Taking some off

After my first tri season.

I’m a clydesdale. I will more than likely always be a clydesdale-class athlete. No, I’m not an equine. Clydesdale is a class of triathlete that weighs more than 200 pounds. (Athena Class for the ladies over 145…) For those who aren’t familiar with the world of multi-sport, an athlete over 200 pounds can choose to either compete in a Clydesdale division, or they can compete in their normal age group category. You can’t do both in one race, and Clydes usually don’t get counted toward Elite and Pro standings. (This is why I don’t race in that division.)

Not to mention, there’s a tad bit of animosity between clydes and age-groupers. (Often times, they put the Clydes and Athena divisions in with the beginner wave at triathlons, so all these new people have to compete against these huge people, no matter their size. Heh… welcome to triathlon, folks!)

First, let me preface this by saying I at one point weighed 283 pounds and had a 42 inch waist. Yeah, I was a bit of a whale.

My story starts back in Florida. While I was in the film program, I was working out a little. The issue back then is that I had to walk everywhere, since my $500 mountain bike had been stolen from the bike rack at school — with a Kryptonite U-Lock even! Florida in the summer really sucks to walk in! 108 Degrees in 110% relative humidity? Eww.

Anyway, about three months after I got the gym membership, I moved to an apartment closer to school, and consequently, closer to the gym. I started going constantly for two weeks, then a hurricane came through and knocked a tree through the window at the gym. With the flood damage, they had to shut it down and move. (Ironically, they moved a block away from my old apartment.)

I didn’t go back very much after that. I started in on my computer animation degree, and 130% of my time was spent doing class work and sitting in labs. Sometimes 12 hours a day, sometimes even 36 hours at a stretch, I was sitting in front of a computer learning the craft. I was hooked on Breves for my caffeine fix (which is like a latte, only with half n’ half), and my life was almost entirely sedentary. While working a freelance camera job for a concert in Orlando, by the end of the night it felt like I had a stabbing pain in my back.

I saw a chiropractor shortly thereafter, and he was sure I slipped a disk. What I didn’t know at the time was that I had done so much sitting over the previous 16 months, that I had weakened my back muscles and succumbed to levo-scoliosis (curvature of the spine in one direction).

I happily graduated, and, to my chagrin, moved back to Wyoming and lived with my parrents for a few months. When mom took me clothes shopping, size 38 jeans weren’t fitting anymore. (Before I went to college, 38’s were comfy. I was could do 36’s for the most part.) I was convinced, convinced, that there was this huge conspiracy with clothing manufacturers to label their sizes smaller. Don’t ask me why, I was just convinced. I didn’t want to admit that I was, indeed, getting bigger.

I became depressed, started getting bigger, and soon, I was put on Zoloft. I became a bump on the couch. A living, breathing, pathetic bump. I was on it for two months and hadn’t even worked on my reel, which was my intention when I came home. It sucked all the motivation out of me, like I was just along for the ride. I was miserable; in a constant state of purgatory. Finally, I weaned myself off the Zoloft, and after a week I started feeling a lot better. Then, over that summer, we made a motion picture called Stagbunny. I spend the months after that trying to start a CG company, which fell through the floor. Depression hit me like a wall, but I hated the way I felt on Zoloft even more. I was eating, getting bigger, and failing at life.

I saw the doctor (a medical doctor, not Doctor Dan) and when she weighed me, I was at 283. Almost 300. I was devastated, because I have never been that heavy. Looking back at some pictures of me from Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, I was chubby.

It didn’t help that my mom and all my friends, bless them all, told me I looked fine, because my height. That I hid my weight well. It was bullshit. (Oooooh! I said a swear!) My back was getting worse. I had an MRI done on my spine, and that’s when we discovered the scoliosis. The neurosurgeon told me that the weight I had wasn’t healthy for my skeletal structure, since tall people have joint problems anyway. They wanted to send me on my way with a steroid shot directly in the spine, and told me that I would probably need a fusion within four years.

Life changed dramatically when I moved back to Denver.

In the midst of my Wyoming depression, I tried swimming with a USS age group team. It was mostly high school kids and my old coach from back in the day. I was really self-conscious about my body and my man-bosoms, not to mention all the activity and my lack of health were draining my adrenals faster than anything, and we couldn’t figure out why. Drained adrenals seemed to worsen the depression.

Sufficed, mom was a little hacked when she found out that I had joined a masters team down here in Denver.

Anyway, I moved down for a better chance at finding a job in my industry. I was swimming with the team two nights a week, and dietarily I was back to bad habits — those Breve things. I was just hanging in there, but I felt a little better depression-wise. I got to start seeing Doctor Dan again, and he worked on ironing out my back. (I thank all that is good for that man. Seriously!)

