Happy Thanksgiving!

I saw several herds/gaggles/gangs/mobs of turkey this morning on my drive to work. I wonder if they were going to Thanksgiving dinner?

Sometimes you have to visit where you were...

... to see just how good it is where you are now.

We celebrated our Thanksgiving day yesterday since we're working through the holiday. Dinner with all the trimmings, mini-pies for dessert. I do my best to eat in a healthy way. I strive for foods that are minimally processed. I avoid flour and sugar. I don't eat pie. I don't eat mashed potatoes and gravy. Yams are microwaved with a little pat of butter, not baked in a syrupy brown sugar bath. A salad precedes every meal, and sometimes is the meal.

However, I'm not doing a Tofurkey Thanksgiving with mashed cauliflower subbing in for mashed potatoes. No. I bust my ass 90% of the time so that when it comes time for the 10%, I'm not going to have guilt. Fuck that - life's too short (insert favorite cliche saying here). Now, I haven't been perfect. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I've caught myself justifying eating more than I need with the old, "I got up at 4:30 this morning to work out - don't I deserve this?"

However, yesterday showed me just how far I've come in the almost 2 years I've been working on my eating issues.

I used to look forward to that uncomfortably full feeling I had yesterday. Hell, I'd seek it out, make it happen. Eat to coma every time. Numb out. Fall asleep. Undo the top button - hell, don't even wear pants you have to button, what are you thinking? I had 1 1/2 helpings of dinner yesterday and could not take another bite, not if you held a gun to my head. In my old life, that would have just been the start. Easily, I've eaten 3 times as much in a sitting and then was ready to tackle dessert; but that is my past. Not because I have this incredible willpower and white-knuckled it though dinner and got dragged kicking and screaming from the table; because I just didn't want any more. Even with servings a fraction of what I used to consume, I actually over-ate pretty severely by my current standards and felt bloated, slow, achey and burpy all night.

It was a feeling that was oddly foreign yet at the same time familiar. I thought back to years past where it would hurt to sit or even lie down after Thanksgiving dinner. How pathetic is that - on the biggest eat-then-nap holiday of the year you're too uncomfortable from eating to get your nap on?

I don't know what has changed. I can't say for sure it won't ever be like that again. I live in absolute fear that The Sickness could catch up with me again one day. The only thing I can do is apply the antidote every day. Get up. Work out. Move. Assess hunger. Assess feelings. Work out.

Move. Every day, move.

Week In Review

*sigh*

Have you ever felt that - while things were stable and you were accomplishing the things you wanted to accomplish - that you were on the precipice of it all crumbling? That is how I feel. It's not really the upcoming holidays; I feel that I've worked very hard to overcome that holiday Buffet Pig-Out mentality and mastered the art of 90%.

It is the disruption of my routine. Believe it or not, the easiest days to get a workout accomplished are days when I work daylight, 8a-8p. I know that I need to get my ass out of bed at 4:30, and after that comes shower and work. Easy peasy. Not so easy on days off, with some tasks on my house still hanging over my head. With the painting of the entire house out of the way, the rest has become overwhelming. Really, I should feel as if I'm in the home stretch and when I was in the thick of painting hell, I was looking forward to this time. Now, however, I am confronted by my stuff. Stuff that needs to be moved. Stuff that I need other people to take away. Stuff I still need to throw out. Stuff I need to strip/sand/refinish, because I'm not paying someone $1200 to do so. Stuff I need to box up/donate. Stuff that needs to be dragged out to the curb on garbage day.

I wake up on my days off and think to myself, "How can I possibly go to the gym for an hour and a half with all of this crap hanging over my head?" Most days I go anyway and I know in my rational mind that it makes absolutely no difference in what I do or don't get done at the house. Sometimes I just do what I feel is the important stuff and cut cardio down to 15-20 minutes. I had stopped filling out my workout book on Sundays because my workouts were so muddled, trying to combine the new kettlebell strength moves I learned in physical therapy with the workouts I had planned, so that I never have to deal with that throbbing pain in my ass ever again. The fact that I stopped filling out my book frankly scares me, and I am making myself a promise that I will fill out the next 5 days tonight. Having a plan makes me feel safe; not having one makes me feel unstable and on a collision-course with disaster.

Last week:
Monday - first shift of a month of daylights. Ass out of bed at 4:30 and at gym by 5:30. *proud*
20 minutes cardio, squats/lunges modified with dumbbells from kettlebell workout (ouch - you can't hold a dumbbell over your sternal area the way you can a kettlebell - lesson learned), chest workout
Tuesday - Gym at 5:30. Struggled through my workout, sustaining severe respiratory damage from an inconsiderate crop-dusting. 30 minutes cardio, arm/tricep workout, abds. Tricep dips are the devil.
Wednesday - Day off. Gym at a leisurely pace. 30 minutes cardio. Modified leg workout, squats/lunges. I can feel my ass getting higher.
Thursday - Ever feel like crap, but you couldn't say or describe exactly specifically how you felt like crap? This was one of those days. I only completed 10 minutes of cardio, did my brief shoulder workout, skipped abs, went to my house, and accomplished absolutely NOTHING. I'm blaming the rainy, gloomy weather. That's right. I'm gonna Blame It On The Rain.
Friday - I didn't go to the gym. I wanted to get stuff done at the house. I got jack schit done.
Saturday - I took my new 25lb kettlebell to work with me and got 80 squats and 50 lunges done. It helped me feel better about Friday.

Plan. Plan. Plan.
Off to make a plan for next week.

Crop-Dusted

Dear Dude Working Out On Treadmill In Front Of Me:

It has been well over 20 years since someone farted so horribly in my presence that I nearly threw up (and that's saying a lot, I'm in healthcare). The last time was on a road trip, trapped in a Ford Tempo with my brother; 80mph down the highway, but I seriously considered the tuck n' roll, if only it would allow me to escape that thick, lingering odor.

Have you considered perhaps using a machine that doesn't place your ample ass almost directly in front of someone else's face? I mean, you had to know that Cloud of Doom was coming. I bet it burned coming out. Whatever you ate yesterday, it created this perfect storm of sickly sweet crappish odor that had an unreal hang time. My brother would be proud. I mean, if you were trying to actually invent a recipe to make someone gag, you really could not have done better.

I know that's not addressed in all of those Gym Etiquette articles you see in Men's Health, but maybe it should be.

• Don't grunt loudly or bang your weights together
• Don't drop weights on the floor
• If you see people waiting, limit yourself to 20 minutes on cardio equipment
• If you've overdone the fiber or something has actually gone and died in your rectum, please stay off the cardio machinery or become proficient at ass-kegels.

Overwhelmed

This blog is not dead, just temporarily neglected. My days have consisted of a blur of physical therapy appointments, gym workouts, and painting and remodeling my house for the tenant who is moving in mid-December.

I remember why I only paint once every 10 years: I hate it. I hate moving stuff. I hate covering stuff. I *VERY*hate cutting in.

However, my month of night shifts is drawing to a close and I'm hoping to be 95% done with everything I wanted to have done on the house by next week. I'll be done with physical therapy - which, by the way has gone fabulously. The physical therapist/torturer had me feeling 90% better the first 2 visits. I've been going 3 days a week for a month and I've done more squats and lunges in the past month than I had previously done in my lifetime. I do feel (and maybe, just a little, see?) a difference, though and these will remain a staple of my workouts at least 3 days a week.

So, without anything else meaningful to say at this time, please enjoy one of my favorite Nike ads. I always have my 120g ipod on shuffle while I drive, and when this song comes on, I want to stop the car in the middle of the road, just leave it there abandoned with the door hanging open, and do a triathalon.