March 17th, 2012: Down 2 for a total loss of 58 lbs. today. I’m at 292.
I lifted weights last night. I used to go kind of slow between sets, as in rest 1-2 minutes between. All power-lifting stuff. I did it completely different last night. No less than 15 reps, no more than 30 seconds rest between sets, huffing and puffing all the time, keeping good form, biceps then triceps, chest then back. Kicked my ass!
I’ve decided fat people make pretty cool skinny people. Or we will. Think about it: 1) We know how to stick with it – we know that because we were able to stick with eating until that whole pizza was finished. Now we’ll stick with the program until goal and beyond. 2) We know how to do cardio – we had an exercise session every time we walked up a flight of stairs, now we’ll run stair laps for our cardio. 3) We know how to lift weights – every time we got out of bed it was a power-lifting session, soon we’ll rip through scorching circuit weight routines. 4) We know how to be empathetic – you are us, we feel that pain. 5) We know what we can achieve and yet we realize what we still need to work on. 6) We all made HUGE life changing decisions to do this – we undertook the challenge, and we are standing by our decisions. 7) We keep ourselves accountable to ourselves. 8) Sometimes saying “no” can be really hard, but we are learning to say no sometimes. 9) We got our asses out of bed and went out into the world everyday anyway, regardless of what people thought or said to us or about us, so we’ve got thicker skin.
When you see an overweight person from now on, you can say to yourself that here is a beautiful person, and a tough person, and just needs to come along with you on your journey. When he is ready.
58 lbs. down. Closing in on my Mississippi, but still a long way from New York. So far this has actually been more scary than hard. Fear of failure is a tough burden.
March 17th, 2020: Maybe I’ve written about it before; if so, I apologize. I’m referring to the liberating feeling of looking around you and realizing that you’ve gotten yourself into a fight where nobody is there to bail you out anymore. Even your buddies have come to their senses and took off. It’s now just you against you, or you against them, or you against the motherfuckin world. No sense looking for mercy from anyone or anything now, so it’s left entirely up to you whether you’ll sink or swim; roll over and die; or fight like hell.
And quite literally, it was up to me whether I’d sink or swim that afternoon in Rigby Lake. There was nobody there except my mom and my son, and whenever I had the presence of mind (or stupidity to look to the future that was represented by the far shore), I could see they weren’t paying any attention to me. All they would’ve been able to do anyway was call the ambulance or something, after they walked clear around the lake to where my truck was parked. By then it wouldn’t be a rescue mission.
On bright, sunny summer days, Rigby Lake is packed with people who might be able to help you. On a blustery spring day, ain’t nobody around. And this is when that liberating feeling came over me.
Fuck you talking about, “liberating feeling”? There was no liberating feeling. I have had that before in a fistfight, and while lost in the wilderness, and in the middle of a firefighting shitstorm, but not right now. I was terrified and tired and gasping and scorching and paddling and kicking and thrashing. There was no feeling of release at all!
And then I fucking made it. And then I felt my feet dig into the muck at the far shore, even though I could barely stand up. And I had given all I had. I still couldn’t catch hold of my breath, and because I’m not the crying type in general, all I could do was shiver. Stand there and shiver. But I would’ve cried.
I shivered all the way back around the lake to the truck while trying to jog on dry pavement. I shivered all the way home on the drive and didn’t say anything to my mom and son. How was I supposed to convey what just happened? I shivered and shook and finally had a chance to change into dry clothes. At 4 in the afternoon I turned my heating blanket on high and laid my head down on a heating pad and slept for 5 hours straight.
And that was Day 1 of open-water swim training for my first triathlon. I guess it should have been a great time to give it the “fuck this” treatment instead of the “fuck it” treatment. I opted for the latter and found myself at that goddamn lake, on the shore and pointed west into the treachery, five days later.
What does this have to do with my weight loss journey? Stand by and I’ll tell you…
