(no subject)
I'm at the heaviest I've ever been. While my work day is somewhat sedentary (and the two hours in the car daily doesn't help) I feel like I'm not really challenging myself to really lose weight. All of the things I've read so far have said that I need to take personal responsibility (well, duh.) and try to be accountable to someone other than myself. My lovely wife has many other things going on, so I figured I'd share this with a bunch of people that barely know me.
Hi, I'm Xander, and right now I view myself as a tubby load. I'm 235 pounds, and while that may be great if I was 6'5", I'm the reverse of that. I'm 5'6".
Where do I want to be?
All the charts I've seen have said I should be anywhere from 135-165lbs. I can tell you right now, there's no chance in hell I'm going to be healthy at 165lbs. I'm pretty stocky naturally, so I'm going to say my realistic goal is 185. Realistically.
I have to watch myself carefully though. You see, I was born with spina bifida occulta, which is a rare genetic disorder that basically means that my spinal column didn't close all the way at the lowest part of my back. I didn't know this until I was thirteen, after I fractured one of the remaining vertebrae in that spot, and a bone shard "tickled" my spinal cord causing me to lose feeling in my legs for the first time in my life. Not a "pins and needles, my foot's asleep" kind of lost feeling, more like a screaming pain and suddenly "where the hell are my legs?" kind of pain. It doesn't happen very often, but it's scary enough when I do. This accident was when I really started going downhill, because I didn't want to be that active, in fear that I was going to do something wrong, and I'd spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. Not a pleasant thought. The other major problem is my right knee. I used to wrestle, and one day someone rather heavy fell on my knee. Destroyed a lot of the cartilage and some of the growth plates. It hurts a lot, and my kneecap often just floats off. Plus, I'll never be able to sneak up a flight of stairs because of the grinding noise it makes.
These are part of the reason that I want to drop the weight. Let's face it, every extra pound I'm carrying is on my back and on my knee, and it's not comfortable. That and I'm no longer comfortable in my own skin. It's kinda depressing, I look in the mirror and I see my gut and it saddens me. I've never really been the super-athletic type, never been ridiculously "cut" but at the same time I've never been "my gut is now folding over my pants" type either. I'm getting closer to the latter, and it terrifies me. Plus, heart problems run in my family, and I don't want the extra burden on the ticker either.
Biggest problems
I eat like a five-year-old.
No really, my diet has never been horribly healthy, I'm not a big fan of the veggies (something about the textures), and I'm flat-out allergic to spinach (makes that South Beach and Atkins diet virtually impossible, because it's in everything.). Moreso, I guess I'm a little lazy. I don't have a lot of free time during the day, so meal prep goes right out the window, because I want to spend that time doing just about anything else, and well cooking? I cook then I have to clean, so sometimes it's just easier to pick up something out of a bag, and save myself the hassle.
Sedentary lifestyle
Not entirely by choice, I've an office job (thank god for it) but I spend a great deal of time on my arse, staring into a computer screen. I spend an additional one-and-a-half, to two hours a day in my car, in traffic to get to and from work (I work downtown, my home is in Maineville, round about 40 miles away.) According to Google maps, it'd be close to an 4 hour commute both ways (not to mention physically strenuous.).
I feel alone
I love my wife, I do, but when it comes down to it we're each our biggest enabler. Her schedule is even more difficult than mine, and by the end of the day all she wants to do is crash. I can understand that, but sometimes she makes me feel bad about wanting to go to the gym without her, and I wind up on the couch, or in front of a computer screen, and I can't keep doing this if I want to be healthy. At the same time, I feel as though some of her depression comes from the fact that she too is very sedentary. She comes from a very warm and sunny place (Egypt), and the winter months here are killers for her because she goes to school/internship/work early in the morning around dawn, and comes back a little after dusk. So her day consists of being indoors. The weather in Cincinnati doesn't help much either, because in the wintertime we go from bleak to absolutely miserable, with maybe something tolerable in-between. But I'm focusing too much on her here, this is about me and my problems. However, my physical shape does have an effect on other aspects. the strain on my back leaves me in a great deal of pain (more often than I let on), and so I'm not really high on physicality, and well my appearance has had an effect on my mental state, I don't feel attractive, and so I don't expect anyone else to either. In short, I'm a mess, but that mess doesn't affect only me right now.
No sleep 'til
For whatever reason, I don't sleep very well. It could be the fact that I don't feel that a lot of my time is my own, and so I try to milk every hour out of my time when I'm not at work to relax and do stuff. Usually though that stuff isn't really all that important. I really want to get to the point where I'm doing what I perceive to be important.
What are you going to do about it?
First thing's first.
I've got to get my head straight. My goal weight is 185, my current weight is 235, so my goal is 50 pounds of weight loss. I know this is going to take time, my goal is to be there by June. Today is February 6, 2011. If I set my goal for June 6, 2011 that means that I have to lose 10 pounds per month from now until June. Breaking it up, makes it sound not as bad, I know it's probably going to be harder than I expect.
Talking to you
Whoever is out there reading/listening, I am now making myself accountable to you. Being accountable to myself isn't enough, obviously, I've tried that before, and it's not really done a whole lot for me. I'm going to try to make this a daily posting, but as you know the best laid plans of mice and men often goes awry. I'm going to try to make this as entertaining as possible, because I know that I'm not going to have much of an audience just bitching about what a fat ass I've become.
What I have at my disposal
For starters, I have the gym. This is more of that mental block that I've got, I have a gym membership that I'm locked into for the next three years, and I rarely ever go, even though I have four locations in between my office and home (and one more option relatively close to work.) I should be ashamed of myself, but at the end of the day, I usually feel exhausted, and I come home and change, and instead of going to the gym, I pass out on the couch instead.
Video Games Yeah, this is kinda my biggest weakness, because as much as it is a huge time waster, it's also the way that I decompress at the end of the day. My mother picked up the Kinect for me for Christmas, and my sister picked up Your Shape: Fitness Evolved for me for Christmas as well (dropped it off on Feb 3rd.) and my in-laws got us a Wii, so now between the two I don't have a whole lot of excuses for kicking back with a controller in hand, it helps that Your Shape:FE tracks the calories you burn (as does Dance Central, what I got for Christine for Christmas).
What am I gonna do?
I've put a lot of thought into what happens when I get back into shape.
I'm a photographer, but for the longest time, I've been afraid of the lens. I don't get my picture taken, because I cringe at what I see. It drives my wife nuts, but it drives me nuts as well, because I just cannot be comfortable in my own skin, and I cannot stand to see that blob that is me.
I kept telling myself that I wouldn't have a model do anything that I wouldn't do myself. Then I started shooting nudes, and it was a little out of my comfort zone. To top it off, I shot women of all shapes and sizes, and found beauty in every type. I still couldn't even face myself in a mirror, much less a piece of film or photo paper.
So, when I get down to my goal weight, I will shoot a series of myself nude, and I will find a place to show it.
Hi, I'm Xander, and right now I view myself as a tubby load. I'm 235 pounds, and while that may be great if I was 6'5", I'm the reverse of that. I'm 5'6".
Where do I want to be?
All the charts I've seen have said I should be anywhere from 135-165lbs. I can tell you right now, there's no chance in hell I'm going to be healthy at 165lbs. I'm pretty stocky naturally, so I'm going to say my realistic goal is 185. Realistically.
I have to watch myself carefully though. You see, I was born with spina bifida occulta, which is a rare genetic disorder that basically means that my spinal column didn't close all the way at the lowest part of my back. I didn't know this until I was thirteen, after I fractured one of the remaining vertebrae in that spot, and a bone shard "tickled" my spinal cord causing me to lose feeling in my legs for the first time in my life. Not a "pins and needles, my foot's asleep" kind of lost feeling, more like a screaming pain and suddenly "where the hell are my legs?" kind of pain. It doesn't happen very often, but it's scary enough when I do. This accident was when I really started going downhill, because I didn't want to be that active, in fear that I was going to do something wrong, and I'd spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. Not a pleasant thought. The other major problem is my right knee. I used to wrestle, and one day someone rather heavy fell on my knee. Destroyed a lot of the cartilage and some of the growth plates. It hurts a lot, and my kneecap often just floats off. Plus, I'll never be able to sneak up a flight of stairs because of the grinding noise it makes.
These are part of the reason that I want to drop the weight. Let's face it, every extra pound I'm carrying is on my back and on my knee, and it's not comfortable. That and I'm no longer comfortable in my own skin. It's kinda depressing, I look in the mirror and I see my gut and it saddens me. I've never really been the super-athletic type, never been ridiculously "cut" but at the same time I've never been "my gut is now folding over my pants" type either. I'm getting closer to the latter, and it terrifies me. Plus, heart problems run in my family, and I don't want the extra burden on the ticker either.
Biggest problems
I eat like a five-year-old.
