Run, Carlos, Run

Here's a guest blog post from Kristin Sheppard, author of MadBetty.com, a kickass blog about pop culture, Austin food and all sorts of other awesomeness. Check out the guest blog I wrote over there about Deadliest Catch, the TV show.

Carlos might just be onto something with this running goal. It's a great way to stay in shape, doesn't require a lot of expensive equipment or training and virtually anyone can do it. Even more important, running never goes out of style

From the early days of Madonna jogging in dark sunglasses and red lipstick to Bill Clinton and the Secret Service running around DC, icons from all walks of life lace up their sneakers and hit the road. They are just like us! Well, sort of...

One of my favorite celebrity runners is Will Ferrell. His Boston Marathon time of under four hours took everyone by surprise, but he had secretly been a serious runner for quite some time. I heard he used water to stay hydrated, because milk was a bad choice.

Reese Witherspoon is also an avid runner, logging in an hour every day. And Fergie was seen all over Hollywood running with her water belt, giant sunglasses and monster headphones. Those Black Eyed Peas are some serious dancers, so I imagine she has to work out pretty hard to keep her lady lumps in check.

Katie Holmes wasn't the fastest marathon runner, but she caused quite a sensation in NYC when she ran in 2007. At mile 23, she stopped to visit Tom Cruise and Suri. And whatever Scientologists were hanging out on the sidelines. How sweet.

The most notable celebrity runner is Eddie Izzard, who ran 43 marathons in 51 days. Only a comedian could do something that crazy with only five weeks of training. (!) He lost toenails, his blisters blistered, and he had to bathe in ice everyday. Renee Zellweger's fanatical running pales by comparison.

In addition to the runners themselves, it's important that Carlos choose a celebrity's running style to emulate. Should he wear red cutoffs like Miley Cyrus? Or just keep it low key like Edward Norton? Or should he embrace the spirit of Austin and start training in some bright orange gear.

Join me in following Carlos' journey in matching his personal best 5K time of 18:24. Let's continue to support his efforts and stalk his progress on this blog. We're rooting for you, Carlos!

Did that just happen?

There are two things in life that remind me of Ross Geller, the character from the TV show Friends: leather pants and spray tans. When I woke up this morning I could honestly say I'd never done either.

The leather pants thing will last until my dying day or until I join a boy band. The spray tan thing expired this evening, in preparation for tomorrow's photo shoot.

I can't believe I just wrote that last sentence.

Yup, as we speak, I'm waiting the 3 hours until the sticky, bronze stuff that covers my body is ready to be washed off. Mariah told me that the photo shoot lights blank you out if you don't have a tan. Kevan and PhotoShop tried to convince me today that I also needed to shave my legs and upper body. That was NOT going to happen.

I traipsed into the tanning place, located in the West Campus area of Austin near UT, feeling rather hesitant. The green and purple paint on the walls and the shelves full of tanning products whose packaging runs the spectrum from pink to yellow did not help.

Before I knew it, I was standing in all sorts of awkward positions, getting spray painted like an Escalade at West Coast Customs. Turn your leg out. Turn to the side with your arm up. Turn around. Lean forward so we can get the shoulders. Look up. Here comes the face, are you ready. 1, 2, 3.

It's not so much that a spray tan is hard to endure. It's pretty easy and the cool spray actually doesn't feel bad. It's the fact that you're GETTING A FREAKING SPRAY TAN.

The guys at work tomorrow are going to eat this up like the platter of donuts I've seen like a mirage around every corner the last few days.

Band of Brothers (and Sisters)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, (I've changed names to protect the innocent), finished her set of upright rows and grabbed a gulp out of her water bottle before starting her set of 7's bicep curls.

"You're going to run after that set," Kevan said, on his way back to our area of the gym after dispensing with torture to our brothers and sisters in arms on the other side.

"Oh, I already did," she said. "I ran extra last time."

"Oh, ok,", Kevan responded.

I burst out laughing. Kevan and Buffy quickly did the same. All three of us knew Buffy had done no such extra running.

She's been working out with the program for several weeks now. I would guess 5 or 6, and she makes the workouts fun. She gives 110 percent while expressing what you might call colorful language and hand gestures, usually aimed in Kevan's specific direction. I often have to stop whatever medieval activity I'm in the middle of because I'll lose my breath from laughing.

