Not sure how many regular followers I have ever had with this blog, but for those of you who are/were regular readers, you have assuredly realized I have been absent for quite some time. I wish I could say that I have been so incredibly busy shedding pounds and getting ripped, but that is simply not true. This actually does not have anything to do with being too busy. The opposite is true, in fact. In my second year of teaching, I have gotten a stranglehold on my time management like crazy. I am ahead in my planning, I am grading at a solid pace without getting too backed up, and I rarely have to stay late at school this year.
What it amounts to is a lack of motivation. I stopped caring about my three year endeavor. Other things mattered more. Other things matter more. I decided to write a novel this summer. That was more important. Once the school year started, and my free time was more limited, I did not want to fill it with workouts from which I stopped seeing results. I had not lost weight in some time. Actually, I had gained weight back. Even with my workouts, and not eating fast food, and not drinking soda, or too much other sugary garbage, I started to put weight back on. This did not inspire me. This did not throw me back into hardcore workouts. All it did was extinguish the flame that had burned so well for so long.
Of course, I have noticed the difference in my life without even small workouts. Every day is a bit of a drag, and my body ached every night, but not that good ache of progress. It was that bad ache of sadness, or lethargy. That old friend, Shortness of Breath, had come back to visit. Nights have been restless to say the least. Yet, I continued to stay unmotivated. All I wanted to do was sit on the couch and eat ice cream. My 5:15 in the morning workouts were completely fruitless. I was getting up, and going down to the gym and walking for 15-20 minutes, but the reality was, I was not committed to the idea, and thus, my track record for getting up at that time was spotty. What was the point?
What is the point? I have a great life. I have a job that inspires and stimulates me, and that fulfills so many of my own personal needs. I have a fiancée who loves me, and I have great friends. So what if I spent my life a bit lethargic and out of shape? This is the exact mind with which I spent so much time my entire life and it had served me well enough, right?
WRONG!!! Every single day of this school year I have felt disgusted. Every single day of this school year I have felt useless once the school day was over. Every single day. Even though I had put a few pounds back on, the daily workouts had served a purpose. They got me up and moving and thinking about life in a positive way. As I found myself falling deeper and deeper into isolation, I kept thinking I would just snap out of it, that it would pass as so many other things had. It was only this last weekend that I realized how wrong I was. Certain feelings do not just pass through, they fester. They hang out until you DO SOMETHING. It was time to do something.
This week I began fresh with what will hopefully be a new routine. Tuesday morning and this morning I got up at 4:15 and went outside for a walk/job that measured out to around 2 miles worth of cardio. It felt amazing. Last night I solved my sleeping issue. I was exhausted, but in a completely different way. It was exhaustion from having completed a full day. It was the most satisfying kind of exhaustion. I hit my mattress last night, and instead of the anxiety of the day washing over me, I was met with a quiet mind, and a quiet body. Instead of tossing and turning for hours hoping for sleep to catch up to me, I turned Pandora on (Regina Spektor station), cuddled with Gatsby for a few moments, and then, without giving it another thought, I was carried away to dreamland. On top of that, I did not have anxiety filled violent dreams. It was a peaceful sleep.
Now, I am not deluded into thinking every night is going to be like that, but just being active from 4:30-5:10 in the morning, and then giving myself time to have a proper breakfast, and allow myself time to stretch and make sure my body was fresh for the day has made a ton of difference. This morning’s workout was interrupted by rain, but it felt awesome, and getting home and having time to get myself together was great. Not being in a rush is spectacular. My entire mindset has changed in these last two days. Maybe I will never lose the kind of weight I hope to lose. Maybe I will never be as healthy as I would hope to be, because my priorities do not allow for that. It is more important for me to be a great teacher, than to be in great shape. However, that does not mean I should stop trying to find a way to be more active, and to keep trying to be in shape, and keep trying to lose weight.
Year three of this life change has been tough in terms of my own physical and mental fitness. Any weight loss blog you read will eventually come around to the dreaded plateau section. I have hit plateau after plateau over the last few years, but this current one hit me like a hammer. For months it weighed me down. I have not overcome this plateau, but I changed my perspective. I reminded myself that this was never about the weight I lost, but about the progress I made to positively change my life. This was meant to be about feeling better, and being better, not about a specific loss weight target. That is what I need to focus on. Everything else will come as it comes.
Every so often I find that I am hitting my head against a wall repeatedly, in a metaphorical sense. Eventually I realize that the wall is not the problem, my head is. The wall is not going to change, so I have to change my perception of the wall. It does not always work, but more often than not, a change in perspective can do wonders for the disquiet mind, body, and soul.
What started as a journey for physical and emotion health has morphed into something much bigger. Here you will find musings about my health journey, my teaching job, my re-entry into the world of academia, random thoughts about the world at large, books, movies, television, and ultimately my search for sustained happiness.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
Clash of the summer goals
This summer I laid out a series of goals that I thought were reasonable, but would also require a tremendous amount of effort on my part. These goals were spread across a few different goal making categories, but the common thread was that they would help me rediscover who I am. I wanted to read tons, write tons, spend plenty of time with those close to me, and I wanted to work out twice a day and lose a pound a week, which would have put me at roughly 13 pounds lost for the summer.
Quite early on in summer, I realized how difficult this truly was. Getting up at 8 in the morning and walking by 9, gave me plenty of time to write a little bit or read a little bit before Martina came home from work, but doing all three of those things in the same day turned out to be quite difficult. I tried a variety of combinations, but ultimately, the clashing goals left something out, and that something became my workout routine. It turned out that this summer, I felt it was more important to take care of who I was inside. Instead of working out twice a day and losing 13 pounds, I worked out once a day for the first half of summer, and ended up losing 7 pounds this summer. It was 8, but I put a pound back on in the last few weeks, which is totally fine.
Since I wrote a 10 page fantasy story for a Fantasy literature class my junior year in high school, I have wanted to write a novel. My senior year I wrote a 2 page slasher story for my Mystery and Terror Lit elective class. Once I got out of high school, I wrote dozens of half finished, half baked stories of varying genres. Eventually I stopped write prose all together. I wrote a ROM-COM screenplay that is roughly 50 pages long during college, and eventually a zombie screenplay for a Horror film class in college. After college I pretty much turned to verse. I wrote poetry nonstop for a few years. I have notebooks full of poetry. In that time I tried to go back to prose. I tried to write a novel about how David's death changed me as a person. I tried to write a novella about a guy who had not slept in a month. I tried. I tried. I tried. Nothing ever stuck. I kept going back to verse. Poetry was my creative saving grace, but I knew deep down there was more that I needed to say, not to anyone else, mind you, but to myself.
I have toyed with screenplays, play writing (I still love my idea for a play), and I even tried to write an old timey radio show once. My entire life in filled with half finished ideas. Then the worst thing happened. I stopped writing. I was blogging at the time, between this blog and my movie review blog, but for over a year, I just stopped writing. I was not making time for it because the entire enterprise just frustrated me. What was the point when I knew I was not going to finish it anyway?
When 2013 began I was at the lowest I had been in a few years. I did not have a teaching job, and I was working the exact same job I had in high school and college. I was barely able to contribute to my life financially. Instead of wallowing, I had an idea for a title of a poem. It was called "Curbside Redemption." I tried to write this poem about two people confessing things to each other while sitting at a curb in 2 in the morning. It was not working because verse was just not the right avenue for it. That title turned into the ending of a short story, where a guy, utterly destroyed by his own infidelity, confessed to his girl on a curb at 2 in the morning, and while she walked away from him, it allowed him to begin to feel like he could work on his issue, therefore finding his redemption. The story was a disaster. Everything about it was forced. I was 5 pages in, and I deleted everything I had, except that title. That title just kept haunting me, begging me to find the write story befitting of such a great title.
Around this time a friend asked me if I could watch her youngest kid a few days a week, which would include dropping the kid off at swimming and then picking her up an hour later. I started to think about this title more, and because I was now given this new place to write, and time to write, I thought about what would have happened if I had made a few different decisions in my life. What would have happened if I had given into certain things, or people. Once I stopped thinking about the Curbside Redemption being one of romance, the entire story just hit me. It was a teacher feeling redemptive after a conversation with a student. From there it just clicked. When it was all said and done, I had a legitimate novella on my hands. I felt reignited. It would not have mattered if everyone who read it just hated it. It was something I accomplished!
Finishing that novella reminded me of how badly I have always wanted to write a novel. I put it on the bucket list I shared with my students last year, and I got it in my head that 2014 was going to be the year of the novel. My students had just finished reading Into the Wild and I was becoming incredibly interested in cross country road trips. The idea for my novel was that a man would meet a woman, and after a whirlwind few days, they would get in a car and drive across the country together. Each chapter would switch points of view. The guy was going to be a sheltered guy who thought this woman was going to save him from a life of loneliness, and the woman was going to be a woman running away from all sorts of messy choices, who half way through the trip was going to realize the guy was expecting her to be a savior of some sort.
I started it over and over again, but ultimately it was a waste. It never felt honest, so I sat down one day and thought about what spoke to me. In Curbside Redemption I had tackled the life of someone allowing his addictions to control his life, and through this blog I have spent years thinking about how I have used food like a drug my whole life, but never thought of it in that way because we usually only see addiction as something that makes someone out of control. I decided to tackle addictions in my novel. I decided that the novel would be about 5 people whose lives connected through one character. I would tackle food addiction through two different lenses, gambling addiction, and a character whose constant searching for an escape to emptiness led her into a series of bad decisions. I also wanted to tackle a variety of issues. In fact, I might be tackling too many, but who cares?
This summer I have completed what I think is 75% of my very first novel. Yes, my physical goals fell by the wayside, but this novel has been insanely cathartic. It has allowed me to write about how it feels to be obese in an every day setting. How uncomfortable public transportation is, how sitting at a bar with stationary stools can be painful and embarrassing, and a whole host of other things that I didn't even know I was dealing with until I started writing. My goal is to finish my first draft before 2014 is over.
I have to do it because I already have my project for 2015 thought of: a collection of short stories revolving around the theme of TIME. I want to explore different genres, different styles, and different narrative structures, but be loosely connected by time. I have two stories already thought up.
Who knows if I will ever let anyone read any of these new finished products, and who knows if I ever plan to do anything with them (probably not) but it is the sense of accomplishing long standing goals that keeps me moving.
This post was meant to be more about the challenges of having so many goals, but I guess I really needed to write about the writing process.
As the school year gets going, I am planning to rededicate myself to my journey to health, so I am hoping to keep blogging semi regularly.
Quite early on in summer, I realized how difficult this truly was. Getting up at 8 in the morning and walking by 9, gave me plenty of time to write a little bit or read a little bit before Martina came home from work, but doing all three of those things in the same day turned out to be quite difficult. I tried a variety of combinations, but ultimately, the clashing goals left something out, and that something became my workout routine. It turned out that this summer, I felt it was more important to take care of who I was inside. Instead of working out twice a day and losing 13 pounds, I worked out once a day for the first half of summer, and ended up losing 7 pounds this summer. It was 8, but I put a pound back on in the last few weeks, which is totally fine.
Since I wrote a 10 page fantasy story for a Fantasy literature class my junior year in high school, I have wanted to write a novel. My senior year I wrote a 2 page slasher story for my Mystery and Terror Lit elective class. Once I got out of high school, I wrote dozens of half finished, half baked stories of varying genres. Eventually I stopped write prose all together. I wrote a ROM-COM screenplay that is roughly 50 pages long during college, and eventually a zombie screenplay for a Horror film class in college. After college I pretty much turned to verse. I wrote poetry nonstop for a few years. I have notebooks full of poetry. In that time I tried to go back to prose. I tried to write a novel about how David's death changed me as a person. I tried to write a novella about a guy who had not slept in a month. I tried. I tried. I tried. Nothing ever stuck. I kept going back to verse. Poetry was my creative saving grace, but I knew deep down there was more that I needed to say, not to anyone else, mind you, but to myself.
I have toyed with screenplays, play writing (I still love my idea for a play), and I even tried to write an old timey radio show once. My entire life in filled with half finished ideas. Then the worst thing happened. I stopped writing. I was blogging at the time, between this blog and my movie review blog, but for over a year, I just stopped writing. I was not making time for it because the entire enterprise just frustrated me. What was the point when I knew I was not going to finish it anyway?
When 2013 began I was at the lowest I had been in a few years. I did not have a teaching job, and I was working the exact same job I had in high school and college. I was barely able to contribute to my life financially. Instead of wallowing, I had an idea for a title of a poem. It was called "Curbside Redemption." I tried to write this poem about two people confessing things to each other while sitting at a curb in 2 in the morning. It was not working because verse was just not the right avenue for it. That title turned into the ending of a short story, where a guy, utterly destroyed by his own infidelity, confessed to his girl on a curb at 2 in the morning, and while she walked away from him, it allowed him to begin to feel like he could work on his issue, therefore finding his redemption. The story was a disaster. Everything about it was forced. I was 5 pages in, and I deleted everything I had, except that title. That title just kept haunting me, begging me to find the write story befitting of such a great title.
Around this time a friend asked me if I could watch her youngest kid a few days a week, which would include dropping the kid off at swimming and then picking her up an hour later. I started to think about this title more, and because I was now given this new place to write, and time to write, I thought about what would have happened if I had made a few different decisions in my life. What would have happened if I had given into certain things, or people. Once I stopped thinking about the Curbside Redemption being one of romance, the entire story just hit me. It was a teacher feeling redemptive after a conversation with a student. From there it just clicked. When it was all said and done, I had a legitimate novella on my hands. I felt reignited. It would not have mattered if everyone who read it just hated it. It was something I accomplished!
