When a number takes on more meaning

Often times a number is just that, a number. It has no real meaning or significance to people. But then suddenly one little event happens and that number is linked to that moment forever.

This was the case for me last Thursday night. It was my first training session since before Thanksgiving and one where I knew I would get my behind kicked. I had still been going to the gym regularly, but it had been a couple of weeks since I had worked out with my trainer.

So we meet at 6pm last Thursday. After some small talk and a warmup exercise or two, she lets me know the first brutal mission for me during this session: pyramid pushups.

Now, when I first started training with Amy back in the spring, she was feeling me out, seeing what I could and couldn’t do. One of the things she had me do was pushups. Nothing fancy, nothing crazy, just regular pushups.

It didn’t take long for her to see where I was at. I could barely get through two pushups before my arms would give out.

So it’s something we’ve worked on, little by little, and something I’ve done on my own. There is no way I should only be able to struggle through two pushups.

The pyramid pushups are doing sets of 10, then 9, then 8 all the way to one, then reverse back from one to 10. You do take breaks after each set (or at least I do), and she added a wrinkle where on the solo pushup, I had to hold it when I went down before coming up.

It is about as fun as it sounds.

But it was a milestone for me, a personal achievement, and one I was and am very proud of. And it led to a number having more meaning to me than it ever did before.

89.

That was how many I was able to do before my arms were like jell-o. I completed all the sets from 10-1, then from 1-7. As I went to do the set of eight, I got to number six before crashing to the floor.

It made me feel unbelievable. Amy was very proud.

It was a long way from two. And 89 will always have a different, more meaningful place with me.

One of the pitfalls

So when I started on this journey of mine, one of the hopeful outcomes was losing some weight and getting healthier. And I am on my way to that achievement.

But with any journey, there are pitfalls. There are bad ones, like when the scale is being stupid and telling you that your weight is up for the week when you really did nothing to necessitate that. But there are good ones, too.

Example of the Patriots jersey I can no longer wear!

The best pitfall is that everything is bigger now. The obvious first thing is clothes, and I find myself not being able to wear that favorite sweatshirt or Patriots jerseys because, well, it looks ridiculous now because it hangs on me like a dress. But boy is that a good feeling. There was nothing better than when I was getting ready to head out to watch a Pats game earlier this season, pulled out the old #12 Brady authentic jersey, put it on and … POW … saw the thing fall to my knees. And this was a jersey that, at times, may have been snug. Now, it hangs in the closet, waiting for a good washing before it goes up on eBay, because the hope here is that I won’t ever have to wear a jersey that big again. (And that goes with just about every other sport-type article I own. There will be a lot of activity in the coming weeks of me selling stuff that is way too big. Hopefully the proceeds help negate the cost of some replacements!)

Another item was a pair of Reebok Zigs that I bought this spring at the Reebok store in

Patriots Place

. And these things weren’t cheap, like $100-for-the-pair not cheap. Now, they are way too big for my feet. Did I lose weight in my feet? Guess so, because I can’t walk around with these sneakers on anymore without my feet falling out of them. Literally. And, again, these sneakers were probably a tad tight at purchase time.



The Reebok Zigs I can no longer wear.



The one good thing, and KC and Jen were witnesses (whether they were paying attention and/or remember is a different story) is that the Reebok people told me that there is some sort of “lifetime guarantee” on the Zigs and they would take them back for an exchange at any time. It might be time to test that theory and see if I can’t get a new pair of sneakers!

But one of the more satisfying pitfalls was my wedding ring. When Jen and I got married, the ring I got had to be extended to basically the biggest size they had. It was a size 14, and I remember the jeweler saying that there was no way this ring could be extended to be bigger. As I started to lose some weight, the ring started to get looser. And looser. And looser, until one day I was in the office talking with my co-worker Brian and made a motion with my hand. The next sound we heard was my ring bouncing off the wall. It flew clear off my hand. So I stopped wearing the ring for the week for fear of losing it because it just fell off my hand.

A couple of weeks back, Jen and I went to Kay Jewelers to have her rings cleaned and fixed and mine resized. The woman was going through the key chain with all the different sizes for a few minutes until one actually fit.

Size 11.5.

We just got the message last night that the rings are back in and ready to be picked up. While the prospect of dealing with Christmas crowds at Emerald Square Mall is very unappealing, being able to pick up my wedding ring and being able to wear it again is something I very much look forward to.

