A humble blog post.

No time to blog today, as I'm a very busy and important person, but I just had to say yeeeeeeeaaaaahhhh! Thirty pounds, mothafucka!

How to Eat Fresh, twice.

Celebrate! The scale is moving in the correct direction again!

Yesterday was a strange day. I had an internal interview with my company at 11:00, so I had my breakfast around 9 and planned to grab some lunch after the interview. I get through the questions, they tell me I have the job, then they ask me to stick around, just for “a couple hours”, and get the overview of the company.

I was out at 3:15. Of course, by this time I’m ready to go Miami Homeless Dude on someone, so I sped home at zero miles per hour on I-5 because FUCK YOU TRAFFIC. I grabbed a Subway sandwich on the way home and sat down to cram it into my maw at 4:30. And cram it into my maw I did. I was planning to clip my nails but I’m pretty sure I ingested them. I’m lucky I didn’t lose a finger.

The downside to this is I had my weekly 5K two hours later. Have you ever tried to run when you have a belly full of Subway? Let me tell you, at that point, your body decides that food belongs anywhere but in your stomach. I was able to stem the tide by being too out of shape to run an appreciable distance, but regardless, by the end I was close to Eating Fresh® in reverse. However, I was able to do my intervals throughout the entire 3.106 miles (run 0.1 miles, walk 0.1 miles).

I think this would be easier on a day without sun beating down on me. If I tried this on a nice, cloudy 60-degree day, I would still be sucking in air like a fat, red-faced Rush Limbaugh (in other words, like Rush Limbaugh), but I would have had much less desire to cut through switchbacks and kill any witnesses. Still, I did it, progressively slowly and more filled with hatred at the world, and at the end, I was happy I did. I finished in 44:31, still above my “PR” of 43:30, but I broke that goddamn 45-minute mark.

I’m still working on increasing the accuracy of my calorie intake though. At Pita Pit on the way home, I ordered the chicken breast pita and was figuring I was in for a fair amount of calories. Maybe it’s because I’m used to adding tzatziki and cheese and lots of other shit that makes everything good, but somehow I forgot that grilled chicken breast and a pita, with loads of veggies and plain yellow mustard, while delicious, is not a particularly calorific food. I ended my day with somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 calories. It’s not enough, especially on workout days, but I blame my work, because they kept me there much later than expected, and also because blaming myself is far less satisfying.

So I’ve been thinking about clothes. My clothes are starting to feel bigger, not by a particularly noticeable outward appearance, but I can tell that at some point I’m going to need to buy clothes that are smaller, because if you wear clothes that are meant for a great big fat person, it makes you look more like a great big fat person, and I prefer to wear clothes that make me look thinner than I am, or at least do when I’m looking in the mirror trying to find an angle at which I can enter public.

Thankfully, I never reached the levels of fatassery that allowed me to just say “fuck it, it’s sweatpants time”. I have two basic rules for clothing fit for public consumption. No sweats or pajama pants, and if you’re a dude, no sleeveless shirts. Armpits are gross, and just because it’s only a trip to the Walmart does not give you permission to dress like the people there. Besides, do you really want to be lumped in with those people?

One of the things that I most look forward to doing as I lose weight is shopping at real-people stores for clothes. Have you ever been to a big-and-tall store? Holy shit is it awful. Basically, it allows fat people to pay a hefty (heh heh) premium to look like either a sixty-year-old man, or dress like a hip person from 2007. You can buy band t-shirts for $38 though! Seriously, everything is for old people or it’s far behind the times.

The other option (and the one that I employ most frequently) is the Burlington Coat Factory. While I can attest to this store being frequented by the People of Walmart, this place has some clothes that aren’t godawful bad! I will say that it has a lot of clothes that are more for, to put it delicately, urban, but I can find nice clothes, casual clothes, everything I need if I look hard enough, and it’s decently priced. It’s also receiving a lot of overstock and things of that nature, so it’s inconsistent.

