Being the fat kid sucks. I am not going to bullshit you and say looks don’t matter and you should be comfortable in your skin no matter how you look. Looks do matter. They have always mattered. People who say they don’t matter are either liars, look good, or are much more evolved than I am. Being fat as a kid means you get ostracized. You are different. You are a target for bullies and ridicule. As you start to get older it means you are much less likely to date. It means while your friends are dating you are home alone or the dreaded third wheel. For my youth I was always the fat kid. I had friends and I played sports but for those who did not know me I was a target. Goodbye self -confidence.
As I approached 15 I realized I wanted to change my life path. I ate a lot of salad, drank a lot of water, and cut down on bread. Lo and behold I got my first girlfriend. In fact other girls started to notice me as well. I am just shallow enough to know that made a difference in how I felt about myself. When I look better I feel better about myself emotionally. I don’t know why fat is a problem in society but I know it is and I know I am not strong enough to take on the onslaught of looks, derision, and whispers of being too fat.
In college I gained the freshman 15 but I also lifted weights fairly often. I would continue this throughout my college years and though I was no longer the 27 inch waisted kid I was at the end of high school I was in shape and muscular. I have never been shredded. Even when I was running a mile every day in 95 degree heat and doing an insane amount of work on my abs I was never ripped but I was in shape. I did pretty well with the ladies in college. Even though I ate crap and a lot of it I was working out and had a youngster’s metabolism.
When I met my wife I was 150 pounds and built. I had a 32 inch waist. I was also getting ready to start law school, would soon begin a comedy career, have a part time job and of course a new girlfriend. There was just not enough time to work out regularly like I use to. I was happy. I was busy. I was not focused on my fitness. I am not one who gorges themselves on food. I don’t eat a lot. I don’t eat exceptionally bad. I just slowly gain weight. I like to eat at night in bed watching tv. I like to sit on the couch and eat junk food. I really do enjoy eating. It makes me happy. I like sweet. I like savory. I like food. I like food much more than I ever liked working out. Maybe you can relate.
Leading up to our wedding we did the South Beach diet together. It worked very well for me. Don’t get me wrong, I hated not being to eat exactly what I wanted but my fiancée made a lot of the food. I essentially was living off of turkey roll. I was fine with it because I was losing a few pounds every week. I like to see the numbers go down on the scale. It motivated me. I did not have to lift heavy objects at a rapid pace. I looked good for my wedding. I definitely could not have done it if my fiancée was eating chocolate cake every night. I do not have that type of will power. It definitely works better when you are doing a program with someone to help motivate each other.
After the wedding we stopped the South Beach diet and fell back into bad habits. Slowly but surely the pounds crept up. It is always a slow climb. A couple of pounds every year. A few years later my wife is pregnant and that seems like the perfect excuse to eat poorly. And I did. Now don’t get me wrong, I have had gym memberships and I actually went for quite some time. I don’t like going. I hate getting in the car to drive someplace just to be uncomfortable. The point is I was trying. I was walking the treadmill and riding the bike. I was lifting weights. Thank goodness or I would have really ballooned up. I always tried to keep my weight in check but if you are not exactly on point it is a battle you can lose. So a bit after my daughter was born we tried Nutri-System. The food was not great but the plan was easy. Once again the weight came off fairly easily. Don’t get me wrong, I preferred bigger portions and sweeter sweets but it worked. Once again though once off the plan the weight slowly crept back up. I was your typical yo -yo weight gain and loss person.
On top of that I stopped going to the gym. It was too far (15 – 20 minute drive). I did try and walk the hills in my complex. I was still mobile but my eating habits were bad and my metabolism had slowed down considerably. I was getting rounder. When the crew came to film American Greed at my house we took some pictures. I did not post them because I did not like how I looked. The self-esteem was plummeting. That was the spring of 2017. We then went on a cruise to Cuba. I did the cruise lifestyle and grew to my fattest. Things were trending badly. When American Greed came out on tv I joked on the radio that I looked like I ate myself.
When we came back from Cuba my wife decided she had enough of her own weight issues. She subscribed to some something called Beach Body. They had a lot of work out programs so she picked one she wanted to do and I agreed to do it with her. We started with 21 Day Fix. It was a high intensity work out 7 days a week for 30 minutes a day. I did lose some weight. I was not following the meal plan but I was toning some and some pounds were coming off. We did this program for awhile. Then we would mix in those work outs with some other work outs.
