Opposite Day

I’m sick and tired of all this weight-loss mumbo-jumbo. I come on here every day and write something silly or pen something sappy, and you come waste your time skimming over whatever hodgepodge gobbledygook I happen to fart out.

So in the spirit of completely phoning a post in, here’s some tips to make sure your next weigh-in doesn’t drop you too, too much…

• You don’t have to workout on days that end in “y”.
• Dog paddling can burn up to 10 calories an hour; dog paddling in water will burn even more.
• Driving by a YMCA earns you three activity points
• That tuna salad could use a little more mayonnaise
• Wearing sweatpants in public isn’t always perceived as a sign of giving up
• Low energy can cramp your style… and nothing provides a quicker energy boost than Twix bars dipped into a can of vanilla frosting.
• Most Mexican restaurants will keep bringing you baskets of chips if you ask.
• Most scales are generally five pounds “off,” so be sure and take that into account before registering your WI numbers
• If you go to one of those fancy gyms with the treadmills with the TV sets built right in and you just stand there and watch the Soap Opera Channel for an hour… hey, that still counts.
• Eat smaller meals throughout the day… roughly every 20 minutes.
• If you have a good weight-loss week, you deserve to blow it out over the weekend.
• If you’re looking for a substitute for butter on your toast in the morning, why not try fudge?
• Staying up all night farting around on the internet is just as good as sleeping eight hours.
• People will tell you that eating too many carbs is bad for you, which is why I encourage you to quit listening to people so much.
• If you wear a wide belt, nobody will notice that you have your pants unbuttoned.
• A glass of half-and-half has a tremendous amount of calcium.
• If nobody sees you eat it, it doesn’t count against you.
• Make it your goal to be more like Jillian; that is, be a total bitch to everyone around you.
• You know what’s a good appetite suppressant? Belgian waffles and syrup! I don’t know why it works, but it does.

I take my Opposite Day responsibilities extremely seriously, so I plan on leaving comments all over the weight-loss blogosphere today and passing on some really horrible advice.

Have a craptastic day and an even worse weekend.

x

100 Things I’d Rather Do Than Gain My Weight Back

1. Lick a mile of asphalt
2. Tape grapefruit halves to my knees and wear them around for a month
3. Begin each day listening to an hour-long audio of my father Horace explaining why Sarah Palin is right on the money
4. Swallow a 9V battery
5. Play strip poker with all my aunts and uncles
6. Flush my wallet down the toilet
7. Have my portrait taken at Walmart
8. Get sprayed in the face with Easy-Off oven cleaner
9. Forever believe that stepping on a crack would actually break my mother’s back
10. Be either person in this conversation: "Hey, whatcha doing tonight, bro?" "Boozin'."
11. Develop an irrational fear of Chapstick
12. Drive a baby blue minivan
13. Go see the world’s most boring opera
14. Fish
15. Go see the world’s most exciting opera
16. Have all my sentences mysteriously start ending with the phrase “Boy, howdy”
17. Get kicked in the crotch by a donkey
18. Be pen pals with a death row inmaate
    
19. Know only 75 words
20. Start speaking like James Earl Jones
    
21. Always have to answer the phone: "Yello"
22. Develop a taste for Christian rock
23. Wear a "Home of the Whopper" belt buckle to a job interview
    