After I interviewed for my current job, I went with my mom and my sister to Montana for a family reunion. My sister and I fought the whole way there. This is where I have to be careful and redact myself a bit. Mom and her side of the family have always been into natural cures for everything, which I believe in to an extent. I believe that keeping healthy, and preventative care, is a better way to go, and will keep you going for a lot longer. There are some things that I read that do make some sense, but the methodology behind them is way too extreme. I find that a middle-ground sort of approach is the best.

One such book states that a person should avoid chlorine at all costs, because it causes little organisms called Flukes to soak through your skin and get absorbed by your brain, and it does all this stuff to your body chemistry. This is one thing that I think went a little way too far, and I knew it wasn’t the reason I was all over the place. But mom called me out on it, and in one of the bouts between my sister and I, she brought it out that I said that I thought the idea of the flukes was crazy. Mom wasn’t too happy about that, either. It was a pretty tense trip for the first half, and I was being a pretty big a-hole then. (Actually, now my sister and I are even closer than we ever have been.)

While we were in Montana, we saw a nutritionist / kinesiologist in Butte, who specializes in the Eat Right for your Blood Type diet. We did a little testing, and she put me on a diet and a host of supplements. Funny thing is that I wasn’t even supposed to see her that day, but boy, am I glad I did. Through the testing we did, we also found out that an earring that I had at the time was pushing up against a pressure point in my ear; the one that regulates thyroid function.

Sing it if you know it… the knee bone is connected to the… well… the thyroid, the adrenals and the pituitary gland all work together, and if one is strained, it causes stress on the others. The endocrine system is a complex and amazing thing, really. This one little earring was costing me a whole lot of trouble. (This is why I haven’t gotten any other piercings since!)

In the months that followed, while keeping to the diet and swimming with the team, I dropped about 20 pounds. I was feeling so much better, and better yet, things were working internally like they were supposed to. No more depression. Sure, I have my bad days, and I have my good days. Take them in stride – it’s about all you can do!

Then, when people told me how good I was looking, I got determined to drop a few more pounds and thin out a bit. I figured I could start running to drop a little more.

First thing about me that most of my friends would tell you is that I hate to run. I’ve never been a runner. Still don’t like it to this day, but I do it to do it. Went out, got some shoes, some running attire, and started running. Motivation was hard, but I figured since I spent so much for the shoes, I needed to be pounding the trail.

Don't mind the clothing strewn about on the bed; I was in the process of doing laundry and came across my old jeans, and figured I should take a "fat pants" picture.

When I told my good friend, Kel, that I was also running, he told me I should try a triathlon. Me? A triathlon? My head started spinning with the thought, but I figured why not? (Hey, a year before that, if you would have told me I was going to participate in a triathlon, I would have told you that you were off your rocker.) I signed up for the TriGlenwood, and I had a goal. I had my motivation.

I went to the bike shop and bought my Trek. Over the next several months I put more money into it to make it more geared for triathlon use. I was riding three times a week, running two or three times a week, and swimming three times a week. I even did my first 100K bike tour that summer.

The day of my triathlon, I weighed 206 pounds. In a little over 8 months, with diet and exercise, I dropped 77 pounds. I also dropped 8 pant sizes. For the first time since high school, I can fit into a size 34 jean! When I started at the gym, my weight started going up slowly, but my but I was still dropping body fat. I had never felt so wonderful and fulfilled in my life! And behold! I have the fat pants to prove it!

And I’m still going! I’m not concerned about my weight right now, but maintaining a healthy body into my middle age. It’s easier to get into shape and stay that way when you’re young than when you get older. Not to mention a lot of people will tell you that Triathlon is really addicting.

It is!

Goals for the summer of 2009

What I want to look like at the end of the summer.

Other than my usual training regimen, my big goal is to maintain a healthy weight and gain more muscle mass. Specifically, I want my chest and abs to look like this. Right now, I’m still holding onto a little stubborn belly fat, but then again, the season really hasn’t kicked into high gear yet.

Granted, with genetics, it’s probably going to be a royal pain in the moose butt to get sculpted anything close to this, but it’s a goal to work toward.

The extra body fat I should drop when I start doing a good amount of running (while keeping with it.) The chest and the abs is going to be a combination of gym work, core work, diet, et al.

I guess it’s time again to really try to give up processed sugars like I did last year, drink a lot more water, and jump back on a nutritional bandwagon.

So, I’ll post the results as I go, week by week.