I’ve been avoiding posting here for a while, because I went back to read through some of the archives and I came across a post where I talked about how I’m going to be at my goal weight by 11-11-11. I’m pretty sure I can’t possibly lose 100 lbs. in 3 weeks and honestly that just depressed the hell out of me. But you know, lately things have just been going really well. I’ve been exercising more, my food has been WAY better, and so what if I don’t make the goal by then? Right now I’m not going crazy and I’m not unhappy, so I might as well just roll with it. Maybe I won’t be 159 lbs. by November 11th, but if I’m better off then than I am now, who can complain?
Christmas Party.
A REAL one – not the bullshit at the office they usually have. At the Four Seasons!
o.O
11.5 weeks…
So a lot of what I planned fell through, changed, and shifted, and I’m kind of glad I planned to do so much because it wound down to a reasonable level.
The wing chun place sucked. There’s an expression in martial arts, “empty your cup” – it means go into each new style as a beginner and don’t act like you know shit just because you’ve done this before. And I tried really hard, but when the instructor said he was going to teach us chain punches, well, it was a little too much. So on we went to the place on 1st st, which would have been awesome because it’s not even 10 minutes away. Sifu was awesome but his head instructor was a complete douchebag. The focus of the school is more MMA style…no thanks, if I wanted to spend all my time fighting on the ground I’d fucking take Jiu Jitsu. There’s no need to have separate class for it, AND incorporate it into the regular class. When does that whole “Kung Fu” thing happen?
Finally on to the last place – it’s inconvenient, it’s expensive, and it freaking ruled. The people were nice, the class was fun, fuck I can’t afford $200 a month right now but sign me the hell up anyway. So now I’m learning Mantis Style and I feel bad that I’m not more excited about it, but I really love Choy Lay Fut and that’s what I wanted to continue in but oh well, I have my dvd and that’s the best I can do right now. Why couldn’t there be a Tiger Style school in Austin??
The Warrior Dash is still on like Donkey Kong, in fact I have started training for it Couch-to-5k style and it’s going well. Today I went running at 10am because I thought “It’s fall! It will be cooler!” Two overheated, angry dogs later, I realized I still need to get up a little earlier to make that happen. Week two starts on Monday.
Kickball is ok. Our team has some talent and some truly stupid people who don’t think knowing the rules is particularly important. It’s frustrating. We lost to a team we really shouldn’t have on Thursday.
I decided to bail on the bootcamp. I have enough going on in my life right now. I’m also going to have to cancel one gym membership, I’m just not sure which one yet, but I really don’t need to pay for two or possibly any but I’ve never not belonged to a gym so that just seems weird. But Former Instructor #1 upped his training classes to 2x per week and I just don’t see when I’m ever going to have time to go. Even today after running, I just took a nap. I could have gone to the gym I guess but now I have to go do stuff and there is never enough time.
So, I might have gone a little crazy.
It started with Zozi.com . They has a deal for a month of classes at Moy Yat Kung Fu academy for only $50. They teach Wing Chun, which was my second-choice style, and the head of the school trained with Ip Man, who was Bruce Lee’s Sifu back in Hong Kong, so…y’know…that’s like the Dali Lahma of Kung Fu. I signed up for that and decided to start on the Tuesday after DragonCon (which I am going to on Friday – woo!). Then a groupon deal for a boot camp showed up and I really have no idea why it seemed so appealing but it was $39 and I bought it (I think because it had yoga in it. I don’t know why but I’ve been feeling like I should get into yoga). Anyway, I figured a month of that, plus kung fu, no big deal, it’s only 2 days a week for a month on the boot camp, and the kung fu Mon – Wed – Fri – Sat.
Since there are no Thursday classes at this Fudio, I decided to join D.’s Kickball league on Thursday nights, so I got a few friends together and signed up to play Nakid!
After that, in my travails around the internet, I found a correspondence course in Choy Lay Fut kung fu. SCORE! My style! So I figured, what the hell, I’ll sign up for that too! Maybe I can learn two styles at once. I could not send the check off for that fast enough.
