Hooray for Stress!

Cheer up fellow fat people! I have discovered a key that can unlock limitless fat burning potential for each and every one of you. It doesn't cost a thing, it's easy to find and there's an untold supply of it everywhere you look.

Are you ready?


You sure?


It's all of the stress, anger and other shit that the universe throws your way on a daily basis! See... like I said... there's always an unlimited supply and you generally don't have to look too hard to find it.

The problem for a lot of us fatties is that most of us fight stress head on. We arm ourselves with cheese pizza shields, ice cream machine guns, pepperoni nunchucks and alcohol bombs and we just try to bludgeon stress to death with it. And yeah sure you may win the battle, but you'll lose the war in the long run.

However, if you can make stress your friend instead of your enemy some amazing things can happen. Take today for instance. Before today I had never been able to stay on a treadmill longer than 35 minutes and had never gone further than 3.5 miles. Then this happened:

So... yay me. It's amazing what your body is capable of sometimes. And while I was running, blasting my Eminem Pandora radio I felt like this:

Of course I realize that I looked like this:

But hey, I don't go to the gym to look good. Which is a good thing... because I don't.... look good.

So stop fighting stress with alcohol and calories. Make stress your buddy, welcome him into your life... then use him to make the world your bitch.

The Unfair World of Dieting

Vince Lombardi once famously said this:

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing."

 

Your friendly neighborhood FatMan would like to put a new spin on that quote:

"Dieting is not a sometime thing, it's an all time thing. You can't diet once in a while, you don't exercise once in a while, you do it all the time. Dieting is a habit. Unfortunately, so is spinning your wheels and remaining a fat-ass for the rest of your life."

 

OK, not quite as pithy as the ol' ball coach but believe me my quote is every bit as true. I've run into a dilemma this summer that I can't seem to shake. I will totally commit myself to this diet and do everything right... for about 3 days. Then I find myself at a theme park eating a donut, or at my restaurant scarfing some extra pizza and the whole thing gets blown to shit and I press the restart button. This has resulted in, well, very few results. 

 

I am going to the gym on a more consistent basis, and during my July 4th trip to Universal Studios and a nearby fireworks party I somehow walked 12 miles. And while that is all well and good, you might remember the tirade I went on recently about how working out is a nice thing to do, but won't actually lead to you losing weight. This week I have proved that theory to be utterly, painfully true. I've busted my ass, yet it remains the same size.

 

Now, part of my problem is the blatant unfairness of human anatomy. Regardless of your religious beliefs, whoever you think "created" mankind totally screwed the pooch when it came to weigh loss/gain. Simple math will tell you that 3 days of dieting should outweigh 1 day of binging. Yet somehow one trip to a Chinese buffett can somehow counter-act days and days of trying. How is this possible? Does God suck at math or something? 

And I am still of the firm belief that we, as humans, should get some sort of extra-diet bonus points for resisting temptation. If I eat chocolate cake, I get fat... this I understand. But if I'm offered chocolate cake and don't eat it... nothing happens. This is pure crap. If I turn down a piece of cake, I should automatically lose the weight I would have gained if I had actually eaten it. Any truly kind and benevolent God would have worked these kind of details out. 

 

Now the upside here is that these days I'm getting bent out of shape because I've only lost 4+ pounds in the last month and I'm still 206 pounds. It's a far cry from the days of being 250-260 and waddling to work. But still, I'm impatient and I want it all now... and I still want the ability to eat a donut and not look like Homer Simpson after it.

 

I have a feeling Vince Lombardi would not have liked me very much.

Busting Diet Myths

When I tell people I've lost over 50 pounds, and did the bulk of it in about 4 months, I get asked how I managed to do it. Oddly enough when I tell people what I did the immediate response from them is "Well that's not healthy", "That's not how they say to do it" (I've always wondered who "they" were anyway). I basically have people telling me that my method to losing all the weight won't work and can't work despite the fact that it actually did work. Hmmm... weird.

So as I re-enter the dieting lifestyle, I thought I would share with my readers what I did, what I'm trying to do, and what All Powerful and Holy Dieting Rules I broke along the way.

Myth #1- You absolutely must force yourself to eat something for breakfast no matter what because it kick starts your metabolism, brightens your day, causes the sun to shine upon your face and without breakfast you'll be a miserable husk of an individual.

