And the sweat is starting to pour.

I knew these days would come; the days of enjoying the crisp cool nights, where even though I was vigorously working out I kept cool because of the weather were destined to end. I knew that the humid Michigan summer would kick my ass.

I was right; it’s starting to get hot, it’s starting to get humid, and it’s just going to get worse.

I did a lot of yardwork the last couple of days. Yesterday I mowed down a hill in my back yard with a roto-tiller. Doing this is like going to the gym and having a major upper body workout. You are constantly fighting the heavy machine as it tears its way through roots, hard soil, and rocks. Your job is to keep it level and keep it moving. This involves a lot of pulling, pushing, grunting, and in my case, sweating.

Today I finished my final phase of transporting and deploying 31 bags of lava rocks for the tree box in front of my house. I have planted Lantana, a couple of petunias, some sage bushes, and a basil plant. I repotted a Ficus that inherited from my grandmother years ago. Things are starting to shape up.

I didn’t bike the last couple of days. Tonight I got back to it, and I knew it would be rough from my weekend with lots of alcohol and my breaking of routine these last couple of days. I did make sure to stay hydrated throughout the day, and accordingly, I seriously picked up my water consumption. That, and the sweaty yardwork I did today were probably the only things that saved my ass from collapsing on my bike ride. My pace sucked, it was the worst ever, and each pedal was a struggle, especially for the last mile. I also really need to do some maintenance on my bike; it sounds like a damned jalopy. It squeaks and moans all over the place.

Bleh. Anyways, I got it done. 3 miles, dripping sweat, hot, miserable, and painful. Sounds familiar? It sounds like when I started my walking blogs, doesn’t it?

More yardwork, and another bike ride tomorrow. See you then.

It may be the incredibly mild and beautiful Michigan spring, it may be the fire in my belly from my LA trip, it may be a bunch of things, but the end result is that I have been working like a fiend lately. I’ve gotten so much work done for Icrontic (my day job) lately; the kind that makes you look at the clock and see that it’s 1am and you realize you’ve been essentially working for 12 hours straight without getting tired. I think they call this “in the zone”.

So yes, I’m in the zone. I didn’t have the same rah-rah go-getter attitude that I did last night when I got on the bike tonight, and I started off dragging ass for the first few minutes, but by mile 1 my pace was back on par with last night’s great ride.

If I could just channel this determination into my diet, things would be unstoppable. I could make excuses about lack of healthy food in the house, and the “bare essentials” grocery shopping that got done today, which was mostly bread, ramen, and boxed food, but that would just be … making excuses. I mean, it’s not like I’m completely off the wagon, but I could definitely do better. I am still eating way, way better than I did before but then my roommate goes and does shit like… make fresh chocolate chip cookies and buy delicious loaves of fresh baked sourdough bread. And I hate him. And I love him.

I still get that thing where I look in the mirror and don’t see any difference. It’s like I’m losing my weight in strange places in my body, like my arms and thighs. My belly, my neck, and other places where I’d really like to see a difference are still looking the same. It’s discouraging. Don’t get me wrong, 20 lbs (probably more by now) is still 20 lbs. I am still able to fit into pants that I haven’t been able to fit into for years. I am still down two pant sizes. It just doesn’t look like it. At least not to me.

When I get like this, I go back and read my first few days of blogs, and I remember just how fucked I truly was. I could not walk to the end of my block. It still boggles my mind just how out of shape I was.

A year from now, I’ll look back and think the same thing about this very moment.

Literally.

While I wouldn’t consider my last week spent in Los Angeles to be a “week off” exercise-wise, it certainly wasn’t a dedicated, focused effort either. I spent the week covering the E3 conference in LA and our hotel happened to be 1.25 miles away from the convention center; I’ll estimate that we walked at least five miles every day between hotel trips, meetings at other locations, and general floorwalking in the gigantic LA Convention Center.

At any rate, before the trip I got sick with a cold; I had it the entire trip, and I still have it. I was kind of out of sorts between the change of atmosphere and routine, the sickness, the timezone changes, and the crappy air in LA. I got back late Friday night and I’ve had trouble getting back to EST and reality.

I knew that my biking adventure would be an either/or proposition tonight; it was either going to be stellar, or it was going to be shit. I rolled the dice and left.

Luckily I had good music with me. It rained all evening here in Detroit, so the humidity was exceptionally high. I started sweating almost immediately in the thick and heavy air. Still, I am in awe of how fresh and clean everything smells here compared to Los Angeles. Michigan air has the warm and seductive scent of flowers, trees, and leaves. The rich scents of late spring are thick in the air.

I cranked my music and took off. Normally my biking goes like this: pedal pedal pedal driifffffftttt pedal pedal pedal drifffffttttt. Tonight it was constant pedaling with no drifting. I set a firm pace and stuck with it. I went 3.5 miles and kept up the pace. If you’ve been keeping up with me on BuddyRunner you’ll see what I mean–my pace this evening was the most even it’s ever been, and it was the best I’ve ever done.

