Breaking Ruts & Walls

June 14, 2018
 
I feel like I have been stuck in a rut for far too long.  Of course, I have no one to blame for that but myself, and I have no choice but to accept that one.
 
The stupid thing is that it drives me nuts every day.  Every…freakin’…day!  The obvious huge part of that is my body.  I’m disgusted with myself every waking moment.  The grotesque level of fat that I am living in is nauseating to me.  I really mean that.  I feel this sludge hanging off of me all over my body…sludge that never falls off or wipes away.
 
I feel it hanging off my back, hanging over the waist of my pants.  My pants are so tight that they are so bothersomely uncomfortable.  I refuse to buy bigger ones because all that does is say that it is OK to be like that…but it’s not OK.

I don’t understand this whole thing in this world of obesity we find ourselves inn now in the way that we promote how being big is beautiful too.  I wholeheartedly disagree with that.  The reason for that is I know how unhealthy it is, and I don’t think it’s right to promote unhealthy as beautiful.  What one looks like and what their personality is irrelevant to the issue at hand...this is about health, plain and simple!

For me, the excess fat on my body, and my disgust within it, has nothing to do with how it looks, because I don’t give a shit how I look to other people.  The thing that matters is what it does to my body.  My efficiency of movement is non-existent, and therefore so is my efficiency of energy.  I’m just wiped out all the time.
 
I know I have all the strikes of my pain filled body and sleeplessness working against me too, but even with acknowledging it, I still ignore it and hold myself to a standard irregardless of it.  That plays torture on my mind…all day every day.  It never won’t!  Even when I am at my best it is still never good enough for me, because I still see what could have been.
 
I am sooo far from my best right now and my daily battle with insanity because of it is another torturous fight on my daily plate I am force fed to eat down.
 
The amount that I hate getting winded for nothing is something that I couldn’t possibly quantify.  I fuckin’ hate it!  Hate it!  Hate it!  Hate it like you don’t even know!
 
The strange thing is that I love hitting hard cardio to the point where I feel like my lungs are gonna pop and I am gonna throw up.  That unique taste that forms in my mouth full of saliva that splats out of my mouth and hangs off my chin while I have snot shooting from my nostrils while I am gasping for air feeling like I’m gonna die is one of my most favourite things.  I’ve been so in love with it for so long, but my body has ripped the true ability for that as I structurally cannot bring myself to that level.  There is one exception to that, and that is when I am able to find a steep mountain hill in the winter and charge up the hill in belly-button deep snow.  That shit fucks me up in that very blissed out way.  Sadly though, it has been a very long time since I have been able to do that.
 
Getting winded from being so over weight is not the same thing though.  It’s coming from the same place.  The tiniest ways that I can get winded are embarrassing.  I don’t mean embarrassing in regards to what others might think, because just like not giving a shit what people think about how my current obesity looks, I couldn’t care less about what one might think of the ways I can get so winded so easily.

Although not steep and deep snowy mountain terrain, I have been dipping into doing hills in my back yard from the river up to my home.  Even that kills my heart and winds me terribly though

The path from my home to the water.  Doesn't look like a hill here, but I swear it is one.

It eats at my mind to not have a low resting heart rate.  (I used to love seeing results of my resting heart rate being in the mid 50 beats per minute when I was younger.)  The thing hurts worse than my lungs for getting winded is the pain it causes in my chest around my heart area.  I have to be conscious of that.  I miss the recklessness of hard cardio when I was in shape, or not far from it, where I could go hard and it felt nothing but good for me even when I would throw up from the hard charge.  It is the exact opposite though with a body so horribly out of shape, because the worst thing is my heart.  It just feels like it could give out at any moment.  The strain my heart and chest feels is insane!  This is why I think it is not right, and down even outright negligent to be promoting excess body fat as beautiful, because when you get below skin deep and look at what is really going on it is absolutely terrible.  I don’t understand why people are so OK with it.

For those who may read this and get offended or all mad at me, I simply put this 30 month challenge out to any obese person.  Take 18 months to eat relatively well, and get good exercise consistently 4 days a week.  I don’t mean going for a shitty little walk, I mean proper cardio and weight bearing exercise.  Cut the weight off while strengthening your muscles and cardiovascular system.  Eighteen months is a good amount of time to do it safely and properly.  During that time, honestly acknowledge how it feels in your body.  Completely ignore how it looks as that is not what this challenge is about.  It is strictly about what the effect of proper eating and exercise has on the function and feeling of your body.  Document the journey.  Then, at the end of those 18 months, for the next year, go back to eating whatever you did before and giving up on exercise…do whatever it was within your previous lifestyle that had you in an obese body, packing on a whack load of weight again with cardio stripped away.  Document that honestly too.
 
