“One time isn’t going to kill you.”-another friend, who knows I have been slipping but still wants me to indulge with her.

“Two beers? That’s lame.”-a friend, who knows I’ve been calorie counting and who wanted to go out to drink the day before also.

“You don’t need to lose any weight, you’re obsessing over nothing.”-a friend, telling me this when I am at my heaviest.

“You know you really shouldn’t be working out that much.”-a friend, after telling him I acheived a near 7 minute mile on the treadmill.

“You better not be starving yourself, or throwing up or something.”-my Father, back during an earlier weight loss attempt where I was actually losing weight.

“It seems like you are acting like you are better than me.”-another friend, after I ordered a salad at Chik-Fil-A instead of my usual standby (Spicy Chicken Sandwich and a Large Fry).

Those are just a few examples of the kind of bullsh*t I’ll deal with on a fairly regularly basis.

To my non-blog friends and family (not all of you, a few of you have been pretty awesome, I will admit), I love you all very much, and you know I’d do anything for you, but WHAT IN THE F*CK IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?

I don’t know why it happens, but it seems like my efforts are being attacked from all sides, and I can’t catch a break.  I’m constantly being made to feel like I’m doing something wrong, or being made to feel guilty or like a tool or like or dumbass or like a bad friend.  And me, being the moron I am sometimes, cave right in to make them happy, even though I know I’m doing myself an injustice.

I’m sick of it. 

These are people who I have known for years and who I’ve always been there for, and if ANY ONE of them wanted help in trying to lose weight or get in shape (which ALL of them claim to want, at one point or another), I would be right there to lend a hand.

I am not trying to cram my own weight loss efforts down their throat, in fact, for all of the reasons above I hardly ever talk about it to anyone anymore.  Nor am I going to (or would want to) stop being friends with them once I get in shape, or act like I am better than them because I’ve done it.  It’s stupid that anyone would even think that.

I don’t know if it’s fear or losing me, because they are jealous, or because they want to feel superior to me.  It needs to stop, but it won’t.  I’ve told several friends before that a little support would be nice, but those requests never came to fruition.  And most of the people in my real life don’t even bother to read the blog, so it seems like they don’t really care to know what is going on anyway.

Sometimes it seems like it would be best if I could just wall myself up in a room until this process was over.

Have you had your weight loss efforts sabotaged by friends and family?  Do you cave under the pressure, or do you stand your ground?  Have you lost friends in the process?

And that’s because I will be spending my Labor Day weekend in Buffalo, NY at the National Buffalo Wing Festival.

Now Steve, you’ve been struggling with your weight loss for a while now, and you’ve gained alot of weight back in the past few months…why in the hell would you go to Buffalo Wing Festival?

Because it sounded like fun, and because I like buffalo wings.  That’s all there is to it, really.

So I’m going to take a few days off from fretting about the scale, and I’m going to chow down.  The hotel has a gym, and a pool (I think) so there will be workouts.  But I’m not going to kid myself and say I’m not going to eat anything, or that I’m going to try to drink alot of water so I’m not hungry.  To be perfectly honest, there will be a lot of wings, and the beer will probably flow freely this weekend. 

If that doesn’t look delicious to you, then you are a communist.

.

I’ll try not to drunk blog/tweet though, because I’m classy.

If I manage to pull off a loss, then I will probably think my scale is broken, but I will accept it.  If I pull off a gain, I will know full well why it happened, and I will just work on losing that too.  I have no more food festivals planned for the rest of the year (although there is possibly a Wine Fest and a Microbrewery Festival in my future), so I think it’ll be okay.

Anyone else have any plans for the long weekend?

When I first started this journey, I really thought I would be Superman by now.

I thought I’d have lost almost all of the weight, built on a lot of muscle, become a superathlete, and so much more…

Early on in this journey, I had caught the running bug, and I set my sights on the Baltimore Marathon in October.  A few months back, thinking I was unstoppable, I had also registered for the Marine Corps Marathon (which I wasn’t going to really speak about until I saw how I did in Baltimore).

Yesterday, I decided to take a shot of reality, and decided that I will not be running any marathons this year.

Basically, I’m not ready.  I have done very little by way of training, I am not where I should be physically/mentally/etc…

I am deferring my Baltimore registration until 2011, and I have downgraded my Marine Corps registration to the 10k.  I wanted to at least run something, and I have a much better opportunity to train for a 10k by the end of October.

I’m disappointed and frustrated in myself.  I let my training and my journey fall to the wayside.  I never went in thinking I’d halfass it, but I don’t think I really grasped how big of a challenge this would be either.