Finishing that novella reminded me of how badly I have always wanted to write a novel. I put it on the bucket list I shared with my students last year, and I got it in my head that 2014 was going to be the year of the novel. My students had just finished reading Into the Wild and I was becoming incredibly interested in cross country road trips. The idea for my novel was that a man would meet a woman, and after a whirlwind few days, they would get in a car and drive across the country together. Each chapter would switch points of view. The guy was going to be a sheltered guy who thought this woman was going to save him from a life of loneliness, and the woman was going to be a woman running away from all sorts of messy choices, who half way through the trip was going to realize the guy was expecting her to be a savior of some sort.
I started it over and over again, but ultimately it was a waste. It never felt honest, so I sat down one day and thought about what spoke to me. In Curbside Redemption I had tackled the life of someone allowing his addictions to control his life, and through this blog I have spent years thinking about how I have used food like a drug my whole life, but never thought of it in that way because we usually only see addiction as something that makes someone out of control. I decided to tackle addictions in my novel. I decided that the novel would be about 5 people whose lives connected through one character. I would tackle food addiction through two different lenses, gambling addiction, and a character whose constant searching for an escape to emptiness led her into a series of bad decisions. I also wanted to tackle a variety of issues. In fact, I might be tackling too many, but who cares?
This summer I have completed what I think is 75% of my very first novel. Yes, my physical goals fell by the wayside, but this novel has been insanely cathartic. It has allowed me to write about how it feels to be obese in an every day setting. How uncomfortable public transportation is, how sitting at a bar with stationary stools can be painful and embarrassing, and a whole host of other things that I didn't even know I was dealing with until I started writing. My goal is to finish my first draft before 2014 is over.
I have to do it because I already have my project for 2015 thought of: a collection of short stories revolving around the theme of TIME. I want to explore different genres, different styles, and different narrative structures, but be loosely connected by time. I have two stories already thought up.
Who knows if I will ever let anyone read any of these new finished products, and who knows if I ever plan to do anything with them (probably not) but it is the sense of accomplishing long standing goals that keeps me moving.
This post was meant to be more about the challenges of having so many goals, but I guess I really needed to write about the writing process.
As the school year gets going, I am planning to rededicate myself to my journey to health, so I am hoping to keep blogging semi regularly.
Monday, July 7, 2014
I pretend they don't, but words hurt
Before I begin, mother I apologize for any swearing in this post. I am not sure there will be any, but it is definitely possible.
Some days just suck. Today did not start out as one of those days. In fact, considering how sick I have been feeling for the last 36+ hours, I was in pretty great spirits when I woke up. I packed 6 boxes of books for our upcoming move, I cleaned the kitchen and this afternoon I topped 20,000 words for my novel. It was quite an excellent day all things considered. Then I went to Safeway to pick up Nyquil, throat drops, and a few other things. As I was leaving the store, I started to cross in the crosswalk, when this truck looked like it was not going to stop, so I stopped. I waited. The guy stopped. I waved him through. He waved me through. I waved him through, he waved me through so finally, I went. After maybe 6 steps the guy shouts out of his window "Hey move it along fatty."
Now this is not the first, second, third, fifth, twentieth, fiftieth or even hundredth time someone has shouted derogatory shit about my weight at me. It, in fact, happened just a week or so again. It started happening when I was 10 years old, happened on a daily basis through my teens, and then on a weekly basis in adulthood. I hear comments from random people in stores, I hear comments from students, and I obviously hear them when they are hurled at me loudly like today. There was a time in my life when every single one of these comments got to me. I missed school pretty much every day of 7th and 8th grade because I was tired of being mocked for being fat. I was tired of girls wondering aloud what bra size I wore. This comment today was nothing compare to some of the shit I have endured in my life. It is just a part of my life I have learned to accept because otherwise, most days would just be a nightmare. I just do not have the energy to fight every single person who shouts "Fat Ass" outside of their car.
I am not sure why, but today it hit me like the words were actually rocks being tossed at me. They stung. It hurt. A lot. I hate admitting it, because I have been in such a positive place lately, but frankly, I got to my car and nearly started crying. I know I am not unique and that there are people in this world who endure far worse than I do, which is partly why normally I can let those ugly words run off me like a warm breeze.
I want to say that I am writing this in better space, with some positive affirmation, but I am not. I am quite down. I know that people who shout things like that are probably insecure and I know that I am better than to let that get to me. I know all of the nice things my friends will say to pick me up, but frankly, right now, they do not matter. I feel awful. Some random person decided I needed to be reminded that I am fat. Once a week some random person feels the need to remind me that I am fat. As if, I am not aware of that when I wake up every morning and look in the mirror. I also wish I could say that I have accepted that I am fat, and that I am comfortable with that fact, but I have not and I am not. I have accepted that I need to appreciate my body more. I am comfortable knowing that I am fat and that I am working on myself, and that I am less fat than I was two years ago, but words hurt.
I see it all of the time. I hear students call each other names. I make snide comments about a weird looking stranger on occasion, thinking that person does not hear me, but what if that person does. I see people taking pictures of odd looking people and posting them on social media to mock them. Girls called each other bitch and slut like they are terms of endearment, but I wonder if the girls being called slut think of it as endearing? I know people get flung much worse hate than I get. I have no idea how people deal with it on a regular basis. This shit sucks. There is so much ugliness in the world, and I think, sometimes we do not think about how it hurts someone on an individual basis. My entire day was ruined by this one guy.
There is no denying that words hurt, but words can also heal. I do my best to tell the people I love, why I love them. I try to fill the world with hope, but maybe I need to extend that to strangers. Maybe I need to roll down my windows and say "Hey you look great today." Though we live in such a cynical world, that person would probably not believe me.
This is probably scatter brained and I am not sure I am arriving at any point, but I deal with thoughts through writing about them. I am not looking for pity, and I am not fishing for compliments. I am not sure what I am looking for. I do know that the next time I see someone who looks odd, or different or unique, I am not going to say anything mean. I do not want to be the reason someone gets to his/her car and nearly breaks down like I nearly did today.
I am sure next week when I hear someone call me a fat ass, I will let it roll off of me because, hey, that is the life of a fat person. But today, it has defeated me. Today it has me questioning whether I am ever going to lose enough weight to stop getting those comments from people. Today it has me wanting to turn on the TV, pop some popcorn and retreat from the world. I hate that some random guy has that much power over me in this moment.
This is usually the moment in my dark posts where I start to feel good again, but I don't. I am just going to end this with, next time you see someone and you want to ridicule them, even just to your friend, don't. It sucks to be on the receiving end of those comments for 20+ years.
Some days just suck. Today did not start out as one of those days. In fact, considering how sick I have been feeling for the last 36+ hours, I was in pretty great spirits when I woke up. I packed 6 boxes of books for our upcoming move, I cleaned the kitchen and this afternoon I topped 20,000 words for my novel. It was quite an excellent day all things considered. Then I went to Safeway to pick up Nyquil, throat drops, and a few other things. As I was leaving the store, I started to cross in the crosswalk, when this truck looked like it was not going to stop, so I stopped. I waited. The guy stopped. I waved him through. He waved me through. I waved him through, he waved me through so finally, I went. After maybe 6 steps the guy shouts out of his window "Hey move it along fatty."
Now this is not the first, second, third, fifth, twentieth, fiftieth or even hundredth time someone has shouted derogatory shit about my weight at me. It, in fact, happened just a week or so again. It started happening when I was 10 years old, happened on a daily basis through my teens, and then on a weekly basis in adulthood. I hear comments from random people in stores, I hear comments from students, and I obviously hear them when they are hurled at me loudly like today. There was a time in my life when every single one of these comments got to me. I missed school pretty much every day of 7th and 8th grade because I was tired of being mocked for being fat. I was tired of girls wondering aloud what bra size I wore. This comment today was nothing compare to some of the shit I have endured in my life. It is just a part of my life I have learned to accept because otherwise, most days would just be a nightmare. I just do not have the energy to fight every single person who shouts "Fat Ass" outside of their car.
I am not sure why, but today it hit me like the words were actually rocks being tossed at me. They stung. It hurt. A lot. I hate admitting it, because I have been in such a positive place lately, but frankly, I got to my car and nearly started crying. I know I am not unique and that there are people in this world who endure far worse than I do, which is partly why normally I can let those ugly words run off me like a warm breeze.
I want to say that I am writing this in better space, with some positive affirmation, but I am not. I am quite down. I know that people who shout things like that are probably insecure and I know that I am better than to let that get to me. I know all of the nice things my friends will say to pick me up, but frankly, right now, they do not matter. I feel awful. Some random person decided I needed to be reminded that I am fat. Once a week some random person feels the need to remind me that I am fat. As if, I am not aware of that when I wake up every morning and look in the mirror. I also wish I could say that I have accepted that I am fat, and that I am comfortable with that fact, but I have not and I am not. I have accepted that I need to appreciate my body more. I am comfortable knowing that I am fat and that I am working on myself, and that I am less fat than I was two years ago, but words hurt.
I see it all of the time. I hear students call each other names. I make snide comments about a weird looking stranger on occasion, thinking that person does not hear me, but what if that person does. I see people taking pictures of odd looking people and posting them on social media to mock them. Girls called each other bitch and slut like they are terms of endearment, but I wonder if the girls being called slut think of it as endearing? I know people get flung much worse hate than I get. I have no idea how people deal with it on a regular basis. This shit sucks. There is so much ugliness in the world, and I think, sometimes we do not think about how it hurts someone on an individual basis. My entire day was ruined by this one guy.
There is no denying that words hurt, but words can also heal. I do my best to tell the people I love, why I love them. I try to fill the world with hope, but maybe I need to extend that to strangers. Maybe I need to roll down my windows and say "Hey you look great today." Though we live in such a cynical world, that person would probably not believe me.
This is probably scatter brained and I am not sure I am arriving at any point, but I deal with thoughts through writing about them. I am not looking for pity, and I am not fishing for compliments. I am not sure what I am looking for. I do know that the next time I see someone who looks odd, or different or unique, I am not going to say anything mean. I do not want to be the reason someone gets to his/her car and nearly breaks down like I nearly did today.
I am sure next week when I hear someone call me a fat ass, I will let it roll off of me because, hey, that is the life of a fat person. But today, it has defeated me. Today it has me questioning whether I am ever going to lose enough weight to stop getting those comments from people. Today it has me wanting to turn on the TV, pop some popcorn and retreat from the world. I hate that some random guy has that much power over me in this moment.
This is usually the moment in my dark posts where I start to feel good again, but I don't. I am just going to end this with, next time you see someone and you want to ridicule them, even just to your friend, don't. It sucks to be on the receiving end of those comments for 20+ years.
Monday, June 23, 2014
My morning Pro and Con list
On a typical morning I wake up anywhere between 7:30 and 8:30, today was no different. I was stirred from my sleep around 7:45 by the sound of my poor sick and pained kitten receiving eye drops courtesy of Martina before Martina headed to work. I went on my walk/jog at 9:15. What follows is everything that happened in my brain between 7:45 and 9:15, and is not atypical for any given morning these days.
8:00 am: I should get out of bed, make some breakfast, let my food settle and go for a walk.
8:01 am: Why?? I am tired. I should stay in bed. My body aches from the stress of dealing with the cat this weekend. I have earned some extra sleep. Plus, I did not exactly get a ton of sleep last night because I was constantly worried about Daisy. Plus, if I go out for a walk, my body is just going to get sore, and my knee has been feeling sore for the last few days. Just Stay in bed for a little while then get up and make a huge filling and time consuming breakfast.
There it is, isn't it? When I look at the pros and cons of working out, the cons always outweigh the pros. There are a dozen or more things I enjoy doing more than working out. I would prefer to sleep, read, watch a movie, write, play video games, watch Orange is the New Black, eat, play with kittens and a host of other things. I am too tired. I am too achy. I am too stressed. I am too busy. I am not seeing results fast enough. WHAT IS THE DAMN POINT? The cons not only out number the pros, they are louder. That pesky pain in my right knee screams like it is being stabbed with a knife. The stress pounds repeatedly on my shoulders. My sleepy eyes heavy with exhaustion. It is so hard to hear over that. Sadly, this summer, I have listened to all of the cons way too much. My work outs have been spotty at best, full of the frustrating starts and stops that someone first driving a manual car feels. I cannot get any strong momentum going.
See, I can list 10-20 cons to getting up in the morning and working out and only 1 pro: To feel better. That is it. That is the only reason to exercise. It is simple and shockingly profound, but it is the only reason. If I want to feel better, I have to exercise. If I exercise regularly, suddenly so many of those cons dissipate. The pain in my knee lessens because my knee is getting stronger. That stress lessens because I am out working it out. I am thinking through the problems. I am getting my blood flowing. That sleepiness goes away because I sleep better at night after I work out. I just feel better. In fact, every facet of my day gets better. I do not feel lazy for playing video games after a work out. I get excited to try and cook new healthy dinners. I can even focus better on a book when I exercise in the morning because all of my senses are fired!
