plans just because I'm coming to town. Ultimately, it is my burden. They've always been supportive of me and my efforts, but sometimes it feels like I'm an alcoholic in a world full of people who've never had a drink. They feel for me, but with the exception of a few, probably haven't had to walk in the same plus-sized shoes.
Anyway, I wish I had worked out on Saturday because then I think I would have remembered how hard I was working towards making a life change, and maybe I would have been a little more conscious of my decisions that night. I did the right thing at the end of the night and sent the rest of the chips home with my friend to get them out of the house. I did the wrong thing by feeling sorry for myself and eating the last three pieces of pizza after he left. I paid for it on the scale. I was down two more pounds going into Saturday, but this morning I was at the exact same weight as I was on my Thursday weigh in.
But here I sit, Monday number 1510, and I'm staring at a week of new challenges. I know there will be more bumps in the road, but I'll keep fighting through. If a night of pizza and beer pushed me to start my exercise on a day that it would have been really easy to sit on the couch, watch football, and eat more pizza, I guess I'll take it. I continue to learn the same lessons I've learned a hundred times before, but this time it is going to be different. This time when I ask myself, "Can I really do this?" I'll have the voice of my soup aisle friend loudly reminding me that, "Yep!" I really can.
Your Rocky of boxing the air,
Jeff
In the 72 or so hours since my last post, a couple of things happened.
1) I went grocery shopping
2) My new workout arrived in the mail
3) I found out that old habits die hard
As a follow-up to Jeff and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Friday, I went to Walmart Saturday morning to get an eye exam and pick out some new frames that didn't sit half-cocked on my face. I've been rocking the same frames and lenses since November 2005, so this appointment was long overdue. I went through the appointment and quickly remembered why I hadn't gone to the optometrist in five years. The first thing they did was the air blast in the eye deal. In middle school I decided that having a big round face was not helping me in the coolest kid category. So, in my hormone-riddled pubescent brain, I decided that it was surely my lack of glasses that was keeping me from making the leap into whatever being popular meant. I talked my mom into taking me to the doctor where I fully planned on half-assing the exam to get glasses, but being this was my first eye exam, I didn't know what was coming. They made me sit in terrifying chair in a poorly lit room, put my chin into a holster that looked like it was a torture device from the Middle Ages, and proceeded to shoot air into my eye. I hated it then and I hate it now. After about six months of realizing that being the fat kid with bifocals wasn't helping me out with the ladies, I ditched the glasses and swore I'd never go through that again. That is until I started sitting at a computer for 16 hours a day and slowly went blind. After the doctor got done torturing me (I can't be sure, but I think he asked his helper bees to bring in the water board equipment when I got up to leave), I walked out into the bright lights of Walmart to pick new frames. At this point, my eyes were fully dilated, and while I could see well enough to not run into the table, I was far from being able to make a solid decision on the future of my eyewear for the next five years. I fumbled through pair after pair, struggling to tell if they made me look like a young George Clooney or an old Kathy Bates. I finally settled on a pair that probably makes me look more like Drew Carey (pre-weight loss) than I already did, but they fit my face and my style. Walmart also carries the Randy Jackson line of glasses, and I think the nice girls there had me try on every single pair. But, and this is just me dawg, I just wasn't feeling them. They were a little pinchy in the middle, so, yeah, um, for me they were just aight.
Anyway, with my pupils still fully black, I stood in the middle of the fluorescent lighting capital of the world and I decided I should probably pick up groceries to get me through the week. I decided that my baked potato idea was grand and was definitely something I'd like to keep in my repertoire, but I was going to need to mix it up a little to make this thing work. I had looked around some other sites to see if there were any good options for me, and I decided that I'd start with Progresso soups and pita pocket sandwiches. I started with the soup aisle, but as I stared at the rows of cans I realized I couldn't see well enough to know my split peas from my chicken noodles. I picked up the cans and tried bringing them closer and further from my face to get a better idea of what I was buying. I found that distance was the key, so I turned the cans I was interested in around to the nutritional values, took a couple steps back, and then leaned and squinted to make out the calories/sodium/fat. As I was doing this, I heard a loud, high pitched "Yep!" I turned around to see a woman standing there next to me, also looking through the soups. I thought maybe she was on the phone or something, so I didn't think anything of it. Twenty seconds later I heard it again. It was clear this time that she wasn't on the phone, so I looked up and down the aisle to see if there was anyone around her that she could be sending her loud affirmation to. No luck. Was she mocking me? So, back to my squinting I went, only to be interrupted for a third time. It was at this point that her kids came running around the corner with hands filled with cereal and chips. She talked to them in an average voice and sent them back to find other goods from other aisles. In the process, she also yelped. Thanks to MTV's True Life, I figured out that the woman was probably suffering from Tourette's syndrome. I started to feel bad for questioning this woman's sanity and motives for yelling in the soup aisle, so I hung my head a little bit as I turned back to focus on a chicken gumbo. It was at this time that her husband came up next to her. Together, they walked past me, excused themselves, and let out a little giggle as I heard her try to explain the crazy squinting person standing three feet away from the soups trying to figure out how many servings were in a can. I quickly grabbed three of whatever was closest to me, made a dash to the pita aisle and through the vegetable section, and headed to the self checkout.
