Like her ugly step-sister Discouragement, our fair lady Encouragement is an intermittent guest. Tonight was yet another “I’m not feeling this at all…” night, but I finally got my ass out there and ran.

I felt like I wasn’t doing as well as I had done in previous nights. I kept slowing my pace to a walk, gasping for breath, and then picking up again.

Then I realized something; my pants were falling down. Literally: falling down. I had to stop to pull them up on several occasions. I don’t wear a belt with these pants because I don’t need to. They stay up on their own. But not tonight. (on a side note, please don’t ask why I wore jeans to run tonight; it is a laundry logistics issue.)

Encouraged, I kept up my pace, even stopping many times to pull my pants up. I started picturing myself 30 days from now, at the Expo Icrontic (a huge gathering of friends from all over the place, many of whom I’ve not seen in a year) and having people notice that I was thinner. I got lost in this line of thought for a moment but I kept running. I realized that getting my mind off of how much it sucks and hurts actually helped me forget so that I could keep going. My mantra of “oh god. this sucks. oh god. this sucks” faded away into a reverie of imagined friends saying “holy shit, Brian; you’ve lost weight”

The best part is this: These are not my fat jeans. Everybody has a pair of fat jeans. You know the ones; the biggest pair of pants you ever bought. Your fat jeans.

My fat jeans are big on me now. They are impossible to wear without a belt.

To top off my encouraging moment, when I got home I still felt that my pace wasn’t good and that this was not my best run. I sent my results to BuddyRunner and sat down to write this blog entry. I checked my status, and saw that in every metric, this run was better than my last. Longer and higher paced; my final bit of encouragement before I go to bed.

I get them far less often than I used to, which leads me to believe that overall fitness and diet have a lot to do with them, but today’s was a reminder that I’m not out of the woods yet.

It was bad. Very bad. It kept me from doing a lot of things that I was very, very excited about today. I was going to do some online shoe shopping for a sexy lady friend, I was going to set up my new phone today, I was going to shoot a video on how to make my famous pickled eggs, I was going to till some soil and plant some tomato plants, I was going to teach my ex-wife how to make chicken makhani, I was going to shoot some photos for a video project for an upcoming trade show, I was going to play a game online with my friends that I’ve been eagerly anticipating, and I was going to improve on yesterday’s jogging.

The only thing on that entire list that I accomplished was setting up my phone; and honestly, I didn’t even really have the energy for that. The only thing that forced me into it was that I basically had to, or I wouldn’t have a phone today, and I need my phone.

This was supposed to have been a big productive day, and it was all shot down by a headache.

I opened my day with two high protein meals; a can of tuna with some spices for breakfast, and some cottage cheese for lunch. When my head hurts like this, I lose my appetite as well, so that was really all I ate until I forced myself to make and eat tacos for late dinner. The tacos, while not necessarily really bad diet-wise, probably contained something that my body was craving. I think maybe a lack of sugar has something to do with it, but I could be barking up the wrong tree.

The may also be caffeine related. I’m not a huge coffee drinker lately, but I haven’t had coffee in 3-4 days, so perhaps this is a withdrawal symptom.

I don’t know. I did jog tonight, but it was not as good as yesterday’s. I wasn’t feeling it, so I didn’t push the issue. I jogged a half a mile, and that’s that. I’m content with having bad days sprinkled in with the good.

I was excited to get an application called BuddyRunner today, thanks to a recommendation from my friend Bobby. This is actually exactly what I’ve been dreaming of: it uses GPS to track where I’m at, calculate how fast I’m moving, and how long it took me to get there. Therefore, I can track my jogging progress with great precision, effortlessly. It uploads my results to a central dashboard when I finish so that I can track progress over time. This is an amazing convergence of technology that is seriously going to help me, except for one minor problem: it stopped tracking in the middle of the run because I think my butt turned off the tracker. Therefore, if you look at today’s jog, there’s a huge gap in there. I promise you I didn’t teleport.