There may be 20 loud cons, and there maybe only 1 pro, but in terms of sheer weighted volume, the pro vastly outweighs the cons. The problem is remembering that. The problem is remembering how I felt this morning after walking/jogging over 3 miles. Yes, I was beat, and sweaty, and totally unequivocally gross, but I was also refreshed and felt like I had accomplished something. I was not lazy this morning, and in turn I played video games for much less time than I would have other wise. On days where I listen to that steady pro, I am not as accepting of a lifestyle of utter laziness.
Maybe other people have other reasons for exercising but I feel like they all come back to that one truth: We want to feel better about ourselves. Sure, for some it may be more of an image thing, but that still falls under the same umbrella. For me, I just want to feel like today I am better than the man I was yesterday. And I want to make it a challenge to be a better man tomorrow than I am today.
Today's soundtrack: Tech N9ne: Something Else. It is an album that pushed me to move faster and to think harder about my fitness goals because of how wonderfully honest the lyrics are. I would not recommend the album to anyone who is not a strict lover of rap music, though.
The goal now is to listen for the pro in the sea of noise that is the con list. It feels good to be back....today.
8:00 am: I should get out of bed, make some breakfast, let my food settle and go for a walk.
8:01 am: Why?? I am tired. I should stay in bed. My body aches from the stress of dealing with the cat this weekend. I have earned some extra sleep. Plus, I did not exactly get a ton of sleep last night because I was constantly worried about Daisy. Plus, if I go out for a walk, my body is just going to get sore, and my knee has been feeling sore for the last few days. Just Stay in bed for a little while then get up and make a huge filling and time consuming breakfast.
There it is, isn't it? When I look at the pros and cons of working out, the cons always outweigh the pros. There are a dozen or more things I enjoy doing more than working out. I would prefer to sleep, read, watch a movie, write, play video games, watch Orange is the New Black, eat, play with kittens and a host of other things. I am too tired. I am too achy. I am too stressed. I am too busy. I am not seeing results fast enough. WHAT IS THE DAMN POINT? The cons not only out number the pros, they are louder. That pesky pain in my right knee screams like it is being stabbed with a knife. The stress pounds repeatedly on my shoulders. My sleepy eyes heavy with exhaustion. It is so hard to hear over that. Sadly, this summer, I have listened to all of the cons way too much. My work outs have been spotty at best, full of the frustrating starts and stops that someone first driving a manual car feels. I cannot get any strong momentum going.
See, I can list 10-20 cons to getting up in the morning and working out and only 1 pro: To feel better. That is it. That is the only reason to exercise. It is simple and shockingly profound, but it is the only reason. If I want to feel better, I have to exercise. If I exercise regularly, suddenly so many of those cons dissipate. The pain in my knee lessens because my knee is getting stronger. That stress lessens because I am out working it out. I am thinking through the problems. I am getting my blood flowing. That sleepiness goes away because I sleep better at night after I work out. I just feel better. In fact, every facet of my day gets better. I do not feel lazy for playing video games after a work out. I get excited to try and cook new healthy dinners. I can even focus better on a book when I exercise in the morning because all of my senses are fired!
There may be 20 loud cons, and there maybe only 1 pro, but in terms of sheer weighted volume, the pro vastly outweighs the cons. The problem is remembering that. The problem is remembering how I felt this morning after walking/jogging over 3 miles. Yes, I was beat, and sweaty, and totally unequivocally gross, but I was also refreshed and felt like I had accomplished something. I was not lazy this morning, and in turn I played video games for much less time than I would have other wise. On days where I listen to that steady pro, I am not as accepting of a lifestyle of utter laziness.
Maybe other people have other reasons for exercising but I feel like they all come back to that one truth: We want to feel better about ourselves. Sure, for some it may be more of an image thing, but that still falls under the same umbrella. For me, I just want to feel like today I am better than the man I was yesterday. And I want to make it a challenge to be a better man tomorrow than I am today.
Today's soundtrack: Tech N9ne: Something Else. It is an album that pushed me to move faster and to think harder about my fitness goals because of how wonderfully honest the lyrics are. I would not recommend the album to anyone who is not a strict lover of rap music, though.
The goal now is to listen for the pro in the sea of noise that is the con list. It feels good to be back....today.
Friday, June 13, 2014
The myth of the "friend zone."
Before I dive in: I know this is not what this blog is typically about. I have been wrestling with this for a few weeks and decided the only way to stop wrestling with it was to just write it. I will go back to my usual posts next week. Also, this is purely anecdotal. I am adding my voice to the dialogue only for those who know me. I am no trying to incite anything major, there are no studies cited, there is not social justice theoretical framework that is framing this post. It is a purely subjective blog post. Take it or leave it. Oh also, this is my personal experience, so it is going to be about male/female friendships, not those of someone attracted to the same sex having same sex friendships. Okay here goes.
In 9th grade I had a friend who had a bit of a reputation. Getting over the fact that these reputations existed in 9th grade, people assumed I was friends with her because I was hoping the stories of her sexual aggressiveness were true. When someone asked me about it, I said that we were not hooking up that person said "Well then, what's the point" as if the only reason to be friends with a sexually active female was to have sex with her. This person assumed that I wanted sex, but that she was unwilling to give it to me. This is when I became familiar with the "Friend Zone" term. This girl would go on to be a great to me through high school. In fact, that same year, my 9th grade class went to Ashland for the Shakespeare festival, and after someone who shoved me to the ground in the pouring rain, and I was unable to go change my clothes because we were running late for a show, this girl was the only person who would sit with me at the show. She was the only friend of mine who helped me clean up at the theater, and she was the only one who hung out with me during the rest of the trip after my other friends joined the chorus of people who were laughing at me. If friendship is measured by what I got out of it, well she was a great friend because she salvaged my first trip to Ashland.
All of my life I have had incredible female friends. I have also always had way more female friends than male friends. It is something that my ex-girlfriend could never get over. It started with that girl in 9th grade and has continued to this day. Over the years I have had people always mention how often I have been put in the Friend Zone, and I always reacted the way I was culturally told to act: disappointed. I would act like the victim I thought I was supposed to act like. I was acting upset that these girls did not want to have sex with me, but the reality is, I was not upset. I understand attraction. I get that friendship does not equal sex. I also understand that my life does not revolve around sex. When I look back on my life time of great female friendships, all I think about are the incredibly rich relationships I have with them. I think about all of the great life lessons I have learned through the friendships. You know the same things I learn in my male friendships, because FRIENDSHIP IS NOT ABOUT GETTING TO SEX.
I like to think that my girlfriend would confirm that I am a good boyfriend. She might even say I am a great boyfriend. I strive be the best boyfriend I can be on a daily basis, but I strongly believe I am, on my worst day,a good boyfriend. I have always attempted to treat my girlfriend in a way that her friends who have not met me would love me because of how she talks about me. I believe I accomplish this because of 2 things. First, I was raised by a wonderful man who treated my mom with incredible respect. Growing up my parents had regular date nights, and while my dad is not super affectionate, I took notice of how he treated my mother. The second reason I think I am able to accomplish this is because of all of my female friends. Over the years I took notice of what girls want. Yes, it gets frustrating when girls you like date jerks, but that was not because I thought they should be with me, but because I wanted them to be happy, and over the last 20 years of my life, I listened to what girls generally want. I got so much out of those friendships because each one made me a better person, and prepared me for the time when I met a girl who not only wanted to be my friend, but wanted to my partner in life, love, and friendship.
If you are looking at sex with women as the end game, you are not a nice guy, and you did not get put in the Friend Zone by a girl, you got put in the Asshole Zone, because that is what you are. I have no idea what would have happened if some of my female friends had had sex with me. Were there female friends I wanted to have sex with? Yes, absolutely, but who knows how different my life would have been. Would that relationship have been irrevocably damaged beyond repair? Would it have turned me in the kind of guy who was looking at sex as the end game? I have no idea, but I do know that I am thankful for every single female friend in my past. Friendship is not a consolation prize. Sex is not "first place" because sex is not a prize to be won. If you think a girl has put you in the Friend Zone, you are not actually friends with this girl. Friends do not turn their backs if sex is off the table. Yes, it can be difficult to have feelings for a girl and listen to her complain about her current boyfriend, and if it gets to be too much, just walk away because you are not doing yourself or her any favors, but please stop complaining about being in the Friend Zone. If you are actually a friend, you will listen to her, and be there for her even if the boyfriend is a jerk. Then, when the time comes that you find a girl who wants to be with you, remember all of those lessons you learned from your female friends and be the best boyfriend you can be, and continue to be the best friend you can be to your female friends.
I am the man I am today because of countless female friends, some of which I want to mention here in no particular order: Martina, Wendy, Marina, Jessica, Jessica, Taylor, Karly, Megan, Christina, Emylee, Lyndi, Cindy, Sarah, Erin, Joelle, Shirley, Malia, Megan, Andrea, Carolyn, Caitland, Lauren, Liz, Amanda, Tayler, Brandi, Brittany, China. Thank you ladies for helping me be a better friend. Thank you for helping me be a better human. Thank you for helping me be just better.
SO to answer the age old question about men and women being friends, yes they can be, and it is awesome.
In 9th grade I had a friend who had a bit of a reputation. Getting over the fact that these reputations existed in 9th grade, people assumed I was friends with her because I was hoping the stories of her sexual aggressiveness were true. When someone asked me about it, I said that we were not hooking up that person said "Well then, what's the point" as if the only reason to be friends with a sexually active female was to have sex with her. This person assumed that I wanted sex, but that she was unwilling to give it to me. This is when I became familiar with the "Friend Zone" term. This girl would go on to be a great to me through high school. In fact, that same year, my 9th grade class went to Ashland for the Shakespeare festival, and after someone who shoved me to the ground in the pouring rain, and I was unable to go change my clothes because we were running late for a show, this girl was the only person who would sit with me at the show. She was the only friend of mine who helped me clean up at the theater, and she was the only one who hung out with me during the rest of the trip after my other friends joined the chorus of people who were laughing at me. If friendship is measured by what I got out of it, well she was a great friend because she salvaged my first trip to Ashland.
All of my life I have had incredible female friends. I have also always had way more female friends than male friends. It is something that my ex-girlfriend could never get over. It started with that girl in 9th grade and has continued to this day. Over the years I have had people always mention how often I have been put in the Friend Zone, and I always reacted the way I was culturally told to act: disappointed. I would act like the victim I thought I was supposed to act like. I was acting upset that these girls did not want to have sex with me, but the reality is, I was not upset. I understand attraction. I get that friendship does not equal sex. I also understand that my life does not revolve around sex. When I look back on my life time of great female friendships, all I think about are the incredibly rich relationships I have with them. I think about all of the great life lessons I have learned through the friendships. You know the same things I learn in my male friendships, because FRIENDSHIP IS NOT ABOUT GETTING TO SEX.
I like to think that my girlfriend would confirm that I am a good boyfriend. She might even say I am a great boyfriend. I strive be the best boyfriend I can be on a daily basis, but I strongly believe I am, on my worst day,a good boyfriend. I have always attempted to treat my girlfriend in a way that her friends who have not met me would love me because of how she talks about me. I believe I accomplish this because of 2 things. First, I was raised by a wonderful man who treated my mom with incredible respect. Growing up my parents had regular date nights, and while my dad is not super affectionate, I took notice of how he treated my mother. The second reason I think I am able to accomplish this is because of all of my female friends. Over the years I took notice of what girls want. Yes, it gets frustrating when girls you like date jerks, but that was not because I thought they should be with me, but because I wanted them to be happy, and over the last 20 years of my life, I listened to what girls generally want. I got so much out of those friendships because each one made me a better person, and prepared me for the time when I met a girl who not only wanted to be my friend, but wanted to my partner in life, love, and friendship.
If you are looking at sex with women as the end game, you are not a nice guy, and you did not get put in the Friend Zone by a girl, you got put in the Asshole Zone, because that is what you are. I have no idea what would have happened if some of my female friends had had sex with me. Were there female friends I wanted to have sex with? Yes, absolutely, but who knows how different my life would have been. Would that relationship have been irrevocably damaged beyond repair? Would it have turned me in the kind of guy who was looking at sex as the end game? I have no idea, but I do know that I am thankful for every single female friend in my past. Friendship is not a consolation prize. Sex is not "first place" because sex is not a prize to be won. If you think a girl has put you in the Friend Zone, you are not actually friends with this girl. Friends do not turn their backs if sex is off the table. Yes, it can be difficult to have feelings for a girl and listen to her complain about her current boyfriend, and if it gets to be too much, just walk away because you are not doing yourself or her any favors, but please stop complaining about being in the Friend Zone. If you are actually a friend, you will listen to her, and be there for her even if the boyfriend is a jerk. Then, when the time comes that you find a girl who wants to be with you, remember all of those lessons you learned from your female friends and be the best boyfriend you can be, and continue to be the best friend you can be to your female friends.
I am the man I am today because of countless female friends, some of which I want to mention here in no particular order: Martina, Wendy, Marina, Jessica, Jessica, Taylor, Karly, Megan, Christina, Emylee, Lyndi, Cindy, Sarah, Erin, Joelle, Shirley, Malia, Megan, Andrea, Carolyn, Caitland, Lauren, Liz, Amanda, Tayler, Brandi, Brittany, China. Thank you ladies for helping me be a better friend. Thank you for helping me be a better human. Thank you for helping me be just better.
SO to answer the age old question about men and women being friends, yes they can be, and it is awesome.
