Frustrations....

It's pretty common for someone working out to have frustrations with various things. Some of us complain about the gym hours, lack of machines open, free weights everywhere, old fat guys putting their bare ass on the bench in the dry sauna and things like that. I can, to a point, deal with all that. I feel like it's just part of the game. People suck in general and they suck even more when they are at a place they would rather not be. I'm not that way. I like the gym. I look forward to it. I love the smell, the sounds and the people watching.

I'm talking about personal frustrations. Those are the ones I struggle with. I feel like I have plateaued in some way. I eat well and honestly make really good food choices 98% of the time. There is the odd cheat meal and non-diet drink and I can live with that. Sanity food is what I like to call it. I'm not sure if I can pinpoint my frustrations. I hate the gut I'm still carrying although it's not nearly as big as it used to be. I hate the lack of definition in my arms and legs although I see the vascularity in my arms and can see some obvious muscle buldges in my thighs. I wish I could lift more weight in the gym although I have made excellent gains since I started. I guess I'm just frustrated overall.

I have a goal I was trying to reach but I really don't know if I will make it. I have 17 days as of today to reach that goal and I am what seems like 100,000 miles away. I'm currently sitting at 211lbs. My goal by January 9th was to hit 200lbs. We are leaving for a cruise and I wated to look the best I have ever looked in many many years. I wanted to walk on that deck proudly with my shirt off and not feel self conscious for once. I really have doubts that I can shed 11 pounds in 17 days. I know we see it all the time on Biggest Loser of double digit weight loss in 1 week but let's face it...those people are MORBIDLY obese. They are on the verge of their bodies saying "You know what buddy? I'm done with this, let's take a permanent nap." You got a lot to lose you lose a lot. I honestly didn't think I would reach this point for at least another 15lbs and I would understand at that point because I would be on the threshold of my "ideal" weight.

I take my suppliments, I eat clean, I work my ass off in the gym....or do I? Am I short changing myself? Am I really not pushing myself as hard as I could? I walk out sweaty, tired and a battered shell of my earler self. Is that enough? I really don't know. I have been on the same workout routine for about 4-5 months now and this week I decided to switch things up. that's what I hear all the other Brolys say. My previous workout was as follows:

Monday- Chest
Tuesday-Shoulders
Wednesday-Legs
Thursday-Back
Friday-Arms
Sunday-Circuit

Hmmmmm, that's 6 days a week on average. Is it possible I'm overtraining? Not giving my body enough time to recover? A quick Google search says the following about overtraining:

"Overtraining is the result of giving your body more work or stress than it can handle. Overtraining occurs when a person experiences stress and physical trauma from exercise faster than their body can repair the damage"

"...excessive exercise may lead to overtraining, but don't forget to consider other stresses, such as family or work commitments."

"Remember, stress is stress, whether it's a physical, mental or emotional stress, it still has the same effect on your health and well-being."

I don't have many of the physical signs of overtraining but let's look at the psychological signs and symptoms:


Fatigued, tired, drained, lack of energy
Reduced ability to concentrate
Apathy or no motivation
Irritability
Anxiety
Depression
Headaches
Insomnia
Inability to relax
Twitchy, fidgety or jittery

The ones in bold describe me to a T. But what throws me are the physical signs:

Elevated resting pulse / heart rate
Frequent minor infections
Increased susceptibility to colds and flu's
Increases in minor injuries
Chronic muscle soreness or joint pain
Exhaustion
Lethargy
Weight loss
Appetite loss
Insatiable thirst or dehydration
Intolerance to exercise
Decreased performance
Delayed recovery from exercise

I don't have near as many. Now I'll be honest...I can be lazy but in all seriousness this is exactly how I feel. Everytime I walk in the gym I have the mindset that I'm gonna bust my ass and make the workout count. I may be doing myself a disservice. I recently took some time off from the gym for about a week. It felt good. Stress levels dropped, I didn't feel rushed and I enjoyed the gym time not hanging over my head every day. At the same time I felt like I was doing something very wrong by not going. What the hell is wrong with me? I like the time off the gym but I mentally feel like crap for not going. It felt like I "no call, no showed" for work.

I'm so confused and feel like a writer with mental block, a director with no direction or a stripper who can't seem to take her clothes off. Either way I will continure pounding away as always and doing what I can to keep things up.

At this point I have no choice because I won't go back to what I used to look like.

