My physical frustration

Well, the darkside is back. I was in such a groove of positive energy and this damn knee of mine has really brought me down. The tendinitis in my right knee has been causing my knee to be swollen for nearly 48 hours now. I pushed through it yesterday which was probably not my most wise decision. Between choreography on Saturday, dancing at the wedding on Saturday night, choreography on Sunday night and walking to rehearsal on Monday night, my knee is in a bad way. With it, the reminder of why this entire process is so maddening to me.

being obese already puts a tremendous toll on my body and the only way to attempt to alleviate that toll is to get active. However, the more active I get, the more of a toll it takes on my already in pain body. yes, it would have been easier to not just have been grossly fat in the first place, but that shipped sailed many many years ago. All I can do is focus on how to get my life back. Everything was going so well and now that my knee hurts to stand, sit, switch positions, push the gas pedal and certainly do any sort of exercise it reminds me why I always give up. At some point, the pain just becomes too much for me to overcome. The pain outweighs whatever results I see, because I never see the results fast enough to make me forget about the pain. Every time I watch something like The Biggest Loser I get so frustrated because they do not show that aspect of the show. We never see the medical staff of set that is there to make sure no one pushes passed the ability. Well, as someone who is in debt, and cannot afford to ever see a doctor, I have no idea if I am just in pain, or if I am doing serious damage to my knee or to the shoulder that has felt pinched for nearly a week. Without knowing what I am doing to my body, I am left to decide for myself how much to push and right now, I am feeling like I need to ease up just a little bit, at least until the swelling dissipates.

This constant back and forth is starting to weigh heavily on my mind. I know I need this change. I know it is the key to accepting myself and to allowing myself that elusive happiness I am digging for, but what if I cannot get there? What if my body is already too damaged to be helped in a serious way. I know this is a dramatic turn from last week, but such is the life of someone trying very hard to make a severe series of drastic changes. I started to feel myself hit these "what if" scenarios pretty hard two days ago and I have not been able to close the floodgates on them. I am doing everything I can do make the change, but what if it is not enough? Like so much else over the course of my life, what if I am just not good enough, or strong enough to overcome this wave of pain? I am fighting like hell and I think that is all I can do. I have to keep moving forward with the hopes that I will soon find a job, and then be able to afford people to help me really figure this out. Whether that person is a trainer, a doctor, a nutritionist, or maybe one of each, I have no idea. I can only hope that I can hang on long enough to find out if there is something else I should be doing.

I hate feeling like such a downer, and a disappointment, but I think I have to allow myself to have a bad day every once in a while. I just have to get myself out of it before it becomes the predominant thought. I have to know when enough is enough. This is not a pity party, and I am not feeling sorry for myself, I am just frustrated and disheartened today, which in and of itself is progress, because this frustration has always led to a pity party before. I am still going to eat something healthy for dinner and still eat grapes and watermelon as a snack, I am just going to drive to rehearsal tonight and try my best to remain upbeat, but that will be tough tonight.

The Toxicity of life

I am finding my summer to be full of activities, which has left me with less time to myself at the computer, so what will follow is sort of a few ideas I have been kicking around since I returned from a family reunion on Sunday.

First off, seeing my entire family was just heavenly. I could easily write a whole post about the feeling I had throughout the weekend, but I will spare you all the cheesiness. I will say this, my dad is the single most focused man I have ever seen. He is on a health quest and has just met and surpassed every goal he has set for himself over the last few years. It is astounding. I can only hope to find that sort of progress in my own life. Also, for a brief moment over that weekend, my mom and I talked about the toxic things in life, in my life in particular. It has had me thinking for the last few days and what follows will be a summary, or meandering word vomit of these thoughts.

I have been doing a good job of cutting all of the toxic food out of my life. I have been doing a pretty good job of upping my physical activity to remove that toxic laziness out of my life. As I have detailed in this blog multiple times, I am working hard on eliminating the negative thoughts that continue to plague this journey of mine. These toxic thoughts lay at the root of everything in my life. I am constantly giving myself new goals, and my most recent goal is to stop being so self-deprecating. I am at a point in my life where I need to take myself and my journey seriously and in order to do that, I have to cut out my jokes at my expense. When you have spent 20 years conditioned to make fun of your own weight so no one else does it first, this is quite an undertaking, but I believe it is vitally important to my progress. Yes, I need to work on getting the thoughts out of my head, but first I need to work on not making jokes at my own expense. If I want other people to take me and my journey seriously, I need to take it seriously. therefore, I am trying to cut down, then eliminate the amount of time I spend making fun of myself. I have done fairly well so far. Try it, it is difficult.

The next part of the toxicity of life is people. I have had many toxic relationships in my life. I had a seriously toxic romantic relationship in my early twenties of which I still feel lingering effects some times. I have allowed myself to carry on extremely toxic platonic relationships out of fear of not having any friends which have done severe damage at times, and I have had a few toxic relationships where the line between platonic and romantic have been extremely blurred. Any sort of relationship can be toxic. Having the strength to pull yourself away from it is challenging. However, I know that I need to expect better of people. I need to make myself expect to be treated better and that starts internally. I am working on removing everything toxic from my life and that includes relationships. Currently, I am working on not carrying all of that baggage from the toxic relationships into my current relationships. I am working on letting go of anger, resentment, sadness and frustration. it is yet another roadblock on my journey. I must figure out how to knock the roadblock over. I can no longer afford to go over it, under it or around it because it invariably pops up again and knocks me on my ass. I am 31 years old and it is time to start dealing with my damn issues! It is never too late to try and fix the things you dislike about yourself.

