Unleash The Animal

First, it looks like my break from that funk was only temporary, because it came back about the middle of the week.  The Darkness kicked it up a notch, but The Animal wasn’t to be undone.  A great many things collided in my life this past week, the types of things that make many folks give up their hopes of a fit lifestyle and return to The Darkness’ embrace.  However, The Animal won’t take that crap.

For many reasons, many of them internal, I didn’t make it to the gym since Tuesday as I said in my earlier blog.  However, The Animal refused to let me stop eating clean.  Every day, like clockwork, I prepared for 6 meals per day, and ate them.  Nothing else.  I avoided the pizza that came into the office, even though is smelled oh-so-good.  I drank water like it was going out of style.  All in all, I ate like a bodybuilder.  In truth, it seemed small at times, but The Animal within knew that if I gave up on my eating, it would be the end.

Instead, I still managed to make some gains this week.  I was depressed as hell, but not falling into The Darkness’ clutches was important to me.  He couldn’t cage The Animal this week, though he tried.  Instead, I ate clean.  The Animal held on by the tiniest thread, but enough that he was able to keep fighting.  The Darkness doesn’t know what happened.

Honestly, the subject came up of eating "dirty" more than once.  I wanted to do it, but I wanted to hold on more.  I ate clean regardless.  I couldn’t help myself, I just had to do it.  I refused to fall into the quicksand I’ve written about myself, and instead I moved forward.  I’m stronger mentally right now than I probably have been in some time, simply because I refused to give in to The Darkness.  I will not fall to him again.  I can’t.

It’s amazing how important food is to your mental well-being.  Just as a cheat meal is good for the mind, eating clean the rest of the week is good for it as well…especially if you can’t work out.  Now, I feel much better about the past week.  Since July 10, I’ve lost 16 lbs…nothing to sneeze at by any measure.  That’s just under 6 weeks.  If, by Tuesday, I’ve lost two more pounds (not likely but you never know), then I’ll be averaging 3 lbs per week.  If not, who cares?  I’m just trying to get to where I want to be…for the long haul!

Sometimes, all it takes is holding on by the tiniest thread to make all the difference.

My old boss just called a while ago.  He retired back in January, but stopped in a few days ago and mentioned bringing pizza for everyone.  Well, he called and I answered the phone.  He asked how many folks we currently have (a couple have been hired since he left), and I told him.  However, I mentioned, one of my co-workers hasn’t stopped eating off his Body For Life plan from last year, and I was back to trying to lose weight.

He pops off "You mean to tell me you won’t eat a piece of pepperoni pizza?"  What part of "I’m trying to lose weight" was to difficult to comprehend?

"I can’t eat that anymore Bill.  Doctor’s orders," was my response.  It’s the truth…sort of.  I’ve had a couple of doctors tell me I needed to drop a few, so it wasn’t a lie.  What was funny was how, suddenly, his attitude changed.  Apparently, a diet is stupid when it’s you making the call, but when someone with MD after their name tells you to do it, it’s all good.

WTF?  Why is it that people can’t accept folks trying to change something about themselves on their own impetus, but instead have to spend money to get permission to lose those unwanted pounds.  Is my weight loss now not a threat because I’ve been ordered to by a healthcare professional?  Why, just why, does it matter?  I know I’m overweight.  Doctors on TV tell people who are overweight to lose the fat all the time.  Why does it matter that I have been told specifically to lose weight, when we as an entire freaking nation have already been told that?  Hmmm?

I’m just a regular guy, trying to set a good example for my son.  I don’t smoke, I rarely drink, and now I eat right and exercise.  I don’t give a rat’s ass what you and yours do…just stop trying to force your bullshit life onto me!  I don’t want to drop dead at 39 because I couldn’t leave the fried chicken alone.  I don’t want to experience fun stuff like diabetes and strokes.  I don’t want to experience any of the issues most folk will later in life…so back the hell off and let me do my thing to fight it.

Maybe I’m weird, but I’d actually like for women to be happy I took my shirt off.  I’d like for my son to not be embarassed when I walk around shirtless…or if he is, it’s because of all the stares I get from the ladies.  Hell, I’d like for people to think I’m juicing when I’m all natural!  Here’s the thing though…it’s all my freaking life!!!!!!!!!

I’m about ready to tell folks like this to have a Coke and a smile, and to shut the f**k up!

It’s wierd, but I find myself looking forward to my weekdays more than my weekends.  Monday mornings allow me to easily flow back into my routine without anyone or anything interfering in it.  Errands are done according to my eating schedule, not when it’s convenient for other folks (because it’s solo).  It’s like the stars align for me on Monday morning.

You see, I’m a creature of habit.  Weekdays are very structured, and I find great comfort in that for some reason.  I know, more or less, when I will eat every single meal and what it will be.  That gives me incredible comfort for some odd reason.  It removes the element of "what will we have" that often led me over to the chips instead of real food. The weekends, however, aren’t nearly as structured, so I have to work toward making them so…if for no other reason than for my sanity.

