The hike up Dragoon Gulch

When Martina and I decided on Sonora for our Two year anniversary (to be honest, Living Social played a big part in that), we realized we had to figure out what to do. As we went through the things the official Sonora website had to do in the town, we saw there was a 2.5 mile hike that we could do. It is not really like us to seek out a hike, but we are both trying to get a hold of our health and we thought we would go for it. Last week Martina, Erik, Sara and myself went out in Sacramento and took a nice little hike, but it was not particularly strenuous. it was great fun, and it made me feel like hiking was something I could potentially be into, which was a dramatic change from my usual stance on the great outdoors. Ever since the great Half Dome debacle of my teenage days as a member of the Mormon Church, where we we hiked around for a few days, tried to sleep on the middle of a hill only to slide down roughly 7 feet during the night, got our packs all wet from having to wade in waist high water and I ended up with multiple bloody noses causing me to not even be able to attempt Half Dome, I have been not terribly fond of the idea of hiking.

Well, that was a lifetime ago. In my new life, I am trying everything. I thought I hated running, turns out I kind of enjoy it. The era of "nope" is gone. I am in the era of experiencing as much of the world as possible and hiking seems like the kind of thing world-experiencers(I know this is not a word)would be down to try. I do not have hiking shoes, but I do have my running/outdoor shoes. I am not sure what one typically hikes in, or what hiking type people carry around in their neat backpacks. I do not know anything about hiking. People take a lot of pictures, and look like they have not showered in a few days, and that is the extent of my knowledge. I typically think of hiking as camping to a whole other level and I have a deep seeded hatred for camping. The people in my life who enjoy hiking seem like perfectly reasonable human people, so it cannot be all crazy, right? Okay, can I just say this here: nature kind of freaks me out. There are things that grow in the wild that seem to exist just to make people itchy and red. Who has time for that nonsense? People like study that stuff. People know this tree from that tree and that plant from that plant. I am over here like, well that's a tree and it provides me shade when I want to read outside. That is where my basic knowledge of nature ends. Never mind that I got my wilderness survival Merit Badge, and a few other nature related Merit Badges at Boy Scout Camp. I also got a Merit Badge for like wood carving and other nonsense. What I mean to say is that I could not survive in the world if I was suddenly thrown into a situation where I had to. Nature is freaky plain and simple.

Okay, I have veered far away from sanity here. Allow me to reel myself in. Martina and I got ourselves to the general vicinity of Dragoon Gulch, which is the name of the series of trails we would be ascending and if we were lucky, descending. Before we began, we made the decision that we would take the hardest way up the hill. We were feeling confident after last week's hike and if I am being totally honest, I was a little cocky. I mean, I could climb up ANYTHING after tackling that area of Sacramento last week. I HAD THIS! We followed a series of arrows pointing us to the start of the trail and we headed off. It was all petty straight forward at first. The trails appeared to be fairly busy, but it was a gorgeous day, so that made a certain amount of sense. People were jobbing, walking, riding bikes and many people were out there with their dogs. It is a really stunning sight, but fires look pretty too and they do serious damage. I would not be fooled by the gorgeous scenery. I was still on the look out for plants that want to cause me pain. Eventually we reached our first decision. The path split into two ways, but they were not labeled as EASY and HARD. What were we to do? As luck would have it, a woman came through who could tell we were confused and told us which one was difficult and which one was not. The steep and strenuous path was shorter, but provided quite a work out. Ultimately we decided we would head up the steep way and down the other way.