I decided at some point last week that I should probably find some sort of exercise to work alongside my new healthy lifestyle. My friends and I have been fascinated with P90x for quite some time, so I decided I'd start shopping around on eBay and Craigslist to see what I could find. In the product reviews, I noticed that a lot of people commented on the intensity of the workouts and the time commitment, but I knew that going in. After all, how was I going to go from a keg to a six pack without a little burn? I decided to head over to the P90x website to see what they had to say on the subject. I read product descriptions and user comments and realized I was probably getting in over my head. The site said something to the effect of "This routine is intended for people who are ready to take their workouts to the next level and transform their bodies in 90 days. However, if you are obese and haven't done any activity in the past 15 years, it will kill you. Proceed at your own risk." Maybe it wasn't quite that harsh, but that's how I read it. Instead, it pushed me towards a different product, the original Power 90 workout. This workout was for everyone! I read through the comments, and middle aged women, 73 year old men, and the morbidly obese all were having great success. It was so easy to do that one 90 year old grandmother was now bonding over it with her four month old grandchild! So, I found a used copy on eBay for $20 and had it rush delivered. I wrestled with whether to do it this weekend or not. The routine calls for six days on, one off, and the total workout is around 40 minutes. I decided to skip it Saturday because I was already exhausted from my 100 yard dash in Walmart, so I decided I'd give it a shot on Sunday afternoon. The kit came with a measuring tape to get a starting result, 2 DVD's (one beginner, one advanced), a recipe book, and a calendar to monitor my progress. I started with my measurements. No big surprises there. The tape was long enough to go around all my biggest areas, so I was feeling pretty good about that. I put on a pair of shorts and a hooded sweatshirt (no sweat, no sexy) and popped in the DVD. The video featured three people. There was a man and a woman in phenomenal shape standing in the back, and a super chipper man in front leading the party. They were all smiling and laughing it up. This was going to be fun. We started with a stretch to loosen up our muscles. The four of us bent to the left, bent to the right, and then three of us successfully touched the floor without bending our knees. I could tell my muscles hadn't been used in some time as everything seemed to pull and ache. By the end of the stretch, I noticed the first beads of sweat starting to drip down my face. No big deal. I sometimes sweat getting off the toilet. Next, we transitioned into Power Yoga. I've done yoga before and always seemed to enjoy it. I'm not sure I've ever done Power Yoga, though. We were flying from the Downward Dog into an Upward Snake, then throwing our legs back and somehow ending up in a Warrior. I felt like I was in a turbo charged game of Simon Says, only I didn't know what all the commands meant. "Okay, gang, swing your arms around and into the Flying Squirrel, now crouch down, bend over backwards, let out a grunt and we're in the Moose." On the flexibility scale, I'm somewhere between iron and diamond. I kept imagining a little old woman standing next to me flying through the poses as I wondered how much longer it would be before my hip went out.
After Yoga, we jumped into the cardio. Jumping jacks, running place, lunges, jumps...pretty standard fare. The nice man on the screen kept telling me that I didn't have to go at their pace and that if this was my first workout, I shouldn't be ashamed to hit pause and grab some water. I took this as a challenge. By this time my sweatshirt was living up to its name and was adding about 20 pounds to my frame. I huffed and puffed my way through the jumps, all the while praying that my neighbors couldn't see me through the giant picture window in our living room. After the first round of cardio and hearing multiple times that I should probably just hit pause, we were granted a 45 second break to grab some water, towel off, etc. I also decided I should probably ditch the sweatshirt. The two people in the back of our ring leader were starting to show some signs of exercise, and I might have even seen a bead of sweat run down one of their faces. I was starting to hate these people. Next up was more cardio, this time in the form of kicking and boxing. I shadow fought for about five minutes while trying to keep up with the folks on TV. Suddenly, I found myself in a daydream where the smiling face on the TV was standing in front of me and I was making him hurt as much as he was killing me. So was the imaginary old woman that showed me up during yoga. And then I suddenly felt like I was fighting me. I saw a reflection of shirtless big Jeff in the window, and I got mad. Even more angry than I was at the yoga lady. I didn't like that person in the window. I didn't like the way he jiggled every time I threw a punch in the air. I hated the way his face was all red and wet. My punches suddenly got crisper and more concise. I was using my whole body on the uppercuts. The old lady and the chipper dude didn't make me so out of shape that I couldn't do a workout that had been touted for everyone. I did. So, I decided I'd start with the man in the mirror, and I'm asking him to change his ways. One air punch and high kick at a time.
The workout ends with some quick ab exercises, and I did as much as I could. I finished the DVD feeling tired and disappointed in my overall performance, but also optimistic that this was something I could do as long as I kept at it. I need to prove to myself that I'm not in worse shape than a 42 year old morbidly obese man in Kentucky. I feel reinvigorated and ready to tackle this week. If I had only done that workout on Saturday...