Buffy is just one of a host of characters that I have enjoyed working out with on Monday and Wednesday evenings over the last 3 months.

All have been super nice, friendly supportive and hard working. I think we feed off of each other's efforts and are inspired by their results. Although we're all are here for different goals, we share similiar journeys. There's definitely a shared sense of accomplishment, mutual admiration and inspiration. Workouts are peppered with high fives and encouraging words.

When passing each other on the runs that bookend our circuits, the grimaces of exertion on our faces are usually broken with a smile or quick nod as one is on the way out and the other heading back in (Except for Buffy, who will usually say something along the lines of "I f-bombing hate this") I truly enjoy the camaraderie.

Not long ago, Photoshop finished his 12 week program and did his "after" photo shoot. It was awesome to see such a nice guy who I've watched work ridiculously hard reach his goal. I call him PhotoShop because some friends of his on Facebook wall didn't believe the photos were unaltered.

I get a kick out of listening to him talk about his kids, especially the 18 year old son who he says likes to bust his balls. In case you're wondering, dude lost 50 pounds and turned into a total beefcake in 12 weeks. And he's come back for another 12 weeks.

I was intimidated when I started the program, but it quickly became one of the most welcoming of places. Kevan is no-nonsense when it comes to workouts, proper form and doing things right.

He used to belong to this little group known as the Marine Corps MMA fight team, but he's a super nice guy. He laughs every time I alter exercises to make them a little easier, quickly correcting me and bringing me to the edge of throwing up from the exertion. It's amazing how much of a difference a few adjustments make.

So close, yet so far away

So, technically, my 12 weeks are up. My starting weight was 223 and my weight on Sunday was 190.6.

But. I was sick in the middle and lost two weeks worth of burpees, dozens of varieties of pushups, wall balls, planks, and all sorts of other unGodly things. So now I get this week and next week to make up for that. Then I'll be in a freaking photo shoot.

Yes, before this all started, I committed to doing an after photo shoot as an added incentive. So I've got 3 more group workouts and about 5 to 7 workouts on my own to "pump my shit up", as Mariah put it.

I wouldn't call it a carrot on a stick, because who in their right mind would volunteer for potential public humiliation? I can see the guys at work licking their chops for more ammunition to bust my balls. But it is motivating and has snapped me out of my foggy cloud of half-assedness.

I had the best workout yet Monday evening. It was awesome. I did 12 burpees straight through without stopping. I did 12 unstable pushups on the Bosu Ball without stopping. Twice. I felt like the Karate Kid exacting revenge on the Kobra Kai. I almost pumped my fist Jersey Shore style, but managed to keep the celebration on the inside.

Normally I have to stop in the middle of a set, bent over with my hands pressed on my knees, struggling not to fall over. I'm sure someone casually walking by might think I'm struggling to stay upright after a gunshot wound. So it felt darn good to actually feel like I was approaching the point where I'm doing the workout as it was intended.

It was by no means an easy workout. Kevan likes to increase the intensity so we do a little more and more to achieve the same level of suck. Reminds me of an article I read once by a Tour de France cyclist on the nature of getting in better shape: You don't suffer less. You suffer faster.

All In All, It's Gone Well

Early on during the 12 week program with Revelation Fitness, I lost four pounds per week. I emailed my client manager, Sheryl, and asked if I should expect to lose weight at that rate for the rest of the program.

“No,” she said. “There will be plateaus. And we’ll work through them.”

My plateau came not so much in struggling with pounds lost, but with motivation. It goes a little something like this: Around week six I got a bad cold that kept me out of working out for two weeks.

I stayed on the meal plan during that time, and got down to about 198, just three pounds short of my 195 goal. After two weeks off and the encouraging voices of my friends and family telling me how good I looked ringing in my ear, it was hard to motivate myself again.

I half assed it for a couple of weeks, yada yada, and now I am at 192, from a starting weight of 223.

Feeling Good

On the one hand, yes, I’m feeling like a sexy bitch.

A couple of weeks ago I was at an outlet mall with a friend, with no intention of getting anything. Just for kicks, I tried on a pair of size 32 pants. I fully expected to not be able to pull them up past mid leg. (I had been a 36 before starting the program).

