“The Summer of George” meets Rocky IV

The other day I was paying for my Bob Evans breakfast when the cashier asks, "It's 90 degrees outside and you're taking hot coffee to go?" I chuckled and replied, "It's true, but I figured if I told somebody that I would pay them to kick me in the ass to wake me up that they'd throw me in the insane asylum!" I mention this because for the most part, I feel like I'm asleep all the time. It seems these days that the only hours I'm awake are the hours I spend moving freight at FedEx, and though I don't sleep the remaining 20 hours of the day I almost feel asleep when I'm awake. Now I don't want to be too hard on myself because I've been all over the place emotion wise, and more specifically medication wise, but I just can't sit around and wait for that perfect drug combination to sweep me off my feet and carry me like a magic carpet through all of the challenges and obstacles all the way down to 215. I need a kick in the ass!

Like so many individuals from my generation, I've grown up with this sense of entitlement. I have no idea why because my mother and I got by on very little in my childhood, but there is still this sense of entitlement nonetheless. Truthfully, I don't necessarily think we are the entitlement generation that others have claimed, but I believe that we grew up with this idea that we will always get out more than we put into something. Our education was almost completely based on setting the bar low and teaching so that as many children as possible can get over. All we had to do is show up and we were passed on to college. During that time, people were becoming millionaires overnight as the "dot.com boom" kept skyrocketing. At that time, all you had to do was try and the world was yours. So many people were doing so well with such minimal effort that arrogance became cliché. In my case, growing up I was so much smarter than a lot of my peers and with that came a feeling of superiority as well as a feeling that I just didn't need to try so hard to get by.

Now, I'm still smarter than a lot of my peers AND I've lost a 150 pounds and I feel like I'm a superstar. I feel at this point that if I stand still that the world will come to me. When you combine that with my fear of failing on this tremendous quest it's as if my feet are stuck in concrete. Like I said, I need a kick in the ass! Enter the Summer of Rocky IV. I've always loved the Rocky movies. I've always loved the idea of one man against the world and the forth Rocky movies takes that struggle to the ultimate peak. This killing machine of a man, Soviet Ivan Drago, has killed Rocky's best friend and long time rival so Rocky has to face Drago for revenge and to preserve his best friend's legacy. So to train for this fight, Drago trains with the most advanced technological equipment at the time while Rocky secludes himself to a farm in Siberia where he uses primitive farming tools to train for the fight of his life. By the end of his training Rocky's has a beard, his hair is long, he's dirty and scrappy looking, but he is in the shape of his life and ready to take on this lethal opponent.

So for me, the Summer of Rocky IV begins today! For the next two months, until school starts, it is 30 hours a week of hard work at FedEx along with an intense 6 day per week workout schedule. At this point, nothing else matters except improving my life and pursuing my dreams. Though I'm not training against Ivan Drago, the harsh realities of life is a pretty strong opponent and is an opponent for which I've got to work extra hard to prepare. One of the things I need to improve is this blog. Over the next few weeks you will see this website undergo a facelift as well as a greater commitment to post more often. I am going to return to posting my daily weight, but this site will be so much more. I'm going to start sharing every aspect of my training, from workouts and recipes to helpful products and workout iPod playlists. In return, I hope that you will share your experiences and diet/exercise aides with me as well as the rest of my audience so that we might all make significant strides together.

As you can see from the hard work stains on my shirt that day one's workout was quite intense. Here is to committing that every workout from here on out will match or surpass that intensity. As Rocky would say in this situation, "NO PAIN! NO PAIN! NO PAIN!"

Today's weight is 358 pounds.

A Step Back?

On the evening of July 16th, 1999, a luxury aircraft piloted by John F. Kennedy, Jr. crashed into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after take-off. Tragically, the accident killed John, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette, and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette. According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Kennedy, Jr. was at fault because he hadn't logged all of the hours required to receive his pilot's license. In this incident, the pilot lacked the training needed for flying at night, but nonetheless ventured out on the night of the 16th. According to the NTSB, Kennedy crashed due to a phenomenon known as spacial disorientation. When flying at night over open water, pilots can become disoriented. Their instincts tell them that they are flying upside down and steer to correct even though their instruments indicate they are flying level and right side up. They believe that their instruments have failed, when in fact their eyes have failed, and they fly the plane straight into the water below.

When this tragedy occurred, I found the whole thing to be very peculiar. How could one's senses deceive them so much and in that event, why wouldn't you trust your instruments? Instruments were developed because we as humans are flawed. Instruments are the means of impartially telling us how we're doing, where we are, or where we are going. As I've endeavored on this life improvement journey, the scale in my bathroom is my best barometer of my performance in my life and a fantastic indicator of my future.

I purchased an iPhone six or seven months ago and I'm satisfied beyond words. The first app I put on my phone was the calorie tracker from livestrong.com. The app and website are both incredible! With livestrong in my pocket, I put the pencil and paper away and started tracking my calorie consumption digitally. I wanted to slow my weight loss so my skin didn't look like a ball of pizza dough, so I set my calorie level so that I would lose about a pound and a half a week. The most incredible thing was that I could use the app to track my activity as well. So, as I would burn calories through exercise, my phone was telling me I could eat more to stay at losing a pound and a half a week.

