Kind of like when I was a freshman in College and bought “The Dave Mattews Band Live at Red Rocks”, or when Blues Traveler’s “Four” got me through my junior year of high school, or when O.A.R.’s “The Wanderer” was all over the place during my third summer in college, or when “White Blood Cells” by the White Stripes guided my studies through that deciding fifth year of college, or, more recently, when I spent my first full summer in California listening to the Hold Steady. I think you get the point.
Anyway, there is a very good chance that “Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings” by the Counting Crows will immediately remind me of that time I got down to 240 pounds.
So yeah, check it out if that’s your thing.
But back to the task at hand. There is strong evidence, though I am not ready to call it incontrovertible, that the recent changes in the diet are working exactly as I had hoped.
After eating under 2,000 calories for six straight days, and going to the gym for five out of six days, I weighed in on Sunday morning at 267.4. Before I went to the gym around 6 p.m., I weighed in at 266.2 (Don’t ask me how I weighed less. I prefer not to question these things). Since I didn’t weigh myself on Monday, the first day of the changes, I can’t exactly say how much weight I lost. But I know that I am two or three pounds down from Thursday, since I was 269 then.
For the first time, I can see 240 clear ahead. In the distance, for sure, but clear ahead.
While living in the Colorado plains in 2005, I drove to the mountainous regions for work one weekend. There was a moment on that drive that parallels this quest so perfectly and obviously, that I just have to share it.
I drove through the flatlands, past the same cows and crops over and over again. Then, past a curve, there was a single mountain barely visible in the distance. Had it not been a perfect Colorado day, it would have been covered by the thinnest clouds. But it sat there like in a fifth grader’s diorama staring me down from at least 100 miles away. That mountain was at least two hours away by car. But I could see the snow line and the trees underneath it. That was the first time I saw mountains on that stop in Colorado (clarification: I did my internship in the very mountainous Colorado Springs back when I was in college), and it was the first time I realized they were actually there.
Article comments
1 - Guy
Nice plug for the new Couting Crows. Martha and I spent a rainy Friday morning in the car finishing up the drive from Detroit to Philly listening to the album straigh through. I'm pretty sure I think it is excellent too. It's like Adam Duritz is Rasheed Wallace- he's unleashing the dogs. But instead of Mike James and Lindsey Hunter he's letting guitar players Dan, Dave and Dave loose.
Glad to see you're having success powering through the wall. Dieting is definitely something that goes in cycles or stages. I was stuck for a good long while but I am a refocused man in April. Years from now people will be talking about my April- someday children will read about it in school.
Later