Cocktail Confessions

It’s not just a name for a recent Simon Pegg comedy flick, it’s how I feel lately.

I realize that people are different, have different lifestyles, different habits, and unique metabolisms and maybe ever perhaps a specific gene inherited from their parents that will dictate how skinny or husky one naturally is. 

Some people are prone to be more athletic than others always striving to shave a second off their personal best times, or jump a little higher, lift a bit more.  Then there are plenty of people who enjoy life, enjoy a nice meal not worrying whether the saturated fat count is 5g or 6g, but they enjoy the taste and experience of a meal with family and friends.  There’s another segment of society out there that eats out of some type of internal manifestation “issue” such as stress, boredom, low self-image, anxiety, and even depression.

I think personally I am subject to a mix of all of these factors above.  From a genetic standpoint, I’m a bit huskier than average.  I’ve always been slightly larger than ‘average’, but would never consider myself obese.  As a young child I recall struggling a bit with weight gain and no matter how much I played outside, I have always had a difficult time shedding weight.  A couple of weight milestones stick out in my mind for whatever reason:.  When I was 16 year old I remember weighing about 167lbs and pretty much weighed that most of my high school tenure until I took gymnastics and became a male cheerleader my senior year.  I’m pretty sure I graduated high school at 178lbs. 

As I entered college I took up two new hobbies: weight lifting and beer drinking.  While the weight lifting transformed my muscularity into something my friends soon began to notice, I’m sure the beer drinking didn’t help matters in other areas of my body that weren’t getting defined by muscle.  By the end of my freshman year in college, I not only had gained the ’freshmen 15′, I also had the beginnings of arms and a chest and recall weighing 197lbs.  When I got married I was able to shed a few pounds and at the age of 33, I weight 216lbs but I could also bench press 300+ lbs.  By the way, I’m 5’10″.

Fast forward a few years and here I am welcoming more and more gray hair into my temples and goatee, have had rotator cuff surgery twice on the same shoulder, and thus my involvement at the gym has gone down considerably.  I still go to the gym, but not as regularly as I once did.  While I still eat relatively healthy, I do have some bad eating habits, such as skipping breakfast most of the time, and eating dinner too late in the day (often 7pm or later), where I then just sit on the couch until I go to bed.  And let’s not even talk about dairy…I love my cheese (as most Italians do).  It doesn’t matter that I walk a lot at work, or walk my dog daily when I get home, or even only go to the gym on weekends now…..I’ve noticed my weight ballooning to a current 234lbs! 

I recently saw some pictures of myself  that my friend had snapped when I was shirtless afew weeks back in Palm Springs, I was a little disappointed with myself.  While my chest has shrunk a bit from the inability to lift heavily any longer, it appears that my once established pecs have somewhat migrated around my gut.  I’ve even noticed that my 36″ pants are starting to feel snug, and I’d really like to get down to a 34″ or better yet a 32″ waist again.

I doubt unless I get very sick or embrace some radical new diet and have the willpower to control myself everyday, I don’t think I’ll ever get under 200lbs again.  I think a nice comfortable weight for me would be 210-215.  I feel that is realistic and attainable, and I know when I am very stressed out about things I can easily drop 5-7 lbs in a matter of days….but that’s the unhealthy way.

So despite the fact that I talk about different libations (I’m not quitting that outright), I’ll have to be much more mindful of the amount of libations I consume, eat earlier in the day, exercise a bit of portion control, and try and step up my aerobic activity a bit more.

Perhaps I will start my own personal weight challenge and update it weekly here for the time being and track my progress.  Seeing that this past Saturday (July 18th) I weighed 234 lbs at the gym, that’s a good place to start.  By making some simple changes, I’m going to try and drop 5lbs in the next 2 weeks.  I’m setting a target of 229 by August 3rd.  I’ll keep you posted.