For the past two weeks, Jen and I have joked that it is like we are engaged again, since both our wedding bands had to be sent out to get fixed. It has been very strange not having my wedding ring on, I must say. But I will soon have it snugly on my finger, and what a good feeling that will be!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Tested in your sleep

So last night was a different night for me. It started out the same as most Wednesdays would; work all day, hit the gym, then dinner with Jen. [And the gym was a GREAT workout, including 35 minutes on the machine I call the glider – mostly because NO ONE seems to know what it is called – where I burned 749 calories in 35 minutes!]

But that is where the normalcy ended for this particular Wednesday. After gobbling down dinner [two grilled chicken taco wraps], I hugged and kissed Jen and headed off to bed – in a sleep lab in East Providence!

Let me back up here for a minute. About a year ago, after snoring through my sleeping (if you can call it that), I had an appointment with Dr. Sharkey, a sleep doctor for lack of a better term (I think she is a doctor of sleep medicine as an actual title). After a 20-minute conversation in her office, and the obligatory poking and prodding to determine what was quite obvious at the time (“you are overweight, young and a man – three things that are key components to sleep apnea), I was booked for a sleep study in East Providence.

This is the opposite of a good night’s sleep. Seriously. My first time there, a little over a year ago, was torturous. Having never been to one before, I had no idea what to expect. So I headed there with my two pillows and a book to read, ready to take on this challenge.

For a sleep study, I provided very little sleep for which they could study. In technical terms, I average 150-or-so “incidents” per hour, which means I basically stopped breathing about 150 times per hour over a 6-hour study. I was immediately in the upper echelon category for sleep apnea. It meant I wasn’t getting a night of sleep, good or bad, because every time I drifted off to sleep, I would stop breathing, which would keep my brain awake, which would then awaken me, and this process happened 150 times per hour!



An example of what someone looks like sleeping with a CPAP mask.



So after that first study, I was booked for a second study a week later, a follow-up where I would again be hooked up to a hundred wires on my head, forehead, stomach, chest, legs, etc., only this time I would be going as a “fighter pilot,” wearing a sleeping mask on my face. What this device does is pumps air into a mask that is attached to my head (just like a fighter pilot) and keep my airwaves open so that I can fall asleep and not have these incidents.



It worked, and my incidents per hour sharply decreased once I was hooked up to the mask. So the diagnosis was to be fitted with my own home model of the device to wear every night. This would help me sleep at night, feel less tired during the day (because, well, I would be sleeping at night) and would help with weight loss because my body would be recovering from workouts better with a good night’s sleep.



I wore the mask religiously for the winter and spring until about this June, when it felt like it became more of a nuisance and the fact that I had been falling asleep without it and not having these incidents.

My next appointment with Dr. Sharkey, a very busy woman, was postponed twice by her office (with one rescheduled to a date that, um, the secretary never told me about!) and my May meeting with her happened LAST WEEK (Nov. 3). After seeing how I had lost weight and hearing that I wasn’t wearing the mask anymore, she deemed it necessary to have a THIRD sleep test to see how I was doing without said mask and how to proceed (no mask at all going forward, lower pressure on the mask, etc).

So last night I got all hooked up again. It was supposed to be a “split test,” meaning I would go to sleep normally, then awoken in the middle of the study and fitted with the mask for the remainder of the study.



This is what I looked like last night after the technician
attached all the wires to me. Doesn't it look like fun?



After having the 567762346914724 wires connected to me (its more like 20, but it seems like so many more when the process is happening), I feel asleep around 11:30 in a strange room inside a sleep lab in East Providence. I tossed and turned. I was in and out of sleep. It is tough because not only do you have all these wires attached to you, they are subsequently attached to two machines that send signals back to the technician in the “sleep study room” down the hall. So you can’t randomly get up during the night without the technician coming into the room and disconnecting you.

And I had to pee.

But I waited. And fell back to sleep. And turned on my side. And waited. I waited for the technician to come in to start part two of the test. To hook me up to the mask.

But I still had to pee.

Should I say something? Can I hold it in? But as I am holding it in, I am getting uncomfortable. But then I would fall asleep. Finally, I couldn’t take it, and called for the technician. Who informed me that ….. she would be right there because the test was over.

It was morning. Granted, it was 5:15am, but the test only goes until 5:30. So she unhooked me, peeled tape and tabs off of me and pulled wires off of me from all parts of my body. I asked her if I passed the test because she didn’t come in to put the mask on. Her response was that I was right at the line between needing it and not, but was never in a “bad area” so they kept the single test going.

She may have said some other stuff, but I had to shuffle out of the room quickly.

