The first lunge was something really special.
My trainer demonstrated, "You just walk forward, but bend your back leg down to the ground," he said. "And you know," he waved his finger at me, "the bigger step you take, the less you have to do."
I dropped down, with 201 pounds behind me, and I got down to the hard gym floor of the group exercise room--that part was fine. Getting up, I found was going to require something else. A forklift or a shovel probably.
"C'mon," Danny the Trainer encouraged. It was our first session, so he didn't know how to really piss me off with two, little, innocent words, that ended a sentence. "You can do it, Big Guy.
I hate those two words still. Big Guy. It screams of I don't remember your name, you fat fucking turd, but I need your business.
I put my hand on my front knee and I stood up, and I lunged with the other leg, and then I put my hand on the opposite knee and used that to stand up. I did two lunges.
"Great, but I need you to not use your hands," Danny said. "This is a glute toning exercise, and you need to work-"
"I'm going to throw up."
"Oh, jesus, go get some water!"
I didn't make it to the fountain. I threw up right there on the floor, but after that I did 10 more lunges.
He never forgot my name again, and now I do lunges with 30 pound weights in each hand.
What a tool ------->
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Friday, November 27, 2009
I don't have the Red and Green DNA
It doesn't matter how uptempo the holiday music is, the Holiday never makes me as happy as I'm supposed to be.
The studio techs tried to make that tiny little soundproof room that Ms. Aguilera belted "This Christmas" in happy and joyful back in that week of July the year she became a big star and recorded her holiday album in the same way that the actual music is supposed to make me feel now. I remember reading about it. She didn't feel like singing a record in the heat of a North Hollywood Summer until she walked in and saw the holly and smelled the cranberry incense that a union worker was asked to place quickly but neatly on the eggshell walls. Then, she just melted like a snowflake on an abandoned baby's face and she felt the spirit.
I never feel it. I always think I will feel so happy this time of year, and I look forward to it all year, the colors and the lights, you know? But when it happens I realize I don't have the red and green DNA of Rockefeller center specials. I sit home from work on Break like the rest of my lazy Angeleno neighbors and I look around at the hole in the carpet, the couch that doesn't even belong to me, left over by the good graces and guilt of an ex. I walk up and down the street with my dogs wondering who it was in my neighborhood that helped ruin the relationship with him, not really wanting to know at all. It must have been that one, no that one. Maybe it was a few.
Maybe it was me.
It had to be me. I was so miserable last Christmas, worse than this year, even. I just sighed, and boo'ed and Grinched. He probably just wanted to be around someone who made sleighbell sounds when they cum. I don't blame him. That'd be awesome.
I eat. I eat at parties because I feel uncomfortable talking about the weather that never changes. Sweet Potato Pie tastes like Turkey by the time we move into a conversation about Dancing With The Stars. I smile, "yes, Donny Osmond. He is a true talent."
And then I see the four fake trees I've put up in my house, the ones that were supposed to be shined off this year for the first time in a lifelong tradition, that now sort of belong to me--and I think of my mother and her holiday collection, not built out of joy, but of compulsive hoarding. Am I headed that direction? Will I be playing Michael Buble Christmas CD's and singing off-key and spilling sugar free, caffeine free Arnold Palmers onto the infant-sized holiday sweatshirts I collect for babies that haven't been born? And if the answer is yes, whats so wrong with that? At least I'd be a homeowner.
My mother calls me and tells me that my brother is upset with me, and that I cannot tell him she's told me. I snap and she flies into a fit and hangs up. I go numb. I am alone. I am finally what I always wanted, physically alone and spiritually empty. I can be me and owe no one a thing, just for tonight. Just for Thanksgiving. I heat up frozen Garlic Naan and breathe in my dogs face. We all smile.
I read books on my break and I love it. I finish Augusten Burrough's new holiday Book, You Better Not Cry, and I do cry, a lot because of this passage:
But.
When Santa is suddenly standing right in front of you, soot from your chimney staining his fine red suit and he is flushed and breathing hard and smells like frost and sweat and smoke and his jacket is linted with coarse reindeer hairs and there is reindeer shit on his boots and his eyes twinkle with preposterous joy, you simply cannot say "I don't believe in you," and turn your back on him.
Because he will grip you by the shoulders and wrench you around and he will bring his mouth and blow stars down your throat until you are so full of light.
