The pie and ice cream joint right next door to LA Weight Loss. We all want to be able to eat a diet of crappy, fatty foods and wash it down with gut-buster sizes of soda. As patriotic as I am, I think we have to admit our faults and this photo says a lot. The flip side of the craptastic diet is the magic bullet approach to weight loss. Notice I said weight loss and not health and fitness for a reason. So many people that I know do not give a fck about health or fitness. Frankly, they’d rather fall into the skinny-fat category of looking good in clothes but being in poor shape internally, not being able to lift any object heavier than five pounds, being winded after one flight of stairs, etc. This topic is fresh on my mind for several reasons, the chief of which is a dialogue I was sucked into earlier. A woman asked me, “What have you done to lose weight? I want to know everything.” Again, notice that she said “lose weight” and nothing about health or fitness. I gave her the standard response of: “I have no magic bullet or fancy answer for you. I am still in the process, to be honest, but I watched what I ate faithfully and I have worked out like a mother. Simple as that.” She looked so dejected. She rolled her eyes and said, “Well. I hate exercise. I hate working out. I have no time to myself and even if I did, it would not be spent exercising.” And that was the end of the conversation, LOL. People want to insert themselves quite spectacularly into your business and then when you give them an answer, they aren’t happy because you cannot tell them what they want to hear. I suppose these people want me to tell them the name of a pill or a diet shake or a diet plan. Or worse yet, tell them that I made no changes at all and it happened through magic or I ate nothing but donuts all day, slept for 14 hours a night, and the pounds flew off. Sorry, that ain’t happening. There are times when I wish that certain people wouldn’t even broach the subject with me. Everyone likes to be flattered and I am no exception. It’s nice when people pay you a compliment and pay attention to your hard work. In the beginning of this process, it seemed like I was never going to get as far as I have. But damn, it has taken some time and effort. I got started on this road in the middle of last summer and it was Thanksgiving or so before people started saying anything. For the first three weeks, I lost no weight, which was maddening. True enough, I gained no weight, but I was working out and sweating buckets yet the scale wasn’t moving and my clothes weren’t getting any looser. Sometimes in life, you have to know when to reevaluate your choices. In thinking about my workout schedule, yes, I was sweating like mad but I wasn’t getting enough cardio. When the first step you have to take is getting rid of some extra fat, cardio is the best way to get there. If you try to start a program that is way beyond your level, you may indeed be covered in sweat and feeling tired at the end but you may not have burned as many calories as you think because you probably weren’t able to keep your heart rate elevated long enough to make a serious dent. Trust me on this—I learned it all the hard way. A lot for me changed when my fitness level and my stamina increased. Not only could I work harder at cardio but I could start weight lifting and that is something I completely fell in love with. Now I have had to reevaluate again because if I could lift every single day, I would. Unfortunately, trying to do that not only halts your muscle growth progress, it also makes you more prone to injures and causes you to walk around in a state of constant pain. Not to mention you find your abilities getting weaker each time. No one wants that. I have found that generally speaking, bodybuilders have some good advice to pass along. Certainly I am NOT talking about people who take steroids and/or burn themselves into oblivion in tanning beds and/or who tell you that you can get a 6 pack in 14 days. I guess what I am trying to say is this: if you get stuck in a plateau, an exercise rut, a nutrition rut, etc., don’t sell the bodybuilders short. Many of them have bulked up the steroids way but some of them are fit because of a lifetime of hard work and diligent eating habits. We should be willing to take knowledge from people who have found good strategies.
Then you have the haters. I have experienced some very bizarre, rude, and unnerving comments along my journey and it pays to remember that when you achieve something cool in life, there will always be haters. Period. Some of these unwanted and unsolicited comments include:
Wow. It must be nice not to eat.
You look terrible.
You should gain at least 10 lbs back and then you’ll be decent again.
I guess you just exist on water and celery sticks now, huh?
I offer you donuts and bagels a lot because I want to sabotage your progress.
I am jealous and I hope you fail.
Ain’t life grand? I can’t imagine walking up to someone and saying such things. Common decency is not so common, eh. You have the people who don’t verbally say anything but who will say everything they want to with their body language. One of my co-workers gives me the stink eye all the time. If you watched the first season of Drop Dead Diva (one of my guilty TV pleasures) you remember the discussion of the body check that people do and believe me, it happens whether you’re heavy or thin. You can feel someone’s eyes looking you up and down and not in a good way. If you’re heavy, they’re judging you. If you’re thin, they’re judging you. Then you have the other side of the hater fence, which is a complete refusal to acknowledge your progress at all. This is better than being insulted or dirty-looked-to-death, don’t get me wrong. But it is still meant as a fck you to your improvement. Don’t let it bother you that way. In fact, laugh at it if you can. Of all the inner circle of people in my life, there is only one person who has said absolutely nothing to me about my progress. And when I say nothing, I truly mean nothing. (I will call this person X to maintain his anonymity.) Given the circumstances, I know it’s not a case of this person not realizing the change. I can tell you with great confidence that it is a deliberate disregard out of jealousy. In that sense, surprisingly, it’s hard for me to be angry with him. I feel sorry for him. X has struggled with weight issues and an extremely distorted body perception for as long as I’ve known him. At one time, X was somewhere in the 300 to 400 lb range. I mean, it had gotten pretty bad. X then managed through a series of very unhealthy changes to diet down to the 250 lb range. Losing that amount of weight is fantastic if it’s done in a healthy manner. Unfortunately, X was not healthy about it and, not unexpectedly, once X reached the 250 lb range, the results stopped. But in X’s mind, he’s Mr. Universe-- even though anyone with two eyes can see that X’s weight is not from muscle. I have seen X try to stuff himself into pants that are clearly 2 or 3 sizes too small in the waist just so he can say he’s wearing a 32 or 34. Yeeeahh. I could probably put on a kids’ size 5 or 6 and technically get it on but surely I would look like either a hoochie or a sausage. X doesn’t get this. Moreover, it’s even worse when X makes a comment about how fat someone is and you look at the person and realize he or she is much smaller than X. Like several other people I know, X is a binge eater/sneak eater. In his mind, if he tells you he only eats salads and works out for hours each day, the illusion is technically true as long as you never see him wolfing down hamburgers, chicken legs, candy bars, popcorn, French fries, etc., etc. He’s only hurting himself so even though I think he’s being a hater, I can’t really be mad about it.
Let’s see . . . I’m behind on my movie reviews. The last thing I recall seeing that I somewhat enjoyed was The Crazies. Maybe because I went in with low expectations. Well, and I think Timothy Olyphant is hot. The Green Zone was not bad but it had an anti-climactic ending. Same thing with Repo Men. I still like Jude Law and had high hopes for that film but it didn’t live up. I don’t like getting to the end of a film and receiving the bait-and-switch gag. On the small screen, I have discovered that the show House is like freakin’ TV crack. It joins the list with Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker, Rome, The Tudors, Gordon Ramsay’s shows, et al., of series that I really, really love to watch. Being a nerd, I like to begin at the beginning so even though House is still running, I am not watching the new eps. I’ve started with Season 1 and I am hooked. This all started because I have been tooling around online since I have officially put Simon away as my astrological doppelganger. One of the people who showed up on my list was Hugh Laurie, making me ask, What is it about British men born in 1959? Did I miss the boat somewhere? Then I rented House, fell in love with the show, and I guess it was all kismet. Astrology or not, I can recommend the show—just be advised that you’ll probably get addicted to it from the pilot episode.
