Maybe it's the Frisbee?

Today feels so, so very good. It's been about 3 weeks, or so, since I had a realization. It was a painful day, one that I dont really want to relive, but one that I believe at this point has truly changed the course of my weight loss program. I had been stagnant for about 5 months, and it was frustrating. Frustrating for me, for my trainer Brad (I say trainer because that's his job, but in reality he's more of a friend that's helped me out tremendously), and I would venture to say frustrating for my church as well.

One of the things that I started out really desiring when I began to lose weight was that other people were going to be a major part of what I was trying to do. That meant that when I had triumphs (like running my first mile) I included people in on those things. I remember last May, probably around a year ago this week, was the first time Brad took me out to the track and said, "We're going to go for a run." Now let me tell you that this was not met with any sort of excitement, or anticpation. Rather, I was terrified. I didn't like to run, and the mere thought of doing it for an entire mile was really starting to freak me out. However, I finished it, in something like 12 minutes, but I finished. I told everyone. Not just the people I saw that day, but for like a week and half afterwards I told everyone I saw that I had indeed run a mile for the first time in my life.

Along with those triumphs have come some defeats. Like the first time I actually gained weight on the scale. It was last December/January, and it was a crushing blow to who I had become. I was putting so much of who I was into losing weight, that when I didn't drop 2 pounds in a week, let alone gained 5 pounds after the holidays, I was crushed. I shared this as well, and the community responded with a characteristic warm-heartedness that I don't think exists many other places.

As nice as they were though I still felt as though I had been letting people down for the last five months. Brad sensed it as well. He emailed me, we talked, I got pissed and something inside of me really wanted to say, "Screw this! I'm done." They wouldn't let me though. Because they all knew, especially Brad and my roommates, that there was still something inside of me wanting to see this thing to the end.

Bringing us back to the present. We played ultimate frisbee last night, like 4 whole games worth, so needless to say waking up this morning at 5:45am to workout (which invariably means getting my butt kicked by this sicko who takes an odd pleasure in seeing me squirm and sweat) wasn't at the top of my list. I wanted to stand on the scale this morning, but I was nervous. I had eaten a hamburger Monday night at a party, and the guilt was trying to keep me from the scale. We worked out, and I had my butt kicked like it hadn't been in qutie some time (frisbee the night before an intense full body workout is crazy, you should try it for a really sore feeling the next morning), and I knew that I wanted to step on that scale. I did, and there it was 256.3 pounds. Thats 11 pounds since that day that I wanted to quit. Since that day that I felt like I had been letting everyone in my life down for about 5 months, and as of today I feel like it's over. It's a good feeling, a feeling of triumph I haven't felt in some time.

Maybe it's the frisbee? Yeah, it's gotta be the frisbee.

Blown-in-the-Glass Road Trip

My last week was one full of highs, and lows. Mountains and rivers (wow that sounds like something you'd hear at a youth retreat). Jon Steinbeck wrote the great American road trip novel, Travels with Charley: In Search of America, and at the beginning he makes a wonderful point:

"A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it."
The trip started out rough, with some fairly major car problems, but thanks to Larry, of Gary's Towing and Automotive, the rest of the trip was great, until some more fairly major car problems at the end. The Buffalo National River Trail was phenomenal. Starting out the first day we hit some great elevation climbs that took us up to some really great views. Let me say this, Arkansas is very much underrated in terms of beauty. It was like the Rockies, but much less steep. All of the same great vegetation and feel, with lots of water and cool breezes, but sadly no 14,000 ft. elevations.

I think what I enjoyed most about the trip was the fact that we had purpose every day. We woke up, usually made a pot of coffee, ate a quick breakfast (oatmeal with a bit of granola for me), and then hit the trail. No one really complained, other than the first few minutes of getting the ole body warmed up again--we all knew what we were there for, and got after it with a striking intensity. Hiking up those hills was gratifying for a number of reasons: 1) getting to the top is the best feeling ever. You can stand there and look at where you were and a warm sense of accomplishment will easily wash over you. 2) Pushing each other is crucial. Every day at least one of us wasn't bringing their 'A' game all of the time, especially me on the third day, and without the rest of the group it never would have happened. Sitting down and becoming complacent is just too easy, you have to keep on fighting.
Relating to that last point, I read Into Thin Air while we were on the trail. Reason being I wanted a tail about adventure, and the outdoors (the added bonus was the scathing tale of poor decisions made at unheard of altitudes). One of the points which Krakauer makes that I really loved was that without a team, a group that everyone can depend on, the trip will not succeed. You have to be able to trust each member to the fullest, and only in that will victory come about. We won, we hiked the trail, and although there was mud (and lots of it), poison ivy (more than any of us had ever seen, and caves that seemed to go on forever in vast darkness, the team took it down, and it was wonderful in the process. In the end I found that this trip, much like what my life has been for the past year and a half, took on a life of its own, and only in the end were we truly able to let go, and just let the trip be the person it so badly desired to become. When it became what it so badly wanted to become, we found how wonderful the journey had been, and how wonderful the trip home was actually going to feel.

Watching What I Become

When I was at my heaviest I never thought of myself as fat. I guess that's one of the funny things about how we see ourselves, in a low point we often treat ourselves like we know we should be treated on the inside, but on the outside we sometimes can't portray that same respect. I'll explain.

At 370 pounds I knew that my inside's weren't that of a fat person. I would walk through the mall and see someone who was really overweight and think, "Woah, that guy's fat." Or, "Geeze lady, go to the gym." Terrible, I know. I think a lot of that stemmed from the fact that I was still in my very early 20's and the brevity of the weight I carried around hadn't really started to affect me in everyday life. I could still go out and play frisbee with my friends, or play basketball three nights a week. It was my way of saying, I'm just destined to be large. So on the inside, I saw myself as being much more in shape than what the normal person walking down the street would notice.