Before I knew it, I was using this new tool to get back to my old tricks. I'm embarrassed to say it was all about the food again. I gained back about 22 pounds in the last 8 months and it's clear that my behavior has changed. "If I ride the bike for an hour, then we can go to Olive Garden for supper... I'm absolutely exhausted and I'm going to hurt myself if I keep pushing, but ten more minutes and we can go for ice cream after supper," but why? Why do I feel the need to abuse myself?

The whole time that I was so sick I was functioning at 25 percent speed and I had fallen behind in so many aspects of my life. Now I'm struggling to catch back up. On top of this struggle, we've been working on remodeling the house, which isn't a small task. If that wasn't enough to impair my progress, for some reason I feel such a sense of obligation towards putting a smile on my little princess' face. She's been going through a really rough time these past few months and I just have this overwhelming urge to buy her a pony every time I see her beautiful eyes glaze over with concern and sorrow. Their pain is my pain. Their worries and fears are my worries and fears. All this and I can't even think of when I took a day for myself.

See, for some reason, I prefer to get caught up in other people's problems instead of dealing with my own. Instead of focusing on myself, I've been going bananas with worry about finishing the house because my queen is worrying about the house. It is easier to concentrate of making my princess smile than making myself smile. I've been so caught up in the feeling of responsibility for everyone around me that I had convinced myself that eating 4,300 calories a day was a good idea!

The good news in all of this is that even though I've gained 20 pounds, I've increased only one pant size because I was working out so much that those extra calories went to muscle, and believe me it went to muscle. My arms, legs, and abs are in incredible shape, but my flexibility has gone south. I stopped going to yoga because it was too slow and relaxing and "I just didn't have time for that shit!"

So, with shame in my heart, it's back to the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid)! It's back to a fixed number calories and the end of this flexible spending nonsense. I need to make it less about the food and more about myself! It's back to a variety of exercises with no consideration for Olive Garden, Dairy Queen, or any other place I have no business frequenting. It also seems that I'm not as emotionally advanced as I thought, so I think it's a good idea to get back into therapy. Finally, I need to have a little faith in myself and my loved ones that the world won't fall apart if I let them down off my shoulders, because holding them up there just isn't fair to anybody.

I thought that spacial disorientation was such a ridiculous concept, but it turns out that your instruments are only as good as what you want them to indicate. I was slowly working my way back to the ocean and I was actually proud, if not arrogant, of what I was doing. When I was in North Carolina, I would become flabbergasted after talking to some fellow "life improvers" because they had lost 60, then gained 40, then lost 120, but then gained 150, but this was the time they were going to be successful... How is this possible? It turns out that this sort of oscillation is just a part of the human condition that we all must endure, myself included. "It's not how many times you fall down, but how many times you get back up." This is what happens when you focus on the goal line instead of the next defender or when you start running to first base before you even hit the ball. Recovering addicts will say that "today is the first day of the rest of my life." Well, I happily embrace today so that tomorrow might be a brighter day.

I don't know what to say really. Three minutes till the biggest battle of
our professional lives. It all comes down to today. Now either we heal as a
team, or we're gonna crumble. Inch by inch, play by play, till we're finished.
We're in hell right now, gentlemen. Believe me. And we can stay here, get the
shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb
out of hell. One inch at a time.

Now I can't do it for you. I'm too old. I look around, I see these young
faces, and I think... I mean I've made every wrong choice a middle-aged man can
make. I pissed away all my money, believe it or not. I chased off anyone who's
ever loved me, and lately, I can't even stand the face I see in the mirror. You
know when you get old in life, things get taken from you. That's part of life.
But you only learn that when you start losing stuff. You find out life's this
game of inches. And so is football. Because in either game, life or football,
the margin for error is so small. I mean... one half a step too late or too
early and you don't quite make it. One half second too slow too fast, you don't
quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every
break of the game, every minute, every second. On this team, we fight for that
inch. On this team, we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for
that inch. We claw with our fingernails for that inch. Because we know when we
add up all those inches, that's gonna make the fucking difference between
winning and losing! Between living and dying! I'll tell you this - in any fight,
its the guy whose willing to die who's gonna win that inch. And I know if I'm
going to have any life anymore, it's because I'm still willing to fight and die
for that inch. Because that's what living is! The 6 inches in front of your
face...

A Bittersweet Relief: A End to my Personal Hell

11 months ago, the rambling weight loss train I was riding came to a very abrupt and difficult stop. I was losing about 2 and a half pounds a week until the beginning of August when the weight loss stopped. I tried all sorts of changes in diet and exercise, but to no avail. I saw a nutritionist, an endocrinologist, had all sorts of blood work, and even worked out with a trainer, but nothing I did could move the scale. As September rolled into October, I started insisting to my physician that something wasn't right, but all she had to offer is her nagging suggestions to have bariatric surgery.

By November, still with no weight loss, I started developing sinus infection after sinus infection. By February, the infection had spread to my eye and caused my right eye to swell shut. My eye was so badly damaged that I couldn't read or use a computer almost a month. So, I was referred to an opthamologist who referred me to an ear, nose, and throat specialist. After rounds and round of antibiotics and cortical steroids, I still saw no improvement. By this time I started gaining weight at a rate of about 3 pounds per week, no matter what I did or ate. Plus, to make matters worse, the steroids were making me retain water so I was puffing up in my face and stomach. After a clear CT scan of head, which also proved I had a real, fully-functional brain, it became clear that I had some sort of allergy issue. So, the doctor took some more blood and sent it off to Dallas for some allergy tests. I couldn't believe the results.

