History of the Weights, Part the Second

I moved away from home and stopped lifting weights. It wasn't a decision or anything. It's not like I said, "Ooo, I have my own apartment and my own car and no parents around and by golly the first thing I'm gonna do with my new freedom is not lift weights!" Of course not. It was more like, "Ooo, I have my own apartment and my own car and no parents around so hooboy I'm gonna stay up til dawn with the stereo cranked up eating Puff Corn and Zebra Cakes naked on the couch!" (Junk food was verboten under my parents' roof, so I kinda went off the deep end with the crappy food as soon as I had my own roof.)

I was also going to school full-time, and I had a part-time job at Retail Bookwhore (not it's real name) in the mall. I had never been much of a breakfast eater, or much of a scheduled eater, period. So there were plenty of days that I woke up, had coffee, went to classes, went home and did homework, went to work . . . and didn't eat at all until my break at work, or after work. And by then I was ravenous, shaky and twitchy and fuzzy around the edges. I'd either get something in the food court (Cafe Sbarro or mall Chinese served by Vietnamese kids) or pick up a BK Fish at Burger King on the way home.

Needless to say, I gained weight.

No idea exactly how much, but I eventually wound up as a Lane Bryant size 18/20 and stayed there for the next few years. Hazarding a guess, I was around 240 lbs.

In two years I was done with college and my part-time job at Retail Bookwhore became my full-time job and sole means of supporting myself. I was, in a word, po'. So when my 13 year-old Honda POS finally gave up the ghost in the fall of 1998, I had to walk everywhere. Work was 2 miles away from my apartment. The grocery store was 2 miles away from my apartment, and also 2 miles away from work. (Think an isosceles triangle with home, work, and the store at the points.) Every day that I worked, I had to walk at least 4 miles. A lot of days, I had to go to the grocery store before heading home, so I walked 6 miles. And some days, I walked to and from work, then once home realized that I needed something from the grocery store, for a total of 8 miles walked. For the month of December, I got a seasonal job at the Retail Musicwhore in the mall, and if there was more than 2 hours between quittin' time at Bookwhore and clock-in time at Musicwhore (which was always), I would go home . . . so I walked to and from work twice the whole month.

Big surprise: I lost weight. Fast.

I also started eating better, and on a regular basis. I needed fuel for my daily treks, and stuck with fruits, whole grains, veggies, lean proteins. I was hungry all the time. By Christmastime, I was 198 lbs again. After Christmas, I started counting calories and doing aerobics (yes, in addition to all the walking) and I invested some of my Wal-Mart gift money in dumbbells. Not a lot of dumbbells. Because the Wal-Mart was 3 miles away from my apartment, and everything I bought had to be carried home in my backpack. I started off with two 10 lbs hex-head dumbbells, which meant that I walked 3 miles humping a 20 lbs load on my back. Two days later, I bought a 15 lbs dumbbell. Then a 20 lbs-er, finally a 25 lbs-er. For a total of 5 whole dumbbells, only two of which were matched.

My lifting knowledge was still limited to what SanDeE had taught me (I did not yet have access to teh internets), though now I was hampered by the lack of machines and the ability to train both sides of my body at once. I started light, with the 10 lbs-ers, and I did curls, military presses, tricep extentions, flys, and pullovers. That was it. That was all I knew to do. And though it had been years since I'd slung iron, those 10 lbs-ers very quickly became way too light. So then I did my curls one arm at a time, my presses one arm at a time, flys one arm . . . you get the idea. I didn't work on my legs, because I didn't know any leg-targeting lifts I could do with freeweights; also, I figured the 4-8 miles of daily walking was conditioning my legs just fine, thank you.

I'm pretty sure my lifting was utterly ineffective in those days. I strove for weight progression; I was always mindful of doing more reps, so once I could military press 15 lbs for 15 reps with no trouble, I switched to 20 lbs. And so forth. But I still didn't know much. I actually picked the weights back up, not only because I always enjoyed the act of lifting, but because I was disappointed by the floppy flabby loose-skin-y-ness of my thinner arms and thought, "I know! I'll just lift weights and fill my arms out back to their former proportions with muscle!"

My daily schedule went like this: wake up, eat, walk to work, work an 8 hour shift and eat something during my break, walk to the grocery store, walk home carrying groceries on my back, eat, do aerobics, eat, lift weights, eat, sleep. (How did I manage to have a life while doing all of that? you ask. I didn't. No friends. No nothin'. I had a job and an exercise regimen. That's it. I was pretty content.) Did I mention that I was counting calories? Oh, was I counting them. I ate somewhere between 1200 and 1500 calories a day. Keep in mind I'm 5'8" and a large mammal, and I was exercising 2-4 hours a day. I was always hungry. And I kept losing at a very fast rate. I know now that I was probably losing a great deal of muscle along with the fat, despite my efforts at strength conditioning. Aside from my ameturish lifting regimen (if you can even call it that), I was simply not eating enough to maintain - much less grow - muscle mass.

By summer of 1999, I was at my all-time lightest: 157 lbs. And I was so "thin" that everyone I worked with, my family members who came to visit me that summer, all gave me the hairy eyeball and told me that I needed to stop already, and not lose any more weight.

I didn't. Not because I listened to those who loved me and thought I was getting unhealthy looking, but because at long last, I made friends. And we went out a lot. And I started drinking. A lot. And smoking pot. A lot.

In six months, I moved to the opposite end of town and got a new job at Retail Coffeewhore. And I met the love of my life. And stopped exercising 2-4 hours every day. And stopped counting calories.

. . . and over the course of the next 3 years, I gained weight. A lot.

And I didn't pick up the weights again until October 2003.

Part the Third coming up next.