It did not take very long on our way up the steep trail for me to rethink this entire endeavor! I was sweaty, breathing incredibly hard and my entire lower body was hurting. Wait, people do this for fun?? How is that even possible? I wanted to quit. As I thought about quitting I realized, I could not quit. On a hike, you have two options: Keep moving forward, or head back down. There is no quit on a hike. On the treadmill, I can easily just quit. I can hit stop and go home. On the side of the hill, I could not just sit down and quit. I could keep moving forward, facing my fears, conquering my self doubt and getting that picture at the top, or I could admit defeat and slink down the side of the hill, but I could not quit. With Martina's encouraging words, I knew I could not go back down. I had to press on, so on we went. As we conquered more of the hill, my heart was pounding about as hard as I can ever remember and Martina and I started talking about some of our health goals. I said a big one of mine was to get to a place where I was not winded walking up and down the stairs in our apartment. I realize there are people who can walk up or down a flight of stairs and not feel winded. I do not understand how that works. I have spent my entire life feeling winded and I realize that a big part of this journey is getting myself to a place where it takes serious actual activity to leave me winded. After two rest stops for me to catch my breath, Martina and I arrived at the top of the hill. I did it! I did something I had never really done before. Here was another thing I could hang my hat on over the last year. Of course, this was not really about making it up the side of a hill for a picture, although I got my picture. This was really about being in a place mentally where I felt like I could do it. I am sure a year ago or two years ago, I could have made it up the side of this hill, it is not like it is Mount Olympus or something, but I would have never BELIEVED I could have climbed it. I never would have attempted it. I would have just assumed I was too fat and never would have thought of it as something for us to do.



3 months into the year and I am doing many things I have never done before. I ran for 10 minutes nonstop, then I ran for 15 minutes nonstop. I walked over 3 miles last week, and in a week, I went from riding a bike 3 miles in 15 minutes to 4 miles in 15 minutes. This weekend I willingly hiked up a hill the most strenuous way to hike up it. As we drove up to the Vineyard for our wine tasting, we realized there were other places to hike and made note of them so we can go back! I am not saying I am going to train to be a legitimate hiking type person with the backpack and the nature knowledge, but I know that it is hard work that is fun and gives me a great work out. It allows me to look at something gorgeous while still being active. Many people might read this post and just think "duh" and that is perfectly fine. It probably is "duh" that hiking is fun. As someone who is perfectly content to stay inside and watch movies or read all day, this is not a "duh" situation. I have never loved the nature scene. I had a great time on Sunday and am definitely going to be looking to do more hiking in my life.

I have been at this for almost a year now and am learning so much about myself. I am still not happy with the physical change I see in myself. I see pictures of people who have lost as much weight as I have, and they look drastically different. I do not look drastically different. I look different yes, but it does not feel drastic, but I keep believing it will come. Where the change is drastic, it my attitude. I want to be out in the world now. I want to try new things. I want to say yes and I am saying yes. On the side of that hill, never once did I think someone was looking at me and judging me for being a fat guy breathing heavy. Never once did I think someone was looking at me and thinking I was not going to make it up the hill. This is a huge deal for me. The only thing I can do now, is keep looking forward and finding the next challenge!

Feeling the burn

After a nearly two week hiatus from working out due to injury, I am back and better (read: more sore) than ever. For some reason I thought my first workout back should be the single most intense workout of my entire existence as a human person on this planet of Earth.Click here to find Lucas Blair's Cardio Fat Blast website. Lucas is the trainer who concocted this insanity and last summer when I saw him posting things about leading this workout, I was curious, but I was scared. When I saw that he was going to be leading classes in Sacramento, again, I was curious, but scared. I knew I was not ready for that. The problem was, if I talked myself out of it, I would never be ready for it. As I have been documenting my journey all over the interwebs, it did not surprise me when Lucas reached out to be and told me he would love to see me in class. Without any excuses, I found myself in his class yesterday morning.

After 11 days off, any workout is going to be tough, but after 15 minutes of Lucas' high energy, high intensity workout, I was ready to completely collapse. He tells you to modify and to go at your own pace at spots, but the music is loud and uptempo and everyone there is battling, that you want to battle as much as you can. My biggest fear going in was that everyone else in class would be in incredible shape, but that was not the case. One person was in excellent shape and the rest were people like me, just trying to get into shape. There was this ease of tension when I realized that. However, I believe even really in shape people would have to battle in this workout, it is that intense. If I am being completely honest I did not make it through the entire workout. At about the half way point my stomach started turning and I threw up. I came back and managed to do the abdominal workouts, but once they got back up, I had to throw up again. When the hour was over, I went and threw up everything I had ever eaten in my entire life. If that sounds awful, trust me it isn't. I worked out so hardcore that I threw up, but I came back and tried again. And even though I was beat, and hungry, sweaty and more exhausted than I can ever remember being, I felt GREAT! I have a baseline with which to track my progress with his class. Yes, I definitely plan on attending again. I cannot make the next class, but for the entire month of April, I am planning on going and I would love to see all of you out there. (no Lucas is not paying me to say this, I just really had that great of a time.)