It turns out the ONLY things I'm allergic to are dairy, eggs, peanuts, tomatoes, chocolate, and wheat. It just so happens that I just named about 70 percent of my diet. My doctor said that these food allergies, especially eaten in large quantities on a daily basis, would cause the sinus congestion and drainage, which would feed the infections, and cause all sorts of congestion in my gastrointestinal tract. According to my math, I should have lost 45 to 55 pounds in the last 7 months and instead I gained 25!

I have cut dairy completely out of my diet and I've limited my exposure to the other allergens. I feel so much better and I've lost 9 pounds in the last 14 days! The problem I'm facing now is that I was trying to keep my weight loss pace fairly slow so that I could build more muscle and allow for my skin to slowly shrink, but the general consensus is that I'm going to lose 40 plus pounds in the next few months. After these last nine pounds, the skin in my stomach has already starting to sag and ,without being too graphic, I'm starting to notice a butt crack in the middle of my stomach and the skin under my arms is beginning to sag....

I can't describe how relieved I am to have all of this behind me and I'm hoping upon hope that I don't end up looking too grotesque. I don't like enduring all of this mess and still ending up self-conscious, but the alternative is unacceptable. So, life goes on and tomorrow is a new day with new challenges and opportunities. More than likely I'll eventually have to get plastic surgery to remove all the extra skin, but at this point it can't be helped. I'll just have to keep documentation from my doctors for when Oprah calls again! Onward and upward. Tomorrow is going to be a great day!

God, the Devil, "UU's," and the Conservation of Energy

Since two weeks of age, my heart, soul, and destiny belonged to the lord. I was born in early December and I was in attendance at our Presbyterian Christmas Eve event two weeks later. I was baptized into the church before I could speak, or even walk for that matter, and absolutely bought into the belief that we live only to service the lord; hook, line and sinker. As I grew older and older, and my family condition of mental illness continued to manifest, I was confident that the lord was going to protect me so I went on dreaming of my storybook future, because I believed in the lord. I didn’t need therapy because I was religious. I didn’t need antidepressants because I had the lord.

So, as my life continued to spiral downward, I started with the bargaining. “Lord, I am really getting to a bad place. If you’ll just straighten out my life, then I promise that I’ll live my life in service of your glorious name. I’ll make the a difference in this world, do good works, and help as many people as I have time to on this planet. Just please let me pass this drug test!”

My dad used M&M’s to teach me math as a child. I didn’t know they tasted delicious until I started pre-school. I started presenting science fair projects in fifth grade and started studying calculus my junior year in high school. Logic drives my life so much so that I can only see the world in black and white; never grey. Mathematics, science, and logic has been the biggest driving force in my life, so how did I get to the point where I’m bargaining with somebody, that I have no proof exists, and giving him responsibility for MY life?

After I topped out at 507 pounds and pretty deep into my “fake it ‘til I make it” phase, I still believed that god had this master plan for me and he was going to reward me for my hard efforts. As soon as I lost enough weight, the lord was going to compensate me for fixing my life by bringing me “my partner” in life and making my life easier. I actually believed that God favored skinny people because they were taking better care of their “temple” and it just seemed like skinnier people had easier lives. I mean they were the ones getting laid at bars with women they just met while I was beery belly up to the bar slamming beers trying to make the pain subside.

After about six months of hard work, my storybook life was coming together. I had an awesome girlfriend, a family, and the weight was just dropping off. The lord had come through for me until we hit a bit of a snag. There was a situation that I thought I could handle, we were out socially, I started drinking, made a jack ass of myself, and then ran up a $150 bar bill because I thought this “storybook life” was just an evil glimpse at a life I was never going to have. I ended up trying to walk from Greenwood to Speedway (suburbs of Indianapolis, approx. 15 miles apart) in a pouring down thunderstorm. I was piss drunk walking down the middle of the road, trying to describe to the cab company where I was, while the rain was falling so heavily that I couldn’t even open my eyes to see where I was going or to watch for oncoming traffic.

After an hour or so, I had finally had enough. In a Capra-esque sort of overly dramatic move I looked up to the heavens and cried out to the lord. “Kill me! Fucking kill me! Stop fucking with me you vindictive son of a bitch and just end this! Strike me down and end this misery! Are you enjoying yourself you fucking sadist?” This rant continued at the top of my lungs in between long sobs and choking fits from shouting in the rain. When I had no more energy to shout, I decided to take a break under a bank drive-thru overhang and smoke a cigarette. In my alcohol-induced haze, I spent a while attempting to light a rain soaked cigarette as something came over me. It isn’t god that dictates my life; that is strictly my responsibility. I’ve invested all of my efforts and energy into someone or something that nobody can prove exists. God doesn’t have to suffer the consequences of my actions; I do. They say that’s where the effort of faith comes in, but it’s my belief that faith is for suckers and for people that live off of others. It was time to question everything. It really doesn’t matter who or what is in control of this universe because I need to concentrate on my own destiny and what I can do to affect it.

