A great weekend away has me feeling really good today. The scale this morning was up (alot), but it was well worth it to have a little mini-vacation. Getting away for just a couple of days and not having to worry about my day-to-day life has really helped my outlook on things I think.

I know I haven’t been posting much recently, and I certainly haven’t been watching my calories, but I’m still busting my ass on p90x, having only missed a total of 3 days of the 51 I’ve been at it (two of which were because of surgery). As far as habits go, that’s definitely a good one to be building.

I know I can’t just sit pretty on the 42 pounds I’ve already lost, but in my efforts to not do so, I think I’ve been focusing too much on how much further I have to go, and all the mistakes I’ve made since I started to struggle. When I see little gains, or small losses, in the back of my mind, I compare it to the 1.7 pounds a week I was losing before, and I feel like I’m not doing well.

At different points along this process of trying to improve my health I’ve eaten better, worked out regularly, cooked my own food, saved money, etc. I just haven’t quite figured out how to put all of those things together at the same time.

Practice makes perfect, or so they say, so I’ll keep trying until I get it right.

I’ve been trying to find a way to tie a bunch of different thoughts and feelings into a post for a while now, and have just decided I’m not going to get anything that doesn’t just seems like a sort of stream of consciousness, random collection of statements – so I may as well not fight it.

I’ve been eating terribly. Not fast food, burgers and fries everyday, how I used to eat terribly, but definitely “Oh, there are donuts in the break room, so I should go have one terribly.” I want to improve, but I’m definitely dealing with some emotional hangup I haven’t fully discovered yet, and it’s starting to really tick me off.

Today is day 43 of P90X without missing a workout. There’ve been a couple where I wasn’t feeling all that into it, and almost certainly didn’t go 100%, but I’ve shown up everyday, and I’m proud of it. I wish I’d had more confidence in myself when I started – in the back of my mind I didn’t think I would even get this far, so I didn’t follow the diet plan, or buy the right supplements, etc. I’ve definitely wasted quite a bit of potential gain by working out so hard, and not giving myself the right tools to fully capitalize on it.

Of course, if I weren’t one for wasting potential, it wouldn’t be called mywastedlife, now would it .

Over the last 43 days the trend says I’ve gained about a pound and a half. However, I am on the verge of buying a new belt, as the one I have barely holds my pants up any more. In fact, I have a lot of clothes that aren’t fitting right. My poor eating may be preventing me from seeing gains on the scale, but P90X is definitely still having positive effects on my body. If I try to focus on the gains I’m seeing and not dwell on what I see as wasted potential, I should actually be very happy.

I am sunburnt to all hell after playing in (and winning) a kickball tournament at work yesterday. I also won a Magic Bullet in the company raffle – which I’m taking as a sign from the universe that I should be eating better by making my own smoothies.

I am now 9 days into p90x, and I stand by my original statements – this thing is hard. It definitely wasn’t intended for people at my current fitness level. However, even struggling to do half of what the program requests, I’m seeing real results in only a week. In fact, I nearly doubled my reps on every single chest and back exercise from last week and I made it all the way through the plyometrics video without throwing up. So even if it wasn’t intended for me, if I keep sticking with it, I’ll be able to make it work for me. Only 81 more days to go.

Also, a friend mentioned that I sounded a bit hypocritical talking about Daris’ struggles the other day. I didn’t mean to sound like I was harping on him, or coming from a place of superiority; I only meant to convey sympathy and understanding. This last week I’ve been working out as hard, if not harder, than I ever have in my life. If my calorie intake were on point, I’d have easily seen a 2-3 pound loss. So while I’m definitely getting fitter and stronger, I’m not getting all the benefits I could be out of this effort.

It’s terribly tempting to say “Well, I’m putting on muscle” or “I’m still working on maintaining the changes I made to my diet previously” but those are exactly the sort of justifications I’m talking about. What I should be saying is exactly what I took offense at all those years ago – “Don’t kid yourself, you’re overeating.”

I don’t watch much reality TV, but I’m really hooked on The Biggest Loser. It’s about an hour too long, so I fast forward through a lot of the junk (thank god for DVR’s), but the core of the show strikes me as genuine and seems to come from a really good place.

When I was in high school, I had a subscription to Muscle and Fitness in order to learn new weight training techniques. There were always structured diet plans for X goal, or for X number of weeks, and although I read through them all, I never followed them. When outlining the benefits of the diet plans, there was one phrase the magazine always used: “When you’ve reached this point, if you haven’t seen X result, don’t kid yourself, you’re overeating.”

I remember how much that statement used to upset me, and in my mind I would make excuses and justifications for other people who might be following that diet. I imagined them being diligent and working hard, and then not seeing results due to stress or illness. I envisioned some villainous meat-head, cackling away as he wrote that line, knowing it was going to crush the spirit of some innocent person, trying to lose weight or look good. I was so dependent on food as an emotional crutch, I had to make excuses for other people, just to help support my own.

I heard that same sort of excuse from Daris this week when he said “It’s hard to train for a Marathon and lose weight.” He knew he was eating too much, and he knew it was bad, and he was trying to rationalize it away because he didn’t know what else to do. Seeing him break down into tears while petitioning for “America’s Vote” was heart wrenching.

I really felt for Daris this week, mainly because I know exactly how he feels. Those late nights alone, where you feel compulsively driven to eat, even when you know you shouldn’t, even when you are telling yourself out loud you shouldn’t, are absolutely terrible. The mixed feeling of satisfaction you get from the food, and loathing you feel towards yourself for eating it, is something I would never wish upon anyone.

I’ve been struggling with updating the site recently. It feels as if I’m busy and have no time, which I know isn’t actually true. I mean, I’m busy, but you make time for the important things – which means that somewhere deep down, I’m not treating this site as if it’s one of the things worth making time for.

