so for those of you that don't know, i've lost a shitton of weight since march of 2009. it was my birthday, february 24th, and i was with my roommate. we'd had a few drinks, so i'm 100 percent sure she doesn't remember any of this, but, that night, she looked me in the eye and said, "i worry about you."
i assumed she meant my fractured psyche, like most people do, but, tearing up, she went on.
"i'm worried about your health and i'm worried about you and it's crass to say, but i wish you were skinnier."
i started to laugh.
"i wish you were healthier," she said, "because i don't want you to die before i'm ready. i want to be with you as long as i can, and i want them all to be good years. i love you. and i wish you were better."
no one's ever said that to me before. most people tended to just accept the idea that tim-is-fat, and move on. but she said something.
and people, let me say this - when someone actually says something, it matters.
and when that someone is the woman you've loved the most in your entire fucking life, in every conceivable fashion?
when she's the love of your life and your very best friend and your roommate and the most beautiful thing you know and your fucking hero?
motherfucker, you'd better pay attention.
backstory:
when i was in high school, i had a crush on a girl that i never talked to. i was too scared to. i made friends with all of her friends, i hovered around, but never said a word. college came, she split. a year passed, she came back, and she entered into my group of friends by starting to date one of them. i said nothing, like the coward and martyr that i am, and they fell into a heavy and serious relationship. so she started being around all the time. and that crush never went away.
and then she started being around me. all the time.
and that crush got worse.
so when i was 20 years old i fell in love with my best friend. bad love, too. that all encompassing, unhealthy, mania love. obsession. and when i was 21, i forced her to make a choice between me and him, and duh - obviously, she didn't choose me.
at the time i was probably a good 330-340. i mean far from skinny, anyway. but that "crisis" didn't bode well for me in any way. i fell apart. i failed all my classes, i stopped going to work, and i spent most days in my office, staring at the internet, or under my desk, staring at nothing. for about a year. i spent most of my time drinking beer and eating fast food. by the end of that year i weighed almost 400 pounds. and i stayed right about there.
the irony, of course being, that not long after that i met my roommate, who a) brought me out of it b) obviously eventually led to me getting healthier, and c) showed me what really loving someone really is (and, by extension, what pain really is. but that's a whole other thing).
so in march, right after my birthday, i made a change.
as of now, i'm somewhere just south of 300 pounds. i've gone down one or even two sizes in pretty much everything. i can walk like a normal person. i've lost 10 inches from my waist. i can see why i could like myself, even if i still don't - and maybe never will.
but i've seen some people i haven't seen in forever and they WHOA and WOW and HEY YOU LOOK GREAT and all of that is all fine and dandy.
i personally say the problem with weight loss is there's fat and there's skinny and that's kinda it - if i walk up to a girl at a bar who isn't into me because of my weight it's hard to convince her that she should go for it because "as disgusting as i am now, i was WAY MORE disgusting before."
(see? the like myself thing. disgusting is the real adjective i would use to describe myself, which i know, intellectually, is bad and wrong. but it still just fits for me. maybe if there's a pro cheerleader out there, reading this, feeling bad - fyi, one makeout session with you and my self-confidence will be just fine. @ reply me.)
anyway, i eventually got an email from a guy i haven't really seen since high school, but who i ran into at a wedding a few weeks ago, and he said that he's studying nutrition and exercise physiology, and people ask him all the time about losing weight, and if it's not a big deal or too personal, would i be willing to share with him what's been working for me?
so i sent a response. and he gave me a very positive reply, which ended with
"That shit you said was awesome man, I hope you don't mind if I pass on what you said, because I think that it could potentially help some other people out too."
so i figured hey, i'll post that email on my blog.
because it's the internet, there's gotta be some chubby motherfuckers reading this shit.
i've actually done some really, really simple stuff. i'm sure i'll have to get more complicated eventually, but i've been so overweight so far that simple changes have meant the world.
i realized that food is hard, or expensive. i ate a LOT of fast food, not because i liked it so much, but 'cause it was easy to get and really cheap. cooking is not as easy as a drive through, but it's better. going out and getting a kickass salad made for you is more expensive. (it's not actually harder - i subsist a lot on a SHITTON of boca burgers, and the way you make those is . . . microwave them for two minutes.)
