January 27th, 2012: Out of the holding pattern, at least for today. 328 lbs. I would like to shed 29 more pounds by mid-March. Can I do it?
The treadmill workouts are increasing in intensity to the proportion of weight I’ve lost as well. My two main workouts are slow walk and max incline (~2.5 mph and 15 on the incline) Monday and Wednesday and a slow jog at medium incline (~3.6 mph and 6 on the incline) Tuesday and Thursday. Both burn about 500 calories (at least according to the screen, which I realize is not extremely accurate – but a good relative indicator). Friday-Sunday I’ve been mixing it up with boxing, weights, and stepaerobics (yes, stepaerobics – it’s challenging as hell for someone with two left feet). I’ve also been doing abs and lower back. Still with all that, the diet modification, for me, is the biggest challenge.
I have a perfect little two-year old son. He’s perfect. Except sometimes he can’t sleep at night, so he jumps in with Mom and Dad. He kicks like a mini-mule all night. My eyes look like two piss-holes in the snow today. Quoting Vince Lomabardi: “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Fatigue makes me cowardly in the face of my demons. I’m having a hard time resisting the binge-urge today. However, I will not cave in, and neither will you. We are in this together. Tired or not. This time we’ll fight through the fatigue and we’ll carry on until tomorrow!
January 27, 2020 (retrospective): More thoughts about willpower. I personally happen to think I have a solid power of will, and one of the things I tell myself is that in a head-to-head competition, if it comes down to the power of wills between my adversary and me, my will will win every time. However, one night prior to this last Christmas (2019), instead of planning ahead, I created an EPIC diet failure for myself. Remember, this is real-time now.
I train hard, and generally follow my diet plans to the letter. I am on point. But, fuck, there I was, dinner over, bed waiting, and I thought to myself, I’m just gonna take one, maybe three scoops of powdered peanut butter, mix it with a little Walden’s Zero-Calories syrup, and then eat it slowly. Forty-five minutes later I was scrolling through Facebook eating the last of the actual/already-made (not powdered) peanut butter, mixing it with the last of an entire jar of Smucker’s Red Raspberry Preserves and Chocolate Cheerios. When I completed that, I stole all of William’s Hostess powdered donuts and mixed them with the last of the Cheerios in a huge tupperware bowl with milk. I realized I was eating like a pig at the trough, I knew it, I was totally coherent, but I Could. Not. Stop. Eventually, of course, I was forced to when everything was gone. Then I looked over at the reflection of myself in one of the kitchen windows. The whiskers on my chin were almost all white with powdered sugar. I could also see some brown and red splotches from the peanut butter and jam. I shrugged, took a hot-pocket out of the freezer, microwaved it, and burned my mouth trying to jam it down. I was reminded of why both Jim Gaffigan and I hate hot-pockets.
Just an example of when willpower failed me. That’s all. Oh, and a fine example of how this battle never ends: I went to bed and laid there feeling guilty that I binged. So guilty that if there would have been anything easy left to eat in the house, I would have gotten out of bed and ate it, just to soothe the guilt. Fuck, around and around and around we go. For God’s sake, do not get on the merry go-round when ya can’t handle the spin.
