I can do what I want...

... I say that like I haven't always done whatever the fuck I want. LOL. But, we'll get to what I mean at some point (when I want...)

Interesting week. Weighed in at 269, which is awesome. One of my favorite milestones is when I see a new number on the scale -- there is a 6 where the 7 was. 28 lbs lost overall, and 3 lbs lost in the week, still maintaining my average of just over 2 lbs. / wk lost. This is actually really encouraging because this is the longest I have ever maintained a consistent drop in weight without a major regain somewhere along the way.

Also, tightened my belt down another notch this week. I think I might be able to get back into my 38 waist pants again. (I hated admitting to myself I needed a 40, since I at one point threw away all my 38s because I said I would never be that big again...)

So, a big stone got dropped in my pond. I bought a treadmill. (A friend was selling hers for $100, I couldn't say no.)

My "new" (to me) treadmill - thanks Linda!!

My instant thought was, "OK, I can cancel my gym membership." But something just did not feel right about that. And also Planet Fitness is $10 / mo. It's my cheapest bill. I was thinking that the treadmill was the thing I most wanted to go to the gym for, and in terms of time spent, it is certainly the thing I do the most there, that's for sure. But, I do also work out -- a.k.a. lift weights -- at the gym, too and I want to step that up, not down. I have 3 lb and 15 lb dumbbells and resistance bands at home, but I like the variety and flexibility of the equipment at the gym. I really, really, really want to have a nice chest and that means I need to lift more than 15 lbs. Plus, every person I look up to in terms of weight loss success swears by body building, and every one of them says they wish they had started lifting weights much sooner in their journey.

I don't just want to be thin. I want to be strong, and I want my body to look nice, I want to be proud of my physical appearance. And that's not shallow, I don't give one fuck how it sounds. My appearance has always been important to me, and as I am getting older, I am becoming much more aware of how dramatically my physical health affects my looks. I feel so good after I work out that there is no way I want to stop now. I can feel myself getting stronger, my balance is getting better, my cardio conditioning is stepping way up, and I am losing inches around my waist. I also noticed my face is starting to slim down a little again -- I always lose my face fat first, but that is really fantastic -- I was getting jowly, ick. Let's not even discuss that.

So, anyway -- I am not cancelling my gym membership. My home treadmill is an addition and a backup to the gym, not a replacement. For example: I failed for the 2nd week in a row to get out of bed early enough to go to the gym on Monday morning. I am going to try again tomorrow, but if I can't do it, I'm taking it off the list. And now, if I do fumble, I can still get up in time to at least use my home treadmill before work. I am also going to work on stepping up my weight lifting at the gym. I need to get there a little sooner. I would like 15 more minutes. Right now I usually have time to do 3 sets of 10 reps on 3 machines -- I've been doing the lateral pull-down, the hammer thrust and the chest press. I am going to YouTube some lifting beginner videos and see what I should be trying. I'll go see what Coach Kozak at HASFit has for videos probably, as I really like him.

AND -- drum roll -- something amazing happened. I never thought ever in all my days that the following thought would ever pass through my mind, let alone stick around... I like going to the gym. WTF, right? I realized when I was having the debate with myself about cancelling my gym membership or not that I was feeling remorseful at the idea of not going to the gym. Then, the morning after I got the home treadmill (which is awesome btw) I went to the gym early ass in the morning before work, and I was really glad I did it. I was in a great mood after, and I was like, "I am definitely not cancelling my membership."

So this is what brings me to the title of this blog, "I can do what I want." I realized that I was also feeling weird about the idea of working out at home instead of the gym, and that I was actually worried about being judged by someone who might notice I don't come to the gym as much any more. And then I was like, 'WTF is wrong with you?? First of all, they do not care what the fuck you do. And, you can do whatever the fuck you want." I realized, ok so if I were to go to the gym 3x/wk (instead of 5) and work out at home the other two, I'm still exercising. Also, fuck it, if I want to go to the gym 5x/wk I can still use my treadmill any time I want -- it's mine. Sometimes I get so hung up on having to have a strategy and / or a justification for things that I do forget that I can do what I want. Not sure that makes any sense, but it does to me. Also, that there are no ultimatums and any plan can be adjusted. I make the plan, it is what I say it is. As long as I am meeting my goals, it's working.

Also, a funny little anecdote: so I did go to the gym in the evening one time. And it wasn't horrific like I feared, in fact it was mostly like it always is. However, there was a different crowd, and a slightly different feel to the place. So, the next morning when I was back at my normal time (right about 6am) I walked in and it felt normal and right and I actually recognized most of the crowd and I thought to myself, Ah, my people. Weird. I consider strangers at the gym "my people." But really, most of them are friendly and I am starting to recognize specific people. It's kinda nice.

