Oh no! I used the dreaded ‘N’ word…. well before you go flying off in a rage because I used the word nigger, lets look at the definition as shows on dictionary.com

–noun
1. 	Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive.
a. 	a black person.
b. 	a member of any dark-skinned people.
2. 	Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive. a person of any race or
        origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc.
3. 	a victim of prejudice similar to that suffered by blacks; a person who
        is economically, politically, or socially disenfranchised.

a person of any race or origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc. Sounds about right to me…

I have had this feeling for awhile now. Fat people have become the new niggers of the world. Don’t believe me? Try and get on a plane if you are obese. Just ask movie directory and actor Kevin Smith. He was recently kicked off of a plane because the pilot determined he was a “safety risk”. He was too big to fly. I have seen plenty of remarks about fat people in the news and on news talk shows in the past several months. Fat people don’t deserve health insurance because they cost more (what about people who eat too much candy, smoke, use aspartame, have unprotected sex or drink too much soda?). Fat people shouldn’t be able to fly because they are so huge. Fat people this, fat people that… what’s next? Are we going to have our own water fountains? Our own bathrooms? Are we going to have to sit in the back of the bus too?

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It seems as though life has been handing me bucketful after bucketful of fail recently. Lots of things have been seemingly going wrong and even those situations that seem to be taking a turn for the better have things that just make me scratch my head and say wtf. I must have pissed on somebody’s grave one night when i was younger or something to get this kind of karma going on. While I won’t get into the full details of what has been going on. I will say that the physical therapy I was getting ended in August. I got burned as a result of the Estim treatment they were giving me. It was a second degree burn on my back that I still have a scar from. It undid most all of the work I put in going there. The tension and stress that was created from the situation brought back most of the issues I was having with my back in the first place, with the exception of the extreme pain. That situation gave me a serious hit to my self confidence and affected my work output. In any case, fast forward a few months… Add in some of the stresses of a weak economy and less work and the financial outlook in my household is pretty bleak. I come across what seems to be a pretty good opportunity to pick up more work that will allow me to continue working for myself, yet have someone else send work to me for extra money. The person I have been talking to who is putting their name on this company is well connected and respected. They will most certainly be able to corner a substantial part of the market and get a large number of jobs to keep the work flowing. Good deal, or so I think. After some back and forth with the person I believe is running this new company, I get an email from the person whom I suspect will be my superior. My issue? This person is someone who I have known for sometime. This person is someone who I have a complete lack of respect for. This person is someone who I believe will be a hindrance rather than a catalyst. A person who I have absolutely no desire to do work for or with. Since receiving that email early yesterday. I have been contemplating all of those things. I have been looking for the positives in the situation aside from the extra money (which is sorely needed right now). I see none. As I was discussing the issues with my wife earlier. I was trying to come up with reasons why I should push ahead and not just retreat from it, waiting for the next opportunity which I seem to do more often than not. I came up with the title of my post and what I am going to try to implement as my new philosophy on moving forward. Consider every hurdle as an opportunity to jump higher.

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So I mentioned in my previous post that I did a number on my back. For the past several years I have had pain issues with my back or more directly with my hips / legs. I figured most of the problem was because I was a fatass and I would be better off as I lost weight. After losing 100 pounds the issue wasn’t really getting better and in fact was pretty bad at times. A few years ago, I wet to the doctor to have it checked out. He sent me for some Xrays and told me that I had a condition known as Spondylolisthesis which describes the anterior displacement of a vertebra or the vertebral column in relation to the vertebrae below. More directly, spondylolisthesis is a forward slip of one vertebra (i.e., one of the 33 bones of the spinal column) relative to another. Spondylolisthesis usually occurs towards the base of your spine in the lumbar area. There are 5 grades of spondylolisthesis that describe the amount of slippage. My condition is apparently a grade 2 slippage. The doctor sent me to an orthopedist who recommended Physical Therapy at the time. I probably should have gone then, but I didn’t because of the time involved and any other number of excuses I came up with at the time.

I dealt with the pain for the most part and on the really bad days took tylenol or darvocet. A week or so into June, right after my dad passed away, I started spending more time outside trying to do more so I had to spend less time thinking about his passing. I hauled about 1000 pound of stone from my drive way to various parts of my yard, built my wife 2 raised gardens and then filled them with about 1000 pounds of dirt. I got alot of other things done as well. But, in the process I really screwed my back up. Now I was faced with a whole new pain and this one didn’t always go away. The pain was pretty much in the low center of my back and was almost instant and very intense. I went back to the doctor who suggested physical therapy again and because the pills weren’t working anymore, this time I decided to give it a try.

