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.
06 April 2007
04 April 2007
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.
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.
03 April 2007
History of the Weights, Part the First
Summer 1994. My friend J and I joined a gym. Not to "lose weight" but to "get strong," to be "fit."
I am 5'8", and have no concrete idea what I weighed at the time, though I would guesstimate somewhere between 210-225 lbs. J was four inches shorter, and I have even less of a clue what she might have weighed. I know that my clothes were too small for her, and her clothes were two sizes too big for me. I don't remember what prompted our decision. I'm not sure it's even important, at this point.
We decided to join Girly Gym (not it's real name), an adjunct of Macho Gym (also not it's real name), a fully-equipped state-of-the-art workout facility designed exclusively for women. We could go down the long hallway that separated the two gyms and workout in Macho Gym, if we so chose (we never did), but the guys could never come into Girly Gym. Not that they'd want to. The carpet and matting was all pink, the Nautilus machines were pink, and there were of course little pink dumbbells. (There were real dumbbells too . . . though no barbells, now that I'm thinking about it.) As much as the puke-tastic pinkness of Girly Gym bothered J and I, we tacitly agreed that it was worth putting up with to not suffer the snickers and ridicule of being "the fat girls" working out in front of the high school jocks and gang-bangers in Macho Gym. (We assumed that the guys in Macho Gym were jocks and gang-bangers, and we assumed they would make fun of us; since neither of us actually went in there, I don't know that for sure. But I bet we were right.)
We had a single new member orientation session with a personal trainer, let's call her SanDeE*. SanDeE* took J and I through the Nautilus circuit, showing us how to properly use every machine, figuring out the weight we should start with on each. SanDeE* consistantly underestimated our strength. On every machine we'd have to tell her, "Uh yeah, this is way too light." Over and over again. SanDeE* just couldn't believe two fat girls who'd never before seen the inside of a gym could be so strong! Not that she said that. What she said was, "Wow, you guys are strong . . ." with a look that we both interpreted to mean ". . . for a couple of fat cows."
After the circuit, SanDeE* showed us some very basic dumbbell lifts - lateral flys, tricep extentions, curls, incline presses - none of which we needed little pink dumbbells for. Then she pointed at the cardio equipment (treadmills, bikes, Stairmasters.) She suggested we warm up for at least five minutes before lifting, and that if we were going to lift and do cardio on the same day, the lifting should always come first, never second. We were encouraged to do 2 or 3 sets of 10-12 reps; we were encouraged to increase the weight whenever we could do 15 reps easily. She suggested that we workout 3 times a week, focusing on a different muscle group each visit; chest and back one day, legs the next, shoulders and arms the next. And so forth. And that was it. SanDeE* turned us loose.
(I don't recall another staff member ever speaking to either of us again. Not that we wanted them to. I'm sure if we had questions or something, we certainly could have asked. I also don't really remember any other fat women working out there.)
For a while, J and I went to Girly Gym together 2 or 3 times a week. Then she stopped going as often. After a while, she stopped going altogether. I kept it up though. I liked the exercise, I liked sweating and the endorphin rush, I loved lifting the weights, feeling my muscles work, feeling strong and sore and active and alive. I loved pressing almost the entire stack (150 lbs, if I remember correctly) on the delt press machine and having the woman working the circuit behind me go, "Whoa," with a mixture of awe and envy.
Okay, so maybe I imagined the envy part. But it still felt pretty darn cool.
I didn't have any set "routine," I wasn't rigidly following any sort of "program." I didn't like the bicep and tricep Nautilus machines, and the only dumbbell manuevers I knew to target those muscles were plain ole curls and overhead extentions. I didn't really like the leg curl and calf raise machines either, but SanDeE* hadn't shown us any leg-targeting lifts with freeweights (which strikes me now as a gross oversight), so I worked my hamstrings and calves on the machines half-heartedly. Knowing what I know now, I would characterize the lifting I did back then as ameturish. My enthusiasm was high, and I was a stickler for proper form, but I really didn't know much of anything beyond the very basics. I didn't know that I could lift differently for hypertrophy, for strength, for endurance. I had no idea what a drop set or a pyramid or a superset was, I didn't know about periodization or volume. I didn't keep a log.
I didn't change the way I ate, or pay any particular attention to nutrition. I think I made sure to eat before going to the gym, and I was always hungry after. But I was not counting or watching or rationing or portioning anything. I lost some weight anyways, of course. Not a lot. I remember getting on the scale at some point the following spring and seeing 198 lbs. I stepped on again a few weeks later. Still 198 lbs. I figured that was my "normalized" weight, the place my body just naturally wanted to be. And it was okay. I was reasonably fit, and I felt good, so who cared what the scale said?
Summer 1995, I transferred to a four year college and moved 2000 miles away from my entire family and all my friends. I didn't pick up a dumbbell again for 3 and a half years.
Part the Second to follow.
I am 5'8", and have no concrete idea what I weighed at the time, though I would guesstimate somewhere between 210-225 lbs. J was four inches shorter, and I have even less of a clue what she might have weighed. I know that my clothes were too small for her, and her clothes were two sizes too big for me. I don't remember what prompted our decision. I'm not sure it's even important, at this point.
