#fitfy

How Much Ouch?

galby68, 3 Comments

All of it.

All the ouch.

I’m a fat big enough person to admit when I’m wrong.

Doing reverse lunges yesterday was definitely a mistake. Where my ass would be if I had one definitely hurts today.

As a fatter of mact – er – matter of fact, my abs aren’t minding their business today, either. But I’m taking the immediate onset of muscle soreness following yesterday’s mini home workout versus the typical delayed onset muscle soreness as a sign that I have been too inactive for too long.

So maybe the takeaway isn’t that exercise was a mistake so much as my error was doing the wrong kind of “body building” for too long.

But, still…ooouuuccchhh!

How Much Ouch?

Manopause

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I’ve never felt bad for women who declare, “Oh, god…I’ve turned into my mother”. However, I never really expected the thought to flit through my mind.

But that’s exactly what happened last night.

No, I wasn’t drinking.

The thought had no sooner pasted a glimmer of a smile on my lips, than I’d dismissed the idea. I’m not becoming my mother – although, in my case, I wouldn’t understand why women make that sound so bad.

I settled on an even more insane sounding occurrence: I’m obviously pregnant.

Here’s the scenario: I was actually – well, let me save you some time.

If a picture is, indeed, worth a thousand words…you’re welcome. I’ve clearly spared your eyes some strain.

If you need a little more context to interpret those two pictures, I’m happy to oblige. Read on, I’ll be as brief as possible…

I was eating ice cream for dinner. Why? I dunno. It just ended up in my hands while I was looking at my fridge for dinner ideas.

I was actually standing there, staring slack-jawed at my options of almost literally nothing to eat.

Fridge door open.

Freezer drawer pulled out.

This had the added benefit of blasting me with cold air on yet another 90+ degree day in Portland.

Seriously, we do not need this information getting out, but Portland has beautiful summers. That rain for next Saturday? Yeah, we heard that promise last week, but the rain was only a rumor.

If it does rain next Saturday, that’ll be the end of at least a three week dry spell. If it doesn’t rain…well.

Ugh.

Things could be worse.

Anyway, back to cooling the house with an open refrigerator. Realizing I was doing so, I closed everything up and stood in my kitchen undecided. I was conflicted about cooking and heating up the house, but I didn’t want to order in.

Ice cream seemed like a really good triple whammy to that conundrum because it’s cold food, right? It had the added benefit of not being beer or wine, too. But I was having trouble rationalizing executing the decision to eat ice cream as a meal.

I blamed the Silver Fox. He’d invited me along to Trader Joe’s last week. Probably because he needed bananas – seriously, if he needs bananas: TJs; if he needs milk: Costco – and invited me along.

$55 dollars later, my fridge was full. Of course, I’d only needed one thing when I agreed to go along…

Actually, he’d needed to go for some chocolatey good treats for some chocoholic friends that were coming to dinner the next night. By his endorsement, Trader Joe’s has the best chocolate ice cream.

I chose a different path.

I was not disappointed in my selection. Additionally, I’ve had two servings and still have more. Take that Ben & Jerry’s and your single serving containers!

This is all about excusing my dinner decision last night. Truth of the matter? Once I saw the ice cream in my freezer, I couldn’t not think about it. I had to have it.

It was a craving.

I addition to Portland’s current heat wave driving me to not cook and enjoy frosty beers and chilled rose deliciousness too frequently, it’s also limited my outdoor activity.

Meaning: no hiking or bike riding.

Also, meaning: fat Xtopher.

Seriously.

Fat.

I’ve put on 10 pounds in the last three months. Actually, I put on 10 lbs in a month, I’ve just been holding steady for the last two…trying to limit the damage. That’s 10 on top of 10 that I gained in the first quarter of the year, by the way. Not a good way to follow up last year’s fitfy initiative.

It’s a real shitshow over here at Chez Galby.

I look pregnant.

Well, I think that’s about 1000 words on the picture of my Facebook post about last nights dinner.

Moving on…

I sat down with my ice cream supper and decided to watch the movie Battleship. There’s always a little time for a stupid Rihanna-slash- action movie and after seeing Mission Impossible: Fallout last week…I was jonesing for another Adrenalin hit.

I cried during the movie.

What.

The.

F.

I mean…I’m not super surprised. I cried at the end of Rocky. But at least that was a story about believing in yourself and accomplishing a goal against all odds.

Sure, Battleship has a tenuous similarity. But, c’mon…at least Rocky is quasi tethered to reality. I have an equal belief in boxers and aliens. However, I’ve yet to meet an alien, so that diminishes the reality aspect of the movie Battleship by comparison.

My last word on this crying jag? Copious.

Big, round, flowing tears. Not a quick hit of emotion like in other bouts of ridiculous crying I’ll admit to. This shit just kept on coming. I literally did not have the control to stop. As it was continuing to not end, the movie moves on to a scene – where I know what’s going to happen – and I’m so caught up in this ridiculous moment that I uttered “Oh, no!” before Rihanna comes out of nowhere to save her stereotypically every Irish person from Boston shipmate.

Craziness.

But, just like with the ice cream, I couldn’t stop myself.

Irrational emotions and emotional decisions.

I need pregnancy hormones to even begin to excuse my present shape and recent decision making history.

Since I’m stubborn I decided to watch a potentially feely movie after Battleship ended. It had dropped recently on Netflix called Like Father. I figured it had the potential to make me emotional and that might help me justify the emotional outburst.

I know. Completely backward timing, but I was just looking for a lifeline for my dignity.

It failed to deliver.

As I’m sitting there, not being moved to tears, I emotionally decide to make the French Fries from my freezer.

C’mon!