When I got home, I was dripping, but extremely satisfied with how things went. I needed this to clear my head and get out of this funk.

It’s good to be home.

Okay, I’ll admit it; no exercise tonight: I am sick as hell and I NEED TO GET BETTER BEFORE I GO TO LA FOR FIVE DAYS.

That said, I will still blog.

I had a wonderful conversation tonight with a musician friend. His name is Reggie Smith. He was the lead singer for an up-and-coming Detroit-based band called “Bloom” several years ago, and I was a fan. My wife and I would go to see as many of their shows as we could, as they were one of those bands that you just had a sense about—you know, one of those bands that was just… too good to be playing in this or that crappy bar. They were meant for bigger things.

Things happened, and they broke up. Same with me; things happened, my wife and I broke up. Time passed.

A few years back, as a newly single guy, I saw Reggie again at a local brewery that I started to hang out at. He was now fronting a band called The Afterparty. Again, Reggie stole the show and really knew how to work the crowd. I became a fan all over again.

Over the years, I became friends with Reggie, and we started talking alot. Reggie didn’t know that I was a musician. Recently, I had let on that it would be an honor to jam with him.

Tonight I flat out told him; we need to play together. I’ve got funk in my soul, music that is dying to come out of my fingers, and he is going to help me with this. We had a grand talk, full of ideas, inspiration, and downright badassery. Tonight the foundation was laid for another reawakening in my life; that of the music that died inside of me way back when.

It’s in there. I have been a bass player for 16 years—secretly, clandestinely, privately. I don’t mean to brag, but I have reached that skill level that allows me to express myself adequately through my talent, and it needs to come out. I’ve got music in my soul, and it wants to sing.

So tonight, the path opened up to me, and I’m going to jump on it. So I have begun meditative exercise, so I have begun physical exercise, so I have begun dietary exercise, and so I shall begin creative and artistic exercise as well. The music that lives inside of me shall be free.

I remember a time not so long ago when I made choices for the better; I would go out and decide I was going to do a certain distance, or turn at a certain corner, and then when I got to that point, I decided that instead of taking the easy path I would continue to push myself and go farther, faster, or higher.

That’s where I was tonight; I have a cold (RIGHT before I go on a weeklong trip to LA. Fantastic), and I wasn’t feeling like exercising. Still, I got out there and got on my bike and started up with a one or maybe two mile trip in mind.

When I got to the halfway point, I decided to just say fuck it, and keep going. I ended up going 3 miles, which is my normal distance.

I kind of lost sight of the fact that I was just preaching a month or two ago to make better choices on a moment-to-moment basis. I remember now; I need to make better choices every moment.

My roommate said that willpower was like a muscle, you just need to keep exercising it and it gets stronger, but damn if it doesn’t take a long time to notice a difference. I think that’s where I’m at right now; discouraged by my lack of willpower over the last couple of days, I’m in danger of falling into a rut of going back to my old lifestyle, except I still exercise every night, and I’m still thinking about my food choices, and I’m still drinking far more water than I ever did. I swear, it’s like I got all excited about losing 20 pounds and then boom—my motivation plummeted.

I’ll shake myself out of it; I know that I’ll return from LA invigorated and full of new ideas. Perhaps that will carry over into my personal life as well and I’ll come back motivated to continue my fitness quest.

Day four of being “off”, but I’m sick of talking about it. I decided to jog tonight instead of bike; mix things up a bit.

I jog/walked a mile. I was drenched when I got home, so I know I at least got a good workout. I mean, foodwise, today was better than yesterday, but it was still not ideal. I didn’t eat nearly enough. I really have to remember to eat. I just forget and then I look up and realize I haven’t eaten anything all day, and instantly I’m starving. I also have to seriously cut back on my carb intake, even though one of my meals was almost all protein (tuna), so I’m getting back on track with that. Also: not nearly enough water.

Anyways, I am heartened to see that people are startin’ to pick up what I’m layin’ down, and use the #thingschanged hashtag on Twitter. That is amazing to me, and I am humbled. Each person who uses it makes sure to let me know privately that I’ve inspired them and to ask if they could start using the hashtag. This is something that I never, ever, ever would have seen myself doing. Inspiring other people to exercise? That’s not me.

Three years of my life were spent seething in self-loathing, rage, and madness. I want to erase those by surrounding myself with love, spreading lovingkindness, and with people who are like minded. I find, more and more, that negativity actually kind of repels me; and this is a huge change from just recently when I sought out negative people to commiserate and brood with.

As I continue on this path, I find that the positive people that I should be around are starting to ‘come out of the woodwork’. Actually, scratch that: it is I who have come out of the woodwork, back into the world of normal people who care.