One of the things I love about a really good workout, is how well I sleep the night after it. I have been struggling with sleep lately due to the anxiety of money/job and a really good workout makes it so easy to fall asleep at night, which makes it easier to get up in the morning and get a good workout in. The entire thing is connected. If I eat well, workout, and get a good night's sleep, I feel better. For the last 11 days, I have not felt that great. Of course a big part of that was the fall down the stairs just hurting me, but it was more than that. I missed the workout. I missed running on the treadmill. I missed the feeling of accomplishing a good workout. So on Sunday I might not have finished the whole workout but I branched out, did something that scared me and found that it was not that scary. In fact it was invigorating and energizing.

This morning I set out to do a light workout because I realized I probably should ease myself back onto the treadmill. I did a 15 minute mile doing intervals of jogging and walking and it felt good. I was two minutes behind my current pace, but I felt good and I know I need to work myself back up, but after the 15 minutes, I did not feel done. I felt like there was more I had to do, so I got on the stationary bike. I do not use the bike as much these days, so I was curious as to how it would go. It felt so good to get moving on that thing. I destroyed personal bests and when it was over I felt so good, I decided to come back to my living room and do some modified CrossFit exercises. I am sore as ever right now, but I also feel great. I want to eat great for the rest of the day and just enjoy this feeling.

There is so much going on inside my brain as I deal with bills and trying to find a full time teaching job for next year and even trying to figure out where Martina and I will be living in the summer or fall, but one thing I can control is my health. This is the time when it is at its most crucial because stress is typically when I allow things to spin out of control. I am a stronger person now and am finding that a solid workout is way better for stress relief than a Double Western bacon Cheeseburger with a large Chili Cheese Fries and an extra large Dr. Pepper.

My father, the hero

I should warn any of my readers that this post will be straying a bit from my usual health related posts, but it will tie into my journey, so please allow me this little side venture.

Growing up I always knew I had great parents. Sure, I would complain about them the way any kid/teenager did, but I knew deep down that I got lucky. In high school I had friends who would come over to my house when I was not home in order to hang out with my mom and talk to her. Why? Because my mom is intrinsically cool, but more than that, she was an open minded non judgmental mom. She never talked down to people who were younger. That is something I did not realize when I was at that age, but as I enter my almost mid-30s I see it now. One of the things for which I was often praised on evaluations from my mentor teachers and university supervisors was that I never talked down to any student. One of the reasons, I think, that kids and teenagers gravitate towards me is this concept that I do not talk down to people just because they are younger than I am. I treat a kid's problems the same way I would an adult and I always ask kids how their day is going and I treat it like it important because to that kid, it is. I learned that from my mom. I learned so much from my cool parents that I wish I could back to being a teenager and fully appreciate what they did for me. My parents loved having my friends over. One New Year's Eve my parents had all my church friends over after New Year's Eve Dance and made pancakes and bacon for all of them. I certainly did not ask for it, but my parents wanted my friends to know that my house had a sense of community. I probably never told them how much I appreciated that.

This entry however, is going to focus on my father. It can be a post about all of the great dads out there. I know plenty, but as I struggle to get healthier, I have no better role model to look towards than my own father. My dad has always been a goal oriented man. He is a man with a plan and no one sticks to plans better than my father. I grew up watching him sit down on Sundays and write letters because his goal one year was to write more letters. So he wrote missionaries, family members, and probably various other people. No one has ever stuck to their goals better than my father. I do not know how many years ago it was that he decided to get into shape, but the minute he did, he never looked back. However, it was not just about losing weight. My dad started running 5K's and now has branched out to half marathons and who knows what he has left in store for him. I hardly get to see my dad these days, but one thing I have noticed over the last few years is a change in his attitude towards his own life. My dad has always had excitement for things, but they were reserved for the things his kids did. He would get excited about my opening nights, Travis' point total on the basketball court, Jackson's stat line for baseball and Carly's stat line in softball or volleyball. He would get excited for church events he would help organize or work outings to the Giants games or Waterworld. However, in the last few years he has started to get excited at his own accomplishments. He texts me the times of his runs, not because he is bragging but because he is proud of himself for setting these goals and achieving them. My father is not a proud man, in fact, he might be the most humble man I know, so to him get excited about something he has done, fills me with such happiness and motivation.