It’s after 10 PM.

As I’m watching my oven timer count down, my rational Hyde brain is trying to assert itself and take control back from my Jekyll emotions. He’s been trying to come back to the forefront of my personality lately. That makes me sad. Hyde used to be my default personality. Now, I feel like Jekyll is too present.

Enabling idleness.

Eating and drinking to excess.

I know that it’s depression about feeling driven out of my last job for expecting my fellow leadership peers to follow corporate policies. Naturally, compounded by the challenge of finding a new job. With just a dash of frustration at too often being passed over for an internal candidate.

Yeah, that’s a recipe for depression, right there.

But knowing that in some trapped, logical part of my brain as 10:30 approaches didn’t stop the irrational and sad part of my brain from eating that entire package of French Fries while I finished that stupid movie. No, it wasn’t a movie, it was a mehvie. Hehe.

So I woke up this morning – having slept a straight eight interrupted hours and picked up where I’d left off last night: something has to change.

During the last few weeks of not going outside, I’ve been thinking about rejoining my gym. My resistance there is two-fold: primarily my fear of re-injuring my treasonous shoulder joints; secondarily, I’m too cheap to pay the initiation fee again.

My alternative was to go back to my spin gym. I’ve been talking about it since January. Last week, I actually went back to look at class packages. I was unhappy to discover that the drop in rate has increased to $25.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

They gym seems to prefer class packages over drop ins. Fine. To that end, the owner offers 10-pack classes at a discount. That used to be $180, recently that increased to $190 and if I was having trouble pulling the trigger on the value of an $18 spin class in January…well, that extra buck didn’t help.

What was a surprise when I dug a little deeper last week was the offering of a 20 class package for $300. My grinchy fat ass can support a $15 class.

Except.

Budgeting goes well with no income. Splurging on a $300 luxury does not. I even joined AARP knowing that I was still too young to qualify for the Silver Sneaker program – which pays your gym membership in order to encourage us oldies to exercise – but thinking there might at least be a discount to get me by in the meantime.

There was not.

I’ve spent the last week or so vacillating between spending the money on re-joining my gym or buying a spin package or just forcing myself into the streets to cycle in extreme heat. Neither seems like a great idea. However, when I got back from coffee with The Fox this morning, bitching about my mild sweaty discomfort after walking just under two miles round trip in mid-morning heat, I decided on a compromise: I bought the lunch package of spin classes. They net out to $11 per half hour class. Not a great deal comparatively, but I was kind of fretting collapsing off my spin cycle during a full class, anyway. Hence the “compromise”. This will be a good compromise to get me back in the groove.

That’s what I’m telling myself.

This has the added benefit of pleasing the Filipina Fox, who teaches at the spin gym I go to. She doesn’t do the lunch class, but she’ll be glad that I’m at least getting back in the (bike) saddle.

Wish me luck…I’ve got work clothes that I’ve got to – hopefully – fit back into at some point. Time to push (mano)pause and banish my pregnancy body and Jekyll mindset.

Manopause

Fitfy:  fin

galby68, , , , , 1 Comment

Well, it’s happened…my odometer has rolled over.  Today is the start of my sixth decade of good fortune and ridiculousness that I’ve trademarked as my life.

While I don’t know what my fifties will bring to me, I spent last year course correcting myself after reflecting back on my first five decades during the timeframe between the holiday and my birthday.  Realizing I’d spent too much time investing in things I can lose – job, relationships and wealth – with little control at the end of the day, I committed to spending the year brushing up my favorite human.

Or, who I realized should have been my favorite human and really wasn’t.

I don’t want to dwell on the pursuit/reward cycle I’d caught myself in, unawares.  I wasn’t happy to call myself on being trapped in that unfulfillingso-called lifecycle.  I can acknowledge that I slipped innocently enough into it, having ended a relationship, slogged through career transitions, physical injuries and retethered my base of operations back in my fabulous hometown of Portland, OR over the prior five years.

But it was time to get back to a life lived with a more massive modicum of intent.

Resetting lifestyle and fitness expectations from the far outdated ideals, habits and even rituals of my renegade bachelor 30s and 40s and find an equanimity with those expectations that would provide me emotional and physical stability in this late-middling part of my life.

Fitfy.

I’d reached late December feeling accomplished, having deconstructed a lot of the fitness patterns that led to repetitive injuries.  How boring those quickly become.  Having healed up and sustained, I had found a fairly functional regimen that was private, not going to the gym was providing a sense of accomplishment vis-a-vis home workouts and stair running.

Diet was a part of that accomplishment, plenty of treat-eating and reasonably balanced meals of salads, grains and protein.  Nowhere perfect or sufficiently sustained to declare victory, but definitely a good tragectory.

I should have known that the ingrown toenail I complained about at the start of the year was just a harbinger of obstacles to come.

I awoke one day after that had cleared itself with a tender and throbbing big toe.  Walking was a less than graceful exercise in ambulatory necessity.

I assumed I had kicked my table the prior night on a hazy trip to the head.  I’m not quite familiar enough with my new digs to make my usual nightly zombie bathroom walk without running into something.

Each way.

Getting through my 6-8 miles of daily walking at work was struggle enough, stairs were out.  At least for the week.

This past and final week started with me uneating at 4 am on my way to the MAX stop on my way to work.  Barfing on the streets of Old Town very early on a Sunday morning – or very late on a Saturday night – like a drunk white girl.  How humiliating.

Plus, I missed a day of work.

Two days of eating anything other than crackers and soda water basically had emotionally landed me here

Of course, I mention it to my substitute needle man that week.  

The disturbance in my gut.

My idiomatic toe injury.

Of course, I’m typical, snarky Xtopher when I tell her.

