Slimdude

That’s what I’m drinking right now as I Blog, and it is my current favorite diet soda. I know not everyone is a fan of diet soda, but I am. I drank diet soda the first two times I lost weight and I have had it consistently as I lose weight this time.

I know that I said I would stay off the scale until Sunday but I have to reveal that I’ve been peeking… the highest weight was “150″ and the lowest was “147″ so far this week. So even with no exercise, my diet has been good enough to where I have met that little goal of three pounds this week.

In a way, I knew I would because my weight is really around “150″ and it was just high on Sunday morning because I binged so badly Saturday night.

But it’s already Wednesday and I have not binged or cheated on my diet, even though it’s very hard right now because our house is full of brownies and candies.

My lower back is still kind of sore. But now more in a way after you get in a good workout. Like a constant ache rather than spasms. I worked last night and I didn’t carry anything heavier than our lap-tops. But these are like industrial weight military lap-tops. I also had to climb in and out of the cockpit to do avionics checks and that was relatively hard also.

Also my shoulders and neck have been really bad … a lot of pins and needles and sparking action… not sure if it’s related to the back thing or not. But when I looked it up online there are so many types of arthritis and so many drugs they can try and use.  I am going to seek out a chiropractor also… I don’t want this thing to get worse but I think a Chiro might be able to help.

In addition, Med called and said they want to do a CT scan after “re-evaluating” my last X-ray. I took that X-Ray a week ago at least. It kind of scares me they want to “re-evaluate” ??? Something about “abnormal cartilege.”

I am also supposed to see a Rheumatologist before the end of the year.

I would like to find out what is the cause of all this. All these aches and pains. And have it be NON-fatal and TREATABLE.

Nevertheless, I managed to fix both planes I was on last night and when I woke up today at 3:30pm I Gazelled 4 miles. My back didn’t spasm so I was okay.

Tonight I am supposed to go to the gym and I think I will try the elliptical first and if that is too harsh I will try the recumbent bike.

Oh and should I recap The Biggest Loser? I guess I will keep watching it after all. I can’t believe they kept Neil AND let him use that weight-loss.

Oh well.

—Matt

Well, I wrote this really long post earlier but now it’s gone. Don’t know how that happened. My back was so bad last night I used my “Day Off” from working weekend duty. It’s still pretty bad. I want to exercise so badly but I’m telling myself to take the week off.

Still… last night my wife told me, not in a mean way… but she said she has to start thinking of me as handicapped. And I was like “Well… this lower back problem is not the same thing as my other stuff…” but she had to do all the Boy stuff yesterday while I layed on the couch.

But I could not stand to hear that she thought of me as crippled in any way so today I was putting dishes away and I helped her with the grocery shopping and everything else.

I tried to stay up all night last night and watch TV and eat my normal meals and it worked out very well. Tatiana is right you have to be careful when you are just bored watching TV on the couch, you want to snack mindlessly. Believe me, the chips and dip and tiny candies from the weekend party were calling my name. But I resisted and just drank diet soda in between snacks and meals. I think I ate about 1300 calories.

Then this morning I could not fall asleep because I kept falling asleep on the couch last night. So I helped my wife take The Boy to school and then we ran errands that included grocery shopping. Her lower back is also hurting her in a minor way lately so I have been giving her lower back massages.

Okay this part is kind of private and all but it’s funny so I’m going to share. After our afternoon errands we took a bath together and then we were going to get “romatic” but both our backs were hurting and then it was too funny because we could not find any good position that did not hurt one or both of us, so we ended up laughing so much it just became “cuddle time” because the mood just changed so much.

Ahhh, it’s good to be married to someone that you can laugh like that with.

Anyway.

Tonight is the Biggest Loser. I am so used to exercising during the whole program it will be hard to just sit on the couch. I really hate this.

I tried some Capasizn or whatever it is called with the pepper in the balm… and it is horrible! It doesn’t work at all. It just makes your skin burn. And not in a soothing way like IcyHot or BenGay. It just BURNS so in addition to your muscle pain your skin is burning as well. And it’s hard to wash off so everything you touch also burns.