I know one day I am going to run a 5K or something with my dad. He will probably beat me, but that is something I am aiming for. My dad is the most supportive man I know. He has supported all four of us kids in anything and everything we have ever wanted to try. He wants us to be happy. My dad sat through rap concerts with Travis and I because he knew we wanted to go and he wanted us to be happy. He has supported me in my most trying times and now that I am working on getting healthier, his support grows all of the time. I am not sure how old I was when I realized that my dad was my hero. It probably happened later in life than it should have, but I truly am a lucky person. My dad is kind and hilarious and motivated and hard working and he leads by example. If my 50+ year old dad could get into shape and run races why couldn't I? Well, I can. Things are slow right now after a fall down the stairs and some oral surgery, but I know that I have my goals in place and when I am physically healed, I will get back on that treadmill and back in that gym and work towards my goal because Hadley's do not quit.

I have learned so many great things from my dad, but not because he was telling me to watch him and act like him, he just did it. As I start to think about family and future, I always wonder what kind of dad I will be. I do not worry about being a good father because I had such an excellent role model. In sports my dad wanted to win, yes, but as a coach he practiced things like fair play and gave every player a chance to play minutes. He wanted to make sure everyone was involved. He was never once too busy to play catch with me, or shoot hoops with me, or run passing routes with me, or any of my siblings. He was home for dinner most nights and we ate as a family most nights until there were teenage jobs, and extracurricular activities to get to. Even now he drives to California to see my plays and see Travis and Carly. His kids are his life, but now he has this other part of his life that excites him and it excites me to know that I still have my own life to look forward to. Every day I wake up with a choice to be happy or not and for some reason, often times thinking about my dad makes me want to be happy. It wants me to be better. I want to be the kind of guy who whose kids' friends' think to come to if they need an adult to talk to.

Through his actions, my dad taught me how to treat a woman correctly, he taught me the importance of date nights, and laughter. I learned the value of being with the family when things are rough and when they are great. I understand why family game nights are important. I learned fair play and team work and I learned that even my smallest accomplishments are worth celebrating. However, in this journey to get healthy I have realized that I learned the importance of goals and in the last few years I have learned that it is never too late to change you life and make it the best life it can be.

The twists and turns of quiet contemplation

"Remember that the sun will still rise tomorrow even if I had one too many slices of pizza or an extra scoop of ice cream tonight." 17 magazine Body Peace Treaty

The last week has been incredibly rough. I feel as if I have a myriad of things holding me back right now. My body has felt like it was quitting on me, like I was pushing slightly too hard through a series of pained joints and muscles and I realized, that I might have been. In an attempt to get myself to the goal of a 12 minute mile, I pushed myself too hard and burned myself out. I was not properly warming beforehand, nor had I really built my stamina up to get where I need to get to achieve that goal. I just saw the goal and wanted it so hard that I forgot that I have treat my body well in order to get there. It was frustrating and a bit disheartening. I kind of gave up on myself for a few days there. I am not proud of it at all, but it happened. I just kind of threw in the towel and fell back into some of my bad patterns or laying around a lot.

There are times when I look at myself and just feel like I am not getting anywhere and thinking that this whole thing is pointless. At some point I should see a difference, not only feel a difference, but I should be able to look in the mirror and see myself shrinking and I am not seeing that. For a few weeks I was doing everything right all of the time and was not seeing what I thought I should see and if I cannot see any change doing things the right way, why deny myself things I desperately want like soda, chips, candy and fast food. I know, my body cannot handle fast food the way it used to, but I still miss it. I miss soda and to everyone who tells you it goes away, IT DOES NOT!!! No substitute gets me over missing it. Oh I know what would happen if I had some, it would be gross and I would feel sick because I am not putting it in my body anymore, but logic goes out of the window when I feel down on myself.

Sometimes I feel like I am in a bad relationship with myself. I know logically what to do, but when I am feeling down logic holds no place. Logic has no place in an emotional setting and let's face it, a relationship with one's body is emotionally fragile. I wake up some days thinking I am about as awesome as a man can be, but often times I wake up and think that I am never going to get it right, so why try? I thought this feeling about my body would end when I got out of high school. Then I thought it would end when I found someone who loved me, now I am wondering if it ever really ends? At what point do I realize that this is who I am and it is up to me to get right with it? I am 50lbs lighter than I was at this point last year and I am down 85lbs from my highest weight in my life when I was probavbly 24 or 25 years old. I am basically at my lowest weight since high school, but I am also in better shape than I was in high school. I am, otherwise in the happiest place I have been in my entire life, minus the whole lack of job thing. So why am I still at such odds with how I look? Why does it matter so much?