“I dunno.  I’ve got, like gout or something.”

“That does look a bit like gout, you should talk to your PCP about it”, she says, all too chipperly.

I miss my regular Needle Man.

I email my PCP when I get out of the office and he replies with the doctor-equivalent of, “Nah”.  You could probably interpret a fairly accurate amount of disdain for eastern medicine in his reply, but at least it’s back to being just another unconfirmed trauma in my life.

Plus, a couple days later and acupuncture has done its hoodoo magic and I’m back to 85-90% big toe function.

But I’m not self-soothing with junk food and booze like I had previously when injured.  That’s a good outcome for a year of inwardly focused intentions.  My injured physical self wasn’t adversely affecting my mental self.  

I was just injured, not physically depressed, and that injury wasn’t bleeding into my mental state.  

I’m still about 10 lbs heavier than I want to be, but it’s no longer driving me to punish myself.  And during the last couple of physically busted up weeks, I’ve legitimately held steady at the same weight.

That’s actually a fine place to set off on this fresh year and decade.

Imperfectly satisfied.

Who really saw that coming?  

Fitfy:  “Cheers, bitches.” <dumbbell drop>

Fitfy:  fin

2018 Writing Self Challenge

galby68, , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions.

I mean, right?

But I was aware of the fact as I wrote Fitfy 49:49 that my 2017 theme was quickly winding down.  I’ll probably only post once more in that theme.

So, what now?

I thought about resurrecting The Yes Game from 2016.  It was a little underutilized in its time, but I worried slightly that it would open a Pandora’s Box of fuckery for me.  I have enough readers that know me personally that I could see people basically daring me to do things and invoking TYG if I blinked.

Like I need my friends throwing me foolishness like this to try to manipulate me.

Hashtag: try it

So, I’m leaning toward something fresh.

What are your thoughts on a theme that extrapolates on my $20 first date rule?  

Maybe I could commit to 12 entries over the year…I bet I could trick a dozen people into keeping their clothes on the first time we meet.  On the one hand, it kind of skews toward relationship failure in 2018, presuming I won’t have a lot of second or third dates this year.   

But on the other hand, you know I was going to write about them anyway, so it’s kind of a gimme.

Twenty-eighteen started with an ingrown toenail and what I’m imagining must be a hemorrhoid, why not embrace the pain and write about my datesasters?  I’ve kicked around a couple of theme names:

Dating Into Oblivion, which is a subtle play off “fading into oblivion”.  I think dating in what I’m going to consider a second run through my 40s – call it a reboot – could easily be seen to have a lovely view of an apocalypse.

Fruitless was my other thought on the theme.  Because: Gay + Old + Single = Fruitless

The last reason I’m liking this idea is because after taking a pass at NaNoWriMo last year, having 10-plus 2000 word essays on first dates sets me well upon my way toward that 50000 word NaNoWriMo goal.  I’m thinking 30000 words would leave just enough room to provide any potentially necessary debriefing about those elusive second dates.  Most likely debriefings in their own right, right?

Who’s got a thought on this?  

Bueller?  

Bueller?

2018 Writing Self Challenge

Fitfy 49:49

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Well, I guess this would be my golden post? 49 weeks into my 49th year…

Some different things have been going on lately, too.  It’s been kinda nice to experience these last few weeks of the Galby existence.

I’ve been pretty consistent about exercise recently, pulling off a steady three workouts per week.  My shoulder tried to register its complaint initially, but slow and steady got me through my ramp up without actually re-injuring myself.

A while back, I also commented that I needed to start getting my legs more involved in my workouts.  I wasn’t sure how to effectively integrate this opportunity into my home-based exercise regimen, until it hit me:  stairs.

Talk about two bird(leg)s with one stone.  I’m running 30 flights of stairs three times a week as part of my regimen.  30 flights up, 30 flights down.

Running.

That carrot my acupuncturist dangled a while has actually inspired me to find a way to re-incorporate my favorite form of exercise back into my routine.  Little warning twinges from my foot and knee reminded me to take it easy at first.  Warming up to the fresh movements after a three year absence with 10 flights initially allowed my grumpy old joints to get accustomed to the idea of this repetitive motion again.  Taking the stairs has actually been less stressful than plain old road running.

At the end of the day, I’m feeling great about this addition to my routine.  It provides that ballistic movement to my exercise once again.  I finish my workouts feeling like I’ve accomplished something.  Not just getting sweaty, but also shaking off some of the mental drama of my day.  Stuff that would have carried through with me to bedtime is just gone.

Once again.

This is the part of running that I missed most. The piece that retiring from running most significantly impacted me, the mental benefit of this physical fitness.

I’ve missed it so.  

Happy Galby.

Seriously.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m still the grumpy guy I’ve always been, but I find my grumpiness has more perspective now.  

Or, again.  

Whatever.  

That’s helpful, like I said, less important stuff doesn’t remain with me.  I’m clearer about what actually bugs me and can focus better on more significant frustrations…hopefully in order to actually be able to effect change.

All while quitting soda and significantly curbing my caffeine intake.

And no one died.

It happened quite by accident.

I was out of soda and it was cold, so I remained out of soda.  

People were getting sick around me at work, so I started hydrating at work instead of grabbing a soda or coffee to drink absentmindedly.  

After a few days, I didn’t want soda.  I found myself at the grocery grabbing some bullshit hipster bubble water to satisfy my carbonation craving instead of grabbing a Diet Coke.  Bad news for Coke stockholders, good news for me.

Before I knew it, I was five days in without coffee or soda.  On my days off, of course I indulged in my weekly coffee time with the Silver Fox.  Walking away from that with the thought, “Two days a week for coffee ain’t bad”, which was all the impetus the universe needed to dangle temptation in front of my nose.

