Coping with the sadness

The end of September is swiftly approaching, which means October is upon us, and in adult world, the new month brings a new set of monthly bills. Nothing brings the starkness of not having a job into clear focus like bills. Every day it is the same thing, fill out applications and check my e-mail 30 times in the first few hours post application finishing only to end up in bed without a job. This is my fault. I screwed up and will be without a classroom until at least January, possibly longer if there is no one hiring teachers mid-year. The entire thing is so close and one stupid little thing has pushed it a few months back. In the big picture, it is nothing. I am not about the big picture though, I am a little picture kind of guy. I am of the step-by-step process school of thought.

At this moment, everything is a struggle. Every day is tough. This is not hyperbole. This is just a fact of my life. Over the last few years, I have very much struggled to find a job, like so many others out there. It takes such a mental, physical, and mostly emotional toll on me that some days, I just cannot even bear to deal with it. I am so close to being exactly where I want to be in so many ways, but so far away, at the same time. Never have I felt less like I mattered, than when I have not had a job. Yes, it is mostly the income, but in all honesty, I need to be doing something, contributing in some way. Even in the most rudimentary job, I could feel like I was doing something. I need to feel like I am earning my keep, my place in the world.

yes, I am tutoring now, which is awesome. If there was a way for me to tutor 40 hours a week, I would feel beyond blessed. Everything I wish I could do in a classroom to help each individual student, I can do with tutoring. I have 3 students and each one is so vastly different. For 4 hours a week, I am excited and challenged and it reaffirms this desire to teach. I know it is coming, I do. It just should be here already. I should be blogging about how my students are challenging me in unique ways, or I should be too busy to blog at all.

Last week I wrote about motivation. I was all gung-ho and ready for the next day. This week, I am reporting that I failed. I am failing. It is not in the past. It is a current and daily thing that I do, failing. I am not working out. I am not thinking positively. I am not eating greens. I am drinking too much sugar. I am barely present in my own existence right now. I have this giant dark cloud sprinkling drops of doubt, anger, frustration, and sadness. I realize as I type this out, that people out there have it way worse than I do. I have a great support system and I this wonderful girlfriend who loves me and reassures me every day. I honestly cringe to think where I would be without her. However, I still have to stand on my own two feet. And, right now I can barely do that some days.

I am starting to wonder if I just cannot do this. Maybe I cannot make the changes I am trying to make. Maybe I am not mentally strong enough to fight through this hurdle. I cannot break myself free from the chains of tasty but crappy food. I cannot break myself free from the laziness. I am not skilled enough to maneuver this dance of steps forward and steps backward. I look at Erik who is just crushing it in terms of his health goals, and think, damn, he just has this fire and I thought I did, but what if I do not.

Just a few hours ago as I was torturing myself by being in a bookstore, I thought I would set a goal to be in a place to run a 5K in a year, or maybe less. Now, I think, what a miserable idea that is. What if I fail? No, I will fail. I have a fail mentality permeating from my very core. I cannot set goals for the future, if I cannot even get myself to walk the 50 steps to the gym at the apartment on a daily basis right now.

I am trying to find a way to end this with a sense of positive energy, but I do not have any. All I want right now is to drive to Taco Bell and eat so much awful food. I am tired of telling everyone I am fine. I am not fine. I am sad. I am tired of not having a job. Why is it so much easier for me to write this for the entire world to see than it is to call a friend and ask for help? What is it inside me that completely flips out at the possibility of intimately sitting down with a loved one and being completely honest. I think I really need to look at this and see what the root is. I have Martina and we tell each other everything and it is a bigger relief than I can ever put into words, but I also realize putting too much on one person is not healthy. This post took me places I never would have expected to go. Maybe I will just delete the whole damn thing in the morning.

I feel like me blogging after 11pm is like what drunk dialing is to most other people.

Coming out swinging

Today I am feeling like I need to discuss motivation. This word is possibly the most key term when I think about this journey. What is the motivation to change my life? Well, the answer is pretty simple; I just want my life. I want to keep my life. I want to live my life, not let my life live me. If that sounds stupid, well, tough, it is my blog and my words. When I sat down and thought about what exactly I wanted from life as my teaching credential program was winding down, and I was getting ready for the next step, the next journey, I realized I wanted the ability to live and be happy. That is ultimately the reason why I decided to get my ass in gear and start fixing myself. The focus of this blog has pretty regularly switched between the physical and the emotional strides and stumbles, and I feel like motivation ties those two aspects together.

Over the last few weeks, though, I have felt my motivation slipping. I am making progress as I have detailed, but I could feel myself slowly losing that drive. I have been waiting for something to motivate me, to push me. All summer I was waiting for a job to push me further. It is tough to get out of bed when you are just going to be home all day. It appears counter productive because the easiest time to spend time bettering yourself is when you have nothing to do! However, with nothing to do, you lose sight of what kept you going. It is a vicious circle that goes round and round, which I guess is what makes it a circle. Without a job, I had to rely purely on myself to get me going and it has been rough. Without a job, I stay up later, so I get up later and am lethargic and sad. Instead of working out, I would sit and play video games for hours and hours. I decided I was either going to work out or job hunt and job hunting won. It makes no sense that I could not do both of them, but then it would take me away from my video games and that is just ludicrous.

