“Knowledge comes easily, but wisdom wears a different pair of shoes.”
We all know that change and new behavior is the only way to move forward. But we are reluctant to put on work boots. Inaction is easier. To reflect, evaluate, prune, and move in another direction. Every important change starts with a new attitude. Followed by action. And if it doesn’t? You move first, and motivation will follow. Almost everyone gets stuck in the familiar; no matter how unhelpful our status quo is, it’s familiar and comfortable despite its consequences. Most of us observe with wonder at how complex our brains are, how filled our world is with surprise, and how powerless we feel when we want to connect with the invisible and intangible power of just being alive. “You’re your own worst enemy” was intended as an insult. I took it as an insight. Knowing you’re an idiot can debilitate or motivate. Everyone says they will do the things that matter, express the words that want to spill, and be a better person. Tomorrow. Later. When the time is right. Your boots are stuck under the bed somewhere, lonely from disuse. Love, X .
People have noticed how dark my skin has become. There’s no secret. The fascinating part is how much people talk about it. No matter what you do, people talk. When I lost 100 lbs, people convinced themselves that I was doing something crazy to achieve it; whether it was stimulants or starving myself, there ‘had’ to be something other than dedicating myself to my goal through radically changing my diet. While I started doing push-ups months into my weight loss, I lost 70-80 lbs without adding any exercise. I joked that I couldn’t write a book to capitalize on my weight loss. A book that said, “Eat differently,” wasn’t going to sell a million copies. People still fight the idea that most of us can lose weight only by eating fewer calories than we consume. After all, there m-u-s-t be some secret that I’d tapped into. It couldn’t be that straightforward. I still walk around and listen to people talk about wanting to lose weight. Even though they have me to convince them that they can do it without up-ending their lives, most don’t want to hear that it’s the foods you choose that keep your weight up, regardless of how much exercise you attempt. People are largely unaware of how many calories they eat versus how much they burn. If you upend the equation on a long enough timeline, you will lose weight if you’re not suffering from a medical condition that impedes it. I’m still in my target range for my weight. Which should be all I need to demonstrate that I’m doing something right. It is all summed up by the word “consistency.”
Genetics plays a huge role in weight loss, body mass, skin color, and a variety of other things. The trick is to find a way to capitalize on whatever you’re working with.
When I went to Pennsylvania in early June, I was often outside in the pool. I started getting darker. When I was young and spent summers with my grandma and grandpa, I was like a wild native, spending a lot of time outside in the intense summer sun. I got darker, running barefoot and wild.
When I returned from the trip early last month, I started taking Vitamin D and beta carotene. I was also eating a lot of dark, leafy vegetables. Even the protein-rich casserole I eat most nights contains a huge amount of tomatoes, spinach, and kale. Guess what? Those foods coincidentally contribute to melanin production. I’d read that a diet rich in such things rapidly contributes to darker skin.
I also started doing intense cardio each day. I wrap my hands and throw punches. I still have “V Minutes” on my chalkboard in the living room. It reminds me that while I can’t do everything if I trick myself into doing something for five minutes, I usually can keep doing it. I started with small mitts for my hands but didn’t like their soft feeling. Blue painter’s tape and cloth worked much better. Do I look crazy doing it? Probably. My hands, if you look closely, are significantly harder than they were. I like experimenting. It’s been over a year now, but when the idea of trying to run a mile in under 6 minutes got stuck in my head, I kept trying to see if I could do it. I did the same when I wondered if I could do 100 push-ups a day. Or 500. Or a 1,000.
Well over a month into the effort to see if foods could also make me darker, in combination with consistent sun exposure, the obvious answer is yes. I’d been asked if I used tanning lotion to artificially look bronzed. Yesterday, I read a version of this post I had written to post at some point. Because I knew, at some point, it was going to be like my weight loss journey; people would want to know the secret. And when I told them, they’d want to know more, as if the simplest explanation couldn’t be true.
People talk. And instead of listening to me about weight loss or darker skin, they want a magic solution. There isn’t one. It’s equal parts experimenting and dedication. I’ll write a book with a kinky, expensive secret revelation about how to do the things you want. I’ll autograph a copy if you want to buy it.
