June 6th, 2012: We boarded a return flight from Disney World on June 6th, 2006, 06/06/06, 666. I heard people in the airport and on the plane talking about that date and the number. My family just laughed, we don’t get scared over that kind of crap. How could anybody be scared of anything when you think of the U.S. military storming the beaches in Normandy, France on this day? It would almost seem shameful to be scared because of superstition and a silly number.
On the way to Florida, we had to land in Denver. As we were coming on left base for the runway, that 737 was bucking like an NFR bronc. You could hear people praying and shit, and then there’s Sam, sitting next to me whooping and hollering about how fun this was, and how he hoped the rides at Disney were this exciting. The lady across the aisle from us had a rosary out and was praying over it.
Big stuff doesn’t happen enough to be scary. Little stuff, like debt, bills, strep throat, car problems, the scale going up – now those are scary. And so it was with the scale this morning, as my hopes to cross into the decade of the 250’s have to be put back on ice. My fears of gaining came true, to the tune of a 2 lb. increase. Dammit. 262 today.
It’s incredibly hard not to make some kind of change to my diet. Maybe I’m not eating enough. Hahahaha – you better not have thought I was serious with that last sentence. But I don’t think I’m going to cut more calories. This is when I have to look back at my weight graph and realize that the program IS WORKING. I’m not going to increase exercise or decrease calories. What I’m going to do is take another helping of patience.
June 6th, 2020: You do not knee jerk. You look back at where you’ve come from and you force yourself to recognize that the program is working. The only way I would ever entirely shift train tracks is if I gained weight every day for 10 days – that’s my program measuring stick. However, if you know your resting metabolic rate, and you’re eating and exercising based on that, then, unless you’re a plant, the 10 day gain scenario isn’t going to happen. If it does happen, before you make any changes, minor or major, make sure you’re accurately measuring every calorie in, and every calorie out – this has sabotaged many dieters who’ve come before us.
There’s the nuts and bolts stuff. Now to the mental, emotional, etc. You’ll encounter a certain demon from time to time on the program. It’s the one that makes you ask why, or what’s the purpose…
I’ve written before about how these questions, or these times, are merely tests – tests of your will. Not only are they a test of your will at this point, though, they’re also a test of your strategy. I believe that if you find yourself in any kind of fair fight, you need to adjust your tactics and look for some good ways to get over and/or around barriers, rather than always smashing through them. In the beginning, I believe you have to smash; you have to learn to be tough; you have to prove to yourself that when all else fails, you could rely on willpower; you could prevail when all is equal and it’s mano a mano.
But doing this over and over again is going to get exhausting. I learned that I’m just not rugged enough to be in a scrap every single day. To get bloodied and beaten and scratched began to tear at my walls of resistance. I learned to start thinking a little more – to, as they say, work smarter, not harder.
My style as a younger boxer was to get in there and smash – kill or be killed. I played football the same way, and I almost think it was more out of a sense of fear than of trying to be a bad-ass. I graduated to a different level of thinking in both boxing and dieting, where, although I may not be as entertaining to watch as I once was, I’ve found a lot more success. It’s only metaphorical with boxing now, as I don’t compete anymore, but let me give you an idea of how it applies to the program, specifically with regard to planning.
Part of planning for smarter work is knowing your opponent and his weaknesses. On the program, this opponent is you. I learned to play this weird offense-defense thing with myself, and that required observation and record-keeping. I’m not talking about counting calories and keeping track of reps, though, I’m talking about moods and about behaviors based on those moods. The kind of attitude you have toward something at any given moment is so complex that I can’t even begin to understand all the possible minutiae that stimulates a release of some combination of hormones and/or neurotransmitters, but I’m beginning to have an understanding of how to be an end-user.
Hate to say it, but it really boils down to these damn hormones and neurotransmitters, so I learned to monitor my moods, which are a product of these chemicals, which fluctuate across the hour, the day, week, and the month. This is step one of behavior change in the program. To know this enemy, I had to know when he’s going to weaken – so I tracked the times when I’ve binged, or when I’ve had to fight the hardest not to binge. Then I would play offense against myself, and deploy some weapons specifically for those times, at those times.