I got them all the way up, but was certain the clasp would not close around my waste. But then it closed. I zipped up the zipper and felt a surge of victory when no material ripped. I did a small little dance just to test things out, and sure as shit, those pants fit. “Holy shit, they fucking fit!” I texted a few friends immediately.

I almost pooped in those pants right then, right there in the Eddie Bauer changing room. I wound up driving home from that outlet mall with three new pairs of pants, all size 32, and two shirts, both size Large. I felt like a new man, since all my post-weight loss, oversized clothing makes me look like a clown or gangster.

As of today, almost 12 weeks from when I started, I’m 31 pounds lighter and about 10 years younger. The last time I weighed this much, it was the early days of the George W. Bush Administration.

Mixed Emotions

But I’ve also got mixed emotions, because I haven’t been working out as much in the last several weeks. Mind you, when I meet up with Kevan and the group at 5:30 p.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, it’s freaking go time. He’s not happy until we’ve cursed his name or collapsed to the floor.

When it comes to doing my own “homework”…. Not so much. I’ll usually do two or three workouts at the very most. Often it is just one or two. So I could theoretically be ripped at something like 185 right now if I had carried over the effort from the first six weeks into the second half.

But as Confucius once said, “Twelve weeks is a long freaking time.”

Over the last two weeks I’ve started doing what I hope to continue doing once the program is over. Working out three or four times a week and keeping the meal plan strict 80 percent of the time.

Unbelievable

I can’t even believe I’ve gotten this far. When I sat down with Mariah in the café at Central Market on Lamar to talk about the Revelation Fitness program, or with Eric in my living room for my orientation a couple of weeks later, I honestly didn’t think I would get down below 200, much less below 195.

I had given up hope that it was something I could do. I had every intention of following through with the program, but my faith wasn’t there that the results would follow.

Well, the hard work paid off. It’s freaking empowering. I no longer begrudge celebrities that have lost a bunch of weight in a short period of time. (You are my brother, Kevin Federline!)

Floor Sweepers, Shmoor Sweepers

It’s fun conquering exercises that literally made me fall on my face the first time I tried them. Decline pushups, anyone? Floor sweepers? Go ahead and look up floor sweepers, try them out and see how that goes for you.

You lie on your back on the floor holding a barbell or some dumbbells straight up above you, as if you had just completed a bench press rep. Then you move your legs around in the air in a figure eight motion, using your abs like a mofo and keeping that weight up.

I did some the other day, or rather, Kevan made me do some the other day, and they hurt like hell. But I was able to do them and I can’t tell you how good that felt.

Milestones

It’s been fun checking off milestones as the weight has come off.

• At 6 foot and 223 pounds, I looked nothing like the free safeties that roam the NFL secondaries at those same dimensions.
• At 215, I was at the weight that prompted me to sign up for and train for a marathon in 2003.
• I weighed 210 at end of the summer of 2008 when I did three sprint triathlons.
• 203, my weight when I finished that 2003 marathon.
• Finally I was under 200 and couldn’t believe it. The last time I weighed that much, I lived in Boston and worked for an insurance company. (I call those the dark times. But I digress).

Note: I’m not counting the period of about six hours in February 2010 when I weighed 199. I had lost like 15 or more pounds after an appendectomy thanks to a two-week diet of jello and chicken broth. I quickly gained it all back.

Getting Ready for Phase II

So it feels good. I’m darn proud of myself. Because of the two weeks off for being sick, I’ve got two more weeks of workouts with that bastard, Kevan, coming my way. And then I’ve got to starting thinking about running. I’ll probably join a program at Rogue Training Systems and my coach will probably be Scotty MacPherson.

I’m sure Scotty, another heartless, ruthless bastard, will know exactly how I should tackle that 5k goal I’ve set for myself. I’m certain that’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve done in my life. I ran the original 18:24 time during my senior year of cross country in high school. And I remember a LOT of very painful workouts and mileage that led to that moment.

I’m trying to set a realistic, and not too uncomfortable, time goal. Is a year too much or two little? Two years?

I am not looking to kill myself. If I try to do it too soon, it’s likely I’ll be turned off by the intensity. If I set it too far off, I’m likely to lollygag. But Scotty is just as merciless as Kevan, so I have a feeling I really won't have much say in the next round of physical pain coming my way.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

As I write this, the banana protein bread is in the oven cooking. We’re at close to 28 minutes over the 17 to 20 minutes it was supposed to take. And it’s still not done. Yes, you could say I’m nervous.