The Marathon will always be there though, and I will run it.  It’s going to take a lot of work, but I will have this.

I will be a Marathoner.

This weekend, I will be over my parents to help celebrate my Stepdad’s and my Sister’s Birthday.

To celebrate that, as well as the end of summer in general, there is going to be a huge party.  There will be a lot of people, alot of liquor (see the poolside bar in the background?)…

…and lots…and lots…of food!

Here is an idea of what typical foodfare my parents parties:

• Burgers
• Hotdogs
• Hot Potato Salad
• Crab Dip
• Seafood Salad
• Homemade Mac and Cheese
• Fried Chicken
• Taco Salad
• Chips and Pretzels
• Cookies
• Cake (It’s a birthday, duh?)
• Whatever else other people decide to bring…

Not exactly a dieter’s paradise, especially a dieter whose MO is to eat anything and everything in sight. Bah!

I think I’ll be okay though, I can’t exactly skip the party (and I wouldn’t want to anyway), but I just have to keep control.  Hopefully since I’ve thrown it all out there on the blog, and since you’ll be expecting to know how it went, that will help with the willpower.

So Happy Birthday John and Katie.  I’m going to celebrate by not getting any fatter.

What are your weekend plans?  Any major temptations coming your way?

I’d be more upset if the scale wasn’t in the 260s just a few days before, so progress is being made on this end. WooT!

But seriously, what the f*ck happened?  I was never doing super great, as the weight loss has been pretty slow going, but an almost 30lb gain?

Seriously, wtf?

Diet:

 This is taken directly from my “The Old Me” page:

“I am a guy who orders a large meal at McDonalds, and a few things off of the dollar menu to boot.
I am a guy who can eat an entire pizza in one sitting, and still want more later…
…same with a bucket of fried chicken.
I am a guy who can eat and entire greasy appetizer at a restaurant, along with the full meal, and a dessert.”

Well, that guy wasn’t so much the Old Me as it was the Still Very Much Exists Me, because I revisited those old habits…hard.  Since I started working from home I had no issue making a quick McDonalds run, or ordering from Domino’s (or Pizza Hut, or Papa Johns, pick your poison).  I have yet to eat a whole bucket of fried chicken, but still…the rest of it is bad enough.  And when I go out it’s been more of the same…appetizer, full entree, dessert (maybe)…stop at the gas station on the way home for a candy bar.

Through all of this I know I was hardly ever hungry…and I wasn’t even “just eating”…I was gorging.  I don’t want to say I didn’t care about losing weight, but I definitely wasn’t thinking a whole lot about it.

Exercise:

To look at my Dailymile training profile is to see a pretty sad sight. 

70 miles ran in April? Awesome!  39 in May?  Eh…not too shabby.

14 in June? Wait…what?!  17 in July?  Yeah, still kind of sucky.

And that doesn’t mean my running gave way to other forms of exercise. No, pretty much everything went into the shitter. 

I’m trying to make up for it now, but the damage is present.  My endurance is shot, my runs are slow, my recent workouts have been all around craptastic.

So what in the hell are you doing to do about it?

Honestly, I’m still trying to figure that out.  A lot of you have said I’ve done it before, so go back to doing that other stuff.  That’s great to an extent, but even my “before” was kind of lackluster.  While my workouts may been good, my diet has really always sucked, just not as bad as it has sucked recently.

Still though, I know what to do.  But “knowing” and “doing” are two completely different things.  I’m on the right track though, I think.  My meals the past few days have been good to moderate, and I think the “trying out raw” has helped with that.  I’m not doing a full raw diet , but what I’ve been eating has been a lot healthier and a lot more filling.  I’m also fighting temptations, drinking a shit-ton of water (and still SOME Diet Coke, full disclosure) and actually looking forward to trying out healthy recipes (which I’ll try to post too).

Exercisically (new word FTW!) speaking, I’m just trying to get back into it.  The Awesome Workout Challenge has helped A LOT, so thanks again for you all who helped out with that.  But other than that, I’m looking forward to going on runs, even if I’m not 100% with my current times.  I haven’t gotten back into any sort of real strength training, but I am getting there.

In conclusion…

So yeah, I rambled, but I think I’ve just about put everything out there.  I’m sure other issues will come up, or will be brought to my attention though, and I’ll be sure to try to put them out there.  I haven’t gained anything from hiding, so I don’t think I would now.

And…that’s it (for now).  Thanks for reading, and have a good day!