Yeah, I’m calling it a full two months early. 2009 sucked the big one.

I got in a car wreck—that I caused— this summer for which I still might be on the hook for about three grand. Then I got laid off at the end of September. A small mountain of emails, a metric ton of resumes, and several weeks later I get word that my old job was hiring. I’m going back to work there next week, but only with a four month contract. But don’t get me wrong, I liked my old job and am very happy to be going back.

I’m not talking or complaining about all those external things, though. Yeah, they sucked and yes to one degree or another they could have been avoided entirely, but this year was garbage for one big reason for me: I gave myself two very clear goals in 2009 and failed to achieve either.

I was back home in Oklahoma last December for my sister’s wedding. I remember so clearly sitting in my favorite chair—my Great Uncle Guy’s wingback— sketching out ideas for a design business logo and thinking clearly about the year ahead. There were only two things on my mind: “Health &am; Wealth”

Health &Wealth and Not Much of Either

So here we are with less than sixty days left in the year and what do I have to show for myself? Not too damn much at all.

Looking at my last post of 2008, you’ll see I was 312 pounds. I weighed in at 316 this morning. And in a moment of self-disclosure, I haven’t been to 24hr Fitness since I badly sprained my ankle in August.

This week I’ve been getting back in the habit of the weight complexes. They may be brutal, but they don’t completely replace a strict weight training plan at the gym. Better than nothing, though.

And as for wealth – instead of actually getting my rear in gear, getting myself into the community, networking, filing the LLC paperwork, and hustling… I’ve sat around in typical ENFP Will fashion and daydreamed: about starting the business properly, about a Northwest tourism and travel site (Click and see how poorly that’s been worked on.), about my epic fantasy novel / worldbuilding project, about the Seahawks, about a hundred different things. And I’ve done nothing.

So yeah, 2009 sucked. And if I don’t take some lessons from it (very first instinctual guess – I need to learn focus and discipline), I’m going to be ending 2010 in the same way over 300 pounds.

It’s sure been a while, hasn’t it? Almost three months since my last post, and what do I have to show for it? A good fifteen pounds. And, everything I said last time still stands. I’m still uncomfortable putting myself front and center by exposing all the inner workings that go along with losing weight and reinventing your life when you’re over 300 pounds (and once was 440).

But, just like I said last time, “I can’t ignore the fact that when I blog, I am paying more attention to my health, and consequently make better decisions like eating right and getting to the gym. When I’m not blogging, I have always failed to work as hard as I should.” So, that brings me here back to 4xlt.

While this entire summer has been a complete waste on the weight loss, front, it isn’t to say that it’s been a waste all together. Honestly, there have been some definite highs – namely in the form of having a good time with friends, and learning a lot about myself. Even more so, but certainly more cryptically (sorry), having the startling but welcome realization that all the presumptions I’ve been walking around with about myself and life and other folks may not be completely true. Or true at all. Period.

But beer, crappy food, little sleep, and no time at the gym do not my future self make. And regardless of how my choices for the last nine months may have shown, I most certainly am not satisfied with being who I am today.

Starting Again Today

I’ve made some piddly-ass, worth-nothing declaration to myself for at least the past two weeks, and exactly nothing has come of it both times. Well, no longer.

Several weeks ago, T-Nation’s Weekly Dose linked to an article on using weight complexes for cardio. Much in the same way as my “this has got to change” declarations I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I’d always tell myself that I need to give this a try – and then do nothing.

Today that changes. Sports Authority is having a 20% off sale (at least on their weights, but maybe more), so I took $40 I really could have used elsewhere (in other news, I’m getting laid off this week, but I’ll gripe about that another day) and bought myself a 45 pound plate.

And tonight, promptly started sweating and gasping and having my too-tight muscles threaten to kill me. I got to be honest: in some sick and twisted way, it felt really good to be sweating and gasping for air and moving weight around again..

I’m not going to promise the moon just yet, but what I will is to go through my complex daily for the rest of the week. I’ll give myself bonus points if I do it twice with a morning set, too. I also resolve not to get lax nutritionally with fast food (yeah, got back into that crappy habit this summer, too) for the rest of the week.

Next Monday, I’ll look at my goals. But, before I start my typically windbag way of talking the talk without walking the walk, I’m going to prove it to myself first.