24. Eat pancakes with no syrup or silverware
    
25. French kiss a buffalo
26. Constantly forget the words to the "Happy Birthday" song
    
27. Have a 4-hour conversation with Keanu Reeves about guacamole
28. Ski pantsless
29. Get a tattoo of Popeye giving Bluto a lap-dance
30. Convert to any religion for a year
31. Drink cold hot chocolate with no marshmallows
32. Make out with Rosanne Barr
33. Have all my teeth yanked and replaced with gummi teeth
34. Listen to Barry Manilow singing Snoop Dogg’s greatest hits
35. Give myself hourly wedgies for a month
36. Be the designated driver at an Oktoberfest party
37. Cough up my own liver
38. Get a tetanus shot in the forehead
39. Listen to my mom tell a story about losing her virginity
40. Wear a thong made of steel wool
41. Clean a men’s public restroom with my toothbrush
42. Watch a reality TV show about the making of a reality TV show
43. Be a telemarketer for a year
44. Gargle with my own urine
45. Take LSD and watch open-heart surgery on the Discovery Channel
46. Eat a puppy sandwich at a PETA convention
47. Spend a Saturday afternoon at Bed, Bath & Beyond
48. Be one of the Smothers Brothers
49. Carry a giant bag of bark wherever I go
50. Think that I'm speaking Spanish when I'm really speaking gibberish
51. Watch old people dance
52. Go back to dial-up internet connection
53. Wear Victoria's Secret PINK brand sweatpants
54. Vacuum my eyeballs with a Shop-Vac
55. Get a full-body massage from Al Gore
56. Wear a Speedo to church
57. Have my colonoscopy broadcast on network TV
58. Be stuck in an elevator with a troupe of flatulent mimes
59. Randomly call numbers from the phone book and demand "Who dis?!"
60. Wax off 85% of my back hair
61. Do a 10,000 piece puzzle of a dozen polar bears break-dancing in a blizzard
62. Put a sticky note on every object in my house, identifying its purpose
63. Watch sausage and/or babies get made
64. Wear Elton John glasses for three months
65. Ask Tom Cruise about Scientology
66. Glue my mailbox shut
67. Run barefoot across a construction site
68. Watch nuns knit
69. Repeatedly bang my knee on coffee table
70. Create a flag that will represent my own nation
71. Go to a toy store and try to purchase a Monopoly game using Monopoly money
72. Go to Vegas and boycott drinking and gambling
73. Pour boiling water up my nose
74. Invent a new language consisting only of variations in the tone of armpit farts
75. Develop an allergy to mittens
76. Whenever I meet someone, announce that I'm the one who coined the phrase "coin the phrase"
77. Sleep wearing a fur unitard and ice skates
    
78. Mop-water enema
79. Go through a car wash with my windows rolled down
    
80. Fit Rush Limbaugh for assless chaps
81. Drink water out of toilet in Mexico City
82. Call 4-11 and shout "Oh my God! He's trying to kill me!"
83. Pierce my Johnson
84. Inadvertently be the cause of Coca-Cola going out of business
85. Be a Pro Bowling Tour groupie
86. After getting my drink on, wake up in a jail cell in a foreign country wearing a tuxedo that doesn't belong to me
    
87. Lose my teddy bear
88. Lick the crust out of my dog Dip’s eyeball
89. Drive with my seat scooted all the way up
90. Go to Dollyworld
91. Live in one of those houses where everything’s slanted
92. Have the navigational system in my car start talking in an Aussie accent
93. Super Glue a gerbil to my forehead
94. Inherit the national debt
95. Take a job as a change-maker in a video arcade
96. Be glow-in-the-dark for six months
97. Be burned in effigy
98. Milk a cat
99. Eat less and exercise more
100. Write a list of 100 things I'd rather do than gain the weight back
     

I Want You to Give Me 55% Today

People who are good at math try to tell me that it’s impossible to give 110% like I always make a concerted effort to do. My argument is a simple one. Can you give 100%? Well, then just do that… then do 10% more.

But some folks still insist that giving that much is physically impossible, and I suppose for them it is.

So I’ll tell you what: how about giving 55% today?

That doesn’t sound so intimidating, does it? That doesn’t even sound all that difficult, when you stop and think about it. I mean, that’s just a little more than a completely half-hearted effort. Anybody can do that. Right?

You can do just a little better than what you’ve been doing, even if you haven’t been doing very much. I mean, anyone can do that, and a little’s better than nothing. Right?

Maybe 55% can be your baseline, the foundation–in terms of effort you’re willing to dedicate to achieving your goals–that you can lay down and build on for the future. It may not be much, but it’s certainly a start.