This all came to a head last week during tech week. I started the week strong but by the end of it I had eaten a burger from Sonic and downed a Double Double Animal style and Animal Style Fries from In-N-Out. I had regressed and woke up two days in a row just feeling awful about myself, not only emotionally, buy physically. My stomach could not handle the In-N-Out the way it used to. It was all kinds of gross to deal with and I knew that something had to give. I very much was falling backwards and I could it affecting me in every aspect of my life. I was losing energy, not feeling as happy and clearly was not myself.

After a pretty sleepless night over the weekend I realized something that we all know, but often forget. Motivation is not just going to jump up, slap me across the face and tell me to follow it. I have to create my own motivation. I have to take responsibility for my own laziness, my own lack of happiness. I needed to find a way to get myself moving. (side note, I very nearly went on a Grinch like monologue. The one where he starts talking about all the things Christmas is not.) First order of business was to get in a routine. I needed to get myself to bed at a decent hour, wake up at a decent hour, eat a good breakfast and then take myself to the gym. It has to be in that order and I need to stick to it. I realized the more I work out, the more motivated I become to keep doing it. Motivation begets motivation. Getting started is always the toughest part of anything, but once I get myself down to the gym and get on the bike, I love it. I love the burn, I love moving and I love trying to outdo myself. Somehow I lost sight of that over the last few weeks.

between worrying about not having a job and wondering how I am going to feed myself on a nearly daily basis, I definitely lost sight of putting in the work on myself. It makes sense because honestly, stress over not being able to afford groceries will do that to a guy. However, a defeatist attitude is not going to help anything. I am tired of attacking life from a pessimistic attitude. What good does it do to wake up in the morning and deciding the day is not going to go my way? When I go work out in the morning, I just feel better about everything. No, it does not solve the bigger issues of my life, but neither does waking up feeling bad all of the time. It is amazing what an attitude adjustment can do. I am not one of those people who believes just positive thinking is going to get me a job, but when I feel better about myself, I more aggressively attack the job hunt. I start my day moving and so I spend the rest of the day swinging. An adjustment in my emotional or mental attitude helps my physical growth. Everything we do is connected to another part of us and the only way we ever achieve anything is by thinking that we can do it and believing that if we do the work, the results will go in our favor. And if we are not seeing the results, instead of getting down, we just have to regroup and try something else.

Will power is the ability to eat one salted peanut- Chinese proverb

Last week while having a disastrous lunch experience with Erik (the food was a disaster, not the company) we got on the subject of self control. I have long blamed my somewhat disgusting eating habits on a severe lack of self control. It was a way to distance myself from responsibility for my actions. It is not my fault, I just lack self control. It was as if self control was something you were either born with or not, or could be purchased somewhere I had just not yet acquired. As this journey progresses, I find myself often thinking about where I was in my life, and more importantly who I have been in my own life. This idea of self control comes back on a reoccurring basis. I have done my fair share of stupid things and it takes serious conviction as a person to take that personal responsibility. I go back and think about all the times I tried to distance myself from being responsible for my own actions by just blaming my lack of self control. If I ate a whole bag of chips in one sitting, it was not my fault I could not put them down. If I went back for thirds or fourths on a meal or dessert, it was not MY fault. I just can not control myself. I am completely absolved from my own actions, because well, I have no self control.

Like anything else worth having in this world, self control is learned. You have to work at it and the fact of the matter is, I was just too lazy, or too reckless to learn that skill. And it is a skill. I have always admired people who ask for a small slice of cake. You know, those people who have just enough of something sweet to take the edge off, but do not need to build cavity after cavity devouring that giant corner piece of cake with all the extra frosting. I look at those people and wonder how they do it. Well, the answer is simple, if the work is not: self control. The ability to know when to stop, not because your body is full, but because you know you will not like it later is such a powerful weapon to yield. This is, of course, for more than just food. This is about anything in life where you need to learn how to stop before things get out of hand. The ability to say "I am good with where I am and if I do anymore I know it will hurt me in some way" is something at which I am still working.

Eating out of boredom is one domain where self control is starting to pay off for me. I am not eating while watching television as much. I am not munching on awful things all day and when I do allow myself to get some ice cream, candy or chips, I am not eating an entire container of it in one sitting. Where it used to take me roughly 20 minutes to polish off a giant the big box of Mike and Ike candy, I now spread it over a few days. Yes, I would like to get to a point where I turn away from candy completely, but I am not there yet. The biggest place I have noticed a change in my self control is with soda and Rockstars. When I began this journey, Rockstars were a big part of my life. If you were to ask any of my former students, they would tell you. I have not had a single Rockstar since I decided to not have them. I have stuck to my guns and have managed to bypass all of the great deals at the grocery store. My self control for soda is getting better. I occasionally cheat, but I am mostly drinking Iced Tea now. I am down to maybe 3 sodas a month.