The point is, though, that I want to shop at the not-fat-people store one of these times. I want to go to Zumies or PacSun and look at things other than hats. Then I can drive by the Casual Male and laugh derisively. HA!

Tuesday:

Breakfast:
10 oz Albacore Tuna (don’t judge me, I was running late!)

Lunch:
Turkey sandwich (Dave’s Killer, turkey, veggies)
Easy Mac

Dinner:
Mozzarella/turkey/avocado/hummus/red pepper/onion/tomato/sourdough Panini (holy shit was this good)


Wednesday:

Breakfast:
1 slice cracked wheat sourdough
2 eggs
Tapatio

Lunch:
Subway Oven Roasted Chicken Breast, no cheese, Dijon and shit-ton of veggies

Dinner:
Grilled Chicken Breast Pita from Pita Pit

Scale, you can go to hell.

I’m not going to lie; it’s frustrating.

Yesterday was a good day. I had lost most of the weight I gained on Saturday; I ate about 2300 calories (not perfect, but definitely not a bad amount); I even got a 2-mile walk in during my lunch break. So I stepped on the scale this morning with high hopes. Instead, I’m up 1.2, which was not only a nice “what the fuck” moment, but also makes my weight officially no different than seven days ago.

In the grand scheme, this is no big thing. I had my 5000-calorie Saturday, which I’m sure was no help. There is a level of frustration though. More accurately, there’s a level of being pissed off. Yesterday was a good day. I felt more satisfied and I was in a better mood, so to not see that tangible evidence is a bitch.

But I’m keeping things in perspective. I’m not heading to the Jack in the Box to eat away the pain. Fuck that; it’s stay the course, like George W. Bush, but with a lot fewer dead people. I won’t kill more than a couple people, tops. So today I just do what I did yesterday, and the day before, and not so much the day before that. It’s just about making the best choices for me and all that sappy shit that sounds lame but is still true.

So it’s on to the next!


Breakfast:

Two eggs, two pieces Dave’s Killer, Tapatio

Lunch:

Hummus plate leftovers, Easy Mac

Snack:

Two bananas

Dinner:

Miso soup, edamame, California rolls (Krab, not Krab salad with shitty mayonnaise)

Dessert:

Yocream, 1 mini-cinnamon bun, strawberries, Oreo crumbles, 1 tbsp hot fudge


Just gotta remember this fat asshole.

I deserved to gain that weight, and that's okay.

Remember this guy?



Let me tell you something about this guy. He and I go back years, back to middle school, when we rode the same bus and I’d go to his house and we’d do wrestling moves on each other on his trampoline. I remember giving him a superplex and his ankle hitting the metal ring encircling the tramp, and I know he remembers it too. He’s one of my best friends. He’s also one half of a reinforcing loop of bad decisions as it relates to weight loss.

This is not to rest the blame on his shoulders. These are all decisions that I make. It’s just that he makes them so much easier. Truth be told, I’m sure I serve the same purpose for him too. I’ve always been a dependable partner-in-crime, as it were, when it comes to eating. We both love getting together and playing video games for hours and eating shitty food and basically just being MEN, and neither of us is going to tell the other that we could maybe eat something better. This is the kind of habit that’s harder to break, I think, than the shitty eating that I do on a daily basis.

So Saturday was a boy’s day, and did we make a day of it. Our first stop was at Safeway for some snacks. Now I swear that I had good intentions when I went in there. OK, that’s a lie. I had semi-good intentions. I passed up the bags of chips and went to the jerky. I ended up with a 12 oz bag of jerky: not the healthiest snack I could have had, but I justified it like a boss. I also ended up with three bananas, two of which stayed at Josh’s house when I left on Sunday. And I gave Josh “advice” on what kind of Kettle Chips to buy. Sea Salt and Vinegar, of course. There’s really no question, of course.