It came in the offer of coffee from a co-worker.  I love the message that I take away from offers like these, that I’m not an entirely evil boss.  If someone that reports to me wants to take me out for coffee?  I take that as a good sign.

Way better than someone that reports to me simply wanting to take me out.

Of course, I accepted – albeit with the admonishment to not spend their hard earned money on me.  Hey, that’s still only coffee three days a week.  It’s an average I’ve been able to stick to, too.  At most, three times a week.  It makes coffee a reward versus a ritual.  That’s a good thing, in my book.

Also, sorry to you people with money in coffee stock.

But wait…there’s even more!

I was eating well, too. Don’t worry, that couldn’t possibly last.  But it’s – once again – pretty much due to me being out of food and it being cold.

For those of you keeping track, the cold has officially dealt me a triple whammy:

1) no soda

2) ran out of healthy food

3) you should see my Double Oh C recycling.  “Out Of Control” is the Chrisenese to English translation you were looking for there, BTW.

But I’ve come off of that week-plus of solid healthy eating with a sense of moderation when approaching things like hamburgers or pizza.  That ain’t bad.

All this led up to two solid days of exertion when I moved last week.

Alone.

Naturally.

My family were all out of town at the ‘Phew’s basketball thingy.

The Fox was helping his some move, and also being sick.

So I just did it.

I am a SNOB, after all…Society if Native Oregon Born.  Home of Nike, so I just do it, naturally.

Hush, Diezel.

Bed?  Moved.

Sofa?  Moved.

Bookcases?  Moved – or sold.  The new place is slightly smaller.

Dresser?  Moved.

Ok, that last one was a bitch.  But, just done.

After all that, I expected to hurt.

For a while.

But I just didn’t.

I’ll chalk that up to doing a lot of little good things for myself consistently.  And that’s what this year has largely been about.  That and accepting my present physical situation for what it is and fixing what I reasonably can while accepting – forgiving – what I can’t.

Honestly, there’s still room to fix or improve.  And I will.

But The Brazilian made another guest appearance in my life the other night, and when he complimented my butt…I didn’t correct him!

“Alex, I’ll take Self Acceptance for priceless, please” – Me!

I can live with this.

Fitfy 49:49

Fitfy 49:45

galby68, , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

Well, it’s getting on to tic-toc time, eh?

The last 7 weeks of this journey toward my big 5-oh.

It’s been interesting.  I started out convincing myself that I was doing similar things but with a different mindset I called intent.

Yeah, that was bullshit.

I was doing the same things and expecting a different outcome because I was being honest with myself about my actions.

Turns out, motivation is quite the bitch.  If you don’t have motivation, you get no results.  If you’re motivated toward the wrong goals or for the wrong reasons, you end up failing.  

I wasn’t looking for a pre-fifty phyrric victory.

I was looking to find a balance between my self care – diet, exercise – and the reality of living in an aging vessel.  In an effort to change my mindset around what constituted successfully defining a healthy lifestyle, I had to extract the mental vision I had of a 30-something robust male physique as the definition of success.  

That mental imagery was holding me back and shaping my decisions as well as informing my actions.

No bueno.

A guy pushing 50 shouldn’t be chasing that reality.  Well, maybe in pursuit of a bedmate, but not in a reflection from the mirror.  With that realization, I admitted that I was really at square one in my journey.  I’d made strides toward eating better and exercising differently, but all with the picture of myself with a ripped torso laughing as he drank as much as he wanted.

How depressing.

So I dialed it back.  I began working out at home, no one to compare myself to except that reflection I hated.  That helped.  

Suddenly, I was finding motivation to not get home with a drinking plan in place:  run in, feed the Mistress, change, run out to meet friends.  Now I was selectively coordinating my detox drinking with the Silver Fox, who’s much more disciplined than I am.  He’ll have one beer, two when he’s getting crazy, and then stop.  I needed that example and company to reign me in.  So, we’d have three beers or a bottle of wine between us when we met up, I’d stop occasionally on the way home and get a six pack that would last me close to a week and eat something, have one or two more and Bob was indeed my dietary uncle.

Getting my drinking consumption-to-frequency ratio in line was helpful.

The Filipina Fox was also helpful.  She gets me to a spin class occasionally, but at $18/class, less than she’d like.  

Less than I’d like, too.  

I appreciate that she forwards me deals from ClassPass, but I found a studio I like with equipment that is good for my body and that’s the studio I want to go to.  I’ll go when I can, but at this point I don’t want to compromise and end up on equipment that hurts my body.  It’s just as delititerious to my goal as surrounding myself with people who are at an age where they can achieve results that I can’t while living the lifestyle I want to.

So there it was.  The challenge to accept that I can socially live like an urban 30-something, but I had to forgive myself for looking like a middle-aged man in the process.

Being left with the option of working out in isolation has helped.

Tremendously.

My gut is tightening up, but I’m not looking for signs of abs.  I know they are there, I can feel them…I have to forget that other people may judge me on their personal inability to verify their existence.

Their problem, not mine.  If there were visible abs in my future, those same people would find something else on which to judge me negatively.

I gotta do me.

So, I’ve embraced my FUPA – Fat Upper Penis Area.  See, now I’m gonna be in trouble with the big girls for stealing their acronym.  

Middle-Aged White Guys ruin everything.

Now, instead of catching myself absent-mindedly juggling my chesticles I catch myself poking or bouncing my little belly.

And chuckling at myself when I catch it happening.  I’ve changed my belly perception from rejection to acceptance.  

It’s here, queer, get used to it.

