May 23rd 2012: At 264 (for the 2nd time since January 2nd), I’m equal to the lowest weight I’ve been in years. Monday was the day I was going to send the chocolate muffin packing. I really don’t need to now I guess, but I still think I’ll tell it to fuck off, just because I sometimes like to be mean to myself.
No, I’m not deeply angry at myself, nor I am I clinically depressed. I just sometimes like to take things away from myself to more fully appreciate what I have left. I never forget that this is a free country, and that I’m an adult, and I can eat all the goddamn chocolate/chocolate-chip muffins I want, anytime I want. There are some things that will never return to my life, but a chocolate muffin isn’t one of them.
I was thinking about that today as I was at Maverick buying a little tube of powdered-sugar donuts for William. I thought about one of the terrifying things, or at least nagging thoughts about a controlled diet is the possibility that something you love (or loved) to eat may be unavailable to you in the future, should you decide to cheat the program, and should you decide that you can’t live without.
I had irrational thoughts at first… and then there were rational thoughts. The only fucking foods I can remember unfairly being snatched from my fat little paws were Chocodiles, PB Max candy bars, Hostess Pies in all the right flavors, and Keebler Magic Middles. I survived all of it, and you know what else, the new snacks and treats out now that could wreck my program far outnumber the ones committed to the mothballs.
May 23rd, 2020: Illness. BACK in the day, I was force-fed the idea of continuing to exercise just as hard when you’re sick as you would when you’re 100% healthy. Not no more Billy…
This is why the program does not build in days off to the exercise part. Days off just happen, you let the universe decide when you’ll have rest days. A butterfly flaps its wings in Sri Lanka, and you get strep-throat the next week.
The caveat to this is that I’m assuming most people who read this aren’t professional athletes. I know I ain’t. See, if I had a coach working with me every day, and training for a sport was my profession, then I know I’d be completely thorough with record keeping (or somebody would be doing it for me), and my coach would be deciding how often and how hard I’d work. He or she would tell me what to do, and I would do it. Exercise and diet would be tracked in fine detail, and rest days would be regularly factored into that program. There wouldn’t be interruptions for other things, like for instance, my profession. Because, well, that’d be my profession. Hope you get the idea there.
I’m also writing generally here. In the days and times of the Covid, you show up to the gym looking or sounding sick, and you may get curb-stomped by a gang of cotton-tops. Humor aside, it’s pretty lame when some asshole is at the gym coughing and hacking everywhere. I once saw two huge bodybuilder guys get into a shoving match at a gym because one of them called out the other for coughing and not covering his mouth. The sick one took offense at being called out, and so forth…
I learned to try to determine if I’m really sick or just being a bitch by sticking my toe in the water, and then just listening the best I can to my body and being honest with myself. It doesn’t have to be black and white, either. On days where I’m just not feeling it, I’ll stretch for 30 minutes, or just walk on the treadmill. It sucks, and it doesn’t make me feel accomplished at all, but it helps uphold the continuation aspect of the program. If I’m feeling too shitty to even do that, I chalk it up to my universe-coach telling me to chill for the day. So I shrug, sit in the recliner, and read a book.
No sense worrying too much about it. Illness is one of those “is-es” in life. You roll with it. If I’m out two days, though, well then that’s why they invented the urgent-care clinic.