Now, I understand the need to be flexible as well, and I can be, but it’s a lot easier to be flexible when it’s the exception, rather than the rule.

Yeah, our dietary requirements mean we have it so hard.  I mean hell, while my friends are probably eating fast food or potato chips for their lunch, I had a baked chicken breast with onion and pepper, a baked sweet potato, and steamed mixed veggies.  Yep. Our life does suck, doesn’t it? [/SARCASM]

Seriously though, I was sitting here eating and thinking just that paragraph above.  I ate a really healthy, really tasty meal just now.  I ate a better lunch that most folks do for supper.  It’s sad really, don’t you think?  It took a bit of time to cook, but it’s Saturday…it’s hardly the day we HAVE to do a bunch of other stuff, now is it?  This is the one day it’s easiest to make time to cook, right?  So, instead of having a bunch of crap, I had a really good lunch.  I love this life

On a completely different note, I’m going to do some changes to my goals after my weigh-in tomorrow.  My current goal is set something like 6 months out.  While I still want to reach that goal (and I will reach it), I figure I need to adjust to some shorter term goals first.  Like, say, 10 lbs in the next month.  Something reasonable, but a way to have something to achieve in the short term.

Should be fun

We all have them.  Yesterday was mine.  I didn’t feel very well, and apparently I was running a low grade fever myself (Jenn has been for a little while), and was in a bit of a depression.  Honestly, I have no idea why, but there I was.  I was ready to chuck the whole thing.  Honestly, my scheduled cheat meal saved my ass.

My last two cheat meals weren’t really that bad.  About 640 calories, low fat and high protein.  All in all, a pretty decent meal.  All it really did was spike up my calories just a tad, and still lower than BMR+Lifestyle…much less activity levels.  Last night though, I went a bit wild, and the psychological impact was great.

All week, there was temptation everywhere.  People at work were bringing in leftovers from the night before, offering to share with any and all, and they were all favorites of mine.  It was horrible, but I made it through.  However, by last night, I was shot.  I just couldn’t do it anymore I thought.  Well, that planned cheat meal really bailed me out.  I’m still not as energized as I want to be about lifting, but instead I’m ready for it.  More like a "I’m ready to take a shower" kind of thing…that thing you do every day.  If that’s the worst it gets for me, I can deal with that.

Everyone, even the most motivated of us, will have off days.  We all have days we don’t even want to see the inside of a gym, much less set foot in one.  However, we have to push through those as best we can.  I can’t really tell you how.  I don’t know if I’d have gone last night even without the fever, but I’d like to think so…but I don’t know how healthy for the mind that would have been in the long run.

Tomorrow is scale day.  I’ve decided that the only number I’m really worried about is body fat percentage.  The scale didn’t budge last week, but BF% went down, so I’m doing well.  There’s still a long way to go, but by this week I should be down to 22%, which is a far cry better than I’ve been in a long, long time.  Also, I suspect my measurements to be down even more since I found I can take my 38" waist jeans and pull them down to my ankles while buttoned and zipped.  I’m sorry, but that’s just cool

Remembering the past gains is really the only thing I can do to keep myself motivated today I suspect.  Luckily, it’s working!  I’ve done pretty well in the last month, and I’ve got to remember that.  So what if I don’t lose a bunch of weight…if I lose body fat, then I’m gold.  Besides, even independent testing (from the gym) confirms I’m losing fat and gaining muscle, something people seem to say is impossible.  Sure, they’re newbie gains and newbies like me can do anything.  However, if newbie gains happen fast enough, I won’t care, because I’ll have reached my goals

So, we all have good days and bad days.  The trick is to let the bad days be rare, and the good ones so common you barely notice them

I’m feeling down at the moment, and it’s actually a good thing.  Last  night, I was really feeling my oats for some reason.  I thought I was just half a pound shy of Ronnie Coleman or something, I don’t know what the deal was.  I notice a "two pack" in the ab area, and the blubber there isn’t nearly as thick as it once was.  That’s great.  However, today I started realizing I still have a long, long way to go.

Am I being to hard on myself?  Not really, and here’s why.  I have to be realistic if I hope to have a shot in hell of succeeding at this.  I could lie to myself and say I’m OK now, since my body fat is only at 23 % as of Sunday (It’s probably less now) and move on.  After all, 22 is supposedly not so bad according to oh-so-many tables floating around.  However, I still look like shit, and I have to remember that I do else I let The Animal get caged.