I know tomorrow will be better; how can it not be? I won’t have a headache again, and I’ll try to catch up on at least some of the things I missed today.

I’m not sure what the deal was today; I ate sushi for lunch, an octopus, some miso soup, and had a bunch of green tea. For a pre-workout thing I made a protein shake with an apple and a celery stick and some whey protein powder. Whatever it was, I went to the gym today and just… fucking crushed everything I did. It was easily the best workout I’ve ever had. I was sweating, heaving, hoo-rahing, and doing every manly thing you can imagine. I got out of there and then went grocery shopping for a bunch of stuff that I need in order to eat better. There is a distinct lack of fresh food in our diet here at home, and this has to change. Almost everything we buy is bagged, canned, boxed, or frozen. It’s not good.

I had a talk with an old friend of mine. She is actually one of my big influences because she has lost a lot of weight as an adult, and as a result looks better now at 30 than she ever did (and I’ve known her since she was 15!). She competes in triathlons, and runs competitively. We had a neat talk today about the psychology behind running; the tricks we use to motivate ourselves to go that extra step, that extra ten steps, that extra 1/4 mile. She was scaring me a bit when she said things like “it never gets easier,” and “it’s incredibly difficult,” and “god it hurts.”

There’s always going to be difficulty involved with this process. Going to the gym wasn’t easy, running tonight was certainly not easy, but the results that come from it are worth it. I don’t mean the physical results, either.

In reality, I don’t look much different than I did two months ago. However, I feel dramatically different. The single biggest change that has come over my state of mind is the simple fact that I am actually accomplishing something that I previously felt was nearly insurmountable. I know I repeat myself on this matter, but actual tangible changes are happening in my life because of these ‘intangible’ changes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about why I’m doing this, what motivated me, what snapped, what changed. I’d like to figure it out since it may help me with other things in my life.

I realized that part of why this has been working and why I’ve been able to stick with it is because I broke it down into very tiny chunks. Before, weight loss efforts had failed because I tried doing everything all at once: I’d completely change my diet, go to the gym, and try to change my entire lifestyle. This time was different. I started slow: I’m just going to walk. That’s it. I’m going to walk a block. I’m going to walk a half mile. I’m going to walk a mile. I’m walking 6 miles.

Then I started making tiny changes to my diet. I started with the water. I drank more water. Then I drank a lot more water. Then I started eating breakfast every day. Then I started being conscious of what I ate for the rest of the day. Then I started using Fitday. Then I asked my friends about what to eat before workouts, and it just keeps going.

That’s why I’m starting to jog. As of tonight, I decided that walking has plateaued for me. Crazy 4-6 miles walks just don’t wear me out anymore, they don’t push me, and I don’t feel like I’m losing weight right now. I’ve been extremely discouraged lately, because I don’t feel or look any different. I need to shake things up again.

I got out there in the freezing-ass cold and started extremely slow, like I started my walks over a month ago. I didn’t set any goals, I just decided to run as far as I could, rest, and then try again.

It was exactly like when I started walked: It hurts, it was incredibly difficult, and I was gasping like a beached whale. I made it about half of a block (1/8th mile), then slowed down to a fast walk, but didn’t stop. When I got to the end of the block, I started running for another 1/8th, then walked, then another 1/8th, and so on. All told, I went only 1/2 mile, but I’d say I jogged half of that, which is more than I thought I’d be able to do. So, 1/4 mile jogs until I can do 1/2. 1/2 until I can do a mile, and so on.

Hell, at the rate I’ve been going, maybe I’ll be blogging a month from now that jogging 4 miles just isn’t doing it for me anymore. I never thought I’d be able to say that 4 mile walks don’t wear me out. It still boggles my mind.