After I left Walmart on Saturday, I went home and took a quick power nap on the couch. I had invited one of my friends over for a night of video game entertainment, so I needed to have my mind fresh for the upcoming marathon. I had been good all day. I ate a chicken sub with lots of veggies and no sauces at Subway for lunch. I had a big glass of tomato juice to get my vitamins. I was rolling. My friend arrived and we jumped right into the fun. At some point, I realized that I was eating a bag of chips that I had purchased in an effort to be a good host. No big deal. A couple of chips never killed anyone. Then we popped a couple of Tony's pizzas in the oven. Hey, we were working hard! I had been good all day, so a couple of slices of 'za weren't going to derail me. Next thing I knew we had devoured two pizzas (of which I easily ate an entire one plus some) and a thing of cheesesticks. And I'd drank 3 tomato beers. And I'd eaten half a bag of pretzels. It was so natural and happened without me even thinking twice. This is what I do, this is who I am. My friends come over or I hang at their place, we play some games, munch on some snacks, drink a few beers and have ourselves a good time. Nobody worries about calories, nobody stops to count carbs. We just have fun, and usually food is tied into this fun. Now my friend is probably 6'2", 140 lbs, and he downed three 24 oz Mountain Dews while I had my beers. I'm pretty sure he didn't think twice about how empty the calories in pop are. After he left and the full reality of the night set in, I thought about how unfair it was that he didn't have to think about these things. In fact, it never feels like anybody has to think about these things but me. I've never heard a friend order at a restaurant and ask for the dressing on the side or if there is a steamed vegetable substitution for the smothered baked potato. Maybe they just aren't as vocal about it, or maybe they really do live active enough lifestyles that they burn off all the crap they put into their bodies. Maybe they secretly sneak late night spinach or carrot sticks into their lunches the same way I sneak a Snickers bar or a double cheeseburger. I don't know, and I've never known. Don't get me wrong. I'm not angry at my friends, and I don't ask them to change their ways as I go through my yearly diets. I don't ask them to keep certain foods away from me or change menu plans just because I'm coming to town. Ultimately, it is my burden. They've always been supportive of me and my efforts, but sometimes it feels like I'm an alcoholic in a world full of people who've never had a drink. They feel for me, but with the exception of a few, probably haven't had to walk in the same plus-sized shoes.
Anyway, I wish I had worked out on Saturday because then I think I would have remembered how hard I was working towards making a life change, and maybe I would have been a little more conscious of my decisions that night. I did the right thing at the end of the night and sent the rest of the chips home with my friend to get them out of the house. I did the wrong thing by feeling sorry for myself and eating the last three pieces of pizza after he left. I paid for it on the scale. I was down two more pounds going into Saturday, but this morning I was at the exact same weight as I was on my Thursday weigh in.
But here I sit, Monday number 1510, and I'm staring at a week of new challenges. I know there will be more bumps in the road, but I'll keep fighting through. If a night of pizza and beer pushed me to start my exercise on a day that it would have been really easy to sit on the couch, watch football, and eat more pizza, I guess I'll take it. I continue to learn the same lessons I've learned a hundred times before, but this time it is going to be different. This time when I ask myself, "Can I really do this?" I'll have the voice of my soup aisle friend loudly reminding me that, "Yep!" I really can.
Your Rocky of boxing the air,
Jeff
Friday, November 5, 2010
Because it is Friday and I have a good sense of humor about myself...
Things My Belly Reminds Me Of:
In case you had forgotten what it looked like
A weather balloon
This guy's bald head
Mother Earth
A Golf Ball (or any ball for that matter)
One of Saturn's moons
This delicious Honeydew Melon
A pregnant lady
Stop Tugging on Superman's Cape!
If you give me a computer to sit at, I am the eternal optimist at the keyboard. I can do this! I'm confident! Read my words and hear my message! Anyone that knows me in real life knows that this confidence has its limits and that there are weeks where it is almost non-existent. I like to think that I strive in the moment and I'm able to handle life's situations as they come at me, but sometimes all those little things start to add up and the system breaks down. I'm hoping today isn't one of those days. Let me give you a quick glance into my Friday morning thus far.
1. Woke up and had bit my cheek in the middle of the night. Now that it is swollen I will continue to bite it for the remainder of the day. My body is so upset with this diet that it is revolting with night time cannibalism.
2. Ate a delicious turkey sausage muffin sandwich for breakfast (low in calories and fat, SUPER high in sodium) and got some of that sandwich stuck in my back tooth to a point where no floss can get at it. My body is so upset with this diet that it is trying to store food in my gums in case of an emergency.
3. Cleaned the smudges off my glasses as I was driving to work and snapped the entire nose guard off of one side so that my glasses now sit funny on my face and keep sliding down (as if they don't do this enough the way it is). My body is so upset with this diet that it is giving me super human strength to break my glasses with, which then results in me not being able to see, which causes me to have to remain in one place to avoid injury, thus conserving precious calories and body fat.
4. I stopped to fill my car up with gas and stepped in a large puddle of gas that the person before me kindly left on the pavement. Of course I had a hard time noticing it seeing as how my glasses were broken on the front seat of my car, which, by the way, was super dry and full of static. My body is so upset with this diet that it is trying to start me on fire.
5. In my effort to pump gas and not burst into flames, I somehow missed that the credit card connection was currently down and that the nice people at Super America were only accepting cash. I don't carry cash. Also, the ATM was broken. Luckily the nice lady inside allowed me to write a check, even though that wasn't their policy, but only after I begged, provided four forms of ID, and did a soft shoe for her in the middle of the store. My body is so upset with this diet that it is embarrassing me in front of the help.
My first thought was that the Health Gods were punishing me for not eating my apple yesterday and sneaking a Caramel Apple sucker while I was playing video games instead. Clearly this was the only rational explanation for how everything could be going wrong at once. Thankfully today is one of my good days. Instead of getting down, I shook it off. Maybe it was Jack Johnson filling my ears with calm or the strong cup of Sumatra filling my belly. Maybe it was thinking about the funny idea for a Christmas gift that Jenna and I had been working on and how much I was looking forward to seeing her next week. Who knows. What I do know is that in the past I would have stopped at McDonald's to get a large vanilla iced coffee and two breakfast burritos. Today I didn't. It isn't much, and I can't promise that if the same series of events happens next Friday that I won't make that unnecessary pit stop. But today I didn't. No, today I'll sit here chewing on my cheek with a tooth that is filled with turkey sausage while tilting my head to look at my computer through lopsided glasses, all the while enjoying the sweet, sweet smell of paid-for-in-cash gasoline that might just cause me to spontaneously combust. If this ain't livin'...
