How to lose weight quickly

During the years I lived in Colorado and did the whole extreme skier thing I was fucking deisel. I mean was in really, really sick shape. Then a few years ago, while I was still living out there and still skiing everyday, I got hurt really bad (extreme skiing lends itself well to serious injuries; seriously, true story) and was laid up for a while. I lost most of my sponsorships and got really lazy in general. Which led to me getting kind of... um, round.

After I got hurt I went back to school, graduated from said school (hey, a lot of people need 8 years to finish college without getting an M.D.) and moved to New York to get a "real job." Now, instead of skiing and generally enjoying the mountains, I ride the subway and sit at a desk most of the day.

Awesome move, dude.

During the injury>school>move to NYC>desk job span I managed to gain a lot of weight. In the relatively short timeframe right after the injury I gained some weight because I wasn't very mobile and I was on a 100-bong hit a day regimen, which led to many Ben & Jerry sessions and a lot of sitting around. Plus, apparently drinking like 15 beers a day can be fattening.

After moving to New York and being the serious foodie that I am I naturally felt it was my responsibility to try as many restaurants and pizza joints as I could when I moved here. So that, combined with not burning like a million calories a day while skiing, meant I got fat after I moved here.

FAT, fat. And not with a "ph" either. I gained like 60+ pounds in less than two years.

I know.

This past spring, I found out I had an ulcer (I wrote about it briefly here, but again, the 15 beers-a-day may have been a contributing factor. Just saying). The doctor put me on some meds and no alcohol, and I put myself on an ulcer-curing diet plan. I ate yogurt and granola for breakfast, I would have a banana or two for lunch (sometimes I would have some carrots for lunch - how exciting, right?) and I would eat an avocado and a half a cup of cottage cheese for dinner. That's it. For almost five months that was all I ate. Ulcers really harsh your appetite bone and I love avocados and cottage cheese, so it actually wasn't that hard to do.

Around the same time as I discovered I had an ulcer and started on the diet and all, I saw a picture of myself. I realized - just like in one of those Jenny Craig commercials - just how fat I really was. I looked like Jobba the Hut. Pregnant. After a big meal. Except, you know, whiter and with a lot more body hair.

So I figured as long as I was on the holocaust diet plan, I would start working out again and try and shed some of the extra pounds I had worked so hard to add on over the past couple of years. While it was a difficult decision, and I loved those pounds of flabby fattness for all the good times we had shared and all those long nights it kept me warm, I felt it was time for us to end our courtship.

So I started running and doing sit-ups and push-ups everyday. I was never a runner at all, so this was a big step for me - running like 4-5 days a week. (Wait, so I just put one foot in front of the other and repeat? Huh...)

The ulcer had forced me onto a crazy lactard-rabbit diet, my own sense of self-disgust had me working out again and I ended up losing about 50 pounds in just over four months.

(I seriously thought about writing to one of those self-help or healthy lifestyle magazines with "the ultimate diet plan." Then I found out that getting an ulcer and having no appetite isn't really that healthy. Go figure, my one shot at being ever published. Also: Not sitting on your ass all day and cutting some calories out of your diet? Not a very innovative or unique approach to losing weight.)

My workout when I lived in the mountains involved some training, generally peaking during the fall to gear up for the ski season. But it was mostly a Rocky IV kind of workout: Shoveling snow, skiing, lifting the front end of my snowmobile out of deep snow when it got stuck, chopping wood in the fall, construction work in the summer, just exerting myself in general.

(Wow, I just re-read that last paragraph and holy shit did I used to be manly. Now I can barely carry my own purse without getting tired.)

Now I work out in the gym. I started at the gym again this winter when it got too cold to run outside and I am pretty much there five days a week. The thing is I have an ultra-super-serious sweet tooth and have no will power over it (I am snorting Oreo crumbs and chasing them with bacon grease even as I write this). I still want to drop about 20 more pounds to get to where I want to be (which is even more insanely, ridiculously good looking than I already am; if that's even possible) and I know in order to do that I need to work out AND not eat anything. At all. I know my addiction to cookies, boobies, bacon and fattening foods is what is holding me back from losing the last little bit, but I cannot control myself. I am essentially working out in order to be able to eat what I want and to not gain weight, but to not lose any either, like treading water.

Fat water.

I have always been all about enjoying life to the fullest - eating, fraternizing, drinking, cavorting, you name it - if it feels good then do it, I say. So, seriously, drop a few more pounds or give up good food and cookies and bacon? Particularly with all the amazing restaurants and food in New York City, it would be like going to a whorehouse after I cut off my dick.

