Today's weigh-in: 297.8 (2.6 pounds down from last week)
The Cardinals
It's amazing to watch very smart sports writers opine that we're going to see how much the Cardinals regret not getting Oswalt signed. I wasn't aware that our starting rotation was in need of another starter. Two bad starts for Lance Lynn does not a reasonable sample size make. Chill the fuck out, guys. Where we were struggling was hitting and bullpen, and both of those performed tremendously over the weekend, with Jon Jay and Matt Carpenter back, even after Lance Lynn imploded yesterday
The Heat
I remember watching sports pundits the nation over at mid-season cry out for everything from breaking up the Big Three to firing Scott Spoelstra. Yeah. I guess that kind of knee-jerk idiocy gets clicks?
Becoming Less Fat
It seems like each week with the weight loss crusade, something new is imparted to me, and I'm able to refine this process better and better.
The big thing this week was dealing with a setback. From Tuesday to Thursday, I put a pound back on, and I wanted to put someone's head in a fucking vice. In the course of channeling my pain and anger, and drawing on the power of the Dark Side, a little voice cried out and insisted that instead of being all sulky and having a typical 'fattie' reaction (self-pity, 'this is never going to work,' giving up, all that shit), that I stop and analyze where I went wrong.
Wednesdays, I typically work from home, which means I'm moving around a lot less. I also typically eat out for lunch, and it's usually Subway. I ran out of time after work and didn't run. I experimented with making a homemade pizza with my son, and while I was under my caloric allotment for the day, I cut it very close.
None of those on their own would've done me in, but that perfect storm of bullshit probably combined into a Voltron of Fat and slapped a pound back on me.
But who knows? All I can do is learn from it and move on. I came back the next day and was down .8 pounds.
All of that led me to my next point, which is setting oneself up for success. I ate out a lot last week, which is anathema to consistent weight loss. I'm fat because I love food, and even more so because I love cramming it in my mouth. Going out to eat is an exercise in restraint, but I armed myself, every time, with my Windows Phone and used the MyFitnessPal application to research everything on the menu that I was considering, and managed to (mostly) behave myself over the weekend. It's tough, though, and I really wish we'd not eaten out as much as we did. If you're a junkie for fatty foods, putting yourself at fucking Cracker Barrel is not a good idea. Sure, I didn't succumb to temptation, despite the fact that everyone was pressuring me to eat like shit, but nor did it give me a real satisfying meal. Restaurants aren't there to help you lose weight, they're there to make as much money as possible, no matter what it does to your health.
The best way to not eat like shit and still not hate what you're eating is to make it your damn self. Odds are that you're fat because you're lazy, and if you want to lose the weight and keep it off, you gotta change things up in your life, and that means getting used to actually putting effort into some things.
But I digress ...
... my point here is that I bounced back. I didn't overreact and punish myself, nor did I throw in the towel, nor did I say, 'Well, I'll just go back on my diet on Monday.' All that kinda shit is for fatties, and I'm not one of them anymore. I got right back on the horse, and may have pushed it a little on the treadmill that night, but I was mad as hell.
The best part is that I'm now equipped with more experience and knowledge that's going to help me this week. I'm going to apply it, and I'm looking forward to adding more to my workouts. One of my long-term goals is to be at a fitness level equivalent to that of an Army Ranger. I've got family that's been in the Ranger program, and I've always looked up to them, so it seems like a fun long-term challenge. I figured this week that I might bench-mark where I am now relative to the fitness requirements, and once a week, re-rest and chart my progress until I'm there. I don't expect that I'll be anywhere near the requirements this week, but a year from now? Who knows? It seems like something that's worthwhile. And it'll come in handy when the revolution comes.
One last thing. Going to Cracker Barrel was good for one thing. It was interesting to watch the grossly obese folks, and all that little things they did to keep reinforcing their obesity. If you're trying to drop weight, go to a restaurant, pick a group of fat people and watch them all night. Try to pick out everything they're doing to reinforce their fatness, and you may identify some things that you still do that are holding you back.
One really last thing. I'm below 300, which was my first goal. Next up is getting below 290. I haven't been 280-something in YEARS, and I'm really pumped to get there. Being 280-something puts me within 100 pounds of my long-term goal weight, which, yeah, probably sounds insane to you, but for me it's a big deal (literally!)
So, how goes your weight loss? Anything to add here?
Anyway, thanks for reading!