Generally I feel more confident than I have in my entire life. Today I jogged for 12 minutes straight and just missed my 12 minute mile. I can do push-ups now and at work when it is slow I am doing squats and lunges and these standing push up things. I do not sit and eat popcorn when it is slow. No, I am trying to make myself the best version of who I am. However, I realize in my quiet alone moments, I still have so much work to do on the inside. I still have to get myself right with who I actually am. One of the things I am trying to work on is not defining myself by my job, or lack of job. For so many of the last 5 years I have struggled to find a full time job when I have needed it. When I get a chance to interview for a job, I get it 95% of the time, but it has been a constant point of contention in my life. I need to feel like I am doing something to contribute to the world and to my own world. I have to work on reminding myself that I am not defined by not having a job. I hate telling people I am an usher at a movie theater. I hate going to work because I feel like I am doing the exact same thing I was doing when I was 16 years old because I am doing the exact same thing I was doing when I was 16 years old. It makes me feel like I have not accomplished anything in the last 16 years, which is totally stupid, but again, my relationship with logic is shaky at best.

I have to admit this post has not gone where I set out to take it, but clearly I have had some things on my mind that I have been struggling to express outwardly. I should have known writing it down was the only way to get it out into the world and out of my head. The quote I put at the beginning of this post came to me from The Biggest Loser last night. For some reason it really hit me in a major way. After last week's frustrating events, I remembered that every day I get to start again, so that is what I did. I stretched out, I made a nice breakfast, I walked down to the gym and I got on the treadmill again. Keeping a good pace, when 10 minutes of pure jogging passed, I pushed myself to go two more and I did it. After a bad week, I had a great morning. I had a great long shower, I am going to make a great lunch and make some salmon for dinner. I am going to read a book and I am going to send my resume to three places today. I am going to spend this day reminding myself that it is okay to have a bad day and it is okay to slip and fall because I am able to get back up and try again. I am going to remind myself that I have great qualities that I need to love about myself and I need to remind myself that my relationship with my body, while volatile, is MY relationship, and I am the only one who can change it. I am the only one who can get right with it. I am the only one who can look at myself and tell myself that it is going to be okay and that as long as I am trying my very best to be the best version of myself, that I can hold my head up high and be proud of myself, which is something I never let myself be. When I graduated college, I did not let myself be proud of myself, and when I finished the Teacher Credential Program, I did not let myself be proud of that, but now I realize that I am the only one stopping me from being proud of who I am and what I have done and what I continue to do.

Okay, I am too emotionally drained to continue. No more truth from me today.

Physical Education

I grew up an athlete, as has been documented multiple times in this blog. My mom once told me that my dad wanted us to play as many sports as possible growing up so that in P.E class we would not look foolish. This may seem like a silly reason, but I promise you, it is not. I grew up playing baseball, basketball, football, tennis and yes, even soccer. I knew the rules, I knew how to play and most of all, I was good enough at all of them to never be made fun of during sports in P.E. In fact, my sophomore year in high school, I beat my P.E teacher in tennis and got an automatic A for the semester. I could play sports and I could play them at a level below superstars, but above most people. To be an overweight teenager and not get picked last in sports, always felt like a big deal. Actually, I was often a captain during sports all through middle school, even though I was miserable and had basically no friends. Sports were always a saving grace for me.

However, there was this other side to P.E. The fitness side. There was the President's test, and the mile runs and all of that other stuff that went along with those physical education classes. This is where I failed myself. I was not in great shape. I was not in good shape. I could hide that in sports because I was skilled. I could hit a baseball, shoot a hoop, throw a pass, and serve a tennis ball, I could not, however, run a mile to save my life. Through most of junior high I faked notes from my dad to get out of running the mile (I could mostly forge my dad's signature, but not my mom's.) If I did not fake a note, I would run until everyone was out of my sight and then I would walk the rest of it, finishing well after everyone else had moved on to other things and not paying attention to how slowly I finished a mile. When it came to the president's test, I would literally cry on those days because everyone was around you watching you try to do a pull up, which I could not do. The entire process shamed me. It did not shame me into taking action, no it shamed into not trying. I did not care what anything showed on those tests, I just hated knowing I was going to get teased non stop about my inability to do anything on that stupid fitness test.It is that test that made me afraid of ever trying sit ups, push ups, pull ups and everything else involved. I could literally play circles around 85% of my class in spots, but no one cared about my skills in sports when it came time for this bi-yearly test.

