"Wake up, wake up, wake up it's the 1st of the month..."
I know... it's not the 1st of the month anymore, and this blog is getting off to a slower start than my emotional momentum should allow.
Let me just say, I'm glad I come from the generation that produced Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Seems like they might have been the first hip-hop/rap group that was socially acceptable for white folks to listen to. Maybe it was just their Cleveland roots. Yes, Cleveland. Not L.A. or NYC or Philly. Cleveland. The city that "rocks", not raps. By metropolitan standards, it's gotta be one of the whitest out there. I mean, we're talking about the home of Drew Carey and Dennis Kucinich... a town whose baseball team unabashedly sports a beaming minority for a mascot, as if said minority were privileged to serve as the caricature for his race.
"Bone" wasn't trying to sugarcoat anything... they were as "gangsta" as anyone else on the block. It wasn't like they were rapping about the PTA at the local elementary school or the minutes at the latest meeting of the homeowners' association. But there was something about their delivery... maybe their vocal harmonies were something folks were familiar with, even if they hadn't been exposed to much rap. Whatever the case, Bone was the first rap group I can remember some of my white friends embracing.
"Isn't this a blog about weight loss? Why is this guy writing about gangster rap? I don't know if this is even appropriate..."
Stay with me. This pays off, I promise.
Someone reading my blog has probably made a resolution concerning the recently departed "1st of the month", and chances are, by now they've already broken it. This self-same person may or may not have sat out two days of workouts and pretty much neglected to count calories, opting instead to go for Chinese at 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday night.
Are you smellin' what I'm dishin' up?
I mentioned in my last post a couple of days ago about an obstacle involving work and food. Please, allow me to explain.
In my evening hours, about four days out of the week, I'm working part-time at a fine-dining restaurant. Now, the constant barrage of culinary sights and smells assailing me in such an environment might seem like too much for someone with my intentions to withstand. And I'm not going to lie and say I haven't been led astray by the occasional untouched portion. But that's not the obstacle to which I was referring.
This particular restaurant serves a meal to its employees at the beginning of every shift. We're not eating from the menu - keep in mind - but it's usually adequate fare picked up at the local grocery store and prepared by a professional chef. Sometimes it's on the cheap side (frozen corn dogs, Kraft Mac-n-cheese, etc.), and sometimes we're really eating gourmet. Just depends on whatever they have the time and the budget to prepare. The food is served promptly at about 4:30 p.m. and lasts until it's gone.
Whatever the meal consists of, there's a huge decision to be made here - one that involves more than just an spontaneous choice of whether to eat or not to eat.
This meal has to be planned into my daily routine. If I try to exclude it, then I wind up eating a supper between 3-4 p.m., being on my feet for 6-7 hours, and coming home and going to bed on a really hungry stomach. In order to rely on the provisions as my supper, however, I have to strike a delicate balance with respect to the other meals in the day, making sure that I'm hungry by 4 o'clock, but not waiting too long in the morning to eat breakfast and throwing my metabolism out of whack.
Today, I had a muffin - a small one - around 9:30 a.m., along with two cups of coffee with creamer. That was what should very well be considered a late breakfast, albeit a small one. It held me off pretty well until lunch, when I went to Olive Garden.
Ordinarily, a trip to Olive Garden would spell doom for any mortal resolution. But I'm still pretty charged up about this transcendental mission I'm on, and I'm not backing down that easily. I ate my way through three or four bowls of the best salad known to humankind, and sufficiently stuffed with greens, I nibbled at a bowl of soup.
At 5:45 p.m., I arrived at work to find that 10 cold, congealed tater tots were all of what was left of the traditional employee meal. Apparently, it was burger night, and the early bird gets the worm, so they say. Not one to go to bed hungry, after work I found myself inevitably drawn toward my seductive archenemy: Chinese food.
I wanted to go back and recap Thursday, which was really supposed to be the start of this huge undertaking to lose 30 pounds in 17+ weeks. It actually turned out to be a great day. Three boiled eggs for breakfast, a 350-calorie microwave tamale for lunch (don't judge), and a sensible prosciutto, salami, and swiss sandwich with lettuce, tomato, mayo and dijon mustard, provided by the good folks at the restaurant for supper. Just before work, after leaving my internship for the day, I managed to slip over to the gym for an intense, 20-minute session on the rowing machine, burning over 200 calories.
It might have been something I did at work, but more likely it was the intensity of my workout, that tweaked the back of my shoulder on Thursday. Whatever it was, I felt horrible yesterday morning - and not too hot this morning, either.
The pain in my shoulder, together with looming deadlines at school, and other responsibilities, kept me out of the gym for the past couple of days.
Ok, stop laughing. No, seriously. Stop. Now. I know it sounds like I'm regressing back to my former, pre-blog self. Just one excuse after another. But I'm not. I've learned something here.
This is what I'm learning: Just like it was with "Bone" - it's all about harmony. We need harmony among every aspect of our lives. Not just eating and working. I'm talking about meeting our obligations, but pursuing our dreams at the same time. I'm talking about cleaning the house or finishing that homework, but still getting in that recreational activity, whether it's an intense workout or just a little downtime in front of the tube. I'm talking about finding time, making time. Being a little more intentional.
We all have responsibilities that keep us from doing what we'd rather be doing. But these things can be controlled, to some extent. These things don't have to be our excuses for not being a better, more balanced person. I can't control the things that life deals me, like throwing my shoulder out, for instance. But I can most certainly control one thing, and that's what happens next. How do I react? Do I make sure my calories for the next few days reflect the lack of physical activity? Do I take advantage of the downtime to get ahead on my studies?
A modern management theory by Jim Collins deals with the flywheel and the doom loop, and I think this theory extends from the corporate world to 90% of people who have tried to lose weight - or take on any large task, for that matter... from running a billion-dollar corporation to managing a family. Basically, what it says is that in order to change where you're headed, there's a huge amount of momentum that needs to be redirected, and the so-called "quick fix" is only a diversion from the real work in front of you. That is, there need to be tangible, intentional differences in how you do things, and these little changes need to work together toward the ultimate end of changing that momentum.
This blog is my first attempt at a tangible change. Next comes putting various activities into proper alignment - creating harmony. Tomorrow is Sunday. That means football... err, homework.
I have three days off before I work again. Should be enough time to 1) get that list of "most important" things out of the way, 2) recover from the shoulder problem, and 3) figure out the eating situation.
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