Love, X
The above isn’t unusual for me, especially during the week.
Erika surprised me last weekend with not one but two pairs of shoes. ( She even bought them new. 🙂 ) She was tired of seeing my worn-out but very comfortable work shoes. One of the pairs makes me feel like the god Mercury. The other pair? I literally danced and took off running at Academy when I felt how light they made me feel. I already feel that way most days, as if I’m a burning battery and my feet not quite touching the ground. Just at work today, I walked 23,000 steps, 75 flights of stairs, and jumped three railings. For years, I accommodated a huge amount of weight. I try not to think about spending those years not being the way I was always supposed to be. All the picnic tables I did not jump, all the miles I could have traversed in all manner of places, and the energy hidden inside my body but camouflaged by poor eating choices. Don’t get me wrong. I was very active and especially so because of my job. But there’s no getting around I foolishly convinced myself that it was more pleasurable to overeat than to feel the way I do now. As my friend Tammy taught me to say, nothing tastes as good as this feels. I know I won’t always be this way because age has no choice but to rob us incrementally of mobility. So if you see me jumping things I’m not supposed to be… Laugh and give me encouragement. You can laugh twice as hard if I bust my ass. Because one day, I will be like that native American next to the highway littered with trash, a tear in my eye, as I look upon a picnic table that I can no longer jump. So for today and all the days I can, I will pirouette, jump, climb trees, and remember what it felt like when I wasn’t truly me.
The other day was an odd day. I woke up at 12:55 a.m. with something I was struggling to remember suddenly clear in my mind. I started my day like any other. Coffee, cat petting, and play. Because I was up earlier, I started doing pushups. For whatever reason, I felt like my body was lighter than air. Most mornings, I am burning with energy. It’s been that way since October 2020, when I began to transform my body. 100, 200, then my daily limit. I’d kept my promise to keep it reasonable for a long, long time. Going into work, I continued to do sets at odd moments. It wasn’t as if I were thinking about doing them. I’d be on the floor, wherever I was inside the buildings or out, doing pushups again. By the end of the day, I’d done more than 1,700. I’m sure I forgot to count some. (Just realized how many times I typed “I” in this post!)
The law of increments helped me to realize that while I can’t do 500 pushups at once without tearing something, I can do multiples of that amount if I do them in smaller groups. Whether it’s weights, walking, running, or pushups. That’s part of why I encourage people to use their day to their advantage. They might not be able to set aside 45 minutes in a block, but they certainly can spare 1-2 minutes several times a day. If you harness that realization, you can make amazing gains toward whatever goal you’re aiming for.
It was an odd day to blow past my intentional record. Not planned, not even really trying. It reminded me again that most numbers and obstacles for this sort of thing are mentally anchored and not connected to real limits.
I was a little sort the next day, but not unusually so. If I deliberately pushed myself to do so many on a given day, I’m certain I would be unable to move the next day. Pushups once served me as an anti-anxiety tool. I used physical fatigue to beat down the anxious moments. Counting them out worked as meditation for me. Before my emergency surgery, I decided to do far fewer of them, recognizing that I’d taken an effective tool and gone too far with it. That’s usually the case with anything; we adopt behavior and find it helps. And sometimes, we use that effective way to overcome feelings or behavior incorrectly. For most, it is a glass of wine each evening, then two, then a bottle over time.
Having a FitBit is a luxury that helps me. Over time, the analytics pop up and remind me of correlations between sleep, mood, heart rate, and activity. Every once in a while, I have a day when my brain is in a zone of both activity and disconnectedness. And on those days, it correlates to my body feeling like I’m tapped into hidden energy.
For the days when I’m not feeling it, I go ahead and do my thing anyway. Because motivation follows action. If you get moving even when you might not want to, over time, that becomes the new normal to you and you can understand that it’s your own mind causing you problems. Not your tiredness or schedule.
I’m posting this because I get frustrated with people. It’s not because they want to see me fail (though some do); rather, it’s because I see them complicate the issue of being the weight they want to be. “Accepting and loving yourself as you are is the best. If you can’t, then DO something. Forget the gym. It’s all on the what-you-put-in-your-mouth side of the equation.”
