Weighting game

Several months ago, I had done so well. I watched what I ate and lost over 10 pounds. Then the inevitable backslide that so many supposed experts predict (and it burns me up that they were right).

However, I'm not taking this lying down. I have made specific efforts to exercise more and more-regularly. What really gets me is that for some reason, when I do these things, I reliably put on more weight than when I'm inactive, and immediately as well. I went from 215 to 218 pounds in just a few days, after running and lifting weights three or four times per week. This improvement borders on the miraculous for me, and I am discouraged at the Bizarro-world rules that seem to apply.

Is it water weight? Is it (snicker) muscle mass? Is it an increase in appetite or entitlement due to increase activity that causes me to eat more?

I don't know, but I know I don't like it. I know damned well that exercise provides a multitude of benefits, and that I'd be a fool to let weight fluctuations put me off. So, I won't.But still, it's troubling...

Tradition

Monday, I had sincerely planned to increase my exercise, both in frequency and intensity. I went to bed feeling a mite peaked, and woke up with a cold. I've tried before to soldier on through a cold, working outdoors and exercising, and I've learned through experience that it's a reliable and effective way to punch up the severity of an illness. So, last Monday I made a conscious effort to chill out and take lots of fluids.

That paid off, and my cold was relatively gentle and short-lived. Feeling about 95% yesterday, I made good on the promise I'd made myself last week, and continued my tradition of only the most intermittent exercise. Just often enough to cause significant discomfort, that's my motto. Therefore, I am in the kind of pain that makes me move about and groan like a mummy with a spinal cord injury. I couldn't tuck my head in properly when crouching into my car seat, and bashed my head on the edge of the roof.

I don't think I can take much more of this healthy lifestyle.

Gorgeous Days

Yesterday and today were just beautiful days. Sunny, clear, warm - a welcome departure from the preceding month of gray drizzle and cold winds.

I went for a jog yesterday and today, enjoying the warmth and sun (and, disgustingly, blasting the crud from my lungs, which are still recovering from last week's cold). I feel stronger for it.

It's not all sunshine and warmth in my life and especially for those around me, but as awkward as it can be, it reminds me all the more to appreciate the good.

Gym report

I was feeling really good last week about going to the gym. I hadn't gone in weeks, but I had some excellent excuses. Almost as good as achievement, is justification.

Gym report

I'm happy to note that my discipline towards exercise, measured in visits to the gym we joined, is holding up pretty good overall. I went last night when I really didn't feel like it, had a solid workout, and left feeling satisfied about it.

It being the first workout after a few days' rest/neglect, I always have a little more drive than back-to-back workout days. The off days couldn't be helped. It's been an alternately busy and tiring week, requiring a lenient approach to formal workout days.

I am even more proud of my wife, who has historically taken a, shall-we-say lackadaisical approach to fitness. She noted that although her weight was on the fast track to Slimville, she wasn't feeling as strong and healthy as she wanted. She took it upon herself to do something about it, and then stuck with it. Not necessarily a holiday miracle, but given my own disjointed handling of problems vs. solutions, watching someone close to me take responsibility and control over a circumstance and see it through is really something noteworthy.

So there; I noted it...

But back to the important topic at hand: me.

As much as I'd like the abs of Adonis and pectorals of, well, anybody with better pecs than me, I think my overall goals are going to have to shift. I've never thought much of conditioning my lower body, largely because my body-image and idea of strength always assumed an upper-body stacked with beef, letting the lower half look after itself. Considering my medium- and long-term goals, though, I am rethinking this. Those goals:

1. I'd like to get out and hike/camp/fish next year. A lot.
2. I'd like to look not so much like the Michelin Man's pregnant mistress.
3. I'd like to have buttcheeks that didn't flap in a stiff breeze like two hairy windsocks.
4. I'd like to have both knees not hurt and threaten to give out so often; one of them is clearly defective from the factory, and I've just got to make do with what I have.

You add all that up, and it all points to legs. Aerobic workouts to lose weight, strength training to develop strength, muscle tone, bone density and joint health. By spring, I would dearly love to have legs like a mountain goat (hey, hooves and all, I don't care). I'd like to have gams like a mountain troll marathoner. I'd like to have strength, agility and endurance. I'd like to have an ass that my wife can slap without spreading ripples through my backfat up into my forehead.

It's tough, because I've always felt I wasn't built for speed. Or motion in general, for that matter. I've always felt deep in my brittle, flaky bones that running was a torture visited upon man by a cruel, pitiless creator, and that I should have as little part in it as humanly possible, to avenge the moral wrongness of it, if nothing else. Now it looks as though I'll be spending lots of time on treadmills, lunging, squatting (hideous in name and deed, if you ask me). Yechh.

Deep down (maybe not all that deep) inside me there is a pessimist, who has seen many efforts bear puny fruit. He truly doubts in his pathetic, cynical heart that all the effort in the world will bring me closer to the above goals. That little bastard needs a kick in the nuts, and it would do me a world of good.

But, I am encouraged by my wife. She took it upon herself to declare a goal and work fastidiously towards it. If she can do it, maybe I can, too. Ain't she great?

Gym Rats

My wife and I are Valley Springs' newest Gym Rats. We joined the "fitness center" yesterday, and I had my first workout this morning. It was nearly deserted, which is fine with me. I did some light activity and scuttled off to work.

Knowing myself as I do, my biggest fear is sloughing off the workouts, and paying for a service I don't use, not to mention not getting healthier. My goal then is to go at least 3 times a week for the first several weeks, and adopt it as a habit, even if the workouts aren't strenuous.

I'm sick of being shaped like a pear - I want to be a banana, at least.

Bulking up

I continue to pack on the weight. I made 211.5 today. I have started running and walking recently, but God knows I had better start turning down junk food and embracing exercise more fervently. I'm not going back to 235. I'm just not. Hell, I don't wanna see 212 again.