March 16th, 2012: 75 Days! 75 days of sacrifice and grind. If I didn’t lose another pound, I gotta feel a little successful just because I’ve hung in there that long. Sometimes it feels like 75 days in prison, but when it does, I have to try to flush that feeling immediately – because I think this is probably gonna be a life-sentence. A life-sentence of feeling better about myself!!
I’m already sick of the 290’s. Though I did lose that extra pound I gained, I still have no net loss. 294 today. It was cool to drop out of the 300’s, but I can’t afford to rest on fat-loss achievements based entirely on the scale number for too long. The scale number can change quickly and it has the ability to profoundly impact my attitude.
I’m trying to undertake an exercise challenge, and I did yesterday – and it was a total victory for me. I had been maxing out on my treadmill at 4.0 and 15 incline for my last 6-10 minutes. Yesterday, though, I said to hell with it, and bumped it up to 6.0 (reduced incline to 6), and I was able to keep that pace for 20 minutes. That is big-time for me. When I tried that two months ago the first time, I couldn’t do it for more than 1 minute. When I tried that the second time, I was so heavy and pounding so hard on the deck of the treadmill that it tripped a breaker – no bullshit.
Van Halen was in concert in my basement yesterday, just for me, and the volume was 10 in my ear-buds. I howled “Hell yes, I can do this shit!” when I finished. I may be weird, but I’m an all-weather sonofabitch of a weirdo, and rain-shine-wind-happy-sad-hungry-or tired, I know I’m gonna show up! Pack a lunch and a flashlight, we’re gonna be here until we win.
March 16, 2020: My heart rate increased immediately – I felt it clearly, and then entered a deadly pattern of self-doubt. I remember asking questions of myself, like “why I am doing this anyway?”, “why did you put yourself in danger, was it just for your pride?” – but the questions faded from philosophy into the more immediate wonder of why the shore was getting further away, how I was going to make it alive, and how could I possibly talk myself back into calm.
None of those thoughts helped, and I began to breathe harder, work harder, and become much less efficient with my swim stroke. Sometimes it’s just best to let your body do what it’s going to do. I learned that with the whole weight loss process, but evidently that was not ready for internal concrete. Maybe it never will be. And my muscles ached and cramped – my delts, my obliques, my triceps, and my quads. All of it was adding up to tell me this is a perfect time to give up.
But HOW THE FUCK DO YOU GIVE UP WHEN YOU ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LAKE AND NOBODY IS THERE TO HELP YOU!?!?!
You simply can’t fucking quit. You can’t fucking quit. You can’t fucking quit. You quit and you die! All you have to do is never quit. You just gotta keep moving, even if it’s just slow, even if it’s clunky, even when it ain’t pretty. And so I digressed into a dog-paddle swim, and I drank more Rigby Lake water than I wanted, and I assure you, there were no more clear thoughts of not quitting, or any kind of philosophical self-discussion. It just became survival. And I paddled and paddled, and moved so slow and the wind pushed me off course, and my breathing sounded like a Union Pacific locomotive, and I was like a brick that’d been thrown into a bathtub.
To be continued…