Truth- Some of us out there just simply aren't hungry in the morning, and if you're not hungry you shouldn't eat. My diet is simple: eat 1500 calories a day. So why would I waste some of those precious calories eating something I don't feel like eating? I'd rather slug down a few cups of coffee (very low-cal by the way) and call it a morning.

As for the metabolism business... yes eating in the morning does kick-start your metabolism, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Ask anyone who generally doesn't eat breakfast what happens when they grab a morning bite. 2 hours later they are hungry... crazy hungry... like starving grizzly bear hungry. When your metabolism gets revved up it's like a fire you constantly have to add wood too. That's great if you happen to carry a small supermarket with you, but some of us have lives and need to do that pesky work thing. That brings me to another myth.

Myth #2- You need to eat little bitty tiny meals every couple hours throughout the day. That keeps your metabolism up and will magically somehow burn more calories for you then eating a traditional 2-3 meals per day.

Truth- This is damn near impossible for anyone with a life to do every day. We are busy, we're in meetings, we're on the road, we're getting stuff done. Many of us don't get little snack breaks every couple hours and if we do, we don't have time to prepare some avacado-kale-quail egg wrap that Dr. Oz swears is the latest breakthrough in weight-loss technology.

Every day during the work week I would pack a lunch that was somewhere between 400-600 calories. You would be surprised how much food that can be. A sandwich, a yogurt and a couple pieces of fruit will run you about 500 calories depending on your sandwich fillings. That leaves you 900-1000 calories for a dinner, which is a lot of food... and that's good because by dinner time I'm very hungry. Hmm... weird, I eat a lot of food when I'm actually hungry... how revolutionary. Dinner? A meat of some sort, a potato and some veggies/a salad.

Myth #3- But... but... Dave... potatoes are starches and starches are full of carbs and carbs are the devil so you'll go to Hell and burn for all eternity if you eat potatoes!

Truth- Have you ever looked at the calorie information on a bag of potatoes? Did you know that a whole Russet potato has just 110 calories? Did you know if you slice that potato thin, spray a little olive oil on the slices and throw those slices in the oven at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes they come out looking and tasting like french fries? You're welcome America.

The beauty of my diet is the simplicity of it. I only look at the calorie content. Not the fiber, fat, or the poly-moly-unsaturated-sodium-globbules content. Just calories. And a weird thing happens when you do that. I like eating a large amount of food, so I started looking for foods that were low in calories... and guess what? Foods low in calories also pretty much low in everything else bad for you. So make life easy, just focus on one number and let everything else fall into place.

Myth #4- Going to the gym is a great way to lose weight because you run around and sweat and lift heavy things and other people there certainly look skinny to me.

Ah yes, this was a myth I lived by for years. And there I was, a 260 pound lard ass going to the gym every day and wondering why I was still a 260 pound lard ass. When I lost 50 pounds in 4 months do you know how many trips to the gym I made? None. Zippity-doo-dah. Absolute zero. Working out is good for you, it builds muscle tone and the more muscle you have the more calories you will burn. But if you think a workout will counteract that burger, fries and two beers you consumed last night... get used to being a 260 pound lard ass.

I use one of those little FitBit devices. It stays in my pocket and it tracks how many calories I burn throughout the day. How many calories do you think a 1-hour workout burns? 1500? 1000? 800? Try about 500, and that's if a large amount of your time is dedicated to cardio. That's two slices of pizza. That's less than a Big Mac. In short, working out is a good thing, but it shouldn't be the center of your dieting universe.

Myth #5- Weighing yourself every day is stupid because it crushes your spirit, it's incredibly demoralizing and you'll become a sad, pathetic individual with suicidal tendencies if you do it.

Yes I weigh myself every day. Why? A couple reasons actually. For starters, when you begin a diet like this you will tend to lose weight quickly. So weighing yourself every day becomes fun and exciting. Half a pound today, quarter pound tomorrow, maybe a full pound on Tuesday. Every day you see yourself getting a little smaller and it motivates you. You start your day feeling positive, and it drives you to keep doing what you're doing. Plus, knowing you will weigh yourself in the morning tends to curb those late night snacks that send a diet downhill in a hurry. Those of you that weigh yourself weekly, let me ask you: What do you do the night before your weigh in? Is it in the back of your mind during dinner? Dessert? Yeah I thought so.