For the first time in eight years, for the first time since high school, I weigh less than 300 pounds. I’m never going back.

Still here. Still watching my eating. Still watching a bit of an direct correlary to the amount of food I eat and how much I lose, but not in how your would suspect. I wonder if that by going so low on my caloric intake (sub 2000) for several days in a row that my metabolism starts to shut/slow down and so it holds on to any food and water for dear life, thus the fluctuating weights? And when I eat more than my minimum maintenance level, my metabolism kick starts again? I dunno, that’s just my best guess so far.

My water intake’s been right where it needs to be, and I know that keeping hydrated and flushing toxins out of my body at a firehouse rate certainly helps things.

That’s about my only guess. Past that, there’s not too much to write – or more honestly, not too much I want to write about. I guess you can say I’ve been really questioning this blog and why it exists and if I’m comfortable with what I’m writing here (in the sense of putting myself out there in regards to certain parts of my life).

I can’t say I’ve come up with a conclusive answer, but I do know that when I blog consistently, I am thinking more about my health and weight loss, so I make better choices, and end up losing weight. That right there is a good reason to keep it up, but I may change focuses to write more strictly about the What, When, and How of my weight loss rather than the Why.

My body is fighting me really hard to get through to the 302 mark, much less 299. I weighed in Saturday morning at 204.6 after eating fine on Friday. Weird and frustrating.

Saturday, I helped some friends move all morning and worked up a good sweat. Things were going just fine. My nutrition was okay, sans the two big homemade cookies and Barq’s Root Beer I had while moving, but I figured I could dial back my nutritional intake the rest of the day and come out ahead. That was all fine and dandy and going pretty well until about 11:00 that night when I hit up Applebee’s with some friends… and had a burger, fries, and beer.

Well crap. or so I thought. I woke up Sunday morning at a svelte 303.2 – the heck?!

And to make matters even worse, I ate right spot on all throughout the day Sunday, even refusing to eat a single thing at Red Robin after church. And my weight in this morning? Back close to 304. Bah.

PS: Go read this article: Seven Keys to a Successful Body Transformation – it’s a really good overview to things. My favorite line(s): “When you turn on the TV and come across a show about weight loss, you’ll see a lot of crying, hugging, and syrupy-sweet one-liners about having a positive attitude. Well, fuck that. In the real world, successful people get pissed off…Now, how does a self-pitying whiner deal with discomfort? He quits. How does a guy who’s willing to be an asshole deal with it? He gets ticked and fights through it. And he wins.”

So, I’m not going to sit here and complain about things. I’m going to go home, cook some chicken, throw the sandbag around, sweat some, and win.

Well, I hit another weight loss spike yesterday, but I can’t claim it’s anywhere as surprising as the one from earlier this week. A friend of mine from college (Go Pokes!) plays in a band called Other Lives (formerly known as Kunek). Really great stuff – kinda this Radiohead meets Sigur Ros meets folk thing going on. Well, I ended up going to bed pretty late as a result, and that in tandem with my two beers shot me right back up to 304.6 yesterday.

And in a supreme sense of oddity, I ate pretty poorly yesterday and was prepared to see a 304 or even 305 (gasp) this morning, but ended up at 303 again. Weird.

Well, the weekend is approaching, and I’m dead-set on hitting 301 by Monday morning.

Enjoy your weekend. Have fun. Live on purpose. Lose weight.

I am reminded of something my friend and fellow weight loss / health blogger Billy said to me once: “Work hard to change yourself now, and when the time comes unless the best Will possible on the world.” I can’t remember if it was in an email or a comment here at my weight loss blog, so I may have mangled it slightly (or greatly), but the sentiment remains.

I feel that I’ve got so much awesome change – and the potential and desire for so much awesome change – going on in my life, that it’s easy for me to try and become better at everything all at once: health/weight, socially, professionally, personally, etc. And in doing so, I just end up spinning my wheels. And when I spin my wheels, I get nowhere. And in getting nowhere, I just get frustrated.

But when I take a step back, I come to the realization that there are some pretty important things I want to experience and become (forgive me for being somewhat vague). And for these parts of my life, becoming healthy (aka thin and strong) is by necessity a significant portion of the foundation that must be in place first.

