April 11th, 2012: Day 101, hmm, that means back to the basics right – Weight Loss 101. I didn’t lose or gain any, still 284 lbs. My scale does carry the decimals to the 10th, and that fucker sat there and hovered: .4 then .5 then .4 then .5 I round the numbers like any good former math teacher would, so, obviously it was 283.5. I don’t report decimals, that’s just a little too much detail.
Here’s something I need to start working on again if I’m going back to basics and fundamentals: battling each and every pound. What happened is that I started thinking too big. I got into the low 290’s/high 280’s and was like, “marathons, boxing matches, mountain hikes, 34 inch waists, etc., they’re only 30 or 40 pounds away, and while I still intend for all those things to occur at some point, that picture is simply too big for at least the next couple of months. So I’m back to the mindset of fist-fighting every single dirty little pound. And I love it. Bring it on you little bastards.
What if height and weight were reversed? I started thinking about that on the way to work this morning and about had myself cracking up. What if, when you had diet and exercise issues, you got taller instead of fatter? What if supremely fit individuals were all like, 1 foot tall and 2 feet around? I wonder if people’d be like, “Gross, that guy is so tall!” or “Dude, you’re way too tall, you need to go on a diet” or “I need to go on a diet so’s I can get a little shorter.”
When I reported my weight to you this morning, instead it would be my height, like, “today I’m down to 7 feet 5 inches”, with a goal height of 2 feet 8 inches. There’d be some people 4 or 5 stories tall. My jeans would always be high-water jeans and falling off because they were so loose, and people with the “proper” body-mass index would have butt-cracks hanging out all the time because the waist on the jeans was too small. Obese would be 6 feet 11 inches and taller. Ah hell, I could go on like this all day – this shit is making me weirder than I already was I guess.
April 11th, 2020: How often should I exercise? Question #3 from April 8th.
This is easy for me to answer for me: every goddamn day; twice a day every day if I have time. But I am not, repeat not, answering for everyone. I’m just answering for me and all the average humans, like myself, who want to operate at a level of fitness slightly above average. I have several qualifying statements to add, however. See below.
Because I’m not a professional athlete, nor do I work under a strength and condition coach, I don’t push it as hard as I can every day, during every workout. If I did, I couldn’t do focused, intense exercise every day. If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll see that I do as I feel, and that often isn’t at a 100% intensity level.
I no longer think of exercise as entirely for becoming bigger (or smaller), faster, and stronger. I now think of exercise more as a stress-relieving drug. It has evolved within me to where it’s harder not to exercise than to get in there and do it, and this is because if I don’t blow off steam every day somehow, it’ll rupture a valve somewhere else in my psyche. And I love sweating, it just makes me feel good. If something makes you feel good, and it’s not hurting anyone else, why the fuck not do it?
I no longer exercise if I’m sick. I was raised to fight through that, and if I had to, I still would. However, I’ve realized that to go to the gym when you’re sick is fucking selfish. And also, I think it just prolongs being sick because you’re using resources your body needs to fight off the illness.
So there are the qualifying statements. One other thing to add is that I’ve learned that life, and/or your body, will make you take days off when you need to take days off. This is another reason for training every day. Too many times in the past I’ve had a planned day off, say Wednesday for example, only to have some unexpected event happen on Thursday, forcing me to address that in lieu of getting a workout. Now I’ve had two consecutive off, and I really don’t like that.