May 5th, 2012: I felt a little sorry for myself in retrospect today when I looked at those before photos from yesterday. What’s funny is how I sometimes thought I looked ok back then when I was 300+. You know, fooling yourself is good sometimes, but man, that’s pushing it. I remember sometimes long before January 2nd, 2012; or even before April 4th, 2009 – I’d be drunk as fuck at the Sandpiper and be in the bathroom taking my 80th piss since 7 o’clock, and I’d see myself in the mirror and flex a little bit, and be like “damn I ain’t so bad…” Jeeeezzuss.
Today is finally beautiful in southeast Idaho, and maybe even the wind will stay down. It’s a good day for the medium-length jog on my training schedule for the half-marathon in July.
I sincerely hope that anybody out there just starting realizes how quickly the overall time for this journey goes. My only realistic goal by this time in the program was to lose 30 lbs., but now I feel like a half-marathon will only be a starting point for me.
Every time I have negative thoughts, I’m trying to will myself to stop whatever I’m doing (I mean, if I am walking, I will stop walking, if I am driving, I might even pull over to the side of the road, etc.), and generate a conscious thought of where I was, where I am, and where I want to go. I say to myself, “Is that candy bar really worth it, really? What means more to me, what has a better aftertaste: winning or a cheeseburger?” If it’s winning, I think I can make it, if ever I feel it’s the cheeseburger, well, I don’t even want to go there . . .
May 5th, 2020: A boxer who steps into the ring without a level of confidence where he knows without a doubt that he will be victorious, even if the opponent is King-fucking-Kong, is in big trouble. Whenever I have questioned my abilities, and indeed even what in the hell I was doing there, at just the wrong times, I almost always received an ass-whooping. The boxing ring isn’t the only place where moments of doubt and hesitation have immediately put me in deep water. There are just certain situations that you gotta get in there and start swinging with everything you’ve got, to hell with what happens in the end.
At certain times, even if you recognize that everyone else thinks you’re going to fail spectacularly, and indeed the numbers predict it, you have to rise above all of that and just believe. It’s like this: I certainly don’t want to die, but guess what? I have no fucking choice, it’s gonna happen at some point. However, what’s worse than dying is being terrified of it. What I have to be scared of is being scared. Facts may be scary, but I have to try to “confidence” my way through them. To lose or to die or to fail cannot even be a valid term in this polynomial.
The numbers predict that you’re gonna lose this battle no matter what weight-loss program you decide to try. To fail is the rule, to succeed is the exception. Unless you believe you are 10-feet tall and bullet proof, you will not make it. I guess you do have to push it. You just have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror no matter what stage of change you’re in and say “damn, I ain’t so bad…” And then when you can walk past the mirror and still believe it, you’re the exception and I will predict that you’ll be triumphant.