This weekend my wife’s Dad’s side is coming. We like her Dad and his wife. And we like her sister, who is just back from Iraq. But some of the people coming are very judgemental and very materialistic. My wife is anxious because our “new” home is a Manufactured Home. It’s not like we live in a run-down trailer, it’s a nice house. But my wife is so worried because it’s not all hardwood floors and fireplaces and plasma screen TVs.

We put our time and resources into each other, our family, our son, and my wife’s education and my Air Force career. Her family does not have kids or anything like what we have. Our values are completely different. We would spend our weekends volunteering or out at the park with our son.

They would spend it shopping for brand new clothes and  cars and stuff.

But she is worried. I love her so much. I hope she’ll be okay this weekend.

—Matt

uh, oh.

 This weekend while I was holding my son he threw a tantrum in my arms and it threw me off balance and my lower back totally spasmed-up. I tried a few things later on Sunday but…

 I worked last night and it was only sore and I’m already not doing as much physically but today when I got up at 3:30pm I noticed that even moving around moderately, like getting off the couch to go to the bathroom… my lower back is seizing up and it realy hurts to move at all.

I’m nervous about it because now I can’t even Gazelle or walk for exercise. I’ve got to just sit on the couch. I wanted so badly to lose 3 pounds this week and now I’m gonna have to probably not exercise at all this week.

First of all, I hate it on the principle alone. I love to exercise, even easy exercise… every single day… and now I’m stuck on the couch?

And also now I’ll have to watch my diet super duper close. I can’t afford to “cheat” and then make up for it with exercise. I may have to be totally sedentary this week. But I’m pretty sure the calorie level I use, about 1500 calories per day… that will get me to lose some weight even without exercise and I certainly won’t gain anything on that few calories per day.

I’ve just gotta be aware of not binge-ing.

Okay. Hobble back to the couch.

—Matt

So fellow BuddySlimmers, I come to you with a surprisingly optimistic attitude and goals and ideas this Sunday morning.

I did NOT in fact, resist tempations this weekend. I tried valiantly. I made it until about midnight and then I had a veritable feast with all the goodies in the house.

So my “official” weigh-in this morning put me back at 153 pounds and I updated my weight tracker accordingly.

Now, you’d think that would put me in a miserable mood, right?! Well… you would be wrong! Those days of beating myself up are long gone.

Instead, I realized that most of that weight is “stuff in the tummy” weight, anyway, and I really weigh more like 150 still. And I started this whole BS thing at 163 pounds so I’m still rocking on!

Nevertheless, I am not where I want to be yet. I’d much rather be swaying a few pounds around 140 than 150. So I’ve decided to initiate

“The LAST 15 Pounds!” challenge to myself. I know, I know… I’m always setting these goals and time-lines and trying to get these last few vanity pounds off and trying to stop binge eating and what-not. But slowly but surely I am getting there, okay?

Anyway. I’m setting my sights for FIVE WEEKS. So my new “goal weight” date is December 2nd and I have the same “over-all” goal of buying myself a Nintendo Wii if I make it.

In fact, I’m going to give myself a small reward every week that I make my goal weight. This first week I want to lose 3 pounds… putting me at 150 by next Sunday. I will NOT step on that scale until next Sunday morning.  If I get my weight goal, I will buy a new music album… probably Britney Spears’ new one.

Then for the next four weeks, I’ll adjust my goal weights to probably 2.5 pounds per week. It’s a little aggressive, and mathematically it means a calorie defecit of a little more than 10,000 calories per week. But I can do it. I’m going to work hard but treat myself right and get this “Final 13″ pounds of vanity weight off and have my flat belly back.

Five weeks!

I wrote down all my planned workouts this week. It’s a lot of Gazelle-ing and walking and then three circuit weight / resistance routines. I always put those off. You know. Push-Ups and Sit-Ups and Crunches and Biceps Curls. All that. But I swear I’m going to do it three times this week no matter how much of a struggle it is.