-Blaine
Buy my book!
20120618
Don't Hate Me Because I'm Less Fat Than Last Week
Weighed in today at 300.4 pounds, which means I dropped 5.6 in the last week.
Yeah, that's a crazy amount of weight to drop in the first week, but I've got two things for you. 1) if you're fat, and you suddenly switch to a good diet and exercise, you drop a shitload of weight real fast for the first 20 or so pounds, then you have to start grinding it out like all the normies. 2) if you're fat and you don't drop that first weight real fast, you're still fat and you're doing it wrong.
This protein-heavy and low-carb diet is working wonders. I'm never starving, and I can eat a reasonable amount of meat. That works for me. I also cut out a lot of soda. Even diet soda will bring you down, given that all that sodium that's packed in adds up.
What's been surprising is that a lot of skinny folks have been like, 'Yes, great job, keep it going!' while most of the fat folks have either immediately started to explain to me why my approach wouldn't work for them or some other nonsense. I'm content with your failure if you're content with it.
Look, people, here's the secret. I'm not doing a crash diet, I'm eating 4-5 times a day, I'm not spending hours in the gym, I've simply adjusted my existing life to a healthier one. I'm eating lots of protein, avoiding carbs, getting on the treadmill M-F for a half hour or so, and not sabotaging myself by making exceptions.
The last part of it, too, is that I've accepted that I'm the only one who's going to lose this weight. I can't count on anyone but me to make this happen. People everywhere, everyday unintentionally stand in the way of my weight loss, and simply circumventing them has been a huge step for me. I am accountable for this, and only me.
Oh, and planning. That was a big lesson last week. I went to Busch Stadium with my son and his baseball team that I'm coaching to walk on the field before the game. I snagged some stadium nachos while I was there, then, when I went to enter them into my food diary, and I saw that they were between 700-1100 calories, I was shocked. I should've planned.
Therefore, when my wife and I made our monthly sojourn to her hometown in northern Illinois, I planned everything. Before I ate anything, I looked it up online, compared it with my food diary to see if it was in my budget for calories, carbs, sugar, etc, and only put it in my mouth if I could 'afford' it. If we were hitting a fast food joint, I pulled into the parking lot, pulled out my Windows Phone or iPad, and looked at their menu, and carefully planned each piece. THIS HELPS TREMENDOUSLY.
It seems like a lot of folks psych themselves out of weight loss by building into this HUGE, all-encompassing thing, but it's really not that big a deal. Just chill the fuck out, tweak your life a bit, and make it happen.
The most annoying part is that people are constantly shoving food at each other. Not only that, but a lot of folks just won't let up when I say 'no.' There were a few times this weekend in which I damn near went 'Hulk smash' on some folks because they wouldn't stop trying to ram pie down my gullet.
On top of that, I insist that I eat at the same times every day. That helps tremendously with regulating my food intake, and makes life easy to manage. What that means, then, is that I don't give a fuck what time your party is, or what time you're serving food. I'm eating 'x food' at 'x time,' and I don't care what that means for you. Period. Again, I'm the only one who's going to lose this weight, and I'm not going to let anything stand in my way. Don't take it personally, and either be supportive or shut the hell up.
I've gotta be selfish and inflexible in this process, but you'll be glad I took that approach when you can't stop staring at me and wonder what it would be like to make sex at me.
Last thing - the applications I've been using have been tremendously helpful. I've been using a combination of three, and this may get pared down as things move along.
MyFitnessPal - I use the Windows Phone app + the iPad app + the web application, and this has been tremendous. Thank you very much, Chris, for the recommendation on this. This is where I plug in all my food and keep track of my daily intake. I can use this to make sure my carbs and sugar are low, while my proteins are through the roof, and that my calories hit their target. It has a huge, ever-growing food database, to which you can add whenever you want, plus the phone application lets you scan in barcodes, which rocks. Friend me on here and you can see what a bad-ass, manageable diet looks like (though I did have to improvise while traveling this past weekend, but I was still well within my plan.)
RunKeeper - I plug all my runs in here, and they auto-feed into Fitocracy, which I'll get to in a moment. I use this to calculate the caloric burn and auto-spam to Facebook and Twitter that I'm better and more active than the other fatties. There is not yet a Windows Phone application, which is disappointing. I manually feed the stats from my treadmill into this for now, or if I'm forced to run outside, I'll use RunningMate on the Windows Phone for its GPS tracking.
