FatBlogger

tick...tick...tick...

Less than a month ago I was working out at the gym, doing my thing. My "thing" is a series of weights and elliptical work, trying to get my time shorter and my weights heavier, typical circuit training stuff. I was doing particularly well this work-out, my heart rate was down, I cut my time by 5 minutes...it felt great! Except when I got home, my face looked like a tomato, and it stayed that way all night.

The next day I had a headache, and this weird feeling like there was this literal pressure cooker going on inside me. It just felt strange. It was hard to concentrate on anything. This went on for about three days. Eventually I just felt like I should check my blood pressure, so off I went to a CVS to do so, and it was 145 / 90. It said see a doctor, so I made an appointment at this new clinic by my house.

They checked my BP also, and it was the same. The doc, a rather chatty Indian dude, told me to come back next week to check it again. It was a bit lower that second time, around 130/90. I fasted for 12 hours and they took some blood for a diabetes / cholesterol check. I was instructed to come back for a third visit.

On the third visit my BP was still around the 140/90 range, and they had other bad news, my cholesterol had actually gone up 10 points to 263 total. My LDL (bad cholesteral) is 175. Hey, on the plus side, my  blood sugar was normal.

The doctor says to me, in an accent I have not heard since I had some computer trouble...

"You're are a ticking time bomb. Your BMI is 35, which is mildly obese (can you really be mildly obese I thought?), You have high cholesterol, and you have stage 1 hypertension."

I gotta tell you, I was pissed. Not that I have been busting my ass these past 6 months with a lousy loss of ten pounds, but all these indicators getting worse? WTF is all the oatmeal for? The nuts? The stinky ass salmon?

Right then and there he was going to put me on some medication, which I promptly, but politely, convinced him not to do.  He gave me three months to drop my numbers, or it's Lipitor to the rescue.

Now what?

Weak 3?

I worked out today, and everything was fine until I stepped on the scale. Like some of you have also  reported, I too have gained weight, to the tune of another 1.5 pounds! Now I am at my heaviest ever, 231-1/2.  I want to chuck the whole idea for these three months out the window and starve! But of course I have been there, done that...and here I am today, nothing changed.

What could be the reason for the weight gain? Well of course there is the obvious overeating. I did have two events where I ate more than I should, to the point of painful. But can two binges account for that extra 5,250 calories? I would have had to have eaten an extra 2600 calories for each of those two days. Not likely. I did over indulge a the Faire, but I also did not eat much of anything else. Lets assume that I over ate an extra 1,000 each day, that leaves an extra 3,250, nearly a pound. Perhaps I gained a pound of muscle? From only 3 total workouts in two weeks? Also not likely. I guess the only answer is I have increased my daily consumption a bit, about 375 extra calories a day for two weeks would do it. THAT seems much more probable.

Now I am at another fat crossroads. Do I continue with the plan of concentrating on exercise alone for the rest of the year, or do I try to curb my enthusiasm for chocolate candy bars?

And the answer is...just playing.

I suppose I should be grateful that I have an answer. Even if it is not a positive one, it is a revealing one; I am just not serious about losing weight. For whatever reason I want to remain fat.

After my folks left I was faced with returning to this months goals, namely just 4 things; eat more veggies, drink more water, get more activity and rest. Simple enough but for whatever reason the whole thing was lumped into the same basket as losing weight, and indeed if felt the same.

There was this feeling of dread and expectation, and I kept putting off the idea of starting, looking for a "better day" to begin. It was as if I was going to go on a restrictive diet, the same feelings and emotions associated with dieting. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Put it off, put it off, put it off. Even something as small and easy as this, seems like a mountain to climb, a cross to bear. I even binged once, despite the fact that there were no restrictions on food at all!

So obviously there is more going on here.

I knew that though, I have thought about this stuff A LOT. So is it really that much of a surprise or that revealing?

Yes and no. Not so much that there is other stuff going on, but more so that whatever it is, it prevents even the most smallest of improvements. There is not diet plan, no event or "better day" that is going to be able to break through that, and I must admit I am at a bit of a loss right now as to what will.

 

The SargASSo Sea

I won't say that I am a mess, things around me are good, but I will say that I have become adrift within them. I have definitely lost my way...again.

Since Sept. 1, to be precise. I do not blame it on anything other than a lack of self discipline. Shit happens right? The weak get torn apart by it, at the very least distracted, the strong keep moving on. I suppose one could say I lack the courage of my convictions, lack the will to make changes, even small ones, AND STAY ON TRACK. I am yelling at myself here, not you. GET UP YOU FAT F#*K, GET MOVING!

Yes, things are different. I am not obsessed anymore about my body (good), I am getting fatter everyday (bad). The worst of it seems to be that because I am not A) dieting B) training, I don't bother to do c) anything else. I just wander from event to event in my life, unable to keep the focus on what I want to do. I DO NOT think this is an accident.

This is by choice. I truly believe that it is only avoidance, fear of trying something I might fail at. Yes, I know, believe me I know, it is better to try and fail than not try at all, blah blah, unless you are a perfectionist procrastinating freak of nature who has made this a way of life. I was beginning to beat the habit of it down, but it has roared back with a vengeance and knocked me to the ground. I could get up, but here I sit, debating the prospects of getting up...what is the point? While the debate rages, food, the choice, the freedom, and of course the taste of it, provides an instant relief. Believe it or not, my problem is NOT food, it is something else, dark and hidden. Food is my tool of choice, like alcohol was with my father. "Hey kid, you need something to kill the pain". What pain? Life is good damn it!

