Category Archives: weight loss

it’s not a diet; it’s a lifestyle change.

weight loss

Heroes

No, no, not David Bowie.

I have weird trains of thought. I hadn’t done my daily blog checks for a few days, so I headed first to Sheryl’s site, then to Beth’s, where I got impersonally schooled for not updating more often. (::ouch::) Anyway, I read about her weight-loss frustrations, which turned my thoughts to my own weight-loss kick. (After, of course, wondering why Beth would think she needs to lose weight.)

To help bolster my weight-loss motivation, I put a big scowling picture of Henry Rollins on my desktop. He’s looking directly at me, silently chanting his seven-word solution to losing weight: "Eat less. Eat better. Move your body." This has become my mantra since seeing Henry’s spoken word gig in Columbus on Saturday.

This thought led me to the conclusion: Henry Rollins is my fitness hero.

I’ve ruminated on the hero/role-model concept ever since my pre-teen years in Sunday School, when they told us to find a role model and emulate him or her. It occured to me even then that I couldn’t find anyone who was quite where I wanted to be, who was quite who I wanted to be. Since that point, I’ve denounced the idea of an overall personal role-model as absurd. If I try to be Person X… then who am I? And how does my attempt to be Person X belittle him or her — especially if I’m successful? Her uniqueness factor is kicked down a notch. As is my own.

On the other hand… if I could find someone who personifies each aspect of myself, and emulate that aspect of them, our uniqueness as individuals remains intact. Plus, I’m not forced to cheapen myself on other aspects of my being that Person X might not have, or have as strongly as I do.

Some of my other heroes are a little personal, so I won’t blab them here. Some of my personal heroes change from year to year. Some are famous (like Hank). Some of them are people you know.

I challenge you to identify your own personal heroes. Be truthful. It might be strange on some levels, but you might be surprized at who you actually emulate.

wedding, weight loss

Wedding Obsession — er, Planning — Continues

This evening, on WeddingChannel.com, I discovered something that disturbed me as I had not been disturbed since discovering the Tony Hawk Pro Skater Create-A-Skater mode.

The link said, “try on gowns on a model that looks like you!” I shrugged and clicked like the trained internet monkey that I am. After a few minutes of clicking and thinking, thinking and clicking, then a little gasping and rethinking and clicking again, I created VirtuaDiana. Fortunately or not, the gown sizes available required me to downsize VirtuaDiana from current actual size to projected wedding-day size. This will require a weight loss of 1.4 lbs per week from this week until the wedding day. It could happen.

(As a side note… I’ve noticed that VirtuaDiana’s breasteses are severely lacking. Her only choices, unfortunately, were small-med and med-large. The Create-A-Model designers failed to take into account those of us with a large build who count on our enormous hooters to balance us out.)

In related news, today I played Dance Dance Revolution 3rd Mix for 15 minutes in Diet Mode, and also discovered that pomegranate seeds a.) are a good snack, and b.) are a good carpet dye.

ruminations, weight loss

Gone for a Walk

I decided this evening after work, around 9:15 or so, to go deposit a couple of eBay checks that had been living in my wallet for way too long. I stuck my pen in my hair, wallet and keys in my pockets, and I was on my way.

Once I’d hit the ATM and checked my balance, I didn’t want to go home. It was too nice out. So, I decided to walk. I walked down Main Street, trying to decide where to walk. I glanced up at the Huntington Bank clock. Flip — 67 degrees. Flip — 9:22pm. Flip — 67 degrees…

At any rate, campus would be ideal for walking, being dimly lit and without through streets… but I wasn’t going to walk 15 minutes just to walk around, then walk 15 minutes back afterwards. Maybe I’d walk the residential streets. And that’s what I’d decided, until about five steps from the crosswalk by the Corner Grill. I could see the Administration Building down Court Street, and decided that the University wasn’t that far away… I crossed the street at the signal, and walked past the Corner Grill, past the Methodist Church, past the Courthouse, all the while fixating on the Admin Building and the cool, still night.

About five steps from Enterprise Street and three blocks from BGSU, I decided that the University really was too far to walk just for sport, and I made a quick left. This is where the usual mental drift that accompanies my solitary walks began. Not that I walk in front of moving vehicles or get myself lost, but that I think of the strangest random things, like:

  • I really don’t have that many friends I can hang out with anymore. My Senior year at BGSU, I’d finally made enough friends that, if I felt like being social, I could call up Beth or knock on Donna’s door upstairs or go visit Tim two floors up. I still have two local acquaintances that I went to BGSU with, but I really wouldn’t feel as comfortable just calling them up out of the blue and going to their apartments to play PS2 or something.
  • I’ve had this weird habit ever since that Creative Writing curriculum in third grade. When things happen around me or near me, I involuntarily try to compose the appropriate prose in my head — as if I were writing my life’s story moment by moment. I heard some guy make a noise down the alley and thought, “It sounded like a a retch, or grunt, or some other incoherent cry.” Hey, I never said it was good… only involuntary.
  • I really have gained a lot of weight. I realized this as I looked down at my shadow before me. Then I realized that my arms touch my sides when I walk. Not just at my hips, not just my armpits, and not just my boobs. My entire side. This was somehow more disturbing to me than my recent discovery of a “gut flap.” It only strengthened my resolve to somehow lose 45 pounds in eight or nine months.

At any rate, I finally looped back around and joined up with Main Street again, this time the opposite direction. Walking back under the Huntington Bank sign, I looked up. Flip — 9:47pm. Flip — 63 degrees. Flip — 9:47pm…