At times (like today), it makes me consider becoming some kind of a health hermit until I reach all my related weight loss goals. Not that I would become completely anti-social (hard for an extrovert like myself), but that I would commit so specifically to changing this aspect of my life first and foremost that it would trump anything else for the next several months. Part of that would be to just be at the gym way more than random hangouts. Another part of that (HUGE part of that) would be the mental discipline to disengage from a lot of the superfluous or otherwise pointless (at this point) mental entanglements that can snag me so often.

Sure, it may not be just the very most exciting life, but if I’m thinking about the long term and creating the life I want to live instead of settling here at 300 pounds and all that goes with weighing three bills, it may be just the solution I need.

One Third of the Way Through My 21 Day Challenge

A week ago, I decided to give myself three weeks to lose 15 pounds (roughly) in order to weigh below 300 pounds for a quick weekend trip to see my family. I’m exactly on track for that. I needed to drop four pounds a week and have lost just that.

Although, I have to admit that I’m still pretty chapped about my mystery two pound weight jump yesterday. Yeah, I know that weight fluctuates and day to day weigh ins don’t matter as much as the long haul, but still – it irritates the fire outta me because I should be at a 301 right now and I’m a pound and a half up. The only thing I can figure is that someone must have spiked my peanut butter with a ridiculous amount of sodium.

Regardless, I should be satisfied that I’ve stuck to my plan and my word, worked hard the last week (the easy weekend notwithstanding), and dropped exactly the weight I needed to drop. However, finally being back in the swing of things and being so close to 299 makes it hard to be satisfied in anything else than that.

If I had eaten poorly yesterday or not gone to the gym, I would be better prepared to deal with an almost two pound weight increase. But that’s not the case here. I ate correctly (and showed some supreme willpower to not much and graze like a bison last night as a church small group’s pasta and bread bonanaza – not so much as one little nibble!). I even went to the gym afterward and pounded out some time on the elliptical and rower.

I worked hard and earned it yesterday, and so I’m pretty dumbfounded at the increase. I am pretty frustrated that it always seems to be the case that after I hit a new low I bounce back up a few pounds. Normally, it’s because I splurge out of some ignorant sense of accomplishment, but yesterday I didn’t!

There are only two variables at play here that I think may be effecting things: 1) I went to the gym pretty late, from 10:10 – 10:45 at night (although not really sure on any specific reason why that might effect my weigh in, but it’s out of the norm for me), and 2) I was up late last night and didn’t get as much sleep as I should – about 6.5 hours.

Gotta keep pushing on, but I was really hoping to see a 301.8 or the like show up this morning. Now, I’m not sure what to guess for tomorrow, but I’m going to keep this quote by Theodore Roosevelt in front of my today for good measure:

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

Hope everyone had a good weekend. Mine was way too short – as I’m sure yours were, too.

The health & weight loss front was a mixed bag this weekend. Friday and Saturday morning’s weigh-ins were both 304.2. I’ll attribute the non-loss to a number of factors, but it always gets simplified down to the basics, right? I ate too much and worked out too little.

Friday, I had the day off from the gym, but I failed to compensate as my nutrition and food intake wasn’t exactly fantastic. I can’t recall exactly what I ate (a powerful reason to do food journaling, it’s just something I rarely remember or have the discipline to do), but obviously it was enough to only let me lose a fifth of a pound.

Saturday was a bit more puzzling in some ways. I spent about four hours in my backyard in the 90 degree weather. I didn’t have enough water (bad move), but I did enjoy two High Lifes that I iced down in my Igloo cooler along with some deli meat and my water bottle. For what it’s worth, I did enjoy my beers while doing yard work! But apart from that, I food intake was fine, if not a little low. But in the interests of full disclosure, I did have a Hawaiian shaved ice at the carnival that night about an hour before I went to bed. I’m sure the sugary flavoring is what prevented any weight loss.

Sunday is when things finally got back on track. Food was on, water was mostly on, and I made it to the gym for weight training and worked hard. I think I’ve tweaked something in my right trapezius muscle (between your shoulder and your neck) that made doing power cleans really nasty, so I switched them out for Romanian deadlifts. My hamstrings aren’t exactly thanking me for that. Other than that, it was a good set, but chest presses make me look like a little girl for the second time in a row. I’m really not sure what’s going on there, but I’m going to continue to press through.

