Perfection’s Crucible

I’ve posted new pictures of where I am at so far in my training and for the most part I’d give myself an 85(B) if I was grading myself.  I did a lot of good things, but I have a list of bad things that I did:

1.  My cardio was way too inconsistent.  - I know I have to do cardio to see the great results I want.  I’m looking for a way of occupying my mind to get through the boredom…

2.  My diet was inconsistent.  - I know I can do better here.  I didn’t avoid carbs nearly enough and I really didn’t do meal manangement well by preparing to eat further down the line.  I have made a new schedule and plan on making it happen.

3.  Research.  - I’ve been getting great advice from my friend on nutrition and what to avoid, but part of this journey is learning why my body is the way that it is.  I want to learn more about how food is converted into energy and used to repair and grow my body.  Also I didn’t do nearly enough research to find new exercises to do and broaden my routine.

I think those areas are where I’m focusing my new efforts this year.  I’ve made some huge steps in breaking the mental block of thinking I can’t lose weight because the evidence is there to support it.  I now need to build on that success and tackle my mental weaknesses that are holding me back from pushing through the barrier of inconsistency. - "Light Weight!"

The most pressing update is that I wasn’t able to participate in my job’s weight loss challenge.  The scale was too small for it to take my weight.  So I’m still lifting and working out, but the plan is to get back into the gym and focus on High Intensity Interval Training.  I think as I improve my cardio all ill will be cured too.

Today at my job they announced the winner of the weight loss challenge that the owner sponsored.  The contest was for three months and the winner only lost 13 pounds.  During this time I was busy working out and everyone in the office was wondering why I wasn’t in the contest.

For all my life my battle with my weight has been a very personal issue.  Only till recently have I decided to be more open about it.  So yesterday my boss started another weigh loss contest and the winner urged me to enter it so that he would feel he "had some competition."  One never to shy away from a challenge, I entered our contest this time.

August 14th is the weigh-in and I’ll hopefully have my first "official" weight that I can post and begin to track my progress in pounds instead of inches.  I’m nervous that I might be too big for their scales but there is only one way to find out…wish me luck.

As the lardy lover that I fashion myself to be, I just take some things as a given:

1.  Women(the superficial ones) will never see you as anything more than a friend.

2.  Beware the diggers of gold!!!  One of the things that sucks about being lardy is that you can’t trust people especially pretty women.  Sure its totally a trust issue on my part, but they tend to try and butter you up and then well expect something in return…(Maybe Another Blog)

3.  The only physical compliment you will receive is "You are like a big teddybear!!!"

Now lets examine number 3.  On the surface I used to think when I heard this from an attractive woman "Wow, she wants to squeeze me…awesome!" But now I think "Man she just called me a pudgy and inactive mammal!"  Sure a bear is strong but man they pretty much just eat and sleep.  Its like all women read the same paragraph about how to compliment a big man right out of the "How to compliment a man" book…

One of the things I’m looking forward too is meeting a beautiful woman with my hardened body and she actual thinks about ripping my clothes off in a passionate rage of lust instead of warming herself against my extra fat deposits in the winter time.  Now if she said something like "Awww you like a smaller Ronnie Coleman!", yeah I think I could live with that…Oh for such a woman lol. –"Light Weight!"

For most of my life I’ve always been the biggest guy in the room.  Maybe not the tallest but always the biggest and especially in my group of friends.  I don’t know if there is anyone out there that understands what I am about to say…but there is a certain "status" that goes without question when its clear to everyone in the room that you are the largest man present.

However, recently I’ve had my "status" questioned and outright challenged by other big men and my weekend training friend made an interesting comment…"How did it feel not being the biggest person in the room?"  And at that moment I was floored!  After these initial months of work in the gym it was becoming less fuzzy that I’m shrinking.  The measurements I’m seeing are also starting to be visible to those people around me and for the first time I can enjoy second "class citizenship."

– *Everyone wants to be a bodybuilder, but don’t no one want to lift that heavy ass weight!*

Today I was out shopping at my favorite grocery store Whole Foods when I saw a lady that was so obese she had to use one of the motorized wheel chairs that are usually reserved for the elderly or the disabled.  As one that is struggling to rip throught my own crisco costume, its the decline of others that motivates me.  I’ve taken a stand to fight against my body and my former lifestyle of bad food and horrible eating habbits.  I do grow weary at times of taking an hour out of my downtime to go and wage battle with the imperfection that cloaks my perfection.

In those moments like the ones in the grocery store I am reminded of the practical nature of what it is that I am doing.  It gives value to each bag of chips I refuse to buy or each soda I refuse to drink and I know in that moment the cost of redemption and the wages of failure.  *Thank God for pure natural strength…"

One of the biggest victories in my dieting has come from a concept I thought of that I’m tentatively calling "diet volumization."  Simply put you try to reduce the calories to mass ratio of the food you eat.

