Kicking it up a notch

From the moment I found myself back in the pool, I wanted to get myself to 20 laps. My body is a mess of pain, I am incredibly obese and out of shape and I was swimming 10 laps the first week and in order to do those 10, I had to take breaks. It was embarrassing for someone who used to swim on a regular basis and I was good. This is not some bragging nonsense either, I was a pretty good, and fast swimmer. I have always been bigger, but when I was younger, I was in pretty good shape even for a bigger kid. The fight to get myself to 20 laps has been equally as embarrassing for me. I would hit this wall at 16 or 18 laps and my mind would take over and I would crash. The pain would kick in and I refused to fight through the pain. The back injury was a major setback in my progress, and I was starting to feel defeated but that was before my major attitude adjustment this week. I came into this week knowing I needed to kick myself in the ass.

Well the attitude change brought with it my 20 lap milestone! Not only did I hit the milestone, I hit it without any real breaks between laps! Oh, but that is not all readers, today I got up to 24 laps in the amount of time it took me to get 20 on Wednesday. Next week, I am really going to push it and get myself to 30 by the end of next week. I honestly think I could have pushed myself harder today, but I do have a bit of a cold and it was making breathing a bit difficult, and let's be honest, breathing is an important part of the living process. I started this blog on May 10th and began my quest a day or two earlier, and here I am 7 weeks later and hitting my first, of hopefully many, big milestone. It feels great! My body was exhausted, but it was a good exhausted, not the kind of exhausted you feel after wolfing down a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger.It was not that exhaustion of shame you feel when you ate too much and realize you are tired from eating. I am excited to hit 30 laps next week. My goal is to be at 50 laps before the summer is over. I really believe I can get there.

Keeping with the physical, I had my first dance rehearsal in over a year this week. Our choreographer moves at a fast pace, which I appreciate. For some reason I have always picked up choreography very quickly and I love to move and I love it when a choreographer does not hold back on me because of my weight. The next day I woke up and I could move! This is another huge thing for me. Normally the day after a dance rehearsal my body is a mess of serious pain, stiffness and general sadness, but not this week! I was up the next day, went for a brisk walk and spent the day packing and lifting boxes with minimal pain. This is 7 weeks in and I am seeing the exact kind of results I was hoping to see. Yes, I have hit a weight loss plateau, but I am feeling so great about myself for the first time in a few years.

In terms of weight loss, I have decided not to weigh myself for another week. I do not want to risk getting down on myself. I want to keep this positive momentum flowing. It feels like I burst through a dam and I do not want to stop the gushing water of positive emotions. I need this right now. There are still a few aspects of my life that are freaking me out, and this momentary outburst of pure positive energy is needed to get me through the rest of it.

Happiness is a fleeting emotion. If you find it, you have to do everything you can to hold onto it and remind yourself of that happiness when times get tough. I have a world of things to be thankful for and I am not ignorant of that. I know many of you have great families, but I believe I have the best family in the world. We rally around each other in the face of everything and I have needed to fall back on them many times in my life and never once have they let me fall. My best friend has seen me through so much and seen me at the absolute lowest of emotional, physical and mental health, and he has always told me I deserved better for myself and always reminds me how much I have to offer. I am also lucky enough to have the sweetest, most understanding, most caring and most amazing girlfriend in the world. I apologize, half-heartedly, for the cheesiness, but it is completely sincere. Martina does way more than she probably knows to keep me focused. But most of all, I have myself. I have to control my own happiness. We all have to control our own happiness. We surround ourselves with the people who bring out the happiness. They do not create it or control it, but they help foster it. I have to be in charge of what I let in my body, and who I let in my heart and life.

