May 26th, 2012: It’s a static day, I guess, so I’ll spend another at 262. It’s not so hard after a 2 lb. loss the day prior.
I thought yesterday about how conscious everything has been on this journey. The first week or so, I tried to be unconscious about diet and exercise, hoping it would just happen. It can’t be that way, though. I have a big whiteboard in my little basement home-gym upon which I wrote yesterday, “Sometimes these workouts are supposed to be hard.” I had to write this to remind myself that it isn’t going to be an unconscious effort.
I can’t be numb until I reach goal and beyond, I guess. I wrote this in response to probably the 50th time I’ve done that Bob Harper “Weight Loss Yoga”. I weigh probably 75 lbs. less today than when I first tried that workout, yet it still kicks my ass. Sometimes it’s supposed to be hard.
So for the next two weeks, I’m going to be fully on the program. The third Sunday in, I’m going to be “on-program” until 3:33 pm, at which time I’m going to be “off-program” until 10:33 pm, at which time I’ll go back “on-program” (yes, I know I’m totally weird, and yes, those numbers are totally arbitrary). Then the 4th Saturday, I’m going to be “on-program” until 3:33 pm. Then I’ll be “off-program” until Sunday night at 10:33 pm. Have fun trying to get to the reasoning behind this. It amounts to 1.33 days “off-program” every 4 weeks (not in exact times, but in like, “food time”). I think. Sometimes I just confuse myself, but whatever. And, also, this is week 4, so it’s the “1”.
One more thing, though. I have told myself that I’m going to train extra hard on those “off-program” days – i.e., tomorrow I plan on jogging 10 miles and lifting weights for an hour.
May 26th, 2020: Don’t you believe it. Do not believe it. Do not believe the little lies you’re telling yourself when you tell yourself that changing it up a little would do you some good. This is not you talking to yourself, this is an inner little fuckface demon that somehow worked its way into the Ramen noodle packet of your brain.
The Eagles have a song called “Learn to Be Still”. The only lyrics you need to take to heart from this song right now are “learn to be still”.
I knew the program was working. Hell, how could a near 90 lb. loss in 145 days introduce within me a perceived need to change? Why? Why? It took me so many minor fender-benders, quite a few crunching collisions, and countless near misses to realize that one of the biggest tests of all is when you come to a point in the program when you begin to consider changing it up somehow.
Very rarely, maybe 3 or 4 times at the most, in the first year, did my planned tweaks to the diet part of the program mean a reduction in calories. Almost every time, my planned diet changes amounted to eating more food, propelled by some bullshit I happened to have internalized. I often encounter this with clients as a personal trainer.
The thing that always nailed me was that damn Special K commercial: “Do you ever stop to think that while you’re dieting to lose fat, you may be losing muscle?” Yes, that’s the one. I also would get hung up on something I had heard somewhere to the effect of “make sure you’re not overtraining and undereating”.
Well, golly, I’m for sure losing all my muscle and, wow, that’s it, I’m training too hard and not eating enough!
This is a lot of bologna sandwich. I train my ass off, almost every single day. And I still rarely “over-train”. There are times, to be sure, when my 45-year- old body says, “you can’t do this boy”, and I’m obligated to listen. This is a learned response. If I don’t listen, I quickly get injured. So, like a little boy touching, or peeing on, an electric fence, I’ve only done it a couple times before I learned my lesson.
I didn’t realize how much strength I would initially lose after completing the first section of the program. I lost a lot! I lost a hundred pounds from my max bench press that first year. I went from packing out half an elk at once (on a packboard on my back), to packing out half a deer at once. However, I’ve become starkly aware that, unless you’re a pro-football player, a competitive weightlifter, someone who just enjoys powerlifting, or a bro, then what really matters is strength-to-weight ratio, and fat to lean-muscle ratio. These things can be achieved through patience and practice, I assure you.
You lose weight, well then, of course you’re going to lose some muscle simultaneously – it’s because you have to be in a caloric deficit in order to lose weight. There are complicated and/or illegal ways to get around this, but I don’t have the expertise, desire, or reason for exploring them to the level where I could prescribe to them. Lose some fat, lose some muscle, then gain the muscle back the correct way. It just takes time and commitment. In my experience, it never required a diet adjustment that called for more calories. Not once.
