So since my last introductory post, I have no clue what happened to June.  I don’t think I accomplished a single thing.  Not a damn thing.  I want to say I was sick for a week, but there were still three other weeks.  Here are the stats for June.  This is with little in the terms of exercise, and just starting to eat better.

That’s right.  There were 43,200 minutes in June.  I spent 15 of them running.

So that brings in July without any momentum.  Luckily, I don’t take much to get rolling and have gotten right back on the ball.  Coincidentally, I started being much more productive after deleting my Facebook account.  Hrm.

So, what does a guy do when he lives alone again?  How does a single guy stay entertained?

Well, in my case, he goes slightly insane and decides to start hitting the gym.  Hard.  So I figured there are lots of people out there that are into the same thing that may want to read this.  You don’t get to read about people trying to get in shape very often, without it being a sales pitch.  So this is me, a real guy, just trying to get into shape.  I’ll be as transparent as possible.

So here is my health background over the past year… I’ll try to keep it short… but a year is a long time.  Updates won’t be this long.

I’m in my middle twenties now, so getting into shape shouldn’t be too hard.  Being six feet tall with a decent sized frame, I can pack on weight pretty easily.  During my “skinny” days I was about 170 or so.  Then I moved back to Texas and got a desk job.  I packed on a LOT of weight.  I wouldn’t say I was a big ol’ fatty, but I wasn’t small either.  I was pushing towards 230 pounds.  The most I saw on a scale was 225.  I never really realized it until I saw some photos of myself, and realized “Hey, I can grab my gut with two hands, and am getting man boobs”  This was around a year ago now towards the end of July 2009.

I started off with my diet, after all, that doesn’t require any real work.  Just a lifestyle change (harder than it sounds).  I stopped drinking soda, and I stopped eating fast food.  I hadn’t gotten into eating healthy yet, I was just not eating terribly.  Immediately I noticed I felt better physically and mentally.  These things alone caused me to start losing weight.  I still don’t drink soda, except maybe in mixed drinks every now and then.  One thing I am guilty of though, are energy drinks.  I’ll still have a few a week.  My sleep schedule needs work.  I’m now trying to cut those out, along with beer.  However, you’ll never take my rum away from me.  Never.

So, this simple lack of junk food made me feel so good, and the weight loss made me feel motivated.  I got hooked.  I started eating healthier, and watching how much I did eat.  Lots of chicken, low sugar yogurt, and water.  Cut out sugars.  Then I started to educate myself about nutrition.  Pro tip: YOU CAN NOT OUT EXERCISE A POOR DIET.  Ingrain that in your brain.  Unless you are an Olympian in training, eating a pizza every day can’t be undone by your exercise.  I mean, think about it, whenever you order a pizza or go grab some donuts, how do you feel afterward?  Chances are you’re disappointed or feel a bit blah.  This is because your body doesn’t like it.  Only your brain does because it likes the chemicals that are produced, not all that unlike street drugs.  There is a ton of science to a diet, which is why most people don’t bother to learn about it.  It’s confusing.  Honestly, I still don’t know that much, just enough to get by.

It snowballed from there, I learned what to eat, and how to eat it.  I started eating smaller meals throughout the day to keep up my metabolism.  I started to hit the gym around the same time and the weight just began to melt off.  220… 215… 210… 205… 200…  I was losing it, and keeping it off.  This wasn’t the fast weight loss the magazines try to sell you, this was real due to life changes.

Then my problems began. I hit 200 months ago in January and became content.  I wasn’t Fatty McFatfat anymore.  The stairs to my 3rd floor apartment didn’t make be breath heavy.  I stopped hitting the gym, and relaxed my diet.  I didn’t gain any weight since my habits had changed so much, it kept that from happening.  It’s not like I’m “fit”.  I know I can lose more.  Probably been around 205 for the past few months.

So like most people when they become newly single, they assess their life, and figure out what to change and improve on.  I decided I want to see what kind of shape I can get in.  I started running.  I competed in the Warrior Dash.  My first run ever.  Just so I can say I did.  Now I can say I’m a warrior.  Shut up.

Now I’ve started back on a stricter diet than ever, and like the introduction said, I’m hitting the gym with the fury of a 1,000 suns.  I want to be ripped.  I want my effort to show.  Is it vain?  Most likely.  I don’t care.  I want to prove it to myself that I can do it, and I want to look awesome.

This is going to take a lot of work.  I’ll update with how it goes, and what I did to get there.

P.S.  If you’re on DailyBurn.com or DailyMile.com, I’m on both as “Crizomaticus”.

It’s my blog and I can cry if I want to. I hate to have one of “those” posts, but when life hands you lemons, listen to some Mayer. This song is absolutely gorgeous in a sad way about two people who try to stay together even though they know it won’t work. The lyrical imagery is better than I could have ever said it. I had to tune out when he played it at the show last week. I can relate to a lot of his stuff, but this one hits dead center.

It’s not a silly little moment
It’s not the storm before the calm
This is the deep and dying breath of
This love we’ve been working on

Can’t seem to hold you like I want to
So I can feel you in my arms
Nobody’s gonna come and save you
We pulled too many false alarms

We’re going down
And you can see it too
We’re going down
And you know that we’re doomed
My dear, we’re slow dancing in a burning room

The social revolution is upon us as anybody within distance of a WIFI network knows. I’m part of the first generation that really grew up with and helped shape the internet.  I spend so much time on the internet, it’s kind of embarrassing if I were to put it into numbers.   I’m all over the social web, but why?  Yes, there is the “convenience” of it, but how convenient is it really?

*Warning, this is full of a lot of over generalizations.  Sorry if I sound like a bitter old man, I don’t really write in a way that should be taken at face value.

In the “old” days if I wanted to talk to somebody, it was simple. I either called them on the phone, e-mailed them, or if they were tech savvy, I could even instant message them on ICQ.  Back in those days I had good friends, I mean friends that I could just walk into their front door without knocking. Friends that I could spend all day with, and not run out of things to talk about.  I still have those kind of friends, and amazingly, I pretty much never talk to them using the social web.

Ever since it had become “easier” to talk to my friends, and for my friends to talk to me, I honestly see them less, and don’t really talk to many anymore. It’s just simply gotten too easy to be a lazy friend.  People think being “friends” with somebody on MyTwitterBook means they’re friends in real life.  They will believe that leaving 140 character comments on each others FaceSpace pages counts as human interaction.  Then just to let everyone know that they still go out and have awesome times, they will put up nothing but party pictures.  Whenever I’m out partying now, it’s crazy how many cameras you see, knowing that the photos will be for nothing other than putting on Facebook to show their friends that they know how to have a good time.   People simply didn’t use to do that.

It’s such strange dynamic when people just shout something out into an empty field, hoping that somebody else in that field hears them and shouts back.  They don’t actually talk.  They won’t even take a step closer to each other.  They don’t ask each other how the others day was, because frankly, they don’t care.  They just want to know that somebody heard them.  If that insults you, either you know it’s true, or you’re one of the few awesome people out there and I want you to add me as a friend on whatever.

I’ll read their status updates about how awesome their grilled cheese sandwich just was. Then I let them know I think it’s awesome that they think it’s awesome by clicking on a button. If I REALLY liked it, then I’m going to even comment on how I wish I could have such an awesome grilled cheese too. I’m never directly talking to them.  I’m talking to their comment, as if it was its own entity.

I just don’t see how I should need to spread myself out so thin across all these networks just to make sure I am able to get messages from anybody, at anytime, even my dry cleaners.  If people really want to talk to me, they can figure it out.  I have a phone and an email address.  My phone even gets instant messages if you don’t want to leave your computer.  Kids and their skinny jean technology, dag nabbit.

Now excuse me while I update my Facebook profile to let everyone know that I published a new post on my blog.