That said, I’ve got to get some remedies in place for lower body exercises at home.

Right now, my belly fat detente is in a physical stalemate that I can appreciate:  it’s there but it’s not too heavy so that it pushes my pants down. 

Some of my shorter torso shirts raise up when I put on a coat or lift my arms past shoulder height, exposing my little “butt in front”.  That has gotten to…not a comfortable space, but a conscious space.  I’m mindful of it and move accordingly to prevent showing it off in public, but I don’t run past the mirror to avoid seeing it.

If I’m gonna drink, I’m gonna have a butt in front.  Instead of denying that reality, I’m looking for ways to alter the reality of the butt in back.  Shifting the focus to something I not only can change, but want to change.

Taking the stairs whenever practical is one thing, but not enough.  I think I’m ready to cautiously add squats into the home workout mix.

This shift to working out at home has taken me back to my days of participating on the Golf Team in High School – yeah, I fucking lettered in golf!  Golf is a solo sport, much like running.  

You compete against yourself.  

Focusing on – dwelling, really – on my inability to run any longer had lent itself to my disabled mental state and contributed to my lack of physical motivation.  Comparing my home workout results to my past performance like I did with prior golfing performances has allowed me to find a balance between efforts versus results while also factoring out my habit of comparing myself to others.  That behavior fuels the unhealthy motivations that led to excessive use of metabolic enhancers in my 30s and early 40s.  It also led to exercising too frequently and not allowing my body enough time to recover between workouts. Those are both factors that contributed to my arrival at 49 after two decades of my cavalierly undisciplined approach to exercise.

Coming out of this year with that balance and perspective to carry forward into the next two decades of my physical fitness life is the other half of the equation needed to get there healthily instead of crippling myself further along the way.

Fitfy 49:45

My Jimmy Buffet Life

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Usually this theme manifests itself in a Margaritaville or Cheeseburger In Paradise kind of way.  But last night, Why Don’t We Get Drunk And Screw took the wheel.

Aaaand…Mom, stop reading.

It’s ok, she’ll make Dad read on and give her a synopsis.

I’m hardly bragging about this feat.  It’s only the second time I’ve had sex this year.

My undoing?  The irresistible Wallpaper.

You can do the legwork and figure out the key to his blog name yourselves, but I will tell you that several times in the course of this year, he’s hit me up on Facebook: The Messenger and several times our conversation has turned toward last night’s   activities.

The short of that is that it didn’t happen cuz we wanted different things.  Him: an itch scratched, Me: something more.

Plus, we were friends.  Randomly occurring friends, not close.  But we’d run into each other out on the town and sass each other on The Facebook often, so I valued the current level of our friendship.

Call us life extras for each other.

So, last night, he posts on Facebook that he’s at a bar a few blocks from my house celebrating his Friday…at around 3 pm.

I sass him.

He sasses back, demanding my presence.

I capitulate – foreshadowing! – on the grounds that I’m only keeping him company until his real friends get off work. He’s a super sweet and adorable as fuck guy, I don’t need a reason to see him socially, just a circumstance.

This was it.

I get there and he’s talking to someone at the bar.  I order a beer and say hi, meeting his new acquaintance Keith and then sit at a table behind them.  The Wallpaper joins me a few minutes later.

We start in on easy conversation, very nice.  Small talk, but it has substance.

“Oh my god!”

I look around.

Someone hugs him and says, “I can’t stay, but couldn’t leave you alone here!”

Heath, I learn.  I amuse myself with the alliterative quality of his bar-quaintances.

Keith.

Heath.

Precious.

We all talk.

They go smoke.

Five beers and four hours later, we’re at my place, Heath having made me promise not to let him drink too much and The Wallpaper telling me that he was staying over.

“Obviously”, he says.  And I’m glad for his good impaired judgment.

I’d recently – couple weeks – heard of a motorcycle rider being killed on highway 30 and my mind suggests he’s been quiet on social media lately and he has a motorcycle.

The math is obvious, my inner voice suggests.

I check his Facebook page.  Nothing new since the last time I called him out for drinking in my hood and not calling me.

You see how I had to go when he said “Come”?

I mean, nothing new since then except he now has a boyfriend…the guy he was drinking with last in my hood.

That explains The Facebook silence.

New.

Romance.

I never begrudge someone that.  Quite the contrary, I encourage others in the pursuit of that which has eluded me.

Yet, he tells me that it just happened.  He asked, The Wallpaper described his thought process as, “Well, it’s been a few years since I dated anyone…why not?” and Bob’s your uncle.

Dating.

Except.

The Wallpaper isn’t getting boyfriend behaviors from this guy.  He’d come to realize they hadn’t communicated in 30 hours and acknowledges that a) that doesn’t feel right; and b) he’s not upset by it.

I enjoy seeing these young people I’ve known grown into pretty good humans.

Smash cut to us not watching a movie on my couch.

I said pretty good!  And I’m only human, too.

Luckily, I’m past my operational BAC and we just go to bed.

I don’t sleep, but enjoy that he cuddles into me while he does.

Three hours later, something wakes him and he ends up somehow – charming and sexy soon to be 33 year old that he is – astride my favorite person, cautioning me, “Don’t cum inside me.”

I’m debating leaving to buy a lottery ticket since somehow – gracious host that I am – I haven’t shown him where my lube is yet somehow he’s got as many inches in him as I have beers in me.

My response is to think that I’m an almost 50 year old buzzed man who was pushing rope three hours ago and now my decade-plus randomly occurring fantasy is happening.

How many times does 50 go into 33?

As many as he fucking can.

For my second sexual encounter – nope! third, I just remembered another – of the year, I’d rate us a 7.

He was a smoldering 10.