So there it is folks. Eat 1500 calories of something (truly doesn't matter what) during the day (truly doesn't matter when). Stay as active as possible but don't go running a daily marathon. 60 minutes of mowing your lawn and weeding is just as effective as 60 minutes in the gym. And celebrate your progress no matter how small. Every time you lose a pound, go to the supermarket and pick up a pound of ground beef and realize that is no longer attached to you anymore.

Go ahead. Tell me it won't work.

Get Thee Behind Me Pizza!

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Karma is a bitch. Whatever goes around comes around. It's the circle of life (cue the African chorus chanting in the background). Not matter what your particular favorite saying is, it all basically means the same thing: Everything in life goes from being good to bad and back to good again. When you're on a diet this is true in so many painful ways. Here now is a brief recap in the week that was for me:

Wednesday- I'm rebooting my life! I'm going to blog again, and diet, and exercise!! I'm going to lose these 20 pounds and get all sexy and life will be awesome!

Thursday- I lost 3 pounds in one day! I have stunned by body into awesomeness. I feel better already, nothing can stop me now!

Friday- Another pound gone! 4 pounds in two days. The Dave train has left the station and is flying down the track! Two straight trips to the gym and a day of lawn mowing and yard work. I will lose these 20 pounds in no time.

Saturday- OK, I maintained my weight... I'm fine with that. And hey, grilling burgers for dinner isn't so bad. Plus I'm sure that french toast I had for breakfast isn't nearly as caloric as I think it is. I'll be on stage tonight working it all off anyway.

Sunday- You know, I think I'm going to skip my daily weigh in this morning... just to be on the safe side. But it's cool. Sure I might go a little crazy at the cast party tonight. Another burger, some fries, fried pickles... but it's all good. We all need to enjoy life right?

Monday- Back working at the restaurant, but I must maintain focus. Can't go grabbing food. Sure this is the best Italian food I've had in years... but it's all carbs man. Must avoid! What's that? Someone ordered two pizzas and never picked them up? We can nibble on pizza all night long for free? It must be my lucky day! Besides, I'm sure 2 (or three) slices won't affect me that much.

Tuesday- I just gained back the 4 pounds I lost last week. However did that happen? Side note: diets suck and the inventor of diets should be dragged out into the street and shot.... repeatedly... with a bazooka.

Sooooo.... kinda back to square one here folks. I did go to the gym this morning (yay), but I'll be back at the restaurant tonight (uh-oh). Apparently losing these 20 pounds will actually be, ya know, challenging and stuff.

FatMan Returns (again)

So... um... long time no see. Yes it's been about a year since I've updated this blog but I think it's time to start updating it more frequently to serve as some sort of motivation for my never-ending attempt to look less hideous than I currently do. But before we discuss the present or the future, let's do a quick recap of my past and what the FatMan has been up to over the last year:

In July of 2012 I tipped the scales at a portly 260 pounds. I couldn't walk without pain, I was wearing XXL clothes and I was often mistaken for a beached whale. Enter my doctor who instructed me to go on a diet of 1500 calories a day. I immediately thought two things:
1.) He's nuts
2.) I bet I don't eat THAT much more than 1500 calories a day

I was wrong on both counts... a lot. By Thanksgiving of 2012 I was under 200 pounds for the first time since high school. I looked good, I felt good, life on the whole was heading in a positive direction. Then 2013 happened. Here now is a brief synopsis of my last 16 months in no particular order:

I developed a bad case of panic attacks, I visited the emergency room twice and something called the Crisis Stabilization Unit once. I went to see a cardiologist, a neurologist, and a psychiatrist. I got really cool brain scans, and eventually I was diagnosed with a mental disorder (yay me). I left my old school, started working at a new school, then lost my career all together before finding two brand new careers that are far less stressful. I was in court twice, paid a law firm an insane amount of money, was publicly smeared in a scandal that actually made the nightly news, and completed a rather ambitious home improvement project. I surrounded myself with lots of new people that made me feel good, got rid of a lot of people that made me feel bad. I got angry, got depressed, got really depressed, got insanely happy, then got depressed again... then the next day I would start all over again.  I got involved in community theater again, appeared in 5 shows, won an award, got a lot of compliments and made a ton of new friends. My relationship status fluctuated between "happily married" to "it's complicated" to "are you f-ing kidding me" and hit virtually every stop in between. I ran in (and completed) 4 5K's, lost 10 pounds and for one shining moment was under 190 pounds, before gaining 20 pounds and landing on the wrong side of 200 pounds again. Hence the reboot on this blog.