Not because I have some kind of baking ego. This is the first thing I’ve ever baked, not counting frozen pizza. So I could care less how the world views my skills.

Cravings A-Go-Go

The reason I’ve even motivated myself to begin the baking is because of something that started last Wednesday morning… I was in a conference room at work with two others waiting for my other coworkers and boss to arrive for yet another meeting in the year-long redesign of the website of the state agency where I work. On the table in front of me was a stack of papers containing research of sites I liked. Resting on one of the chairs against the wall behind me was a plastic bag containing my usual food for the day: egg whites, grape tomatoes, deli turkey.

Then other coworkers started to arrive, carrying brown paper bags and plastic bags. That’s when I remembered that people were going to bring breakfast foods to the meeting, which was supposed to last all morning. I knew I would not get to eat any of it.

Then they started going through the bags, fixing their paper plates with donuts and breakfast burritos; their cups with orange juice. It was all I could do not to flip the conference table over and run out of the room screaming.

I’ve never been a vampire, nor do I believe in them. But in every vampire movie you get a good idea that the blood thirst is an all-consuming, life threatening pursuit. It was that sort of single-minded attention with which I watched my bastard co-workers put this food into their mouths. There was a clear plastic cup full of Krispy Creme donut holes that I stared at like it was an open flame. Finally I split off another personality to deal with the physical and psychological drama I was experiencing.

I hadn’t had cravings like this in weeks. I thought for sure I had conquered the cravings monster.

Later that day I sent Mariah and Sheryl, of Revelation Fitness, an email with the subject line “Cravings!” to explain what I went through that morning and what I had been going through over the previous few days.  Let’s just say it’s been stressful, both at work and personally. Normally in these situations, I head over to the convenience store across the street, grab a package of Keebler chocolate chip cookies or a pint of Blue Bell ice cream, and call it a night. That’s no longer an option.

Mariah talked me down off the ledge as she explained how my body was sort of rebelling at the loss of fat in my body and in my diet. She gave me tweaks to my diet I can make to lessen the cravings. Sheryl and Nicole, another member of the Revex team, sent me a bunch of healthy sweets recipes. And the one that I thought might be the easiest was the banana protein bread. How hard can it be? You mix the stuff then add heat. Piece of cake.

Baking for Idiots

I Googled “basics of baking” and came across some pretty interesting little tidbits of information. You need to mix the wet ingredients and the dry ingredients separately before mixing the two together. When you do mix them together, you should be careful not to overmix, whatever the hell that means.

Meanwhile, it looked like the wet ingredients tend to be mixed with a handheld mixer. What the heck is that? Oh, it’s the thing my mom used to use. I can’t remember what it was for, but my sister and I got to lick off whatever was left over when she was done using it while making a cake.

I texted a friend and asked her if, when she bakes, she mixes the ingredients by hand. “LOL No” was her response. So I called my mom. “Don’t you have one?” she asked. “Have we met?” I responded.

I haven’t thought about that piece of equipment in years and I sure as heck didn’t really know what my mom was doing with it. The handheld mixer to me is a lot like the equipment you see in the background of the workshops in American Choppers. There are all sorts of big, manly machines that I can only assume are used for making motorcycles. The handheld mixer is some kind of machinery, with exposed moving parts, I might add, that was somehow used to cook with. Turns out it’s used to mix the stuff that goes into stuff you bake. Who knew?

I put out a feeler to my Facebook friends asking for mixer recommendations. Most said a cheap one works just as fine as an expensive one. Another said KitchenAid was the way to go, as their products will last forever. One told of a cheap Black and Decker model that lasted her 19 years.

After my usual exhaustive search of Internet consumer reviews, I decided to go with a $20.99 Sunbeam from Bed Bath & Beyond. Then I went to HEB, and picked up most of the ingredients. Except for the oat flour. They had all sorts of different kinds of other flour. The Internet told me that oat flour was a pretty common form of flour. Someone please tell the folks over at HEB. I headed to Whole Foods, even more determined to conquer the baking monster I found in might sites. Alas, I found the oat flour I needed. It would appear that you can make flour out of just about anything you darn well please. They sell bags of tapioca flour. Truth.