With 100% confidence I guarantee that the results will find that of the two different body types and lifestyles, the healthier eating and exercising one will feel better.  I know this first hand because during the 25 years of my broken body I have been kinda disgustingly underweight (to the point where I had to walk around with my hands in my pockets just to keep my pants from falling down), grotesquely overweight (as I am right now), as well as ripped in shape.  I have experienced the full spectrum of body type (Irregardless of the pain in my body.), and well condition trumps grotesque underweight or overweight every time with no thought.  There is no comparison.

Having been through all of that, and knowing it first hand, plus having been in shape (or not far from it) for most of my life I know what I am talking about with it.  Packed with that knowledge is also why it drives me so insane on more than a daily basis to be in such poor condition that I’m in.  It’s there in my mind non-stop.  It doesn’t matter what I am doing, if it isn’t on the forefront of my mind, it is lingering around on the back burner poking at my brain.

It is really hard for me to push through that.  It gets harder and harder with the more that my body breaks down.  I’m so worn out, and I sleep so little that it is a struggle to do nothing most of the time, so having to push through that to charge into strengthening a well rounded aspect of my body is tough.  Real, real tough!
 
I’ve always been known for having a real tough mental strength, but although it is there in theory, it can often feel like it is waning which is terrifying to me.  If I lose that I’m fucked.
 
I know that mental capacity is there as I have shown it far too many times when strength is the last thing I felt inside me.  Finding that mental strength doesn’t always have the same recipe though, and at times I feel like I have lost my recipe book and have lost the intuitive nature to create a new recipe from scratch.  That can frustrate the living hell outta me; and that’s when I start really attacking myself mentally for being so weak and shitty in my mind.  It not only terrifies me, but it disgusts me.  I love being strong.  If not in my body, than at least in my mind!  If it’s not there, or it continuously tries to elude me I beat the living shit outta myself in my mind.
 
If all that is not enough, I also have to deal with my mind ripping itself apart over the actual physical sensation of how it feels having these disgusting layers of sludge hanging all over my body.  It is such a living torture every day.  Add to that the unfathomable exhaustion permeating every cell in my body and it’s really hard to put it all together.
 
I am trying though.  In my mind every day I am desperately trying to crack through the wall my self-imposed rut has led me to.  I have been building muscle to where I can feel those changes in my body.  That feels good, and paints a lotta pictures in my mind of the first summer I started working out with Ronnie Perkins when I was 12 years old.  That summer changed everything about who I am.

Starting to strengthen my body has also flooded me with images of working out with my Uncle Charlie in his powerlifting days on his way to winning the world championships.  I’m not sure if he ever realizes the true depth of his impact on my life.  I fuckin’ loved spending that time with him…even when I was a piece of shit little punk-ass teenager

When I moved last year, I bought myself a universal gym.  I had wanted one of those since that summer workin’ out with Ronnie.  The downfall with them was always the limited amount of weight on them, but that isn’t a problem anymore as my physical structure can only sustain so much, so I will never be able to strengthen my muscles to their capacity.  That’s a bummer for sure, but I will take what I can get.
 
Without exception, every time I am working out on it, I think of my old bro from high school, Gary Beynon.  He and I had some good work outs on the universal gear in school.  He was a tough bastard!  Strongest and toughest in our school as he used to be a boxer!  Fuckin’ great guy though!  Even though we haven’t seen each other since forever we’re still really great friends

Gary's greatness was always inevitable!

(We are both die-hard Philadelphia Eagles and had all our dreams come true in the Super Bowl this year!  Yaaaaaaaaaaay!  Eagles!  Eagles!  Eagles!)

I also have a few people on my mind on pretty much a daily basis who are from around here, but who I barely know at all…Kaila, Ali and Leo.  They’re pretty well known, so a lotta locals will know who I am talking about.  Ali owns Power by You Crossfit.   (www.powerbyyou.com/)

Leo is a firefighter who trains at her gym.  (They are also engaged)  They are both competitors on top of simply training themselves.  Ali had this amazing video of Leo made last year.  It is bad-ass as all fuck!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-Qix-zwfww&feature=youtu.be&app=desktop

Not too long ago, the community came together in a heartbeat to sponsor Leo to go to a big competition he qualified for.  He's such a good guy, and works real hard, so people jumped all over the sponsorship opportunity for him.

