That guy who wrote that book about the bell curve - my hardest kick in the ass. It's comin' kick in the ass

I was reading an article a few weeks ago and I came across a section explaining the psychology of what happens when men lose control of something on which you have based your self esteem. Usually depression, sometimes violence. But the feeling off loss becomes tremendous and overpowering.

I saw a lot of myself over the past 4 months (tomorrow will be 4 months since the accident) in the article. Even though things weren’t perfect, I’d spent 17 months running, and subsequently losing a lot of weight. I felt good about myself for the first time in years. I’d accomplished at least one of my major goals, becoming a better softball player. I’d becoming healthier, and seemed to understand, after about 18 years of struggling with my weight, how to actually lose weight.

And it seemed simple – eat less, healthier food and exercise. And I could do it.

That is, until the night of March 16, 2007. After the initial shock wore off a few days later, the pain in my neck started.

I will easily admit that I went overboard with the eating. I have repeatedly told the story of how salmon was the dinner I’d had the night of the accident, and in the hospital bed all I could think about was how I had really wanted pepperoni pizza with extra cheese. And that played on my sensibility.

When I got out, I ate. A lot. I know I’ve written on here the past few months, but I really have eaten pretty much everything I could shovel into my mouth, especially if it was batter dipped and deep fried. And any time I’d try to use the treadmill, I’d end aggravating the whiplash resulting in headaches, weakness and neck pains.

Well, the good news is that I’ve been headache free for the past 11 days. I’ve walked and lightly jogged two days this past week, and the next days I did not have any residual pains. I will say that it was very light walking, and only about 2-3 minutes jogging (total of 30 minutes on the treadmill Monday & Thursday) but it was something, and encouraging that there was no pains.

Now I need to work on controlling the food intake. I am still reading that book I was previous, You on a Diet, so I haven’t figured out if I am changing my diet, but what I want to do is something I know, something I know works. Once I get on a roll running and eating well, I can look into changing it up to suit a specific need, but until then, I want the comfort of what I know.

By the way, my weight last Monday was 243 lbs. That only sounds like 14 pounds over what I was just prior to the accident, but it is actually a much fatter 243 lbs, or that was a much leaner 229 lbs. Either way, my belly is huge right now.

Oh, and I’ll try to get back to updating 3 times a week on here. I think that is actually important, as I can see a progression, a record of my success. And I say success because, really, I seem to write on here when I am successful. No one wants a record of failure, do they?

Oh, and the title of this post is from a song by one of my favorite artists of all time, Moxy Früvous. They started in 1990 as a busking band from Toronto, but they blossomed into a one of the best live bands I've ever seen (I've seen, by my own count, over 500 artists live in concert) and they had a way of wrapping a melody around some great, socially conscious lyrics in many different genres of music. They are currently defunct, but for about a 10 year period, they were the bomb!