Week 13

212.0/213.7

"It is not impossibilities which fill us with the deepest despair, but possibilities which we have failed to realize." - Robert Mallett

This weekend my mother came in from out of town, mainly to see Stacey on her last few days of elementary school. She seemed stunned when she saw me. The day she came, my weight was 212-ish, roughly 43 pounds lighter than the last time she saw me. It was a nice little moment, reassurance that my efforts are noticeable.

This week I got back to feeling strong, overcoming a two-week slump that involved sickness, scraped up ankles, and leg soreness. Despite feeling stronger now, I've decided that the 5k run I mentioned last post isn't looking promising. Running that distance isn't out of my reach, but I don't have the legs for it yet, and three more weeks of training won't be enough to put me there. Maybe by the end of summer I could reliably run a 5k, but if my fitness quest has taught me anything, it's that pushing too hard for an arbitrary goal is dangerous. Persistent, moderate pressure over time is the way to go. For now I'll keep to training for soccer, and after the season is over my legs should be able to take a good beating running the bike trails.

Sunday was my second full soccer game, and both my physical and game performance were improved. I had a few good touches, but my main contribution was keeping up with the forwards as they ran around unable to find many good shots. It was hard, and a couple times I was winded and lucky that my team kept control of the ball for a while. By the end of the game, I had started missing easy kicks and falling out of position, so I pulled myself from the game after, again, roughly 50 minutes of field time.

We ended up losing the game 1-0. It was still fun for me and most of the team, but I noticed a pair of the more competitive folks on the team acting like poor sports, as they spent a lot of the game flirting with getting yellow carded for losing their tempers with the referees. I wonder if part of the $1440 league fee goes towards referee stress-management counseling. I hesitate to say I'm not competitive, but I don't have the same level of emotional investment in the outcome of games as some of the players.

Watching people who I'm playing with lose their cool is an irritant, and one of the things that kept me out of organized sports in high school. "Crush ya enemy, see dem driven before you, here da lamentation of da women" ... just not my thing. I suspect most players are more like me, and the loud and angry ones are just more noticeable. I like being out there, and I'm going to give dealing with the angry folks the ol' college try, and not run away in thin-skinned abhorrence to basic human conflict.

After the game last week, I was stiff and sore getting out of bed until Thursday, and was not eager to walk for pleasure. This week, Monday morning was hell, but I felt better later in the day. Getting up Tuesday wasn't hard, and I was feeling well enough then for my standard long walk at lunchtime. I also feel I'll be able to go run the stairs at the dam again tonight, so this week's recovery is an order of magnitude faster.

I'm officially taking longer to lose weight. My average number of days it takes to lose 10 pounds hovered around 18 - 20 days since I started in March, and then in mid-May it started to drift upward. Since then, the days-per-10-pounds went up to 25 for a while, and today it is at 30 days. This must be the "second wall" that begs you to give up and go back to being fat and lazy. The first one happened about week 3, when I stopped losing 5 pounds a week, and my joints were sore from push-ups and jumping jacks. I got past that wall, and I can get past this one.

I'd like to improve my loss rate again, but even if I just hold steady at my current loss rate, I can hit my goal weight, 185 by my kid's birthday party, August 25. But again, pushing too hard for an arbitrary goal is dangerous, so I'm just going to keep at it patiently and persistently, and let my body do what it can. Patience is the hard part right now, when my BMI is 25.8, where losing just a few more pounds would put me under 25, and no longer technically overweight.

It's hard to stay frustrated now, however. The positives are overwhelming, far outweighing my lag in loss rate and the overweight classification I still haven't technically shed. At a mere 13 weeks into a training and diet program, I can play 50 minutes of soccer a week, run up 300 stairs, and burn 450 Calories playing a dance game with my kid. I can also survive multiple stresses on the body in one day. Yesterday, for example, I took an hour long walk at lunch, mowed my yard when I got home, and helped a man in my church group tear down a buckling cement block wall. My second new set of pants are now 4 inches smaller (38" waists, where I started out wearing 42"s), and are themselves starting to get roomy. Lastly, and this is the important part, I've noticed women noticing me again.