Kaila owns Bambu Hot Yoga Studio and also trains at Ali's gym with the two of them.  (Kaila and Ali are best of friends.)  Her yoga studio is right across the road from my work.  I work nights, so I see her car parked out front all the time when I get off for the day.  You can pretty much set your clock by her discipline.  Earlier in the year I spontaneously wrote this about Kaila.

www.stevearchdekin.com/home/purpose-filled-hope

Bambu Hot Yoga in Nelson, BC  bambuhotyoga.com/

Kaila and Ali are freakin' animals when you see one sense of the way they are.  No matter the time of year, how nice or shitty it is out, you see Kaila's car parked in front of her studio somewhere around 5:00am...even in the deep dark side of winter all covered in ice and snow.  Then you look online and Ali's postin' stuff for her business and returning messages at like 4:00 - 4:30am.  It's totally amazing.  Forget the crack of dawn...these two kick the crack of dawn's ass all up over the place!

Two seriously bad-ass people!

Kaila, Ali and Leo are all pretty serious into being bad-ass and living a really wholesome lifestyle.  The three of them, maybe they do realize it, maybe they don’t, but they do leave an inspired impression in their wake.  They’re all really freakin’ nice and just go for it!  What’s not to dig about that?!  I like people like that.  I didn't mean for them to be on my mind, they just inadvertently carved their way in there from being awesome.
 
In my past I have been told too many times I have inspired people.  I don’t always think I deserve that, but regardless, even those who inspire need to be inspired, and I like that I casually 1% know these people, and that they are around town.  It’s good to have that kind of thing at the doorstep of ones mind when trying to push through a barrier.

As I am writing this I just caught a whiff of my wetsuits hanging in my closet.  Ooooh that disgusting smell of neoprene rubber that I both hate and love so much!  I can’t stand the smell, but I love what it represents.  It often makes me think of a triathlon I was doing in Florida 10 years ago at Disney World.  Before the race began, when it was still dark in the early morning, when I was in line to go to the bathroom the guy in front of me turned and said with a smile on his face, “Aaaaahhh…nothing like the smell of neoprene and port-a-shitters before a race!”  If you’re a triathlon person you will understand what that means.
 
(By the way…at that Disney triathlon, there was a petting zoo between the water portion of the course and the transition area.  Haha…That was a first!)

So, even though it is covered in fat, I have been building muscle in my body, but aside from casual time on a recumbent bike trainer in my home, I have not really been hitting cardio.  

**On a side note...it is a really strange feeling having tightened and toned muscles that are buried in fat.  It is a truly perplexing feeling.

I have tried to ride my bike, but the tough thing I found is that I have a big bulging hernia that hurts pretty badly.  When I did get out on my bike for a chintzy flat 4km ride, my hernia went rock hard and was sticking really far out.  It hurt really badly.  The pain I can take, but I don’t want it to rupture ‘cause that’ll be trouble, so I kinda don’t know what to do for my cardio right now.  I am trying to figure it out.  I have figured out how to weave through the pain and my hernia to do some weight training, but the cardio aspect is a different animal, an equation I have yet to figure out.  I am a persistent one though, so I will figure it out.
 
I am also getting back into intermittent fasting and casual consistent cleansing just to give my digestive system a break.  Straight fasting is not something that is good for the make-up of my body.  I have discussed that pretty thoroughly with numerous healers many years ago, but intermittent fasting seems ok.  Cleansing is more suited to my body needs, and I have been well versed in that for sure.

 A couple weeks ago I looked on the Triathlon BC website for the first time in 6 years.  It was a spontaneous thing that I kinda found myself surprised that I was poking around there.  There are a bunch of the same races, and also some new ones.  I kinda have the itch to do that again, but the state of my body is so rough, and it has broken down so badly with a lot more permanent damage since I last raced that I don’t know what is realistic and what is not.
 
For now, all I really wanna do is cut this fuckin’ sludge off my body and be able to get this hernia cut outta me in the fall time with enough time to heal before I have to start shoveling snow…or else I will have to wait til spring for that.

Cracking the cardio code for my shitty body, and busting through all mental barriers pulling me down with such crushing weight is my real top priority, but maaaaan is that shit ever tough when I have the level of exhaustion flowing through me that I do.

How I walk around...living in a world between awake and asleep.

Last month I kept track of my sleeping hours during one of my work weeks.  My entire duration of sleep over that week totaled 7½ hours.  I get so tired that I feel like I am gonna throw up, so it does make it real tough to have that as the starting point to then push through paint throughout my whole body with a crazy hernia on top of it all.  I guess this is just another one of those times where I can try and see what I’m made of to see how it all plays out.