Upon return to the house, we started our day of slovenly laziness. By the time we went to bed, it was 5:00 in the morning. Just from my appetite, the bag of Sea Salt and Vinegar chips was gone. The bag of jerky was gone. Two Burrito Supremes, a Nacho Burrito, and a Crunchwrap Supreme from Taco Bell were gone too, along with half a fifth of Sinfire, an awful cinnamon liquor. When I got home yesterday, I gained 1.8 pounds.

And you know what? It was amazing. Don’t get me wrong; it wasn’t healthy. In fact, the last week was just OK. I’m seeing a slight trend in an upward direction, and this week is going to be about consistency. But if I’m going to gain 1.8 pounds, I want to fucking earn it. And I most certainly earned it.

In reality, I’ve put together a month of eating right and exercising, and I’ve lost 24.8 pounds. It will probably realistically take three days to fully recover the weight that I gained. But I’m not going to let four days overshadow the other 26 that are good.

So it’s Monday, I’m down 1.6 pounds, I’ve got my eating back on track, and I feel renewed, and as usual, I owe it to salt and fat.

SATURDAY:

Breakfast:
Egg McMuffin

Lunch (if you want to call it that):
One bag (8.5 oz) Kettle Chips Sea Salt and Vinegar
One bag (12 oz) beef jerky
One banana (yay!)

Dinner:
Two Burrito Supremes with Lava Sauce
One Beefy Nacho Burrito with Lava Sauce
One Crunchwrap Supreme with Lava Sauce


SUNDAY:

Skipped breakfast again! Lame.

Lunch:
Asparagus spears
Shrimp (~6)
Tortilla

Dinner:
Hummus, feta, kalamata olives, flatbread, tomato, onion
Half of three sliders (pulled chicken, pulled pork, beef and cheddar)

Breakfast is for suckers, and I'm no sucker. (Edit: I am a sucker)

I'm on my way out the door, so this is going to be another short entry (this will become a theme on the weekends), but I lost another pound today. I'm still 1.6 off my weight from two days ago, but that's fine. I do notice that even though I'm well aware that day-to-day weigh-ins are meaningless, I still want it to go down every day and I'm mildly disappointed if it doesn't. It's no big though! Besides, if I started weighing in every week, it would be that much easier to miss one, and if it's easier to miss one, it's easier to miss two, then three, and...well, I assume you can count for yourself.

Breakfast:
Skipped breakfast! What an asshole I am. Not only is it not good for you to skip breakfast, it really fucked my whole eating schedule. I got up early, then I wanted to go for that six mile walk I mentioned yesterday, but I didn't want to wait the 20 minutes or so after eating breakfast, so I skipped it.

Lunch:
I ended up eating a Subway Oven Roasted Chicken Breast sandwich around 1, with no cheese, every veggie they had, dijon, vinegar and pepper.

Dinner:
Sushi! I had a bowl of miso soup, some edamame, and a few rolls. All pretty basic rolls, but I'm sure I've retained a fair amount of water, so I expect a god damn loss tomorrow.

Dessert:
Half a cinnamon roll with cream cheese icing

I'm off! Hanging out with this gentleman today:

Remember, this is normal.

So as you can see below, I gained 2.6 pounds today. This is normal and expected, especially when one weighs themselves every day. I lost seven pounds the four days before that, and it's not really something that's good for you to lose in that amount of time, even as a great big fat person. So I look at it as losing 4.4 pounds in the last five days, which is more optimistic and frankly more accurate.

Anyway, this isn't going to be a long post, because I'm on my way out to find a rainbow sweatband and rainbow wristbands. I'm running the Lyle's Myles Charity 5K on July 14th as many of you know, and I promised my buddy Antonio that I would be wearing rainbows. Besides, this run is on Vancouver's Pride day, so how can I not wear rainbows?

If you like, you can donate to the cause here. You can also check out Lyle's Myles here.

