Day 64

March 5th, 2012: The jive continues, only my grille is pointed south today, and that’s good.  Down one to 303.  Which, again, is a net gain, overall.  At least it’s a gun caliber weight (albeit one I don’t use or own or wouldn’t own, it’s the .303 British). I’m going to do something today I don’t necessarily believe in while on this program (which may be to my chagrin).  I’m going to totally step outside my comfort zone and blast myself when it comes to exercise today.  You see, it’s not that I really mind pushing the envelope when it comes to exercise, it’s just that I feel if I pushed it too hard, too often, right now, it’s simply because I’m trying to hurry this along.  If I start to hurry this along, and I don’t get the results I would expect from hurrying this along, I’m going to get overly frustrated.  This is something I really need to avoid.  Also, I’m not really training for any competitions or anything right now, so what’s the point of pushing it too hard at this stage in the game?

Let me clarify and be honest, I know myself enough to know that if I push it too hard, too early, I’ll quit exercising entirely, and that ain’t good.  Regular 30 minute workouts on the treadmill is all I’m expecting of myself for the most part. But today, since I want to hurry out of these goddamn 300’s and get back into some kind of groove, I am going to do 4, yes 4, structured workouts.  I’m going on the treadmill for 30 minutes.  Then I’m going to do Bob’s Biggest Loser Yoga.  Then I’m going to do a step-aerobics workout, and then I’m going to do a boxing workout – all this through the course of the day.  This is just today.  I better be a pound down tomorrow, or I’m going to file a lawsuit against myself in People’s Court.  

March 5th, 2020: In looking back at the post from this day in 2012, I can see that I was never going to be satisfied.  A one-pound loss after a disco-dance right around a major milestone is bullshit when you work so hard and deprive yourself and sacrifice.  One damn pound?!? 

I have an enormous amount of patience regarding most elements of life.  It’s not there naturally – it’s been trained into me, beaten into me, and practiced.  The weight-loss challenge may have been my ultimate patience pedagogue.  There was just no way to hurry it.  I seriously considered every option and entertained every possible quicker, though not necessarily easy route, and it started right around 300 lbs., if I remember correctly.  It started with that plan of 4 workouts in one day. 

“Anorexia athletica” is a term I’ve heard used that wraps up what you already know about anorexia with way too much exercise on top of that.  “Exercise bulimia”, when you binge and then try to purge the calories through too much exercise, is another term I’ve heard.  I guess I haven’t tried anorexia, but the latter term often fits what I used to catch myself doing.

So what’s my point? Well, I learned that while the scale ends up being an altar to the church of the program – it still will do whatever it wants to do within certain limits, even if you follow the process down to the smallest detail.  Hurrying it by excessive exercise will only yield temporary results, and usually those results aren’t significant in magnitude anyway.  I have put on a sauna suit and ran a fast 6 miles on the treadmill before, only to find that I lost maybe an extra pound.  Conversely, I’ve missed exercising on a day completely and registered a 3-pound loss the next day.   I have to worship the process and do what I’m supposed to as often as I can.  I learned over the course of 161 pounds that program heaven awaits you if you do this.

 I told myself in the beginning that, no matter what, I’ll follow what I know will work – science said it would, and then whatever will be, will be. After that I just believed, believed, believed, and still believe 8 years later.  I also figure that I’ll just try to be a nice person as often as possible, then whatever happens to me after I tip over and die is just what’ll be.  If I try to be good and still go-da hell, so be it Jedi.  It’s the process that matters, and then the product will follow, I know it.  After all these years, I’ve realized that, while the product is cool, it’s still only temporary in nature. The process has become more important to me on a regular basis.  It’s what has taught me the most, and what has been the most applicable skill across so many areas of life.  Its roots are in PATIENCE!