So my question is: How does one willingly quit eating food that's bad for you without first getting an ulcer?

Or a better question is: How can I keep eating cookies and bacon (oooh, what about bacon cookies? I bet those would be awesome!) and still lose weight? And how can I get really rich without having to do any actual work? And how do I keep all these attractive women from begging me to sleep with them? It's getting so annoying. Wait...






Oh, and keep the questions for the "about me" section coming. Seriously people, that post isn't going to write itself and I haven't nearly enough motivation or introspective prowess to write that much about myself. Also, I am really surprised by the fact that a question I thought would be asked hasn't even been approached yet. I thought for sure it would be one of the first ones I'd get, but nothing at all... Hmmmm.

Contagious Band-Aid Face

Um, yeah, so those of you (or both of you) who read this blog may be aware that I had a tough week last week. I did, it's true. And it has to do with a few things, I think. First of all, I didn't see any boobies all week. I didn't see boobies until the weekend had technically started.

Strike one.

I also decided I needed to take a little break from drinking last week. I have been drinking a lot lately - as in I cashed three big bottles of vodka at home, solo, in two weeks; not including weekends (I know, I know, nice life dude) - and I felt like the best thing for my stomach would be to take a solid week off of the hooch. You see back in May I was diagnosed with several bleeding stomach ulcers. So the whole drinking thing is kind of... Well, I don't need to be drinking multiple liters of vodka per week. Let's just say that.

Oh, the ulcer thing? No big whoop. I had these weird pains that felt like hunger pangs or indigestion for a few weeks. Then they turned into a light stabbing pain for a few weeks, and for another three weeks or so I had severe, sharp stabbing pains for most of the day that would leave me doubled over, gritting my teeth and clutching my side for almost my entire waking day. What did the doctor say? Pffffftttt, what kind of self respecting man goes to a doctor for a little stomach cramp? Not me, that's who. Until five of my friends tried to pick me up off of my bed (where I was gripped with pain and holding my stomach with my teeth tightly clenched) and put me into a car to go to the emergency room.

In Brooklyn.

For a stomachache.

Needless to say, I did not go to the emergency room that day. I had to promise my friends that I'd to go to the doctor the very next day though. My physician happens to be a stomach specialist (that's a gastroenterologist for all you non-laypeople out there, since I'm sure there are at least a few doctors who read this), so he scoped it with a tiny camera snake and told me, "it looks like a war zone down there."

Sweet. Thanks doc. That's exactly the kind of reassuring statement I was looking for.

The ulcer was perhaps due to my mild (excessive), recreational (habitual), infrequent (daily) use (abuse) of alcohol (by the way, are you guys aware that drinking 6-10 beers a day and maybe more on weekends, constitutes drinking "a lot"? I know! I was just as shocked). Other contributing factors may have included drugs (check!), stress (girlfriend troubles were just starting around this time), and diet (I gained like 50 pounds in my first 6 months in NYC by eating Thai food and pizza everyday. Apparently fairly acidic foods. Who knew?).

But I got off topic a wee bit here. So, last week, riiiigggghhhtt...

In addition to not drinking all week (I picked the wrong week to stop drinking), I had a cyst spring up under my ear.

Strike two.

Jesus H this is getting to be like a medical history report, eh? Sorry, but this is my life right now.

For those of you who have never had a cyst right there on your face, it feels like a white hot poker searing into the soft, sensitive skin right where your face meets your ear, only with more pressure from the inside and even more painful than you are imagining it to be right now. Seriously. The little fucker went from non-existent to about the size of a softball (not really) in like a day. A Saturday. Remember how I said I wasn't into emergency rooms in Brooklyn? Yeah, well try and go see a doctor on a Sunday. I waited until Monday to see my doctor who had to cut the bastard cyst open to drain it (still hungry?). And believe it or not: That. Shit. Hurt.

A lot.

Strike three.

So Monday I dealt with that. By the time I made it home from my doc's office which is way uptown, I was very out of it from the pain killers (the sweet, sweet painkillers). I had like 40 emails to deal with and had to spend my afternoon working from home, trying to sound like I know what I'm talking about. Not so much.

Tuesday I was extremely busy after missing most of my day with the face-infection from hell; I played catch up and tried all day not to enjoy, er, eat any of the painkillers as I again needed to sound like I knew what the fuck I was talking about. Which is hard enough as it is when you can barely construct basic sentences in English. I made it through Tuesday only popping pills towards the end of my day. Fine. But now I hadn't been to the gym in a few days which Uncle Ebenezer doesn't feel good about doing (or not doing, as it were).