And here is the dog that I just forced to walk six miles with me this morning:




Breakfast:
Egg McMuffin (300 calories of awesome)

Lunch:
Turkey sandwich with veggies and horseradish, Easy Mac, banana

Snack:
Banana, jerky

Dinner:
1/3 lb. bison burger with pepper jack cheese, habanero hot sauce, jalapeno, onion, lettuce, tomato
Salad (lettuce/tomato/black olive) with a little bit of blue cheese dressing

On running. Summary: it blows.

God damn it, running sucks.

Don’t get me wrong; it’s great to exercise, but running blows. However, I learned a great lesson last night during my weekly 5K.

I’ve been doing 5Ks off and on since last summer, and over the winter I started really improving at them. I ran a 43:30 in December of last year, before I started slacking off to start 2012 (it was like a New Year’s Resolution, except the exact opposite). So I’ve been working my way back into it since late spring and although I’ve slowed some, I’ve been steadily improving, from the 51-53 minute range to 45:56 last week.

Now, I am not a runner. Going through my entire life I’m pretty sure I’ve never run over a mile. But I was feeling high on the hog (what the fuck does that even mean? Am I using it right? Doubtful), and this week I planned to incorporate a plan that I’ve been considering for a few weeks now. My plan was to alternate walking and running, using tenths of a mile as my intervals. My goal was to break 45 minutes, and I was pretty confident.

So I start and I am right on pace. Yes, the pace is 14 minutes per mile, but for me, I’m thrilled because fuck you that’s why; also, I’m right on pace to match my PR (personal record, for you lazy non-brisk-walk-slow-joggers), and I’m feeling good. I hit mile 2 in 28:17 and I’m just a little bit off PR pace, but well in line to break 45 minutes. Then I hit THE WALL. Fact: The Wall is a bastard. There would be no more running in this 5K. I gave it a valiant effort, but I just couldn’t move any faster. I wouldn’t say I broke down like that Swiss girl in the Ironman that soiled herself at the finish, but it was a struggle.

I finished in 47:07. Not good. Moreover, I was frustrated, because I knew why it had been so hard. It’s said that man cannot live on bread alone. Man also can’t run 5Ks on two fish tacos. I need to eat more. I need to drink more water. I need to snack.

The good news is that the Hometown Buffet was fantastic after the run (I eat there because I’m fancy). I ate a monstrous salad, and I am quite sure that I looked awful shoveling it in my mouth. Luckily, as I was eating at the Hometown Buffet, I looked like a classy gentleman by comparison.

So lesson learned, exercise still done, and it’s on to the next day.

Food check!

Breakfast: toast (2), eggs (2), Tapatio (fuckload)

Lunch: leftover fish tacos (2)

Dinner: Big salad (greens, cucumber, tomatoes, mushrooms, hard-boiled eggs, peas, jalapenos, grilled chicken, a little blue cheese dressing)

1 BBQ riblet, one baked chicken breast, ½ cup mashed potatoes, zucchini and chicken stir-fry

1 piece fudge, ¼ cup NSA frozen yogurt

One month in.

One month in, 24.6 pounds down. Am I happy with that? Of course. Am I satisfied? Not yet.

I am thinking about goals, though. Is my “goal weight” attainable? 199.6 is where I would cross into normal weight, according to the BMI. But we all know that the BMI is largely bullshit. So is it possible that I’m setting myself up to fail? Maybe – I have been known to start a thing or two without finishing.

But I feel like this is different. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I’m acknowledging it so publicly? In the past, weight loss has always been a private thing for me. Part of it was shame, sure; human beings aren’t meant to weigh 400 pounds, and it’s not something a person likes to share. But that’s only a small part of it, I think. I think it was mostly to support the illusion that I’ve created for myself.

One of the points of this blog is to shatter that illusion, permanently. Will I ever be 199.6 pounds? I’d say it’s a 50/50 shot at best. But I also know that 230 pounds is a hell of a lot healthier than 403. Shit, 330 pounds is healthier than 403. I have 199.6 as a nominal goal, but in reality, it’s just a number to keep me motivated. If I stick at 230 pounds, so be it. I’m going to be a healthy 230 pounds.

