April 13th, 2012: A 2 pound day. Down to 281. I’m one pound away from a gun caliber, the .280 Rem, and two pounds from a new decade, so that probably means a plateau. However, my new attitude about plateaus is that my body is just downsizing in volume to the new mass. So maybe my density is increasing? Or maybe I’ll be optimistic and not think my way onto a plateau.
I was thinking back to when I first started this (something I now regularly do as a mental treat). I made the conscious decision then to put on blinders to almost everything else, almost all of the time, until I got this weight problem under control. That’s what it required. Nothing else really mattered. One thing I have noticed, however, is that I’m starting to notice other things again. I’m starting to be aware of cool stuff again – and things that are sub-cool are not bringing me down and making me want to binge like they used to. And while I’m still probably a disappointment to my employer, I’m starting to realize there is life without stuffing myself like a pig. This, my friends, is a non-scale victory.
April 13th, 2020: Survived Easter without a binge. I don’t think I did last year. Seems like last year I dropped the ball for some reason. Instead of hanging out at Easter suppers and gatherings and all that jive bizniss, I went to my basement gym (I call it the 2nd Wind Gym) multiple times yesterday, and worshipped the heavy bag, the treadmill, the dumbbells, and some classic rock music. We still had a good day as a small family unit.
I remember my dad waking me up on Christmas morning when I was somewhere around the 7th or 8th grade, and saying it was time to wake up – “we’re going to lift weights until we’re shitfaced”. I remembering staring at him incredulously, and wondering if I was in a nightmare, or in an insane asylum. I was disturbed by that wake-up, and the 2-hour weightlifting session that followed, for 30 years. However, I finally put it all together and answered the question why.
It’s a form of worship almost, and one for which I won’t apologize. The higher power in the universe, however you want to consider him/her/it, created (or whatever, hell I don’t know) this body for us. In its best form, there’s only a limited amount of time available to keep it tuned up. More importantly, there’s this brain thing, and that usually lasts just a bit longer.
There’s a line from one of my favorite movies, A River Runs Through It, where Tom Skerritt, Norman Maclean’s father says to Norman, “…the body fuels the mind.” It also keeps me sane when I’m skating through periods in life where it seems like I’m walking a sanity tightrope over Niagara Falls in a 20-mile an hour crosswind.
Exercise doesn’t seem to work as well for acute moments of stress and anxiety, but it’s still better than alcohol. However, if I take it daily, or even twice daily, like a vitamin, it usually keeps me going in the right direction. The right direction, for me, has little to do with monetary or professional success, and all to do with keeping my sanity. If keeping my internal sanity requires some external insanity, then on holidays where the binge reaper approaches, I’ll lift weights “until I’m shitfaced”.
