May 27th, 2012: It hasn’t been a bad week for the scale. With another pound lost, I stepped off at an easy 261 today.
If you decide not to food party this weekend, you’re not missing much. Well, I take that back. If you go off-program and decide to eat whatever you want, here’s what you’re missing: teeth actually hurting from so much sugar, so thirsty you could stick a straw in Lake Michigan and run it dry – yet never be satisfied, so full of water that you slosh from side to side like a heavy pail of water you’re taking out to your horses in the morning (and it spills on your slipper because you were too lazy to put on your mud boots), so stuffed that even the mention of food makes you gag. Then there’s heartburn, lousy sleep, fatigue, etc.
I have to hang my head a little today, and make the admission that I fucked up and overate/binged/went off the rails yesterday, and I’m actually sort of counting a non-scale victory here because I think I’ve realized that either my stomach has shrunk (if that’s actually a true phenomenon, I don’t know), or I’ve realized that I’m not missing much if I stay on-program, and in fact, I feel so much better being on-program. Now, that’s not to say that getting back on-program all day today will be a cakewalk (like the pun?), but that’s also part of the mission here. That is, to learn self-control, and awareness of myself. That’s my true battle in life. Weird, huh, that often the keys to freedom lie right in between your ears and some of us spend a lifetime trying to find those keys.
Monday memory, yeah well, I was cleaning yesterday, and I found my size 50-waist pants. My God, when I stretched them out, it took nearly my entire wingspan. I remember when I bought that particular pair of pants, too, and they were a bit on the tight side. They aren’t really jeans, I mean, they are made of denim, but they’re like specially-made for the “big man”. Like, all soft and stretchy, and shit, like they know damn well you’re going to grow right into them and so the waist is elastic. I’m actually laughing a little here, just in deference to the sheer size of those bastards! That was impressive in a really bad way. I had no idea just how big I was!
May 27th, 2020: Injury. The more you train against injury, the less of them you’ll have, i.e. I think when you do your safety core stuff, it sort of keeps the possibility of getting hurt on your mind every day, so you try to avoid situations where it may happen. Or something.
From head to toes, just like every other human, I’ve ran the gamut of injuries – from acute to chronic, overuse-caused, and underuse-caused, major to minor.
It’s important to keep these two things in mind regarding the program: It’s flexible, and it’s designed to keep you losing weight more as a function of your diet than of your exercise regimen.
One of my most disappointing “time for a new me” days prior to beginning the program was a Monday when I decided I was going to start dieting and exercising for real again. I had gotten up that morning to a beautiful sunny day. I measured out the proper amount of Wheaties cereal with the proper amount of skim milk. I ate this breakfast, had a cup of coffee, and then laced on my new Brooks Beasts running shoes. I intended to make a 2-mile jog.
I left the house a few minutes later, walked to the end of my block, and took off at a slow and measured pace, fast enough to feel my heart rate increase a bit, but still well within my comfort zone. I had made it exactly ¼ of a mile from my house when I stepped on a rock and a rolled my left ankle, complete with a cartilage pop that you could’ve heard from 20 feet away. The excruciating pain was only defeated by the mental pain of knowing that all of my plans for the “new me” were fucking finished again, right then and there. It seemed like there was no point in dieting when I couldn’t exercise.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve learned a few things on the topic of injury. First, it’s just yet another “is”. I think I’ve learned to prevent many of the things that could’ve happened by being diligent about safety core. An ounce of prevention…the irony shouldn’t be lost on that euphemism if your battle centers around weight loss in particular. I’ve gotta do my abs, I’ve rarely missed lower back exercises like back extensions, and the balance board tastes the soles of my shoes at least twice a week.
Second, an injury is another test of your willingness to believe in the program because you can still make exercise happen despite a bevy of possible injuries. I’m speaking from experience here. My addiction to exercise had me sweating within 3 or 4 days post hip-replacement surgery, and I believe it led to my faster overall recovery. I was back on the stairs in about that same amount of time after a bicep re-attachment surgery.
Third, injuries force you to learn new exercise movements and routines. Back problems led to my discovery of Biggest Loser Weight Loss Yoga. Knee issues made me explore doing my steady-state cardio on the stairmaster. Repeated sprained ankles threw me back into the pool for lap swimming. The hip issues introduced me to the Krank Cycle – one of the most overlooked and effective pieces of equipment in the gym.
Fourth, an injury, if you take it with a grain of salt and stay positive, forces you to re-focus on your diet. You can still lose weight without ever exercising! It sucks because man, you really have to cut back. But it’s possible. As your activity increases post-injury, so can your calorie intake (in measured and relative fashion), so the reduction isn’t forever.
I’ve learned to approach the program, and its application to life itself, as a process that compels me to fight sometimes even when there doesn’t seem to be any concrete reason to fight, or the path forward isn’t clear, the strategy has become blurred, and/or my daily tactics are non-existent or scrambled. I do refer back to Day 1 or Day 2 of this blog, when I listed my reasons for starting the program in the first place, but sometimes those reasons seem diluted or pointless, so I refer back to that day when I wrote that sometimes the fight is the objective itself, the final outcome actually less important or even irrelevant.
I’ve learned that to have a Hollywood ending as my long-term goal is admirable, fun, and glossy, but it often doesn’t jive with the universe’s plans for me, so I’ve gotta concentrate on the methods and the short-term goals if I ever want to be satisfied. Regarding injury, this means that even if I get my fuckin arm chopped off in the middle of a fight, I’ve still got to fight. I might lose the war, in fact, I’m almost sure of it, but my willingness to fight and keep on trying and keep right on believing will be the legacy anyway, and that’s the gift I’ll give to others.