It's Go Time

Anywho, I put off the actual baking until today, waiting for a block of a few hours when I knew I had nothing else going on.

I meticulously measured out the ingredients, proud as a pip that I knew how to use measuring spoons and measuring cups. My frozen pizza making experience taught me how to pre-head an oven, so that was no problem. I mixed the dry stuff with a spoon. Then I poured all the wet ingredients into a mixing bowl. That stuff really does look gross before it’s been mixed. Just sayin’.

I took out the handheld mixer from it’s packaging, jammed in the mixer spool thingies, and tested out the motor. Every one of the 5 speeds was smooth. So I set it to high and mixed the ingredients for a minute, per the Internet directions I was following.

I mixed wet and dry together slowly with a spoon, and suddenly it started to look like something my mom had made. I poured the mixture into the loaf baking pan I picked up, placed it in the oven and set my 17 minute timer. At the 17 minute mark I opened the oven and it dawned on my that I had no clue how to check whether the thing was done. I mean, it looked fine to me.

So I called my mom who said I should stick a toothpick or a knife in it. If it comes out clean, then it’s ready. I pressed the knife down and it looked and felt like I was poking pudding. OK. Definitely not done. Or anywhere near done.

Victory is Mine

Finally, about 30 minutes after the thing was supposed to be done, it passed the knife test. I pulled it out of the oven and put it on the range. I called my mom.

“What do I do now?” I asked her.

She laughed. “You cut it and you eat it,” she said.

Fair enough. I divided it into 8 equal pieces then calculated the nutritional information. Then I had a piece. It looked like banana bread and holy crap, it tasted like banana bread, too. 

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t break into a victory dance right there in my kitchen, fist pumping like Tiger on the 18^th green at Augusta.

Four weeks in.

It’s been a month since I started the RevEx program and I’m starting to feel like a sexy bitch. I’m down to 208.4 pounds from a starting weight of 223. My pants are getting baggy. The other day, just for kicks, I decided to take my dog out to poop while wearing jeans without a belt. I looked like Tupac. It was awesome.

Today at work, some coworkers and I were talking about our pets. Right in the middle of a discussion about blue heelers, golden retrievers and de-clawed cats, one of them turned to me and said, “You’re face looks skinny.”

Yeah, baby.

It’s so freaking awesome to see the results of all the hard work and sacrifice start to show. Burning 700 calories per workout, five or six days a week while eating 1500 to 1600 calories a day, it turns out, works pretty damned well. It was really hard at first, because you’re huffing and puffing and not eating all the food you love and you want to see results right away.

Once a week I take full-length photos and measurements of myself. I’ve been losing a half inch per week around my belly button. We’ll call it the gut measurement. Although I was losing weight according to the scale, my weekly pics weren’t really changing that much. This was the first week where I really saw a noticeable difference. I was drunk with power.

This program is making me feel so empowered. It’s so gratifying to put in hard work and see results. My friends are giving me pats on the back and sending encouraging text messages. Many of them are extremely fit triathletes, runners and cyclists and it’s great to feel like I fit in a little more.

I used to eat out for 90 percent of my meals. Over the last month I’ve prepared 35 to 40 meals a week for myself. I’m not exactly carmelizing onions over steak tartare with sides of foie gras, but it’s still a freaking achievement. Recipes don’t look like outtakes from the Dead Sea Scrolls anymore.

I know I’ve still got 8 weeks to go. But already I feel like I’m finally in control of my body and no longer a slave to cravings for Papa John’s barbeque chicken pizza. I’m looking forward to taking on the next two thirds of this thing to see what I can accomplish.

I'm freaking tired.

Looking back at the program so far, the first week was pure hell. I wanted to throw up and die in each of the group workouts I attended. There was a definite moment that Friday as the difficulty of the program him me like a ton of bricks, 11 more weeks looming over my head.

By the second week, I was starting to get the hang of things. The group workouts weren't the most horrible thing in the world and I was getting really used to the food plan.

This week has been great. The group workouts are still no picnic, but I'm somehow better able to manage the pain. Preparing my meals, food shopping and eating 6 times a day is becoming second nature.

But two nights this week I had trouble sleeping, for whatever reason, and I'm paying for it now. I went to the gym tonight and did a chest workout, assigned to me as homework. I managed to burn 500 calories, as I padded my workout with time on the treadmill before and after the weights.