Slowly but surely what I see in my head, and what I notice in mirrors, or windows (yes, I often look at myself in the windows of buildings that I pass by, just to check) when I look in them is getting closer and closer. No more is there a fear of seeing a picture of myself and thinking, "Oh God, please don't let this be as bad as I think it's going to be. There is a calm self assurance there, and I really believe that is from the self confidence that knowing who you are inside and out has brought.

This next week we're heading to Arkansas to do a bit of backcountry camping. I'm excited to see what I can do with a 50+ pound pack on my back for 4.5 days, and if I can make it to the end of this cave we're talking about going to explore. That and seeing Bigfoot. http://www.gcbro.com/ardb1.htm, this site helps to explain a bit of the mentality that we're heading into this weekend with. It should be sweet.

More to come later.

Circumstances Dictating Joy?

I really have a problem in letting my circumstances dictate my attitude. Sports is a big one of these in my everyday life. Aggie sports in particular. If the football team wins a game, I feel great for the rest of the day, my joy is dictated by the fact that my favorite football team won a game (silly huh?). If we lose... my day is pretty much shot. I have to stay away from certain websites, one of which I work for because i know I'll just get more pissed from reading what other pissed off people are writing about. In addition to that, I spend the entire next week convincing myself that it's going to be OK, the season isn't totally shot, and (most importantly) it is just a game.

My weight, same story different verse. For a long time I was the guy who was really good at losing weight. It was like someone walked up to me, hooked a faucet up to my gut, and turned it on full bore. For nine months or so the fat just fell off of my body. Every week someone was telling me how good I looked, or wow, this is a good week for you dude. I let the fact that I was good at losing weight define who I was as a person. Just like I had let the fact that I was really fat for a long time define who I was (albeit in a much more negative light). Getting over this is tough on me, hence the reason I'm writing this blog, another thing I'm trying to help myself get through this rough patch of weight loss.

New of the day, I'm down to 260.8 pounds. That's big for me, since i havent really been down below 265 since, well... I don't really know when. I remember being in high school my junior year, and getting down to about 275, and I remember being a freshman and weighing in during football practice at 236, but those are really the last weights I have to go by. This puts me at a weight that I haven't seen since the awkward times of post-freshman-year in high school, through my junior year. That is a long time, but a really short time to put on something like 40+ pounds of fat.

I know that I made mention of the fact that i wanted to quantify how i was feeling with more than just weight lost each week. That means that when i lose weight i want myself to feel good about more than just dropping a few pounds, and when i gain weight, i dont want that terrible feeling to ruin my entire day. Right now I have quite a bit to be excited about:

• In a week we're heading to Arkansas for a back country trip down the Buffalo River


• All three of my roommates are graduating this coming Friday/Saturday


• Work is fun right now, and we have some big stuff getting ready to roll out in the very near future.

These things, coupled with the fact that I have actual weight loss (not just water loss) mean that I'm feeling pretty good about these new meals I'm trying out. Plus the workout this morning was insane, below, in picture form, what we had to do...

200 Squats at 175 lbs.(this seems about right)

200 Sumo Squats with 53 lb. Kettle Bell

100 Row to Narrow Push up w/ 40 lb. Dumbbell

All in all I got my butt kicked this morning, but I was more than willing to take it, since I had lost weight for the first time in a while. But there has to be more, I'm just not sure I can see all of that right now.

Getting Started

The fact of the matter is that I don't blog already, reason being, I'm just not sure that anyone wants to read what I have to write. So, lets get started with that assumption, that not many people are going to be reading this, but I'm going to go ahead and do it anyway.

In February of 2007 I started a journey to drop some weight. (In a future post, I'll get the beginning of the story down in the blog, just not right this minute.) I was not completely prepared for the changes that my body would undergo, both in good ways, and in the new struggles that it would present in myself. More importantly than the physical changes have been the emotional ones that I've gone through. Most of them have been amazing, and some of them have just sucked.


(Picture of the roommates and I, circa November 2006 at the Texas A&M-K.U. football game in Lawrence. Estimated weight, 370+ pounds.)

To make my first real confession, these last six months or so have been some of the most trying in my life. I haven't really lost any weight in that time, though I have gotten stronger, lost some inches, and begun to feel more positive about who I am as a person, I'm still trying to come to grips with lots of who it is that I'm becoming.

In trying some new things out, I was given the suggestion of beginning a weight loss blog. I think its a wonderful idea, one i'm not sure how many of you will follow along with, but one that i think will allow me to get some things off my chest that are both good, and right at the time. Along with some things that are not so good, and not right, but that still need to get out there.
Alright, I'm starting to get sick of this notion that the only way to track a life change like I'm experiencing right now is with weight, so I'll note most of my progress mainly with just how I feel about myself. Sure, the weight i carry will often be a major factor in that mood, but in time I'd like for that factor to play an increasingly smaller role in the process of chaning myself.

For now, I feel ok with who I am. I started eating more from the Eat Clean diet, and I feel energized. It's been good stuff so far, and the food is more promising than lots of stuff you see in weight loss plans. Mostly fresh vegetables and fruit, with some fun things thrown in there like flax seeds and bee pollen. I havent gotten the bee pollen yet, but I'm gonna run to the store in the morning and pick some up. The author (the name escapes me at the moment) swears that on some oatmeal with a banana mixed in is delicious, I'll let you know. (Picture: me about a month ago, singing some song, terribly i assure you, weight 265ish pounds.)
I plan of getting some more stuff down in the next day or so.