That was my week. Still on track with all goals. New goal is to start increasing my weight lifting, including figuring out how to squeeze 15 more minutes out of my morning. I've tried the no-computer-in-the-morning rule and I hate it. I need 15-20 min to drink a cup of coffee, wake up a little and take in some Internet crack. I do some sit-ups and ab crunches as soon as I get out of bed, and that takes me up a notch, but I still just like a few minutes first thing. I don't look at social media at work (except in the Facebook Room, I mean the restroom, and that's only if I poo...) and I try not to spend my evenings online, so morning is my Internet time, always has been, always will be. I am trying to brainstorm ideas though that do no include, "Get up earlier." I am already getting up at 5. OK, well maybe more like 5:10, so maybe I just found 10 minutes right there... and I could stay at the gym a little bit longer, I can get to work on time as long as I'm in the car by 7:20, so there's 5 or 10 more, too.... yeah I can do it.

Onward! 🌈✅💪💪💪

Milestone: tightened my belt down a notch

Very good week! Amazing what happens when you set goals and stick to them. Weighed in this week at 277 lbs, which is 18 lbs lost since I started tracking and this week I dropped 4 lbs. Something I see as an even greater success, and a literal milestone: I moved down a belt notch this week. I waited until I couldn't stand the feeling that my pants were going to slide off my hips any more, then one day at work in the bathroom I cinched my belt down another hole -- and much to my surprise, I was comfortable the rest of the day, even sitting down.

I need to start taking my measurements again. I'm sure the belt notch represents a couple inches lost off my waist and I know my muscles are getting bigger because I can see (and feel) the proof. I have a cloth measuring tape and 2 tape measures, you'd think I could find one of them...

Goal: start taking my measurements again.

So what did I do? Well, I went to the gym M, W & F and worked out at home the other two. And I found that as I increased my physical activity, my appetite decreased. I am still using WW to to track my dietary intake and my weight, and I ate less than my daily points allowance every day without feeling hungry. One day I only ate 18 points (which is less than half) and although I did not feel hungry that day, I was really hungry the next day before each meal. It was the only day I came close to eating my whole points allotment. So, I did learn from that a little lesson: don't under-eat, there will be a payback.

I also go the book, "It Starts With Food," and have been reading it as my bathroom book. And I have been watching every documentary or special I can get my hands on between all my TV platforms. I also try to do a 25 min beginner workout on HASFit while I cook dinner, every day. It's interesting to me, and I feel like I'm also helping my brain by watching TV that is actually educational.

I am also doing really well on my plan to eat at least 50% of my calories from vegetables. I have been having a salad for lunch every day at work, and and a lean protein with a mix of roasted or sauteed vegetables for dinner pretty much every day. This has also allowed me to keep some of the comfort meals I like in my diet without them tanking my goals. Those being: Buffalo chicken strips, french fries (oven baked only, no restaurant fries) and I also like Orange Chicken or General Tso's Chicken over white rice. I eat one or both of those once a week, but they have become the exception not the norm. I also haven't eaten a frozen pizza in at least 6 weeks, maybe more, haven't even felt tempted. I did eat 2 slices of pepperoni pizza at work about a month ago, but I actually felt kinda gross afterward. Astonishingly, I have also not eaten sandwich bread in about a month, and only a couple English muffins a week (I like one with my at-home breakfast, so Sat & Sun) and a couple times a week I eat a flour tortilla - -either a wrap of some kind or a fish taco, oh yeah, and I do still keep frozen bean & cheese burritos in the freezer which I tend to use as the base of a meal 1-2 times a week. However -- I never in all my days imagined the day would come that I didn't have a loaf of bread in the house and didn't care. I haven't even bought garden burgers 'cause I don't want to eat bread. And really, garden burgers are kind of gross, dry, carboardy grain-based quasi-bread. I'm not a vegetarian (although sometimes I forget that.) If I want a burger, I'd have a meaty one. With bacon. My standard day-to-day diet is clean enough that I can (literally) stomach some less-than-ideal foods -- they are part of my psychological satisfaction with food.

I am also doing pretty good on my promise to myself that I am going to change the way I experience food. I am working on putting my fork down after every bite. The only time I am not sticking to that is at work, and I will buckle down on that one too. I am also trying to prepare for dinner, not just prepare the food, but prepare my environment. I light some candles and incense and set the table and make sure I designate the time period as "dinner time." I'll admit it: I watch TV while I eat, I am going to keep doing that. But, I still make a concerted effort to stage my environment, put down my fork between bites, and make sure to actually taste the food before I swallow it. I also try to drink a full glass of water 20-30 minutes before eating, even if I forget the time frame, I still drink one even if it's right before. Then I drink another whole glass as part of the meal.

