February 10th, 2012: Lost the found pound and now I’m back to 316. Been here on the way up once before, and on the way down once before. The next time I go down below 316, I fucking better never see this weight again. Because I try to take off Thursday (from exercise), the only thing I did yesterday that approached physical activity was watching Sam play ping-pong at his new ping-pong club. I played with William and we fetched loose ping-pong balls from everyone’s tables. Moving 316 pounds to try to do that must have burned some calories. It didn’t feel easy.
I have three stories illustrating three false starts for me at exercising this century. I often like to try to paint very descriptive pictures when I write, but today I’ll try to make these long stories short.
1) My would-be workout partner and I both got gym memberships in our town. We both figured we still had it, and went straight to my old standard move: the bench press. I started out with 225 lbs. on one bench, even though I hadn’t lifted weights in a good 5 years, while Clay went to another bench and loaded his bar with 225 lbs. 225 lbs. on a normal Olympic bar is 2-45 lb. weight plates on each side. The only problem is, I accidentally put only 1-45 lb. plate on one side , and two on the other. It was 6:00 pm, prime gym time and very busy. I brought the bar off the rack, and anyone who’s ever done this or witnessed it knows what happened next. The bar pivoted hard and fast to the heavier side – CRASH – the two 45 pounders came off. I thought I could hold the other side. Nope. CRASH – the other 45 came off. I sat up fast. Everyone in the gym was looking at me. And Clay, who, as I saw when I looked over, was pinned under his 225 lb. bar. His legs were doing the mid-air bicycle as he gasped for help. I ran over and pulled it off him. It was like the music stopped, everyone stopped, the birds flew out of the trees, etc. Complete and total buffoon embarrassment.
2) My wife and I got memberships to another athletic club in our town. We went to a group spinning class. Juliana is a class act, has done spinning before, and warned me to be prepared. Ah, how hard can pedaling a bicycle be? We got there late and the only bikes left were front and center. I was by far the largest person in the room, probably like 100 lbs. heavier than the next biggest person in the room. Not expecting to be worked hard, I was wearing Levi shorts and a button-down shirt. Within moments of starting, I knew I was screwed. I can’t remember, but I think the class was supposed to be 1 hour. Not even 5 minutes into this, all that’s going through my head is quit-quit-quit-quit-quit- . . . I’m prideful, but there was no way I was going the full hour. I only made it about 20 minutes. Then I made some lame-ass excuse to the class in general. I did not make it out the door. I gagged and puked in a garbage can. A loud gag that sounded in-human, like a bus crashing into a herd of buffalo. I had a horrid Levi rash. I had that horrid first-day on a bike crotch pain. I never went back.
3) January, 2003. Temperature (I’m guessing) was about 0°F. It was around 8 p.m. There is a path around the river everyone calls the “greenbelt”. My 80-year old grandmother-in-law walks this 2+ mile path almost every day. How hard could it be to jog it? Just under the halfway mark, my back, like, seized up. It was almost like a Stephen King novel finishing the other mile. Cold is creeping in. Can’t stand up straight. Can only take slow, itty-bitty, shuffling steps. Wondering how I can flag down a car and not face one of the worst humiliations I’ve ever had. Wondering if I should turn around, or keep going. It’s 6’s. I can see people through windows in restaurants on the other side of the river enjoying a drink and a meal and they look so warm and comfortable. I didn’t try jogging again for about 3 years. I don’t even remember how I made it home.
I guess my reasons for telling this are that no matter how hard you think it might be going to the gym – don’t ever be embarrassed. I’ve got you beat in that department. And take it slow. Everybody will be on your side. I do most of my workouts at home now, but when I do go to the gym, everyone has been really supportive. I didn’t show up this time with swagger, but rather, with humility and honesty. I know that eventually I’ll be able to hang with at least the average person there.
February 10th, 2020 (retrospective): We’ve moved from trains that leave stations to planes that leave the ground. I guess next it should be automobiles, and it will be. I’m known for trying to explain everything sooner or later with analogies – once, one of my colleagues said, “here comes a Benalogy” during a meeting when I was yapping about something or other and couldn’t get my point across succinctly. Well, hopefully the Benalogies help me achieve that from time to time, or at least sharpen the point a little bit.
It’s fascinating to me the highways of thought I had throughout that initial weight loss. They weren’t always in order, but at least one theme played out in a mind-movie documentary each day. The subject of the movie would change between morning, afternoon, and evening – perhaps a function of fatigue; sometimes they would change depending on the situation – maybe a function of stress level; and other times they might change like the Idaho weather, without apparent reason.
I thought about how humiliating it had become to almost always be the fattest person in the room. I thought about how I used to not be fat. I thought about what had changed for me that led me down the road of self-destruction, and I thought about what was making me want to find the next exit on this interstate and head back south. And then I thought about how in the hell I was going to make myself keep traveling south because there had been times when I’d had a pretty good head of steam southbound (losing weight), only to find myself traveling again north. Some of these places I’d passed by multiple times – 250town, 275’sburg, 280falls. I thought about the people who seemed to want me to fail, and whether this was just my imagination or not (usually it was imagination, nobody cares that much really, everyone’s fighting his own daily battles). Sometimes my dreams and aspirations were crystal clear, usually as a function of the number on the scale. Sometimes I felt like this was nuclear winter and I had to just dig in and fight. I wondered if there was life without massive food binges. I wondered if there was life beyond making every celebration revolve around food. There were days when I felt so light and fast and squared-away that I wondered why there were any fat people when the process was so simple. There were times when I dreamed – when I had to dream, lest I become caught in a whirlwind of a nightmare of my own doing.