So, with this newly discovered self reliance, I found the Unitarian Universalist church. It was so surreal to go to a doctrine-less proceeding, where you were free to practice your own system of beliefs. Instead of the Apostle’s Creed, it was a devotion to religious freedom and the journey to find our own spiritual origins. I even joined a very interesting group called Build Your Own Theology where we explore our individual religious histories and plot our spiritual futures. With this branch of religion, I’m free to explore all of the “nooks and crannies” of life without having anybody tell me what I’m seeing or what I’m supposed to be seeing.

One thing that has frustrated me about these open minded, spiritually flexible church-goers is their strong belief in the idea of community. There seems to be this huge emphasis on the idea that an investment in community with fix all of societies woes and we are beholden to our community more than we’re supposed to be accountable to ourselves. This has left me somewhat dumbfounded because these people that criticize Christians for their blind faith and obedience to this all powerful, all knowing “God,” place their independence, free thought, money, future, hopes, and dreams into this collective they believe can overcome our shortcomings, as a society, to solve all of life problems; without having the individual power to effect the ideas or decisions of the collective. That’s sounds a lot like a religion.

It seems in religions throughout the world, the major principles are arranged as God first, the church second, and the individual third. Take the Roman Catholic Church for example. It starts at the very top with God, the Holy Ghost, as the most important position within the faith. Just below God, is the pontiff, followed by the Catholic Church as an organization. Then the organization is broken down by archbishops, cardinals, priests, elected officials within the local church, and finally the individual. God, the Pope, and the church, as an organization, are the only sacred institutions, with no mention of the individual. If there was even the least bit of concern for the members of the church, then maybe the Catholic Church wouldn’t be opposed to practices such as birth control in third world countries that can’t afford to feed all of “God’s miracles.”

Generally speaking, it is my experience that all protestant organizations, as well as religious hierarchies throughout the world, are organized in this sort of “top down” fashion with considerations for God and the church, before the individual. With regards to the Unitarian experience, it really surprised me at how much it felt like every other church I’ve attended; from the hierarchy of the organization to the schedule of events during the service. The principles and vocabulary are slightly different, but the experience seems the same, minus the guilt at the end of the sermon. So, it really feels like every other church, just without God at the pinnacle. If God is absent at the focal point, then it would seem like the entire organization would flow through the fundamental ideal of the community, or the Unitarian Universalist church. It’s God first, the church second, and the individual third, but without God at the top of the pecking order.

Now don’t interpret this as any sort of dig at the Unitarians. I am so thankful that I’m actually in a position to freely question and explore my spirituality without any sort of bias, pressure, or specific doctrine. It isn’t my intention to undercut the Unitarians or any other sect or religion, but to demonstrate just how close we all are as a people to understanding the answer to our most fundamental question of how we ended up here and what is our purpose in existence? The verbiage, practices, and stories might differ from faith to faith and church to church, but the behavior is consistent throughout mankind.

So what is a spiritually confused, at times mentally and emotionally unstable, obese man to do?

If you have read anything about me, you know that I’ve plateau-ed at my current weight for about 8 months now. My energy level has been terrible and I’ve felt as if my depression and anxiety were getting worse, instead of better, and I was afraid to see how many emotional stabilizers it would require to get me to a good place in my life. I’ve talked to doctors, nutritionists, herbal specialists, acupuncturists, and reflexologists only to consistently get the same result: constant fatigue and no energy response from food. It’s like my metabolism is stunted, but my thyroid is perfectly normal. After a great deal of exploration and examination, my girlfriend and I figured out that I must have some sort of insulin response problem. For 8 months I have absolutely killed myself to get this burden off my shoulders to no avail. As month after month with the same burden on my knees, I would work harder and harder and commit more energy to easing my life. I’m in the cardiac shape of somebody a lot smaller than I, so imagine doing 7 hours of aerobic activity with 150 pounds of weight strapped to your back. I’ve been working so hard only to break even and it is so frustrating!

Why is it that every positive step in life gets harder and harder? I know that nothing comes without work, but shit this is getting ridiculous. How much determination can one person have? How much crap must one person eat, figuratively, to get to a point where it doesn’t hurt to get out of bed in the morning? It’s great that all my efforts have slimmed down my waist line and bulked up my chest, arms, legs, and shoulders but I really just want this weight off my back! When I exercise, I’m just killing myself because I’m pushing all that weight around with a great deal of vigor, but when I stop to rest, I’m still exercising because I’m have to hold my large mass up off the ground. I just want some relief.

So tired, sluggish, exhausted, and absolutely pissed off I put on my exercise clothes and went for a walk. I was planning on a two mile walk to the cell tower and back. As I got out on the road, the wind started to pick up and I became just a big parachute. My legs started to ache from pushing my massive frame through the straight line winds. As I was getting so tired and frustrated at the strength of the wind, I looked up at the sky and started taunting the heavens. “Is that all you’ve got I screamed? All of this energy all around me and you can’t knock my fat ass over! You can’t keep me from getting to that tower because I’m bigger that you, stronger than you, and better than you!” The wind zipped and roared as I kept moving forward, battling the urge to turn around and have the wind push me to the comforts of home. Louder and louder I screamed as I grabbed myself inappropriately as a sign of total disrespect to the world around me. “Is that all you’ve got? Harder damn it!” And with one final step, I reached out and put my hand on that tall metal structure and breathed a sigh of relief. At that very moment, as the pride was swelling over me, the wind subsided and it was totally calm. There, at that victorious moment was this deafening silence as I gazed into the face of God.