I have been here before, anyone who has read my blog knows this, and most likely dreads it. It is the periodic wasteland I fall into, the morass of my own ass.  Like a ship stuck in the Sargasso Sea, unable to motor under its own power, I wait for the wind to blow me in a direction, any direction. I find myself here too often, more often than not I think.

I have high hopes, I always do. Just a short few posts ago I was waxing poetic about my "chances", my "focus", my "purpose".  What were those again? If I have to go back and re-read them to find out, I am in trouble... and I am in trouble.

I won't say that I am a mess though...

Slip Sliding Away...

....slip sliding away. You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away.

With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel, that is my status at the moment. I have not had a long Sunday run, or stuck to the training schedule given to me by Jeff Galloway, for a month now. In fact my last long run was Sept. 4th for 4 miles, the Sunday before that my longest run to date, 10.

I have not stuck to any diet, not that I was really on one to begin with to my recollection. After Rita I weighed myself and I had lost 2 pounds, this morning I had gained 5. My weight is right where it has been for the past year, stuck at around 220.

During the past month I did work out about 2-3 times a week, in the house, on a treadmill, bike or go walking with the dog, maybe some weights, but there was no attempt on my part to really stick with a "plan" and try to make any progress toward losing weight or training for the 1/2 marathon.  Just over two weeks ago I did ask Jeff if it was possible that I could get back on track, he said yes, and made a revised running schedule for me, which I did not do. It seemed like every time I went to go running, something came up, it was 98, or my mp3 player was not working, or the family wanted to go out to eat, I was easily persuaded. Now, with the marathon just 5 weeks away, I am doubting that I can do it. I am not even sure if it is possible, training wise.

There was no reason to stop, not really. Yes I was busy and there were many days when it was just not possible, but there were many more when it was. I would not use the poor plight of Katrina victims, nor our preparations for Rita as an excuse.

I just stopped caring about it for some reason, it just did not seem that important. On my last run of Sept. 4, it was a drag. I was not motivated, I could not get up any "steam", nothing inspired me, I just didn't care, and if you don't care about it, it is not going to be easy to go 10+ miles.  During the past month I did not even consider my weight either. In fact, food was not an issue, or an obsession during this time. I did not overeat or binge, but I did not eat all that great either. I simply was doing stuff that I had to do, and when the choice came to go running or work out or eat something "good", I just opted not to. And I never felt guilty about it, which is the really weird thing. In the not so distant past, hell, for the last 2 decades, I would have beaten myself up mercilessly over it. That is a good thing right?

It could be the reason I waited so long to come back to FatBlogger, I was not sure I ever would to be honest, I was not sure that I should be making this an issue in my life any more.

I think I am at a crossroads, and it scares me a bit. If I give up concerns and goals for improving my health, do I fade into the obscurity of our rising obesity statistics, yet move on with my life? Or do I try to get back the momentum I had, make "it" and issue again, yet somehow change the direction and focus more pertinent to my life now? For the first time in my life, I think I am realizing that maybe my personal health, and the rewards of vanity and fitness, are not my priority anymore. Are they? Should they be? What do you think?

rhythm and funk

Could alternately be titled "the pendulum of self pity". Last night I fell from grace. I ate an entire bag of "Bob's Texas Cracked Pepper Chips" and of course made a cheese/mayo sandwich. Not that there is anything wrong with eating those things in moderation, except I didn't. The whole escapade cost me 1200 calories on top of what I had already eaten.

Since I started this blog 5 weeks ago, hell, since I started this diet two decades ago, I have lost a grand total of about 5 fucking pounds that I have managed to keep off. Pitiful.

I know that I was struggling to get back into it after the weekend, but I thought that I was coming out of the funk. Then last night I got into a yelling match with my son, later that night (you guessed it, after 10 - "the witching hour") I turned to food to relieve my guilt (ironic) and/or provide some comfort. This morning the comfort had evaporated and I was left wondering if I will ever get this thing done.

I sabotage myself. No one forced me to drink and eat too much last weekend, well, that is not entirely true, I was forced to do tequila shots, but hell, that is life (though the after effects don't necessarily feel like "living"). No one made me eat like I have been the last few days, It is only me not wanting to leave this  blubbery cocoon I have fashioned for myself.

Everbody has ups and downs, but the down parts seem to linger with me, as if I am afraid to lose them, an old friend that keeps telling me it will all be okay if I stay fat.  Only I don't want to be fat anymore and I lack the skills, the determination, the courage to walk a more healthy path. I know that if I could just stay on it for a while, that the rhythm of continuing would flow more easily.  I am finding that it helps to blog, to put these mini disasters "out there" so I don't have to own them anymore. Yes, it makes for boring and redundant reading, but it seems to lift a burden off me somehow, a reasonable compromise I can live with. I feel better already!

it's Groundhog Day!

Well, not really, kinda like 6 weeks late? But the movie is on TV right now, there is this scene where Phil (Bill Murray) realizes that he can do whatever he wants, so the first thing he does is go to a diner and pig out. I am watching this as I am eating, after midnight. I am not hungry, as a matter of fact I am stuffed. In the past hour I have had Cheez-its, Wheat Thins (the new sun dried tomato ones are great!), slices of hard parmesan cheese, olives, a splash of whiskey and a Sam Adams. I am stuffing my face and I realize I am doing the same thing as this character, and that I have been doing this for about 2o years! Over and over and over and over again. I am living this movie Groundhog Day...I always knew this movie was saying something to me, I watch it whenever it is on. Maybe tonight I will finally figure it out?