Recently I have taken up CrossFit, as I have mentioned here, and CrossFit has forced me to dig deep within myself and TRY. Sit ups, push ups and pull ups are all a big part of the CrossFit routine. The biggest difference between now and then is no one is making fun of me for trying. In junior high, my P.E. teachers looked passed the teasing, thought nothing of the snickers coming from my classmates as I struggled to do a pull up. They paid no mind to kids calling me the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man. I do not bring this up for sympathy or pity, as I have processed that time in my life and dealt with it. When I got out of high school, I was sure I was never going to do anything of those things again because of all the ugliness attached to it all. I was never going to run a mile again because I could not be successful at it. I could not be successful at physical fitness and no one in middle school or high school made me feel like I could. I was these great supportive teachers all through high school, but none of them were there in P.E. Now, at 32 years old, I have these great P.E teachers.

This morning I just missed my 12 minute mile, but I did get 1 and 1/4 mile in 15 minutes on the treadmill and then followed that up with two miles on the bike. I did 3.25 miles of physical fitness today and all under an hour. Tonight I will go to CrossFit and I will probably be asked to do push ups, of which I can now do 6 before going to a modified version. I am so close to being able to do a real sit up again. I am still worlds away from doing a real pull up, but I am trying. In middle school and high school, I would do a mile in probably 20 or 25 minutes. I am bigger now than I was in middle school, but I was scared in middle school. I was scared of everything from the age I was 12 until 18. Now I am on the treadmill running/jogging/walking a mile 5 days a week. This is not just about getting physical healthy, this is about conquering all of the things that scare me. Well, not all of the things, I will never get over my fear of clowns, those things are just unnecessary.

Physical Education made me afraid of physical fitness. Not only that, but I always felt physical education missed teaching me about so much of the idea of being healthy. I understand there is a health class at the high school level, but shouldn't physical education be all encompassing about health? That, I presume, is a topic for another day. When I was a kid, I loved sports, and running around with my friends. Eventually all of that stuff scared me and now I am slowly getting it back. I am remembering what it feels like to build up a nice sweat accomplishing something physically demanding. I am missing basketball and baseball. Honestly, I think the thing I miss the most is playing basketball with my brothers and dad. I am setting clear goals and working towards them. I will have a 12 minute mile before February is over. I wish I had this resolve when I was 13 years old. Who knows what may have happened if I had felt supported by the people at school, or if I just did not care what people said in junior high and high school. I do know this, it is never too late to do a pull up and one day, I will get there.

Trying to maintain a positive attitude

In all honesty, the last week has been incredibly rough on me. I lost the substitute teaching job. I am not entirely sure what happened, so I am not going to rehash it all, but it is gone. All that means is that I am exactly three weeks ago. I am in no worse a position, although it definitely feels that way. This is where that mental aspect of my work comes into play. I am pretty sure if this had happened at any other part of my life, I would have completely fallen apart. I would have binged on some of the worst food imaginable and stayed in bed for weeks. It is just how I would have dealt with a sort of loss. However, I do realize that I am in no worse a place than I was a few weeks ago. I still have a job, even if it is only a part time job. I am well liked and respected in this job, and my managers all told me that they will let me know if any of the surrounding Regal theaters have management openings and will write me a recommendation. It is not a great job, but I have something. I also still have everything else I had a few weeks ago. Therefore things are still good. Right? Yes, for the most part. I still feel great.