Fitocracy - This is where everything all kinda ties together. It makes fitness into a game, and I love it. It automatically picks up my RunKeeper stats, I feed my daily weigh-ins into it, and it's very cool. The only problem is they still don't have a category for sex.
I also use 'Virgin Health Miles' at work, and that's been very, very helpful. It's what I use to weigh in and track my steps every day.
Please 'friend' me on any of these sites if you want. There's no reason that you can't enjoy watching me succeed.
-Blaine
Buy my book!
Yeah, that's a crazy amount of weight to drop in the first week, but I've got two things for you. 1) if you're fat, and you suddenly switch to a good diet and exercise, you drop a shitload of weight real fast for the first 20 or so pounds, then you have to start grinding it out like all the normies. 2) if you're fat and you don't drop that first weight real fast, you're still fat and you're doing it wrong.
This protein-heavy and low-carb diet is working wonders. I'm never starving, and I can eat a reasonable amount of meat. That works for me. I also cut out a lot of soda. Even diet soda will bring you down, given that all that sodium that's packed in adds up.
What's been surprising is that a lot of skinny folks have been like, 'Yes, great job, keep it going!' while most of the fat folks have either immediately started to explain to me why my approach wouldn't work for them or some other nonsense. I'm content with your failure if you're content with it.
Look, people, here's the secret. I'm not doing a crash diet, I'm eating 4-5 times a day, I'm not spending hours in the gym, I've simply adjusted my existing life to a healthier one. I'm eating lots of protein, avoiding carbs, getting on the treadmill M-F for a half hour or so, and not sabotaging myself by making exceptions.
The last part of it, too, is that I've accepted that I'm the only one who's going to lose this weight. I can't count on anyone but me to make this happen. People everywhere, everyday unintentionally stand in the way of my weight loss, and simply circumventing them has been a huge step for me. I am accountable for this, and only me.
Oh, and planning. That was a big lesson last week. I went to Busch Stadium with my son and his baseball team that I'm coaching to walk on the field before the game. I snagged some stadium nachos while I was there, then, when I went to enter them into my food diary, and I saw that they were between 700-1100 calories, I was shocked. I should've planned.
Therefore, when my wife and I made our monthly sojourn to her hometown in northern Illinois, I planned everything. Before I ate anything, I looked it up online, compared it with my food diary to see if it was in my budget for calories, carbs, sugar, etc, and only put it in my mouth if I could 'afford' it. If we were hitting a fast food joint, I pulled into the parking lot, pulled out my Windows Phone or iPad, and looked at their menu, and carefully planned each piece. THIS HELPS TREMENDOUSLY.
It seems like a lot of folks psych themselves out of weight loss by building into this HUGE, all-encompassing thing, but it's really not that big a deal. Just chill the fuck out, tweak your life a bit, and make it happen.
The most annoying part is that people are constantly shoving food at each other. Not only that, but a lot of folks just won't let up when I say 'no.' There were a few times this weekend in which I damn near went 'Hulk smash' on some folks because they wouldn't stop trying to ram pie down my gullet.
On top of that, I insist that I eat at the same times every day. That helps tremendously with regulating my food intake, and makes life easy to manage. What that means, then, is that I don't give a fuck what time your party is, or what time you're serving food. I'm eating 'x food' at 'x time,' and I don't care what that means for you. Period. Again, I'm the only one who's going to lose this weight, and I'm not going to let anything stand in my way. Don't take it personally, and either be supportive or shut the hell up.
I've gotta be selfish and inflexible in this process, but you'll be glad I took that approach when you can't stop staring at me and wonder what it would be like to make sex at me.
Last thing - the applications I've been using have been tremendously helpful. I've been using a combination of three, and this may get pared down as things move along.
MyFitnessPal - I use the Windows Phone app + the iPad app + the web application, and this has been tremendous. Thank you very much, Chris, for the recommendation on this. This is where I plug in all my food and keep track of my daily intake. I can use this to make sure my carbs and sugar are low, while my proteins are through the roof, and that my calories hit their target. It has a huge, ever-growing food database, to which you can add whenever you want, plus the phone application lets you scan in barcodes, which rocks. Friend me on here and you can see what a bad-ass, manageable diet looks like (though I did have to improvise while traveling this past weekend, but I was still well within my plan.)