Hilarious non-related aside:

As I huffed and puffed back into my driveway, I heard a noise, and looked up to see a GREAT DANE barreling towards me from the direction of my back yard. I actually yelped; it was the most frightened I’ve been in a long time. The dog whined and ran by me and kept going down the street.

I tell ya, a dog as tall as your shoulders, running at you full speed is the LAST thing I expect to see at 3:30 in the morning in my driveway. I nearly pissed myself. I probably frightened him as much as he frightened me though. Stupid strays.

My friend Reggie’s brother died. Instead of mourning tonight, Reggie (who is the lead singer of a band) celebrated by doing what he loves; singing, entertaining, moving people, making people happy. He was surrounded by people who were laughing, drinking, dancing, and loving life. It was a fitting tribute.

After the show, we talked; he asked me how I’d been. I told him about my changes and my quest to get fit. He is overweight as well and asked me detailed questions about what I was doing, how I faced down temptations, and what motivated me.

I had already decided that I was walking home from the bar we were at. It is 4 miles away from my house and I figured I’d use that as my walk. Trust me when I say it was the absolute last thing on my mind tonight, walking 4 miles in the freezing cold, in my dress shoes, after a night of drinking.

So I told Reggie that it wasn’t so much motivation as it was forcing myself into situations in which I must get it done. It’s brute force of will. I said, “I sent my ride home without me. Now I have to walk.” (of course, he then offered me a ride, which believe me, I was tempted to take!)

It’s not mystical, spiritual, or poetic. It’s just “I’m walking home tonight.” That’s it.

As I was walking, I kept revisiting my conversation with Reggie, because his questions and statements brought back my struggles, and made me think about my motivation and how this all started. I realized something crucial tonight: I used to think that one of the primary reasons I decided to do this was because I finally hated myself—and what I had become—enough to do something about it, but actually the truth is that I became sick and tired of hating myself too much.

I wish the weight would come off faster. It seems to be going so slowly, and it’s getting discouraging. Every day I feel good about my overall performance, diet and exercise-wise. Today I ate a lot, and had a few beers, but I offset that with a lot of heavy yard work (shoveling gravel and muck, and filling bags with heavy debris) and then the four mile walk.

Whatever. I’m not stopping. It’ll come off.

I can’t quite figure out why, but I definitely operate better at night. I prefer the cold. I prefer quiet. I prefer darkness. A clear, moonlit night is what wakes me up. If I could live my life in reverse, I think I would do a lot better. If I could cut my lawn or do my laundry or go shopping or do any of the other things normal people are supposed to do, only at 3am, I would be much more functional.

I’m not sure how much I hold with astrology, but according to it, I am ruled by the moon. This makes sense to me because I am much more comfortable with the moon than with the sun. I digress.

I’ve been thinking about these things a lot lately, because I am still suffering from depression, but it is almost always during daylight hours, mostly in the early afternoon. Every day I wake up at 7:30am, and get my kids off to school. I usually go back to bed and set my alarm for 11 am or so. Every day I wake up at 11, and realize that while I could get up and be functional for the day, I’d much rather just lie there. I don’t even necessarily sleep. Sometimes I lie in bed for hours. I finally tear myself out of bed around 2pm and start my day. Even though I work from home, this is dysfunctional to my coworkers and disrupts their day, and people have come to not rely on my being present at important times.

I’m on a path to correct all of the problems in my life, and this is one that I’m working on; Depression has been a part of my life for a very long time now, but the Buddhist teachings have been a great help in that regard.

I spoke with a very educated friend tonight who is entering her master’s program for clinical psychology and she told me about cognitive behavioral therapy, and I was bemused to realize that CBT is extremely similar to the Buddha’s teachings. The concept that you step back and be mindful that you are not the feelings you’re feeling; the awareness of thoughts and moods as they occur; the concept that the present moment is the only important one.

If modern medical science and ancient eastern philosophy agree almost 100% on something, well then there has to be something to it.