Teddy Roosevelt once said “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure...than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” However, if you take that 55% approach, you can just paraphrase it to “It’s okay to dare miniscule things, to win tiny triumphs, to not try too, too hard… because… well, just because.”

Hmmmmm, that doesn’t really stir my heart or make me want to jump out of the airplane into the wild blue yonder. It doesn’t lift my spirits, and it sure doesn’t stoke the fires of my weight-loss engine.

Maybe it’s time for us both to admit that putting in a half-ass effort is only okay if you’re interested in half-ass results, if you’re content thinking that the way things are is the way things have to be.

I started this post thinking that I was going to try to egg you on to give a 55% effort, to at least give half of what I think you ought to be dedicating to this weight-loss journey you’re on, but I just don’t think I can do that today.

I think you’re worth more than that.

I think you’re better than that.

I goof a lot in this space, but this is oh-so serious business. This is really the beginning of a new day, and what you’ll make out of this new day is entirely up to you. Whether you want to squander it, whether you want to put in a lackluster effort or whether you want to strive to really get after it and make the most of it, I don’t have much control over how you approach this journey (after all, I can’t even make my kids do what I want them to do). At the end of the day, it’s all on you.

It’s your day to do with as you will. But I can tell you this: tomorrow’s coming right away, and when it comes, this day will be nothing but a fleeting memory. What you do today is important because you exchanged a precious piece of your life for it, and it’d be nice if you had something positive to show for it.

55%?

I don't think so.

Give it your all.

I’m Sorry, Rolling Stones

I’m at the grocery store; my brain says, “Put it back.”
No bags of corn chips, yes, I want to put them back.
I walk down the aisles dressed in my slimmer clothes.
I smile contently cuz I know how this thing goes.

I see a line of carts, and they’re all filled with crap.
I can’t say what I want ‘cause it would cause a flap.
I see people all around turn their heads and look my way.
I need to shop like this until my dying day.

I look inside myself and say to myself, “Jack,
If corn syrup’s in there, man, you need to put it back.”
Maybe then I’ll fade away cuz it’s time to face the facts.
It’s not easy facin’ up when your whole world is fat.

No more will my old bod go to a greater weight.
I could not foresee this thing happening today.
If I look hard enough at that spinning scale,
I start to see the fit guy that lives inside this shell.

I grab some Cheese Whiz, but then I put it back.
I put it up alongside the other crap on that rack.
I see my old life come to a satisfactory close .
I’m living better, hey, you know how this sh*t goes.
Hmm, hmm, hmm,...

I wanna keep it, keep it, keep it all on track.
Fit is right, fit is good
I wanna see this fat blotted out from my gut
I swear I’ll never, never, never, never give it back
Yeah!

x

You’ll Go Down in History

Charlie-In-The-Box: I'm the official sentry of the Isle of Misfit toys.
Hermey: A jack-in-the-box for a sentry?
Charlie-In-The-Box: Yes. My name is...
Rudolph: Don't tell me: Jack.
Charlie-In-The-Box: No, Charlie. That's why I'm a misfit toy. My name is all wrong. No child wants to play with a Charlie-In-The-Box so I had to come here.



Unless you’re of a certain age, the story doesn’t resonate.

No, not the story of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, dumbass. That story resonates with all God’s children.

No, I mean the classic story of “Jack Sh*t Having to Watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”.

I guess I was six or seven years old, and had settled in to get my Rudolph on. I was sitting there cross-legged, about two feet from the front of the set in my prime TV-watching position. The show started in an hour-and-a-half, and I wasn’t going to miss one second of it.

I was so engrossed in my TV watching that I didn’t notice my parents packing the car, didn’t pay any attention to them getting their coats on, ignored them when they called out “Jack, ready to go?”

“Whaaa?” I moaned confusedly, and my mother Shirley patiently explained that we were making the two-hour drive to see the grandparents.

