Embrace the fear

Dear Diary,

I realised this morning that my everyday monologue resembles something like similar to the blog: an inarticulate "Mark Corrigan" style of thoughts with some humour and many parts pedestrian thought. My overriding thought for some reason is my irregular bowels. Two things affect my weight loss that really make a difference except for eating, those are how much food I get out of my system by poop and how much energy I get out from my body (by excercise). For the last couple of workouts, I've only managed to do about 90 minutes in my workout time. Over the past couple of weeks I've made a routine of doing a 1500kcal burn, which includes an hour on the x-trainer, 15-25 mins calisthenics/weight training and then an hour on the rowing machine to do 10k. I just haven't been able to do the 10k  over the past two workouts due to fatigue. All the factors were good for me to do another hour, such as: I was at the gym, I'm standing up and the most important one - sexy ladies around to motivate my evolution-proof mamalian sexualised brain. The advanced homo (sapiens) in me decided to stop due to fatigue.

Over the past few workouts however, I have started some new routines. I've decided to use this shoulder and back advanced plate machine and I've also upped the ante on the weights. I've started doing deadlifts and using the dumbells to do a thing called the 'skullcrusher' and this wide arm excercise which is supposed to be good for the pecs. Even though my past couple of workouts have been shorter and less calorific, they have at least been harder to do. I think my muscles were getting too used to the x-trainer and rowing, although that's a good thing too. Pain is also good for progress.

With the possible exception of sunday and saturday, which was nearly a week ago now, my diet has been okay. I've reached closer to 1800-2000kcal than 1500, but I won't beat myself up about it because that's not terrible. I feel my mindset changing a little bit with regards to my diet psychology. I've made a little promise to myself, if I say it on this blog then its concrete: I don't want to do another takeaway like KFC or McDonalds until I'm 200lbs. It's funny as soon as I say that I've already entertained a loophole, I'm going to work tonight and when I'm coming home around midnight I will feel positively ravenous, coming home from the tube will entail a walk down 6 (I counted just now in my head) fast food places that normally tempt me. I'm trying to negotiate it in my head: if I don't eat anything for the rest of the day, I'll be 'available' for some fatty fast food goodness!

Perhaps the one pressing motivation about my avoidance of fast food would be, or rather, should be: is the fact that I am not earning much right now. I'm just making enough to make ends meet for the next few weeks. I'm not even sure if I can afford July and August. I need to get working by july or august. I feel afraid of setting a task like that because the job market and all is so uncertain, its not as if I haven't been applying to things. I'm starting to sound defensive right now. Why haven't I, after all this fucking time managed to get a job? am I simply not hungry enough??

When I ask that to myself it brings up a lot of dark feelings and thoughts inside me. I've been afraid to talk about this in counselling and especially in this blog. Lately I've been really jealous of my friends, and I find out more about other people I knew from university and such. They all are successful, very few of them are doing as shit as I am. Many of them are teachers, some work in advertising, a few in media, a couple in banking, one guy works for a musical instrument distributor, one guy works as a comedy agent! A few guys I know work in academia or around research. One girl in my intern office was 1-2 years down from me in the philosophy department at uni, I knew her friends but I dont think she knew that I knew them. Anyway, now that I've said it I think I've cleared the air emotionally. Secrets are terrible to keep. I think the worst kinds of secrets are the ones you keep from yourself. You can be aware of it on a conscious level, but you never really want to face them. Those are the kinds of thoughts that always creep up on you, and they seem more menacing especially because you don't confront them.

My mantra for the past couple of weeks has been: embrace the fear. When I'm going to the gym, or when I decide to go, one of the main thoughts in my head is something to the effect of: face this now! Yesterday I went because my brain felt like mush. I did as much as I could of the schedule tasks (by the way I'm doing pretty well on the schedule, despite the 5 day disappearance of my internet!), and then I thought to myself that normally in this situation I either lay down and rest while listening to a podcast, have a wank or just feel so aggrivated and bored and lazy that I just end up binging and watchign family guy on the Sky+. Instead, I decided to gym it. Gym'll fix it!

When I'm at the gym, I often make a habit of facing my darkest thoughts, my greatest fears. They are very deep cutting and they still have power over me to hurt me. But what I do is I don't let myself succumb to them, but think about them just enough to upset me, sometimes it upsets me more than a little bit and then my body just slows down during the repetitions I'm making on the x trainer or the rowing machine. I make myself aware of that, by the declining speedometer reading and I push on to the speed I kept. I feel there is some deep metaphor here (I am using the word deep too much in this post), when the pain of memories become great, it slows down my present behaviour. I become aware of this and keep moving, either in spite of those memories, or because of them, I'm not sure. What I do know is that when I face those fears, it makes me feel stronger. When I face those fears I internalise a little bit of it to make me push on harder. There is an extreme version of this, if I act on emotion alone when I'm training, a pure rage or pure feeling of something else, I go as hard as I can and it doesn't last long, eventually, usually after only a minute or so, I just burn out. That's no good for extended cardio. It might be good for short term sprinting, but what I need in my mind when i'm doing cardio is balance. A forced balance. It's like when I get up in the mornings, I feel terrible and hopeless, but I force myself out. I force myself into a certain rhythm in the day. Not because I want to, but because I have to. because I've set that for myself, just like how I've set myself to beat my 10k in 57 minutes or less, because I'm aiming for between a 650-700kcal burn on the x-trainer. I push myself because I must, an old part of myself resurfaces, a good part of a person I once was.

Progress is slow, but it is progress.

I've managed to write a really long blog post. It took like half an hour to write. I'm really glad I wrote this post, I'm gald I've said what I had to say on this, because I've been skirting around these feelings and I've forced myself to just blurt it out. Sometimes it helps to have a 'eh, I don't give a shit' attitude to your feelings. Anyway, I'm going to put some money in my oyster card, because I want an excuse to go for a walk.

Laters