Monday, August 18, 2008

Finally, the switch goes on

So its Monday. Rah rah. I hit the gym this morning first thing as usual, I find the beginning of the week so much easier at the gym than later on, say Thursday. I don't go to the gym on the weekends, preferring to take a brief 2 day break to rest my weary bones. Only the weekend is probably when I should be going to the gym since those are the days I'm most at risk of over-eating. I've often thought of dropping a day during the week and making it up on Saturday or Sunday but by the time the weekend arrives, I can't bring myself to go.

Its my time, I don't have to work, don't usually have places to be, anything I do should be recreational and enjoyable. We sometimes have errands to run but those aren't like work. Weekends are a good time to clean the house but that only takes an hour or two, same with mowing the lawn so I don't really worry about it. But the gym is a whole other ballgame. I have a love/hate relationship with it.

As a teenager, I was first introduced to the gym by my mother who bought family memberships every year. Her live-in at the time was a guy who enjoyed working out and taught me many things about lifting weights. However, I was an overweight, lazy boy and the hard work and diet necessary to see any real results proved too much for my spoiled ass. I'd work hard for a while but then I'd just drop off. Come to think of it, so did everyone else in my family. We were one of those people who bought memberships every year, used it for a couple of months, then disappeared only to reappear sporatically over the year until renewal time when we'd come in again and repeat the same pattern. Maybe I'd have been more interested had I seen results but without a proper diet in place, and my mother losing interest all the time, there was no way. So I just got fatter and fatter.

Once I was in my 20's, that was it for the gym, even after my gastric bypass. I simply wasn't interested and expected the surgery to take care of it. It only partially did. You still need to exercise and burn calories, and I still was loading up on empty calories so I was accomplishing very little. The surgery did what it could and I lost weight but not all that I needed to. I was still a good hundred pounds overweight.

But then something changed. I was 33 and just separated from my ex. I had been feeling a change churning inside of me for a few months, like a need to join a gym and eat better. It was the fall of 1999 and I made a decision: in the new year I was going to join the gym again and follow a diet and lose the rest of this weight. I chose the new year mostly to give myself time to enjoy whatever foods I wanted over the last couple of months I could, also because it represented a new start. Sounds like a New Years resolution and maybe it was, but this was one resolution I was going to keep.

I waited until the 17th of January to join, mostly because I was off during the holidays and needed a pay cheque to pay for the gym. I purchased some gym sweats, gloves for weight lifting, a gym bag and a combination lock. I planned to eat light and arranged my groceries appropriately. Lots of soup, chicken, veggies and lean meats. I was a man on a mission. Sure I had been primed and ready to go in the past but something was different this time. To this day, I still don't know what it was. Maybe it was the breakup, which was messy and very painful. Maybe it was the realization that I was at a major crossroads in my life with the opportunity to make some very serious changes for once and better myself. I had already decided to return to college the coming fall, and I didn't want to go back fat. I had always been fat at school and it wasn't pleasant. Although college was older and I would be a mature student attending, I still didn't want to be the fat guy anymore. Either way, I was focused like never before and ready to work hard.

For the first month, most of my regimen was built around weights with little cardio. But after some time, I realized that in order to burn the maximum amount of calories, I'd have to concentrate more on the cardio and get my heart pumping. So I changed things up to include about 20 minutes on the cross trainer which burned about 350 calories, another 20-25 minutes on the stationary bike and another hour or so with weights. I made great progress losing about 2lbs a week which was expected since I was so big and it tends to come off easily at first, but seeing the scale dropping so quickly motivated me to do more cardio and skip the weights. So I ended up doing 2 20-25 minute shots on the cross trainer and another 20-25 minutes on the bike, plus I started doing some jogging on the treadmill. I was eating pretty light too so I wasn't able to do the lifting, simply no energy for that and without all the protein and that to build muscle, it wasn't doing me any good anyhow.