Stoppin', droppin', and rollin' to a better me,
Jeff
1. Woke up and had bit my cheek in the middle of the night. Now that it is swollen I will continue to bite it for the remainder of the day. My body is so upset with this diet that it is revolting with night time cannibalism.
2. Ate a delicious turkey sausage muffin sandwich for breakfast (low in calories and fat, SUPER high in sodium) and got some of that sandwich stuck in my back tooth to a point where no floss can get at it. My body is so upset with this diet that it is trying to store food in my gums in case of an emergency.
3. Cleaned the smudges off my glasses as I was driving to work and snapped the entire nose guard off of one side so that my glasses now sit funny on my face and keep sliding down (as if they don't do this enough the way it is). My body is so upset with this diet that it is giving me super human strength to break my glasses with, which then results in me not being able to see, which causes me to have to remain in one place to avoid injury, thus conserving precious calories and body fat.
4. I stopped to fill my car up with gas and stepped in a large puddle of gas that the person before me kindly left on the pavement. Of course I had a hard time noticing it seeing as how my glasses were broken on the front seat of my car, which, by the way, was super dry and full of static. My body is so upset with this diet that it is trying to start me on fire.
5. In my effort to pump gas and not burst into flames, I somehow missed that the credit card connection was currently down and that the nice people at Super America were only accepting cash. I don't carry cash. Also, the ATM was broken. Luckily the nice lady inside allowed me to write a check, even though that wasn't their policy, but only after I begged, provided four forms of ID, and did a soft shoe for her in the middle of the store. My body is so upset with this diet that it is embarrassing me in front of the help.
My first thought was that the Health Gods were punishing me for not eating my apple yesterday and sneaking a Caramel Apple sucker while I was playing video games instead. Clearly this was the only rational explanation for how everything could be going wrong at once. Thankfully today is one of my good days. Instead of getting down, I shook it off. Maybe it was Jack Johnson filling my ears with calm or the strong cup of Sumatra filling my belly. Maybe it was thinking about the funny idea for a Christmas gift that Jenna and I had been working on and how much I was looking forward to seeing her next week. Who knows. What I do know is that in the past I would have stopped at McDonald's to get a large vanilla iced coffee and two breakfast burritos. Today I didn't. It isn't much, and I can't promise that if the same series of events happens next Friday that I won't make that unnecessary pit stop. But today I didn't. No, today I'll sit here chewing on my cheek with a tooth that is filled with turkey sausage while tilting my head to look at my computer through lopsided glasses, all the while enjoying the sweet, sweet smell of paid-for-in-cash gasoline that might just cause me to spontaneously combust. If this ain't livin'...
Stoppin', droppin', and rollin' to a better me,
Jeff
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Warning! This Post Contains Male Nudity (But it's still safe for work)
Well, here it is. The day I reveal my weight to the world. I stopped at Walmart last night to buy a scale, and after being told the $7 ones aren't as accurate (why sell them), I opted into a lovely black digital model. It claimed to be as accurate as the one at the doctor's office, which I'm not sure is always so accurate. The last time I hopped on the scale at the doctor's office (about three weeks ago) I weighed 289. That number set off my freak out flag because my highest ever, which just happened to be achieved at about this time last year, was about 294, and I was getting dangerously close to that magical 300 milestone that I swore I'd never let myself hit. Okay, that's not entirely true. One time when I was at about the 285 mark, I decided maybe I'd shoot for 320 so that I could get on Biggest Loser. I knew that tipping the scales at a measly 285 would never get me past the screeners, but I figured 320 with my great personality had me as a shoo in. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and I didn't risk my life for a reality TV show. But know that I was thiiiis close...
Anyway, I hit 289, freaked out, started re-evaluating things, and, four weeks later, I'm the owner of a new scale. I walked into the bathroom this morning, climbed on the scale, looked down and saw:
That's right, I saw nothing except for my big fat hairy gut (and yes, there are boxers down there somewhere). When you reach the point where you can't tell how much you weigh because you literally can't see the scale, it might be time to make a change. You see, I suffer from what the doctors affectionately call Dunlop's Syndrome because my belly dunlops over my belt. You may also know it as Dinkydoo Disease, because my belly sticks out further than my....well, you get the point. Regardless, this wasn't a great start to my new scale experience.
So, I took a deep breath, bent over, and saw this instead:
Anyway, I hit 289, freaked out, started re-evaluating things, and, four weeks later, I'm the owner of a new scale. I walked into the bathroom this morning, climbed on the scale, looked down and saw:
So, I took a deep breath, bent over, and saw this instead:
My toes! I hadn't seen them in forever, and it turns out they are short and hobbit like. Who knew? Also, I saw that my efforts were already starting to pay off. Now, I know, I can already hear your minds rolling around screaming, "It is a different scale!" and "You weighed first thing in the morning!" and "Water weight fluctuates your result!" To that I reply: Shut up! I'm well aware of all of those things, and it seems like every time I've made an effort to drop weight I hear that stupid water weight excuse. I get it. It fluctuates. So does my self-esteem, and you being obnoxious isn't helping the cause. And the moon pulls differently on the Earth, which effects the tides, which effects gravity, which effects my weight. Perfect, now you've pitted me against the moon. We're trying to lower my blood pressure here, folks! I also know that it is all about carbs and that my bones probably don't weigh that much more than yours. Will that stop me from eating my baked potato for lunch and telling people I'm just big boned? No, probably not.