I still had to pee.

Before & After

This may not be the best way to show, but it's what I got. Here are a before and after picture of myself, roughly a year ago. Both are with the very talented Ben Miller. I think there is a little difference, but who knows?







Ben and I at the bowling fundraiser for Don and Jay, Oct. 2009

 


Myself and Ben in New Orleans for his wedding, Oct. 2010

Thanks again for reading and for all the comments, emails and postings from yesterday's blog. It really does mean a lot.

The Journey As We Stand

This initial post may be a little longer, so please forgive me in advance …

In the summer of 2009, I took a trip to DC with some friends for baseball, beer and general fun. It was a nice getaway to a fun place, with the added benefit that some friends lived in the area.

It was also an awakening of sorts for me.

Now there’s no nice way to put it. I am fat and really always have been. But this was a different kind of fat. I was embarking on dangerous territory, the kind you only read about or see on some documentary on the Learning Channel.

It was probably the heaviest I have ever been. I could barely walk from point A to point B without breaking into a sweat. On the aforementioned trip to DC, I routinely had to return to the hotel to shower or change because the walking around we were doing was causing my shirts to change color at a rapid pace.



Me duing the DC trip during one of the tours we took.



It was not a good feeling. It was actually quite embarrassing. But it still would take some time for me to make some serious changes.

That came around Christmas. At that point, and after some talks with my wife and some deep soul searching, not to mention a brutally honest assessment from my doctor, I knew it was time to change my ways, both my eating and (lack of) exercise.

Let me backtrack here a little. There was one time when I had started to dedicate myself at the gym, and was seeing results. It was 2007-08 during the winter months. I was going on almost a daily basis with Jen, doing two hours each time, and was feeling better. Then life decided to throw a little curveball at me.

Actually, it was a high-and-tight fastball that knocked me on my ass.

My best friend passed away suddenly. It was a shocking blow to the system. Suddenly, getting to the gym took a back seat. And that back seat was in some car three miles down the highway. I grieved and spent time helping others cope. I put myself and what I had been doing the past four months to the side and concentrated on what was front-and-center.

Then, as life was starting to turn around, another friend passed away. Both were in their 30s. And the cycle started again.

It’s never easy to lose someone close to you, let alone two people that are like brothers to you. On top of that, I started a new job and was going through the learning curve with a new position in a new town with new co-workers.

Then came the trip to DC. Now, I’ve never been a thin dude. I’ve always been the big guy – heck, my nickname in college was the Big Daddy – but I had never been THIS big. After sweating my way through that trip, then finding even the easiest of tasks around the house – taking out the garbage, mowing the lawn, cleaning up the living room – led to me not just sweating, but needing to take a break before continuing.

Now I wasn’t delusional, I knew I needed to make a change. But I could never commit to it. I would always find an excuse to NOT go to the gym. This led to me always being tired and Jen could set the clock to when I would fall asleep on the couch – usually around 8:30.

So the first realization came during a routine doctor’s visit. While there, Dr. Scott decided to have me step on the scale. And then – SMACK – it hit me in the face. That high-and-tight fastball was now a Pedro Martinez heater off the back of the head.

The scale couldn’t register my weight; it couldn’t go that high.

%&*#.

That was when I dedicated myself to getting healthier. I started going to the gym regularly instead of sparingly. I started to change my diet and eating habits. I took stock in my life and saw how the bad stuff was really treating me bad. I overindulged in the really good stuff and never-indulged in the healthy stuff.

I was a walking time bomb that really didn’t need much more to go boom.

Since then, I have done a complete 360. Or 720. Or whatever number you want to associate with it. I use 1/1/10 as the date because the New Year always signifies a new beginning. It probably started a few weeks before that.

The results are proof that it has worked. Since that eye-opening appointment with Dr. Scott, I have shed about 70 pounds. I have hired a personal trainer once a week and have dedicated myself to eating better (although I am still working at that) and taking better care of myself.

I have adopted a new mantra, No Excuses. Basically, I make it to the gym for my workout at least 4-5 days per week, no matter what happens during the day. Late day at work? Still going to go. A little tired from the day’s activities? Still making a stop at the gym. Something more fun is happening? It can wait until after my workout.

As I continue on this journey, I will document how it’s going, good and bad. As a writer, I am upset that I didn’t start this earlier. But in all honesty, I didn’t know if this was going to work. But I feel better, which is just plain awesome.

I have set goals for myself, some of which I have hit, and some that I am struggling to reach, but I am not going to stop trying. That I can promise you.