Realizing that I’m depressed, when I’m depressed is a gigantic first step that I took a while back. Hell, that might have even been what started this whole thing. The problem has always been acting on that realization. When I lay there and make that choice, what am I doing? Why do I choose to lay back down instead of facing the day, the sunlight, the responsibilities? I understand that I will be unhappy with the choice later on, and I will be disappointed with myself when I finally get out of bed at 2pm and realize that much of my day has been wasted, yet I persist. What is with this self-destructive behavior?

I suppose it’s just a matter of buckling down and practicing—I should take my own advice. I can observe plainly by looking in the mirror that persistent, repetitive practice creates results. My weight loss and fitness improvement are visceral examples of that. Now I just need to do the same thing with mindfulness.

When I’m motivated, I can move mountains and make galaxies tremble. Sometimes I surprise myself at how much potential I have inside of me. The thing I’m missing is the trigger to that motivation. I still need to understand myself and I still need to be able to harness that power at will. I feel like an untrained sorcerer sometimes.

I’m going to keep on walking, every night. I don’t know that it’s going to keep the weight coming off as it has been; I sense that a plateau approaches. Walking 3 miles doesn’t wind me anymore. It’s not a struggle. On the one hand, I’m ecstatic, because that is a spectacular achievement for me. On the other, it’s kind of scary. The next step in this journey involves increasing my efforts at the gym, improving my diet more, and fixing my motivation and depression issues.

But fuck it, I’ve just conquered a huge, gigantic, major challenge in my life. What are a few more?

See you tomorrow.

I was not looking forward to this one; I let my diet slip this weekend, didn’t get much sleep last night, woke up early to take my mom out to breakfast, ate something horrendous at breakfast that made me sick, gassy, and bloaty for the rest of the day, then topped it all off with bloody marys. I had a feeling tonight would be a tough walk.

However, it wasn’t bad at all. I could definitely tell that I wasn’t in peak form, but I slogged through all 2.5 miles of it. I truly think my leg pain is over. This was as bad as it gets, diet/sleep/weekend wise, and I still walked 2.5 miles with no problems other than it being cold as hell outside (STILL). Sundays used to be my bad days, remember?

I went a new way tonight and got a little lost and turned around. If you look at the map, I meant to go left on the street called Wexford and end up going down Frazho. As soon as I go off the grid (read: Onto curvy streets) I get mixed up. I ended up making a big circle. 

At one point, a skunk started following me. YES, FOLLOWING ME. Most of the time the skunks skitter and take off at the slightest hint of human, but not this guy. My pied piper must be in full force tonight; or it was all the gas I had that was making him curious. Not sure how to chase him off, I just picked up my pace a bit and he eventually left me alone.

I’m starting to think of maybe weighing in, but at the same time I don’t want to. I just don’t like expectations, I guess. Tomorrow I’m going to the gym, so I should be nice and sore for my walk tomorrow night.

Boy this is turning into a stodgy and boring blog. What happen to the sexy times? The fetishes? The kink?

I promise they’re up here (I am tapping my head), they’ll come out to play soon. I’m just not feeling it tonight between the fatigue, the cold, and the stomach ache. 

See you clowns tomorrow.

I took my kids with me tonight; after all my tales of seeing skunks, they wanted to see if they could catch a glimpse of one. We walked three miles and didn’t run into any. We had a nice walk, though. We got to see a train go by, and did the “Penny on the tracks” bit. We saw rabbits (of course), and a few curious cats. Not bad for a suburban safari.

We stopped in the Field of The Moonlight Warriors to take a rest, sat down on the grass, and cuddled up to talk and look at the moon.

These are the moments that I am reminded that a short time ago, I wouldn’t dream of taking a three mile walk with my kids. Now, I’m waiting for them to catch up. My son told me tonight “Dad, you’re a lot thinner. Good job.” 

We may not have found skunks; but I did find something else: A sense of accomplishment. I’m doing this, and I’m beginning to realize that it’s working.