So after a month, what have I learned? Don’t look for any profound wisdom here; most of it is going to be head-shakingly obvious. But they’re things that I’ve spent 29 years not knowing or just ignoring.

1. Being hungry is a blessing. Being hungry makes you appreciate your food. I am enjoying what I eat so much more than I ever did. I ate an Easy Mac yesterday and it was orgasmic. I know that the traditional wisdom calls for eating a bunch of small meals throughout the day so you don’t get too hungry. Well fuck that. I like a good meal. I’ve tried eating multiple small meals and all it did was leave me slightly unsatisfied for the entire day. I eat three good meals that keep me full for several hours. If I get hungry, I snack on some fruit. Easy peasy.

2. I’m a pretty damn good cook. Most of this is just being good at following a recipe, but I think I have some decent instincts. I also am pretty good at not overcooking meat. Really, now that I think about it, I’m better at coming up with dishes than anything. And I make a delicious fish taco.

3. Runner’s high. You know that great feeling you get when you’re out running? Yeah, me neither. Fuck runner’s high. I think it’s bullshit. I know that it feels good to get done with a workout, but I think everyone has conflated the good feelings that accompany exercise with exercise feeling good. I feel great when I finish a run. I feel better and have more energy when I work out consistently. I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment when my body is sore the day after a workout. But working out sucks. If you get a runner’s high, I hate you just a little.

4. Spicy food kicks ass.

Anyway, I’m going ten pounds at a time, so my true next goal is 373 pounds. I’m also going to post what I eat each day. Just one more way to keep myself accountable.

Breakfast:
2 slices Dave’s Killer Light Bread
2 eggs
1 shitload Tapatio

Lunch:
Turkey sandwich on Dave’s Killer Good Seed bread with veggies and horseradish
Easy Mac

Dinner:
Fish tacos (tilapia, small white corn tortillas, lettuce, tomato, FF sour cream, avocado, onion, and lots of jalapeños and Tapatio)

I'm fat.

I’m fat. There, I said it.

It’s not an easy thing to say, really. If you look at me, it’s clearly not something I’ve been hiding. I haven’t been wearing a thin disguise. We really have neutered our culture in a way that makes it difficult for someone to say anyone is fat. It’s an offensive word, apart from the anonymity of the internet.  No one is fat anymore, to hear people say it. People are “big” now.  He’s a “big guy”. He shops at the “big and tall” store.  I know I’m stealing from Larry Miller here, but what’s wrong with calling someone fat?  Not in a cruel or obnoxious way, of course, but to say someone is fat is anathema to our sensibilities. 

In any case, whether I’m fat, big, husky, or anything else, if I lost my footing and came barreling in your direction, you’d be petrified.  I’d be petrified.  So it’s important to make that distinction now.  I’m not as fat as I used to be, and I damn sure intend to be less fat going forward, but fat is what I am. I find myself looking through pictures of myself before I post them on Facebook, picking the ones that don’t show the gut, or that little bit of fat that rolls over the elbow, as though people won’t know that I’m fat if it’s not in Facebook pictures.  Well fuck that, it’s time to make myself actually not fat.

So how did I get here?  Well, let’s make a list of the people that are to blame for the predicament in which I find myself.

1. Me

There’s the list.  Of course, there have been circumstances that have made it easier for me to become fat, but everything comes back to me and the choices that I’ve made, and often still make today. It can most easily be traced back to high school.  I actually started getting fat around fourth or fifth grade, but high school really ingrained those habits.  Specifically, high school wrestling, the time when I was in the best shape of my life. 

So how did this teach me to be a big fat fatty?  Simple: I was a 230-pounder in the 275-pound weight class.  While my teammates were eating plain chicken breast and salad (and often less), my lunch often consisted of a pound of chicken strips with ranch and a 20-ounce Pepsi.  If it was the right time of year, it was a quart of egg nog.  Then I went to wrestling practice every day and worked it off.  It didn’t matter what I ate (and I ate a lot), I would stick somewhere between 227 and 234 pounds, which still left me dwarfed by most of my opponents. 