Instead, I felt blubber in various places and was motivated to kick my own ass at the gym tonight.  Jenn hasn’t been feeling well, so I told her to take the day off and rest.  I think her diet has gotten screwed, and she’s feeling ill all the time, so we’re going to try and fix that.  However, I have to sieze it as an opportunity.  I’ve got a killer leg routine worked out…so killer that abs are getting bumped to tomorrow night!  Besides, leg lifts don’t work when your legs can’t move

Sometimes, feeling down about some factor can be a motivating thing, so long as you don’t obsess over it.  Instead, use it as fuel to push yourself farther than you ever have before.  I’ll be thinking about the fat as I power up weights, envisioning the fat going away more and more with each rep. 

I feel horrible about myself, and tonight I’m going to make my ass pay

Yep, sure enough, I have found that I have a new friend.  He’s with me during and after every great workout.  He sticks around for a while, and when I don’t think he’s around, I find him.  I can always count on him to show up.  His name?  Pain.

First, some clarification.  Pain is defined as physical suffering or distress, as in an injury, illness, etc (per dictionary.com).  There are different types of pain.  One, that everyone knows so well, is the kind that comes from an injury.  This is a very bad kind of pain, one that we need to be very careful of.  Another type of pain is soreness.  Try doing some heavy squats for the first time in ages, wait a day or two, and try telling me you’re not suffering…I dare ya.  However, soreness (aka DOMS), is a good thing.  It means you’ve pushed yourself hard, and your body is trying to adapt.

The real trick is knowing the difference.  Honestly, I’d love to tell you how to tell.  However, it’s more of an instinct with me I guess.  Either that, or I just don’t know the difference and I’ve been lucky.  Either way, I can’t tell you.  What I can tell you is that pain is a new friend.  It has to be, for me at least.  Why?  Frankly, I want more than just normal workouts will give me.  I want to be huge and ripped.  That just ain’t going to happen the way things normally work for me in the gym.  I had to hurt.

Injury is bad, we can all agree.  However, I can’t help but think that my lack of gains as a young man weren’t because of bad genetics (though that probably didn’t help), but because I just didn’t know how to really train.  I’m not sure I do now even…though I’m ready to push more and more into that realm of pain to find out.

As I’ve said before, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.

Things are going good when your son, all of six years old, tells you and your wife on the way to the gym that he did sit-ups earlier today.  What he truly wants, more than anything, is to work out like Mommy and Daddy.  He was so proud, so I had no choice but to be proud.  I figure this weekend, I’ll show him how to do things like push-ups and squat thrusts, calisthenics-type stuff that should be fine for a young kid to do.

In short, this is our family’s lifestyle now.  We’ve all bought into it and drank the fitness Kool-Aid (it’s got no sugar an 46 grams of protein!).  There’s no talk about what junk to eat, there’s no talk about snack foods at the grocery store, none of that.  When our son sat down to our Oven Fried Talapia dinner last night, the first words out of his mouth was, "This is a healthy dinner."  He can see it, even at his young age.  I can’t wait for his great grandmother to take him to McDonald’s one day and him make a comment about how unhealthy all that crap is.  It’ll be great!

When the whole family is on board with the program, it’s a whole lot easier to do.   I only wish we had all done it years ago.  It doesn’t matter though, we’re here now and nothing will stop this family.  I can hardly wait to see what we do next

You take them both, and you’ve got my progress.  The pics are depressing.  There’s no way around that one for me.  I can see changes, but the pics aren’t showing it for whatever reason.  Maybe I need GunPowder’s room he mention in the over 35 forum, that has perfect lighting to show every since separation in the human body.  That would have helped.  Oh well.

Well, today is measurements days, but it started off horribly.  I hop on the scale and BLAM!  219.  WTF?  Oh well, the tale will be told with the measurements then.  After all, if I gained enough muscle, the scale will call me fat, while I’m still getting leaner.  So, first the body fat gets checked.  The reading was too good, so I checked it again.  About .5% difference between the two, so to err on the side of caution, I took the larger of the numbers and used them.  It was still a 2 % difference in a freaking WEEK!

To top that off, my measurements were bigger where they need to get bigger (chest, arm, etc) and smaller where they need to get smaller (waist).  I guess I can take that, although it’s hard to believe…that’s five pounds of muscle in one week while losing fat.  Is that even possible? Who knows…either way though, my measurements are going the direction they need to.  But it’s majorly confusing, you know?

Oh well, today is rest day, and I actually think I need it today.  I’m hoping to catch a nap later today.  I’ve got a few things to do, but nothing major.  Hopefully I can recharge the mental batteries a bit and be good to go

EDIT:  After realizing the scale was slightly nudged under something, I found that I hadn’t actually lost anything…I’m still at 216, but with a lower body fat.  I’ll take it that way

OK, new progress pics are up, and frankly, I don’t see shit.  Not a damn thing.  Of course, this is only a few weeks, so I have to cut myself some slack.  The camera can’t pick out some of the details I see day to day, at least not a crappy Polaroid.  Oh well.  Tomorrow is the real test, measurements including weight and body fat.  I don’t have a good feeling about this one (I haven’t all day), so everyone keep your fingers crossed for me, OK?