I went to the gym Monday thru Thursday evenings after work then again on Saturday mornings like clockwork. And the results were staggering. Never before had I seen such losses, I was losing easily 10lbs a month which translated into 2-3lbs a week. Soon, everybody around me was noticing but they couldn't quite pinpoint what it was that was different. Not long after that, it wasn't hard to figure out. After about 30lbs, people really took notice. And everyone was supportive and wanting to know what i was doing. Was I taking pills? Was I following one of the fad diets? A couple even asked me if I was sick.

I continued along like this and in May starting dating again. Unfortunately, this resulted in a slowdown of my weight loss since I was going out and eating and drinking things I hadn't touched in months. Fortunately, this didn't last long and I was back on the train and single again by the fall. I managed to get down to about 200lbs by Christmas and ended up changing jobs. Instead of working in a cafeteria where I was surrounded by temptation, I was working in a furniture store and moving couches around every day. This had a great impact on my weight loss. By the spring, I was down to 185lbs and looking fairly trim. People who hadn't seen me in ages didn't recognize me. And when they found out who I was, the reaction was always one of "Oh my God you look great!"

So after a year and a half, I had lost about a 100lbs, it would have been more and faster if not for the hiccups due to dating in that span but the social opportunities that had opened up were fascinating to me and I wanted to enjoy it. Unfortunately, in the summer of 2001, I started dating someone I had been crushing on for years and she had no real qualms about eating. She wasn't a big girl by any means but she enjoyed her food and it led to catastrophe for me. I had stopped going to the gym (big mistake) and was indulging in things I simply should have stayed away from. I had a deep fryer that had been in storage for a long time, but out it came and we started eating far too much deep fried food. Same with visits to the ice cream parlour and dining out. I had no idea I was putting on weight again until I stepped on the scale in November and it read: 227lbs. I almost had a heart attack.

Right away, I announced to her that I was rejoining the gym and was done with the food. She joined too which was cool and we set about fixing our mistakes. It took a while, somehow I just didn't have the same drive I had before, but I managed to get to about 205lbs where I stayed for the next 3 years. My diet just wasn't where it needed to be to lose anymore. And being in college and going out for beers fairly regularly wasn't helping. It wasn't until I graduated and was working in a paint store full time lugging 50lb pails of paint around while waiting for my first job in my chosen profession that I managed to lose some more. I got down to about 180lbs a year after I graduated and snagged my first desk job.

Sitting at a desk all day was a major change. All my life, I had been in labour intensive jobs, but now I was sitting most of the day. That made going to the gym and watching my diet even more important. But still, my diet wasn't great and I gained probably 15lbs over the next few months. Then I got sick. This story is chronicled in my entries about Gastric Bypass Nightmares so I won't rehash it here.

Today, I'm eating better than ever enjoying fruits and vegetables and avoiding junk for the most part. I don't know what happened after the surgery to fix my bypass, but I just lost my taste for most junk. I used to live on Cheezies, I haven't even sniffed a Cheezie since. I acquired a taste for diet pop instead of the real thing, use sweetener (specifically Splenda) where sugar used to be and gave up my once cherished sugary cereals for better choices like Corn Flakes, All Bran and Shreddies. I haven't visited a McDonalds, KFC or other fast food outlet in what seems like forever. About the only "fast food" I still enjoy is pizza but even that is once a month and we don't order a big one anymore. I adjusted my gym schedule so that I'm going every morning before work and I'm doing pretty much just cardio for the calorie burn. I may start lifting weights again once I lose some more weight but I haven't made that decision yet.

My body loathes lifting weights and seems to break down rather easily when I do. I'm always pulling a muscle or causing some other unnecessary pain so I don't bother. But I know I should. I'd love to get good and strong and I do enjoy lifting weights, but I'm addicted to the calorie burn. Lifting weights will cause a rise in my weight from the muscle growth and I'm wanting to see that scale under 200lbs. I know its not about the scale, its about how you look and how your clothes fit, but I like seeing a lower number on that scale. It makes me feel better. And since I'm always in losing mode, I want to see that scale drop every week. Those people who use personal trainers are getting a better overall workout but it takes forever for them to see results. I'm too impatient. I want it now. But I know better. I'm sure I'll get to a more balanced approach at the gym a some point. Its just getting there that's the problem.

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