Now that we've got that out of the way, let me tell you why buying the scale was probably my biggest mistake. There's a huge difference between living healthier and losing weight. One often causes the other, but not necessarily at the pace we'd all like. Most bigger people don't obsess about their health, they obsess about their weight, regardless of what they say. I'd love to tell you that my morning aches and pains or my monthly sickness or the recurring kidney issues and borderline diabetes are the main driving force for me. They are all things I worry about daily, but in my preprogrammed mind, weight is still the obsession. I know better than to think that I can hop on the scale once a week and update this blog. Truth be told, I weighed myself last night. And again last night after I ate supper. And again when I woke up this morning. And again five minutes later. I have another picture on my phone that says 280.7. I'll leave it up to the imagination on how I lost three lbs in five minutes, but here's a hint: I'm not bulimic and have a new high fiber diet. The last number was the one I was the happiest with and the one you see above. Maybe I'm lying to myself, but if it gives me even the slightest feeling of self-accomplishment, I'll take it.
Anyway, this is a demon I'm going to have to fight. Pounds seem to be the most easily measurable milestones in the beginning, and I hope that I'm able to shake that need to jump on the scale every time I walk by the bathroom. I even tried keeping the scale in a drawer in my bedroom with the mindset of "out of sight, out of mind", but it called to me like a long lost lover who desperately wants to break my heart again. Well, I'll play her game for now, and as long as I stay strong enough, I know I'm the one who will leave her at the altar this time.
Until then, I'll keep this in mind: What weighs more, a 277.4 lb bag of feathers or a 277.4 lb bag of me? The answer, my friends, is that I'm as light as a bag of feathers.
Scaling it down,
Jeff
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
My Love Affair With Fast Food
Ahhhh, the McRib. Welcome back! And at such a convenient time for me! There's nothing like a 24 gram of fat "pork" patty slathered in BBQ sauce, covered in onions and pickles, and planted between two soggy buns to derail my train before it even leaves the station. How can this monstrosity bring me to my knees when I know how absolutely awful it is? Well, because I am the old black man in the video. When I pass a McDonald's or Taco Bell, I have a physical and psychological reaction. When I take the first bite out of a McDouble or a Grilled Stuffed Burrito, my soul gently sways back and forth while a sense of satisfaction sweeps over me. In my mind's eye, fast food completes me.
This isn't anything new. As far back as I can remember, I was excited every time we got to eat out. In my family, that was a lot. See, I had fantastic parents who lived very busy lifestyles which often centered around me and my sister's activities. We were never all in one place at one time during the day because my dad taught in Montrose, my sister went to school in either Humboldt or Hartford, wherever I happened to not be that year, and my mom worked in Sioux Falls. My dad coached baseball, softball, boys and girls basketball, volleyball, golf, and anything else that involved a circle ball. My sister and I were involved in sports, plays, band, chorus, and pretty much everything in between. My mom somehow managed to make it all work to where she never missed any of our things, which was tough since they were almost always at conflicting times. So, how do you feed a family of four that is constantly on the go? Hamburger Helper and fast food, the latter of which was strongly preferred by my sister and I. I distinctly remember going to Taco Bell as a kid on our way to softball games. Taco Bell was new and exciting for me since we'd never had one in any of the towns we lived in before. Our family wasn't rolling in dough, so I'm sure the convenience, cost, and our overall love of Mexican food made it the ideal place for my parents. I remember we used to be able to order two things off the menu, so my sister and I would strategize carefully about how we could get the most bang for our buck. Eventually, two items became three items as we got older, and somehow along the way after I didn't have my mom guiding my decisions, it became four or five.
It wasn't just Taco Bell. Some of my best childhood memories took place in fast food restaurants. I had birthday parties in McDonald's in Pierre and Aberdeen, I collected all the Disney Christmas dolls/Smurf glasses/California Raisins from Hardees, and I felt a little closer to my grandma as we shared an Apple Grande on hot days in Taco Johns. I don't watch a ton of children's TV anymore (okay, okay, I do, but not on Saturday mornings), so I'm not sure how the marketing is to kids these days, but back then your relative coolness completely depended on whether or not you had the Kids Meal watch from Burger King. Fast food = satisfaction with life.
Then came college and my real downward spiral into trans fat dependency. There's something about the amount that you eat as an adolescent male that helps you feel superior to your friends. You can eat a 18" of sub? Well, watch my down two footlongs. You got the Monster Burger combo with a large fry? Yeah, me too, and I'm looking forward to washing it all down with this chocolate shake. We ate like maniacs! My friends were all very athletic people, and they could go calorie for calorie with me. I have one name, who shall remain nameless so as to protect his reputation as a sane person, who once at the following: 1 footlong sub, 6 Chicken McNuggets, a large Monster Burger combo, a big cookie from Hardee's, and large Blizzard. In one sitting. In under an hour. And so did I. Suddenly, my stomach's threshold was able to expand beyond my wildest dreams. Eating a large pizza by myself was no longer an oddity, but a regular occurrence. We ate and ate and ate. They all stayed the same weight. I gained about 60 pounds.