As you can see, it's been a rather eventful ride and yet somehow I'm still standing upright and smiling (occasionally). But I have a few lofty goals that I want to reach and I'm hoping that by sarcastically updating this blog on a semi-regular basis I can stay on the straight and narrow.

Goal #1- Lose 20 pounds before I fly back home to NH on vacation at the end of July. As of this morning I weighed exactly 210 pounds which means I want to be 190 pounds when my vacation starts. This means I will actually have to pay attention to what I eat from now on (dammit), make a concerted effort to work out more often (dammit), and somehow avoid temptation despite the fact that I'm now working at a restaurant that serves the best Italian food in all of Cape Coral (double dammit).

Goal #2- To run in (and complete) a 10K. As a few of my running friends have told me... "If you can run 3 miles, running 6 miles is easy." As a former math teacher I am largely skeptical of this statement but I will defer to their experience on this. There is a 10K in October that I am tentatively looking at, which means I have 5 months to round myself into some kind of shape.

Today I made it to the gym and so far I've only eaten a fairly healthy PB&J sandwich. And I'm not working at the restaurant tonight so I won't be tempted by cake and bread and pizza and basically every enemy my diet has. So that's a start.

Dairy of a Mad Fat Man

So this past weekend I ran in (and actually finished) my 3rd 5K of the summer. As I had mentioned before I finished my first two in 27:42 and 27:29. To translate that time for the uninitiated... I was fast enough to beat everyone who was walking, watching or dead. So that's something I suppose.

Anyway, this time I felt good about my ability to post a personal best time. I had some new running shoes, and I had been back at school for a couple of weeks. For those of you that don't teach for a living, let me just say that every day spent teaching is like a day spent hiking... uphill... in snow. I actually carry a little pedometer/calorie counter with me now and I average between 3-5 miles of walking per school day. Who knew right? Needless to say even when I wasn't dragging my ass to the gym, I felt as if I was getting some form of exercise in.

So on race day eve I was joined by a good buddy who agreed to run with me. Dinner? A mound of pasta with my homemade sauce. (I am Italian therefore I am bound by law to make my own sauce. Purchasing a jar of sauce is a sin punishable by death in some families). After partaking in our fill of carbs we settled in to get as much sleep as possible. One of the problems with running 5K's is that they all start so damn early in the morning. This one kicked off at 7:30. Given the 20-30 minute drive, plus time to actually wake up enough to function (much less run) I was waking up way earlier than I like to (especially on a blessed work-free Saturday).

So we wake up and it's still pitch black outside. Oh, and since I'm running a race, coffee is verboten. See coffee dehydrates the body and since I sweat like a polar bear in a sauna, I was going to need every ounce of hydration I could muster. So I'm tired, I'm grouchy and I'm caffeine free. Fan-friggin-tastic.

We get to the park a good 30 minutes before the race. Enough time to check in, stretch and eyeball the competition. Now at this stage in my career I can pretty much barely finish this race standing up. Then there are people that run an entire 5K just to warm up for the real 5K. Seriously people? Way to ruin the curve for the rest of us. Damn overachievers.

So now it's time to start the race. We all gather by the starting line. We get our pre-race instructions. I fire up my iPod. I feel loose. I'm ready to go. Eye of the Tiger. Let's do this. Ready... set... go! Damn a lot of people just passed me.

I settle in to the first mile. I'm getting passed, but I'm doing some passing as well. Just ahead I spot a girl, maybe 10-years old. OK, this little girl is not going to beat me. She has just become the rabbit at the end of the stick. I pass the 1-mile marker and I feel good. According to my playlist I did it in a little under 8 minutes.