I decided to do the bicep portion of the homework tomorrow night, since my forearms and biceps are still sore from Monday's hammer curls and Australian pullups.

Go ahead and look that one up. It's not pretty. I got through 6 of my required 50 reps and was just about done. I completed the remaining 44 two at a time. It was so much more brutal than it looked.

I'm looking at the size large triathlon racing top I've hung on the wall that faces the entrance to my bedroom. I'm thinking about a trip to Vegas with friends in May when this is all over. I'm thinking about the 19 additional pounds I need to lose. And I'm trying to stay focused.

I can't wait until Sunday's day off. I'm looking forward to a whole lot of nothing, with a possible stop at the Alamo Drafthouse for a movie and a milkshake.

Cheat Day...Ugh.

I write this entry a steaming ball of indigestion and regret. Today was Sunday, my cheat day from the meal plan I've been on. Drunk with power, knowing I'd lost almost 8 pounds over the last two weeks, I decided to treat myself a little bit. Surely I'd earned it.

Ugh. Let's just say, pizza + ice cream + chocolate chip cookies = no bueno. It's been a few hours and on top of still not feeling quite myself, I feel guilty as hell and it definitely was not worth it.

It felt like I'd chugged a pint grease. Really disgusting. I had a similar experience last week after the pumpkin pancakes at Kerbey Lane, but quickly dismissed it. I'm going to have to look into the biology of this, and if anyone reading can provide some insight, that'd be great. But it would appear that, after only two weeks, my body has decided that bad food really is bad for me and from now on it is going to make darn sure I know it.

Plus, it really wasn't that much food, but it was a ton of calories. Today really opened my eyes into why I've put on all this weight in the first place. Three pieces of pizza (3X276 calories), two chocolate chip cookies (170 calories for the pair) and some ice cream (300 calories) was super easy to put down. And I used to do the equivalent almost every day.

To be honest, I'd much rather go through a day of what has now become my usual stuff, oatmeal, cottage cheese, sweet potatoes and all. 

So my next step will be to get off my butt and research recipes that make all this healthy stuff I'm eating actually taste good. Sheryl, my RevEx client manager, sent me some last week, so I'll start there. Wish me freaking luck.

Numbers

Since I started this whole thing, my day is just a sequence of numbers. The following is a composite that could make up any given day:

Wake up. Step on the scale. 216 pounds (Saturday’s weight). Meal 1. Measure 1 ¼ cup of egg whites. Heat up on number 9. Let it rest on 6. Pour the eggs. Move it to 7. Measure ½ cup of oatmeal. Microwave for 50. 1 teaspoon raw honey. 21 calories. Cook Meal 4 ahead of time. Defrost chicken then grill.

Measure chicken on food scale. 6 ounces. 180 calories. 39 g of protein. Measure BBQ sauce. 1 tablespoon. 23 calories. Prepare Meal 2. 1 scoop whey protein. ½ additional scoop weight protein. 9 ounces of water. 1 cup of frozen mixed fruit. Blend. Prepare part of Meals 3 and 4. Measure potato on food scale. 7.5 ounces. Put everything in containers.

Get to work. Drink 32 ounces of water. How many grams in an ounce? 28.3495231, says Google. Part of Meal 3. Scoop out one cup of cottage cheese. 160 calories. 26 g of protein. 5 calories worth of sriracha sauce. ½ cup of brussel sprouts and cheese sauce. 60 calories.

32 more ounces of water while working on web project. 1 cup of grape tomatoes. 63 calories.

Go to group workout. Turn on heart rate monitor. Count reps. Count reps. Count reps. Peak at 183 bpm. Average 140.  893 calories burned. Go home. Eat meals 5 and 6. Drink 32 ounces of water. (Long since added up to 1 gallon of H2O for the day).

Feeling sleepy. But first, log in food calories. 1568 calories consumed. 132 calories under daily limit. Go to bed.

Holy Hell

I lay on the rubber exercise mat, chest heaving and covered in sweat. The first workout was over. Kevan, a former Marine, had run me and 3 others through an hour workout. Several times I almost threw up. At one point I was doing decline pushups and was unable to push myself up off of the ground. So I collapsed into a ball. It was pretty embarassing.