Now the fast food companies had me hooked on about four levels. I knew it was cheap, I knew it was easier than cooking for myself, I was always full, and I was emotionally attached. The last two eventually turned into my biggest downfall. I don't feel like I eat a lot. Or at least not that much more than anyone else I eat with on a daily basis. I know that it takes 3,000+ calories to maintain my weight, but I honestly don't feel like I put that into my body on a normal day. However, many days for me aren't normal. I'm a social person, and I've lived on my own for the past six years or so. When I feel down or lonely, I binge. When I leave my parents' house or Sioux Falls/Sioux City after a weekend with friends, I almost always stop somewhere and spend $15. I'm ashamed to admit this, but my usual fare consists of two Buck Doubles and two Chicken Sandwiches from Burger King or the two Chalupa meal with a taco, plus a Grilled Stuffed Burrito and a Chili Cheese Burrito from Taco Bell. I'm so ashamed when I do it that I sometimes pretend I'm on the phone with someone who is asking me to place an order for them as well when I pull up to the window. Fast food makes me full, and not just in the basic food way. Ronald McDonald, Taco John, the King, the Noid, and that talking chihuahua always have my back, no matter what else is going on in my life.
Well, no more. Hi, my name is Jeff and I am a fast food addict (pause for your hello back). Starting today, I no longer need fast food to fill in the spaces. I have a support system that always holds me up, and all the Super Sizing in the world isn't going to make me feel better than my friends and family. This $3 apple (okay, I'm still not over the $3 apple) makes me feel just as good about myself, and in the long run, it is going to make my life better. So, Ronald, John, King, Noid, dog...we're through. I won't let the McRib have this dance for the rest of my life.
Dancing to a new beat,
Jeff
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Being Healthy is Killing Me!
So, my first Monday back on the wagon went pretty well for the most part. I brought my own lunch to work, and I tried to space out my eating so that I never had a "Oh God, I'm starving, give me three double cheeseburgers!" moment. I also received a ton of support from my Facebook family, so I went back to feeling pretty good about this little project. But then, at a time I estimate to be between 3 and 4 am, my body decided it was going to reject this little healthy notion my mind had come up with and made the bold move to suffocate me. I woke up around 6 am, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, and couldn't move. I noticed yesterday that I was starting to get a little congested, which was probably the warning shot from one of my man boobs telling me not to mess with what we had going. But today it was all out warfare. I made the call in that I was sick, rolled back over fully expecting not to be able to sleep seeing as how I couldn't breathe, and woke back up again at 12:30. So, today I made it through lunch with a calorie intake of 0, unless you count the snot in my throat, which is probably on par with the nutritional value of one of the 20 or so Halloween Tootsie Rolls I ate last week.
I looked around for some sort of medicine to get me back on track, but I shared the plight of old Mother Hubbard. Sick or not, I fully intended to vote today, so I decided I'd hit the grocery store on the way to the polling center. After doing my civic duty, I made the dreaded trip to the grocery store. Here's what I hate the most about the diet tango. There's always that first trip back to the grocery store when you've recommitted yourself, and during that trip you have to visit the section of the store you usually blow past on the way to the frozen pizza aisle. I always feel a little overwhelmed trying to pick out fruits and vegetables, but I generally know what I like. I'm a big fan of Honeycrisp apples, bananas, and pears, and I am fairly tolerant of broccoli and carrots. What this generally equates to is me leaving the store with bags and bags full of fruit that I'm fairly confident rot on the way home. Seriously, how long is a banana supposed to last? I try to pick some green ones to last me through a week, and they almost always brown before I get to one. You know how long a Twinkie lasts? Forever! Also, you know how much five Honeycrisp apples cost? Roughly as much as five Jack's pizzas.
But I'm committed. I only buy enough fruit to get me through the weekend this time. I came up with this crazy plan to make a baked potato for lunch with my nifty microwaveable potato bag and then put a Green Giant Broccolli and Cheese single on top of it. That puts me at around a 300 calorie lunch that just happens to be one of the meals I usually looked forward to on the cafeteria menu. Match that up with a $3 apple (seriously, did I miss the small diamond in the middle?) in the afternoon, and I should be able to fight my mind's starving reflex.
One of the other steps of the new diet tango is getting rid of all of the "bad" food around the house. I did a fairly convincing job of that this weekend, because, as anyone who has struggled with weight before knows, you'll start new on Monday so you might as well get in your last two large pizzas from Dominos. Anyway, going into yesterday I just had a few pieces of leftover pizza in the fridge, so with the exception of the huge bowl of suckers that I bought for the trick or treaters that I eventually decided to shun, I think the house is pretty much temptation free. I live with a guy that weighs about 140 lbs soaking wet and who leads an active lifestyle, so I can't even blame it on him. Bastard! Just kidding, Ryan...don't jack up my rent! I did eat the rest of the pizza last night, which most surely put me over the 2,000 calorie a day mark. But get this: according to a recommended calorie calculator, I have to take in 3,034 calories a day to maintain my current weight! I used multiple tools online to figure out this number, but it was always very close to this number. In order to lose just one pound a week, I need to get that number down to 2,534, and to lose two pounds I have to average 2,034. And that's living what the websites affectionately have termed "a sedentary" lifestyle, which basically means I move as much as a rock. These numbers reinforce to me that it won't take a major overhaul in my lifestyle to get this sedentary rock a rollin'!