And I cry because I am scared, because I know that I know he is right. That this pain will not last forever, and that I am so strong and so kind and so not alone and that it is all taking me where I need to be and I know that without pain there is no joy, and without an insane mother and a heartbreak and the heartburn from Nigel's mac and cheese there can be no stars.
The stars are here now, and they fill this screen and some Christmas soon, I will not be trying to avoid the stars, I will be handing them out.
-----------
The studio techs tried to make that tiny little soundproof room that Ms. Aguilera belted "This Christmas" in happy and joyful back in that week of July the year she became a big star and recorded her holiday album in the same way that the actual music is supposed to make me feel now. I remember reading about it. She didn't feel like singing a record in the heat of a North Hollywood Summer until she walked in and saw the holly and smelled the cranberry incense that a union worker was asked to place quickly but neatly on the eggshell walls. Then, she just melted like a snowflake on an abandoned baby's face and she felt the spirit.
I never feel it. I always think I will feel so happy this time of year, and I look forward to it all year, the colors and the lights, you know? But when it happens I realize I don't have the red and green DNA of Rockefeller center specials. I sit home from work on Break like the rest of my lazy Angeleno neighbors and I look around at the hole in the carpet, the couch that doesn't even belong to me, left over by the good graces and guilt of an ex. I walk up and down the street with my dogs wondering who it was in my neighborhood that helped ruin the relationship with him, not really wanting to know at all. It must have been that one, no that one. Maybe it was a few.
Maybe it was me.
It had to be me. I was so miserable last Christmas, worse than this year, even. I just sighed, and boo'ed and Grinched. He probably just wanted to be around someone who made sleighbell sounds when they cum. I don't blame him. That'd be awesome.
I eat. I eat at parties because I feel uncomfortable talking about the weather that never changes. Sweet Potato Pie tastes like Turkey by the time we move into a conversation about Dancing With The Stars. I smile, "yes, Donny Osmond. He is a true talent."
And then I see the four fake trees I've put up in my house, the ones that were supposed to be shined off this year for the first time in a lifelong tradition, that now sort of belong to me--and I think of my mother and her holiday collection, not built out of joy, but of compulsive hoarding. Am I headed that direction? Will I be playing Michael Buble Christmas CD's and singing off-key and spilling sugar free, caffeine free Arnold Palmers onto the infant-sized holiday sweatshirts I collect for babies that haven't been born? And if the answer is yes, whats so wrong with that? At least I'd be a homeowner.
My mother calls me and tells me that my brother is upset with me, and that I cannot tell him she's told me. I snap and she flies into a fit and hangs up. I go numb. I am alone. I am finally what I always wanted, physically alone and spiritually empty. I can be me and owe no one a thing, just for tonight. Just for Thanksgiving. I heat up frozen Garlic Naan and breathe in my dogs face. We all smile.
I read books on my break and I love it. I finish Augusten Burrough's new holiday Book, You Better Not Cry, and I do cry, a lot because of this passage:
But.
When Santa is suddenly standing right in front of you, soot from your chimney staining his fine red suit and he is flushed and breathing hard and smells like frost and sweat and smoke and his jacket is linted with coarse reindeer hairs and there is reindeer shit on his boots and his eyes twinkle with preposterous joy, you simply cannot say "I don't believe in you," and turn your back on him.
Because he will grip you by the shoulders and wrench you around and he will bring his mouth and blow stars down your throat until you are so full of light.
And I cry because I am scared, because I know that I know he is right. That this pain will not last forever, and that I am so strong and so kind and so not alone and that it is all taking me where I need to be and I know that without pain there is no joy, and without an insane mother and a heartbreak and the heartburn from Nigel's mac and cheese there can be no stars.
The stars are here now, and they fill this screen and some Christmas soon, I will not be trying to avoid the stars, I will be handing them out.
-----------
Monday, November 23, 2009
13
The elevator doesn’t even stop on the thirteenth floor in high-rise buildings because 13 is an unlucky number for most people and they avoid it at all costs. Yet for me, 13 is the number of months it took me to lose 100 pounds.
There is a 13th floor. And by the end of 2003, I had found it by taking the stairs.
There is a 13th floor. And by the end of 2003, I had found it by taking the stairs.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
August 2003
There came a moment when I looked down at the treadmill and it was no longer an option to be speed walking at 4.2 mph.
I had lost 75 pounds and was teetering at 199. I had just weighed in and couldn't believe the number. My heart pounded at how science worked. Less calories in, more calories out equaled weight loss. It wasn't just clever advertising by those makers of exercise and food in moderation. I was smiling. I had never done that in a 24 Hour Fitness.