I am slowly realizing that we create our own mentality. I have been weighed down by a negative attitude my entire life and no matter where I try to lay the blame, I realize I am the one who should be shouldering the blame. I know I have touched upon this in my blog before, I will not bemoan the point, but I think it is worth mentioning every so often. Our attitude determines how we react to a situation. I can remember times in my life, when I would have a day of small misfortunes and I would blame it on the world just hating me for existing. What kind of nonsense is that? Now I realize that is not the case. People spend a lot of time commenting on how great I look, that my physical appearance is changing and that is great, but there is a part of me that thinks that I do not really look that physically different in terms of my weight. I feel like the change my appearance has more to do with how I carry myself. I am no longer always looking at the ground. I am not as hunched over when I walk. My hands are not always shoved deep into my pockets as I try to avoid talking to people. When I go see shows, I am not standing in the back waiting for my friends to be done talking to all of the patrons, I go up to them and hug them and get in the middle of crowds without feeling like everyone is looking at me and judging. I really believe that is the biggest physical change people see.

I know I am losing weight, that is something you can measure. However, when I look in the mirror, I do not see someone who looks smaller, I really do not. I wish I did, but that is not what I see. However, I do see changes, but they are attitude changes. Last Friday night I went to CrossFit without Martina for the first time. It was the biggest class I have attended to this point and the work was by far the most intense to this point. I am pretty sure the Kyle from a year ago would have quietly walked out, gotten in his car and gone home. He would have not been able to handle any of that without someone he knew. He would not have been able to be in a gym with a bunch of really fit people and still been able to do any of the work out. But that is just not who I am anymore. Instead, I walked up to a guy who was sort of similar in size, introduced myself and asked him to be my partner for the partner work. I could barely recognize myself in doing any of that. I have never been the kind of guy to walk up to people and just start conversation. I have always been too self conscious to do such a thing. At least not since high school. And to have spent a whole hour next to some other dude and not once be self deprecating about my weight or my abilities in hopes of getting a laugh? That might be the biggest part of that whole night.

In fact, I generally feel like I am doing a great job at not being self deprecating in an attempt to get people to laugh with my obesity instead of at it. I am doing so much work to be healthier and happier and I realize that I am the one who holds me back the most. Instead of joking about my obesity, I am tackling it head on. I am admitting to myself that my obesity is something I can get control of, instead of letting it have control over me. I still have days where I just feel gross about who I am, and I do express it, but it is not in a joking way, or even a way to get sympathy. It is just stating it out so it no longer festers in my brain and eats at me. And then I have Martina who reassures me that I am not gross and it makes everything okay for that moment.

I know I am going to have bad days and bad weeks, but my attitude is everything. If I can keep myself moving forward and looking for the next opportunity instead of wallowing in what I did not get or what happened to me, I can overcome the bad days or bad weeks without letting them turn into bad months, or bad years. It is time for me to be an active tense and not a passive tense. I need to do things and not let things happen to me (sorry, I could resist). If I just focus on the things that make me happy: my girlfriend, my friends, cooking and eating good food, the gym (what??) movies, and books, I can overcome the bad times. I have to keep myself from slipping into an inherently negative attitude until it is my habit to be positive and do not even have to think about that negativity that has weighed me down for two decades. One step at a time seems like such a cliche, but it is true. Every day is fresh start, and it is time I stop carrying the baggage from Monday into Tuesday and so on until Saturday comes and I am too crushed by baggage that I cannot enjoy the weekend.

The Biggest Loser

From its first season until now, I have always been a fairly casual observer of NBC's The Biggest Loser. I have seen probably 8 seasons in their entirety and seen bits and pieces of most of the other seasons. For those of you who do not know what it is, The Biggest Loser is a reality based contest show. The goal? To be the person who loses the most weight, pure and simple. Every season obese people come on the show and work out with renowned trainers and learn how to be healthy. They get weighed at the end of each episode and the team who loses has to send someone home. For 13 seasons, The Biggest Loser has been a staple of NBC programming.

I remember when I first heard about this show, I was hesitant. Then the first season started and it had the catch phrase "Time to trim the fat" and I felt like it was a show that was not taking the idea of obesity seriously. That catchphrase went away quickly, thankfully, but every year as I watched the show, something about it always felt off for me. I have been obese for most of my life. At my heaviest (early 20's), I was over 350 lbs. I know what it is like to be obese and I know what obese people go through. I always felt The Biggest Loser gave people a false idea of how weight loss worked. It made it seem like dropping 9-15 lbs a week was not only doable, but expected. It sets people up for failure by giving them unrealistic expectations. it does not show the viewer how to lose weigh at home when you work 8 hours a day, come home to a family and have 50 things going on. These are not excuses. Let me make that clear. This last year has shown me how possible it is to lose weight, once you figure it out, but The Biggest Loser takes a group of obese people away from their lives and tells them, "Lose the most weight and win $1000,000.00." It is your only focus when you are on that show and when you only have one focus, it is easier to spend all day in the gym. When stocks your fridge with healthy things, it is easier to eat them. I am not saying the show is bad, but it has always felt like the show sets people up for failure if they think the weight loss results on the show are realistic.

