Sal's Blog of Nothing

Not that I make a habit of eating fast food, but Danielle, her Father and I were out shopping for furniture for their new home in West Palm Beach – and I was hungry. Very hungry. I need to eat every couple of hours because I eat very small meals. Anyway…

I pull into McDonalds (the one on Okeechobee Boulevard near Congress) and the girl taking the order either didn’t understand what I was asking for or was on too many drugs to accommodate me. I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich, plain with honey mustard on the side. Well, I ended up driving away without ever completing my order. It was far too confusing for the McDonalds employee.

So I head over to Wendy’s (on Military Trail) where they’re (in the past) more familiar with orders of meat without bread (yes, I’m changing my order now). So I get there, wait on a 10 minute line and order. The guy taking the order spoke such horrific English that I should have known I wasn’t going to get what I ordered.

I ordered two pieces of grilled chicken in a container PLAIN with honey mustard on the side. It was like $8.00 and change and off I drove to the pickup window. What I received was two grilled chicken sandwiches (meaning with bread), NOT plain (mayonnaise, lettuce and tomatoes were on it). Of course, there were no utensils, so I had to pick this stuff apart with my fingers and eat with my hands.

And to make matters worse – they were the worst pieces of grilled chicken I had ever eaten. Dry as all hell and the outer layer was old and actually sharp.

What is wrong with this planet? Why can’t people handle the most mundane tasks? I’m losing my ability to be compassionate with “less fortunate” people. I’m starting to believe they do it to themselves…

So. This past week I only lost a pound – down from 218.2 to 217.2. I suppose I should be happy for that – at least I didn’t gain or not lose anything at all. Honestly, I should be okay with it because I learned something in the process. I normally lose about 3 pounds per week. However, 1.5 is fat and the other 1.5 is muscle – not good. But there’s nothing you can really do about that. When you’re caloric intake is as low as mine – 1000-1200 per day, you can’t expect to keep all your muscle. No matter how heavy you lift – you’re going to lose some.

So, I added a couple hundred calories to my daily intake – and this past week, while I only lost one pound – it was almost all fat. So that’s good news. Instead of losing 1.5 lbs of fat and 1.5 lbs of muscle, I lost about .8 lbs of fat and .2 lbs of muscle. