Year 2 Week 35 Day 1

So, a theme for my life is going on again. Starting over.

I'll post the numbers this week so you can see the kind of bum I have been over the last month or so.

Knowing and doing, the classic "do as I say, not as I do" you once got from Mom and Dad, but it's really twisted when you do it to yourself. I do believe there are a number of obese folks who just don't know why they are fat, they are literally ignorant of food and calories and exercise and then some are figuratively ignorant in that they understand diet and exercise but they don't apply that knowledge to themselves. I hate those people, I am those people.

You know the ones, they've tried every diet, pill, drink, and super secret program to lose weight. They spend a fortune on exercise equipment or have the gym key dangling on the keychain but the equipment has dust or dirty laundry on it and the gym key gets used to open boxes from Amazon.com (not a sponsor). They're the people who can tell you calories and diet theories and all the nonsense like I spout here from time to time.

Like Christians who go to church on Sunday talking about love and forgiveness, then go to a rally on Tuesday spewing hate and stabbing folks in the neck because they look different, diet people follow many types of faith. Some only pray when they really want something, like fitting into a dress or looking good for that high school reunion and they are faithful for a short time. Others fall on and off the wagon binging one week and devoutly following a diet the next. A very few find permanent solutions, but they aren't from fads and rarely from the divine intervention of doctors and lap bands. Eventually all successful people find something to hinge on that really matters.

Ironically some find God, others realize their lives are more important than a cupcake because of wife and children, and some just look in the mirror and face themselves and say 'no more'.

I don't think I am any of those people. I'm not finding God since the whole idea of God is simple mythology, the only important thing for life is just trying to outlive my Mother so I can see to her ending better than my Dad's, and looking at myself in the mirror generally leads to maniacal laughter that might one day be clinical insanity.

So I cling to "One Week, One Pound" even when it doesn't work this week or that week because it is simple and it is true. Just break down everything and focus on the goal, losing one pound a week. That's roughly one hundred and four pounds in two years. That's an amazing number on its own, but when you factor in a four pound week here and there you can really see results. My issue is finding the food, exercise and motivation balance to keep it up.

The older I get the less I do. In part that's a financial constraint and in part I've come to realize I have no passion for the things in my life. Worse yet, I have no sense of where I might find something to be passionate about. It's not like I have to keep working to put food on the table for a wife and three kids. I haven't quite failed at anything yet, but I've been damned close for years. Maybe you need to really fail to get to something better. Not many people get to the top without failing, but on the flip side lots of people are on the bottom because all they do is fail. Most folks are dog-paddling in the middle though, not failing but never quite succeeding.

What to do about it? Hell if I know.

Here are this week's numbers (that might explain the philosophical tangent this week):

Weights and Measures:
	Weight	Blood P.	Hips	Gut	Chest	Neck	Bicep	Pulse
End Goal	200.00	110/70	38.00	36.00	42.00	16.00	18.00	60.00
8/16/2010	306.20	133/82	47.00	53.00	53.50	18.50	17.00	72.00
8/30/2010	310.40	157/99	47.50	53.75	54.75	18.50	16.75	77.00
Change	4.20	+24/+17	0.50	0.75	1.25	-	(0.25)	5.00
To Goal:	(110.40)	-47/-29	(9.50)	(17.75)	(12.75)	(2.50)	1.25	(17.00)

 

Yep, that bad. Add to it four days of weights with no cardio and multiple it over the last month or so and that is what you end up with, another year older and more obese.

Still have 30 2 40, that's thirty days until I turn forty years old, so my best hope now is to push under 300 by then and focus on the 1W1P concepts.

If at first you fail, just keep trying, who cares besides you?

Later,

Year 2 Week 34 Day 1

Did I already mention my opinions regarding fat and exercise?

Since it has been a month when I last wrote and there are no numbers today because I am still mega-bummed out.

By the way, I have no reasons to be bummed out other than I am a self-centered son of a bitch.

So exercise works like this, if you do minimal exercise on a regular basis you stay at a minimal level of health. If you work out religiously and consistently hit your target heart rate and blah, blah, effing blah then you get improved fitness levels and might be able to run a triathlon if that's your thing. However if you stop doing the minimal amount of work, then you get less healthy at a deceptively rapid rate.

What I am saying is I am in pain after taking a break from my minimal workout routine and now breathing is a bit tough.

Like I said not much to complain about.

Also a complaint in my head that I may have written before, fat cells. They don't go away right? Think about it, as you back on calories and pounds your body adds fat cells to store the excess of potential energy from food. However once you cut back on calories those cells don't die off. They are in your body and I am guessing they exist to have fat stored in them and if they don't have that fat somehow they tell your body you need more calories. Hormones or some other super awesome survival thing kicks in and you dream of cupcakes, or whatever your poison might be, until those cells are occupied with fat again.

That is all just a guess, since I think I heard the cells never die concept from a real doctor but I can't recall who.

So clearly, you need liposuction to eliminate these cells?

I have no idea how this works.

Like most charitable donations. Who am I giving my money to when I donate to cancer research? It seems like the money for cancer research should come from the companies that are going to sell the final product to the people. That's how capitalism works, right? I'd like to see the pie chart of donation money broken down by where that money goes. It is sad that the only Jonas anyone knows these days is on the Disney Channel, but no Salk is out there discovering a cure for diseases that he is going to give away.

The other problem with the research, cure and dispensing mechanism in capitalism is that there is less incentives to cure diseases with a one dose solution then there is for a treatment program that requires a lifetime of doses. No cure for cancer, but lots of treatments. No cure for diabetes but tons of treatments. No cure for high blood pressure (other than diet and exercise-thanks Doc!) but a plethora of treatments.

I liken it to car maintenance. Used to be you'd get an oil change every 10,000-20,000 miles and now it's every 3,000 miles. Cars have improved so much that it takes three times the cost to keep it running in the most basic sense.

Hey remember swine flu? How much did that cost you? There aren't enough real diseases to bilk actual sick people out of money, now we have fake diseases to sell fake cures to healthy people to in order to improve the bottom line. Good news! The World Health Organization has said, "Remember that Swine Flu? Nevermind." So we went from losing 30% of the world's population a few years ago to can you name two people you've met personally who even got diagnosed with this "disease"? Now try to find two people who didn't get a shot for it, you can count me as one.

Sorry, just a level of frustration with the world in general this morning. Just put me in charge of the world for a week or two and we can take care of all these crazy wastes of time. Legalize marijuana, make all marriages illegal or none illegal, no one has a kid until they can get a home loan under the 2010 rules not the 2007 rules, if you can work but can't find a job then you do community work in the state where you are cashing an unemployment check until you get a job, if you can't work then figure out some way to add value or, you know, there are those death panels. I am just saying that most of the world's problems are very straight forward, no raping, no child labor, no slavery of any kind, no treating one person as less than another person based on sex, race, religion or any other criteria except age (five year old and seventy year old drivers are not necessary) and legitimate assessment (I should not be designing new airplanes, but a chick from MIT should be able to if she got the grades).

So maybe I won't be running the world any time soon, but most of it seems pretty simple.