Meanwhile my jerk off roommate who works from home as a clothing reseller or some sketchy shit was in Brazil relaxing on the beach with his girlfriend, drinking coconut drinks and probably humping in the sand laughing about how lame it would be to have a cyst on your face and to not be on the beach in Brazil in November. Being the stand up guy that I am I said (before Hell Week started) that I would take care of processing, packaging and shipping some orders for him while he was away. So I had that to look forward to every night when I got home, swollen face and all. More work.

Wednesday I had an awesome surprise meeting with an agency I just started working with and instead of being the one or two dudes I thought I was meeting with, I got to meet an entire team of people and give (an impromptu) presentation that I didn't know I was giving. With a fucking bandage on my face.

Awesome.

Thursday. Oh man, Thursday was great. On Thursday I overslept - like WAY overslept and rolled into the office pretty (read: really) late. (I was in one of those funk moods too right from the giddy-up and it took me like a week to decide what to wear - sweater vest or no sweater vest? I went with the vest, this turned out to be a decision that would haunt me later.) Which isn't too abnormal for me, but I was LATE, late this day, my friends. About three minutes after I sat down at my desk I decided nope, no sweater vest (Indecision is going to be the name of the movie they make about me after my trial, conviction and imprisonment). In removing my stupid, green sweater vest that took me, no shit, fifteen minutes to decide whether or not to wear out of my house I pulled out the stitches in my face.

Let me repeat that. I pulled the stitches out of the extremely painful wound on my face with my sweater.

Awesome. I don't know about you, but I love bleeding at work and having people say, "oh man, are you okay? Are you sure? You're bleeding."

I gave up at that point. In addition to having an already overloaded week, full of business (ha - that was supposed to sound like 'busy-ness', I am so having a lexiconal epiphany right now, wow) and being overloaded with work I was fortunate enough to deal with the painful fucking cyst/open wound on my face, working through the day on or jonesing for painkillers (I still am by the way, so if you have some email me. I ran out), walking around with a swollen face and bandages/band-aid on my face (not in a cool way like Nelly either, more of an overlapping the bottom of the ear and onto the cheek kind of look - so not hot). As well, some shit kind of hit the fan at work at the end of the day on Thursday. (I'm not getting into work details on here because I already got fired from a job for going on TV and talking about humping that midget in the elevator at my old job.) Let's leave it at: Things went bad with business towards the end of the day.

I swear to you it was the closest I have ever been to actually crying at work. Ever. Horrible week. And it was only Thursday.

And still no drinking. Why I did that to myself, I have no idea.

Strikes four, fi- fuck it. Ballgame.

Friday wasn't actually that bad. We did a pot-luck thing for Thanksgiving at work; tons of food, relaxed kind of day, lots of desserts after not being in the gym all week. Solid day. I hit the gym after work (for only the second time in a week), went home, saw some boobies, watched a movie and went to bed pretty early. I stayed horizontal for most of the weekend. Seriously, I said I was going to sleep all weekend and forget my week and I did. Saturday I was horizontal on my great futon couch and watched college football all day. I did not even open the door of my apartment. The biggest distances I covered the entire day were from the bedroom to the couch, and from the couch to the bathroom. The most effort I put into my whole day was making myself breakfast (toast) and hitting the jump button on the remote to go back and forth from football games.

(Oh, did anyone see Oklahoma slap the pants off of Texas Tech? Wow. Why even bother leaving Lubbock guys?)

Sunday, my friend Joey made a big pot of sauce and homemade meatballs and we watched NFL all day and ate a great dinner to finish off the weekend. Something about Sunday and a big Italian meal just makes everything better, no? Plus, you know, Entourage on Sunday nights is always good.

This week is shaping up to be better so far. We got a short week, a holiday to look forward to and to be thankful for and all that shit, and more importantly my face is feeling much better. I am still dealing with the fallout from Thursday work-wise, but at this point I just want to find any resolution, and I think that will happen today.

This past week has helped to put things in perspective for me though. I am much more appreciative of not having four shitty days in a row - or for even just having one good day. The weekend was the most relaxing one I have had in a while, because I (successfully) tried to make it that way.

And most of all, I have learned to be much more careful when removing my sweater.

...That's what she said!

(I couldn't help myself )