Because if  don’t do the resistance part, I’m just gonna end up looking like those “skinny fat guys” … well, I guess I kind of already do, and that’s the problem. Not enough weight training.

Okay. Anybody else out there wanna hunker down with me and lose that last little bit? That Last 15?

—Matt

Good morning, BSers. Two posts ago I blogged about how frustrated I was with my Chronic Pain issues and how so many of my dreams might be slipping away. But as I read my own post, I became sort of inspired.

I am now determined that, no matter what, I will push through these issues and get things done. I will live my life bravely and positively and I have even decided that I will be able to come off my “waivers” and be able to run and jog and do push-ups and sit-ups. I am going to work at it.

 For instance, even though this morning I feel about as mobile as the Tin Man on the Wizard of Oz, I am going to clean up the kitchen and then I am going to have myself a little “less-than-macho” dance party with Leslie Sansone.

I have to work today. I hope I am off tomorrow. Tonight is our Halloween Party and you should see all the treats my wife has made. Our kitchen literally looks like a bakery. There are cookies and muffins and brownies and cupcakes and all kinds of stuff laid out everywhere. It is going to be hard but I think I can resist.

Well fellow BSers, the holidays have begun. And that means it’s time to play our favorite game… everybody now : “House — of — Temptation!”

 Because of the party tomorrow, our house is currently filled with every manner of cake, cookie, brownie, frosting, crackers, cheese and other tidbits you cannot even imagine.

And here I am drinking Diet Pepsi and blogging at midnite.

Lord help me, BSers.

—Matt

One musical artist I really like is Bjork. She’s an aquired taste, if you’re not too familiar with her music. Probably her most “commercially accessable” album is “Post” or perhaps “Homogenic” but lately they’ve been really bizarre. I didn’t even buy “Volta” which came out earlier this year and had the Timbaland collaboration “Space Intruders” on it.

But she has this song from way back called “One Day” where the lyrics are kind of cryptic but basically… that’s how I’m feeling right now and I’ll explain.

I’m fairly tired after coming off a week of working Graveyard shift. My left shoulder and chest area are extremely sore and so is my left foot. I did not get home and get to bed until almost 10:30am today and I had intended to wake up at 1:30pm in order to go to my son’s class Halloween party. But then I woke up almost immediately at 11am with this urge to binge and … for a second I had a conscious thought of trying to fight it… but then I gave in and had some pizza, two bowls of cereal, 6 cookies, a few bowls of pudding mixed with sweet potato filling (which was delicious, by the way) some ice cream sandwiches, a lean pocket and probably more stuff I cannot even recall.

All this was while watching “Work Out!” with that hot lesbian trainer on Bravo! talk about your irony there. “Stuff your face while watching hot people get in shape! Woo-hooo!”

But then I was so full I was actually kind of ill… but then I made a decision NOT to feel bad or guilty, and “get back on track” right away. I think some people would think that this ruins everything and they’d wait until Monday but I never do that.

I have struggled with this binge thing for a while now so I know

#1. It’s not the end of the world.

#2. Just start over right away with your next breath, your next meal, your next exercise session.

So since it was about noonish, and I am so so so freaking full, I decided I probably just won’t eat again until breakfast Saturday morning. No big deal. I have “weekend duty” so I’ll be on dayshift tomorrow and Sunday.

The Halloween party is tomorrow night and we are making lots of junk food but I think for me personally I probably just won’t eat any. We’ll see… I’m not sweating it.

Also when I stepped on the scale it still says “150″ and this is with all that food and everything still “in there” so that is really good. I’m in a good mood and I’m not going to Gazelle or anything this evening I am just fatigued and sore I’m just taking it easy. My wife and son are up and making treats for tomorrow evening’s party and our friend is over with her daughter so it’s just going to be a relaxing evening with the family until I fall asleep.