Some of it certainly has to do with the fact that I’ve been sitting around the same weight for the last 6 months, but I don’t think it ends there. I’ve been making (or attempting to make) significant changes to many different parts of my life recently, and those changes require a deep emotional commitment from me that seems to be directly competing for the time I was dedicating here. In a way, it’s somewhat fitting, as many of the personal changes I’m working on are a direct result of my work here, which leaves me a bit conflicted on what to do.

For instance, I am (and always have been) terrible with money – I never save, always blow budgets, and feel poor regardless of how hard I work or how much I’m bringing in. I literally am always one serious problem away from financial disaster. Until I really started trying to live a healthy lifestyle (instead of fad dieting) I never really understood how much that stress was affecting my weight.

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been slowly getting my finances in order by cutting unnecessary spending, paying off debt, planning ahead for foreseeable expenses, etc. All of the changes have been incredibly difficult to stick with (much in the same way eating a healthier diet is), and I’ve been struggling to make it all work, but I’m definitely making improvements.

That, and other things like it, are consuming the time and energy I was devoting to the site. While I feel as if they’re necessary for my growth as a person, and my goal of losing weight for good, I don’t like the fact that the site feels neglected. I could take a official hiatus from posting regularly (rather than just the de facto hiatus I’ve been on) but that really just doesn’t sit well with me either.

Ironically, I think the answer may be to post more. If I expanded the scope of the site to cover more than just my specific goal of losing weight (it is mywastedlife after all), then maybe it would become a part of whatever process I’m specifically focused on in the way it did when I was specifically focused on losing weight above all else.

I’ll have to think about it more.

Yesterday marked exactly one year from the start of this blog. One year ago, I sent out an email to my close friends and family, asking them to check this site regularly and help support me in my quest to become healthy. Since then, I’ve lost 45 pounds, run a 5k, stopped drinking soda, and stopped eating most fast food.

I want to give my sincerest thanks to all of my friends and family who’ve supported me and all of the weight-loss bloggers out there who’ve inspired me. I still have a long way to go (as the pound and a half I put on during my trip up north will attest to) and I’m sure to face difficult times ahead, but I can unequivocally say that I am healthier today than I was a year ago, and I couldn’t have done it without all of you.

The last week has been, yet again, incredibley busy for me. Aside from posting my weigh in every morning, I’ve not had any time for the site.

I’m out of town for the next 4 days, so that isn’t likely to change in the near future.

Stress, combined with not taking the time to prepare the best meals has had a negative impact on my most recent weigh-in’s, but overall I’m still making forward progress, and this trip is just what the doctor ordered to get me refreshed and focused again.

I’ve missed a few posts this last week, but mostly due to being really busy, as opposed to being disinterested. I ‘back filled’ what I could accurately remember, but it seems I’ve finally got my weight moving (if slowly) in the right direction again, so the days I didn’t log don’t bother me so much.

Now, to make good on my intentions and up the intensity in the gym today.

I imagine that everyone who’s ever tried to run with stock iPod headphones knows what pain in the butt they are. Aside from being slightly too big to begin with, that shiny white plastic they’re made of slides out of a sweaty ear faster than Jay Leno can steal a talk show. I wasn’t even past light jogging before I knew I had to get something new.

One day I swung by a big name electronics store, looking for a new pair that would work better, but didn’t find anything that looked too appealing. I didn’t know what I was really looking for, I mean, I assumed athletic people needed to listen to music while they ran just like I did, so it stood to reason they’d already solved this problem, but if they had, I wasn’t finding it on the shelves.

When I got home, I hit up Google, and in less than 5 minutes I found myself with an incredible selection of ‘sport’ headphones of all shapes and sizes. Still not really knowing what I was looking for (and hating to spend money on something I might dislike) I was pretty reluctant to buy anything without being able to physically inspect them first – especially when every single set of headphones I checked had a mix of rave and terrible reviews. Eventually, I found myself coming back to the Sennheiser MX85 Sport Series again and again, so I figured I’d take a shot.

I’m really glad I did, because I think these things really rock. I’m not an audiofile, so I can’t speak intelligently to the sound quality, but I don’t have any complaints. What I can say, is that these things stay in your ears, even when you’re a big lumbering dude who has no idea how to run properly, and even when you drop your iPod shuffle while doing said lumbering. They stay in your ears, and they’re comfortable, and that’s exactly what I wanted. All in all, I couldn’t be happier with them.

It feels a little odd to be raving about a purchase I made months ago, and even odder still to think that this post about my headphones is twice as long as my post about my 5k. So odd in fact, that I almost didn’t write this out. For someone with steady employment, buying something in the $30 price range isn’t really an accomplishment, particularly when compared with running farther than you’ve ever ran before in your life, so what’s the big deal?

It might sound a bit silly, but buying those headphones was in investment in my health. I didn’t buy a home gym, or a treadmill, or some gimmick on tv telling myself that once I had it, I’d start using it to get healthy – I was already in the gym, doing the hard part, and when an opportunity to make an excuse not to go came up (“I need to get new headphones”), I refused to use it. Instead, I invested in the commitment I’d already made to myself and, in doing so, strengthened it.

So, when I say I love my headphones, I really do. Not because of how they sound, or because they don’t fall out, but because they serve as a reminder of how I’m slowly changing my life for the better.

My mother and I went to my Uncle’s for Passover Seder today (Yeah, it’s not the right day, but I’m not Jewish either, so sue me). My Uncle Paul is a great cook, I definitely ate too much, and I’ve no idea how to log the calorie I consumed (I mean, how many calories are in gefilte fish anyway?).

Still, it was wonderful to see the family, and (did I mention) the food was really good. So aside from having no calorie total, and feeling like a stuffed pig, today was a good day.