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Appreciating the only body I get
I am currently sitting in a Barnes and Noble, where I have been holed up for a few hours to escape the heat in the world, because, as I documented on Facebook yesterday, our air conditioning is broken. A broken A/C is the perfect cap to this current heat wave we are experiencing, right? Martina and I have been lucky to have great people around us to help when things go wrong, so we are doing just fine. Besides, in the grand scheme of life, a broken A/C unit seems relatively small. It makes summer days unpleasant, but there are enough places like B&N that exist to make it manageable. The heat, of course, is not the point of this post, but it relevant to my health.
Summer is currently a week old, and I am proud of my first week. I reached my steps goal 5 of my 6 days, and the day I did not get there, I got close (1 mile away). I ate all of the vegetables, including making stir fry for the first time, roasting broccoli for the first time, and spinach in my breakfast every day and spinach in my sandwiches on sandwich days. Outside of Wednesday night when Martina and I were celebrating, I cut out super salty snacks, and more importantly to my long term financial sanity, we only ate out 1 night. The start of this week has had complications because of the heat. Yesterday I did manage to go over my steps goal by 4,000 steps, but we have not been able to cook at home so far. So far, things are going well. However, I have not been able to truly find a solid rhythm in these things. I went out for walks a few days, but other days I have just relied on my every day browsing of shelves at B&N or Safeway for my steps. I have not yet begun my second daily work out, and I spent too much time during my first week playing video games and not enough reading or writing.
This is my 8th or 9th "Day One" since I began my journey 3 years ago. I have written extensively about Day One, and if I were more tech savvy, I would link to that post, so I am not going to rehash the Day One idea. I want to focus on my positives, in hopes of providing myself with a reminder that baby steps are important. Last summer is when I was at the height of my jogging and biking. I was straight up killing it because I had built a routine. I am slowly building that routine now. My alarm goes off at 8 every morning. Now, I have to actually GET UP when it goes off, instead of laying in bed for another hour. If I can actually get up at 8, I can get out on my morning walk/jog before 9, which is manageable with the heat levels these days. I also need to utilize the pool more. The big issue there is my appearance. I am still incredibly self conscious about all of the fat I am carrying all over my body. It is never an issue when I have Martina with me, but when I go down to a pool by myself, I am suddenly incredibly aware of how fat I am and how gross I feel/look. It is an issue I am continuing to work through, but my self conscious mind always believes everyone else is staring at me and being super grossed out by the pasty white flab swimming through the water. I know, with time, I will conquer this. The fact that I can be shirtless in my apartment is already huge progress for me.
Instead of agonizing over that self consciousness, I am going to focus on the positive. Buying shorts and buying swim trunks this week, was actually a painless process. I have been wearing the same pair of shorts for a few years because shopping for them is always a hassle. Not only was I able to find swim trunks that fit (I usually purchase swim trunks that are too small because it is what they have available), I found regular shorts that fit perfectly and are 5 sizes smaller than when I was at my heaviest. Beyond that, I finally felt comfortable buying a relatively thin t-shirt. Typically Big and Tall size shirts are thick, and do not breathe AT ALL, but this weekend I tried on a thinner shirt and felt comfortable in it. I am not as worried about how it lays against my rolls of fat, or worried about how OTHER people might feel about how I look in a shirt. When you are in 100 plus degree heat, the last thing I want is to be in a t shirt that does not breathe, and just collects sweat.
In keeping with the theme for summer, reconnecting, I am reconnecting with loving myself. It can be a trying thing, to look at yourself and just love what you see. I am not sure I have had long periods of time where I truly loved myself, but I am working hard to replicate those moments, and have them last longer. My body is the only body I get, so I need to appreciate it more. I have started by treating it better, but I have to realize that even if I lose all of this weight, it will still be the same body. I think sometimes I get lost in that. I keep thinking if I lose the weight, I will somehow get a "better" body. It will still be this body. It may look different, but it will still be the body that has been 1 fight. It will still be the same body that has been behind the wheel, for 10 fender benders, none of which were my fault. It will be the same body I had when I fell in love, got my heart broken and fell in love again. It is the same body that played sports as a kid, and danced in theater starting at age 15.
For some reason, just typing that last paragraph out feels freeing. It a lesson I am still learning, but there it is typed in the ink of the internet. I will love my body because it is the only body I get. I will love myself because this is the only *myself* I get. It starts with appreciating myself and my body. It starts with understanding how to treat myself and my body. It starts with treating myself and body well. it starts with understanding this is my body and this is the only body I get.
Summer is currently a week old, and I am proud of my first week. I reached my steps goal 5 of my 6 days, and the day I did not get there, I got close (1 mile away). I ate all of the vegetables, including making stir fry for the first time, roasting broccoli for the first time, and spinach in my breakfast every day and spinach in my sandwiches on sandwich days. Outside of Wednesday night when Martina and I were celebrating, I cut out super salty snacks, and more importantly to my long term financial sanity, we only ate out 1 night. The start of this week has had complications because of the heat. Yesterday I did manage to go over my steps goal by 4,000 steps, but we have not been able to cook at home so far. So far, things are going well. However, I have not been able to truly find a solid rhythm in these things. I went out for walks a few days, but other days I have just relied on my every day browsing of shelves at B&N or Safeway for my steps. I have not yet begun my second daily work out, and I spent too much time during my first week playing video games and not enough reading or writing.
This is my 8th or 9th "Day One" since I began my journey 3 years ago. I have written extensively about Day One, and if I were more tech savvy, I would link to that post, so I am not going to rehash the Day One idea. I want to focus on my positives, in hopes of providing myself with a reminder that baby steps are important. Last summer is when I was at the height of my jogging and biking. I was straight up killing it because I had built a routine. I am slowly building that routine now. My alarm goes off at 8 every morning. Now, I have to actually GET UP when it goes off, instead of laying in bed for another hour. If I can actually get up at 8, I can get out on my morning walk/jog before 9, which is manageable with the heat levels these days. I also need to utilize the pool more. The big issue there is my appearance. I am still incredibly self conscious about all of the fat I am carrying all over my body. It is never an issue when I have Martina with me, but when I go down to a pool by myself, I am suddenly incredibly aware of how fat I am and how gross I feel/look. It is an issue I am continuing to work through, but my self conscious mind always believes everyone else is staring at me and being super grossed out by the pasty white flab swimming through the water. I know, with time, I will conquer this. The fact that I can be shirtless in my apartment is already huge progress for me.
Instead of agonizing over that self consciousness, I am going to focus on the positive. Buying shorts and buying swim trunks this week, was actually a painless process. I have been wearing the same pair of shorts for a few years because shopping for them is always a hassle. Not only was I able to find swim trunks that fit (I usually purchase swim trunks that are too small because it is what they have available), I found regular shorts that fit perfectly and are 5 sizes smaller than when I was at my heaviest. Beyond that, I finally felt comfortable buying a relatively thin t-shirt. Typically Big and Tall size shirts are thick, and do not breathe AT ALL, but this weekend I tried on a thinner shirt and felt comfortable in it. I am not as worried about how it lays against my rolls of fat, or worried about how OTHER people might feel about how I look in a shirt. When you are in 100 plus degree heat, the last thing I want is to be in a t shirt that does not breathe, and just collects sweat.
In keeping with the theme for summer, reconnecting, I am reconnecting with loving myself. It can be a trying thing, to look at yourself and just love what you see. I am not sure I have had long periods of time where I truly loved myself, but I am working hard to replicate those moments, and have them last longer. My body is the only body I get, so I need to appreciate it more. I have started by treating it better, but I have to realize that even if I lose all of this weight, it will still be the same body. I think sometimes I get lost in that. I keep thinking if I lose the weight, I will somehow get a "better" body. It will still be this body. It may look different, but it will still be the body that has been 1 fight. It will still be the same body that has been behind the wheel, for 10 fender benders, none of which were my fault. It will be the same body I had when I fell in love, got my heart broken and fell in love again. It is the same body that played sports as a kid, and danced in theater starting at age 15.
For some reason, just typing that last paragraph out feels freeing. It a lesson I am still learning, but there it is typed in the ink of the internet. I will love my body because it is the only body I get. I will love myself because this is the only *myself* I get. It starts with appreciating myself and my body. It starts with understanding how to treat myself and my body. It starts with treating myself and body well. it starts with understanding this is my body and this is the only body I get.
Monday, June 2, 2014
The word of the summer: reconnect
Dear readers,
I apologize for the absence. Who knew teaching high school would be so time consuming? On top of being too time consuming to blog, it was actually too time consuming to keep myself moving in big positive steps with my health, which leads me to this letter to you faithful readers.
I am back. I am actually back, not saying I am back, and then never updating back, but back back. I am going to update this blog at least once a week for the entire summer, and if I get myself into the habit of doing it over the summer, I believe I will continue it once the next school begins. I am taking the same approach to working out. This year was a world of ups and downs as far as my physical health went and it is time to grab a hold of this elusive mistress I call health, and put a damn ring on it. My plan is simply to be active every day this summer. I want to be active in the morning and then again mid day or later. The goal is to walk/run every morning and then strength train/swim later in every day. I am determined to be in much better shape in a few months. I want to get to the point where I cannot handle a day where I am not active. The walking around campus is nice, but it did not get my where I want to go. Where do I want to go? I want to be healthy. That goal has not changed. Yes, I have learned to accept myself for my flaws, and strengths, but the goal is walk up a flight of stairs and be able to carry on a conversation without gasping for breath. The goal is to not feel like I am going to hurt myself getting out of bed. The goal is to lessen the strain on my knees, legs, and feet. The goal is to feel like I am going to live a long healthy life and I cannot do that the way I have been living for most of my life. It is time to reconnect with my body.
Besides the working out, I am continuing to experiment with food. I have maintained a fairly good diet over the last few months, but there were weeks when I was eating doughnuts for breakfast, and not eating lunch and then eating an awful dinner. I am not shooting for perfection, but I am shooting for better. My biggest fear (outside of clowns) is getting too complacent. I have a damn excellent life right now. I have the girl, the job, the cats, the friends. I mean what else could a guy truly need? Well, I can always get better. With food, Martina and I are trying to incorporate more vegetables into our diet. It is the summer of vegetables! Woo hoo! I love cooking and it is time to reconnect with that love of cooking, and eating healthy things that are tasty.
Outside of the physical health, it is time to reconnect to what feeds my soul. I am going to read more than a book a week this summer. Reading has long been one of my favorite leisurely activities and there are times when I get too involved in video games, television, or movies, that I forget how much I love to sit and read all day long. I have a lengthy list of books to read this summer and I am going to put a giant dent in it. I am going to reconnect with my writer's voice. Last year I wrote a novella that I am incredibly proud of and that the 6 people who have read it (would be 7 if someone would ever finish it. You know who you are!) have told me is great. Earlier this year I wrote a 3 page short story, that I think is one of the best things I have ever written. I shared it with my Pre-AP students on the last day of school, and they were all captivated by it, and it pumped me up. This summer, I want to think big...like big big. I am going to tackle a novel. I am going to research and start my novel with the hopes that when summer ends, I will keep writing.
Lastly in my summer of reconnecting, I am going to be out in the world more. The goal is to never go more than 2 days of spending the day alone in my apartment. I want to reconnect with the people in my life that I love, and I want to reconnect with the people I could love. This is my time to make an impact in my own life. I want to take day trips to places I have never been. I want to experience happy hours, and food from restaurants I have never been to before. I want to see people I have not seen in years, and take in their stories face to face, and not just through Facebook. If you live in the Sacramento area and want someone to go do things with, contact me. I am down.
I am blessed to be in a career that has a few months off every year. As much as the statement "I'm blessed" irks some dear friends, I am blessed. I have a career that I love and that challenges me, but also allows me to reboot my system. I can take this summer to do all of the things I laid out above, and still find time to be a better teacher next year. My last goal is to do just that: teach myself to be a better teacher. Research methods, find better, more rigorous activities and lessons, and ways to more fully engage my students.
I will reconnect with myself this summer and in doing so, I am hoping to reconnect to the joy I live for. I hope that my prolonged absence did not lose me any readers, but if it did, I hope I can reconnect with them and I hope that everyone comes along this journey with me. It has been a blast thus far, and it is only going to get better.
Sincerely,
Kyle
P.S. I will have another post this week dealing with a specific issue.
I apologize for the absence. Who knew teaching high school would be so time consuming? On top of being too time consuming to blog, it was actually too time consuming to keep myself moving in big positive steps with my health, which leads me to this letter to you faithful readers.
I am back. I am actually back, not saying I am back, and then never updating back, but back back. I am going to update this blog at least once a week for the entire summer, and if I get myself into the habit of doing it over the summer, I believe I will continue it once the next school begins. I am taking the same approach to working out. This year was a world of ups and downs as far as my physical health went and it is time to grab a hold of this elusive mistress I call health, and put a damn ring on it. My plan is simply to be active every day this summer. I want to be active in the morning and then again mid day or later. The goal is to walk/run every morning and then strength train/swim later in every day. I am determined to be in much better shape in a few months. I want to get to the point where I cannot handle a day where I am not active. The walking around campus is nice, but it did not get my where I want to go. Where do I want to go? I want to be healthy. That goal has not changed. Yes, I have learned to accept myself for my flaws, and strengths, but the goal is walk up a flight of stairs and be able to carry on a conversation without gasping for breath. The goal is to not feel like I am going to hurt myself getting out of bed. The goal is to lessen the strain on my knees, legs, and feet. The goal is to feel like I am going to live a long healthy life and I cannot do that the way I have been living for most of my life. It is time to reconnect with my body.