“Huh?” I moaned, and she reached down and flicked the television set off. “I told you we were going this weekend,” she said. “Now go get in the car right now.”

This is the part of the story that my own kids don’t understand.

“Why didn’t you just set it to record on the DVR?” asked Pisa, my 10-year-old daughter.

“Didn’t you own a copy of it if you liked it so much?” asked Holly, my 17-year-old daughter.

“They didn’t even have VHS tapes,” my 21-year-old daughter Noe explains to the others. “Get this: they didn’t even have a remote control.”

“I’m scared,” says Pisa, shivering.

It never ceases to freak them all out to hear about our TV watching habits in the olden days. Yes, if you wanted to watch a show, you had to sit there when it came on and watch it right then and there. If you missed it, you… well, you missed it.

So cut back to that brave young lad in the backseat of his father Horace’s Oldsmobile. Did he take this disappointment with courage and good grace? With understanding and a discernment that belied his young age?

Oh hell no.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried a little, and by “a little,” I mean for 45 minutes at maximum volume and intensity. We had crossed the state line and I was still wailing like a banshee. Horace was threatening to veer into oncoming traffic if I didn’t stop, but Shirley was getting worried.

“Maybe he’s hurt,” she frowned. “Are you hurt, Jackie?”

“I WANNA WATCH RUDOLPH!” I sobbed, and even my younger sister was starting to get upset.

My parents were only human, so about five minutes later, Horace testily pulled the Olds into a big sweeping U-turn and we headed home. My cries began ratcheting down the closer we got to the living room TV set.

We pulled into the driveway with three minutes to spare, and Shirley sat my butt right back in the spot I had so happily previously occupied.

“YOU ARE GOING TO SIT RIGHT THERE,” she sneered menacingly. “AND YOU’RE GOING TO WATCH EVERY COTTON-PICKIN’ SECOND OF RUDOLPH!”

I simply smiled back.

Since that night, each year I get a call from my mother whenever “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is on network TV. She call to to remind me that it’s on, and warns me I had better have my ass in a chair in from of that set and watch every cotton-pickin’ second of it.

I like to think that I get some of my determination from Mom’s side of the family.

All Evidence to the Contrary, I am Normal

Weekly weigh-in: 204.8
Loss: -1.5
Total loss: 86.7 lbs.
Emotion: Uncommonly Normal

Talk about your punch in the gut: it’s a day or so after Christmas last year and I’m standing there on our brand spankin’ new Wii Fit board, getting my first weigh-in for my cute lil’ Mii character (he looks just like me, by the way). Anyway, the scale spins and suddenly the TV chirps out in an elf voice: “Oh, that’s obese.”

Worse than that, my lil’ Mii character has just plumped out noticeably, sending my 10-year-old daughter Pisa bursting into hysterical laughter.

Check that: now my not-so-lil’ Mii character looks just like me. *sigh*

Well, that was then and this is now, and now definitely ain’t then.

See, I just stepped on the Wii Fit board this morning and made some magic happen.

It seems I am NORMAL.

Not Morbidly Obese, not Obese, not Overweight… just a regular ol’ plain-as-can-be Normal guy (okay, we both know that I’m not “normal” normal, but, well, you know what I mean...).

This journey is about taking a step in the right direction… and then following it up with another step and another and another. It doesn’t happen overnight… but the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll arrive. And I’m here to tell you that arriving… crossing that razor-thin line between Obese and Overweight, between Overweight and Normal... well, it feels mighty fine.

My lil’ Mii character jumped for joy.

So did I.

Egged on by the success of my lil’ Mii partner, I dragged the last two too-tight pairs of pants out of my top closet shelf and tried ‘em on.

Done and done.

I no longer own a pair of pants that don’t fit. Check that: I own lots and lots of too-big trousers, but none that are too small to wear anymore.

Thus ends my game of “Last Pants Standing.” Who was the winner? I was, of course.