Still some of the weight I had lost was coming back with a quickness. There is nothing more frustrating than working hard physically and still gaining weight. Plus nobody seemed to really notice that I had lost weight. It was frustrating. We did drop some weight before our trip to Italy so we were at least happy about that. The food in Italy is delicious so I was not going to stick to a diet there anyway.
About a hundred days ago my wife was growing bored of our workouts so she wanted to do 80 Day Obsession which is more like 100 days. You work out six days a week for about an hour a day doing weight training, while doing cardio, and compound movement all while on a very strict eating plan. And no cheat days…F@#k my life.
Can I just tell you I hated waking up in the morning to work out. So many times I wanted to quit within the first couple of minutes of the work out. My couch and Scrubs is way more enticing than a work out mat and loops and sliders. If you don’t know what loops and sliders are they are essentially resistance bands and pie tins that are extremely frustrating to deal with. The woman who leads the work out, Autumn seems like a nice enough gal but I hated her. She was too peppy with too many platitudes and motivational sayings. I am sure this is helpful for some people . For me I envisioned doing horrible things to her just to get her to shut up. I soon realized that some times the equipment we were told to use was nothing more than an excuse to use the stuff we bought from them. I stopped using some of the stuff on some exercises. Even Autumn came around and stopped using the stuff on occasion.
The pounds were not flying off of me. It was frustrating. I was doing the eating plan and working out very hard. I missed white bread and soda. I was tired of vegetables. I don’t want spinach at 7 Am in the morning! My mood was deteriorating because the pounds were not coming off quickly and I had never worked so hard. I lost a few pounds. My body was changing a bit. I was toning but I needed to see the numbers come off. About half way through I convinced my wife that we scrap the meal plan and just watch what we eat. The pounds started coming off more quickly. The meal plan which had us eating 5 times a day was actually too much food. With the number on the scale going down my mood brightened.
Next up my annoyance at the woman leading the work out. Shut the F@#k up is never good to yell at a tv. I started playing music during the work outs. I still heard Autumn but at least on occasion I could lose myself in the music. Every day my wife pushed play on the video and every day I joined her. Often followed up by playing softball in the evening. Now my wife thought Autumn was delightful enough though maybe a bit too peppy sometimes. I think I work out harder on rage and determination than light hearted inspiration.
That is another thing. This work out beat up my body. I don’t just mean muscle soreness. My knees really hurt taking stairs. My back was aggravated. I was in pain and feeling worse than I did before working out. There is a lot of jumping while holding weights. I am not a fan of that. You can modify it but I tried to not modify as much as possible.
Now it did help my cardiovascular conditioning. I do not get winded nearly as easily. It did help my strength. I am lifting heavier weights than I was before. I did get an oblique cut. I did not shred out the way I would have liked.
In the last month my wife was starting to struggle with the workouts. She was bored and had enough. This is where I picked her up. I would not let her quit. We were too close and she had worked too hard. Her body was changing. She was getting uch thinner but she had problem areas that she was unsatisfied with. I wanted to quit but I wasn’t going to and I would not let her quit. She had dealt with my bad attitude through most of it so it was time I set a good example for her.
The week before the program ended we went to Florida. I was not going to work out in Florida. I was not going to starve myself in Florida. We went and had a good time. We each lost weight that week. Apparently ice cream and amusement parks are a good work out.
We came back and started Peak Week…the hardest week of the program. It was hard. It was not Butter Beer and ju ju fruits. I would end the work outs covered in sweat like I just got out of the shower.
We did it. Did I lose what I wanted to on the program? No. I thought it was a weight loss program. It was a toning program. Am I in better shape? Absolutely! My shoulders are broader, my waist is smaller, my butt is smaller (not that I was worried about that), and my stomach is flatter. I look better. I have more work to do. I will never do this program again. It is too strict for me. I will pick various work outs over the next few months to maintain and then October there is another program I hope to start. Work out 4 days a week for 30 minutes with high intensity. I am going to hate it but I will hate it 30 minutes less at a time. I don’t like working out. That will not change. I do like being in better shape for all the vain reasons. I am not an inspiration. I am not going to tell you that I am going to embrace this new lifestyle. I won’t. I will try. I will fail. I will push again. This will be a life long struggle. I’m in it. Why? Because my vanity says I have no choice.