Besides the working out, I am continuing to experiment with food. I have maintained a fairly good diet over the last few months, but there were weeks when I was eating doughnuts for breakfast, and not eating lunch and then eating an awful dinner. I am not shooting for perfection, but I am shooting for better. My biggest fear (outside of clowns) is getting too complacent. I have a damn excellent life right now. I have the girl, the job, the cats, the friends. I mean what else could a guy truly need? Well, I can always get better. With food, Martina and I are trying to incorporate more vegetables into our diet. It is the summer of vegetables! Woo hoo! I love cooking and it is time to reconnect with that love of cooking, and eating healthy things that are tasty.
Outside of the physical health, it is time to reconnect to what feeds my soul. I am going to read more than a book a week this summer. Reading has long been one of my favorite leisurely activities and there are times when I get too involved in video games, television, or movies, that I forget how much I love to sit and read all day long. I have a lengthy list of books to read this summer and I am going to put a giant dent in it. I am going to reconnect with my writer's voice. Last year I wrote a novella that I am incredibly proud of and that the 6 people who have read it (would be 7 if someone would ever finish it. You know who you are!) have told me is great. Earlier this year I wrote a 3 page short story, that I think is one of the best things I have ever written. I shared it with my Pre-AP students on the last day of school, and they were all captivated by it, and it pumped me up. This summer, I want to think big...like big big. I am going to tackle a novel. I am going to research and start my novel with the hopes that when summer ends, I will keep writing.
Lastly in my summer of reconnecting, I am going to be out in the world more. The goal is to never go more than 2 days of spending the day alone in my apartment. I want to reconnect with the people in my life that I love, and I want to reconnect with the people I could love. This is my time to make an impact in my own life. I want to take day trips to places I have never been. I want to experience happy hours, and food from restaurants I have never been to before. I want to see people I have not seen in years, and take in their stories face to face, and not just through Facebook. If you live in the Sacramento area and want someone to go do things with, contact me. I am down.
I am blessed to be in a career that has a few months off every year. As much as the statement "I'm blessed" irks some dear friends, I am blessed. I have a career that I love and that challenges me, but also allows me to reboot my system. I can take this summer to do all of the things I laid out above, and still find time to be a better teacher next year. My last goal is to do just that: teach myself to be a better teacher. Research methods, find better, more rigorous activities and lessons, and ways to more fully engage my students.
I will reconnect with myself this summer and in doing so, I am hoping to reconnect to the joy I live for. I hope that my prolonged absence did not lose me any readers, but if it did, I hope I can reconnect with them and I hope that everyone comes along this journey with me. It has been a blast thus far, and it is only going to get better.
Sincerely,
Kyle
P.S. I will have another post this week dealing with a specific issue.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Moving on to year number 3
April first will mark the end of the second year of my journey to health. In year one I lost over 50 pounds and started to get a handle on my emotional health. In year two I lost a little under 30 pounds, putting my total weight loss thus far just a shade under 80 pounds. It does not feel like it that much, if I am being honest. I can see that I have lost weight, but I thought an 80 lb. loss would look much more dramatic. Of course, part of the reason why it does not look so dramatic is because I have a naturally wide and big frame. What I learned in year two is far more important than how much I lost though. In my second year of health, I stopped drinking soda completely, I have gone 3 full months without any fast food, and have only craved it twice. In my second year of health I did a hike I never would have imagined doing even 2 years ago. In my second year I learned how to conquer my fear. I have almost no fear of this journey now. A life lived with minimal fear is a stellar thing.
The last 365 days have taught me so much about myself. Last summer I very nearly had a teaching job, and then lost it last minute. Instead of throwing me into a tail spin, I just kept believing something would happen. Then something did happen and I landed a great job for a first year teacher. Year two saw Martina join me big time on a quest for health and now she has become the biggest inspiration for my own journey. Year two is when I really took my mental health by storm. I stopped blaming myself for the choices I made in my past. I stopped allowing other people to make me feel bad about myself. I started to truly get rid of the toxic relationships of my life. It was also the year I started to conquer real life problems. I am beginning to pay back my student loans (only 9 years left!!), I live on a real budget. I shop for food responsibly now. I look forward to learning how to cook delicious and healthy meals. I find myself Googling salad recipes randomly, I mean who does that?
Where does that leave me? I have 3 dress shirts that I love that I can no longer wear, but am still too obese to buy dress shirts in the "regular" section of a store. I am still obese. I still ache if I do too much walking. There is still so much work to be done. There is still so much weight to lose. There is still so much work to do until I feel healthy enough to feel like I am going to be on this planet for a long time. The best things I have going forward are optimism and history. I know that I can do it because each year I have gotten healthier in some way. I conquered a massive hike last weekend, a hike that a year ago I would have quit. I can conquer whatever comes next. The goal is to keep moving forward.
The big goal for this year is to take advantage of "me time" when I get it. This summer I will have bunches of time and I have a plan of how I am going to take advantage of it. Every day will consist of two work outs. Yes, two. In the morning I plan to run 6 days a week. The eventual goal is to conquer my fear of running a 5K with other people. Later in the day, I will be doing strength training. With the money I will save on gas from not driving 130 miles a day, I am going to get some personal training sessions at our gym. I need a good starting point. I believe this is going to be the year where I really conquer my physical health. I can feel it deep inside myself. I think I am overcoming those last things that have been holding me back. Also this summer I am planning to write a novel. I mention this because I think it will help me in my health quest because I am planning to write it about food addiction. I am already very excited about this summer and I just have 9 weeks to go until I get there.
3 years ago I never would have imagined doing the things I have done the last two years. It starts with being honest with myself and with everyone who has been reading over the years. I never imagined kicking my dependency on soda and energy drinks. I never thought I could go months without any fast food. I have basically eliminated beef from my regular diet. I eat chicken like a fiend now and growing up I hated it. I have gone on two pretty gnarly hikes. I spent a whole summer running nearly every day. I own running shoes. I wore out a pair of running shoes! I have forgiven myself for things I had been holding onto for nearly a decade. I have allowed people to help me when I have needed it. I have realized just how great life is. That last one might be cheesy, but so be it. I have spent so much of life oblivious to how great life can be, that now that I see it, I want everyone else around me to understand how great life can be.
I am thankful to everyone who has read this blog over the last two years. I am thankful for the people who continue to inspire me every day, and thankful for the people who have told me that I have inspired them because those people have, in turn, inspired me. I hope that people will continue to tune in because my journey to health is just getting good!!
The last 365 days have taught me so much about myself. Last summer I very nearly had a teaching job, and then lost it last minute. Instead of throwing me into a tail spin, I just kept believing something would happen. Then something did happen and I landed a great job for a first year teacher. Year two saw Martina join me big time on a quest for health and now she has become the biggest inspiration for my own journey. Year two is when I really took my mental health by storm. I stopped blaming myself for the choices I made in my past. I stopped allowing other people to make me feel bad about myself. I started to truly get rid of the toxic relationships of my life. It was also the year I started to conquer real life problems. I am beginning to pay back my student loans (only 9 years left!!), I live on a real budget. I shop for food responsibly now. I look forward to learning how to cook delicious and healthy meals. I find myself Googling salad recipes randomly, I mean who does that?
Where does that leave me? I have 3 dress shirts that I love that I can no longer wear, but am still too obese to buy dress shirts in the "regular" section of a store. I am still obese. I still ache if I do too much walking. There is still so much work to be done. There is still so much weight to lose. There is still so much work to do until I feel healthy enough to feel like I am going to be on this planet for a long time. The best things I have going forward are optimism and history. I know that I can do it because each year I have gotten healthier in some way. I conquered a massive hike last weekend, a hike that a year ago I would have quit. I can conquer whatever comes next. The goal is to keep moving forward.
The big goal for this year is to take advantage of "me time" when I get it. This summer I will have bunches of time and I have a plan of how I am going to take advantage of it. Every day will consist of two work outs. Yes, two. In the morning I plan to run 6 days a week. The eventual goal is to conquer my fear of running a 5K with other people. Later in the day, I will be doing strength training. With the money I will save on gas from not driving 130 miles a day, I am going to get some personal training sessions at our gym. I need a good starting point. I believe this is going to be the year where I really conquer my physical health. I can feel it deep inside myself. I think I am overcoming those last things that have been holding me back. Also this summer I am planning to write a novel. I mention this because I think it will help me in my health quest because I am planning to write it about food addiction. I am already very excited about this summer and I just have 9 weeks to go until I get there.
3 years ago I never would have imagined doing the things I have done the last two years. It starts with being honest with myself and with everyone who has been reading over the years. I never imagined kicking my dependency on soda and energy drinks. I never thought I could go months without any fast food. I have basically eliminated beef from my regular diet. I eat chicken like a fiend now and growing up I hated it. I have gone on two pretty gnarly hikes. I spent a whole summer running nearly every day. I own running shoes. I wore out a pair of running shoes! I have forgiven myself for things I had been holding onto for nearly a decade. I have allowed people to help me when I have needed it. I have realized just how great life is. That last one might be cheesy, but so be it. I have spent so much of life oblivious to how great life can be, that now that I see it, I want everyone else around me to understand how great life can be.
I am thankful to everyone who has read this blog over the last two years. I am thankful for the people who continue to inspire me every day, and thankful for the people who have told me that I have inspired them because those people have, in turn, inspired me. I hope that people will continue to tune in because my journey to health is just getting good!!
Saturday, February 22, 2014
2014: The year of cutting out the nonsense
This post comes courtesy of a two hour long brunch with my best friend Erik. As Erik recently turned 30 and I am about to head into my mid-30s, we were having a conversation about how things have changed as we have gotten older, and one of the biggest changes we have found recently, is that we are done dealing with the nonsense. To be honest, the word we used was not nonsense, but this is a family safe blog, so I made the decision to censor myself here.
Over the last few years, I have talked at length about getting rid of the toxic people/things in my life, and to be honest, it has been awesome. This new attitude goes beyond that. It gets at this idea that I feel like I am at a place in my life, where I do not have time for games or double speak or passive aggressive behaviors. I am at a place in my life, where I want to be up front with people and I expect them to do the same, and if they are not going to be up front, it is time to stop wasting energy on their collective nonsense. I have become more liberal about blocking/unfriending/unfollowing people from various social media sites if I get tired of the nonsense. This is not about getting rid of people who disagree with me, but getting rid of people who are posting things just to get a rise out of people without really paying attention to what they are posting, especially not researching stupid memes. This is about getting rid of people who complain nonstop about awful things are, but do nothing to fix their personal situation. This is about making my entire social media experience more worthwhile.
It is also about not wasting time on people who are not really important to me. I have enough people in my life who actually care, that why would I waste time on people who clearly do not care about my life? When you start to think about who matters NOW as opposed to who has mattered in the past, life gets much more focused. At some point, the past has to stay in the past. This is something we have been discussing in class recently, as we read through The Great Gatsby. My students get stuck on things they cannot change, and I have some students who are trying so hard to recapture a moment with a specific person, and we are reading this book about a guy who destroys multiple lives by doing that. It is possible to acknowledge having loved someone, and yet still allow yourself to truly move on in life to something bigger and better.
This also gets at the idea of just putting yourself out there without worrying too much about what other people will think. Last week I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Utah with a bunch of people I had never met. If this had happened in my 20s, I would have probably had a miserable time. I would have ordered almost no food, I would not have said anything that could have been taken in a way different from I meant it, and no one would have gotten to know me. This time, I had no shame in ordering whatever food I wanted to eat. I went back from seconds if I still felt hungry, and I felt like I was very open about who I am, the kind of teacher I am, and the kind of life I lead. There was a time when I avoided any conversation about my background in the Mormon faith. But on this trip, I was very upfront about it. I was going to tell people who I was and let them decide if I was someone they wanted to talk to. it was a completely freeing experience. The minute you allow yourself to just be you, flaws and all, everything gets infinitely more clear. You gain insight into yourself, and how you relate to other people. I knew that this person wanted to talk to me because of who I am, not because of who I was trying to be.
For years I tried to be everything to everyone else, and I allowed myself to be sucked into the nonsense. I bought all of the nonsense. I was not taking care of myself, and I was not growing, or learning anything about how I related to the world honestly. 2014 is going to go down as the year where I learned to honestly communicate to the world. I preach honesty in my classroom above all else. I ask my students for honest feedback because how can I grow as a teacher if the people who are being taught by me do not have a way to express how I am doing. it has led to an awesome, if sometimes overwhelming, dialogue between myself and my students, but also among my students themselves. I believe that I have an obligation to my students to practice what I preach, so that is my big key right now. If you ask me something, I am going to cut through the nonsense. If you want to know something about me, I am going to cut through the nonsense. Be prepared for truth. I cannot promise it will always be tactful, but it will always be sincere. Let us all practice sincere honesty. Let us all put our real selves out there because that way we know who is really there for us, and not just because we are pretty.
2014: Down with the nonsense, up with the sincere honesty. let's make it a thing!
Over the last few years, I have talked at length about getting rid of the toxic people/things in my life, and to be honest, it has been awesome. This new attitude goes beyond that. It gets at this idea that I feel like I am at a place in my life, where I do not have time for games or double speak or passive aggressive behaviors. I am at a place in my life, where I want to be up front with people and I expect them to do the same, and if they are not going to be up front, it is time to stop wasting energy on their collective nonsense. I have become more liberal about blocking/unfriending/unfollowing people from various social media sites if I get tired of the nonsense. This is not about getting rid of people who disagree with me, but getting rid of people who are posting things just to get a rise out of people without really paying attention to what they are posting, especially not researching stupid memes. This is about getting rid of people who complain nonstop about awful things are, but do nothing to fix their personal situation. This is about making my entire social media experience more worthwhile.