"The first day is the worst," said Missy, who was starting her ninth week. "No. The second week is the worst," said the other guy we were working out with, I never caught his name. "Because you're sore AND you suck."

One Week Down, Eleven to Go
Ok, well it's been a week since I started my 12 week program with Revelation Fitness. I'm working out 3 times a week with them and 3 times a week on my own. Seven days a week I upload my food log so they can monitor what I eat. Once a week I upload progress pictures I take of myself in my living room in shorts and with my shirt off. I'm sure the thought of that has the ladies drooling.

Here's the good news: The diet is no where near as hard to get used to as I thought it would be. Eating 6 small meals a day, high in protein and complex carbs, is actually not bad at all. My biggest fear coming in to this was the expectation that I would be going to bed hungry, but that has yet to happen. Chicken, protein shakes, strawberries, sweet potatoes, oatmeal and egg whites. No Blue Bell ice cream. No pizza or breakfast burritos or any of that other stuff that makes life worth living. One gallon of water minimum per day, however, has not been a challenge to drink. I actually really like cottage cheese. I know!

Now for the bad news: The workouts are brutal. To protect the innocent, I won't go into detail, but lots of circuit training with weights and pushups and burpees. If you're not familiar with a burpee, it's like a squat thrust: start out standing; bend at the knees; put your hands on the ground and kick out your legs behind you so that you're in a pushup position; do a pushup; bring your feet back up to your hands; jump in the air. Rinse and repeat. Whoever gave this little bite of hell the cutesy name "burpee" should be shot. I'd probably rename them something more appropriate, like "hemorrhoids" or "gall bladder removals."

This past Saturday morning we did the Spartan 300 Workout, which some motherless bastard thought up as a way to test the fitness level of the actors training for their roles in the movie 300. I'm too traumatized from the experience to re-live it here, but if you Google "hell on earth," it shouldn't be hard to find.

Cheat Day
Sunday is my cheat day from the food plan, so I can theoretically eat whatever I want. But my Revelation Fitness client manager, Sheryl, who I constantly pepper with questions, suggested I just do just one cheat meal instead. All week I was walking around in a half awake/half unconscious state where I would see Chef Boyardee Ravioli around every cubicle at work, like an oasis in the desert. I would daydream about eating pizza and mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Friday afternoon I met up with friends for happy hour. Those bastards got to eat chips and queso and drink beer. I sipped water and had to leave early in order to get to 24 Fitness to get a workout in. I would have killed 15 people for a quesadilla.

Thusly, I was afraid my cheat day would start and then I'd wake up in a ditch somewhere, covered in pizza, with no way to account for the previous 13 hours. But Sunday morning came around and it was as if a switch happened and everything was OK in the world and those Jurassic-sized cravings subsided. I ate the same 3 first meals I'd been eating all week. Then I met up with my friend Dustin at Kerbey Lane and ate some Pumpkin Pancakes. I cannot put in to words the spiritual joy those pancakes gave me. It's something I will never, ever forget.

The Bottom Line
In case you're wondering, I started the week at 223 pounds. Sunday morning I weighed 218.4. And I fought for every ounce of it. Boom!

A Farewell Tour

I’m a big eater and always have been. Getting me to finish my plate was never a struggle for my parents. When I was a teenager, my Uncle Desi and I would plan our trips to the Ponderosa Stakehouse all-you-can-eat buffet with the same bloodlust as Vikings planning plunder. Until my early 20s, the quality and quantity of food was never a concern. I was rail thin no matter what I ate. But then around 25 or 26 my metabolism slowed down from the speed of a Porsche to that of a 1977 Pinto.

Good bye, good friends

With the start of my 12 weeks of high calorie burn workouts and low calorie meals looming on Monday, Feb. 6, I’ve spent the last week conducting a farewell tour of my favorite foods, or as I like to collectively refer to them, “Everything that makes life worth living.”

I’d like to take the opportunity to address the following foods and drink individually:

Big Red Soda: You haven’t been in my life very long, but have definitely left a profound impression. You and the Styrofoam containers full of work cafeteria-served lunch entrees will be missed. Thank you.

Beer: Hang in there, little buddy. I’m going away for a while, but don’t worry, I’ll be back. You and I have a complicated relationship, since, let’s face it, you’re a big part of the reason my body fat hovers around 23 percent these days. But that’s OK. I forgive you.