I promise I wasn’t on acid or “shrooms” and I didn’t electrocute myself by touching the cell tower or fall and hit my head. I actually saw God, Allah, Buddha, the all powerful lord. I realized that God is everywhere around us. He is the thorn in our ass and the joy in our hearts. He is that cool refreshing feeling in your soul when you kiss somebody you love or when you lose your virginity and he is also the pain in your heart when you lose a loved one or are diagnosed with a terminal disease. He is in the wind, the water, and every ounce of matter in our universe. Physics will refer to this concept as the laws of conservation of energy and the conservation of matter. It states that matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but only change form. It says that energy is all around us. There is energy in every piece of matter around us and that physical and chemical forces can convert that object, and its energy, into another source of mass and energy. For example, there is a great deal of energy at the core of this planet. The heat from the earth’s core works in concert with the mass of the overlapping layers of rock and dirt to create this incredible pressure. The pressure is so intense that, over time, it converts the dirt and rock to coal. The coal is excavated from the group and burned to produce electricity. The electricity is used to create heat or light. You might think I sound stoned, but you have to admit that there is certainly energy in many different forms all around us.

Man has always known that there was some sort of energy greater than their individual or collective powers which evolved into the birth of religion and spirituality. As this idea of expressing the collective energy of this earth as one or a collection of beings spread throughout man, different languages, as well as the influence of power and profit formed spirituality into the religions we have today.

What I realized when I had that epiphany at the cellular tower is that God, Satan, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, the Apostle Paul, Mohammed, and all of the angels in heaven and hell are really just frames of mind within ourselves. These aren’t spiritual beings that decide the outcome of our lives, but they are our personal interpretation of the events in our lives that influence our perspective and our decisions. I’ve always believed that the devout amongst us seemed truly happy. It always seemed like my priest or minister had their bright disposition and outlook on life because they truly knew god, but I was mistaken. It isn’t because they found the all powerful, but because they had actually found peace in their own hearts.

If I want to find peace and happiness I need to keep my “temple” in the best shape it can possibly be. Not because it is god’s will, but because I am ultimately responsible and accountable to myself and only myself. When it comes down to it, the all powerful, my girlfriend, my parents, or even my community don’t have to own the consequences, good or bad, of the decisions that I make. That responsibility lies solely with me. In order to be happy and endeavor to do what I want in this world, I have to be my own personal god. I need to worship at the altar of Andrew J. Ashby in order to finally find peace. Granted, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to walk on water or raise the dead, but who wants that kind of responsibility anyways?

My first 18 holes of the year in the bag!!!

Today was the most beautiful day, even though very windy, to get in some golf. My buddy and I hit up a course that would be way too expensive after March and had a blast.

I averaged a double bogey per hole, but that was without swinging a club since August, no time at the driving range, water on every hole, heavy winds, lots of beer, and, oh yeah, I'm terrible!

Had a great time :)

"Golf and sex are the two things you don't have to be good at to enjoy...."

(that was from the movie Tin Cup, but I'm sure that one has been around for ages)

Sorry..... I've been busy.

TO MY READERS:

Sorry that I haven't posted in a few days, but I've been really, really busy! Guitar lessons are going well. I can play my CAGED chords and the first three lines of "Silent Night." Oh, I can also rock out on "Mary had a little lamb!"

I started a body cleansing vitamin regiment 6 days ago which was tons of pills and frequent trips to the bathroom. I feel so much better and I lost 5 and a half pounds. I thought this was going to be the catalyst that broke this awful plateau, but to no avail. I gained it all back by this morning.

I'm still tightening up and getting in better shape, but my weight has stayed the same since last August. I'm not getting frustrated though because I'm eating for the right reason and living a healthy lifestyle, so weight loss will eventually be a byproduct. I'm not hitting my exercise like I'd like, but this week WILL be different. I need to push myself just a little harder to get everything in and I intend to do it. My super-intense workout is getting easier and gaining speed and endurance on the track as well as in the pool!

I promise I'll have a good blog tomorrow, but I wanted to check-in and reflect for a second.

LIFE IS GOOD!

The Random Wednesday of Greatness: Prologue

It amazes me that as this journey is becoming more commonplace that it still isn’t getting any easier. I’ve been on this life improvement train for almost 13 months now and it is just as difficult, if not more now, than it has ever been. Previously, I referred to getting to my highest weight as filling my size 62 pants with one million mistakes and that to lose the weight I’ve got to fix, reverse these mistakes. I figured as I managed to untangle this bad wiring that it would be easier to get to the more complicated issues. I feel like I’m working harder now than I was 12 to 13 months ago.

When I got started, I was so fat, that exercise really just had to include movement and I would lose weight. At 507 pounds, walking around the block could be considered cardio because my heart rate was getting up to 145 beats/minute pretty easy. My weight has plateau-ed for about 5 months now so I started working out with a personal trainer. I’m on a fantastic workout, but I thought getting out of bed before was a struggle. I have to brace myself to get myself on and off the toilet because my legs burn so badly. I’m even getting lightheaded from the pain. I’ve got to do that workout on my own tomorrow and I don’t know how I’m going to summon the strength to do it!

