October 21, 2008

29 and 75

Friends,

Today is my birthday. Hooray. Emily bought me two books (B.A.S.S 2008 & Tree of Smoke). I got a psychic appointment later, dinner planned at The Nitty Gritty and despite Diana's negative review of W, I might wind up seeing that tonight as well. Tomorrow, I start my adjunct teaching gig (which means I'll leave my apartment at 6:30AM to return at 10:45PM). So yeah, next couple days are big for me. But, something else has been bugging me as of late, and what a surprise it's my weight.

For a while, I tried to keep an online journal of my weight loss tracking not only what I ate everyday, but how much I worked, and my weight loss progress, all the while providing pithy commentary on the process. I didn't have a lot to say, and in the build up to the move to Madison, I quit updating that blog and eventually I deleted it. And, as I found out, there isn't a whole lot to say about the process of losing weight. It's hard to do. Then add sprinkles of self-loathing about how it ever got this bad and doubt about success in your goal with amounts to depression....and then once and while articles like this about how you can be fat and healthy come along to undermine your determination...so that blog wasn't much fun to keep in the first place. Weight loss memoirs seem to be best written after the fact, not during the torturous process where the negatives pile up and are easy to fixate on. So, once I'm through the woods on this weight loss journey, then maybe I can write about it without sounding like an emo kid draped in sweat clothes.

But, anyway, right now, I am, around 275 pounds. I just weighed myself, so that should be fairly accurate. That's in the neighborhood of 80 pounds less than what I was at my heaviest. I say neighborhood because at my heaviest, I was actually too fat for my electronic scale to read my weight, so I had to track my weight loss for a few weeks then figure my average weekly pounds loss, then add it back on to approximate my starting weight.

At 275, I'm still fat. And, by the way, I'm not using the word fat to "take it back" like the article linked above suggests. I'm not crusader. I use the word fat because that's what I am, and what I feel. I don't know what the appropriately soft language term is either. Obese? That sounds like there is something medically wrong with me that I can't fix, like obese is a condition. Big? What does that really mean, big? Big compared to what, exactly? And portly, tubby, chunky, husky...or other words than end with Y....they don't seem right either. Overweight I suppose fits too because it's technically correct, being over the weight I should be, but saying I'm overweight makes me think I'm thinner than I feel.

Anyway, semantics aside, me fat, need thinner for physical and mental health. Going by the BMI index, I should weigh between 152 to 200 pounds.

First, let me say that at 152 pounds I would look ridiculous. See, I got such a big head, I'd look like a dumdum lollipop, and downright Icabod Crane like. That won't work for me. Plus, that's a goal I think would be impossible as there are some muscles under this fatty layer, and I'd prefer not to lose them so I could look skeletal. And, if I set such a low, low goal, I might as well call myself a failure and buy myself a soft-serve ice cream machine.

But 200...that's possible. Now, what about 200 by my 30th birthday? Hmm. That would be challenging. That would be losing 1.44 pounds a week, every week, for an entire year. Probably unrealistic too because that would require some serious ballbusting effort to get there. I'd need to join a gym so I could vary my workout regiment more than what's available to me here, which means getting a better job, which means spending more time searching/applying which means less time working out on those free moments away from my jobs. Oh, the cycle!

On this website it says that guys my height and age say say they have an ideal weight of around 230 pounds. While 30 pounds more than the ideal medical weight, it would be less and probably thin enough where I can buy pants in the regular section of Penney's, instead of the Big and Tall section. So for me to get there by the time I'm 30, I will need to lose .87 pounds every week for an entire year. That's doable. Ideal weight loss, I believe, is about a pound a week anyway. 230 by Oct. 21, 2009? Yeah, that could happen, could even wind up less than that.

People get all wound up about turning 30, getting to-do lists and shit together...okay, I'll play along. Get my weight between 230 and 200 pounds. Less is better, sure, but I'm not interested in starving myself too much. That's my "Thing To Do Before I Turn 30." Maybe I'll cook up others before I turn that spooky age, but right now, getting my weight between 230 and 200 is good enough for me.

viva el mustache

2 comments:

Jessica said...

Some suggestions that really help if you aren't doing them already:

1)Drink lots of water and by lots I mean in place of juice, soda, and, sadly, alcohol.

2)Eat breakfast. A good one. It jumpstarts your metabolism for the day. Otherwise, your body holds onto whatever calories it can to keep you going.

3)Try interval workouts. That is when you change your pace while on the treadmill/elliptical/whatever. You do a few minutes at a mild pace, then a few at a high pace. Up and down for however long.

4) Don't eat less than 3 hours before you go to bed.

Those are some of the more manageable things I've done.

Good luck! I'm rooting for you!

Luke said...

First of all, Happy Birthday!

Second. As a person who fluctuates weight pretty regulary, I know how much losing weight sucks balls. It's hard work. It's slow. Skinniness comes natural to some people, which makes it all the more frustrating. One of the things that I did to help myself was count the number of workouts I did in a week. One half hour = 1 workout. I made sure I made that number 10 every week at first. Then it was 12 every week. At one point, it was even 15. So, if I worked out 1.5 hours, I gave myself 3 points. That seemed to help, and it encouraged me to work harder at the end of the week if I slacked off in the beginning.

Third. At AWP, Clisbee really wanted a piece of your ass. You don't want to become TOO good looking, or people won't be able to control themselves around you.