Taking Stock

A week into March and I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of my adventure. It has been almost two months since I started my semi-public quest to become non-obese. When I started, I weighed just over 203 and then went up to 206. I am now holding steady at 198 so depending on where I start counting, I’ve lost between 5 and 8 lbs. Liking greater achievement as I do, I’m going to say I lost 8 lbs. At one level, it is good that I’ve lost anything. At another level, 8 measly pounds over the course of 60 days is nothing to write a blog about. Since I am not one to be deterred by reality or facts, I’ll keep writing.

When I started, I said I was going to weigh myself every morning, exercise, and keep a food journal. The food journal went out the window within a day or two my public promise to do it. It was just too much work and I am fundamentally opposed to too much work. It’s a lifestyle choice that defines me and giving it up is like giving up my authentic self. Too many books have been written about finding your authentic self. Since I’ve found mine, I’m not going to get rid of it!

The exercise thing is going OK. I am doing it more consistently than I have since High School when I played sports. That said, I go in fits and starts. I can’t seem to string together a consistent week of exercising. Most weeks, I get in about 3 days of pretty hard walking for at least 45 minutes. Being more consistent seems to get high jacked by other stuff, like work and family. I am seriously considering quitting my job and starting a reality blog all about me. I’ll use our video camera and just video myself all day as I try to exercise and lose weight. I think people without jobs, social opportunities, or anything better to do would really connect with me and my attempt to lose weight. I am certain I could gain a large and loyal following and the advertising money would make up for my lost income. I’ve also considered renting the kids out. Don’t get me wrong. I love them and they make me proud. Still, they take up a lot of time. Sure, babysitting might be a good solution. The problem is that the money flows the wrong way. Why pay to have someone take my kids when I can think of a way to get rid of them and get paid. Unfortunately, I still haven’t cracked that one. My subconscious works on that one while I sleep. I’ll let you know when I figure that one out. On second thought, if I do figure that one out I’ll sell you the idea through my blog.

Recently I’ve been hungry pretty much all the time. I do my best to eat a little bit every few hours, but sometimes I eat more than I should. This constant hunger thing is new and I am thinking my body has reached some kind of critical point. My fat memory (I made that up) is realizing that I am trying to get rid of it (the fat) and it has unleashed and counter offensive. It has convinced the rest of my body that I am going to starve to death unless I punch up the eating. So it’s game on! I am in charge of my brain here, not the fat. If it wants to play rough, then I’m ready to go. I am convinced that I won’t lose any more weight until I pass this plateau and break the tyranny my fat memory has unleashed on my body.

So today I decided to play a little torture game with my body. I want to kick my own ass! Now using the term epic for this is probably overkill. In fact, in the world of cycling any use of epic seems at this point to be overkill. Still in my little world of inactivity, any hard exercise pretty much can be described as epic. Epicness, then, is on a sliding, relative scale. Anyway, today I went on my usual 45 minute walk. I am assuming it covers around 2 to 3 miles. I haven’t clocked it yet. On that route there are a series of hills that I go down and then back up. Today, I ran up all six of those hills. It hurt. My shins tightened pretty fast, but the worst was my breathing. By the time I reached the top of each hill, I was really sucking wind. By the time I got home, I was pretty beat. This may sound strange, but I am really looking forward to some muscles hurting tomorrow. Take that fat memory! Your Jedi mind tricks don’t work on me. This is my body. I’ll do the torturing here.

Those of you who follow professional cycling know that the new season is really starting to heat up. Since I only have a few friends and only one follows cycling (and he has a real job and a life so he’s probably not following every race like I am), I assume this statement doesn’t apply to anyone I know. Still, it was a good way to open the paragraph and transition from talking about me to talking about something I like.

The Tour of Murcia in Spain wrapped up today. Team Radio Shack sent Lance and Kloden along with a pretty strong team. Kloden finished just off the podium and Team Sky’s Wiggins was on the podium. In the media, Lance said he was suffering a bit and having a hard time adjusting to the speed and uncertainty of the peloton. He said he wanted to finish the time trial within a minute of Wiggins. He ultimately finished the race in 7th place and was about 30 seconds behind Wiggins. The team boss Johann Bruyneel has been talking about how Lance is progressing this season but really sort of playing it all down. I think this is all mind games that Lance is playing with the rest of the contenders. His one goal is the Tour de France. He is the master of building his season toward that goal and also the master of underplaying his potential in order to mess with his rivals.

Paris-Nice starts today. That is a big race and a bunch of the big name teams will be there. The Shack’s B team will contest that one. Leipheimer and Horner are on that B team, which is a pretty damned good team. Look for Horner to be the guy, with Levi building for the Tour of California and le Tour. Then next week the Tirreno-Adriatico starts. That also will have many of the big European teams as well as Garmin and HTC’s Cavendish back in action.

I’m really looking forward to the cycling action. It keeps me focused on my goal of losing 30 lbs by the Tour de France in July. So, I’ve only got 22 lbs to go.