It is worth writing down what my routine / regimen currently looks like:

Meds / Supplements:

• St. John's Wort, 900 mg (600 in the AM & 300 at bedtime)
• Vitamin B Mega-Complex (1 cap in the AM)
• Tylenol PM (1000 mg at bedtime)
• Valerian (1500 mg at bedtime)
• Melatonin (10 mg at bedtime)

Exercise:

• Situps and lower ab crunches (15 ea. 5x week M-F first thing)
• Gym 3x week (M,W, & F before work)
• Beginner full body workout (15-25 min 5x week M-F in the evening)
• Spontaneous use of my hand weights, usually in response to an emotional food trigger

Diet:

• 50% of my calories from vegetables
• Lean protein with every meal
• Portion snacks on plates, and actually portion them
• Keep an honest and complete written track of what I put in my mouth (cock doesn't count unless you actually eat it.)
• Eat mindfully
• Before eating anything at all, drink a glass of water
• Drink a full glass of water first thing in the morning, and at bedtime (I drink a whole glass down with my supplements AM & PM, easy peasy.)
• Do a triple check system when I feel a food craving:
• Am I really hungry or was it an emotional trigger? What am I thinking about?
• Am I thirsty? Drink water and wait 5 minutes.
• Is my body craving activity? Walk around or do a 10 min workout video or use my 15 lbs hand weight and do some arm curls or something, just to see if a little activity will kill the craving.
• Plan out and prep my meals before I'm hungry. Sounds weird, but it keeps me from letting hunger give me permission to deep fry everything and dip it in ranch. 
• If I have a snack craving, at least try some snow peas or carrot sticks or a pickle. I find a pickle usually satisfies my evening snack wants by being savory and crunchy and filling all at once.

I'm happy to announce I am doing good on all of it. I've cleaned up my nutritional regimen, totally changed up my physical activity level, found myself actually interested in it instead of feeling obligated to it, and changed my routines for the better. I have lost all the weight I gained last year -- I am back down to the weight I was at 18 months ago when I last made any concerted effort to diet. I am feeling better, sleeping better, and have seen a huge improvement in my mental state and the best part -- I am still actively looking for ways to make it even better.

Something about me has changed. As I already said, I find myself interested in it and I see the results and I want to see more. When I've done this before I've tended to see only the long term goal, not the process. I hate T-shirt wisdom, but the journey really is the important part. It's not like when I get to my goal weight I can just go back to sitting in front of the TV sucking down 3 frozen pizzas a week. I will have to maintain my dietary and exercise goals for life. And that doesn't bother me this time. I don't see the goal weight as the "stopping point" any more.

In fact, there is ample evidence that people who have lost large amounts of weight -- more than 25% of their body weight or greater, have to eat a calorie reduced diet for life to maintain that weight, as much as 10% less daily calories than someone who has been at or close to a healthy weight their whole life. Your metabolism as a "set point" that goes up much easier than it goes down, and it is an evolutionary survival trait for all humans. Our bodies are built to store fat (energy) and will store as much as we give it. It's pretty basic: what goes in, goes in. It only comes out if we do something to use it up. There is also ample evidence that muscle building exercise is critical in maintaining a healthy weight. Even though you don't burn a lot of calories while you are lifting weights, the amount of energy your body uses actually building muscle tissue has benefits equal to cardio, but in the form of changing your actual shape, not just the number on the scale. Keeping muscle strength up also contributes to bone density and triggers endorphin cascades in your brain which help regulate all kinds of things including mood and appetite control.

So, it's been a good week. I was probably too hard on myself 2 weeks ago for not working out that much and going off the wagon in a few little ways. The truth is I hurt myself (my foot) and I needed some time to heal and that included some food indulgences too. I am determined that I am going to do this in a way that is psychologically and emotionally satisfying to me. And this week I saw the real proof that my goals are working. And instead of taking that as permission to back slide a little, I have seen it as evidence that I should keep going forward.

plateaus and renewal of goals

OK so I haven't written in over a month. Oops. Whatever, I forgive myself.

So, it's been a month. And my weight has pretty much plateaued. Overall, I've lost about 10 lbs in the 2 months since I started actively tracking my diet and exercise 11/11/18. Yes, 10 lbs is something to be happy about and I am. However, that is not enough -- that is just over 1 lb a week, which would be good except that I got down to my current weight the first month and now there has been no net change since. I did  "lose" some this month, but that is because I actually gained back 4 lbs.