One of the biggest complaints I had about dieting was not feeling "full" or not feeling "satisfied" after eating a "diet" meal.  This was because a I approached meals from "portion control."  This approach is fine, however if you are accustom to huge meals and pigging out, a portion control diet is going to be hard(atleast was for me) to maintain.  So one day while reading the labeling on some chicken breasts I realize just how much food I could eat and still reach my reduced calories goals.  For instance(Time for Some Math):

1 57g Snicker Bar has 271 calories!  That’s a 4.75 calories for every gram!

Now compare that to a 140 g chicken breast with 258 calories…that’s 1.77 calories per gram!  And what’s beautiful is I’m eating nearly three times the food and actually taking in fewer calories!  Now I know what most of you are saying…ok I used a candy bar to illustrate my point, but lets take a look at my actual breakfast compared to a meal I could…buy "fast:"

Krystal Scrambler(A past favorite AKA Death in a Bowl) 440 Calories 312g = 1.41 calories/g

My Breakfast: 6 thick cut slices of bacon(63g) 2 large eggs(100g) scrambled with a pouch of pink salmon(85g) for a total of 590 calories = 2.38 calories per gram.

Now Most of you will say "Your breakfast is higher!"  But given the complete lack of carbs in my breakfast compared to the profile below:

As you can see its loaded in carbs and I wouldn’t call that "good fat."  So while my breakfast has a higher ratio, I’m getting a satisfying healthier breakfast with some Omega 3’s.  Hope this tip works for you, I’m enjoying it!

Inevitably I have conversations with people when they see me savoring some cut of meat, that starts with the classic opening…"I don’t eat [insert some land-based animal here]."  I simply say "Oh…" and keep eating my delicious meat.  And usually when you ask them why, they have a variety of reasons but all come back to the topic of "health."

I would commend these people if they were really conscious of eating healthy and meat was seen simply as an unnecessary indulgence, but these are the same folks that eat cookies, soda and refined sugar bombs!  They also eat the "real" food from McDonald’s and have have the nerve to question me for eating something that was raised and handled completely naturally and organic while they are consuming death on a bun or a walnut salad from some burger place!  I can name all the ingredients in my steak:

1. Beef

That’s it.  Ask them what’s in what they are eating and the say "I don’t know, but I’m only eating a few…"  I guess arsenic isn’t that bad when you only take a small portion…

So I’ve been "dieting" for the last three months and one thing that I’ve noticed is that my eating is a very conscious moment.  I’m am much more aware of what it is that I am putting into mouth and how much I am putting into my mouth.  One of my discoveries in shopping is genuine organic food!  When I started eating meat and vegetables(as if I should have EVER stopped…) I was amazed at how poisonous the food I used to eat was.

America tells us that we can eat fast food and tons of sugar every day and "be happy."  For the longest I had been resigned to eating "food" and not caring about what it could possibly be doing to me.  However now as I eat and taste the quality of Whole Foods natural products I am disgusted and literally sickened at times to think that I even put HFCS based products in my mouth!

 The old adage, "You are what you eat." has never been more accurate than today.  As I see subtle(wish I wish they were blinding) changes in my physique I realize now how what I eat makes all the difference in how I look, feel and most importantly live.

 I can honestly say that with most things in my life I have always been successful.  Whether school, my budding IT career or just life in general I have always been able to "get it done."  The one glaring exception to this rule has always been my weight.  I’ve always been the "big guy" or as the women that I’ve chased have called me a "teddybear"(which is code for you big and I can’t say anything else nice about you other than you remind me of a pudgy stuffed animal).   So after some rather unsettling events last year, I went on a quest for physical greatness!

Now, working out has never been something I ever did.  I thought like most people that "proper" diet and living an "active" life would be enough to keep the lardiness away, but I realized that after 25 years that was not getting it done(the 5X’s on my shirt size helped me come to that conclusions too)…  So I joined my local LA Fitness and began working out.  Being a big, tall man most of the machinery was uncomfortable so I simply did what I felt comfortable getting into.  For the most part the diet shifted from the nutritious fast food and greasy soul food I ate but still nothing I would call significantly drastic.  And after three months of sporadic workouts and wearing the "new" off the the whole gym membership, I vowed to "get serious" as if by some magic that was going to happen in my blissful bench-happy ignorance.

Now I have to say that during this whole initial period, I had a friend[miked512] that was always interjecting his advice(most of the time unwanted…).  He was talking about insulin levels and sugar and fat and carbs and it all sound “good” but it was so contrary to what I was accustom to hearing in conversations of “fitness speak” that I ignored it.  Also my weight has ALWAYS been a very private battle and point of shame(yeah I said it) for me and to have someone so actively involving themselves in my battle with this demon of mine was a bit rattling.

So finally after a conversation where my friend essential dared me to work out with him, I began to listen(sometimes) to his advice and recommendations.  Its been about six months to date and the results have been surprisingly good.  We work out on the weekends and during the weeks I am charged with continuing the madness on my own.  We talk about plans we have for me and the new body we are building for me and aside from having someone to indulge in physical dementia with, I make sure he’s compensated with tasty food(as I like to cook).  So that is the short version of my first steps to greatness…*Light Weight!*

“We are all body builders, some of us build our bodies by working hard in the gym, others of us build our bodies with donuts and soda…” - Me