I was wearing my funny t-shirt, "Somebody in Bakersfield Loves Me" that I bought the night I went to go see Gallagher on the way home to Folsom from Burbank with my mattress in the bed of my truck. I walked toward the locker room, and a guy that I had always seen in the gym asked me, "So, um...I see your shirt...and, um, who's the lucky person?" He giggled. I stood silent. 199 meant that people could see me.
I was supposed to lift weights on this day, but the visibility and the success of my shrinking person scared me. I went to the back of the gym and I got on a treadmill in a semi-private room. I tuned the belt to 3.5 mph and I walked on my one percent incline hill. Rob Thomas sang on the TV screen. The song was "Unwell" and I ignored it. I sped up to 4.2 for Baby Bash "Suga, How You Get So Fly?" and I had to ask myself the same question. Almost a year ago I had not been fly at all. The closest I had been to fly was Dumbo, soaring above the Frontier Wok ready to eat all the Pan fried Noodles I could find.
And then it happened, and when people ask me how I lost 100 pounds I can't tell the story without mentioning this moment. This new song came on called "Hey Yeahhhh" by Outkast, and I couldn't help but put the speed of the treadmill to 5 mph. I was running. My thighs itched, but I didn't care. I lost my breath, but I leant them some sugar, I am yo' neighbor! I wanted nothing more than to match the mid-tempo beat of a song about nothing with my galloping legs, and that made me celebrate in a way I hadn't celebrated since Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate" at a recent Mexican wedding I'd been invited to by Heather.
Outkast was the male version of the girl trio in Little Shop of Horrors and they made me run at 5.3 mph by the middle of the song. When he asked what's cooler than bein' cool, I answered back the second time. "Ice Cold!"
I was up to 5.6 mph when my shoelace came loose. I was shakin it like a Polaroid picture, and when it was time to get on the floor, I did, (I knew what to do-ooh-ohh) by stepping on my shoelace.
I fell off the treadmill and skinned my knee. People looked and they laughed and I died a little, but it was hilarious and I was still 199 pounds, and that's not nearly as embarrassing as being 275 and falling down, but it's close. Falling down sucks. On any other day, I'd have canceled my gym membership. But with "Hey Yeahhhh" I got right back up and joined all the Beyonce's and Lucy Lius.
And that was the day I discovered a weight loss anthem that I still rock to today. And I realized how important good music is to exercise, and thus how important it is to not dread the whole process, but to make it fun--because when you are loving yourself, (and exercise is loving yourself) just thinking about how much better it will be in two months or two years after you've just run 10 miles every day from now to then isn't enough. I would have failed if I hadn't found Outkast that day because I had been too focused on showing Rich I could become everything I wasn't.
You've got to have a reason to get up and dance during the process, because dancing is what gets people up when they fall down and the final two months of my 100 Pound Weight Loss had plenty of steep, nasty falls....
I had lost 75 pounds and was teetering at 199. I had just weighed in and couldn't believe the number. My heart pounded at how science worked. Less calories in, more calories out equaled weight loss. It wasn't just clever advertising by those makers of exercise and food in moderation. I was smiling. I had never done that in a 24 Hour Fitness.
I was wearing my funny t-shirt, "Somebody in Bakersfield Loves Me" that I bought the night I went to go see Gallagher on the way home to Folsom from Burbank with my mattress in the bed of my truck. I walked toward the locker room, and a guy that I had always seen in the gym asked me, "So, um...I see your shirt...and, um, who's the lucky person?" He giggled. I stood silent. 199 meant that people could see me.
I was supposed to lift weights on this day, but the visibility and the success of my shrinking person scared me. I went to the back of the gym and I got on a treadmill in a semi-private room. I tuned the belt to 3.5 mph and I walked on my one percent incline hill. Rob Thomas sang on the TV screen. The song was "Unwell" and I ignored it. I sped up to 4.2 for Baby Bash "Suga, How You Get So Fly?" and I had to ask myself the same question. Almost a year ago I had not been fly at all. The closest I had been to fly was Dumbo, soaring above the Frontier Wok ready to eat all the Pan fried Noodles I could find.