Onto some random quick hits:

I walked to rehearsal the other night. It was lovely. I am enjoying walking. It allows me to clear my head, and get a nice workout in. However, I cannot forget my knee brace because the difference in my pain level is astounding!

I have hit a weight loss plateau. I have not lost any weight in about a week. Normally this would send me into a fast food binge, throwing up my hands in a metaphorical manner and going back to my old habits. My motives are more clear this time, so I am taking it in stride. I will continue to take it in stride. If I do not lose weight for a week, but I make a break through in another realm, so be it. My life will not crumble around me with a bad health week. (Also, it was not a bad health week, but did not lose any weight.)

I have found my desire for french fries and chips slowly draining. It is nice. I never thought I would live in a world where I thought I would be cool off french fries.

I am still looking for good healthy side dishes. I love salads, but I need something else healthy to eat with my proteins. It is tough to not just whip up some pasta!

Also, my my desire for snacking is not going anywhere, so I am trying to substitute nuts and fruits for ice cream and candy. It is mostly working!

Shopping with Kyle

I know this blog has been focusing more on the mental health aspect lately, but I guess that is because I have needed to clear my mind of so many of the dark spots that have been hindering my progress over the last so many years. However, I want to focus on eating today. My relationship with food is one with serious complications. I am a live to eat kind of guy. I always have been, but there are so many misconceptions when it comes to fat people and food. People assume fat people hate healthy food. I do not. I love salad, I love fruits and vegetables. I am as happy sitting with a bowl of grapes as I am with a bowl of chips. I just eat the entire bowl of grapes, then eat the entire bag of chips.

I love cooking. I have never been very good at it, but I love it. I just often do not have the time, or all of the ingredients one needs to cook properly. It has always been more conducive to my lifestyle to open a box and put the contents of that box into the microwave, oven or boiling water. It is always better for my wallet. I can buy 4 personal pizzas for 4 dollars. That is four meals at a dollar a piece. I cannot do that with anything healthy. Fresh fish is expensive. Going to the store the day of cooking to buy everything I need is time consuming and time consuming and on days where my day ends at 7 or 8 pm, the last thing I want to do is go to the store. It made more sense to stop at Carl's Jr. Do not think I do not know these are excuses. They are fabulous excuses. Ask any teacher of mine from 7th to 9th grade, I am the king of excuses. I would spend so much time on excuses and fabricating evidence that it would have been easier to just do my work. This brings us to the point of this blog entry.

The contents of a normal Kyle shopping cart over the last 10 years:

- 2-5 Totinos personal pizzas
- 3 hot pockets
- 3-6 boxes of PastaRoni
- a bag or tortilla chips
- a bag or two of Doritos or Lays
- bacon, eggs milk
- 2 bricks of extra sharp cheddar cheese
- sodas, Rockstars
- loaf of white bread
- Pasta noodles and extremely unhealthy sauces
- potatoes
- Froot Loops or Frosted Flakes
- At least one box of Mike and Ikes
- Ice cream

The picture at the top of this blog post represents what I bought at a local market yesterday. it is $25.00 worth of fruits and vegetables (one of these days Pineapple will no longer intimidate me and I will add that to my collection). These are things you would never find in my shopping cart previously. Some of the other things you can find in my shopping cart now that you could not before include frozen chicken, nuts (instead of chips) and whole wheat bread. Most of the things on the above list are nowhere to be found these days. I am slowly figuring out how to think ahead to cook. I am figuring out how to cook more than I need so I can eat the rest of it for another meal, and more likely, take it with me to eat the next day. I am eating more salads, and making fruit salad to have as a snack or side dish. I have not bought boxed pizza in over a month which is unheard of for me. I no longer make giant plates of nachos. I definitely do not eat 2 or 3 bowls of Frosted Flakes in the morning.

This drastic change has come at a bit of a price. I am spending more money on groceries, but less on eating out, so I believe it comes to a balance. I might still be spending a bit more on food now than I was. Is it worth it? Sure, it is. I still maintain that people with large families and limited budget do not have the luxury of eating healthier, and if you want that debate, I am open to it. I am not totally comfortable with this change, if I am being honest. I still miss the crappy food. If someone could make a salad that tasted like nachos drenched in chili and sour cream, it would make my life. Whole wheat bread makes my sandwiches taste less fun and I miss eating giant bowls of pasta covered in sauce. I will probably always miss it.

I am still learning to like chicken. I am only cooking it one way at this point, so I am going to have to branch out eventually and find other things to do with it that are healthy. I need more food options in general. I am not the kind of guy that is terribly comfortable eating the same 4 or 5 things every week. That is going to be a problem. For some reason I am perfectly okay eating the same breakfast every day, but switching between salad, fish and chicken is going to get old fast. I need to learn more culinary tricks.

Oh one last thing, when I first started this journey, soda was a big topic. I had a soda at the movie theater the other day, which was too bad, but I am doing much better. I forgot to bring a drink with me and I am not going to pay money for water, so I bought a soda. In my regular life though, I have found something that makes me miss soda a bit less. It is called Sparkling Ice. It has no sugar, no calories and appears all healthy, but it has the fizz I loved in soda. They cost me a $1.00 each, but it takes away the monotony of drinking water all of the time.