distraction

I'm not ignoring this -- work got very hectic over the past few days. Plus, I'm fighting off some sort of throat thing. Its very similar to the last one I had which turned out to be a low grade but very persistent sinus infection. My roommate is looking up a ENT doctor for me -- I've got insurance, might as well use it.

Speaking of which, I've snagged my roommate on this trek with me. He too lost a great deal of weight earlier in life but has fallen out of shape. So, for his birthday this year I got him a membership at my gym. He's actually in the middle of a personal training session right now. As for me, I'm at home, taking it easy since tonight I'll have to stay late.

Lets see, progress... I biked in to work for the first time last weekend in probably six months. Exhilirating, difficult, and 4 miles longer than the last time I did it. Today's nice, so I'll make it a round trip tonight. Roommate's birthday party was this weekend so we've been feasting on leftovers. Not exactly the optimal food but its almost gone. This weekend I'm off to see family in FL (again, probably not optimal healthwise). And my smoking has been cut back severely. Still can't breathe, but I can not-breathe more than I could before, if that makes any sense.

variables

Yesterday was officially three months to the day before the birthday rolls around. That's about 12 weeks to whip myself back into fighting condition. When approaching something like this, your best option is to always keep your goals reasonable, and when setting these goals, you've got to pay attention to more than just the pure number of pounds to drop. If not, you'll just end up frustrating yourself and maybe even punishing yourself when you SHOULD be celebrating.

I hopped on the scale to see where I stand. This was one of those digital scales, so the reality of these numbers may be skewed just a little. I stand somewhere in the region of 6'3-6'4. My weight showed up to be 220 pounds at 17.4 percent body fat. Think about that for a second. If I tried to set my goal at losing 40 pounds by the end of the year, it'd be wholly unrealistic -- not because of the period of time or the amount of weight involved, but because if I lost every ounce of fat on my body right now with no other variables changing, I would still weigh 184 pounds.

Freaky, right? This is a fatal flaw I've witnessed time and again at the gym -- people pushing themselves towards impossible goals. People are built the way they are built. I'm quite tall, very broad, with very dense bones. There are other variables that go with it, more to be lost in water weight and the like, but depending on your body chemistry that can fluctuate wildly, and the main point remains the same. 180 pounds may be in the scope of my possibility after sweating out a great deal of water and losing a lot of fat, but just because the number sounds good doesn't mean its particularly healthy or wise. Do not be afraid to adjust your aspirations. Understand the concept of fluid, realistic goals. It helps.

(disclaimer: I am not a scientist and realize its probably much more complex than this... I welcome feedback from anyone who has more insight on this.)

So here we go... goal time!

9-15-06

• 221 lbs
• 17.4% bodyfat = 38 pounds of fat
• 35 inch waist (though my old navy jeans promise me i'm a 33)
• chins: 2

12-15-06

• 200 lbs
• 9% bodyfat = 19.5 pounds of fat
• 30-31 inch waist (um, we'll see about that)
• chins: one, sharply defined

Up next... food. And pictures.

the irony of it all

I have been alternately dreading and looking forward to this day -- where I take the reins and attempt, finally, to make the kind of lasting changes that will improve my life once and for all.

Being as this is my first post here, let's get a little background, shall we?

My name is Prime (not really, but everyone needs a clever pseudonym). I have another blog elsewhere that I rarely post to these days, because I really don't think much of what I do in my day to day life is really worth writing about anymore. I tend to think my life is staid, dull, and on some sort of repetitive loop. And at 26, that really shouldn't be the case.

One of the things that I've always beleieved about myself is that between the ages of 27 and 35 would really be the prime of my life. I have (had?) aspirations to work in the entertainment industry, and those are the years that someone of my 'type' generally comes into his own. I'm now three months away from turning 27 and somehow it seems further from my grasp than it ever was before.

I've always struggled with my weight. I spent the first sixteen years of my life more or less morbidly obese, and of course, suffered through all the social awkwardness that goes with that. Then, at 17, I dropped 120 pounds over the course of a year and a half. I did so by altering my diet and becoming a lot more active. Since then, I've fluctuated wildly but never ballooned all the way back up. Last year, I took a job managing a gym, and that seemed to put finality on the struggle. I was working out regularly, I'd quit smoking, and even had the beginning of visible abdominal muscle -- no small feat, considering my past.

And then something happened that sent me into a tailspin. While riding my bike to work one rainy day, my brakes gave out while speeding down a hill. I managed to stop just shy of getting rammed by a Mercedes, but in the process, nearly destroyed the bike and broke my ankle as I skidded to a stop in the middle of that busy intersection. I walked with a cane for a week and kept the ankle bound for another month and a half afterwards. There went my regimen, there went the bike, there went my discipline.

So here we are, now about five months later. I started smoking again shortly after the accident (something about almost having your head smooshed by a Mercedes will do that, I guess) and I've added about thirty pounds. I have no regular routine, and now getting on the bike for a ride longer than one or two miles unnerves me to the point that I've become a master of the Atlanta mass transit system just to avoid having to do it. And now I'm three months away from what I always told myself would be the best years of my life -- depressed, smoking, and chunky. Whats more, there's a really hot guy underneath this somewhere. Its ironic that someone who manages at a gym should be such a portrait of vice and self-neglect.

Well, it stops here. This blog is not a burble of who said what or where I went, but a document of the positive changes I'm making, and a way to hold myself accountable. The smoking stops, the thirty pound drops, and the depression pops.

Right after I finish this pizza.