We decided to join Girly Gym (not it's real name), an adjunct of Macho Gym (also not it's real name), a fully-equipped state-of-the-art workout facility designed exclusively for women. We could go down the long hallway that separated the two gyms and workout in Macho Gym, if we so chose (we never did), but the guys could never come into Girly Gym. Not that they'd want to. The carpet and matting was all pink, the Nautilus machines were pink, and there were of course little pink dumbbells. (There were real dumbbells too . . . though no barbells, now that I'm thinking about it.) As much as the puke-tastic pinkness of Girly Gym bothered J and I, we tacitly agreed that it was worth putting up with to not suffer the snickers and ridicule of being "the fat girls" working out in front of the high school jocks and gang-bangers in Macho Gym. (We assumed that the guys in Macho Gym were jocks and gang-bangers, and we assumed they would make fun of us; since neither of us actually went in there, I don't know that for sure. But I bet we were right.)
We had a single new member orientation session with a personal trainer, let's call her SanDeE*. SanDeE* took J and I through the Nautilus circuit, showing us how to properly use every machine, figuring out the weight we should start with on each. SanDeE* consistantly underestimated our strength. On every machine we'd have to tell her, "Uh yeah, this is way too light." Over and over again. SanDeE* just couldn't believe two fat girls who'd never before seen the inside of a gym could be so strong! Not that she said that. What she said was, "Wow, you guys are strong . . ." with a look that we both interpreted to mean ". . . for a couple of fat cows."
After the circuit, SanDeE* showed us some very basic dumbbell lifts - lateral flys, tricep extentions, curls, incline presses - none of which we needed little pink dumbbells for. Then she pointed at the cardio equipment (treadmills, bikes, Stairmasters.) She suggested we warm up for at least five minutes before lifting, and that if we were going to lift and do cardio on the same day, the lifting should always come first, never second. We were encouraged to do 2 or 3 sets of 10-12 reps; we were encouraged to increase the weight whenever we could do 15 reps easily. She suggested that we workout 3 times a week, focusing on a different muscle group each visit; chest and back one day, legs the next, shoulders and arms the next. And so forth. And that was it. SanDeE* turned us loose.
(I don't recall another staff member ever speaking to either of us again. Not that we wanted them to. I'm sure if we had questions or something, we certainly could have asked. I also don't really remember any other fat women working out there.)
For a while, J and I went to Girly Gym together 2 or 3 times a week. Then she stopped going as often. After a while, she stopped going altogether. I kept it up though. I liked the exercise, I liked sweating and the endorphin rush, I loved lifting the weights, feeling my muscles work, feeling strong and sore and active and alive. I loved pressing almost the entire stack (150 lbs, if I remember correctly) on the delt press machine and having the woman working the circuit behind me go, "Whoa," with a mixture of awe and envy.
Okay, so maybe I imagined the envy part. But it still felt pretty darn cool.
I didn't have any set "routine," I wasn't rigidly following any sort of "program." I didn't like the bicep and tricep Nautilus machines, and the only dumbbell manuevers I knew to target those muscles were plain ole curls and overhead extentions. I didn't really like the leg curl and calf raise machines either, but SanDeE* hadn't shown us any leg-targeting lifts with freeweights (which strikes me now as a gross oversight), so I worked my hamstrings and calves on the machines half-heartedly. Knowing what I know now, I would characterize the lifting I did back then as ameturish. My enthusiasm was high, and I was a stickler for proper form, but I really didn't know much of anything beyond the very basics. I didn't know that I could lift differently for hypertrophy, for strength, for endurance. I had no idea what a drop set or a pyramid or a superset was, I didn't know about periodization or volume. I didn't keep a log.
I didn't change the way I ate, or pay any particular attention to nutrition. I think I made sure to eat before going to the gym, and I was always hungry after. But I was not counting or watching or rationing or portioning anything. I lost some weight anyways, of course. Not a lot. I remember getting on the scale at some point the following spring and seeing 198 lbs. I stepped on again a few weeks later. Still 198 lbs. I figured that was my "normalized" weight, the place my body just naturally wanted to be. And it was okay. I was reasonably fit, and I felt good, so who cared what the scale said?
Summer 1995, I transferred to a four year college and moved 2000 miles away from my entire family and all my friends. I didn't pick up a dumbbell again for 3 and a half years.
Part the Second to follow.
02 April 2007
Frist Psot
I weighed 211 lbs this morning.
Nine months ago, I weighed 275 lbs.
I have no "secrets," no "magic," no latest greatest Oprah-endorsed wisdom to share with anyone. I know what works for me, and I know what I like. I'll be talking about some of that in the future; not to mention the obligatory "what it has meant for me to be female and fat most of my life" on occasion, when the mood strikes me.
This should prove interesting.
Nine months ago, I weighed 275 lbs.
I have no "secrets," no "magic," no latest greatest Oprah-endorsed wisdom to share with anyone. I know what works for me, and I know what I like. I'll be talking about some of that in the future; not to mention the obligatory "what it has meant for me to be female and fat most of my life" on occasion, when the mood strikes me.
This should prove interesting.
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