And then it happened, and when people ask me how I lost 100 pounds I can't tell the story without mentioning this moment. This new song came on called "Hey Yeahhhh" by Outkast, and I couldn't help but put the speed of the treadmill to 5 mph. I was running. My thighs itched, but I didn't care. I lost my breath, but I leant them some sugar, I am yo' neighbor! I wanted nothing more than to match the mid-tempo beat of a song about nothing with my galloping legs, and that made me celebrate in a way I hadn't celebrated since Kool and the Gang's "Celebrate" at a recent Mexican wedding I'd been invited to by Heather.
Outkast was the male version of the girl trio in Little Shop of Horrors and they made me run at 5.3 mph by the middle of the song. When he asked what's cooler than bein' cool, I answered back the second time. "Ice Cold!"
I was up to 5.6 mph when my shoelace came loose. I was shakin it like a Polaroid picture, and when it was time to get on the floor, I did, (I knew what to do-ooh-ohh) by stepping on my shoelace.
I fell off the treadmill and skinned my knee. People looked and they laughed and I died a little, but it was hilarious and I was still 199 pounds, and that's not nearly as embarrassing as being 275 and falling down, but it's close. Falling down sucks. On any other day, I'd have canceled my gym membership. But with "Hey Yeahhhh" I got right back up and joined all the Beyonce's and Lucy Lius.
And that was the day I discovered a weight loss anthem that I still rock to today. And I realized how important good music is to exercise, and thus how important it is to not dread the whole process, but to make it fun--because when you are loving yourself, (and exercise is loving yourself) just thinking about how much better it will be in two months or two years after you've just run 10 miles every day from now to then isn't enough. I would have failed if I hadn't found Outkast that day because I had been too focused on showing Rich I could become everything I wasn't.
You've got to have a reason to get up and dance during the process, because dancing is what gets people up when they fall down and the final two months of my 100 Pound Weight Loss had plenty of steep, nasty falls....
an excerpt from March 2003
I had lost about five pounds since moving in with my parents, and that just wasn't enough. I'd been home for almost a month, and everything I read said that by that time, I should have lost closer to fifteen to twenty pounds. I was obese after all, and the first six months should be a significant weight loss. I was eating really well but in the middle of the night, once everyone went to sleep (after I'd fought with both Mom and Dad during the waking hours about not buying circus animal cookies and regular coke), I'd wind my fat ass, in all four of it's lumpy parts down the spiraling staircase, like a cat who's owners leave a kiddie pool of Fancy Feast out overnight. And then I would waddle toward the fridge to build a circus sundae.
Circus Sundae:
7 Circus Animal cookies with sprinkles crushed
2 teaspoons (or three or four) Smuckers Hot Fudge microwaved for 45 seconds or until scalding
3 scoops butter pecan ice cream (the safeway brand)
7 more circus animal cookies (uncrushed)
1 or 2 more teaspoons Smuckers Hot Fudge
1 scoop Jif Peanut Butter
5 cherries
the juice from the cherry jar
After about 13 days straight of these sundaes, I realized it was time for me to go.
I packed up my clothes and my unemployment checks and rented an apartment in Midtown Sacramento, and that was the day I came to weight -loss Oz.
Circus Sundae:
7 Circus Animal cookies with sprinkles crushed
2 teaspoons (or three or four) Smuckers Hot Fudge microwaved for 45 seconds or until scalding
3 scoops butter pecan ice cream (the safeway brand)
7 more circus animal cookies (uncrushed)
1 or 2 more teaspoons Smuckers Hot Fudge
1 scoop Jif Peanut Butter
5 cherries
the juice from the cherry jar
After about 13 days straight of these sundaes, I realized it was time for me to go.
I packed up my clothes and my unemployment checks and rented an apartment in Midtown Sacramento, and that was the day I came to weight -loss Oz.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
WeHo Block Party
Hi special friends,
I am beginning the workshop readings of 100 Pounds, The memoir of a Really Fat Virgin next Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at WeHo Block Party (Formerly A Different Light Book Store). I'll be reading the first 20 minute chunk on Tuesday, then another bite in late January, and a final quick slice in early March so if you can't make it next week--Ill let you know about future readings. :)
My dear friend and hilarious comedian Sharon Houston is my very special guest and she'll be reading a 10 minute story to kick it all off. The room can only fit about 10, so please email me if I can save you a spot, and tell your friends. All the details are on the attached poster, designed by the great Ian O' Phelan. :)
100 Pounds Reading 8:30-9PM
Tuesday, Nov 17
8853 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90069
Sean Hetherington
http://www.100poundsblog.com
Thursday, November 5, 2009
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