Then, I was talking to Former Instructor #1, and I mentioned the Warrior Dash race that J. and I did last year. Much to my surprise, he said he’d do it. Today I confirmed with him that we would run the race on November 19th at 10am. So now I have just enough time to do Couch to 5k so that I can run 3 miles and hopefully not die over the obstacle course which looks harder this year (including a massive hill run – FML.)
I think I’ve been out of it for so long, I have the sudden desire to cram as much fitness as possible into the next few months. Maybe it’s a feeling of desperation as the scale creeps upwards, or maybe it’s just that I miss the insane 6-days-a-week training of the old days. I was about to say I hope I survive it, but really, I hope to thrive it!
I ran into some neighbors tonight, who were walking there old dog around the courtyard while I was doing laundry. I was smiling at the old boy, thinking that a stroll around the complex was a good walk for him, when it occurred to me that some day Jester and Sora won’t be able to run with me. Some day, a walk around the block will be all they can manage as well. I hate thinking about the mortality of my pets, but Sora is turning 7 next year – she’s probably at the halfway point in her life. I really need to stop making things all about me and enjoy the opportunities we have together, while we still have them.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It’s the reason you are here on earth. You’re here to risk your heart. You’re here to be swallowed up. When it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling around you, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
~Louise Erdrich
I’ve been fucked up for the past few days because of a few little words uttered last Saturday in a drunken haze. He called me sexy and I wanted to ask if he was blind. I think probably a good 95% of the reason I’m fat is that attention from guys terrifies me. I just don’t know how to be in a relationship without being crazy so I figured I would just have friends that I get unreasonably emotionally attached to. That worked out pretty well until those guy friends started getting girl friends and I learned in the most painful way possible that girlfriends do not like to share the attention of their boyfriends with other girl friends. In the months since then I have realized that I’ve basically been doing my entire life wrong. I like to think of myself as strong but as I was driving home a thought popped into my mind – it’s easy to be strong when you hide.
No wonder I can’t stop eating.
Last night I was starving when I got home from work so I made the last of the few things I had in my house. Then I ran some hill sprints with K. and the dogs, and then I got home. About an hour later I got hungry and all I could think about was going to get fast food. I sat there debating with myself…I worked out…I really shouldn’t…but I could just start eating healthy tomorrow…I really want fries…I’m so hungry…I ate chocolate earlier, what’s the point of eating well now?
I put on my shoes and literally had my keys in my hand when I felt a feeling come over me – DON’T DO IT. I took my shoes off, hung my keys up, and went to paw through the fridge. I discovered hidden in the back my emergency packet of tuna. A ray of hope!! With much trepidation I pulled it out and flipped it over to find the expiration date…and it was still good!!! YES!!! I dug out the bottle of mayo on the fridge door – ALSO GOOD! WOOHOO!! I ate tuna salad and I felt so good.
Today at work, I got hungry in the afternoon and I ate some junky snacks. I was feeling bad, but then when I got home I started thinking why aren’t I proud of the fact that I ate really healthy at lunch? And at the food court in the mall no less – I had lots of bad options. And that made me mad! I’m sick of following these rules that at best make me feel not good enough. I was happy when I was doing Kung Fu all the time and not caring what I ate. So it’s time to get back to being happy with what I’m doing and happy with how my life is going. No more rules and feeling bad and bullshit. It’s time to figure out what I can and can’t live with going forward.
What I can’t live with: Not eating at places I love; missing out on fun experiences with friends because I feel bad or guilty or am trying to be perfect.
What I can live with: Trying to make the things I love better. I can still go to Torchy’s; I can’t get a Trashy Trailer Park (fried chicken with queso). I can replace the tortillas with the low carb option and stick to the Mr. Pink (salmon) and Democrat (beef).
What I can’t live with: Spending hours in the kitchen pre-cooking healthy food that gets gross and unappetizing as the week goes on.