In other news… I made the decision to tell my bosses at work about my Medical Problems and they are trying to be understanding but at the same time it IS the military so I think it is ruffling a few feathers that I am unable to do the more physical aspects of my job… and last night one of my co-workers actually said to me “So I hear you’re making up new forms of arthritis now…” and I was really upset and pissed off at that for a while. Because it means that everybody in my shop probably knows now and secondly there must be at least a few who think I am full of crap.

It is very frustrating to wake up every day in some degree of pain. I am not on any serious painkillers at all. Every freaking movement I make is pain to some degree. If I have to pick something off the floor, get in and out of my car, the simplest movements cause me pain somewhere on my body every moment of my life.

I did not ask for this but I choose to be positive and smile and tell people I am just fine. I continue to try and work out as best I can on any given day. I continue to hobble my ass all over work fixing these planes as best I can without complaining.

How do they think it makes me feel on my really bad days when I can’t pick up my son. Sometimes my wife will do things like pick him up and twirl him around and I can’t do that stuff anymore. Taking out a bag of trash is a major chore. It’s not that I am too weak to do these things, it is that it causes me a lot of pain.

And somebody has the nerve to say something like that to me. I was very very angry for a while but fortunately last night I had a job where I was assigned to update some software on the jet so I got to sit in this CLASSIFIED room for a while by myself while working on the computer and just sit there and stew, which honestly helped.

They are trying to assign me jobs where the most physical thing I have to do is carry around the heavy-ass laptops we have and maybe climb up and down the ladder to the cockpit.

Sometimes I think “Geez, this is so sad… I can’t even climb up and down a ladder without pain.” And it’s true but I don’t think they understand that. I REFUSE to go in there and complain about everything so I think they truly do not understand the extent to which I am in pain all the time.

 And by the way, I really appreciate you listening. I don’t like to burden the people in my “real life” with these types of “woe is me” complaining, but I feel like my journal on BS gives me a place to share how I really feel.

I really feel like I am making the best of this situation as I can. I don’t know what is wrong with me, or what I have or anything. I can’t help it this but I am doing exactly what the Air Force taught me : adapt and overcome.

Good news : I got my first achievement medal.

—Matt

Okay here is the thing : It is said that to have a Samurai / Bushido mindset you are supposed to live each day like it is your last. Right?

Okay then. I keep reading where sometimes people who suffer from extreme arthritis or pain conditions (whatever it is I have…) have to “pace themselves”. And that is true. On these days when I Gazelle, like… 10 miles and then I’m mowing the lawn outside and everything… well by the time it’s bedtime believe me I am in a lot of pain.

So maybe the next day I’m completely hurting from the start, right?

So they say on your “good days” to pace yourself so you won’t have a bad day the next day. But me, I get to feeling like “Oh I can tolerate the pain pretty well today.” and I end up doing all kinds of stuff I maybe shouldn’t. This week, Sunday was good but then Monday night I popped my chest. These past few days I’ve been in a lot more pain and discomfort but we have been having a lot of rain so I think that may aggravate it.

Well okay I’m on a profile now and I might get discharged from the military for all these medical problems and I hate that. It takes so much away from my pride and masculinity that basically all I can do is Gazelle. I haven’t even been able to do the Leslie Sansone DVDs. I can sort of lift my son, he’s about 30 pounds but that is my thresh-hold these days.

I suppose — from what I’ve read on the Net and Wiki, a lot of pain conditions will be bad for a week and then go into remission. So I keep reminding myself that Sunday I felt really really good into Monday and that will return.

Maybe I should be more “Tao” about things. Instead of wanting to Gazelle a Marathon, perhaps I should use that time and energy to do something less physical that would mean something to the world. Like maybe spend the 8 hours writing letters to children or something. Or something like that.

Because Gazelle-ing 8 hours is going to kill me for the rest of that weekend.

I need to get away from the mindset that these physical accomplishments define me.

I guess… before when I was so athletic and slim physicality was so important to me… being slim still is and I am getting there slowly but surely. But I just can’t do too much physically anymore.

As sad as it sound, sometimes GAzelle-ing briskly for an hour or two is very very difficult.

