My sports dilemma

I grew up in a sports family. My mom cheers as loudly for the Giants as anyone I know. It is in my blood. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, football and tennis. Baseball is my favorite sport, but basketball was the sport at which I excelled. I loved playing basketball and even spent a summer at a basketball camp where the 9th grade basketball coach told me he regretted not putting me on the team the year before. In my sophomore year, the dream of playing sports for school went away. I was not good enough at baseball, did not want to be an offensive lineman in football and I was too fat and slow for basketball.

I found theater that year. Of course, theater has been my main outlet since then. Theater offers many of the same things I loved about sports. There is a sense of team work, camaraderie, and accomplishment in theater that I loved in sports. However, there is one big component missing in theater: competition. I can already hear theater people saying "Umm the audition." Sure, there is competition at the audition, but that is where it ends. Well, that is where it should end. Sadly, I have been a part of too many shows where actors continued to compete to the detriment of the show, but that is a whole other blog post on a whole different blog. That belongs on a blog where people contribute posts on how there is a lack of community in community theater.

Martina can attest that I do not like to lose. I loathe it in fact. I am insanely competitive and without sports in my life, I start going crazy over things like Scrabble. This is where the low self image comes into play and how it is relevant to this blog. I do not play sports anymore, not because I worry about not being good, I worry what I will look like to everyone else. I am not sure when I became so afraid of what other people think because this has not always been an affliction to which I am accustomed. I stopped playing basketball at a local church because I stopped knowing many of the people there and was afraid no one would want me to be on their team because of how out of shape I am. I started psyching myself out. I got so afraid of being just the fat guy trying to play basketball that it over-shadowed my abilities. And I had abilities. I was a pretty good basketball player. I could shoot, dribble and most of all, I could pass. I knew the game. Hell, I coached a youth team for 4 years, and we were good.

This week I played basketball for 30 minutes on two separate occasions and it was a total blast. I am unbelievably rusty, but I was starting to get my game back during the second day. I would love to feel comfortable enough to get back on a court with other people. I would love to play a pick up game with friends or even random people looking for a game. I just do not think I am there. These last few years have really been tough, and even though I am doing incredibly well in so many aspects of my life right now, I feel like I am not right in some aspect.

This post feels like it is lacking something. It has been a pretty negative week on this blog and I apologize. People have been telling me how motivating this blog has been or how much they are rooting for me, so I feel like I have not done a very good job over the last week. For anyone reading, know that this rough week will not defeat me. This week I ate much better portions of food than I would normally eat and I am still consuming water or iced tea as opposed to soda, so I am still fighting through it and maybe that is the motivating part. Those things I wanted to do are becoming habit. I still miss soda and I miss filling my diet with sugar and salt, but I am not reaching for the salt without even taking a bite anymore. It is the small victories we have to celebrate, right?

So, to the people who have told me I have motivated them to give up soda (and there have been at least half a dozen of those people) keep it up. We need to celebrate little victories, for they will eventually add up to something big, or at least keep us going to shoot for something big.

My big goal this week is to get in the pool 3 times. Also, find a summer job so I can afford new shoes. If you know of anything, let me know!

The bad week continues

I am hesitant to post this, honestly. I warn you readers, this may not be pretty. I am a ball of distracted mess this week and it is showing in every aspect of my life.

But first, the good.

-While the walking is not working due to some shoe issues, these shoe issues do not exist when I am running. Now, I am not one to run for fun, so twice this week I played basketball with a mix of teachers and students. I will be making a separate post on basketball (well sports) Tomorrow or Sunday, but the 30 minutes of basketball really felt great.

- I have lost weight. Weighing myself is not something I will do regularly, so do not expect consistent updates about weight loss. I am not really tracking weight loss, I am tracking a better life. Weight loss is part of it, but I have to learn not to rely on it because losing weight is a fickle proposition.

- I did not buy any Rockstars today. Usually Friday after teaching, I grab 2 so I can power them down and stay up on Friday night. This week I am going without and will probably just nap for a bit.

Okay, onto the rest of it

The events of Monday's soda debacle have been recounted on the blog, so with that in mind, here I go. This week was just unbelievably rough. The student related thing I wrote about on Tuesday still linger over my head every day I walk into the classroom and it is a struggle. Thursday kind of was the nail in the coffin of the week and I went to lunch with a friend and picked out like I had not done in a few weeks. I tackled a giant portion of these loaded fries, and then took down a huge plate of nachos all by myself. It was a tremendous feast of embarrassment. As I was eating the final third of the nachos, I just hated myself. I hated that I was still eating, but mostly, I hated how much I was enjoying stuffing my face. It was exactly the reason I got myself here in the first place. I eat my feelings and this whole week I have been feeling awful and for that brief moment of nacho heaven, everything felt right. Ugh, I am disgusted with myself as I type this.

Of course, I paid for it. I paid for it dearly. I am glad for this. My stomach was so upset with me for shoving this much food down into it that it ruined my outing with my cohort friends. This shows that my stomach is already adjusting to my new diet. It does not want me to stuff my face, it wants me to eat in portions. Of course, I will not know if my lesson was learned until the next time I am confronted by this.

One of the hardest parts of being me is that I focus too much on the negative. As this is not just about changing my eating habits, but changing my life habits, I need to learn to let it go. One of the things I realized in my health class this semester is that physical health, emotional health and mental health are all connected. My physical health is going to benefit from a better emotional and mental state of being. There will be times when this blog does not focus on my eating or working out at all, but in how I deal with a crisis, or how I managed to let myself be happy when I accomplish something, which is a big problem for me.

Which brings me to tonight. I have one goal: Just have fun and enjoy this accomplishment.

When I got my B.A I did not let myself celebrate. I kind of went right to the next thing to worry about. Tonight is reason to celebrate. When I was 25 years old and working in a warehouse, moving cans of paint from one side of the warehouse to the other, or washing vans in 103 degree heat, this all seemed so far away. I felt like college was never going to happen for me, but I did it.

I got my B.A and now I will have a Teaching Credential, and you know what, some day in the next 5 or 6 years, I will have a Master's degree as well.