No really, my diet has never been horribly healthy, I'm not a big fan of the veggies (something about the textures), and I'm flat-out allergic to spinach (makes that South Beach and Atkins diet virtually impossible, because it's in everything.). Moreso, I guess I'm a little lazy. I don't have a lot of free time during the day, so meal prep goes right out the window, because I want to spend that time doing just about anything else, and well cooking? I cook then I have to clean, so sometimes it's just easier to pick up something out of a bag, and save myself the hassle.
Sedentary lifestyle
Not entirely by choice, I've an office job (thank god for it) but I spend a great deal of time on my arse, staring into a computer screen. I spend an additional one-and-a-half, to two hours a day in my car, in traffic to get to and from work (I work downtown, my home is in Maineville, round about 40 miles away.) According to Google maps, it'd be close to an 4 hour commute both ways (not to mention physically strenuous.).
I feel alone
I love my wife, I do, but when it comes down to it we're each our biggest enabler. Her schedule is even more difficult than mine, and by the end of the day all she wants to do is crash. I can understand that, but sometimes she makes me feel bad about wanting to go to the gym without her, and I wind up on the couch, or in front of a computer screen, and I can't keep doing this if I want to be healthy. At the same time, I feel as though some of her depression comes from the fact that she too is very sedentary. She comes from a very warm and sunny place (Egypt), and the winter months here are killers for her because she goes to school/internship/work early in the morning around dawn, and comes back a little after dusk. So her day consists of being indoors. The weather in Cincinnati doesn't help much either, because in the wintertime we go from bleak to absolutely miserable, with maybe something tolerable in-between. But I'm focusing too much on her here, this is about me and my problems. However, my physical shape does have an effect on other aspects. the strain on my back leaves me in a great deal of pain (more often than I let on), and so I'm not really high on physicality, and well my appearance has had an effect on my mental state, I don't feel attractive, and so I don't expect anyone else to either. In short, I'm a mess, but that mess doesn't affect only me right now.
No sleep 'til
For whatever reason, I don't sleep very well. It could be the fact that I don't feel that a lot of my time is my own, and so I try to milk every hour out of my time when I'm not at work to relax and do stuff. Usually though that stuff isn't really all that important. I really want to get to the point where I'm doing what I perceive to be important.
What are you going to do about it?
First thing's first.
I've got to get my head straight. My goal weight is 185, my current weight is 235, so my goal is 50 pounds of weight loss. I know this is going to take time, my goal is to be there by June. Today is February 6, 2011. If I set my goal for June 6, 2011 that means that I have to lose 10 pounds per month from now until June. Breaking it up, makes it sound not as bad, I know it's probably going to be harder than I expect.
Talking to you
Whoever is out there reading/listening, I am now making myself accountable to you. Being accountable to myself isn't enough, obviously, I've tried that before, and it's not really done a whole lot for me. I'm going to try to make this a daily posting, but as you know the best laid plans of mice and men often goes awry. I'm going to try to make this as entertaining as possible, because I know that I'm not going to have much of an audience just bitching about what a fat ass I've become.
What I have at my disposal
For starters, I have the gym. This is more of that mental block that I've got, I have a gym membership that I'm locked into for the next three years, and I rarely ever go, even though I have four locations in between my office and home (and one more option relatively close to work.) I should be ashamed of myself, but at the end of the day, I usually feel exhausted, and I come home and change, and instead of going to the gym, I pass out on the couch instead.
Video Games Yeah, this is kinda my biggest weakness, because as much as it is a huge time waster, it's also the way that I decompress at the end of the day. My mother picked up the Kinect for me for Christmas, and my sister picked up Your Shape: Fitness Evolved for me for Christmas as well (dropped it off on Feb 3rd.) and my in-laws got us a Wii, so now between the two I don't have a whole lot of excuses for kicking back with a controller in hand, it helps that Your Shape:FE tracks the calories you burn (as does Dance Central, what I got for Christine for Christmas).
What am I gonna do?
I've put a lot of thought into what happens when I get back into shape.
I'm a photographer, but for the longest time, I've been afraid of the lens. I don't get my picture taken, because I cringe at what I see. It drives my wife nuts, but it drives me nuts as well, because I just cannot be comfortable in my own skin, and I cannot stand to see that blob that is me.
I kept telling myself that I wouldn't have a model do anything that I wouldn't do myself. Then I started shooting nudes, and it was a little out of my comfort zone. To top it off, I shot women of all shapes and sizes, and found beauty in every type. I still couldn't even face myself in a mirror, much less a piece of film or photo paper.
So, when I get down to my goal weight, I will shoot a series of myself nude, and I will find a place to show it.