It is also about not wasting time on people who are not really important to me. I have enough people in my life who actually care, that why would I waste time on people who clearly do not care about my life? When you start to think about who matters NOW as opposed to who has mattered in the past, life gets much more focused. At some point, the past has to stay in the past. This is something we have been discussing in class recently, as we read through The Great Gatsby. My students get stuck on things they cannot change, and I have some students who are trying so hard to recapture a moment with a specific person, and we are reading this book about a guy who destroys multiple lives by doing that. It is possible to acknowledge having loved someone, and yet still allow yourself to truly move on in life to something bigger and better.
This also gets at the idea of just putting yourself out there without worrying too much about what other people will think. Last week I had the opportunity to spend a few days in Utah with a bunch of people I had never met. If this had happened in my 20s, I would have probably had a miserable time. I would have ordered almost no food, I would not have said anything that could have been taken in a way different from I meant it, and no one would have gotten to know me. This time, I had no shame in ordering whatever food I wanted to eat. I went back from seconds if I still felt hungry, and I felt like I was very open about who I am, the kind of teacher I am, and the kind of life I lead. There was a time when I avoided any conversation about my background in the Mormon faith. But on this trip, I was very upfront about it. I was going to tell people who I was and let them decide if I was someone they wanted to talk to. it was a completely freeing experience. The minute you allow yourself to just be you, flaws and all, everything gets infinitely more clear. You gain insight into yourself, and how you relate to other people. I knew that this person wanted to talk to me because of who I am, not because of who I was trying to be.
For years I tried to be everything to everyone else, and I allowed myself to be sucked into the nonsense. I bought all of the nonsense. I was not taking care of myself, and I was not growing, or learning anything about how I related to the world honestly. 2014 is going to go down as the year where I learned to honestly communicate to the world. I preach honesty in my classroom above all else. I ask my students for honest feedback because how can I grow as a teacher if the people who are being taught by me do not have a way to express how I am doing. it has led to an awesome, if sometimes overwhelming, dialogue between myself and my students, but also among my students themselves. I believe that I have an obligation to my students to practice what I preach, so that is my big key right now. If you ask me something, I am going to cut through the nonsense. If you want to know something about me, I am going to cut through the nonsense. Be prepared for truth. I cannot promise it will always be tactful, but it will always be sincere. Let us all practice sincere honesty. Let us all put our real selves out there because that way we know who is really there for us, and not just because we are pretty.
2014: Down with the nonsense, up with the sincere honesty. let's make it a thing!
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
A conversation with a student
Last week I subbed in a P.E class, which in and of itself is not news. I have subbed in a drama class, a math class, and now P.E. The kids had what essentially wound up being a free play day. I passed out basketballs, volley balls, and soccer balls. The students just had to be playing one of those three sports for the 40 minutes of class. Once class started I picked up a basketball and started shooting hoops with one of the students who happened to be a student of mine from one of my actual classes. We chatted about everything and nothing while we shot hoops and it was fun for me, and I think fun for him. At some point, I decided I needed to stop playing basketball and start just watching the students. The student took this opportunity to ask me a bit about some rumors he had heard from other students. He asked if it was true that I had lost like 70 lbs recently and I responded that I had. He hesitated after that, but I could tell that he had more he wanted to ask, so I told him that I was pretty open to talking about my battles with weight if he wanted to ask more. The first question he asked afterwards was whether I had a tough time in high school because of my weight. As soon as he asked he apologized, and said that he was just curious because I seemed so happy and confident, and he was wondering if I was always that way.
I thought about it for a few moments before responding because I wanted to come across as honest, but hopeful. I wanted to answer in a way that my student could maybe take something away from the conversation and feel like he was okay. I could tell he was asking because he, himself, is over weight. He is not obese by any stretch of the imagination, but he is a bit on the heavy side. After what probably seemed like hours, I told him that in middle school I cried almost every day after school because of how mean everyone was. I told him that I do not have any of my middle school yearbooks because other students stole it and wrote really mean anonymous things about me in them. Then I told him that high school was an absolute blast for me. I told him that my battle with weight has always been a struggle, but when I stop making it an issue for myself, it never bothers me when other people tried to make it an issue. I told him that when I was younger I used to think my weight caused my unhappiness, but really, I used it as a crutch to make excuses for why I did not do things with people in high school. The fact of that matter is, high school was a ton of fun for me when I let myself just enjoy it. Then I turned to him and told that that college was awesome, and that while my life has had the same amount of ups and downs as many other people, recently, I have tried to focus on the positives in my life and it has done wonders for me in every aspect.
The young man sat there when I was done like he was not entirely sure what to do with the information, so I tried to approach it from another angle. I asked him if he was unhappy, and he said that he felt like his extra weight was holding him back from being social. He worried that people would judge him for being chubby. He wanted to know what I did to start losing the weight, and if it would be too hard for him. It was in that moment that I realized just how much of an impact this conversation could potentially have. It caused me to really look inside myself as a teacher, and as a person. I love to teach my students the ins and outs of grammar, and the symbolic nature of the green light that remains just out of Jay Gatsby's reach, but my first job is to help young people. I told this absolute joy of a young man that I stopped playing sports because I was afraid of what people would say about me because I was fat. I was miserable until I found theater. I told him that finding something you love to do will help alleviate a bunch of that anxiety. Connecting to other people around a common interest makes things easier. I then told him that my weight started coming off when I stopped wishing for a quick way to lose weight and started to put the work in. I told him that the short cuts never stick. The only way to get healthy is to work at it. I told him that the best thing he could do was to stop drinking the 2 liters of soda I often see him with, and for him to shoot hoops every day, or find a physical activity he enjoys and repeat it.
The conversation went on, and I think that when it ended, he left feeling better about where he was headed. The conversation has stuck with me for the last 4 or 5 days. My sophomore year in high school I was struggling mightily with myself. It was actually kind of scary when I look back on it. A friend of mine found some writing of mine that worried her, and not knowing what to do from there, she talked to our biology teacher about it. My parents were called (I did not know this at the time), and the administration was informed, but my teacher asked my parents, the counselors, and the vice principal if he could talk to me about what was going on. His name was Mr. Rathbun. One day he asked me if I would come to his class after school to help him move stuff around his classroom, and when I showed up, he sat me down and talked to me for nearly two hours. He did so without judgement, without any concrete answers, and without any stories of his own to connect to what was happening. For two hours I felt the safest I had felt since elementary school. It was a powerful life changing moment for me, and if I really think about it, it is kind of the reason being a teacher always sounded like a good option for me.
I am not saying the conversation I had with this student will be as profound to him as my conversation with Mr. Rathbun was to me, but it was a great reminder that teenagers are fragile, that they are still looking for their way, and that maybe I can help in some way because I understand what many of them are going through, and maybe my willingness to be open with my students about my struggles is one of my biggest strengths as a teacher. It reminded me that more than anything else, it is my job to make sure my students feel safe when they are with me. It also reminded me that one of the reasons I am trying to get healthy is to be a better role model for my students. It helped get me back focused on my task and made me really think about different I hope to look after summer. Weird, many people want to get in shape for summer so they can show off their beach bodies, but I want to be more in shape after summer, so I can be a better role model for my students.
I really hope this post did not come off as self indulgent, but I fear it has. I hope you know that is not the spirit of this post.
I thought about it for a few moments before responding because I wanted to come across as honest, but hopeful. I wanted to answer in a way that my student could maybe take something away from the conversation and feel like he was okay. I could tell he was asking because he, himself, is over weight. He is not obese by any stretch of the imagination, but he is a bit on the heavy side. After what probably seemed like hours, I told him that in middle school I cried almost every day after school because of how mean everyone was. I told him that I do not have any of my middle school yearbooks because other students stole it and wrote really mean anonymous things about me in them. Then I told him that high school was an absolute blast for me. I told him that my battle with weight has always been a struggle, but when I stop making it an issue for myself, it never bothers me when other people tried to make it an issue. I told him that when I was younger I used to think my weight caused my unhappiness, but really, I used it as a crutch to make excuses for why I did not do things with people in high school. The fact of that matter is, high school was a ton of fun for me when I let myself just enjoy it. Then I turned to him and told that that college was awesome, and that while my life has had the same amount of ups and downs as many other people, recently, I have tried to focus on the positives in my life and it has done wonders for me in every aspect.
The young man sat there when I was done like he was not entirely sure what to do with the information, so I tried to approach it from another angle. I asked him if he was unhappy, and he said that he felt like his extra weight was holding him back from being social. He worried that people would judge him for being chubby. He wanted to know what I did to start losing the weight, and if it would be too hard for him. It was in that moment that I realized just how much of an impact this conversation could potentially have. It caused me to really look inside myself as a teacher, and as a person. I love to teach my students the ins and outs of grammar, and the symbolic nature of the green light that remains just out of Jay Gatsby's reach, but my first job is to help young people. I told this absolute joy of a young man that I stopped playing sports because I was afraid of what people would say about me because I was fat. I was miserable until I found theater. I told him that finding something you love to do will help alleviate a bunch of that anxiety. Connecting to other people around a common interest makes things easier. I then told him that my weight started coming off when I stopped wishing for a quick way to lose weight and started to put the work in. I told him that the short cuts never stick. The only way to get healthy is to work at it. I told him that the best thing he could do was to stop drinking the 2 liters of soda I often see him with, and for him to shoot hoops every day, or find a physical activity he enjoys and repeat it.
The conversation went on, and I think that when it ended, he left feeling better about where he was headed. The conversation has stuck with me for the last 4 or 5 days. My sophomore year in high school I was struggling mightily with myself. It was actually kind of scary when I look back on it. A friend of mine found some writing of mine that worried her, and not knowing what to do from there, she talked to our biology teacher about it. My parents were called (I did not know this at the time), and the administration was informed, but my teacher asked my parents, the counselors, and the vice principal if he could talk to me about what was going on. His name was Mr. Rathbun. One day he asked me if I would come to his class after school to help him move stuff around his classroom, and when I showed up, he sat me down and talked to me for nearly two hours. He did so without judgement, without any concrete answers, and without any stories of his own to connect to what was happening. For two hours I felt the safest I had felt since elementary school. It was a powerful life changing moment for me, and if I really think about it, it is kind of the reason being a teacher always sounded like a good option for me.
I am not saying the conversation I had with this student will be as profound to him as my conversation with Mr. Rathbun was to me, but it was a great reminder that teenagers are fragile, that they are still looking for their way, and that maybe I can help in some way because I understand what many of them are going through, and maybe my willingness to be open with my students about my struggles is one of my biggest strengths as a teacher. It reminded me that more than anything else, it is my job to make sure my students feel safe when they are with me. It also reminded me that one of the reasons I am trying to get healthy is to be a better role model for my students. It helped get me back focused on my task and made me really think about different I hope to look after summer. Weird, many people want to get in shape for summer so they can show off their beach bodies, but I want to be more in shape after summer, so I can be a better role model for my students.
I really hope this post did not come off as self indulgent, but I fear it has. I hope you know that is not the spirit of this post.
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Makeover Week
For the last decade or so, I have had a very strong love/hate relationship with the television program The Biggest Loser. I recognize that it shows incredibly unrealistic weight loss transformations, and that it shows that losing only 1 or 2 or even 3 pounds in a week is not a good thing, and that those people are monitored closely by the best fitness and nutrition experts out there. I also know the show is one of the worst offenders at product placement. I am able to take that all in and am still able to recognize that there are many aspects of the show that are wonderful. The show finds people who genuinely want to make changes to their lives, and have not been able to find the way to do that in their daily lives. I have seen families completely changed by the results of the show. It tells incredibly personal stories and never shies away from showing how weight gain happens. It sets out to show that unhealthy habits are formed over years and years and that it is not all just because people are lazy. The biggest joy in the show comes in the form of makeover week.
With about 7 contestants left at the Biggest Loser ranch, the contestants get full makeovers. They get a wardrobe change, a haircut, a shave, and in a way, a whole new start on life. it is a very in your face metaphor, but these make overs are showing these people a whole new life. They have shed anywhere from 75-125 lbs up tot his point, but the make over is where people really start to see what that change means for them. This week always gets to me more than any other week on the show because it gets to the core of the issues I have with my body.
Over the last two years I have lost over 70 pounds, and have completely changed the way I eat, exercise, and even relate to people on an every day level. I have worked hard to remain active even when I am at my limit emotionally and physically. I do this because I know I have to if I want to be alive for a long time, and the fact of the matter is, until two years, I was not sure I did want to live a very long time. This is not some suicidal confession or anything like that. It is merely me saying that until a few years ago, I think I was okay with the thought that I might not live to see 60 or 70 years old. That has changed dramatically over the last two years, but often times, when I look in the mirror I still see the guy that was there 70 pounds ago. At times that guy feels like he was from another life, but that image of him is still seared into my eyes and when I see myself in the mirror, he is the guy I usually see staring back at me.