The last couple of days have been really off for me, diet and exercise wise. I ate embarassingly bad today, but as a friend told me; just note it and move on. That’s what I plan on doing; I recognize the fact that I made poor food choices today, I see what the effect of that will be (in this case, a horrible bike ride), I have noted that, and I am moving on. I am fully aware and not in any denial about it, which is still far better than I used to be able to deal with these transgressions.

After a time, one begins to realize how badly in denial they were about things in the past. I used to eat like this every day, but yet I always said my diet wasn’t that bad. It was; I was in denial. How many other situations in my life was I in denial about? How many are any of us?

Does knowing it make it better? Do I remain here, squelching around in new and different forms of denial that I do not recognize yet? Perhaps. I probably do.

I don’t really understand the psychology behind denial. It seems counter-intuitive to self-preservation, yet we use it for this very reason every day. If prey were to be in denial about the predator bearing down on them, they would be eaten. Why should it be any different for us?

I have a long and bitter history with denial; one that spans generations, and more recently as a factor in the breakdown of my marriage.

As you know, my journey these last couple of months has been one to confront denial in the physical aspects of my life. I am facing up to my failures and striving to be more honest with myself. Did I eat poorly? Yes. Did I make a bad choice? Yes.

The difference now is that I am still moving forward.

I just can’t think of anything to say tonight; I wasn’t feeling it. I walked almost 2 miles today with my kids and then took a 2.5 mile bike ride tonight. It wasn’t pretty, but the job got done. You can see results at Buddyrunner if you’re interested.

I’m starting to wonder what I’ll do for exercise when I’m in LA for the E3 convention next week; I mean, I’ll be walking a ton during the convention, so I’ll be exercising, but I’m not sure if I’m going to do anything beyond the 3-4 miles I’ll probably walk during the day while covering the show. Knowing how these things go, there will probably be afterparties and drinking involved every night. I don’t foresee a dedicated walk/jog at 3am in Los Angeles after a long crazy day. I’ll try my best. I doubt our 2 star hotel has a gym, either.

Meh. Not feeling it tonight, sorry folks.

I tried not to, but my willpower proved weak; I saw a scale at my parent’s house and I stepped on it.

Imagine my surprise: I have lost 20 pounds since April 3rd. That’s less than two months. Something is definitely working.

Putting that number into my fitness tracker was a very grand moment for me.

Anyways, that’s the only thing that motivated me and pushed me out the door this evening; I absolutely, vehemently, and completely did not want to take a 3 mile ride tonight. I ate a bit much today, I had a beer, it was a holiday, and I just didn’t feel up to it.

Then I remembered; every single night, no matter how badly I’ve avoided it, I’ve gone out and exercised. That, and that alone, is how I lost 20lbs in 2 months. By consistent and strenuous effort.

People have been asking me today: How did you do it? What method did you use? What diet are you on? What program?

This is my method: I hate exercising, I hate the pain, I hate the way it feels, I hate how much time it takes, I hate almost everything about it. I don’t care, though; I HAVE to do this. I have no choice, I have to get out there and just get it done. Everything else stems from that. Once I realize that I have busted my ass, physically, to get results, everything else falls into place. It helps me avoid the cookies, or the donut, or the bacon with my eggs. I say “Man, if I eat these cookies, it will have made my workout worthless.” and I suffered for that workout. Is it worth a cookie? No.

Not only did I finally drag my ass out the door tonight and get on that bike, I beat yesterday’s ride by 30 seconds/mile (pace) and went almost a quarter mile further. I did that in 10 seconds less than yesterday. Even small progress is progress, no?

Things are heating up. There is a definite zero-day by which I want to look my best, and it is fast approaching. For me, zero day is the last week in June. That gives me about a month to drop as much weight as possible, keep up my discipline, and keep pushing my workout routine.

I haven’t disappointed myself too much lately; I’ve been excelling at the exercise, doing relatively well on the diet, and been trying to squeeze in extra workouts when I can. Today I did some heavy shoveling-type of yardwork, and did a 3 mile bike ride; every day I am doing some kind of workout that makes me look back and say “Wow, I kicked ass. No regrets.”

I’ve been displaying an uncharacteristic discipline in avoiding eating like a fat kid as well. There are cookies in the house; haven’t touched them. There is cherry coke; haven’t gone near it. For the most part I’ve been sticking to the proper ratio of carbs/protein/fat. It’s beginning to pay off for real; at this point there is a definite noticeable weight loss and I can see it in many different ways.

The weight will definitely come off; I started to see that tonight as I got into a rhythm; there comes a point when you stop and look at what you’re doing, and you realize just how much you’ve changed. I reached that point tonight. I am actually working out. I am actually losing weight. I’m becoming more focused, more disciplined, and more determined to reach my goal; at this point, it’s just cake. Even if I just kept pace with what I’m doing right now I’d still be doing really well; however, I think it’s just going to get better and better as the weeks go on.

Shenanigans are afoot. I aim to be ready for them.