I LOVE this picture of me. First, it was a fantastic moment in 2005 with my nephew and his friend. It’s not photoshopped. I weighed around 253. They gave me hell and laughter for challenging them to a balloon stomach challenge. Obviously, I won.
I didn’t add any exercise to my life when I dropped almost all my weight. I realized that I was fooling myself by eating way more than I imagined. The math (and results) proved it. I did add exercise because I was afraid my cousin would bludgeon me for not doing so. She was right. Exercise has its own benefits. But I continue to remind people that the best way to lose weight without upending your life is to control what you put in your mouth. It’s a lifelong commitment rather than a sprint. And it can be tough. Food is freaking amazing.
I went from the low 250s to the low 140s. It felt amazing. Now, my setpoint is 165. I’m not self-conscious at all. Because I finally learned that IF I want or need to, I can change the things about myself that are under my control. The rest? IDGAF. Being 55 has its privileges, and I’m so glad to be still alive. I’m not sure that this would be true had a lightning bolt not smacked me in the head a couple of years ago. The same bolt had unintended consequences, that’s true. But not being alive makes enjoying things a bit impossible.
People constantly talk about their weight. Or they needlessly feel self-conscious about it. It’s easy to know when they’ve hit their own fulcrum point because they finally try something different. Talk shifts to behavior. And that makes me happy.
So many beautiful people stress about their weight or how they look. Most of them don’t need to. We have them in our lives because we love them. We don’t see them as they see themselves. People are beautiful because of who they are. If they are unhappy, we want them to find a way to look and feel the way they want to.
Nothing is more astounding than watching someone do the things that give them success. I watch them get confidence – and invariably, they get their huge smile back. This is true about weight, and it’s true when they change their lives in other ways.
While I’m on the soapbox, I wish people would stop being timid about how they look. Especially when it comes to people seeing them or seeing their own pictures. Some of y’all are such tremendously beautiful people the way you are. Most of us do not care if there are extra pounds. We don’t see pounds or focus on the imperfections y’all perceive.
It’s in the eye of the beholder. If you’re not happy, then you can do something. Otherwise, don’t worry about how the rest of us see you. If you’re in our lives, believe me, you’re awesome enough.
Meanwhile, if you feel bad, just look at my picture from 2005 and imagine how many years I continued to make bad choices. And laugh!
Love, X .
PS I welcome smack talk if you want to be snarky. I’m being serious.
I thought the job of Cat Sitter was something else entirely. Erika took the picture. It’s one of the best pictures of her cat Acorn I’ve seen.
The second picture is of Güino frolicking in the snow. I let him play quite a while yesterday.
The third picture is Güino taking a rest in the cat castle after a hard day’s play.
This morning, I stood on the landing watching the moon. I heard arguing and shouting approaching. Even though it was 3:30 in the morning, two people were staggering down the sidewalk after a night’s festivities. Their conversation was so nonsensical that it reminded me of a presidential debate. They finally made it past and their voices faded. Güino was sitting at my feet. I could have sworn that even he shook his head in disapproval.
Even though it was cold and windy, I had to take a walk. This is a coffee and beer place next to the trail. The colors are stunning.
This is a picture heading back to my apartments. There’s color everywhere if you know where to look. We all need more of it in the winter.
Recently, I made a megamix of Rocky theme songs. Though I am not great at it, I made one remix that is impossible to remain immobile while it’s playing. The “Five Minute” rule works great when I’m not feeling it. Because it’s certainly true that motivation follows action rather than the converse. People wait for the urge, motivation, or willpower. It’s the opposite. As soon as the thought hits your noggin, you get up and do whatever it is you were about to put off. Or worse, say aloud, “I need to do so-and-so.” One of the best pieces of advice I was ever given was: “DON’T tell me what you’re going to do. Live it. Show me.”
Most of the time, if you practice doing, telling yourself you’ll spend just five minutes on a task cures your procrastination enough to keep going once you start. That’s true with so many things in life.