RunKeeper - I plug all my runs in here, and they auto-feed into Fitocracy, which I'll get to in a moment. I use this to calculate the caloric burn and auto-spam to Facebook and Twitter that I'm better and more active than the other fatties. There is not yet a Windows Phone application, which is disappointing. I manually feed the stats from my treadmill into this for now, or if I'm forced to run outside, I'll use RunningMate on the Windows Phone for its GPS tracking.
Fitocracy - This is where everything all kinda ties together. It makes fitness into a game, and I love it. It automatically picks up my RunKeeper stats, I feed my daily weigh-ins into it, and it's very cool. The only problem is they still don't have a category for sex.
I also use 'Virgin Health Miles' at work, and that's been very, very helpful. It's what I use to weigh in and track my steps every day.
Please 'friend' me on any of these sites if you want. There's no reason that you can't enjoy watching me succeed.
-Blaine
Buy my book!
20120611
You Don't Have to Be Fat to Be Sexy
This is sports-related ... more or less ...
It's extremely unhealthy, too. What a lot of guys don't realize is that being overweight for a sustained period can actually cause erectile dysfunction later in life, which we all know is even worse than a heart attack.
While it's true that being fat is an easy way to telegraph just how financially fit you are, it's just not worth it. Women need to learn to accept us for who we are, and shouldn't demand that we demonstrate our wealth by consuming a bag of Doritos for every meal. For too long have men suffered this lack of equality, and I, for one, am taking a stand.
Today
I'm at 306 pounds, and have two goals.
First, I want to get under 300 pounds. That's the short-term goal. I'm not sure how I'm breaking up my other short-term goals after that, and I'm not sweating it. Once I get under 300, then we'll figure it out from there.
Second, I want to get to 200 pounds and just see how things look at that point. That's the long-term goal. I may want to go down another 20 or so, but we'll see.
Diet
Doc put me on a high-protein diet that looks something like this:
Breakfast one serving of protein shake (Muscle Milk)
10AM protein bar
Lunch protein-rich lunch
afternoon protein bar
Dinner whatever (reasonable portion)
evening snack (if needed) protein shake
I've modified it a bit as I've seen necessary, and so far, things are shaking out as follows:
Breakfast Muscle Milk Light
Lunch chicken breast + either BBQ sauce or teriyaki sauce + protein bar
3PM Pure Protein bar
Dinner one serving of whatever
8PM Muscle Milk
That seems to be working so far.
Where it's going to be tough, and where my self-control has historically eroded is weekend nights. I haven't consumed alcohol in a year and half, haven't smoked for two months, so food is kinda what I got left in the 'abuse for pleasure' department, and it's gotta go. Sorry, ladies.
That being said, I was tinkering with the idea of just hopping on the treadmill and running myself dead every time I started having a craving like that, but I don't want to turn exercise into a punishment. We'll see.
Exercise
What I've been doing so far is running through an episode of Around the Horn each day. I've been refining it and refining it, and what I've found is working well is the following.
Around the Horn is a sports talk show that's broken into topics. They talk about each topic for a few minutes, then move onto the next, and they do this for a half-hour. I'll do the lead-up to the show at 2.5MPH to get warmed up, then kick it up to 4MPH at the beginning of each topic, then hold that for as long as I feel like, at which point I drop to 3MPH. Then, when the next topic starts, I kick it back up to 4MPH. At each ad, I sprint at 6MPH until the show comes back, at which point I resume the intervals. Then, at the final 'Showdown' segment, I ramp down to 2.5MPH, and then I'll walking at least through the end of the show. Lately, I've kept going for a bit afterward.
Also ...
The trophy wife and I are looking into picking up tennis again. I played the hell out of tennis as a youth and always really enjoyed it. It also seems like an ideal 'couples' exercise. I think we'll try it out this weekend and see how we like it.
I was having a great ride on my bike the other day, finally getting comfortable doing an uphill, when the goddam fucking cocksucking bitch whore fucking chain came off. I have no idea how to fix it, but it can't be that hard, but I was still mad as hell about it. I love the idea of mountain biking and want to get going with it as soon as possible.
I haven't had a real cigarette in about two months and I can breathe again. These e-cigarettes are the best thing ever for people that just can't quit. Being able to breathe again has been the biggest change in me being able to exercise again.
What about you? Have you had to give up fatness? Were you successful? Were you not? Either way, share your story!
Thanks!
-Blaine
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