What I can live with: Cooking food that I like, focusing on healthy meats & veggies
What I can’t live with: never eating fast food
What I can live with: NO. MORE. BINGING.
What I have to live with: Training. I have not done shit for Kung Fu since I quit and I have no excuse for that. I love Kung Fu, I still love it, and I’m not about to let the skill I trained for a year and a half go by the way side. I wanted to prove to myself I could do it on my own and I pretty much need to get on that.
I feel like I go through this revolution in a regular cycle – I say all these things that make sense and seem logical and inside of a week I’m back to binging like a crazy person. Let’s see if we can hopefully make it stick this time. Its so frustrating that I have all this awesome insight and self-introspection and then I have no idea what the fuck to DO with it.
I’m also having What-A-Burger for dinner. 
I always compose these awesome blog entries in my head, and then when I go to write one I find myself staring blankly at a blinking cursor. Probably why I don’t blog more.
I joined LifeTime Fitness for no reason other than it seemed like something to do. As part of my sign up I got a fitness test which was awesome because I love fitness tests of all kind. Unfortunately I woke up early to run hill sprints with the dogs before I did it, so I don’t think the results were quite what they could have been. My VO2Max was literally in the bottom 1%, which made me laugh. My bicep strength was 67 lbs. which was solidly in the “good” range. Excellent is 73 or above so I have something to work on there. My “modified sit & reach” which measures how far I can stretch my hamstrings was poor – 12.6 – but I really have to blame that on the hill sprints. My hammies were toast and stiff. OH and of course I’m fat – 253 lbs, 144.7 lbs. lean mass, 108.3 lbs. fat mass.
It’s interesting because I just got a book on flexibility for martial artists and I’m looking forward to start working on that. I also want to improve that VO2 Max score. I’ll never be a huge cardio bunny but the bottom 1% – really?
Here’s an update on my life:
I got back from Vegas yesterday. Worst trip ever. I got food poisoning on the 2nd day and spent most of the time in my hotel room, doing horrible things to the plumbing of the Mandalay Bay hotel. I was at the show for maybe 1.5 full days. Everyone was nice about it, although at first they assumed it was hung over sickness but once they realized I was actually down for the count, they were nice. I lost 4 pounds, which I am not celebrating because food poisoning weight loss is not something to be cheered. Plus I was so excited to be able to eat small quantities of solid food today, I ate tacos and P. Terry’s. On the plus side, I was concerned before about my stomach being too large and being used to eating too much food – not an issue now.
We took team pictures and it was one of those pictures you look at think “Damn. I am FAT.” I am hoping to do something about that for the rest of the summer. Have to ease back into exercise though.
My size 20 jeans were SO tight at the start of the conference….and now fit much better.
Still not doing kung fu beyond lessons with former instructor #1.
Feeling very blah about work and friends and life in general. I feel like I’m just not good at being a person. I’m not a great friend, not great at my job, not a great co-worker, wasn’t even a very good martial artist (and now I’m not one, not really).
I’m not really depressed. Just kind of blah. I need to shake things up, get some positive changes rolling to get out of the dumps.
I quit Kung Fu.
Not doing it, but going to my school. The head instructor pulled me aside and told me that as long as I trained with Former Instructor #1, he would never give me a black belt, because it was disloyal to the school. He actually used the word treasonous. And just when I had sort of made up my mind to be a little more dedicated to going. But I’m not going to keep working for nothing and it was more about the principle…he has no right to tell me who I can and can’t train with outside of the school.
Anyway, I’m not really sure what to do for now. I think I’ll eventually find my way to another school. I’m seriously considering Wing Chun as a new style. I’d prefer to stay in Choy Lai Fut, but there’s not another school in Austin that teaches it.
Former Instructor #1 said he’d give me a black belt test in the next 2-3 months. Unfortunately he’s moving about 40 minutes away and I suspect once that school starts he will have less time to work with us. That remains to be seen though.
