Background (5/15): Imbalanced, Unfocused, Plateaued

Since the moment I’d decided to make a change, improving my fitness had become the centerpiece and focus of my life. Still, I didn’t take the next step of sacrificing in other parts of my life to embrace that change. For the next nine months or so, I fell into an odd pattern of attempting to balance my social life, work, and the gym. When I had nothing going on, I’d try to get to the gym as often as possible – four, five, six times weekly, and go all out as best I could. Simultaneously, for the first time, well, ever, I began having a more active social and dating life. When I was dating someone, or trying to meet up with friends more frequently, or started getting to know a new group of people which was happily occurring much more frequently, I’d devote a good amount of time to getting together. That would totally rock my sleep schedule and leave me beat – no time to work out, so fitness went right out the window. I just didn’t think about it for some time. That created a situation where I willingly plateaued my progress for weeks or months at a time. In those first eight months of mindfulness, I probably only consistently kept to the gym for more than two weeks at once maybe five or six times. I can’t really say what would bring me back to the fitness fold every time. Sometimes it was a slowing of the action with nothing else to do, but also at times a resurgence of significant pain, or the realization that I hadn’t lost any weight in three months. When I thought about it, I acted on it.

The scale readouts gradually descended, as did my expectations for what was an acceptable weight. For months, maybe five or six until summer, I hovered around 230-235 pounds, which, compared to 255, wasn’t too bad! It made a significant social and physical impact, so I accepted it for that time. Then, I kicked the gym up again and got down to 225, which lasted for quite the long time, probably another four months, until the autumn. Progress felt slow – maybe 30 pounds in eight months – but it was progress all the same.

I also didn’t do much about my diet during these months, besides eat less. Since I’d been warned off of eating far too little and this accidentally killing myself through starvation, I made sure to eat what I considered enough. I still ate a lot of crap. I sometimes took into consideration my doctor’s recommendation to eat at the same places – but just eat better! Or, what I perceived to be better, meaning really only less fried foods and fewer grains. I still hit up all the fast food joints frequently but did my best, when I thought about it. It helped that I had dated Mary, a woman who was working on improving fitness and heightening weight-loss, and had come incomparably further in her progress than I had. And although I hit one of those plateaus while with her during the summer – and probably unwittingly derailed her diet once or twice by insisting we eat terrible foods and insanely delicious Mexican churros and Italian ice in her neighborhood – she gave me some ideas about how to eat better and maximize my activity. Further, it seems she planted the idea deep in my mind that I would be able to take up running at some point, which would, apparently, prove rather important.