Papa John’s Pizza: Feel free to let the employees and cardboard box suppliers to your Austin locations know that you’re about to take a hit over the next 3 months, if not forever. While you’re at it, please notify the folks over at the Amy’s company of frozen, organic pizza and other foods that they won’t be hearing from me for a while, either.

Egg & Sausage Breakfast Taco/Biscuit with Strawberry Jam: It is with particularly solemn emotions that I address you, my wonderful morning friends. The warm embrace you provide during our daily encounters, and the satisfied warmth and comfort you leave me with afterwards, will be hard to replace. All the best to you.

This weekend, in a final orgy of beer and barbeque, my good friend Ryan Kohn and I will leave Austin, not to mention our gastro-intestinal tracts, a scorched, barren wasteland. He is referring to it as “Carlos’s Mardi Gras.”

Burned Ships and Such

I keep my old City Gym membership card in my wallet. The picture of me is small, but it’s a good indicator of how I looked back in 1999, at about 190 pounds, when I was a grad student at Boston University. This picture is always in my head when I sign up for a new running or triathlon training program. But usually, after weeks or months of training, I’m not much closer to this goal.

Eating the nutritional equivalent of a Frito pie at every meal does not help. When I described my weight loss, running goals and eating habits to Mariah MacDonald of Revelation Fitness last Tuesday night in the café at Central Market, her reaction gave me a lot of hope. “Oh, you’ll be easy,” she said. “It’s your diet.” At our meeting she described how after 12 weeks of group training classes and nutrition counseling I would be around 6% body fat and at or below 190 pounds. Shortly after we’d said goodbye I received a text on my phone from her that simply said, “Piece of cake.”

Well, yes. Theoretically, if I clean up my diet and exercise 5 to 6 times a week, I don’t see those types of results as a problem. But it’s not for nothing that in various groups of family members, friends and coworkers I’m fondly thought of as a garbage disposal. I’m the guy who kept his meal plan throughout his college career because he liked it. I know the difference between good food and bad food but I don’t much care, to tell you the truth.

Preventative Health

I’m 35, within two months of turning 36, and it’s high time I cut the crap. The choices I make now will affect me in future life. About 6 or 7 years ago, my dad had a heart attack. The doctors opened up his chest like it was the hood of a Cadillac and performed a quadruple bypass.

As I saw him in the ICU recovery room, a pillow pressed up against his chest to help the newly-minted stitches holding his rib cage together, I swore to myself that I would never be in the same position. While his heart problems likely came from stress, I knew that was yellow brick road I did not want to follow. Ever. So I’m looking at the cost of the exercise/nutrition program as a preventative health care cost.

Burned Ships

Mariah encouraged me to make some goals and do things that would hold me accountable and push me through when I’m almost there and tempted to say, “Good enough.” She described how when Hernando Cortez landed in Mexico he ordered his men to burn their ships, demonstrating the deep commitment to finding New World riches while preventing any chance of turning back.

Starting this blog was my first burned ship. I’ve already gotten a bunch of encouragement posted to my Facebook wall. I’m hoping every friend, family member and random guy from high school I pissed next to once in the bathroom will keep me accountable.

The second ship was my commitment to Mariah that at the end of the 12 week program, which will start the week of Feb. 6, 2012, I will pose for one of those Before/After photos that appear on the Revelation Fitness website. As you can probably imagine, this alone has me scared out of my mind.

So if you can think of another burned ship that will keep me accountable, feel free to share. The more public and potentially embarrassment-inducing it is, the better.

It's go time.

I'm writing this blog to keep myself accountable as I work towards matching my best 5K time from high school. Seventeen years older, 60 pounds heavier and about 6 minutes per mile slower than my 18 year-old self, I'm using that benchmark of 18:24, or about 5:55 per mile pace, to motivate me to get back into shape.

What's first, you ask? Well, I just signed up for a 12-week exercise and nutrition program with Revelation Fitness here in Austin. I met with owner and head trainer Mariah MacDonald last night to talk about the program and my goals.

Before I can run that 18:24, I'm going to have to slim down. I weighed in at an all-time high of 225 pounds last night. I figure I can attain that goal 5k time at around 190 or 195 pounds. Once I get down that far, I'll start to focus on more intensive run training while maintaining that weight.

It's go time.