The Five Minute rule aligns seamlessly with my Law of Increments. If you do a little consistently throughout the day and days, before long, you will amass much effort – and probably consequences.
I know Rocky is old school. One of the reasons it did so well is because Sylvester Stallone (whose real name is Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone) was a nobody with a story about overcoming odds. He was nominated for an Oscar for his screenplay.
Late in my 9th-grade year, I got pissed off at myself one early spring afternoon and decided to go running. I figured if the violence in the house hadn’t killed me, I could risk a heart attack. We lived on the downside of a hill in Tontitown near 4K farms. To say that I regretted starting that day is an understatement. I ran a mile. My shorts were ragged, and my shoes weren’t running shoes. Poor aptly describes my predicament. But I put it all aside and just ran. I did it every day, no matter the weather and how sore I was. After a while, I was shocked to discover that the exhilaration of barely being able to breathe was an absolute high. At the end of it, I knew I’d have a hill to run down. Over time, I found myself sprinting a half-mile before the incline. I added more and more distance until one day, it occurred to me that even distance wasn’t an issue. Years later, I wondered what it was that first day propelled me to stop yammering in my head about what I needed to do – and just do it.
My brother forced me to do pullups and lift weights in the horrid dirt floor cellar on the bottom level of the trailer we rented. He usually punctuated the necessity of compliance by punching me in the upper arm with enough force to numb it. Months later, I turned the tables on him when he told me I had to do at least a dozen pull-ups. I said, “After you, my lady, after which I will.” He struggled and finished. I jumped up on the bar and did thirty. “How many CAN you do?” The look on his face was hard to read. “I don’t know. I don’t count. Pullups aren’t a normal thing I do in the real world.” My brother Mike was ridiculously stronger than me. I didn’t like weights. But if I wasn’t practicing my French Horn or reading amongst the trees, it was safe to hide somewhere, anywhere, rather than inside, where the violence would erupt. I’d do anything to have my brother Mike around so I could duck, weave, and throw punches at HIM.
Later, I realized that when I didn’t have motivation, I would listen to a couple of the songs from Rocky and Rocky 3 in my head. “Eye of The Tiger” played ad nauseam everywhere back then. You couldn’t go to church without expecting to hear it being played in lieu of old hymns. That song always gave me the energy to beat my immobility inertia.
All these decades later, some of the music still motivates me. I loathe many of the songs on the soundtracks. Anything by that crack-voiced Frank Stallone, for example. The new remixes incorporate more of the wall of brass sound that the main theme personifies. It’s just raw power demanding that I stay focused.
Through the years, I discovered that almost all obstacles were a figment of my imagination. Could I do 1,000 pushups a day? No, but I could do 1,500. That’s a bit excessive, I know. I stopped doing quite so many a few days before my emergency surgery about sixteen months ago. Could I run a mile in under six minutes at age 55? Yes. Can I run as fast as my childhood best friend Mike? Hell, no. I still have mud in my nostrils from years ago when I tried to keep pace with him. (I decided he might be Superman.) Could I walk twenty a day if I want to? Yes.
I’ve failed at so many things. So please don’t read all this as a litany of humblebrags. I’m self-aware enough to understand that I wasted a lot of my time and energy. I am proud to be a Spanish bilingual and to be a liberal as an adult. Not just politically but across the spectrum relating to people.
The gist of it is that if we are focused enough to ask ourselves what our goals are, we probably can get there. If we want to. Regardless of most of the obstacles. Everyone has their obstacles. And yes, I do recognize my own privilege by writing all this. So many people have no opportunities or advantages. Mine were massive on both sides of the scale. I’m not so stupid as not to realize that despite the harsh hand I started out with, things are good.
I wish my life had a wall of horns blasting at key moments. It would drown out the complaining and haters, for one thing. It would help to get out of bed, too, not that I have that problem. I’m lucky enough to wake up rattling the rafters most days.
From “Eye Of The Tiger” to “Pancreas Of The Platypus” might be an ideal title for a book to describe my outlook on life.
PS That dust all over my vest is from rolling around on the floor with my cat. I can beat him wrestling any day.
P.S. Parenthetically Speaking 