I started around the end of June. I was going 3 times a week for the last week or two of June and most of July. I cut back to two days a week for the past two weeks and will probably stick with that for the rest of Summer. My sessions last for between 1.5 and 2 hours generally and it is tough to take that much time 3 days a week during summer because of the kids being home from school. I hope to add in the 3rd day once they go back to school at the end of August. Some days have been really tough, but overall I have been seeing the benefits of going. I feel more fit, I have definitely developed more muscle and have started seeing some results on the scale the past 2 weeks or so.

When I started I was doing 3 miles in 15 minutes on a Total Body Recumbent Bike and following that up with a variety of exercises to help strengthen my abs, hamstrings and various other muscles. After a few weeks of this, though, I started having problems with my calves and shins. I was having pain even on the days I wasn’t going to the gym and wasn’t able to do much of anything on my days off without pain. They adjusted my plan and put me on the treadmill instead of the bike. I have been doing that for about 3 weeks now and it seems to be going much better. It is harder for me to stay on the treadmill as long as I could the bike, but I am not dealing with that extra pain and seem to be getting up to a pretty good heart rate while I am on it. Some days I manage 8 minutes and some I manage up to about 12. It depends on the pain I am feeling as a result of the Spondylolisthesis.

All of this has renewed my search for decent workout equipment that will support my large mass. While the best solution would be simply to go out and walk. It doesn’t work so well because of this pain. When I can’t go anymore. I can’t go anymore and it’s kind of tough to just stop and sit down for a few minutes when you are out walking. I have been doing some research into treadmills and found a few web sites that have some pretty good looking equipment that will support overweight people up to 500+ pounds. I am hoping to talk to a few of the companies in the next couple of weeks to see about getting something. I would love to review some of the different equipment they have and rate it here from easiest to hardest and provide details of the results I get from each. I guess we will see whether that happens or not. But, I know one thing for sure. If I can finally get a break from this pain, there will be no stopping me. I am really enjoying the exercise aspect of the therapy and I want to do more. I push myself too hard some days which isn’t entirely good because then it creates more pain for me in the days that follow. But, I really want to be able to do more and when I start seeing some improvement, I start pushing harder and harder. I guess the pain is my body’s way of saying slow down for a bit. In any case, I will post more about my research into workout equipment for overweight people once I have had a chance to talk to a few of the companies.

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My father was a marine. My favorite picture of my dad is one of him in his Dress Blues. He looks so proud in that picture and like someone you can be proud of. He was stationed out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Though I don’t know many of the details, I do know that he was in Guantanamo, Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I heard many stories about his days as a Marine. See my dad loved to tell stories. As a kid, and as an adult, I heard them many, many, many times. More of his stories dealt with his downtime rather than any active duty or actual service. So, I don’t have much to go by other than the fact that he enjoyed spending time with his fellow Marines and they gave him a nickname of suicide… not because he was nuts or did insane stuff in the field. But because he would take a shot of everything on the bar at one time. I think I heard that story the most. Growing up, I enjoyed the stories my dad would tell to a point. Into my teenage years, they got a little stale and I tended to stop listening. I still heard him tell the stories to anyone who would listen, and they never changed.

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One thing I have changed in recent months is that I have stopped going to the nutritionist. I had come to the point where I was going once every other month and my July appointment had to be rescheduled and I just didn’t bother with it. The last few weeks I have been thinking about the appointments I did have over a year and a half span. Before I started going to the nutritionist, or even my first visit to the doctor before he referred me to her I had done a lot of homework and had myself in what I thought was a good mind set for losing weight. I had clear goals on my nutrition needs and had definite weight loss goals in mind. I was headstrong and determined and I was making the changes that needed to be made and getting myself into a different lifestyle. As I think back to my visits with the nutritionist now, I wonder if she didn’t inadvertently help to undermine that mindset. I am not trying to blame her for my slow down in weight loss and my lost efforts. But, I have been thinking alot about the things that she said to me during my visits and the mental impact they have had, at least on what seems to be a subconscious level.

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Well, It has been forever since I have taken time to post in my journal. I figured I would take a few minutes and add an update even though there isn’t much to update on. I have pretty much settled into the weight I was at a few months ago (370). Not sure when my last update was, but I think it was back around February or March. I haven’t really done much in the way of weight loss in the past 3 months. I was working at it for awhile. But, as the economy got worse (To the extent that people have had less and less disposable income. Seeing as who you ask they might still say the economy is doing good), so did my bottom line (at least in financial terms) and I found myself with less and less time to focus on eating well and working out.

