Start moving, stop slacking
photo credit: Mark Sadowski
I am probably in the worst physical condition I’ve ever been in. Two years of sitting on my ass, moping and eating nothing but deep fried chicken parts, have taken a heavy toll on my body. I’ve never been what might be described as small or muscular. Sometime around 8 years old I ballooned into a pretty good sized chub chub. I accept these things about myself. Being large has never bothered me. I’ve never let it hold me back in the past.
I’ve never let myself go this far either.
It really hit me back in December, when I went down to help out with a the new Eldaraenth chapter’s first event. Despite 10 years of experience over all of those guys, and knowing that I have been able to take on 2-3 veteran fighters in the past, I felt slow and uncoordinated. It was not the impressive show of skill that I had been hoping for. Its never fun when you realize that you’ve regressed as a swordsman. Its the one thing I’ve always used to show myself that I wasn’t in hideous shape. As long as I could still sword fight, I was still ok.
The First Step
The First step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, and that took me a few weeks to actually do. I spent the first week after the event recovering from fighting in sub-frigid weather, and rationalizing it by thinking things like. It wasn’t me, it was the cold. Its not my weak arms covered in flappies, it was the new cloak I was wearing. I threw in a couple of “I’m just out of practices,” too for good measure. The truth is, if I was in the shape I was meant to be in, I wouldn’t have been affected by the cold, and might not have even needed the extra cloak. If I had been maintaining and improving myself, I wouldn’t have been out of practice.
I have a problem. I let myself get fat.
Setting the Goal
The easiest part for me is setting my long term goal. The hardest part is setting realistic short term goals. As of today, I am weighing in at 357 lbs. I get winded walking up stairs, and I can barely do 10 pushups to save my life (which they eventually will). I have 3 long term goals that are quantitative:
- Drop from 360 lbs down to 250 lbs by July 2012. (6 pounds per month)
- Run 1 mile in 9 minutes. I was able to do this in high school.
- I want 18% body fat. If I’m making a lifestyle change, I want to look like Kevin Sorbo (the most Sorbo of the
Herculeses)
Of course, long term goals are great, but you really have to have a few short term goals as well. Looking at my long term goals, it becomes pretty easy to set my short term goals for the next month:
- Lose 6 pounds!
- Be able to do a full set of push-ups (1 rep made me about puke).
- Finish 1 rep of the Warrior Workout
They might seem like small goals, but they’re important to me. February might be more ambitious.
Changing my Diet
Weight loss is simple and follows one rule: Burn more calories than you eat. If you obey that one rule, you will lose weight. Of course, efficient and healthy weight loss has a lot more too it than that. I’ve seriously got to change not only what I eat, but how I eat. To keep your metabolism up and going you have to eat at the right times of day, and you have to do it with the right foods at the right time.
Basically, its something like Protein in the morning, protein and carbs for lunch, protein for dinner, with 5-6 snacks thrown in. Its all about eating a little bit all day long than eating a lot all at once. I’ve started down that path. I used to 
only eat dinner. I ate all of my calories in one meal a day. Now, I’m eating breakfast and lunch everyday, and it just makes me feel better. As I figure out exactly how to do it, I’ll start adding in little snacks, too. Just to keep my metabolism up.
That’s only part of it though. The other part is eating the right foods in general. This has always been the hard part for me, because honestly, I’m a glutton. This fat kids likes food. I don’t have the same relationship with food that a lot of people I know do. Its not a comfort for me. I don’t eat to fill the hole in my heart that never goes away. (I have other ways to do that) I eat because I love food. That’s why diets have never worked for me in the past. I don’t want to eat lettuce, I want to feed lettuce to a rabbit and eat the rabbit.
I think I’ve got a handle on that though. I’ve ordered a [amazon_link id=”1605291471″ target=”_blank” ]couple of[/amazon_link] [amazon_link id=”160529442X” target=”_blank” ]books[/amazon_link] that should help me eat like a fat kid without being a fat kid. I also have a couple of friends that sent me links to some healthy recipes. Going hand in hand with my cooking better food is me relearning how to cook. I used to love to cook, but somewhere along the lines I left that part of me sitting out in the winter. Probably because I hate doing dishes.
Shaming my way to success.
I have a long road ahead of me. I’ve set some lofty, but realistic, goals for myself, and I intend to accomplish them. There’s the rub, though. The path to hell is paved with good intentions, or so they say. I can want to change my lifestyle, I can believe I will change my lifestyle, but I can still also let myself not do it. Its easier to stay the same than make a change. That’s just simple physics.
For a guy like me, though, what his hard, is admitting failure. So, here I am publicly announcing to the world that I’m going to get off my ass and get something done. This way I can’t fail. You can’t BS the internet, if you try people wearing Guy Fawkes masks show up and throw cheddar at your doors. I think I’m going to have to build a page here to track my progress.
Nothing can be done alone.
I’ve recruited my two roommates into my whole new me kick, too. I’m pretty sure they’ll start kicking my hole if I slack too much, but they’ll also keep me from burning myself out by overdoing it. The tow of them should be a big help, but I’m looking for as much support as I can get.
If you guys have some recommendations on websites with great recipes or workout routines or even if you know where there’s a deal on a Wii Fit, I’d love to hear about it!
And check back tomorrow for part 4.