Every year I have watched this show with an attitude of "I wish I could do the things they are doing." I always watch it and think about how I should maybe just try and get on the show and that would fix my issues, which is another dangerous idea the show kind of plants in your head. It is shocking to me how many of the contestants say that they have been trying to get on the show for years. "Well if I cannot get on the show, I guess I just cannot lose the weight." Let me be clear, I think the show has great ideas and it is compelling television. It reduces me to tears on a weekly basis as I watch these people fight to get their lives back, but I have always watched it with the idea that you need that avenue to lose the weight. it has always been an unhealthy relationship for me.

Last year when I started to figure out how to get my life back, I thought about the show and how the contestants motivate themselves. I realized, they do not typically motivate themselves, the trainers help them breakdown their issues and motivate them. It is only after they confront the mental and emotional blocks that they have any success. Instead of wondering where my personal 24/7 trainer was, I realized that I could get myself through the emotional and mental roadblocks. I have detailed my internal struggles repeatedly on this blog, so I am not going to talk at length about them, but The Biggest Loser showed me that losing weight is, at most, a 70% physical thing. That 30% of mental/emotional is just as important. I did not have a trainer yelling at me, pushing me and telling me I deserved better. I had to do it myself. When you start to dissect your choices, you realize how much you have been holding yourself back.

Once I stopped thinking only about "I wish I could do that" and started saying "I can do that" or "I will be able to do that" so much opened up for me. Yes, the workouts on The Biggest Loser are a big part of the show, but in my life, I cannot replicate those. I do not have the access they do. I do not have entire days to give to just focusing on my health. I have the stress of daily life looming. I have to find a job, or pay bills, deal with car trouble, or whatever other issues come up in a day. But, I have understood what The Biggest Loser teaches about the mental hurdles. The trainers are therapists as well as trainers. The contestants break down and cry and feel worthless and then they build themselves up as they realize what they are capable of doing. This is the shows biggest asset. It shows us what we are capable of when we stop making excuses.

This year the show is focusing on childhood obesity and they have three young ambassadors to help show the struggle of young obese people. These three people are incredibly brave. When I was 13, I would have never gone on a national television show for being obese. I was too scared. The young boy representative looks too much like me when I was that age. I cannot imagine what he is going through when Bob Harper comes to visit him, but every week I just hope this kid can figure it out. There is nothing I want more than for young people to not go through what I went through at that age. No one deserves that. The show is doing a great thing with these kids though. They never put the kids on a scale. They are just trying to teach an active lifestyle and a healthier diet. it is really tough for me to watch, but also it fills me with hope because if these 12-16 year old kids can put themselves out there to try and end the cycle of obesity, so can I.

These last few weeks I have found myself hitting big milestones. Yesterday I reached a new one by running for 10 minutes nonstop. I am pretty sure I have never done that before. I am doing things I was sure I was not capable of doing. Of course, I never tried them, but look at me. I am too obese to run nonstop for 10 minutes. NO I AM NOT!! When I finished my workout, I went outside and just became overwhelmed with emotion. I could not even cry, that is how full of emotion I was. I thought to myself that anything the people on The Biggest Loser can do, I can do. In the last few weeks I have done a 15 minute mile, I have done a few sit-ups, and now I have run nonstop for 10 minutes. I watch The Biggest Loser with a different perspective now. I no longer say I wish I could do those things, I say that I know I can do those things. I know that 9-15 lbs of weight loss a week is unrealistic, but I do know that if I work out daily and eat better, that the weight will come off in time. The Biggest Loser is a sprint, but my life, my experience, is a marathon. 2013 has already thrown me a serious life curve ball, but I am strong enough to stay up. I will figure this out and now I will conquer the ever elusive 12 minute mile!