This journey has taken me so many places already. I have cried quietly in the dark of night as I realized how I caused this in myself, but how I always blamed other people. I have randomly laughed, and cheered when I hit this big introspective realization. I have eaten more fruits and vegetables in the last 7 weeks than I can ever remember, and I have stuck to my plans. I have hated every fiber of my being, and then never loved myself more when I realized what was causing that hate. I am a million miles away from completing this journey, but after 7 weeks, I feel like I have traveled the entire world of emotions. I am exhausted, but energized and am thankful to each and every person who has read and followed the journey thus far. I am unbelievably thankful for the words of encouragement, the suggestions and the positive energy everyone brings to my journey. I am even more thankful to those who have said I have inspired them. I do not want to sound douchey, but it is my life's goal to inspire and if my journey to free myself from the chains of obesity, pain and sadness, can help someone else escape their own chains, that is best feeling in the world.

Tomorrow I get to go witness two people who love each other commit to a life together. Is there anything more inspiring than that? I tell you readers, life is a crazy, beautiful, tragic, awesome trip and it is about time I look up and enjoy the damn ride!!

The stupidity of insecurities

Today I went to the pool to swim. When I arrived the with my girlfriend and her roommate there were two guys at the pool. They were not swimming, but they were in the pool area. Both of these guys were good looking and trim and one of them was in incredible shape. What is about to follow in this blog follows absolutely zero amount of logic and I understand that.

From the moment I took off my shirt to get in the pool, these guys were judging me. Everything they whispered was a comment about how gross I am, how stupid I look when I swim and how foolish it is I even attempt to lose weight. Every laugh made me cringe because I knew without question they were laughing at me. I was the sole subject of their conversation and it completely psyched me out. The entire time I was swimming, I was not even remotely paying attention to the fact that I did a good amount of laps considering I am on the verge of a death sickness hovering and considering I had not done any swimming in almost a week. No, all I could focus on was these two guys judging everything about me. Of course, the probability that they were actually talking about me is incredibly low. Why would I register on their conversation? And even if they did mention something to each other, why the hell should I let it get me down? My own insecurities of course. I believe these things about myself to the point where I become obsessed with them and I assume everyone else is obsessed with them as well. When you have a tiny zit on your face, you assume everyone is looking at it, or commenting on it quietly as you pass by. Well, my insecurities are a giant zit and I cannot seem to pop it and rid myself of these ridiculous thoughts.

It is the same reason I never go into a gym. I like the idea of having a place to go and get everything I need in terms of a work out, but the minute I step inside a room at a gym, I immediately assume everyone stops what they are doing to comment on how ridiculous it is that this extremely fat guy would even attempt to get into shape. It is like I am infringing on this secret hideout of fit people and they want me to gone as quickly as possible. Even worse is when I start to use a machine and every single person is laughing at me using it incorrectly. They judge the speed, the incline, the reps, the amount of weight, the way my clothes do or do not hide my fat. It is crippling. It is seriously crippling and I wish that it fueled my desire, but it does not. It causes me such serious anxiety I feel like I make myself ill. it is silly because most of the people I know who are in shape are incredibly kind and helpful to me. But, these people who are judging me do not know me. They do not know me and think I am cool, or honest or whatever the quality my friends see in me is. No, they are faceless, charmless people who only exist to ridicule my attempts to better myself.

How can I exist in a world where I think strangers are constantly mocking me? Honestly, it is tough on some days. These days where the insecurities take such hold that I truly believe I can do nothing write no matter how hard I try. I know this is silly. It does not make it any less "real." On these days, I have to learn to better look to the people who care about me. I have to realize that even if there are people who mock me, those people do not matter. The people who want us to succeed are who matter and I have plenty of those people on my side. I have people on my side that I would have never thought would be interested in my life. It is an exciting thing, and it is incredibly helpful on days like this when the insecurities leave me just a bit more crippled than usual.

So after I got out of the pool, and got my first sunburn of this summer season, I ate a good lunch, but did not over eat. I drank Iced Tea instead of soda and for dinner I steamed some vegetables, and ate some delicious fish. I did not let myself feel crippled for the entire day and I did not fall back on the things that brought me such faux comfort. In the end you can say that I handled these insecurities in the most positive way I ever have and as I finish writing this and go to sleep, I feel incredibly good about that.