Every day I am learning something new about myself. I am learning that I am stronger than I ever thought in so many different ways. This is a valuable lesson to learn. I have felt powerless my entire life against food. I have felt powerless against self loathing. I have felt powerless against being obese. If I am ever going to conquer any of it, I have to take back the power. Yes, take it back. I had it at some point, but have lost it over the years and I have to stand up for myself and let myself know I have the power against food. I have the power against self loathing and I have the power against being obese. It starts with self control. It starts with me staring myself down and telling myself nothing has power over me unless I have given it the power over me. Food does not control me. My obesity does not control me. How do I know this? Because I am nearly 40lbs less obese than I was in March. I have to control my food, my obesity, my self love. It is process, but every day it grows just a little bit more and I know I am on my way to being the version of me everyone who loves me (including myself) knows I can be.

My hunger problem/ My wardrobe problem

After most meals, especially big meals, someone will inevitably state "I'm Full." It is a strange thing for me to hear, because I can barely understand it. I am never full, which means I am always hungry. If I am full, I am full for roughly 20 minutes and then I get hungry again. It is as if I am not full, just tired of eating whatever it is I was eating. It is awful when you are trying to lose weight to never feel full. for those of you who want to tell me I am not eating the right foods, save it. I have tried EVERYTHING. Nothing, and I mean nothing keeps me full for very long. I can always eat. I always want to eat. Every fiber of my body craves good at all times. I spend so much time hungry, it is exhausting. I am not sure if anyone else feels this or if I am alone on my island of constant hunger. When people get legitimately full, I get jealous. I am a bottomless pit of food desire. This is not hyperbolic in any way. I wish I was kidding, but almost always, I am hungry less than an hour after eating, even if I just finished eating a huge meal. I have always battled this by snacking all of the time. Chips, candy, ice cream and whatever else I had around to eat. It is part of how I got to be the size I have been. I was an active kid, but I was always hungry. it is a problem that has haunted me my entire life. I have no idea how to cope with it.

Now, I just live with the constant hunger. Some of it is financially motivated. I just cannot keep as much food around as I would like because I cannot afford it. Of course, I am also trying to snack on healthier snacks. However, in all honesty, I am just dealing with the idea of always being hungry. I ate a pretty nice sized meal less than an hour ago and I am already so hungry I just want to eat another full meal. This has become a bigger theme over the last few months as I have tried to back away from the constant eating. I am a total loss on what to do. And yes, I have tried to fill the bottomless pit with water, but that is just a lie. It just makes me feel gross, but does not take away the pangs of hunger shooting through every part of me.

In happier news, I am seeing physical changes. For starters, my watch is just a bit more loose. I started to notice that a few weeks ago. I thought nothing of it at first, but seeing as how I never leave the house without my watch, I know exactly how it has been fitting since Martina bought it for me for our anniversary in march. The biggest change though, leads to my next problem.

A little over two years ago when I lost a bunch of weight that took me from the XXXXL t-shirts to the XXXL t-shirts, I threw out a bunch of clothes. it was easier then because I had money to purchase replacements. Now, none of my t-shirts are starting to get too big, so I am fine there, however, Friday night I put on one of my nice dress shirts, and noticed a big change. I probably last wore my nice purple dress shirt during my final weeks of student teaching, which was early June. It was not a snug fitting shirt, nor was it a loose fitting shirt. In fact, of all the dress shirts I have ever owned, it, along with the 3 others of the exact same kind in different colors, are the best fitting dress shirts I have ever owned. Well, no more. When I put it on Friday night, I was swimming in it. It was super loose fitting and I almost did not wear it out because it looked weird on me.

If ever there was a good problem to have, this is it. I am at a crossroads though, because A) I do not have the money to buy new clothes at this juncture and B) the main hope is to continue losing weight, so if I buy new clothes that fit now, will I just have to buy new ones again IF the weight continues to slowly come off? It may seem arbitrary, or a foolish conundrum, but I have to look at this in a very real way. I think I just have to keep wearing the shirts, even if they are a bit loose at least until it just looks absurdly silly to wear them. I think I have to reassess at a later date, perhaps when I hit my next plateau of weight loss. I can buy new clothes and then have those for a while until I start to really see it come off again.

Make no mistake, I am definitely happy to have this problem. It is always nice to see the change in myself physically. Many people have commented that they see it, but I almost never believe them. Positive encouragement feels great, but in my overactive brain I think that people know it feels great so they offer it even if it is not true. It may not make any sense, but there it is. To see the change really lets me know everything I am working towards is working. Results are happening. Changing one's life is entirely possible. I feel it every day and I see it and hear it every time someone tells me how much happier I seem.