7/11.../11 - "If you survive, please come again"

Why, oh why, did it take so long to feel this damn good?

Yes, my friends, the call of the gym was too overpowering. I had to return. From the depths of despair (which is not a new flavor of ice cream) to the towering heights of physical prowess (if tying your shoes counts), it had been many, many months since I had graced the gym with my presence. But how did I get here? Why, after so many months of blissful ignorance, had I decided to climb back on the horse and keep it going?

After the second phase of my workout plan fell through faster than a New York Jets season, I settled into a life of being mostly happy with where I was. Of course, week in and week out I would either gain or lost a few pounds, but I figured since after I reach my goal that would be the rest of my life anyways, why fight it? After being down all the way to 261.9 at one point, I put on a few extra pounds and called it good for awhile.

"The Biggest Loser Challenge" for Wii became an on-again, off-again friend. While I was getting a good workout, the confines of our small apartment and the multitude of other distractions constantly waiting in the wings kept me from getting the most out of my workout. After 10 so-so weeks of the TBLC, I had only lost about 5 pounds.

Then TBLC went away for good, as far as I was concerned. My logic at this point was my diet. Though I wasn't eating the various healthy meals I had during my first phase over a year ago, I was trying not to pig out on too much. And though I wasn't near my goal yet and wasn't completely happy with how I looked, I figured I had plenty of time to get it done.

Fast forward to a conversation Holls and I had regarding the wedding. The entire text is forgotten by me, but the basic gist was, since she has to get a wedding dress soon, and I'm in the unique position to change my own weighty destiny, we basically determined that whatever we looked like a year from now was how we were going to look at the wedding. That was around Independence Day.

Now that's what I call a close encounter.

Not 1996. 2011, Will.

Shit

Anywho, the realization sunk in that a lot can happen in a year. And, judging by my recent in/un/dis-progress, a lot can not happen as well. It's a frightening thing, actually: thinking how much time I lost and how I probably could have been at my goal by now.

Later that week, I decided that enough was enough. The little signs were starting to add up again. Gut and pecs were starting to turn into "second tri-mester" and "boobs" again, wasn't liking my reflection in the mirror, starting to snack between meals. Worst of all, I had spiked to 271. Not terrible, but still - it was that time. Without thinking twice, I fired off an e-mail to the gym administrator, asking if I could re-up for another year.

*****

Monday. Can't believe it's here.

I slog into the gym, full workout gear in tow. I start stretching. Pop. Pop. Pop. That was just my neck stretch. Three minutes on the treadmill warming up, and then I'm off to the races. Worst part? No music. No TV. Nobody around for me to turn to and say, "Wow, doesn't this suck?" All by myself.

But here's what's strange: my body, instead of failing me, making me nauseas, hurting in all the wrong places, instead greeted me like an old friend. This is what we were meant to do, hombre. If I apply a little pressure here...that's what I'm talkin' about!

It wasn't easy, and it never is. After a slow but sure workout, it's time to cap it off with my least favorite part of the gym: the one-mile run. As you may recall, my body and I have had our ups and downs with the treadmill, and our way-downs when my feet flew out from under me and I rocketed into the wall like a British cannonball.

Yikes. Luckily, I remained upright and relatively painfree. At least until I hit the halfway point. That's when my right side declared its independence from the rest of me and decided to contract as much as possible.

I started reaching for that stop button. But a strange thing happened. Instead of throwing in the towel, I clapped loudly and yelled to myself, "Get it together, Gordon!" The pain kept coming, but I didn't stop. When I finally hit the one-mile mark, I proudly wheezed - er, stopped the treadmill and took the slowest victory lap in the history of victory laps. I was exhausted, I was sweaty, I was thirsty...but I was back.

*****

That was two weeks ago. I've been back to the gym nine more times since then, and while I won't know the actual weight until tomorrow morning, I know I've slimmed down to the low 260s again. Even despite my parents' camp party and a few brief sojourns into the Fried Food Wilderness, I've managed to lose a decent amount of weight so far. I've sort of abandoned the goal of trying to touch 199 just once. What does it prove? That I was in the 100s again? My body type - Double Extra Sexy - would not last at 199. 225 is probably more my style. And if I keep at it, I will most definitely hit 225 by 8/4/12. And then I'll finally be able to fit into that wedding dress I've dreamed of since I was a little girl.

Every in-law's dream
How do I feel at this exact moment? On a scale of Olga Sherer to Gilbert Grape's mom, I'm Magic Johnson: hugely successful, derailed by circumstances somewhat within his control, starting to make a comeback. Let's just hope my comeback is slightly better than "The Magic Hour."

Not cool

What a long, sweaty trip it's been (from April 12th)

One year ago? Today? Really? Wow. Time passes when you're not making progress.

Yes, it's true. What began as a quest to shed the pounds for my wedding in a year and a half has apparently hit a standstill. No, I am not gaining weight by the buttload anymore. But motivation seems to be at an impasse. Hovering somewhere in the high 260s, I'm not quite sure how I got to this point.

See, back during the Christmas season, with the gym quickly erasing itself as an option, I purchased "The Biggest Loser Challenge" for Wii for Holls and I. This was supposed to jump-start my weight loss effort. And for a while, it did. It's hard to work out in an apartment that's roughly the size of a single-person shower, but I was trying to make it work. After several failed attempts to get it going, I was finally on track. And then?