To drink..or not to drink a Rockstar

For a major part of the last 3 years, I have fabricated energy by pounding Rockstars. I am not a fan of the regular Rockstars, so I drink Rockstar Punched.It is a glorious drink that can give me exactly the energy I needed to fake in order to get through rehearsals, work, or just well, mornings. They have become a part of my culture of living. I have managed a full week now without soda, but Friday night still requires a Rockstar if I desire doing anything at night. However, I think it is time to phase them out.

This week I have not needed to fabricate energy because I have ACTUAL energy! During the day I am not nearly as tired or rundown as I have been for the last few years. Now, this happens to come at a time when my stress has been reduced as well due to the semester coming to an end and knowing I have passed the California assessment for potential teachers, so I am getting a better sleep, but this goes beyond that.

I have to make a confession, normally I do not eat my first real meal until after 2pm. I cannot eat breakfast early and because I am not home often, I do not do such a good job of packing a lunch, so I do not eat on campus. Recently this changed. I am trying to at least grab something to eat before school (a banana and/or orange is the most common)and I am trying to bring food with me to eat at school. Doing this has boosted my energy, but it also means I do not need to come home and eat first thing, then get tired from eating too much since it is my first meal of the day. Nope, now I come home and get right to work. I put together whatever I need for the next day and then I eat. It means I getting work done during the day, so I do not have to wake up at 5:30, which gives me an extra 30 minutes of sleep. It also allows me to sleep better, so when I go to bed at 10:00pm, I am not worried about the next day and I actually sleep.

No joke, people undervalue the importance of sleep. For a whole summer I averaged maybe 2 hours a night. It is what allowed me to burn through all 10 seasons of Friends at an ungodly pace. Here I am two years later and I am averaging nearly 7 a night. This is a complete turn around for me and it is making everything easier.

In other health project related news, I went for a really great swim yesterday. There is something that swimming does to me that almost nothing else can. It energizes me and relaxes me at the same time. It is a rare place where my body feels no pain, but I have to worry about my self conscious image issue. When I swim, I do my best to make sure it is just me and someone to whom I am close. My girlfriend makes it a bit easier because for whatever reason she finds me attractive. I do not pretend to understand it, but it is about the most wonderful thing in the world. Seriously, a supportive girlfriend when you feel like you are the most hideous thing ever, really helps. This is still a new revelation to me. However, I cannot see myself through her eyes. I see myself through my eyes and while I have wicked pretty eyes (seriously, I do. Trust me) I see this disgusting thing every time I take off my shirt. It effectively ended my love of swimming at roughly 13 years old when I started to really start thinking about what girls thought of me. Since then, swimming has always been bittersweet. I love it, but I only enjoy it in private, you know like a Taylor Swift song.

wow, did this post ever get away from me. Like I said, the darkness is there. Allow me to say, this change is not an appearance thing, it is not even a weight loss thing in as much as I am not stepping on a scale on a daily basis, this is a change to simply feel better and feel like I will live longer in order to help the people I am meant to help by being a teacher. The Biggest Loser always has two or three teachers on it and they always talk about their students, and as I now have had my own students, I see the importance I can have in their lives. If that sounds pretentious in any way, I promise you I do not mean it to. I think if you knew me very well, this is one area where I am actually void of pretentiousness. On a daily basis I see students who d not have great, stable home lives and they come to school simply for that stability and I do not want to jeopardize that because I could not stop myself from letting my health get too far gone to overcome.

This was literally going to be a short post about Rockstar energy drinks. I guess I have too much pent up to craft short posts for now. There is a part of me that wants to delete this post so no one ever sees just how physically insecure I am. It is easier when everyone thinks I am kind of cocky.