Not to have one of those TMI (too much information) moments, but there is a correlation between my weight plateau-ing and having regular bowel movements. I know that isn’t something one wants to talk about, but it’s been such a struggle and it’s made me so miserable. I’ve tried various daily amounts of fiber and other supplements with no improvement. At one time, I was taking two ex-lax a night before I went to bed, just to help with the discomfort. I’ve talked with different nutritionists and doctors with conflicting opinions. It turns out that I needed more pro-biotics in my diet. I’ve been taking a daily dose with my breakfast for the past few days and my excretory issues are over! As I’m losing this weight, my body chemistry is getting all out of sorts. It’s so frustrating to think that I’m improving my body and screwing it up at the same time.

Now that I’m having multiple, daily trips to the restroom, my weight is surely going to start dropping rapidly. My problem is that now I have an excuse to stop the mega-workout. In just a week, I’m going to see incredible results, but I don’t know if I have it in me. 13 months ago, I had to lose weight. I was unhealthy, sick, and lonely. I had to lose weight or my life was quickly going to end. Now, I’m in excellent shape medically. I have a girlfriend, a family, a great sex life, zero physical limitations and all I had to do was make a commitment to a passive effort. I never really had to push myself that hard, I just had to show up every day and stick to my menu plan 95 percent of the time. Pushing past the pain in an attempt at bettering myself, even further, is actually an active attempt at greatness and I don’t know that I’ve ever done that in the 27 years of my life. Not to “toot my own horn,” but I’m a pretty smart young man so school has never been a struggle. Because I wasn’t taking care of my body, life has previously been a breeze. I have my fair share of mental and emotional daemons, but the antidepressants that I’m on, and my lifetime commitment to stay on them, makes dealing with these emotions much easier.

One of my favorite monologues is from the movie Any Given Sunday. Al Pacino gives this speech before the big game and he talks about how “life is this game of inches” and how fighting for the next inch is what life is all about. I’ll kill myself for the next inch, but trying to make this leap absolutely terrifies me. I get so inspired by this line from the movie Varsity Blues that goes, “We have our entire lives to be mediocre, but we have the opportunity to play like gods for the next half of football.” So many great dramas revolve around the idea of the protagonist rallying against insurmountable odds to succeed at this moment of greatness (like a big game, battle, trial, moment of truth). You see, that sort of thing is sexy. It’s damn right heroic! I can get inspired for that moment of truth. I can push myself for the big game, but who wants to summon that courage and strength for a hard, painful workout on some random Wednesday?

There are very few people that rise to greatness for the purpose of personal accomplishment and not for the glory. I don’t have the self esteem to want this for myself so what possible motivation do I have to struggle through this pain? I do believe that tomorrow is one of those forks in the road that will dictate the rest of my life. It is clear that tomorrow will be one of those defining moments. I think the underlying issue here is that I’m 27 and I’m still learning who am I and what I have the “stones” for. I could talk for another two pages on that, but I don’t know that we ever really know who we really are. I think that is what makes life so exciting and why no two days are ever alike. So what will tomorrow bring?

What to do when words don't seem to help....

As I continue to get older, it seems that the effectiveness of my words seems to becoming less and less. I'm a very genuine, honest person and in the past, people in need of an emotional boost would flock to me because I was always there with a compliment. If you have nice eyes, I'm going to tell you that you have nice eyes. If you've lost weight, generally, I'm going to notice and compliment you on your hard work. It seems that as I continue to age, and my peer group continues to age, the world has taken it's toll on people. Now, those same compliments seem to go unnoticed.

My lady friend, whom I refer to as "rockstar" on this blog, is the most incredible woman that I've ever met. She is fun to be around. She is full of life and energy. She is sooo seductive and absolutely sexy. I literally worship the ground that she walks on. I compliment her all the time, not because I'm trying to get somewhere, but because she has no many things that are so right that I just feel compelled to list all of her positive qualities. I will admit that sometimes I'll tell her how pretty her smile is when she isn't smiling just to get her to smile. Let me tell you, when she smiles it's really as if time stands still. She has such a great heart and soul that just radiates in bright, colorful rays outward when she smiles and it really makes you feel fortunate that you were there to witness it.

Sorry, I got off track. Anyway, it seems that a lot of the compliments that I pay this woman seem to "bounce off." I sometimes get the feeling she doesn't believe the nice things I say about her or maybe she thinks there is some sort of agenda behind them. This is a very common tale. As we get older, words just become lip service (sorry for the bad pun). People have been lied to so much as their lives progress that they get to where the really don't believe half the things we say to each other, even compliments about each other.

So, since words have lost their utility, let me tell you what I'm doing right now. I'm lying on the floor of my bathroom, with one hot pad under my lower back. I've got another hot pad under my upper back. My feet are over the side of the tub soaking in warm water while I've got bags of ice on each of my knees. My laptop, fellow bloggers, is on my stomach and I can see the screen because I have a rolled up towel under the back of my head. I ache in just about every muscle group I have. Why am I in so much pain? Today, I laid 1.6 tons (approximately) in a nice orginized fashion for the final step in the brick sidewalk that I've been putting together for "rockstar." I spent all day with my 360 pound stature hunched over and squatting placing each and every one of the few thousand bricks into their proper location. I would have gotten around to finishing this task earlier in my vacation, but I was busy doing other things for her such as hanging a new front door, fixing some steps, doing yard work, and trying to fix an ice machine. In the last few weeks, if I haven't been eating or sleeping, I've been doing some sort of job for her or researching on the internet how to do the job she needed done.