I’m sitting here writing this, wearing pants that I had basically given up on this time last year, reminiscing about that sinking feeling I got when my Wii Fit called me “obese". I’m not that person anymore, and it occurs to me that a name change might be in order.

Jack Sh*t, Gettin’ Fit?

Uh uh.

Jack Sh*t Done Got Fit.

Hmmmm, still needs work.

Then again, so do I.

Day of Reckoning

Welcome to "Same Old Sh*t" Saturday, where I reheat and rehash old posts in order to pry myself away from the computer at least one day a week. This well-recieved post surprised me by inspiring a lot of readers to comment on their own special day when they flipped a switch and really... and I mean, really and truly... began their weight-loss journey. I can't remember a batch of comments I enjoyed reading more.

“When a defining moment comes along,
you define the moment... or the moment defines you.”

–Roy 'Tin Cup' McAvoy

My friend Sandy over at 45+ and Aspiring recently had her “Day of Reckoning,” the moment where she drew a line in the sand and said “This is it. This stops right here and goes no farther.” I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

If you’ve stopped by today looking for a couple of yuks, I encourage you to either back-track through the archives or check back tomorrow. Today is about that day of reckoning. Sandy’s, my own, maybe even your’s.

My DoR came on Easter Sunday of this past year. While you were busy scarfing down jelly beans and biting the heads off chocolate bunnies, I was home alone (my family was on a trip out of town). What I did with my holiday solitude was something that was long overdue: I finally took a good hard look at myself in the mirror. Truth to tell, I didn’t like the obese son-on-a-b*tch staring back at me one bit. I knew it was time… maybe my last chance… to take a stand.

I know that sounds overly dramatic, but this is a life-and-death situation we’re talking about, you know. Obesity and all its assorted running buddies are things that will just shut you down for good. So maybe I’m being overly dramatic or maybe I’m simply opening my eyes to what’s really going on.

Here’s the situation (and now I’m talking about you, too): we’re getting older every day, and this weight loss journey will never, ever be any easier than it is today. I don’t know where you are on life’s great golf course, but I’m on the back nine, where time and metabolism tag-team to make you want to give in and learn to love the love handles. A lot of people do give in, apparently. They either give in or make such a half-hearted fight of it that they might as well surrender.

But guess what? We’re not most people. I’m certainly not, and I suspect that you aren’t either. We’re putting our stories–our lives–out there for the whole world to see, to be a part of, to judge. For God sakes, we’re putting how much we weigh out there. Granted, we may have too much of a paunch, but nobody can say we don’t have guts.

Which brings me back to that whole “Day of Reckoning” business. When I decided it was honestly and truly gut-check time, positive things started happening in my life. Sure it was hard to get going and sure there were times when I questioned if I had what it takes to do this. But I kept at it, and (almost 50 lbs lighter) I’m keeping on keeping at it.

I can feel the changes taking place in my body, and I know I’m doing good work. I take all the compliments and comments I can get, but the real satisfaction is in knowing that I’m fighting the good fight, winning most days and at least holding my own on the rest.

I seriously doubt there’s a single person reading this that doesn’t know exactly what he or she has to do to lose weight. But unless you’ve had that day of reckoning, that moment when you know in your head and in your heart that it’s time to make it happen, I’m just not certain it will happen. This is an undertaking that not only takes it off of you, it takes it out of you.

I read a lot of weight loss blogs, and there’s nothing I enjoy more than discovering those true success stories and backtracking through their entire chronicle. In just about every case, you can see their spirit through their words, feel the steel in their voice. Even if you didn’t already know they’d lost 100 lbs. or more, you get a sense that they were going to, that nothing was going to stop them.

I am on a journey. I post a lot of non-stop nonsense, but make no mistake that I am on an adventure in which failure simply is not a consideration. I’m losing, and I’ll keep losing. I have no doubt in the world that my fat-to-fit trek will end in success.

I’ve had my day of reckoning, after all.

How about you?

x