Sunday was on track and so I was able to knock out another pound of weight loss, which gets me really excited. I AM going to be below 300 pounds for the first time since high school this week, and I’m so flippin’ excited. I’ve got a bad habit of hitting a new low weight, then splurging with poor food choices, and having to rework through a couple pounds. That’s not gonna happen this week.

I went to the gym for weight training for the first time since March last night. It was a mixed bag, but I have to admit the whole time, my internal monologue was going solely along the lines of “Eff yeah, muthaeffas! I’m back! Graaaaaaaarrgg!”

I started out with power cleans, then moved to seated plate machine rows and standing military presses with the barbell. The shoulder presses were particularly brutal, and I only finished three of my last set. The pull down plate machine went well enough, even though my last set was really sloppy.

But by the time I hit the chest press (horizontal press), the wheels fell off – I think because the military press (vertical press) worked me over so much. I was shedding plates left and right just trying to get some semblance of an actual set count going. I went from 80, to 70, to finally just 45 pounds on each side and still struggled even then.

After that, I went and recouped with a bicep routine and then with some dumbbell swings. The swings were interesting as I’ve usually done a 3×15 rotation (5 with both hands, 5 with the left, and 5 with the right), but this time I’m going to go with the rest of my routine and try a 4×6 double handed format. Trouble is, I spent all four sets increasing weights, and I’ll have to do the same this weekend.

All in all, I was pretty pleased to be back. I’m going to take today off and give my body a chance to rest from three days of work, and then hit the gym Saturday for lifting again. Sunday, I’m getting my body fat measured for the first time in about a year and then going to do cardio.

New to the Gym?

But being back weight training at the gym (and planning on being consistent and dedicated again) for the first time in a few months definitely reminded me of how daunting the whole proposition seemed when i weighed 440 pounds and was just beginning the weight loss fight.

Some of you reading this might be there yourselves, so let me offer you some encouragement.

No One Really Cares That You’re There

Being well over four bills, I remember being so nervous that not only would I stick out like a sore thumb, but people who notice and point, laugh, or generally make fun of me. I know that Tony at The Anti-Jared has a story along these lines of his first time on the treadmill, but I think that is an extremely rare occurrence!

The thing I’ve come to realize about the gym, especially up on the weight floor, is that unless you’re a hot girl in tight/skimpy workout clothes (just keeping it real), no one really cares that you’re there except for you! Of course we’re self-conscious about our size, but all you can do is divert 100% of your energy onto the task at hand – cardio or weight training – and the reasons you’re there. Worrying about what other people are thinking will only distract you and wear down the results you could be seeing.

It’s Better to Underplan than Overplan

If you’re like me (a painfully textbook ENFP personality type), then it’s easy to get so excited about something – in this case working out/weight training/getting healthy – that you spend too much time coming up with a giant plan for world domination and total life reinvention that you fail to actually carry through with doing what you want to do!

Too often, we can spend our time worrying about exactly what exercises to do and all that, that we fail to get the most out of our time at the gym or fail to even go to the gym because we’re so tentative about what to do. Much like diets, I’m convinced that most plans will work if you stick to it and work hard enough at it. That’s not to say that some plans don’t work better than others! I’m pretty convinced on the value of high intensity interval training (HIIT) cardio and total body weight training in how I’m losing weight, but whatever your plan is, go hard at it!

If You Won’t Eat Right, Don’t Bother Going to the Gym

I have the above written in big red letters on my fridge because it’s so true.More than anything, losing weight happens as a result of what you eat. Your exercise habits only hinder or help that. If you exercise smartly (see above), then your weight loss will be helped a lot!

But just because you’ve gone and had a massive weight training session or blasted through a CrossFit routine in record time, doesn’t mean you get to have four or five beers that night for no good reason (although I fully support planned splurges and cheat meals). Eat smart, work hard, and enjoy your splurges when you earn then. But if you’re still going to chomp down on that fried chicken or super-sized fries, then you’re just going to be spinning your wheels at the gym. And why waste so much effort?

So what about you? That’s my question for those of you who have spent some time at the gym, living a healthy life, and working hard? What helpful tips or suggestions do you have to those who are daunted by the prospect of exercise and the gym?