Now we're into the 2nd mile. The little girl is still just ahead of me. Plenty of time to track her down. I make the turn at the halfway point and amazingly I don't want to puke my guts out yet. The rest of the 2nd mile goes by, a little slower than the first. I'm trying to not stop and walk and I'm still trying to catch that little girl. That doesn't sound too creepy right? It's at this point that I reach back and attempt to find that extra gear. That little extra something that will get me through this race. Of course I dig down deep and find a 35-year old body that I haven't exactly been kind to over the years. My body gives me a "Are you f-ing kidding me?" look. So... no extra gear huh? OK then... good to know.

Finally I finish the 2nd mile. One more to go and this pleasant form of torture will be over. At this point the 10-year old is a speck in the distance. Seriously... I'm getting my ass handed to me by a child. Certainly no ego-deflater there right? Midway through the 3rd mile I finally need to stop for a bit and catch my breath, and remind my feet they are not, in fact, on fire. And do I need to mention the heat I'm running in? It's Florida, it's August... enough said right? Good.

I somehow make it to the 3-mile marker. Just a tenth of a mile left. As I round the corner I can see the timer just tick over to 26 minutes. Holy crap I'm actually doing well. (FatMan well... but still... w00t!) I suddenly find the tiniest bit of extra energy. Enough to make it across the finish line kinda sorta almost fast. Enough to fool my children into thinking I was that fast the entire race. I stumble across the finish line at 26:30.. a full minute faster than my previous personal best! What's more amazing is that I'm still standing and able to form words. I hug my kids and can actually carry on a conversation with them.

So apparently I'm getting better at this whole running thing. In fact, if I lose another 20 pounds and build a working time machine, I might actually get competitive with this stuff!

Run Fatboy Run

OK before we get started, I just wanted to shout out to those of you that checked out the re-launch of this blog over the weekend. I got a lot of awesome compliments and it's always nice to know that so many of you out there are rooting for me as I continue my battle with fatness... and life in general kicking me in the balls every chance it gets.

Anyway... we're off and running. No literally. Back when I was The FatMan I had a desire to run. Unfortunately I didn't have the opportunity. My tonage was such that any attempt at running for any length of time was about as successful as an elephant running on stilts. Actually, that's probably what I looked like as well.

Well after dropping the weight I began to realize that running wasn't just possible, it felt good. Before long I started laying out a plan that included some fairly lofty running goals. The plan began with running in (and completing) a 5K. This summer I signed up for a 3 race series, one in June, one in July and one in August. It wasn't until I had officially signed up that I realized what I had done. I had agreed to run a crazy long distance during the hottest months of the year in a state with some of the nastiest, crappiest, most disgusting weather on planet Earth. Oh crapsticks... what have I done?

The first race was an education in endurance. Let's just say the difference between running on a treadmill and running outside in Florida is like the difference between shooting a bullet out of a gun... and throwing it. It's massive. It ain't even close. The weather was hot, humid and completely still. Breathing was like sucking on a damp sponge. I eventually finished the race in 27:42. Well more accurately... a puddle of goo that looked like me crossed the finish line.

The 2nd race was very similar. Same crappy weather, same puddle of goo, slightly faster time (27:29). Since then I've been working on really improving my time, running every chance I get, trying to drop more weight, etc. Unfortunately at my age there's another "time" I've run into. Father Time. And he's a bitch. Remember when we were kids and we could run forever and nothing ever hurt? Yeah me either.

As I write this I'm nursing a pulled hamstring, a sore knee and more blisters on my feet than I care to count. Seriously... I'm paying attention to parts of my toes that I never knew existed. And something I'm noticing the older I get: There are body parts that start to hurt... and just keep on hurting. As a kid, you hurt something, it sucked, it healed, it got better. Now? You hurt something, it sucks, it still sucks, it sucks a little more, it sucks slightly less, and that shit just stays broke... like... permanently.

So it's on folks. We're 5 days out from my next race and if the spit and scotch tape holds up, I should be fine. As for my running future? Well there's a 10K in October I have my eye on, and down the road I plan on somehow completing a half marathon... and eventually one day... a full-blown marathon. Why? Because at my age the NFL, NBA and MLB are out of my reach, I'm too old to become a professional boxer and I suck at golf. Running is one of the few sports left I can train for and fool myself into thinking I can be fairly competitive in.

Oh... and in February I'm planning on running with the bulls. No seriously! And no, I promise I don't have some crazy death wish after the year I've had. It actually looks fun. Who wants to run with me??