I was a 4, at best.

He rolled off of me after with a resigned, “I guess I’m single again!” to which I had no reply.

I want to give that another go.  With less beer in me and less bloat on me.  Maybe lightning will strike twice.  I promised myself I wouldn’t play hard to get if I got another crack at this beautiful man.

Meanwhile, I slept 0 hours last night.  Left work early for a movie date with The Filipina Fox, which I fell asleep during…after being awake for 29 hours, then had a big cheeseburger for dinner.

Thus restoring the order to my normal Jimmy Buffet Life.

My Jimmy Buffet Life

Fitfy 49:39

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Missed these little check-ins from the final year of my fifth decade?

Fret not, they’ve not been pushed far from the front of my mind…they are only a trip past my bathroom mirror away, as a matter of fact.  But, this final week of the third quarter of this trip around the sun for me seemed like a good time to check-in again.

First some obvious accountabilities:  exercise and diet.

Exercise:

I’ve quit my gym.  That may not seem like anything but a big step backward, but I think it’s not.  Sure, this was initially a financial decision, the money I spent on gym membership could be better spent on wine, after all!  

I kid.

What I came to realize, though, was that at this time in my life, lifting weights was problematic.  More of a tether or a crutch for my old fitness mindset of recreating or restructuring my physical self…making it into something it’s not.

I have some 4-25 lb dumbbells at home that I can use for a variety of toning exercises when the mood hits.  Overall, that’s what I want to rediscover: tone.  My arms were as thick as my neck in my 30s – don’t get excited, I’ve been called pencil neck before. My chest and ankle measurements might make you wonder if my “father” was, in fact named Frankenstein.

What happens to that forced physique when you stop feeding it iron plates is not pretty.  Over the past three months, as I’ve changed my exercise regimen up – mostly changed it to “rest” – is that those muscles have softened.  My chest does not have as much in common with a 35 year old man as it maybe does with a 50 year old woman.

And that’s ok…for now.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want either of those racks.  But it’s a stop on the way to slimming down.

So, what’s this new regimen?

It’s more intense cardio based, as far as structured exercise goes.  Spin class.  God bless RevoCycle and the Filipina Fox for getting me back into spin!  I really love it…it’s prohibitively expensive, so I’ve been on a little break for the last few weeks, but the time commitment vs results impact is exactly what I want as I try to return to a slimmer silhouette overall.

The remainder of what I’ve been doing outside of mini weight workouts at home and spin class is lifestyle exercises.  Things designed not to get me out of the house and into the gym, but rather to get me out of the house and outside.

Hiking, mostly.  I live in the Pacific Northwest…God’s Country.  I have 40 miles of trails in Forest Park, a quick two mile urban hike away.  I live on Park Ave – between 8th and 9th St in Portland’s Alphabet District.  My stretch of Park is between Everett and Flanders – do not  stalk me…you’d be gravely disappointed.  Forest Park has an entrance at about 28th and Thurman.  That’s 14 blocks over and 19 blocks up.  

Easy.

Until you see this, anyway.

We all need a little touch up now and then, eh?  That’s what this year-long theme is about!  But I found an alternate entrance a few blocks further up the hill and have had myself a couple of nice 10 mike hikes over the last few weeks.  It rained almost all of last week, but today on my weekend agenda…yeah!  More hiking!  

Now…

Diet:

Ugh.

Remember, what I didn’t want to do was overcorrect here and go radical self-deprivation by only allowing myself chicken and broccoli for dinner.  That usually leads to chicken and broccoli for most lunches, too.  And that leads to Unhappy Xtopher.

Also, I didn’t want to not drink.

I wanted to eat real food, have real junk food and get my drink on when I wanted to.  Be that when hanging out with friends or doing a little self-soothing after work.

I’d say the one thing my diet is missing right now is protein.  In eschewing chicken, I’ve become cognizant of the fact that I’m not chewing enough of anything that used to be alive.  Almonds, peanut butter, lunch meats and tuna ain’t cutting it.

Non-Dad-Bod Xtopher needs some red meat.

Shut up, Diezel.

Other than too much pasta in my diet, I’ve been happy with my intake.  Oddly, I’ve found myself craving kale lately.  I should definitely give into that, I bet my body is feeling less nostalgic than it’s actually trying to tell me it needs something.

My alcohol consumption is steady, I know you were worried.

I find that my drinking has become less…binge-y and more consistent.  Neither in a bad way.  When I was drinking before, I’d drink for several hours, ignoring the fact that I was setting records with how many drinks I could consume in an hour.

I’ve gone from drinking 2-3 drinks an hour for several hours to drinking 2-4 drinks a night.  Maybe I drink 5-6 nights a week versus 3-4 nights a week, but I’m not waking up groggy after and I find myself deciding to have another beer versus just giving into habit or simply being handed one by an attentive bartender.

All this came to the front of my mind during last week’s acupuncture appointment.  My Needle Man had been diagnostically probing my abdomen and when he was done, instead of quickly pulling my shirt back down and making a comment about covering my shame, I began absent-mindedly playing my belly like a drum.  He smirked at me and when I realized what I’d been doing, smiled sheepishly and apologized.

He made a comment about enjoying seeing such self-acceptance in today’s body shaming culture.  Someone just innocently enjoying their body without realizing it – literally, in my case, he said – was refreshing.

I told him that I planned on enjoying my body in not so innocent ways later, which gave us both a chuckle.  That may sound a bit depraved to you, but we talk about my sex life almost as often as we talk about my digestion.

If we’re gonna talk shit, nothings off the table.  Plus, there’s a couple of treatments he does that have a great reproductive side effect.  It may not be strictly necessary in my case, but that doesn’t mean it still can’t be appreciated!

