I don't know. I really don't.
I've been gone. I'm sitting here, in my room, in solitude, watching a bowl of ice cream disappear a few minutes before I want to go to sleep. I look in the mirror and see that the protrusion of my gut is larger than the length of my forearm. I check up on an old, seemingly abandoned blog...scroll to the bottom and see that I haven't made any progress...any progress at all from when I first posted here in July of last year.
I think of where I would be now if I had stayed on track. Really, I think of this about a lot of things. Where would I be today if I never put down the guitar a few years ago? Where would I be today if I finished reading that book about Linux in the 7th grade? Where would I be today if I never met some of the friends I have now, or never left some of the friends that I had?
But the weight thing. The size thing. It's something that's been bothering me. Where would I be now if I hadn't stopped going to the gym and working out on a semi-regular basis.
You know I lost two belt notches from the time that I joined the gym to the time that I stopped posting? That I was starting to feel more and more confident, that I could look in the mirror and actually start to see my traps?
You know that now I have to sit at my desk a certain way to keep my khakis from digging into my thighs? That I have to always be the driver, because riding shotgun in my friends '96 Civic means my legs have to be so close together that I might actually pop a testicle under the pressure?
You know what my biggest excuse for not going to the gym was? That leaving my gym clothes in my car all day would make them uncomfortably cold by the time I had to change in to them.
Over the past month my Warcraft addiction resurfaced. I started a Blood Elf Paladin a few weeks ago and he's now at level 51. FIFTY-FREAKIN-ONE. Where would I be now if I spent that much time on an elliptical.
What the hell am I doing with myself.
Reddit, WebMD, and everyone else whose gotten this link -- it's time. It's time for change. It's time for action. It's time for The Skinny. It's time to make 2.5 equal 1.
3 comments:
The question is Two Plus Half, what do you want to be? Would you rather be dead? Would you rather die? Here? On your knees?
I'm keeping your RSS feed. I'm going to check on you. I know where you homepage is. If you aren't back in the gym and on your way to being happy and fit in six weeks, you will be dead. Now run on home.
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Reddit here, checking in. Best of luck man, I'll be keeping an eye on you. If you ever want to talk shoot over an email.
-- Ase
I'm in the same boat as you are. Two months ago I started trying to turn my life around. I worry about a relapse a lot and I understand how you are feeling right now.
A couple of insights that helped me:
I have always known the physical changes I needed to make to lose weight (i.e., exercise and diet). And I imagine so do you. What helps is improving one's mental health so that the weight loss is not a battle with oneself but a side effect of living a peaceful life. Try to forgive yourself, be kind to yourself. Know that you could gain another 100 pounds and you could still live a happy life. People in far worse living conditions than yours have managed to live a content life and conversely, people with everything you desire have managed to live an unhappy life. Happiness/peace-of-mind is far more dependent on internal factors than it is on external factors. Not tying your happiness to weight loss really helps as most of us overweight people are emotional eaters and we are going to be overweight for a long time before we reach our ideal weight - so don't postpone your happiness to the day when the scale reaches some target number. The only happiness you will find there is the happiness you bring along with yourself.
Other than that, a couple of tricks that helped me get started:
# First month, just work on establishing an exercise routine. Don't weight yourself. Don't try to completely change your diet. Don't exhaust yourself in the gym. Your goal is to establish a pattern of 4 days a week - 20 minutes on the elliptical machine. Sat,Sun,tues,thurs puts the least amount of stress on the work week, interleaves the rest days and you don't go two days without exercising. Trust me in one week you will start feeling better. And every passing week you will naturally feel like increasing the minutes/days/resistance/etc. Establishing the pattern is more important in the beginning than hitting the gym hard.
# Also, exercising in the morning helps a lot. I dont spend the entire day worrying about the upcoming workout. Plus I tend to eat better during the day as I remember the work I put in that morning. Conversely, if I end up not eating right during the day it does not become an excuse to not work out in the evening.
# When you have established your exercise habit slowly start working on your diet. Don't go on a diet. Just make it healthier. Your goal is to get to the point where you are having four healthy/fulfilling meals a day, equally paced out that sum up to 2000 calories.
Good luck. You can do this. And, more importantly, even if you don't do this you can live a happy life.
How's it going? I hope you are feeling better.
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