The funny thing is that she has said more than once that I don't have to do any of these jobs to get laid or for us to maintain our relationship. So why do I do these things for her? If words aren't going to do what they were intended then I'm going to have to try even harder to prove to her how I feel about her and how much I appreciate being with her. She can believe me when I call her amazing maybe 40 percent of the time, but EVERY time she walks out her new front door and along her new brick sidewalk (or even when they're her old front door and old brick sidewalk) she'll remember that I thought she was so amazing that I decided to use my vacation time to struggle and sweat as hard as I possibly could just to put a smile on her face.

Physical contact is great. Kissing makes me feel so special. Sex is absolutely incredible, but there is nothing better that giving a little bit of your time, strength, and maybe even a little of yourself in a selfless way for somebody that you care for very deeply. It's what makes relationships so special. In my opinion, communication in a relationship is very important, but nothing tops the lengths one goes to in an attempt to put a smile on the face of the person they care for so deeply. It's with that in mind that my alarm is set so that I can go over to her house and get some more work done before I have to go to class. I'm such a very fortunate man that I can't even put it into words. I guess you will all have to come by and see the sidewalk to know what a special person she really is.

3:30 am is a great time to start blogging.....

So, where do I begin? I have a final at 10:30 tomorrow morning and I can't sleep. I was a little tired when I started reviewing at 9:30 so I decided to make myself an iced mocha-chino (with sugar-free mocha and skim milk of course) with a triple shot of espresso. I'm not going to see the inside of my eyelids anytime soon. I'm in the process of this huge life change, which I'll elaborate on at a later date, and I've decided that it's time to start writing about my life. That isn't to say that I'm any sort of role model, far from it, but I've made a lot of mistakes and intentionally done some pretty stupid things that just so happen to be hilarious. I intend to use this blog as a way to share some of those stories and to discuss things that are going on in my life right now.

I wish I could tell you that tonight is one of those funny story nights, but I'm really just not in the mood. Maybe that's because my final is in 7 hours and sleep is nowhere in sight. Since I'm in this exhaustion generated philosophical mood, I guess I'll go ahead and ask the question that's been on my mind recently:

What makes sex so special?

It is the most incredible experience, but what about it makes it so special? I used to only have sex in very serious relationships, so I mis-guidedly thought sex was so special because it was an exercise in love. I was mistaken.

Is it the intimacy and vulnerability that a sexual situation involves?

I've been in therapy for a few months now and its been nothing but intimacy and vulnerability. I can honestly say that I'm not desperate to go see my therapist in the middle of the night when I have the most incredible dream.

I know that sex is so very special, but I have a very hard time describing why. That is one very big problem in talking about sex is that there isn't a common vocabulary. It is so hard for somebody to understand what you're saying when everyone uses different words to describe their feelings. Doctors or mechanics have no problem communicating and understanding each other because they were all educated using the same vocabulary. When we talk about sex, we could all be saying the exact same thing, but it makes us (at least me) feel like we're out of touch with the rest of the world.

For me, sex reminds me of the first time I ever kissed a girl. We had been dating for weeks and I think she was about to dump me because I would never make a move. One night I went to kiss her on the cheek to say goodbye and our lips met. It was one of those moments that felt like it lasted forever. It was one of those moments where I felt like nobody else existed in the world, but us. I have had thousands of kisses since then, but no kiss ever compares to that first one. Sex, on the other hand, is very much like that first kiss. When two people are locked in that moment it's almost as if time stands still. As the passionate kisses and incredible motion are followed by this unbelievable euphoria, it gives you the illusion that all of you cares, troubles, worries, and inadequacies have vanished for good.

A very, very good friend of mine, we'll call her "rock star," firmly believes that the world would be a much more peaceful place is we all just had sex with each other. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I do think the world would be a more peaceful place if everybody had more sex. I can tell you that for the two days after sex I'm bouncing off the walls, giggling, and acting like a kid on Christmas morning. Imagine if the whole world felt that very same way.

As it is now 4am and my final is now 6 and a half hours away, I think I'm going to take a shot of tequila and hopefully pass the hell out!

In the beginning..... How sacreligious is that?

One summer in college, I worked for one of my fraternity brothers mowing lawns. We were mowing at the Nazarene church in our hometown and I had taken a break to refill the lawnmower. I took this opportunity to talk to the beautiful, young lady friend of mine that had stopped to chat. As I was chatting away and very distracted by her very large, round “features” I scraped the gas nozzle against the rim of the tank as I removed it the nozzle whipped around and splashed a substantial amount of gas into my face; specifically my eyes. I threw my hands firmly to my face as I shouted every curse word I knew, and even made up a few! “Shit, fuck, god damn mother! Fuck god! Oh god!” The preacher ran out of the church and calmly explained to me that god could hear the filthy words I was saying. I turned to him and replied, “Then that means that god watched while my distracted dumbass managed gasoline into my eyes and didn’t do anything to stop it! So I’m not particularly concerned if I offended anybody that would watch that happen and do nothing.”