Clothes shopping, as an obese person, sucks. I have never enjoyed the process. I am confined to the back of a "regular" store, if they even have a Big and Tall section, or I have to shop at a specialty store that charges an insane amount because they know they can. I have never had much money, and it has made things very hard for me. At a petty young age, I stopped caring about what my clothes looked like. No one was interested in me any way so what did it matter if my clothes were ill fitting, or looked bad on me. It was an extension of how I felt myself. No one else cared, so why should I? For years I shopped at Marshall's looking for clothes that were discounted because that little holes in them, or were disfigured in some way so I an just have clothes on me that fit. It resulted in years of wearing the most raggedly awful looking clothes one could own. It was also where I declined in other aspects of my life, the biggest one being that I stopped taking care of my teeth properly. It was not like anyone was going to look at me any way, so I just did not care. Then when my mouth started to fall apart, I could not afford to do anything properly, so teeth had to go. I am still paying for all of that neglect today, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Dental work is expensive, ya'll.
This leads us to Makeover week. I have lived my entire life hoping to get out of the Big and Tall section of the store, but never working on getting out of it. Every time I see makeover week I am reminded of what I am actually fighting for. it is not about getting our of the Big and Tall section, it is about getting into the section of the store where I no longer see this person I have been carrying around for the entirety of my adult life. These people look in the mirror and see someone new, who fits into new clothes, who looks different, but somehow familiar. They lose the haircuts that they have been getting every few months because switching it up would only feel bad because no one would notice or care because they, themselves, did not care. Now they care. They see that they can buy clothes anywhere, that they can fit into nice looking clothes, and not feel out of place.
I am still working on losing the guy from 70 pounds ago. I might be working on losing that guy for a long time, because I still have his teeth, and I still have his image when I look into the mirror most times. However, I have started to see the new me, and that started when I purchased clothes from Old Navy for the first time. That may seem incredibly silly to you, but Old Navy has never had a Big and Tall section. I have never in my life thought that it would be possible to fit into anything from that store. It was not a goal of mine to buy things from that store, but it was my goal to be able to fit into something from there. I fit into sweaters form there. I bought 3 of them. I bought pants in the regular section of a store, and I bought T-shirts that are just 2XL, not 2XLT, even worse 4XLT. I no longer need the super long shirts to cover my belly because I can buy pants that go over my stomach now without breaking the bank. I have not hit my makeover week yet because I want to wait to buy a whole new wardrobe until I think I have really lost the old version of myself. I am waiting to get a tailored suit until I am at the size I want to be at, until I am the healthiest version of myself, until I am the version of myself who will live to see 60, 70 and hopefully 80 and 90.
With about 7 contestants left at the Biggest Loser ranch, the contestants get full makeovers. They get a wardrobe change, a haircut, a shave, and in a way, a whole new start on life. it is a very in your face metaphor, but these make overs are showing these people a whole new life. They have shed anywhere from 75-125 lbs up tot his point, but the make over is where people really start to see what that change means for them. This week always gets to me more than any other week on the show because it gets to the core of the issues I have with my body.
Over the last two years I have lost over 70 pounds, and have completely changed the way I eat, exercise, and even relate to people on an every day level. I have worked hard to remain active even when I am at my limit emotionally and physically. I do this because I know I have to if I want to be alive for a long time, and the fact of the matter is, until two years, I was not sure I did want to live a very long time. This is not some suicidal confession or anything like that. It is merely me saying that until a few years ago, I think I was okay with the thought that I might not live to see 60 or 70 years old. That has changed dramatically over the last two years, but often times, when I look in the mirror I still see the guy that was there 70 pounds ago. At times that guy feels like he was from another life, but that image of him is still seared into my eyes and when I see myself in the mirror, he is the guy I usually see staring back at me.
Clothes shopping, as an obese person, sucks. I have never enjoyed the process. I am confined to the back of a "regular" store, if they even have a Big and Tall section, or I have to shop at a specialty store that charges an insane amount because they know they can. I have never had much money, and it has made things very hard for me. At a petty young age, I stopped caring about what my clothes looked like. No one was interested in me any way so what did it matter if my clothes were ill fitting, or looked bad on me. It was an extension of how I felt myself. No one else cared, so why should I? For years I shopped at Marshall's looking for clothes that were discounted because that little holes in them, or were disfigured in some way so I an just have clothes on me that fit. It resulted in years of wearing the most raggedly awful looking clothes one could own. It was also where I declined in other aspects of my life, the biggest one being that I stopped taking care of my teeth properly. It was not like anyone was going to look at me any way, so I just did not care. Then when my mouth started to fall apart, I could not afford to do anything properly, so teeth had to go. I am still paying for all of that neglect today, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Dental work is expensive, ya'll.
This leads us to Makeover week. I have lived my entire life hoping to get out of the Big and Tall section of the store, but never working on getting out of it. Every time I see makeover week I am reminded of what I am actually fighting for. it is not about getting our of the Big and Tall section, it is about getting into the section of the store where I no longer see this person I have been carrying around for the entirety of my adult life. These people look in the mirror and see someone new, who fits into new clothes, who looks different, but somehow familiar. They lose the haircuts that they have been getting every few months because switching it up would only feel bad because no one would notice or care because they, themselves, did not care. Now they care. They see that they can buy clothes anywhere, that they can fit into nice looking clothes, and not feel out of place.
I am still working on losing the guy from 70 pounds ago. I might be working on losing that guy for a long time, because I still have his teeth, and I still have his image when I look into the mirror most times. However, I have started to see the new me, and that started when I purchased clothes from Old Navy for the first time. That may seem incredibly silly to you, but Old Navy has never had a Big and Tall section. I have never in my life thought that it would be possible to fit into anything from that store. It was not a goal of mine to buy things from that store, but it was my goal to be able to fit into something from there. I fit into sweaters form there. I bought 3 of them. I bought pants in the regular section of a store, and I bought T-shirts that are just 2XL, not 2XLT, even worse 4XLT. I no longer need the super long shirts to cover my belly because I can buy pants that go over my stomach now without breaking the bank. I have not hit my makeover week yet because I want to wait to buy a whole new wardrobe until I think I have really lost the old version of myself. I am waiting to get a tailored suit until I am at the size I want to be at, until I am the healthiest version of myself, until I am the version of myself who will live to see 60, 70 and hopefully 80 and 90.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Budgeting my time. Budgeting my money.
There is nothing in this world that stresses me out more than talking/thinking about money. The quickest way to send me into a spiral of anxiety and sadness is for me to start over thinking my money situation. 2014 is going to be a year that very much tests this anxiety. When I had to buy a new car, I took on some pretty serious car payments, and took on a much larger monthly car insurance bill. On the plus side, I have a have that I never worry might not start and my monthly gas bill is essentially being cut in half, but it comes with a substantial blow to my the monthly budget. I was unprepared for this, but I am doing my best to not let it really get me down. It all depends on having a plan.
For many years I was under employed, or just unemployed and in that time, I accrued some pretty bad credit. I have not been great with money in my life. It is one of the parts of my life that I have been working on for a while and I think I am starting to figure it out. Of course, having an actual salary job for the first time is certainly helpful, but it is more than that. It is about seriously tracking money and only allowing a certain amount of money for fun purposes. Martina and I have been slowly working on a budget this month, and February is going to be the first month that we put it into full effect. There is a certain amount of money allotted for eating out, for going to the movies, and for other activities, and that is it. We have a grocery budget, and that is where we have to be our most creative. During my first semester of teaching, there were definitely weeks where we just stopped cooking and started eating out too much. That has to stop. Every month, every single dollar is going to completely tracked. As we start planning for a future together, there has to be money saved, so we have to decide what is vitally important to us, and what we can live without. I expect many more matinee movies, more Redbox and Netflix nights, and most importantly much more cooking.
We have already begun to figure out the cooking. We have started planning meals by the week, and we have started prepping meals better, so on the actual night of cooking, there is not much left to do, which is nice after a long day of teaching for me, and a long day or work or school for her. The only way this works is to stick to it. If our calendar says we are cooking on Wednesday night, we have to cook on Wednesday night, or we have to decide to switch our night out to Wednesday and cook on Saturday. This has meant more trips to the grocery store, and it has meant more money on groceries than before, but because we are actually eating the food we buy, we save money in the long run. Not to mention, it is healthier.
I am finding that every part of my life that I want to improve, go together. Getting better at budgeting my money is forcing me to budget my time better. I remember to pack a lunch every day, I get up in time to grab breakfast every day. I know I need to make sure I have time at night for cooking, which is forcing me to get more organized at school so I have the time. I am planning a week ahead of time now, so I am not worrying about having time during school to make the copies I need, or to get all of my materials together. The two weeks back at school have been great in terms of my time. I am making much better use of my prep time and making better use of my TAs which has cut down the late nights on campus. It has also opened up my nights at home. If I use the time on the weekends properly, I have almost no school work to do once I get home. This has already reduced my daily stress greatly.
I am finding that when I want to improve in one aspect of my life, I start to improve every where else. I am slowly understanding how my physical and emotional health are connected to everything I do. I think by sticking to a financial budget, it will allow me to just enjoy every other aspect of my life. It is forcing me to cook more, which I find relaxing any way, and it is helping us make decisions on what we absolutely want to do, which allows me to appreciate our date nights more. It also helps that Martina and I are perfectly happy just staying at home together. It is absolutely vital when you are poor, to truly love the company of the person you are with. There is no hiding behind all of these activities.
What this all boils down to is figuring out how to spend your time. I have learned to truly cherish every single day because I am learning every single day. I am figuring out how to be better with my money, better with time, and better with my energy. I have dedicated myself to ignoring bad energy, and it has helped me have energy at night, which is good because our daily work outs are kicking my butt in the best way possible.
Last thing, if you have a budget app you swear by, let me know!
For many years I was under employed, or just unemployed and in that time, I accrued some pretty bad credit. I have not been great with money in my life. It is one of the parts of my life that I have been working on for a while and I think I am starting to figure it out. Of course, having an actual salary job for the first time is certainly helpful, but it is more than that. It is about seriously tracking money and only allowing a certain amount of money for fun purposes. Martina and I have been slowly working on a budget this month, and February is going to be the first month that we put it into full effect. There is a certain amount of money allotted for eating out, for going to the movies, and for other activities, and that is it. We have a grocery budget, and that is where we have to be our most creative. During my first semester of teaching, there were definitely weeks where we just stopped cooking and started eating out too much. That has to stop. Every month, every single dollar is going to completely tracked. As we start planning for a future together, there has to be money saved, so we have to decide what is vitally important to us, and what we can live without. I expect many more matinee movies, more Redbox and Netflix nights, and most importantly much more cooking.
We have already begun to figure out the cooking. We have started planning meals by the week, and we have started prepping meals better, so on the actual night of cooking, there is not much left to do, which is nice after a long day of teaching for me, and a long day or work or school for her. The only way this works is to stick to it. If our calendar says we are cooking on Wednesday night, we have to cook on Wednesday night, or we have to decide to switch our night out to Wednesday and cook on Saturday. This has meant more trips to the grocery store, and it has meant more money on groceries than before, but because we are actually eating the food we buy, we save money in the long run. Not to mention, it is healthier.
I am finding that every part of my life that I want to improve, go together. Getting better at budgeting my money is forcing me to budget my time better. I remember to pack a lunch every day, I get up in time to grab breakfast every day. I know I need to make sure I have time at night for cooking, which is forcing me to get more organized at school so I have the time. I am planning a week ahead of time now, so I am not worrying about having time during school to make the copies I need, or to get all of my materials together. The two weeks back at school have been great in terms of my time. I am making much better use of my prep time and making better use of my TAs which has cut down the late nights on campus. It has also opened up my nights at home. If I use the time on the weekends properly, I have almost no school work to do once I get home. This has already reduced my daily stress greatly.
I am finding that when I want to improve in one aspect of my life, I start to improve every where else. I am slowly understanding how my physical and emotional health are connected to everything I do. I think by sticking to a financial budget, it will allow me to just enjoy every other aspect of my life. It is forcing me to cook more, which I find relaxing any way, and it is helping us make decisions on what we absolutely want to do, which allows me to appreciate our date nights more. It also helps that Martina and I are perfectly happy just staying at home together. It is absolutely vital when you are poor, to truly love the company of the person you are with. There is no hiding behind all of these activities.
What this all boils down to is figuring out how to spend your time. I have learned to truly cherish every single day because I am learning every single day. I am figuring out how to be better with my money, better with time, and better with my energy. I have dedicated myself to ignoring bad energy, and it has helped me have energy at night, which is good because our daily work outs are kicking my butt in the best way possible.
Last thing, if you have a budget app you swear by, let me know!
Sunday, January 12, 2014
The humility of week one.
In my last post I briefly discussed this new work out routine Martina and I are trying, and now that week one is essentially done (I still have today's leg work out to do), I thought I would reflect back on how hard starting is.
Two years ago when this journey began, EVERYTHING was so hard. I knew that would happen, but what I did not necessarily expect was how humbling it all would be. I have never in my life pretended to be in any sort of shape, but I grew up playing sports and being physical, so I thought I had a good base line. I was wrong. There are so many things my body just was not capable of doing when I started. Most people give up because of that, I would imagine. Why would I put myself through the humiliation of not being able to do a push up? Easy, I just won't. That is my thinking for most of my life. I often faked injuries during the mile run at P.E because I knew I would be last and who needed that humiliation in middle school or high school. Do not even get me started on the President's fitness test twice a year. Are you kidding me? What kind of torture is that for an obese teenager who already had issues with being mocked, now I have to attempt push ups, pull ups and other embarrassing things IN FRONT OF MY WHOLE CLASS? When high school ended, I did away with any thoughts of ever doing push ups again.