I have noticed that as I am spending more hours working, I am opting for easier, quicker meals. The ones that come in a package with tons of calories and not so healthy ingredients. I have even sunk to the point of buying snacks like oreos and chips again. *gasp* While I have managed to maintain my weight give or take 10 pounds, I started getting to the point where I wasn’t feeling as healthy. So, I decided it was time to try and start doing things a little healthier again. The past few weeks, we have been eating much more natural foods with tons of salad and fresh vegetables. I have been enjoying it and I am definitely noticing an improvement in the way I feel.

I have also taken advantage of summer being here. Not as much as I would like to but, I have been getting out more. Work has kept me from getting into the pool as much as I would like to and we have gone to only a fraction of the state parks and local attractions I would have liked to this summer. One thing I did manage to squeeze in was the second annual camping trip for my son and I. We went to Watkins Glenn State Park in New York State. It was nice to spend 5 days with just my son and nature. We got a lot done in those 5 days too. I will post more on the a little later.

All in all, it has been a pretty uneventful summer with regards to weight loss and exercise. I am hoping that the recent decline in oil prices continues and things start looking up giving me an opportunity to start focusing mroe on exercise as the cooler weather of fall arrives.

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In an attempt to try and generate some useful and informative posts on the weigh in forums, I am running a contest. It is a simple contest with prizes being awarded to 6 winners. The prizes include The Calorie King Food and Exercise Journal, The CalorieKing – Calorie, Fat & Carbohydrate Counter 2008 Edition and a 1 year subscription to calorieking.com. All that you need to do in order to win, is register for a free account on the weigh in forums and start posting. Click here to find out all of the contest details.

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Well, despite my strong start to this year, I have kind of strayed from my motivational high and moved into a holding pattern. My biggest issue right now is time. I have none of it. I seem to do best when I can focus on eating well and making the best choices. When I have the time to figure out the best foods to eat, plan a menu, figure out my calorie intake and write about my progress. It’s fairly obvious I haven’t had much time to write about progress or lack of it seeing as I haven’t made a post in close to a month. I just haven’t had the time lately, so I have just kind of gone into a holding pattern at around 360lb. At my last visit to the nutritionist, she suggested that I was her success story and indicated that if I never lost another pound, my weight loss to this point could still be considered a huge success. I suppose in the text book sense that is all fine and dandy.

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Today was my return visit with the nutritionist. I haven’t written much in the last few weeks. I have been busy with work and slightly discouraged at the fact that things have been harder this time around. My weigh in today put me at 2 pounds less than my visit last month and the past two weekly weigh-ins have showed no change from the last one I posted a dew weeks back. I haven’t stuck to the walks on a daily basis. Although I am still taking them, a few issues have made it difficult to stay with them every day. The first being the weather. The town I live in must never have heard of snow plows. When we get snow, it stays on half of the roads until it is gone. Makes me wonder why it is I pay taxes. Another issue has been my back. I have been having problems with my back for years. I finally had some X-rays last February to figure out what was going on. I always figured it was just from being a fat ass that caused the pain and once I started losing weight, it would diminish. Was I wrong. I found out that I have an issue with my lower back called Lumbar Spondylolisthesis. Here is the information from my doctor about it.

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I made my monthly trek to the nutritionist today. It wasn’t the monthly weigh in I had hoped for but I still showed a loss. I dropped two pounds since my last visit. Im not exactly sure how that is, since I lost 5 pounds on my home scale making a 3 pound difference in there somewhere. In any case today I had my Resting Metabolic Rate tested so I knew how many calories my body burns in a day just by doing nothing. If you have never had this test done. You should. It’s tons of fun. First you get to clamp your nose shut with this tight plastic clamp. I wish I had a mirror handy so I could have seen that! Then you get to sit with a small plastic machine with a mouthpiece attachment sticking out of your mouth for the next 10 minutes or so while you breath through it. I wasn’t in the best of moods today. So, I was too pissed off to be bothered by how ridiculous I might have looked and just read through some papers the doctor gave me on weight loss tips and diet suggestions while I sat and breathed. In the end it said my Resting Metabolic Rate was 2550 calories. So, if I were to do nothing every day and set my calorie target at 2000 I should see a 2 pound per week loss. Now I have something to set my mark at and all I need to do is get myself tracking calorie intake on a daily basis and I will be better off.

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