Mr. Body, I will win this war, one way or another.
Breathlessly yours,
Mr. Mind
I looked around for some sort of medicine to get me back on track, but I shared the plight of old Mother Hubbard. Sick or not, I fully intended to vote today, so I decided I'd hit the grocery store on the way to the polling center. After doing my civic duty, I made the dreaded trip to the grocery store. Here's what I hate the most about the diet tango. There's always that first trip back to the grocery store when you've recommitted yourself, and during that trip you have to visit the section of the store you usually blow past on the way to the frozen pizza aisle. I always feel a little overwhelmed trying to pick out fruits and vegetables, but I generally know what I like. I'm a big fan of Honeycrisp apples, bananas, and pears, and I am fairly tolerant of broccoli and carrots. What this generally equates to is me leaving the store with bags and bags full of fruit that I'm fairly confident rot on the way home. Seriously, how long is a banana supposed to last? I try to pick some green ones to last me through a week, and they almost always brown before I get to one. You know how long a Twinkie lasts? Forever! Also, you know how much five Honeycrisp apples cost? Roughly as much as five Jack's pizzas.
But I'm committed. I only buy enough fruit to get me through the weekend this time. I came up with this crazy plan to make a baked potato for lunch with my nifty microwaveable potato bag and then put a Green Giant Broccolli and Cheese single on top of it. That puts me at around a 300 calorie lunch that just happens to be one of the meals I usually looked forward to on the cafeteria menu. Match that up with a $3 apple (seriously, did I miss the small diamond in the middle?) in the afternoon, and I should be able to fight my mind's starving reflex.
One of the other steps of the new diet tango is getting rid of all of the "bad" food around the house. I did a fairly convincing job of that this weekend, because, as anyone who has struggled with weight before knows, you'll start new on Monday so you might as well get in your last two large pizzas from Dominos. Anyway, going into yesterday I just had a few pieces of leftover pizza in the fridge, so with the exception of the huge bowl of suckers that I bought for the trick or treaters that I eventually decided to shun, I think the house is pretty much temptation free. I live with a guy that weighs about 140 lbs soaking wet and who leads an active lifestyle, so I can't even blame it on him. Bastard! Just kidding, Ryan...don't jack up my rent! I did eat the rest of the pizza last night, which most surely put me over the 2,000 calorie a day mark. But get this: according to a recommended calorie calculator, I have to take in 3,034 calories a day to maintain my current weight! I used multiple tools online to figure out this number, but it was always very close to this number. In order to lose just one pound a week, I need to get that number down to 2,534, and to lose two pounds I have to average 2,034. And that's living what the websites affectionately have termed "a sedentary" lifestyle, which basically means I move as much as a rock. These numbers reinforce to me that it won't take a major overhaul in my lifestyle to get this sedentary rock a rollin'!
Mr. Body, I will win this war, one way or another.
Breathlessly yours,
Mr. Mind
Monday, November 1, 2010
1509 Mondays!
Hello, and welcome to the 1509th Monday of my life, give or take one or two. Let's get started with the basics: Who are you? Why the title? What does it all mean?! Well, I'm Jeff. Nice to meet you. I'm a 28 year old man whose 29th birthday is knocking on the door. I'm currently living in the greater Minneapolis area working in the field that I love (higher education). After moving away from Iowa after five years, I finally found the girl of my dreams...in Iowa. But we're solid and a rock and have been making the distance thing work. All in all, my life is pretty great except for one major thing: I'm fat. Whoa! Some people find that term offensive, but in my case it seems to be the best term to use. According to most BMI indexes, I'm somewhere between obese and morbidly obese, and to me both of those things sound 1000% worse than fat. I don't have an exact weight right now because I stepped on a scale this morning that fluctuated 10 lbs depending on which way I leaned, but I'm going to pick one up today on the way home and update everyone tomorrow on the exact damage. Being overweight isn't anything new to me. I've been larger than healthy for almost my entire life, save for a few years in high school where my body decided to shoot straight up and spread the gooey goodness out enough to give the illusion of fitness. It is also something I've stressed about my entire life. This isn't a pity party for me, but (the almighty but) when you're bigger than everyone else, you notice it. And in your head they notice it, whether that's true or not. In my life, I've never had a friend bigger than me, so I guess I always filled the fat kid role in every group of friends. Fortunately, I've never had a friend who has made me feel that way. In fact, I am and have been surrounded by some of the most supportive people anyone could ever ask for. During different stages of my life, I've had friends that offered to work out with me, friends who tried out diets with me, and friends who've been there to push me through when I get ready to quit. I even somehow conned an otherwise reasonable office full of women into running a 5k with me this past May. Again, I'm a pretty damn lucky guy.
So, what does 1509 Mondays have to do with all this? Well, as a person who struggles with his weight, I often find myself using Monday as a new jumping off point. For instance, I'll eat well on Monday through Wednesday, slip a little Thursday, and then completely fall off the wagon for the weekend with the understanding that I'll start up new on Monday. As much as everyone hates Mondays (and believe me, I'm not a huge fan when that Monday morning alarm goes off), in the world of Jeff, Monday means hope. A fresh beginning. Well, here I sit, 1509 Mondays later, and I'm close to my worst health I've ever had (I think I was slightly worse last year at this time, but it is a horse race). There have been new beginnings that have been great and have seen me shedding pounds and feeling healthier every day, but the large majority of them feature me coming up with some new pep talk that seems to fade by mid-week.
