Fucking people.

I would like to keep this blog about weight loss, so here you go: I went to the gym twice this week, and will be getting a softball workout on saturday morning.

In other news, I have deleted my facebook account. Accidentally keeping in touch with someone because of social networking is way different than having friends. Life was simpler when friends were just people you hung out with or had things in common with, not faces in a book. People are not things to be collected, and when they stop being the friends you thought they might be (based on 12 or 13 years of being the same person), maybe it's time to walk away.

Social networking might be the wave of the future. I never was a surfer. It can pass me right on by.

I'd like to leave this town. Anything that is not directly involved in either making that happen or distracting me from the fact that it hasn't happened yet can go suck a fucking dick.

Confession.

It's time to face facts. I have a few issues.

Writing it down does not make me feel better.

I am up and down and down and up and it's the dumbest fucking things that set it off. I simultaneously want to disappear to somewhere new without looking back and embrace my life here and never let go. I hate the skanky bitches at the bar, but bum out when I'm not getting their attention. I want so much to have a lifelong connection with someone, but shy away from the great women I date. I want to lose this fucking weight, but cannot stop thinking about food. Cannot. Stop.

Maybe I cover it up with humor. I love to make people laugh, but do I do that because I need to fill some void? I don't fucking know. Do I want to see every pair of tits I ever met shaking in my face because I just like tits, or is it because I need attention? I don't know. Do I wait to sing at Karaoke until everyone is a little buzzed and ready for a singer because I like to perform or because I want their eyes on me? I'm pretty sure it's the latter. I have no idea where I get attention issues. And they don't always arise...but when it happens I spin right the fuck out.

A hard ass workout in the morning will cure this, I hope.

What a weekend. Packed Friday, moved Saturday, unpacked Sunday, put off ALL schoolwork until today, which leaves me now with a paper due in 5 hours that I have no inspiration for whatsoever. Gym this morning though, for a good hour of resistance training. If I wasn't so time starved to get all this crap done, I would have stayed for some cardio. I feel fucking amazing. Competition aside, just getting up and working out is enough to change my mood for the entire day. I feel like a real human being again, like I can do things without hurting myself.

Let's see how long that lasts.

And BTW, more distraction from schoolwork is coming tonight...Red Dead Redemption midnight release. Bang.

Progress

It's been a month since this contest began, and my first weigh in was at 240 pounds and 31% body fat. Since then, I have been to the gym about once a week, played flag football, been to the batting cages, used my exercise bike three times, and watched what I ate...for the most part. I have worked out until I thought I was going to puke, pulled a muscle in my arm, and as of today, found a new threshold for pain via my lower body workout. I have gotten up before 9am for most of the month, and that has been the hardest thing. Propping open my bleary eyes with toothpicks like a Tom and Jerry cartoon, I have stumbled through the first hours of my day for most of the month.

It looks like I'm doing something right. I avoided the scale all month because I didn't want to be obsessed with the results I was getting (or not getting). Ultimately, what is important is just being healthy, not what the scale says. So I've been doing my best. A few slips here and there, like finding a few patches of ice on the sidewalk, but I kept moving. Kept going. Kept working.

Who am I kidding? It was hard as hell to go to the gym all 6 times I went. I hated waking up early, and I grumbled and complained the whole way through. I cut short two of my three paid training sessions because I thought I was going to vomit, then die, then vomit again.

But I have results:

227lbs

28.6 % Body Fat.

Food day is gonna be fun.

Inertia

An object at rest tends to stay at rest. Repeating that now makes me feel like an asteroid. A big, craggy and pointy mass of rock that moves through space uncontrollably, and the only way it gets any smaller is violent collision with another more large and craggy and pointy rock. I am not an immovable force. My weight is not an unstoppable object. I am not my fucking khakis. And that's what I get for mixing my metaphors.

I love the idea of going to the gym. I love it right until I fall asleep. When I wake up, all of that changes. I wake up stiff and sore and sure that there is no way in hell I can get a workout in.

Time to be Rocky, I guess. No pain no gain. Cut me, Mick. Gonna fly now. There aint gonna be no rematch.

I watched GI Jane last night for some ungodly reason and it made me as a question: How often are our limits tested? When was the last time any of us was truly brought to our threshold for pain? How deep can we dig?

Those tests are painful reminders of our mortality. Or, they can be life affirming journeys o self discovery. Imma go dig deep.

One Day At A Time.

So in the quest to shrink the body fat percentage and lose the weight, I have discovered a few things.

First, the athlete's body I once had is buried deeper than I thought. I played a bit of flag football on Sunday morning. Threw two interceptions, one pass in the dirt, and dropped a first down pass. Not my most shining pigskin moment. I promise, I played when I was a kid and I was much better than that. The worst part, though, is that it is now Wednesday and I am still walking like I got raped by a buffalo. I am shuffling around everywhere, and having a really hard time picking my feet up off the ground. My lower back is kinked, and both of my shoulders are tight and sore. In short, I am in pain. I even have sore muscles in my foot, oddly enough, and my right pinky feels bruised. Like deep bone bruised. That little bastard hurts.

Because of all this pain, I had to reschedule my last paid meeting with my trainer. This brings up the second thing that I have discovered: The depth of my procrastination was hereto unknown. Sure, I have a good excuse this time, but the entire week before that I was healthy and could have gone to the gym. But didn't. I could have logged all of my food. But didn't. I have been putting it all off again and again, so I think it might be time to approach this in a 12 step fashion. One day at a time.

Which brings me to my third discovery: I am addicted to lazy. Yes, folks, my name is Eli and I am a sit-on-my-fat-ass-aholic. I have been eating clean, though a bit too much, so that isn't nearly the worry I have with this competition. My worry is that I am constantly proving that a body at rest tends to stay at rest. I do this even while knowing that I feel good after a workout (that isn't designed to scare me skinny), and knowing that my body responds very quickly to increased levels of activity. For some reason, I still would rather sit on my ass than go to the gym. Or even move three feet to my own recumbent bike. So one day at a time it is.

I will eat healthy today, while not "sneaking" anything crappy in to appease the emotions. I will not start that guilt cycle today.

I will move around today. If I had not destroyed my legs on Sunday, this would have been "I will go to the gym today!" Unfortunately, I need to heal first. I hurt.

I will feel good about myself today. I will feel good about myself today. I will feel good about myself today.

Who invented mornings??

The night before, it's always a good idea to get up and be at the gym at 6. Then 5am comes. My body rebels in every imaginable physical manner, from headaches to foot aches, from nausea to exhaustion. My body gets angry.

I'm sorry. What was I thinking?

This is a pretty heavy indicator of the toll not eating perfectly can take- the right nutrition provides energy and fuels your body's systems so that these moments are few and far between. I should get on that bandwagon. Speaking of bandwagons, I'm sure the drinking is not helping. Time to scale back again.

But whatever will I do on Thursdays? I guess sing sober.

You're right, I'm sorry. What was I thinking?

I am either three months or many years away from feeling good about myself, from being strong and athletic again, from swimming without a shirt again.

Make that two months. It's two months. It has to be two months.

My head hurts so bad I am squinting at the computer screen.

I'm going back to bed. The gym will be there when I wake up. And so will this incessant challenge.