The problem is that wrestling season ended my senior year, so I wasn’t burning thousands and thousands of calories a week.  I was still eating what I can only assume was upwards of 5000 calories a day, though.  When you eat like a 400-pound man and burn the calories of a 230-pounder, the math isn’t hard to do.

It’s not that I didn’t know I was gaining weight.  I just was more than willing to live on in blissful ignorance.  I stepped on a scale at the state wrestling tournament (231 pounds) and probably didn’t step on a scale again until I got shingles at 25 or 26, which is where the real impact of what I’d been doing to my body hit me.  The scale was metric, but it doesn’t take a math whiz to convert 200.0 kilograms into pounds (and I’m a bit of a math whiz). For those who don’t know the conversion, it’s 440 pounds. 

Four hundred forty pounds.

I felt the air come out of me (so maybe 439). How does this happen?  I knew I was a fat person, but holy shit. Time to do something about that, right?  Well, kind of.  I lost sixty pounds pretty quickly, and at 380 I told myself there’s no way I’ll ever weigh 400 pounds again.  I fluctuated between 360 and 390, even getting down to exactly 340 at the beginning of 2011.  I was excited.  I actually weighed what my driver’s license said.  Then I promptly gained it all back.

On May 20^th, 2012, I stepped on the scale.  The numbers did their funny spinning thing, came up E a couple of times (it is only meant to measure accurately to 400 pounds) and finally came up 403.0.  The second stage of complete ignorance in my life ended the second I read that number. I don’t want there to be a third.  I’ll never be 400 pounds again became a lie in that moment.

The next part of the story is about ESPN, and how much it desperately, desperately sucks.  For reasons that are far to extensive to explain here, ESPN has gone from the greatest thing in sports to one of the most awful.  The point is that I’ve shifted my allegiance to Deadspin.  Really you should too.  There’s a writer on Deadspin named Drew Magary who described the way that he reduced his own fatness from 260 pounds to 200 using the Public Humiliation Diet. Here’s the article if you’d like to read it. 

I’ve tried Weight Watchers. I lost 42 pounds in three months and got tired of measuring food and eating heaps of healthy food.  Here’s something I learned on Weight Watchers: If you get used to eating piles of healthy food, then switch back to unhealthy food, you still have the capacity to eat a ton, and then you eat until you weigh a fifth of a ton. I tried Atkins.  I lost weight initially. I also would literally have killed a man to steal his loaf of bread.  The Public Humiliation diet works for me.  You know why?  Because bacon kicks fucking ass.  So does bread.  So does ice cream. So does steak. So does everything else that people tell you you shouldn’t have. Fuck plain chicken breast, I want to eat what I want.  I just need to eat less of it, and have some broccoli with dinner. Broccoli is awesome.

So now I start what I hope is a successful third phase.  Follow me if you like. I’ll be posting my weight here every day (in fact, it’ll be at the top of the page [379.4 pounds as of today]).  I won’t be posting a bunch of sob stories. I didn’t get fat because I was sad, or because I had a terrible upbringing, or because I have to push down the sad feelings. I’m generally a really happy person. I got fat because I like good food and I lived like a lazy fatass for years.

Another thing: Feel free to be supportive or feel free to tell me how fat and lame I am, and most importantly, feel free to offer me something that you’ve made that tastes great. Don’t tiptoe around it.  I’m still a normal person, I still like to eat food that’s bad for you and I still like to be lazy.  Anyone who doesn’t is a god damn liar. Do you want to go out and walk a few miles?  Do you want to play disc golf or hit the gym or play some basketball?  Great, invite me along! Do you want to sit and play video games and order a pizza and drink beer? Shit, I am in! Basically, just treat me the same way that you’ve always treated me. Just expect me to put a little less stress on your couch springs each time.