i quit drinking alcohol a lot, and then when i do drink, i go for vodka soda, which is pretty much the best alcohol content/calorie ratio. but mostly - don't drink.
i eat little to no bread/pasta, but when i do, i've switched everything to whole grains. i eat a lot of fish and a lot of vegetables.
the truth is that i'm kinda eating the way i always wanted to anyway. one of my brothers talks about when we'd go out and have "hedonism days" all my friends would be like "FRIED CHEESE AND BEER!" and i'd be like "OMG SPINACH EGG WHITE OMELET MMMM. OMG CALIFORNIA BURGER WITH VEGGIE PATTY AND NO CHEESE MMMM"
lean proteins, fiber, and vegetables. no potatoes, ever.
i mostly cut juice outta my diet, which sucks - but it's my favorite thing, so i'd have no problem drinking like a gallon of oj or apple juice in a day, and that's just a SHITTON of sugar. all sodas are diet, which i was mostly already doing.
when it comes to eating, i mostly take it a day at a time. yeah, i could've lost weight a lot faster, but i'm not really interested in dieting as much as i am commiting a lifestyle change that'll lead to me being healthy. but when i cheat and eat a ton of pizza or stop for burger king of something, i really don't feel bad. i try to eat between 1100-1600 calories a day, but sometimes i go over. that day's a loss. i just try to have more wins than losses. (to be honest, even on a loss day i rarely go over 2000. i'll have a loss day like once every two months where i hit like 2300. at my weight in june, which was exactly 350, my basic metabolic rate was like 2600. i don't know how much i weight now, i'm worried i'll be disappointed if i weigh myself instead of just going by my pant size.)
this part is bad/cheating, but when i know i'm not gonna be able or don't want to eat a healthy amount of food during the day, 'cause i'm super busy, in order to keep my metabolism firin' on all cylinders i've made damn good friends of caffeine - energy drinks and black coffee are my diet cheat (i mean, really, any diet pill is just a legal form of speed). i try not to do this too often, 'cause i have a tendency to go overboard.
and none of this probably really did much of anything, but i combined it with being more active. i really don't work out, which again, would make me lose faster, but i'm tryin' for slow and steady wins the race. i walk the dog. short walks are 4-8 blocks, long walks are 14-24. i take him on more long walks than short ones. i try to walk everywhere i can in my neighborhood. we play basketball at least once a week, but usually two or three times. or i run around on the court alone. i take the stairs at work instead of the elevator, but not too often, 'cause it makes me outta breath and i don't like walking into the office that way. i do it if everyone's gone. i really sparingly do upper body stuff with a couple 15 pound dumbbells - i just started again and you can tell i ain't done it for a while because my. arms. hurt. i just added a couple really short sets of crunches. i do a "boot camp cardio" dvd i bought. surprisingly the hardest thing about that exercise stuff is that my feet hurt more than anything else. i need better shoe or something - they hurt the least in my boots, but sneakers and barefoot are worse.
i also burn a lot of calories with self-loathing.
so yeah, that's what i'm doing. that's what i did. hopefully it'll keep working. hopefully stuff is working for you.
shit happens, shit changes.
i think my roommate still doesn't know that i'm doing all this because of her.
the truth is she doesn't know much of anything about the way i feel about her. she doesn't much like me anymore. she's not a big fan of this blog.
she's not a very big fan of me.
the truth is that she's moved on. grown past me. she's looking for something real, and i've never been that answer. i was just a temporary solution, and shacking up with me was always her way of playing pretend until someone better noticed her. and it was only a matter of time, because, in case you haven't realized it yet, she's light years beyond me. i'm triple-a ball, and she's an all-star game.
and the only way i know how to react is to be funny.
and the only way i can compete is to bring her and her boys down.
and the only way i can find value is to sit here and entertain strangers.
people got it all wrong. life ain't fun when everything's a joke. it's a fucking nightmare.
put on your dancing shoes, fuckers.