Current weight: 211lbs

Taking the "Health" out of Healthcare

I may not have mentioned it but I have a Culinary degree. I went to school to learn how to cook and I loved every minute of it. They taught us all the traditional techniques of cooking and how everything tastes better with butter and pork fat. You know what? They are absolutely correct. The sweet delicacies of whole butter, heavy on the sweet cream, and ANYTHING cooked in pork fat is just to die for. We experienced, tasted and cooked things most of us had never heard of. We learned how to hold a knife, peel potatoes, small dice things very quickly and learned all those other cool things you see your favorite Celebrity Sell-Out...er...ummm...Chef do on TV. Oh yea...we also leaned Nutritional cooking. Let me see....we spent...ummm...well I guess it was about 6 weeks leaning the basics of healthy cooking. The other 6 weeks were lumped into another form of cooking that may or may not have been related to nutritional cooking. That's my point: I don't remember a damn thing from that class. Possibly because it was clouded by 47 weeks of other stuff that had nothing to do with it. American Regional, World Cuisine, Baking and Pastries, Advanced Pastries 2, Asian Cuisine, Garde Manger...all of those classes took a full 11 weeks to complete. 11 fucking weeks learning how to make Pates and force meats and "insert your meat choice here" en croute but they can't spend more than 6 weeks on teaching us to cook healthy? Did they think we would upset the Culinary Gods that reside in France? Did they think it was like spitting on the grave of every pioneer Chef that came before them? Or did they just simply not care enough about it to put anymore effort than necessary? My bet is the latter.

So that 2 years I spent learning the intricate nature of pork fat and lard eventually landed me a job at a hospital. For the sake of internet prowlers I will leave the name of the facility out but I will say that we are the flagship location in our division and have close to a 700 bed capacity. Our enployees range from all types of lyfestyles and cultres. The kitchen is staffedwith cooks that have many years of combined experience and produce about 1200 meals each day for our patients. The cafeteria serves 500-1000 meals a day to guests and employees. As an employee the cafeteria is my main source of nourishment considering I get a measly 30 minutes for lunch and they discourage going off-site for food. That is what we are going to focus on today...the Cafeteria.

Anytime you go to a hospital, and I hope it's NOT where you spend a rockin' Friday night, one of the biggest questions is "Where is the cafeteria?" For some reason guests are visiting loved ones during a time when they need food. Maybe its the comfort aspect or nervous nature of people with hospitals and needing food. Let me tell ya we got comfort food galore in ours and our employees are showing signs they are damned comfy with what they are eating. Let me take you through a walk through of the cafeteria:

There are two entrances and depending on the time of day depends on what you see. This morning I walked in to do my rounds and I was warmly greeted with the sight of this:

MMMmmmmmmm, donuts, and bagels the size of your head and croissants bigger than a softball filled with enough butter to clog the toilet. Oh yea, those round glazed heavenly bodies are Krispy Kreme we have brought in on a dialy basis. Let's keep walking and maybe we will find something tasty. OK, here is the serving line. Standard Cafeteria style service with everything pre-made and sitting in steam wells. Have a look:

Yea, baby, soak that in. Dive into that sausage gravy FROM A CAN, frozen biscuits, pork sausage, BACON, and just for good measure there is a little bit of turkey bacon and some hard boiled eggs that have been sitting there for AT LEAST 2 hours. Maybe I'll find some fruit instead:

Pretty sad huh? BUT WAIT!! THERE'S MORE!!! Sort of...

How the hell can fruit, of all things, be an after thought in a Healthcare cafeteria?? It's actually an easy answer: The employees won't buy it so they don't putmuch out therefore there is not that much wasted. *slaps head* Of course, the fatties that work here won't get a piece of fruit for breakfast when they can get sausage gravy FROM A CAN!! Nothing tickles the tonge and dances on the senses like a ladel of the mecca of gastronomic creations GRAVY FROM A CAN!!

On second thought I've lost my appetite. Maybe I'll just get something to drink.

Jesus Christ on a cracker??!! Was I majically teleported to a QT or Race Trac?? Oh, wait...LOL, it's the same place. Breathe it in folks because not only do we feed our employees fatty foods and unhealthy fried stuff but we give them the vehicle for everlasting longevity in their departments....CAFFEINE AND SUGAR!! I have counted on numerous occasions no less than the following:

6 different "Coke" labeled sodas (ie. Diet, Lime, Cherry...etc)

8 different energy drink flavors over 3 different companies

5 different Dr Pepper labled products

5 different kinds of bottled tea

3 Sprite products

Big Red AND Big Blue. (WTF is Big Blue?)

And the grandaddy winner of all drinks...Tahitian Treat. This one 16oz bottle packs more sugar and calories than ANY other carbonated soda. 220 calories. Guess what? We can't keep that shit in stock. Keep in mind this is JUST the softdrink coolers. To my immediate right is another cooler stocked full of sugary bottled juice and another cooler full of over priced Odwalla drinks AND ANOTHER cooler of various drinks like Starbucks bottle fraps, Nestle Quik and junk like that.

