Blog Post by Jason

Resolutions are for governing bodies and legislative precincts. I am overweight, but I’m not that big.

Instead of going on an ill-fated new-years resolution (I resolved about 10 years ago to never make another resolution, and I’m not about to break fail now), I’m working on what the late Mr. Valentine would call a “self-improvement project”.

Mr. Valentine was my high school psychology and history professor, who often proudly proclaimed that “my body is a temple”. Well, his temple accepted alcohol and nicotine for sacrifice, and it must have worked, because he’s now met his maker.

But I stray from the subject at hand. New years resolutions fail, because they only consider one aspect of behavior. You can’t quit smoking unless you know why it is you smoke, what drives you to smoke, where you are when you typically “need” to smoke, etc. Those circumstances need to be counter balanced. You also need to understand the biological impulses and learned habits, and you need to have a plan to deal with those. Most people would just ignore all that, focus on the singular action and not the root causes that drive them to that action, and say “This year, I’m going to quit smoking.”

And they fail.

This is the knowledge I’m taking into my 4th attempt at P90X. I made it all the way through twice, and stuck to the diet for half of one of those times (which splits them into a fraction I can’t even measure). I didn’t even know I was taking such a self-improvement attitude into it until I was already underway.

I was perusing the P90X diet guide for crap to eat at fast food joints that wouldn’t totally blow my diet, and found the selection lacking. Candice suggested that I check out the website (milliondollarbody.com, not hyperlinked because it’s really not a good site) to see an updated list. It wanted me to create a free account before it showed me any content, so I did. I never did find my fast food catalog (well, indirectly I did: don’t eat any fast food), but I did get my own personal trainer!

His name is Sterling Purdy (or at least, that’s what is friends call him). His blog is worth a perusal, and I’ve found one of his most oft cited links indispensable.

Sterling advised me to use intermittent fasting (IF) twice a week, to skip the recovery drink entirely, and to run a sprinting workout once per week. I live in Illinois, and I’m not paying for a gym membership, so the sprinting is pretty much out of the question until Spring. I already shelled out $80 to GNC for my recovery drink, and it does too well as a breakfast replacement (occasionally), so I’m sticking to that. As for IF, well, I’ve actually adopted it.

Every Monday, I eat dinner, then lounge around and go to bed. Then I don’t eat again until dinner Tuesday. I repeat the process on Thursday into Friday. If I was following my typical eating habits (I still can’t bring myself to call them my “old” eating habits), this means that I skip lunch the next day (since I never used to eat any breakfast anyway).

The biggest thing I’ve learned from Sterling is that you can lose weight if you just move more and eat less. You can only drop pounds by creating a calorie deficit; burn more calories than you take in. At my present body weight, I burn 2200 calories if I just sleep all day. So, throw in a 500 calorie workout, and then eat a 2000 calorie/day diet, and I’m set to lose a pound per week. I then take out the calories from IF, with the Tommy LaSorda approved “Sensible Dinner – even pasta!”, and I’m even closer to 2 pounds per week.

The secret really is to just PUT DOWN THE FORK. After I’ve dropped below the level of obesity, there will be more things nutrition-wise to think about. I’d elaborate, but I am still obese. At this point, losing tonnage is its own reward.

I didn’t take full measurements before starting, but I can say this much: After 3 weeks I’ve dropped 12 pounds! Candice says that if I looked normally like I look with my stomach sucked in all the way, then I could suck in my stomach all the way and look like a normal person!

Also, I know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like half of you half as well as you deserve.*

Bottom line: I’m getting THINNER… but without the help of a gypsy. Perhaps I’ll share my workout and diet log, which are conveniently stored as Google Docs. It would require a great Internet-ian uprising, though, as I’m not partial to posting my dietary and physical habits all willy-nilly. Maybe it’s time for another vote….

* Bilbo should have added that he wasn’t sure if those halves were mutually exclusive. The quandary becomes yet more perplexing when applied to a physical specimen, as in my metaphor. After all, if you always step half the distance to your goal, you will never reach it.