I need to find some new focuses besides working out, physical stuff… I need to redefine who I am—

Perhaps I will make a rule to limit myself to 90 minutes of formal exercise at the most each day. And I should maybe focus more on my family, spirituality, and humanitarian things.

Any suggestions as to hobbies or good charities or good projects would be mucho appreciated.

—Matt

So things have gotten better, kind of…

 Part of my Lab results (for conditions that may cause my pain and arthritis) came back and they are all normal. Nevertheless I have been advised to seek more second opinions.I may be referred to an off-base rheumatologist.

I injured my chest at work trying to push on some AGE and that was stupid… something MUST be wrong here but I am very careful to ask them NOT to write me any scripts for pain drugs because I don’t want them to think I am looking for pills. I am also NOT looking to get discharged.

So all that is up in the air…

Good news is this morning when I got home I was “148″ and when I wake up my weight is frequently “145″.

My wife started baking for the holidays and my son is going to school again today. We are having a Halloween party, a small one… this weekend and I think a few people are coming by. I hope you all are doing great.

—Matt

WARNING : If you taped or TiVO-ed it for later, do NOT read this post because it will spoil it for you.

 That being said… thank you all for reading my below post and leaving supportive comments. It is mucho mucho appreciated!

Now I am feeling better mentally. Maybe not physically. But mentally I’m in a better place. I think seeing my wife and son all evening helped. My son was in a great mood for his bath time. My son barely says anything but he knows so many words because he’ll point to just about anything you can name and he’s started counting on his fingers.

But the boy just won’t talk. He just goes “uhn” and points to what he wants.

Oh well.

This afternoon before I had Blogged I had already done five miles on The Gazelle and then this evening I did TEN miles while watching TV. Now, listen up ya’ll! I know some of you think gliding along for ten miles is no big deal, and perhaps that is true for some folks. But for me it is a huge accomplishment because my stupid body is utterly failing me, it snaps and pops and groans and aches. I’m trying to increase my distances on the Gazelle because on Nov 2nd I’m gonna try and do 13.5 miles in a row and then on Nov 9th I’m going to try and complete a “marathon” on the Gazelle.

Anyway.

The Biggest Loser was absolutely insane tonight. The product endorsement of the evening was a little bit better. Rememeber a few weeks ago Bob plugged the 100-calorie snack packs? That was weird, because it’s still 100 calories of junk food. But I guess portion-controlled junk food is better than nothing. It’s a start. And we buy them, too.

Then last week Jillian whipped out that sugarless gum.

But the Weight Control oatmeal Bob had tonight is great. In fact, it’s what I had for breakfast today, mixed with some Lite N Fit yogurt and frozen fruit. They have three flavors and all of them are great and is very very fillinf because of the fiber and added whey protein, plus no added sugar. They flavor it with sucralose. Definitely consider picking some up. Mix one packet with some water and microwave for a minute and it is a great breakfast, or part of breakfast if you want to eat other things with it. I just wish they wouldn’t call it “Weight Control”. That seems so clinical and boring.

Okay well of course it made for great TV, but seriously… has Neil completely lost his mind? The entire blue team must be C R A Z Y because this show is supposed to be about getting healthy and losing weight, not nefarious plots and backstabbing!! Poor Jez even tried to divide up the teams fairly and what was his reward for his integrity? Being voted off! have they all lost their minds?

If I wanted this crap, I could watch “Survivor”!! But I don’t.

I would never ever ever sabotage somebody else’s chances to live a better life, and i really thought that aspect came first and all the competition would be healthy and friendly. It would be like if I was on a weight-loss team and I went to other teams’ blogs or forums and messed with them or left negative comments. I would never do that, even if I was competing against you, because the BIG PICTURE is you want everyone to succeed in their goals, and that goal for us BSers is WEIGHT LOSS and WEIGHT MAINTENANCE and GETTING FIT and HEALTHY.

Ridiculous and I was really really pissed off that Neil did not get his fat ass kicked off. Maybe that sounds harsh, but it is the way I felt.

I hope I am wrong and next week I find something to redeem Neil. But I’m not holding my breath.

—Matt