The conversation eventually led to – well, directly led to – how self-acceptance was kind of the theme of 2017 for me.  I described how nothing I did physically replaced running in my life, how I could run in the rain but cycling and hiking in the rain were no-goes for me.

“Why don’t you run anymore?”

So, I gave him the back story and then short-handed it to “bone density issues in my lower legs”.

I’ll short-hand his response to “There’s a needle for that”.

Me:  Do not get my hopes up.

Not at all, he told me, cautioning me that it will take time and be something I have to build up to, but there’s probably no reason I shouldn’t count on running again.

So, as I enter the last quarter of this Fitfy (mis)adventure, I find myself looking forward to an unexpected and welcome gift for my 50th birthday…an evening jog to close out my work day.

It’s just what I wanted.

Fitfy 49:39

Fitfy: 49.33

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I originally set out to make this theme a weekly check-in for this final year of my 40s.  The larger goal was to motivate myself into finding a balance between a reasonably healthy physical self and mental and emotional satisfaction with how that state of physical being manifested itself.

Y’know, to ditch the body-negative mindset that I’ve been emotionally kicking the shit out of myself in pursuit of for the last 20 years or so.  I didn’t quit this theme so much as I took a hiaitus in order to refocus on that goal when I found myself falling back on the same habits that had delivered me to where I found myself on Jan 22 of this year: injured, eating emotionally, physically and mentally depressed…your basic nightmare.

So, that’s what I did.  I put down my phone, walked away from the laptop and WordPress app – at least as far at Fitfy was concerned – and focused on collecting myself mentally to re-engage with diet and exercise.

I addressed diet first.

Before it addressed me.

Also, because I’d gotten comfortable being physically lazy.

I’d been having a real challenging time at work with a really unhealthy emotional situation with Capt Can’t.  I’d been drinking too much and too often to self-soothe instead of dealing with the situation.  I went 29 out of 30 days with more than four drinks in me.

In addition to the drinking – as if that much alcohol wasn’t enough of a red alert – I’d been eating crap.  Candy and coffee for breakfast and chips or popcorn with my alcohol for dinner.  

It’s a wonder I survived the month.  Luckily, I had my righteous rage to sustain me.

But, changing the diet was hard.  I needed some crutches.  Like sharing my bottle of dinner wine with the Silver Fox instead of hiding out in my living room overfilling my own glass.  

See?  That’s a 50% reduction in consumption right there.

Ok, 60/40 since I’m kinda tricky.

Fine!  70/30 because he’s more disciplined than me to begin with…but, still – a reduction in consumption!

Other nights, I would switch to a diet soda overdose to distract my way through a couple days of not drinking.

Then there was reintroducing real food to my diet.  I focused on significantly reducing my “reward days”.  Actually, the goal was more to flip the ratio of healthy meals with bullshit junkfood reward meals by 180 degrees.  I had to be willing to allow myself to waste food while doing this, because normally I will resist cooking at home under the auspices of not liking leftovers.

Step one here was a win-win because I challenged myself to cook food that created leftovers I can tolerate eating, like Italian food.  The bonus here was that I had a couple days of lunches afterward.

What I was most proud of with this first step was that I was eating friggin’ Italian food.  This isn’t something I would have entertained back in June after slipping back into my old food punishing ways of plain grilled chicken and broccoli for dinner.

And lunch.

I was making fun, carbolicious food that felt like a mother’s hug in my belly.

It was a treat, but still healthy-ish.

It wasn’t popcorn.

There were a few nights I’d steer myself away from eating take out for dinner and cook up some tasty red meat protein at home, not great for me…but good enough.  Yet on other nights, I’d order that pizza and then only allow myself one reasonably sized meal off of it.  No eating the entire thing in one sitting or breakfast pizza the day after.  Wasting food isn’t my favorite thing, but I needed to force some discipline into my diet while fending off a potential binge by making myself feel deprived.

If a few slices paid the price, so be it.

Ok, enough of my public diet shaming…it’s making me crave chips for dinner.

The other piece I needed to address was exercise.

I’d already gone butt-wild at the gym early this year and ended up reinjured for my troubles.  The healing break that caused in my gym goings came at a not awesome time:  right on the heels of my Capt Can’t work stress and subsequent medicinal regimen of booze and comfort food.

I think I put on 15 lbs in 30 days.

That also didn’t help with my healing – carrying around a bunch of extra weight.

So, coming off the bench, my mind was set on cardio to slim down versus focusing on those gay muscles.  A nice chest and arms is aesthetically pleasing, but I’d have to look pretty hard to find anything darker than a dotted line between my Fitfy Mission Statement and chesticles.

Complicating the matter, the cardio machines at 24hr Fitness tended to tweak my knee injury pretty easily.  This is something I wished to avoid.

Cycling, it was.

Sadly, I wasn’t getting home from work until around 5 each day, which made getting on the bike for a couple hours hard. Particularly when you factor in that I’d need to come home, shower, make dinner and hopefully be in bed by 8 for work the next day.

I was averaging one ride a week.

No bueno.

Fortunately for me, The Filipina Fox had just started her new spin instructor gig at RevoCycle, just a few blocks from my house.  She taught Tuesday and Thursday nights and encouraged me to use the first two free gymcentive – Chrisism – to try the gym out.

I was skeptical.  

I loved the results that spin produced as a workout, but these classes are in the $13-18 range.

Too rich for my broke ass and its paycheck to paycheck existence.  I’d already let my 24hr membership lapse in arrears, though, so in this particular moment, “free” was just inside my price range.

Of course, I loved the workout.

