Ache never felt so good...

Today, I am feeling like I haven't felt in ages: my muscles ache.

After a couple of weeks of prolonged sickness, yesterday was my first PT session in quite a while. It was tough. I had to sit out the last exercise as I was light-headed and feeling a bit sick.

And today I ache in those places you can only ache after some fairly serious weights work. My legs hurt going downstairs from the squats and deadlifts. My shoulders hurt right where the muscles go into the neck - only achievable with strength exercise.

And it feels strangely good.

New target

I've thought about having a realistic target to aim for before, and have struggled to determine what the appropriate weight goal is for me.

With Wimbledon on at the moment, it occurred to me that tennis players, while often on the more wiry side of normal to where I aspire (not because that's a bad thing, just because it doesn't feel attainable for me), provide some pretty good examples of the kind of physique I want.

Maria Sharapova was my first thought...but then she usually is when I think about tennis. She's the right height too. Nice physique, something plenty of men and not a few women admire...

But then I checked the Wimbledon site statistics on players and decided her weight just can't be my goal. She is a girl after all! And so completely unattainable in so many ways :-)

A small amount of research then brought Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to my attention. He is the heaviest guy in the draw (of those high enough ranked or seeded to count in my research...) that is exactly my height.

91kg is the new target.

Thanks Jo-Wilfried....for Wimbledon 2012 I will be there where you are.

Committed to being fat?

Had a good discussion with Mrs Moose about internal commitments. Seems I have an internal commitment to staying overweight.

It could be that this recognition is the starting point to actually doing something about it, as my brain starts to cogitate this thought, and as I become more conscious of my actions when over-eating or making bad food choices, new pathways get created in my brain and a new internal commitment becomes stronger and more recent, and drowns out the old, out-of-date one.

We shall see...

The curse of a good day

I had a good day yesterday.

I ate well. I ate protein and vegetables, mostly. I ate when I was hungry. I didn't overeat at any point during the day. I resisted the urge of boredom during commercial breaks in my TV schedule to go and raid the fridge for more food. No alcohol, no cakes, no biscuits, no treats.

I exercised. I exercised well. 20 mins on the bike, 20 mins on the treadmill. A good stretch. Steam room and sauna.

I blogged.

This morning, I feel what I often feel after a good day. I feel progress. I feel a little bit slimmer. I feel a little bit more toned. I feel a little bit more in control. I feel a little bit happier with myself.

Boom! And there strikes the curse of a good day.

I feel a little bit happier with myself...it struck me this morning that my fundamental problem is I'm not angry enough with myself about being overweight. I'm carrying at least 20kg too much and yet it doesn't make me mad as hell. I have one (yes ONE) good day, and I feel a little bit happier with myself. That means a little bit less angry with myself. I can't afford to be less angry with myself. I can't afford to feel even a little happier with myself. I am teetering on the brink, I am at the tipping point. The fulcrum is directly under me. The slightest movement towards the happy, away from the angry, tips the balance into complacency.

As I write I feel hungry. I had a good breakfast of pepper and mushroom omelette at 8am. There is no reason to be hungry now at shortly before 11am. And yet the complacency, the lack of anger, tempts me to reach for some food.

The alternative is not particularly enticing though. What do I do? Have a bad day instead, to avoid the curse of a good day?

The curse of a bad day is even worse...

Feel the fear...bullsh@t

Fear. Why does it all seem to come back to fear. I had forgotten about my last but one post back in March when I read a Seth Godin blog yesterday.

He opines that if you are stuck on something, one of four things is getting in the way.

1. You don't know what to do.

2. You don't know how to do it.

3. You don't have the resources to do what you know and know how to do.

4. You're afraid.

When it comes to my weight loss there is no doubt I'm stuck. I'm also in no doubt about 1 to 3 on the list.

So it comes back to fear. I must still be fearful. So my mind turned again to what I might be afraid of, and a number of candidates popped their heads up to say hello and clamour for attention.

Maybe I'm afraid of the hard work involved in doing what I know is necessary over along enough time period to make it work.

Maybe I'm afraid of not having excuses. "I'm not a very fast runner because of my weight..." somehow feels more forgiving than "I'm not a very fast runner." And "I'm not attractive to women because I'm overweight" is a good deal easier to swallow than "I'm not attractive to women."

Maybe I'm afraid of not being me any more. I have been overweight for ever, and maybe deep down it's just such a part of my own self-image I'm afraid to let it go.

Maybe I'm afraid of the unknown. I've been overweight for ever, so I don't know what it's like not to be. Maybe I won't like it when I get there.

I need some more soul searching to decide what's really going on here. Maybe all of the above are a little bit true, however absurd they seem now I've written them down. It would be all too easy to reject all of them as stupid and not applicable. But I've already ruled out items 1 to 3, 4 is all I'm left with.

This is where the "feel the fear and do it anyway" mentality leaves me a bit cold. Easy to say. When it's the fear that is stopping you from doing it anyway, what then?

So I guess dealing with the fear is all that's left between me and success. Let me know if you have any bright ideas...