I don’t know where I’m going with this story, but I can tell you from experience that questioning religion, or even blindly, wholeheartedly committing your life to religion you don’t fully understand, is what I like to call one of the million items you use to fill a size 62 pair of pants. What does that mean you might ask? Well, you see, nobody is born clinically obese, or an alcoholic, or a drug addict, a sex addict, a family-less workaholic, or even a criminal. Lots of people, smarter than myself, will talk about “nature versus nurture” and how much of our behavior is learned versus how much is engrained into our psyche, but I can say with absolute certainty that there aren’t any babies that are born that wear size 62 pants. You see, there isn’t just one bad choice that causes you to be fat. If only it were so easy that we could just find Marty McFly from Back to the Future, hop in his Delorean, and go back and tell ourselves not to pick up that donut or that glass of scotch, or that hit of cocaine when we we’re at a moment of weakness in our lives. Instead of one bad choice that ruins our lives, it’s this progression of bad choice after bad choice until we get to a point that it’s nearly impossible to correct our path.

Though I’ve traversed the gambit of all sorts of addictions and self-destructive behaviors, obesity is the one that was going to kill me. When I look back and try to think of all the bad choices I’ve made, I struggle to find a number. So how do I quantify it? Well, I’ve counted to a thousand before, and I’ve had one hundred thousand of something before so I guess a million is the first number that I really can’t conceptualize. So, for conversation sake, we’ll say that at my worst I filled my size 62 pair of pants with one million small mistakes. The problem is that you have to remove as many of those items as you can to get those pants to shrink and that is easier said than done. These tiny mistakes are all intertwined, like the cables behind your computer or television, and it takes focus, self-awareness, perseverance, and most importantly patience to whittle down those 62 britches to a more suitable size.

On December 24, 2007, the beginning of the better half of my life, I weighed in at 507 pounds. For 10 years at that point, I had succumbed to a family history of mental disease, specifically depression, and the fog that I had been living in had caused my life to completely spin out of control. I had been living in an efficiency apartment where I had hung bed sheets to block out the sun and the walls were lined with stacks of pizza boxes and newspapers from the floor to the ceiling. In the middle of my “fortress of solitude” was an old, worn out mattress and box springs that sat on the floor, because I’d broken the frame 50 or 60 pounds ago. I had my big-ass TV perched as high as I could so that whenever possible I could just lay and watch TV and zone out of my quickly deteriorating life while my garbage protected me from the evils that lurked in the world just outside my defenses.

I got started at a residential weight loss facility in Durham, NC. It was a great place because their program didn’t have any tricks to lose weight. The nutritionist was very straightforward. “You weigh this much, you’re this tall, you’re this age, you plan to exercise this much while you’re here. Well then here is the lowest number of calories that you can eat safely.” With that magic number in mind, I started planning my meals and they would prepare them. I quit drinking alcohol and soda. I quit smoking (yes mom, I smoked. Sorry!). I was drinking a gallon of water a day and exercising two hours a day. Inside, they had classes on proper nutrition, cooking classes, life management, meditation, and group and individualized therapy sessions.

After 1 year and 1 month not to mention the 6 weeks I spent in North Carolina, I have lost 172 pounds! None of those 172 pounds was ever lost because of surgery, starvation, or trick diets. It was all lost the good old fashioned way with hard work, determination, a lot of sweat, and painstaking planning! I’m still counting calories and I’m in the gym about 8 hours a week doing either weight training, boxing, yoga, or training for the Indy 500 mini marathon. I’ve plateau-ed pretty hard at 172 for a while now. I’m still slimming up all the time, but the scale seems broken. I’m not worried about it though because I’m really not dieting. I never did and I never will. For me, this is a lifestyle change and I give my body what it needs based on how busy my life is and how heavy I exercise and the weight loss is just a byproduct.

So, after a year, I’ve managed to shrink to size 62 pants down to size 42’s that I bought the other day from Old Navy. It was the first article of clothing I’d bought myself outside of a store specifically for fat guys since I was in high school! In keeping with the theme of the million mistakes inside my big-ass pants, I’ve managed to get half of that garbage out, but half still remains. The part I worked off we’ll think of it as the poor mistakes that my daemons tricked me into making. Now, if I’m going to make any more improvement in my life, I have to tackle those daemons, faulty ideals, and misconceptions and re-learn what it means to become a man.

Writing is my creative outlet so this blog is my therapeutic release. I need to relive my mistakes and that ugly trip down to the bottom of the barrel so I can learn where those daemons are hiding so that this whole voyage to hell doesn’t happen again. I don’t care who reads my blog, but all of my readers should understand that I’m telling these stories so that I can see them in proper perspective and to have my story heard, because everybody’s story should be told at least once. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, colorful ones at that, but I’m not proud of any of them. Please don’t think that I’m writing this for sympathy and I’m definitely not trying to tell people how to live their lives. I’m just trying to keep fixing mine.

Finally, the terms “Queen” and “rock star” are for describing my amazing girlfriend and “princess” is her seven year old daughter. These two women have taught me so much in such a short period of time. If you want to read an incredible story, read her blog. She is truly my source of strength and my inspiration and if you read her story you’ll understand why. www.rosieblankenship.com .

Enjoy the journey! I’ve found that it goes down a lot smoother with a beer or two….. Of course that would be light beer, specifically MGD light 64, and with a designated driver!!!!