History of the Weights, Part the Third

My job at Retail Coffeewhore had its pros and cons. On the plus side, I was the assistant manager and made a pretty decent wage (for a McJob) in addition to an average of $50 in tips everyday. I dearly loved my co-workers and my manager, and counted them all as friends. On the downside, our cafe was located on the campus of a very large, very rich, very famous private University who's academic renown was matched only by its rep as a party school, so our customers were largely spoiled rich children with substance abuse problems and professors who were unaware of anything outside the realm of their ivory towers. And we were always busy. From the time I opened the doors at 7 am, until well after I'd gone home at 3 or 4 pm, there was a line out the door. Always. Sometimes the line would shorten to just inside the cafe doors, but there were always customers.

Work was a mile and a half away, and I walked, leaving the house at 5:30 to get there at 6 am. Usually around 11 am I'd take my half hour break and scarf down a bagel with cream cheese, or a muffin of some kind, and that would be the first thing I'd eaten all day. Then I would go back on the serving line til 2, which was my scheduled clock-out time, but I had at least an hours worth of managerial work to do before I could leave, so I never made it home before 3:30 pm. Once home, I would shower (I stank of coffee and sour milk) and order delivery (usually pizza or bar food: burgers, fries, nachos, wings, salads loaded with bacon and cheese) and then smoke pot til my food arrived. I was exhausted and starving and had the munchies, so I'd scarf down very bad-for-me food and then smoke more pot and fall asleep.

I did this for two years.

My last six months at Coffeewhore I was so stressed out and miserable that the only thing getting me through the day was the knowledge that I could go home and get stoned when it was all over. I was tired all the time, I was cranky all the time, I hated all the customers, and I was getting fatter and fatter. I'd lie in bed every night before falling asleep considering my expanding girth and think, this is getting so outta hand and I gotta stop it, but I didn't know how and so I'd wake up the next morning and do it all again.

By late spring of 2002 I got to the point where I just couldn't take it anymore. The love of my life agreed that he could support the both of us while I took some time off and figured out what I wanted to do next. After a blissful month away from the daily drudgery of work, I started working on my first novel.

It took me a year to finish. My writing schedule was a lot like my Coffeewhore schedule: I would wake up and drink coffee and write, not stopping until afternoon when I was so hungry I was dizzy and muzzy-headed, and I would scarf down some bad-for-me food (frozen burritos and tater tots were a favorite) then do whatever housework needed to be done, then read or watch movies and eat some more bad food. I stopped smoking pot, not because I stopped liking pot, but because I didn't "need" it anymore. And, not having a job meant I could no longer really afford my previous ounce-a-month habit. I was still doing the starve-and-binge thing I'd done while at Coffeewhore, but I no longer had the 10-hours-on-my-feet-running-around-with-my-hair-on-fire thing to burn calories. I became utterly sedentary.

I gained more weight.

Again, couldn't tell ya exactly what I weighed, or even what size I was, since by then I was getting all my clothes at the thrift store and I simply looked for things that were ambiguously "large." If pressed, I would guess that I was around 270-290 lbs. This seems to be my personal "maximum density" limit, a weight/size where I feel distinctly uncomfortable and fat and dissatisfied with my dimensions. I've never been so fat that I couldn't fit into car seats or airline seats, I've never needed a seatbelt extender, I've never been unable to find clothes that fit even in the fat lady clothing stores, I've never been too fat to exercise. But the high-200s is where I feel too fat to remain so fat, a weight where even the most flattering/disguising clothes make me "look" fat, where I feel morbidly self-conscious about my body in front of others.

None of this bothered me overmuch while I was in the thick of my writing; I had more pressing and all-consuming things on my mind. But by fall of 2003, when I had a polished-up second draft and a host of query letters in the mail to various agents and nothing much else to do with my time, it hit me: Oh god I am sooooo fat!

So I started lifting again. I bought some adjustable dumbbells (and eventually a barbell) and a mess of plates, and since I had access to teh internets by then, I was able to learn a lot from sites like ExRx about what to do, how to do it, and perhaps most importantly why I should do it that way. I learned that to build strength I should lift heavy weights at low reps; I learned that to build mass I should do drop sets and/or pyramids, and rest for 2-4 minutes between sets. I very adamantly was not counting calories; I had counted calories to the point of obsession back in the day, and didn't want to have to do that again. Instead I cleaned up my diet (fruits, veggies, lean proteins, whole grains) and ate whenever I was hungry. Which, because I was lifting heavy and often (4-5 days a week), was pretty much all the time.

My goal, like the time I joined Girly Gym with my friend J, was to get "fit," not necessarily get "skinny." I had gotten "skinny" in '98-'99, and while I was certainly successful at getting "skinny," I also had nothing else going on in my life beyond the journey towards "skinny," and I loathed to return to that mental state of constant counting (how much did i burn how much did i eat should i workout again i'm hungry but i've already eaten x-amount of calories today but i'm hungry but i'm at my limit well maybe i'll workout again), so I didn't. I created my own program, my own schedule of lifts that I liked, and I lifted heavy at low reps, doing drop sets and pyramids, with long rests between sets. I started keeping a log. It was very "classic bodybuilder." I did biceps and triceps one day, legs the next. Then I rested. Then I did back and chest, then shoulders, then rest. Then I'd do biceps and triceps again. It was an aggressive 2:1/5-day split. Did I mention that I was hungry all the time? My single (albeit nominal) concession to "cardio" was 1 hour of walking outdoors 2 or 3 times a week. That was it. I didn't do any real cardiovascular activity.

I lost some weight. Maybe 40-ish lbs. I also actually gained some muscle this time around, since I was lifting and eating in a manner conducive to muscle gain. I have no empirical numbers to bestow, but I remember that the sleeves and shoulders of certain shirts got very tight, while the waistbands of my pants were getting looser and looser. I "stalled" somewhere probably in the 240's, but again, it was okay because I felt good, I felt healthy and strong and fit.

I maintained my weight and my lifting regimen until late August of 2005, when Hurricane Katrina entered the Gulf (I'm from New Orleans.) The love of my life and I evacuated to Texas, and life as we knew it effectively ceased to be.

I stopped lifting and eating clean. I gained weight. I didn't start slinging iron again until summer 2006.

Part the Fourth, or What I'm Doing Now, to follow.