Then CrossFit entered my life. I quickly learned the difference between being humiliated by something and being humbled by something. When CrossFit started I could not do a single unmodified push up. I looked around and saw a variety of people in various states of fitness just trying, so that is what I did. I just kept trying. I said, well I cannot do that now, but I will. I will be humbled by my own physical limitations, but I will not quit and I will not be humiliated by them. After all, everyone has to start somewhere, right? As CrossFit went on, I could feel myself getting stronger, and I could do things I never thought possible. I did 5 unmodified push ups before our CrossFit membership ran out. I went from zero to five. I had not done a legit push up since who knows, but when you look at yourself and realize the difference between what you can do at that moment and what you are capable of doing in the future, an entire treasure chest of confidence opens up. Being humbled by my limitations served me very well during CrossFit.
That brings us to last week. I did 2 unmodified push ups. It was the bitterest of pills to realize that in half a year I had lost 3 push ups. I also felt very embarrassed by what I was able to do this last week. I know it is a fraction of what I was doing a mere 6 months ago. I wanted to quit. I wanted to just throw my hands up and say, well it was fun while it lasted, but let's be real about who I am. I am an obese 33 year old, and that is what I am meant to be. I did not give up though. I did my modified push ups, logged what I was able to do, and thought to myself, that is still 2 more push ups than you were doing 2 years ago.
This last week was extremely tough for me in many ways. My students came back to school, and were hit with a doozy of an assignment from me and they have been fighting me all week leaving me just feeling awful about myself. I know that I am still learning the job, and that the constant complaining from students is never going to end, but for some reason it was harder for me to deal with this week. It all felt so personal and combative. Then I would go home and suck hard at my work outs, and it felt like I could not win no matter what I did. At some point though, I realized that I had the chance to decide what these work outs meant to me. I had the opportunity to allow myself to be humbled by what I was doing, instead of being humiliated by them. I am not sure if that is going to make me feel any better about 2 push ups, but I also realize that in a few weeks it will be more than 2 push ups, as long as I keep putting in the work!
Week one of anything is the toughest. Week one is when you are still mentally unsure of what you are doing It is before routine has set in, and you understand exactly what you are doing. Week one is where your insecurities are most vocal. But week one ends, and if you are still moving forward, even at a crawl, then you beat week one. I have beaten many week ones in this journey, this was just another week one to hurdle. Now we attack week 2 with the confidence that it will be better than week one. Let's all be humbled, instead of humiliated.
Two years ago when this journey began, EVERYTHING was so hard. I knew that would happen, but what I did not necessarily expect was how humbling it all would be. I have never in my life pretended to be in any sort of shape, but I grew up playing sports and being physical, so I thought I had a good base line. I was wrong. There are so many things my body just was not capable of doing when I started. Most people give up because of that, I would imagine. Why would I put myself through the humiliation of not being able to do a push up? Easy, I just won't. That is my thinking for most of my life. I often faked injuries during the mile run at P.E because I knew I would be last and who needed that humiliation in middle school or high school. Do not even get me started on the President's fitness test twice a year. Are you kidding me? What kind of torture is that for an obese teenager who already had issues with being mocked, now I have to attempt push ups, pull ups and other embarrassing things IN FRONT OF MY WHOLE CLASS? When high school ended, I did away with any thoughts of ever doing push ups again.
Then CrossFit entered my life. I quickly learned the difference between being humiliated by something and being humbled by something. When CrossFit started I could not do a single unmodified push up. I looked around and saw a variety of people in various states of fitness just trying, so that is what I did. I just kept trying. I said, well I cannot do that now, but I will. I will be humbled by my own physical limitations, but I will not quit and I will not be humiliated by them. After all, everyone has to start somewhere, right? As CrossFit went on, I could feel myself getting stronger, and I could do things I never thought possible. I did 5 unmodified push ups before our CrossFit membership ran out. I went from zero to five. I had not done a legit push up since who knows, but when you look at yourself and realize the difference between what you can do at that moment and what you are capable of doing in the future, an entire treasure chest of confidence opens up. Being humbled by my limitations served me very well during CrossFit.
That brings us to last week. I did 2 unmodified push ups. It was the bitterest of pills to realize that in half a year I had lost 3 push ups. I also felt very embarrassed by what I was able to do this last week. I know it is a fraction of what I was doing a mere 6 months ago. I wanted to quit. I wanted to just throw my hands up and say, well it was fun while it lasted, but let's be real about who I am. I am an obese 33 year old, and that is what I am meant to be. I did not give up though. I did my modified push ups, logged what I was able to do, and thought to myself, that is still 2 more push ups than you were doing 2 years ago.
This last week was extremely tough for me in many ways. My students came back to school, and were hit with a doozy of an assignment from me and they have been fighting me all week leaving me just feeling awful about myself. I know that I am still learning the job, and that the constant complaining from students is never going to end, but for some reason it was harder for me to deal with this week. It all felt so personal and combative. Then I would go home and suck hard at my work outs, and it felt like I could not win no matter what I did. At some point though, I realized that I had the chance to decide what these work outs meant to me. I had the opportunity to allow myself to be humbled by what I was doing, instead of being humiliated by them. I am not sure if that is going to make me feel any better about 2 push ups, but I also realize that in a few weeks it will be more than 2 push ups, as long as I keep putting in the work!
Week one of anything is the toughest. Week one is when you are still mentally unsure of what you are doing It is before routine has set in, and you understand exactly what you are doing. Week one is where your insecurities are most vocal. But week one ends, and if you are still moving forward, even at a crawl, then you beat week one. I have beaten many week ones in this journey, this was just another week one to hurdle. Now we attack week 2 with the confidence that it will be better than week one. Let's all be humbled, instead of humiliated.
Monday, January 6, 2014
The new work out and keeping it positive.
I put our progress tracking papers on the wall that we see right before we go to the bedroom. That way, if we forget, we see it before bed and get our butts in gear and do the work out before bed. I am sure I will spend an ample amount of time writing about this work out as the weeks go on. The weight is still going to come off, but if I can get stronger as well, that would be great.
We did have to cancel our gym membership which presents some problems for the colder and darker months, but financially it just was not working out for us, and now that we had to purchase a new car, we could not spare that 90 bucks a month. I still think we are going to be okay. This 22 week work out will be a great start. I also realized when I was at my parents' house that I was not listening to my body. Early in 2013 I was kicking butt, but as the year went on, I was sliding backwards, but not working out like it. That meant I was taking longer breaks between work outs because my body needed the longer recovery. I am taking that to mean that I need to slow down a bit. While I was continuing to lose weight because I was eating healthier and I was more active than in years past, I was more out of shape than earlier in the year. My plan to combat this is to start slow again. I plan to walk a mile a day 3 days a week for two weeks, then 2 miles a day for 3 days a week for a few weeks and from there, see where it takes me. I think this is a smart move for me right now.
I really think the buzzword for 2014 for me is POSITIVITY. I made great strides in staying positive in 2013, but now is the year where I really conquer the negativity that seeps through during the tough weeks. Staying positive is going to help me stay organized, stay motivated and stay focused. On Facebook I see people post lists, and memes and charts about traits of successful people, and a positive attitude is always towards the top of the list. Plus, I have over a 130 teenagers that look to me every day, and I know that just by being a positive role model, I can help in some way. I am going to try and do whatever I can to remain positive!
Last note: If you have goals to get healthier in 2014, do not listen to snarky people who tell you you are just going to give up in February. You got this!
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Reflecting on the year that was
2013 will go down as a monumental year for me because it was the year I began my teaching career. The crazy thing is, it was a day away from being the year I gave up chasing my dream of being a high school English teacher. Life is funny. 2013 also marked the year that my girlfriend and I started to have incredibly serious conversations about a life together forever. These two events made 2013 the absolute best year of my life. It continues a trend that started in 2012. Until 2013, 2012 was the best year of my life. I believe that after 2014 is over, I will say that was the best year of my life. The ultimate goal is to make every year better than the one before. It starts with thinking positively. There were a few years there where I was miserable, and just knew the next year would be miserable. This is not the case any longer. I know in my heart that my life is only going to get better from here.
As I reflect on the year that was, I have to be honest with myself and see what did not work. The first half of the year (when I was underemployed) went swimmingly for my physical health. I worked out 5-6 days a week and was at a 13 minute mile, which is a minute away from my goal. However, the second half was not so good. Teaching is not only a full time job, but it is an exhaustive performance. When I get home, it is tough to think about working out. I did not have a very successful physical health life in the second half of the year. I did not achieve the ultimate 2013 goals I set for myself in this category. I have a mental block for 5Ks, which I blogged about last week. I started the year on track to blow by my physical goals, but did not quite get them.
My biggest success of 2013 in terms of my goals was the giving up of soda. I went an entire year without ordering or drinking a soda. I had minor successes in my cooking, writing, and reading goals. While there was a long stretch where I did not cook new things on a weekly basis, I did venture out and cook new things throughout the year. I also stopped relying on recipes for everything. I started to play with flavors and food combinations and found much success. I want to continue with this in 2014. I very much enjoy cooking, and trying new things. I also set a goal to write a short story in 2013. Not only did I meet that goal, but I surpassed it. I wrote a novella! Curbside Redemption is the name of my novella and it is over 14,500 words long. It is imperfect, and I received some excellent notes on it, and I am unsure of what I will do with it from here. When I finished that, I started writing what I hope will turn into a novel. Summer of 2014 will be the summer I write my novel!
While I did not manage to read a book a week as I had hoped, I did finished 2013 having read over 40 books, 43 to be exact. That put me less than 10 away from my goal! I know that teaching dramatically cuts down on my ability to read books for fun, but I still want to try and read as many books as possible this year. When I get into a great book, very few things fulfill me more.
In 2012 I lost roughly 50 pounds. 2013 was not as successful in terms of pure weight loss, as I lost 22 pounds this year. That puts my total weight loss at 72 pounds in the last two years. I am going to commit myself to having an even better 2014 in terms of my weight loss because I know I have plenty left to go. However, 2013 is the year Martina joined me in my journey and enjoyed her own amazing transformation. She is the ultimate inspiration for me, and I know that together we will continue have amazing progress.
In 2013 I went on more hikes than ever before. I ran more than ever before. I enjoyed exercise more than ever before. I ate more good food. I stopped being afraid of all of these things, and was rewarded very well. 2013 is the year Martina and I started to plan life changing vacations, and it is the year I tried to figure out how to be smarter with money. 2013 is the year I stopped craving soda, and stopped putting sugar in Iced Tea. 2013 is the year I was put in a classroom and given the opportunity to teach these amazing young people that will go on to change the world. It the year I shared my journey with my students, and have had students confide in me their own physical challenges and goals and have looked to me for guidance on how to navigate this world that looks down on teenagers. 2013 was the best year of my life...so far.
As I reflect on the year that was, I have to be honest with myself and see what did not work. The first half of the year (when I was underemployed) went swimmingly for my physical health. I worked out 5-6 days a week and was at a 13 minute mile, which is a minute away from my goal. However, the second half was not so good. Teaching is not only a full time job, but it is an exhaustive performance. When I get home, it is tough to think about working out. I did not have a very successful physical health life in the second half of the year. I did not achieve the ultimate 2013 goals I set for myself in this category. I have a mental block for 5Ks, which I blogged about last week. I started the year on track to blow by my physical goals, but did not quite get them.
My biggest success of 2013 in terms of my goals was the giving up of soda. I went an entire year without ordering or drinking a soda. I had minor successes in my cooking, writing, and reading goals. While there was a long stretch where I did not cook new things on a weekly basis, I did venture out and cook new things throughout the year. I also stopped relying on recipes for everything. I started to play with flavors and food combinations and found much success. I want to continue with this in 2014. I very much enjoy cooking, and trying new things. I also set a goal to write a short story in 2013. Not only did I meet that goal, but I surpassed it. I wrote a novella! Curbside Redemption is the name of my novella and it is over 14,500 words long. It is imperfect, and I received some excellent notes on it, and I am unsure of what I will do with it from here. When I finished that, I started writing what I hope will turn into a novel. Summer of 2014 will be the summer I write my novel!
While I did not manage to read a book a week as I had hoped, I did finished 2013 having read over 40 books, 43 to be exact. That put me less than 10 away from my goal! I know that teaching dramatically cuts down on my ability to read books for fun, but I still want to try and read as many books as possible this year. When I get into a great book, very few things fulfill me more.
In 2012 I lost roughly 50 pounds. 2013 was not as successful in terms of pure weight loss, as I lost 22 pounds this year. That puts my total weight loss at 72 pounds in the last two years. I am going to commit myself to having an even better 2014 in terms of my weight loss because I know I have plenty left to go. However, 2013 is the year Martina joined me in my journey and enjoyed her own amazing transformation. She is the ultimate inspiration for me, and I know that together we will continue have amazing progress.
In 2013 I went on more hikes than ever before. I ran more than ever before. I enjoyed exercise more than ever before. I ate more good food. I stopped being afraid of all of these things, and was rewarded very well. 2013 is the year Martina and I started to plan life changing vacations, and it is the year I tried to figure out how to be smarter with money. 2013 is the year I stopped craving soda, and stopped putting sugar in Iced Tea. 2013 is the year I was put in a classroom and given the opportunity to teach these amazing young people that will go on to change the world. It the year I shared my journey with my students, and have had students confide in me their own physical challenges and goals and have looked to me for guidance on how to navigate this world that looks down on teenagers. 2013 was the best year of my life...so far.
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