My physical appearance is important to me, I proudly own that. I am acutely (pun intended) aware of the health consequences of being 100 lbs overweight and I see the health benefits too. I'm pretty sure they go hand in hand. In fact, I got my first "notice" that I am loosing weight from a co-worker who wouldn't say so if she didn't mean it, so that was a nice compliment. And I have noticed my belt is getting looser. (NOTE: I should start measuring myself again...) And I have noted that since I started doing core strength training, I am having an easier time getting in and out of the car and up and down from the floor, and my balance is better -- I don't have to hop around and grab things to put on socks. And, I haven't even considered eating a frozen pizza in weeks, and have barely eaten any bread. My diet is a lot cleaner than it has ever been, and I am feeling better.

HOWEVER: I am not losing weight fast enough. Right around the New Year I decided I was not happy with that rate of weight loss, and that in fact it seems pretty clear to me that diet alone is not going to get me to the body I want. To that end, I joined Planet Fitness, went once, and pulled a muscle in my foot (or something, strained my foot and ended up limping for a week.) In the interim, because I did not want to go to the gym while I was in that much foot pain -- it really hurt, I did a random YouTube search for a home workout and discovered HASFit.

So I've been active, but have not been back to the gym since 1/4/19. I think my foot is better so I am aiming to go back to the gym tomorrow morning. My goal is to go 3x a week, preferably M-W-F because I am still wanting to insulate the weekends as my cocooning time. I don't exercise on the weekends, I do what I want even if that is nothing, and if there are any indulgence foods I have planned, that is also when I eat them. So if I miss a planned gym day, I am hoping to have enough discipline to go another weekday.

I am determined that this is going to work. I am 46 not 96. It's not too late to turn my health around, and it's not too late to have the physical shape that I want. Brad Pitt is 55, Tom Cruise is 56 -- I am not an old man is my point. I am still youngish, and I know I am never going to look 25 again, and that is fine with me, but I can still fix my weight. I have gotten so fat I don't look like myself even to me anymore, and I don't picture a skinny guy when I picture me. And I'm all done with that. I joke about wanting my 20-something body back, but actually I was in really bad shape, flabby with no body strength. I couldn't do 2 sit-ups back then. I was a "skinny fat." (LOL - thank you Jane Lynch and 'Weeds' for that term...) I want to be in good physical health, including my body shape and weight. I want to by clothes because they will look good on me, not because of how I will look in them. My old blog was called "Look Good In A Tight T-shirt," and that remains a benchmark.

Coach Kozak from HASFit.com 

I am back down to the weight I was at in the summer of 2017 when I started trying to lose weight again for the millionth time with no plan but to change my diet. That sounds bad, like not an awesome achievement. LOL. But I take it as a good goal post. That means I have lost all the weight I gained from consoling myself with gluttony and booze when my life took a nose dive that fall. Since then I have been by necessity focused on establishing sustainable self sufficiency again, but I've got that part pretty much on auto pilot now. And I've noted that since I passed that particular marker, my attention has turned back to my weight and my appearance. I have a window right now where there is room for a new priority in my lifestyle. I have had those windows before and I often squandered them on sloth or indolence. But not this time. I am going to keep dogging away at this until it works.

I'm trying not to fanboy on Coach Kozak and HASFit. But there is something I really like about him and his wife and co-coach Claudia and their family and their story. It helps that he is hot, but lots of trainers are hot. I just like him, and I like his motivational approach. Another quote by him that I really like, is about time spent on social media, "We should spend less time fantasizing about other people's reality and more on making ours how we want it." And, "The difference between you today and you next week is what you do in the next 7 days." And the YouTube channel has every type and level of workout as well as vlog-style videos about lifestyle health like diet and routine and how to do it on a budget and how to include fitness in your day to day life. I would encourage anyone to utilize this YouTube channel or any other they like as a backup or supplement to a gym workout regimen. It helped me to stay accountable when I wasn't able to go to the gym, and when I was in jeopardy of relapsing back to my old habits -- my go-to for comfort / stress / failure relief is food. And I know that physical activity elevates my mood and my willpower and often completely evaporates emotional / psychological hunger. So, thankfully I had the internal resources to search for an exercise video instead of a sandwich, and it paid off.

Anyway, that has been my month. I really was teetering on the edge of a relapse there for a minute. I was about to quit Weight Watchers and say fuck the gym. I was having those bad self-thoughts again like, "I was just born to be fat," and, "I just need to accept myself as I am," -- no thank you. I do not accept high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep apnea and an early death. I know from having been much smaller and in better cardio condition that those things go away when you lose weight and stay active. And I do not accept that there is anything about myself I can't change if I prioritize it. I will be who I say I am, I will have the body shape and the physical health that I want, and I will get there by my own determination and plan.