It was all the usual good stuff about a spin workout: intensity, intervals, instruction, motivation…but their equipment was unique, too!  Their bikes are free-wheel affairs, like a real bike versus the typical weighted wheel you usually find on spin bikes.  The free-wheel meant no added stress on my knee.

Being able to walk pain free the day after class:  priceless.

After my week of free classes was up, it was time for an overdue vacation and time with the fam.  I swear, I will get around to writing about it, but for now, just know that I spent plenty of time on my bike.  And, my parents being the awesome folks they are, they slipped their broke ass boy some walking around money before putting me on a plane.  I swear, this whole “walking around money” phenomenon that happens in my family before someone gets on a plane?  I’ve always been a little jealous when I’m not the one traveling. 

But, thanks to the parentals, I had a few shekels for some spin classes.

And that’s where I’ve been putting my exercise effort, 2-3 times per week.  It’s nice, most of the classes I take are 40 minutes of spin and 20 minutes of what they call body sculpt.  Basically, that’s a 20 minute barre class…which is just enough to finish kicking my ass.

It’s been a great few weeks – this is the last week of my pass, so someone start a GoFundFatty to raise money for my next pass!  I’ve dropped enough fluff to fit quasi-comfortably into my 33″ waist shorts.  That’s a nice benefit…one that doubles my shorts wardrobe, too!  I’m still closer to 200 lbs than I’d prefer to be, but I’m moving in the right direction and I also know that some of my weight loss is camouflaged by lean muscle gain as I begin to regain leg muscle that has eroded over the last year of poor exercise.

It’s nice to see some definition peeking out from the shorts I now fit into again.  I call those muscles my eighths but people who are not cursed with chicken legs would call them quads.

Best part?

The last month of exercise has been largely pain free!  Like I said earlier, I can walk without soreness the day after class. That’s a huge plus.

My one instance of suffering was not so much a result of my exertion in class as much as it was a side effect of my usual gracefulness.

I’d been pushing myself hard in this particular class.  It was my second of the week and I’d noted the drop off in performance compared to the first class of the week earlier in my month-o-spin and wanted to push through it.

Mostly, I succeeded.

Mostly.

We were doing climb intervals.  Slowly increasing resistance until you were forced out of the seat to finish the interval, then repeating the process – the climb, if you will – about three times during a song.

It was the second song, second climb.  I already felt like I’d left it all on the last climb, so I was struggling…but determined.

Once that second climb ended and the Filipina Fox gave us permission to return to the seat…I sat.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t just sit, I fucking sat.

Hard.

Right on poor little lefty, if you get my drift.

No idea what he was doing hanging out back there, but I’ll tell you this…I didn’t pedal right for the rest of the class.

Meh.  It’s ok, though…it’s not like I’m using those muscles anyway, so I guess it could have been worse.

Fitfy: 49.33

Fitfy: 49.21

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Here’s a draft from almost two months back from my Fitfy theme of posts.  Look at the second bullet and you’ll see how a little encouragement is definitely not what my innate procrastination skills need.

– I finally started my sugar detox.

– The hall pass from the Fox.

– Watching Working Girl…Melanie Griffith is only 10 years older than me and looks like hell.  Sigourney Weaver is almost two decades older than me and is an untouched, statuesque beauty.  

– What’s that teach me?

I’ve been aware of my lack of follow through on this weekly theme.  It’s a combination of reasons, really:

– I wasn’t feeling 100% physically after my first three months back into a gym routine and needed to let my Needle Man do his thing without interfering in that healing.

– Mentally, right around the end of June/beginning of July was challenging for me because it was right when the work conflict with Capt Can’t began.

– As I was feeling physically better and wanting to jump start myself out of my emotional funk, The Fox went down so my gym buddy was out of commission.

But while in my notes I had made a point of using Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver as a cautionary tale regarding aging and how shortcuts in the moment can cost a lot superficially in the future – something I knew from my past use of fat burners and performance enhancers – it was that last bullet that really proved most valuable.

What’s that teach me?

When I review my posts from the first quarter of this initiative, I can see how quickly they turned into a pedantic laundry list of a workout journal and a food diary.

Neither of those are bad things, in and of themselves, but neither was anything other than a part of the whole result I was aiming for by my 50th birthday.  I wanted to come out of this year with a more whole-istic happiness with my older self, letting go of the narcissistic twenty-something shell person that I was half a life ago and valuing my being based on my internal qualities as an individual.

And I wanted a healthy shell to carry that individual around for the next few decades.

Food diaries and workout journals were really a small fraction of the task as a whole.

Frankly, it was the downward spiral that Capt Can’t initiated that pulled my nose out of the ass of those two elements.

Sidebar:  is “downward spiral” redundant?  I never hear anyone refer to an upward spiral.

So, there I was…all butt-hurt because a co-worker bullied me.

And got away with it.

It took a while to realize – or remember, at any rate – that I have no control over another person’s actions or behavior.  I was stuck emotionally reliving each of the other significant bullying moments from my past – and there have been too many – every day at work and self medicating with comfort food and too much of Oregon’s craft beer and wine every night.  Seriously, in a four week period I drank every night but one.

It was quite a cycle.

So, I focused on letting go of that cycle and embracing a different one.

My bicycle.

Since then, I’ve been wanting to write a Fitfy post about cycling but have also been wary of just falling into that same pattern from earlier in the year.  I will post again in Fitfy, but I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to get back to the right balance before I do.

Y’know, the balance between a person who is emotionally at 100% and physically determined to go from being 110% of a person to just 100% of a person – zing! – without cutting into that initial sense of emotional well-being in the process.

Yeah, that sounds easy.

But standby, maybe your patience will be rewarded…

Fitfy: 49.21