If you haven't figured it out by now it is VERY difficult to find something healthy or at least semi-healthy to eat. Yes, we do have a salad bar and it is quite good but it takes a HUGE toll on my colon and digestive system to eat salad every single day. I can do it and have done it before but I would rather not.

Look, here's the point of all this: I work in a facility that should be the pinnacle of healthy environment. No fried shit, no trans-fat, no refined carbs and no junk food should be the words we scream to everyone. We should march to the beat of the dieticians and heed their words. We should be afraid of the very things that we treat our patients for. Diabetes, heart disease, obesity, gastric bypass should be the words that make us tremble in fear. We should look at ourselves and then look at our plates and then think real hard if we need that extra chicken tender or that extra hamburger patty. It's a sad state of affairs when the people who are treating your Father, Brother, Mother, Sister, Wife or Husband and they are the ones who need help as much as they do.

Moral of this story: Bring your lunch. At least you know who made it and can make your own choices.

Current weight: 209lbs.

What is "Broly"

I'm not even sure why I'm starting this blog. It was an idea I had a few days ago and thought maybe I should put down on "paper" some of the stuff I went through, currently dealing with and will eventually go through as someone who is trying to look better and feel better about himself.

You might be asking yourself "What the HELL is 'Broly'"? Honestly, I couldn't tell you exactly where the term came from. It's used in a loving manner by a bunch of e-meatheads to basically throw some bromance out to a guy who looks good and has been working his ass off. Sort of an electronic hetero hug. Props, daps, knuck...you get the idea.

So anyway, I have been wanting to attain this status for some time. I worked out on and off over the last 3 years or so but nothing really serious. I had some things holding me back. I had a marriage I was miserable in, I was woking in an industry that wasn't conducive to working out and basically had no goals pertaining to my health. I was 260lbs at my heaviest. I lookeded like this guy:

Except I'm white and I don't wear boxers...and I have a better camera. You get the point. The one thing we do share is the vapid expression on our face. I had the same face...sad, lifeless, disheartened and had a general feeling like nothing could change. I can tell you what made me that way. You know before I even say anything. Yup......FAST FOOD!!

The Hut, The Clown, The Box, The Cabana, The Bueno, Chicken on a bun, chicken nuggets, fries, sodas, tacos, pizza....it was all so convenient and so EFFING tasty. My absolute favorite lunch while working int the IT field was a 20 piece chicken McNugget from Mickey Ds, Super Sized fries and 1 liter Dr Pepper and I would finish THE WHOLE DAMN THING!!! Let's digress for a second and analyze my favorite lunch:

Chicken Nuggets (20 piece):
950 calories
540 calories from FAT
2000mg sodium (that is 2 full grams for the lesser math inclined)
55g Carbs

Supersized Fries:
610 calories
261 calories from FAT
29 total fat grams
390mg sodium
77g carbs

1 Liter Dr Pepper
400 calories
140mg sodium
108g carbs from sugar

FOR A GRAND TOTAL OF:

1960 Calories (801 calories from fat)
2530mg sodium
240g carbs

Essentially in 1 (one) meal I had consumed about 100 calories UNDER maintenance for the whole day for someone of my height, age and activity level....and I didn't even mention breakfast or dinner. Truth be told there were days I consumed well over 6000 calories and who knows how many carbs or fat grams. Who cares right? Once or twice wont hurt, right? BULLSHIT! It didn't hurt when I was shoveling crap into my pie hole but I was lethargic afterward and didn't care about anything. I was high as a kite. Who needs drugs, man, I got pizza and nuggets, and soda and all the junk that makes us feel good. Let me tell you something...the hurt was internal and it hurt a lot. My self esteem was in the basement and I hated doing things in general. I was content on the couch watching TV or being on the internet. I hated shopping for clothes cause I didn't want to have to go through the agony of trying to fit in a size 40 pant when I knew I needed 42. I didn't want to buy ANOTHER XXL shirt. They charge more for that size, ya know?

I tried to justify things like I'm sure most do. I had a wife at the time and she was "happy with who I was and not what I looked like." That helped a little but I always knew I needed to do something about the way I looked. The days rolled on and on and before you know it I'm 260lbs. I was a svelt 185 in high school and a marching band fool. Shirt off marching barefoot on the blacktop in summer band and rockin' faces off with my trumpet. Simply amazing how life gets in the way.

So what's the point of this blog? It's a quest. A never ending, constantly changing and frustration inducing quest. I'll keep you informed about my progress, post my workouts, parts of my diet, pictures and possibly some recipes. You'll hear me bitch and complain about gym crap, my diet and various other observations. Maybe you'll learn something. Maybe you'll be inspired. Maybe it will prompt you to look at yourself and see if you can do better. Either way put down your fries and pay attention cause I'm on a non-stop train to Brolyville.

Current weight 210lbs.