The Transformation Journals

Someone put up a Waffle House calendar up in the office.  It talks about healthy lifestyles.  Ummmm?  I just noticed that Waffle House has a job position "Health and Fitness Expert".  Who came up with double order scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, topped, diced, etc…romped on stomped on already chomped on hashbrowns?!?!?

Be well and safe.  ~!~

School is really wreaking havoc with my workouts.  I am really beginning to feel the effects of it.  I am tired and irritable more than I usually am.  The irritablity, along with aggitation, is one of the side affects of a medication I am on (yes it sucks) and it is exacerbated by not getting to the gym.  I have school three nights a week and two online classes.  Work every other weekend and now labs/clinicals on weekends too.  Work is 12 hour shifts.  So, enough whining and no thanks, I’ll pass on the cheese with my whine for now as I am in the middle of a vanilla and rootbeer float flavored shake.  I am trying to get in two workouts a week and for now cardio is more often than not on hold.  I just need to make it until mid May.  I will have a couple weeks off before the next semester starts in June and I am going out of town somewhere. No work, no school, no anything.  School will go to class two nights a week and one online class. Work and clinicals/labs will still be the same but I should be able to get in two a week with cardio and maybe even three a week.  Okay, I feel a little better now.  Thanks for putting up with the venting and the ranting.  More later (hopefully not more venting and ranting).  Be well and safe.  ~!~

Q: Back in the 1970s bodybuilders training at Gold’s seemed to encourage one another more, and camaraderie between the athletes was more evident then it is today. How would you explain this different mentality? 

A: The activity has become extraordinarily popular and busy, the sport sharply competitive and crowded, the diversion commercialized and usurped and the world swifter and tighter, more jaded and impersonal. Today, it’s not who you are; it’s who you are compared to him or her. It’s not who you are; it’s what you’re worth.
Excerpt from a Dave Draper news letter February 13, 2008.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Arthur Charles Clarke

No fine work can be done without concentration and, self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

Max Beerbohm, 1872 – 1956

The willingness to sacrifice is the prelude to freedom. 
The Pesach Seder

"It’s not what’s happening to you now or what has happened in your past that determines who you become. Rather, it’s your decisions about what to focus on, what things mean to you, and what you’re going to do about them that will determine your ultimate destiny."
Anthony Robbins

"Sleep: The golden chain that ties health and our bodies together."
Thomas Dekker

or so they say…well…I can’t.  I just don’t have the room to get in that many calories.  So what do you do?  I am working on that and as I figure things out this section will grow.  As mentioned in the bariatric section, it has become all about protien.  I know I need the carbs and fats too and that is what I am working on.  Fiber too.  Right now I am having three shakes a day on days that I work.  One with a multi source protien matrix mixed with milk in the mornings and evenings and one of the fruit flavored whey protiens mixed with water in the afternoons.  Things at work can get hectic so lunch is a pain the butt to try and regulate but I am trying to come up with something quick and manageable.  Often times, dinner is the nightly shake.  Work days are 12 hours long and currently mostly in the office so there is plenty of time to sip on shakes.  Even if I have to go out in the field I can still sip on the shakes.  Non work days are harder to regulate.  Nights that I have school dinner most times turns out to be a protien/meal replacement bar.  Just some ponderings here for now.  More later as the diet evolves.  Be well and safe.  ~!~

I have been doing some reading and research on post workout supplements, specificly the intake of carbs.  I am curious about anyone’s use of and comments on Dymatize’s Powertech, as well as other products like this in general.  I am posting this on the boards as well.  Thanks for any input.  Be well and safe.  ~!~

This has nothing to do with anything, but in the mood I am in today I thought I’d share one of the daily "Thoughts of The Day" I get in email.

"He was a bold man that first eat an oyster."
Jonathan Swift

For what it’s worth, there it is.  Enjoy and be well.  ~!~

Found another pic BS (before surgery).  I am not sure when this one was taken.  I am guessing late 2004 to mid 2005.  It could be older than that but I know it is no older than 2003.

After pondering on whether or not to put up some progress pics I realized there is one more part to the whole process that I have not mentioned very much if at all.  After you have the procedure and lose all the weight, there is going to be the issue of the excess skin.  In some cases it can cause some health problems but most of the time it is a cosmetic issue.  My doctor recommended that I wait at least 18 months before having the excess skin removed.  This gives the body time to completely heal after the surgery.  It also allows time for the weight loss to even out, and to make sure you are not going to put weight back on by falling back into old habits.  Having the skin removed is a procedure done by a plastic surgeon and not usually covered by health insurance.  With the amount of skin I will have to have removed I am sure it will be at least two procedures.  I would like to have it all done at once and be done with it but will just have to wait and see once the time comes.

More to the point here is the progress pics.  You have undertaken this huge step and gone through all that comes with it, and now, you feel better, stronger, more healthy, yet there is a down side.  You don’t see the fat person that was there, you see something else.  For me it occured in the gym. I was sitting on a bench doing curls and I looked to the side in the mirror to check my form and I saw it.  I saw the loose skin on my face.  Okay, I expected it everywhere else, but on my face?  So I finish the workout and get home and take a serious look.  Took an inventory of it if you will.  There is a lot of it.  Now the mental part kicks in and you wonder if now you look worse than before.  Did your body look better when you were fat versus with all the hanging skin? 

Will I put progress pictures up?  Yes.  Will there be some of the excess skin?  Yes.  Does it make it difficult to see the progress?  Yes it does, even to me so I know it will be hard for others to see in the photos that go up.  The purpose of putting them up is the same as the purpose of this entire section.  To help those who are considering, having, or know someone who is dealing with this process.  The best way for you to judge your progress is by tracking your goals and gains and by feel.  You can feel the muscle growth underneath even if you can’t see it.  Stay at it and in time it will be evident.

Be well and safe.