So, where does that leave me? Well, I turn 30 in roughly 56 Mondays from today. Because of where I'm at in my life right now, I know that there will be some major life changes ahead of me in those 56 Mondays, and in a perfect world, I'd have at least another 2,500 Mondays left for me to enjoy. That's never going to happen at the rate I'm going. Hell, I can't carry an empty cardboard box up a flight of stairs without having to catch my breath at the top. So, here's my challenge to myself. In the next 56 Mondays, I'm going to lose weight and be more fit. That doesn't really seem like that hard of a thing to do, right? I struggle with making some quantitative weight goal because I've learned in the past that when I have that goal and don't hit it, I end up bouncing back up hard. Would I love to lose 100 lbs? Absolutely. Would I be happy with 50? Ecstatic. So, instead of having goals, I'm going to have milestones. I'm not really sure what I want those milestones to be yet, but when I hit them, I'll know it. I would love to take another stab at a 5k someday, only for real this time. I'd love to wear pants in the 30's instead of the 40's, a goal I was able to hit pretty easily last year but that I let slip away. I'd like to own a suit jacket that I can buy off the rack at JC Penney, only I want to feel so good about being able find my size on the rack that I still want to go to the specialty store to get a great suit tailored for me. I want to carry an empty box up a flight of stairs. Those all seem reasonable to me, but sometimes reasonable just isn't as practical as it sounds.
I promise my posts won't all be novels, but I've decided to share this journey with my friends and family. The easy thing will be to ignore the posts when they pop up on my Facebook page, but just know that all of my past success has been based on the support I've received from all of you. I've tried so many different diets and plans (more on that in another post), so this time I've decided to start with the basics. I'm not going to do a fad diet, and I hope it doesn't come back to that. I'm going to use the good ol' Food Pyramid that I learned about when I was in the 2nd grade, and I'm going to try to not sit in a chair for 30 minutes a day. Seems pretty simple, but we all know better. The best thing I've learned about myself through all my different weight loss attempts is that I need to be accountable to someone. Well, here I am world. My success and failures will be on display for the whole world to see. I'm kind of putting myself out there, and I'm not always the most gracious loser, so I'm hoping the possibility of the world knowing I didn't make it will be enough driving force to keep this dream of being average alive. It sure can't hurt.
With hope,
Jeff
So, what does 1509 Mondays have to do with all this? Well, as a person who struggles with his weight, I often find myself using Monday as a new jumping off point. For instance, I'll eat well on Monday through Wednesday, slip a little Thursday, and then completely fall off the wagon for the weekend with the understanding that I'll start up new on Monday. As much as everyone hates Mondays (and believe me, I'm not a huge fan when that Monday morning alarm goes off), in the world of Jeff, Monday means hope. A fresh beginning. Well, here I sit, 1509 Mondays later, and I'm close to my worst health I've ever had (I think I was slightly worse last year at this time, but it is a horse race). There have been new beginnings that have been great and have seen me shedding pounds and feeling healthier every day, but the large majority of them feature me coming up with some new pep talk that seems to fade by mid-week.
So, where does that leave me? Well, I turn 30 in roughly 56 Mondays from today. Because of where I'm at in my life right now, I know that there will be some major life changes ahead of me in those 56 Mondays, and in a perfect world, I'd have at least another 2,500 Mondays left for me to enjoy. That's never going to happen at the rate I'm going. Hell, I can't carry an empty cardboard box up a flight of stairs without having to catch my breath at the top. So, here's my challenge to myself. In the next 56 Mondays, I'm going to lose weight and be more fit. That doesn't really seem like that hard of a thing to do, right? I struggle with making some quantitative weight goal because I've learned in the past that when I have that goal and don't hit it, I end up bouncing back up hard. Would I love to lose 100 lbs? Absolutely. Would I be happy with 50? Ecstatic. So, instead of having goals, I'm going to have milestones. I'm not really sure what I want those milestones to be yet, but when I hit them, I'll know it. I would love to take another stab at a 5k someday, only for real this time. I'd love to wear pants in the 30's instead of the 40's, a goal I was able to hit pretty easily last year but that I let slip away. I'd like to own a suit jacket that I can buy off the rack at JC Penney, only I want to feel so good about being able find my size on the rack that I still want to go to the specialty store to get a great suit tailored for me. I want to carry an empty box up a flight of stairs. Those all seem reasonable to me, but sometimes reasonable just isn't as practical as it sounds.
I promise my posts won't all be novels, but I've decided to share this journey with my friends and family. The easy thing will be to ignore the posts when they pop up on my Facebook page, but just know that all of my past success has been based on the support I've received from all of you. I've tried so many different diets and plans (more on that in another post), so this time I've decided to start with the basics. I'm not going to do a fad diet, and I hope it doesn't come back to that. I'm going to use the good ol' Food Pyramid that I learned about when I was in the 2nd grade, and I'm going to try to not sit in a chair for 30 minutes a day. Seems pretty simple, but we all know better. The best thing I've learned about myself through all my different weight loss attempts is that I need to be accountable to someone. Well, here I am world. My success and failures will be on display for the whole world to see. I'm kind of putting myself out there, and I'm not always the most gracious loser, so I'm hoping the possibility of the world knowing I didn't make it will be enough driving force to keep this dream of being average alive. It sure can't hurt.
With hope,
Jeff
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