Boom. Dead for four days. By the time I recovered, I was so spent I had absolutely no desire to exercise, eat right, whatever. And over the few weeks that have followed, while I've had the inkling to maybe get back on the horse, I've found that I'd rather sprinkle salt and pepper on the horse and eat it instead.

Maybe it's because time is not of the essence. I've not necessarily ballooned back up, and I know there's still plenty of time. But hey, wasn't it great feeling great all the time? So why wouldn't I want that feeling back? Please excuse the impromptu therapy session.

But I think it's time. Enough weeks and months have passed for me to enjoy my little respite. It's time to get back into it. This is more of a celebratory, pat-my-fat-back type of message to myself. Now, let's celebrate by eating a carrot

cake

The Fellowship of the Ring-Dings

One of the secret pleasures in my life is putting in the drain plug in while I'm taking a shower. A minute later, the sloshing of water reminds me of one of my favorite Three Stooges shorts of all time, "A-Plumbin' We Will Go." Then I laugh. Then I feel weird for laughing in the shower, so I pull the drain plug out and continue on with the boring process of cleaning my temple.


"A temple of doom!"


"...I resent that."

But those 10-15 seconds when I stop cleaning, start thinking about Moe, Larry and Curly running upstairs to the basement, and just generally waste time while the water fills the tub are pretty much the story of my exercise routine over the past six months. What was once a fairly routine part of my life - diet and exercise - has now been interrupted by the small pleasures in my life.

Back in April, May and June, when I stepped on the scale for the first time in a while and clocked in just a Cheeto over 300 lbs., it was a shock to the system. Shocks to the system are not always bad. This particular shock kept my focus intact for 10 consecutive weeks, after which I had lost around 40 lbs. and seemed nearly halfway to my goal of being svelte enough to slide into a tuxedo in August 2012.

Then the program ended, I gave myself a week off (which I don't regret), and decided to change up my workout schedule drastically. This new schedule would put me in the gym only two days a week, freeing up the rest of the week to perform other fitness activities that were not restricted to just a gym. The program went great for about two weeks, but here's the thing about days off...um, I like having them. A lot. So when a Friday would roll around and I hadn't been to the gym at all that week, it didn't seem that big a deal to me to say, "Well, I'll just do it Saturday." Then Saturday comes and goes and it gets pushed to Sunday. Sunday turns into Monday, so on and so forth. I was still losing a little bit of weight here and there, but not nearly to the point I had been. At least I had my diet to fall back on.

But as Garfield says, diet is "die with a t."

"I don't get it."

(Neither do I. But he's a national treasure. Or so we're told.)

Anyway, my diet kind of went kaput. During the latter half of my first exercise tier, I had been allowing myself to eat mostly anything I wanted, but in smaller quantities. As my brain and body quickly realized that my new workout wasn't going the way I planned, it basically picked up the orange cones, said "Have at it," and that's when my No Seconds Rule for dinner turned into my No Thirds Rule.

I finally slogged my way through the second exercise tier and decided to go on break for two weeks, which finally ended last month, when I went back into the gym for a 1-week-only Wayne-Newton-like performance that culminated in an intense Saturday run where I was thinking the entire time, "Yes! I'm back, and you all look beautiful!"

The next week, I got sick, skipped the gym a couple days, apparently blacked out for three weeks, celebrated Christmas with lots'o food, celebrated New Year's with lots'o booze, and now here we are. It's January 6, I'm back in the 270-lb. range, and I lack even rudimentary motivational skills to seek out the gym again.

But is there hope? For Christmas, yours truly gave Holls a copy of "The Biggest Loser Challenge" for Wii. And no, that wasn't her cue to go Ron Artest on me and start wildly throwing punches because she thought I was implying something. She asked for it for Christmas, and I bought it for her. No subtle messages here. However, I've been enjoying it as much as she has. It's slowly but surely bringing me back into the mix of diet and exercise, as this game tracks how much you do of both. It's not perfect, and it's no substitute for a treadmill or anything like that, but it's getting me back into the exercise game, little by little.

And what of those little pleasures in life I mentioned earlier? At first, it was just a devastating combination of watching TV and not really wanting to do anything else. See, we bought a 46" LED back in September, and that thing has gotten more play than Justin Timberlake at a Catholic girls' college. After the initial excitement wore off, the pleasures turned mainly into reading. Since my senior year of college, I've had a voracious appetite for reading, which is a good thing, for the most part. But it occasionally cuts into that precious exercise time that I so desperately need as well. In both cases, however, I feel the effects for a long time after I exercise either my body or my mind. I feel smarter and I feel more in shape.


"It's a good thing."


"A Martha Stewart joke? How 1995 of you"

Also, I've been writing a lot more lately. Not so much in this blog, but in other works I've been tinkering at for years. Mr. Gordon's Opus, if you will. Writing is becoming more fun for me, especially when part of it involves searching Google Images for things like "O.J. and the glove" and "Garfield with murderous look."

Reading and writing taking up too much of my time? Every teacher I had from 1st-12th grade just asked where I was from 1990-2002.

Now that I'm learning how to balance my reading and writing, I now have to learn how to incorporate my exercising into the mix. I don't have a plan yet for how I might start logging meaningful exercise minutes, or at least enough minutes to merit a blog entry every now and again. But I'm working on it. Who knows? Maybe it's time to change up the format of this blog a little bit. Change can be a good thing.



Then again...

Play me off, Cat on Piano!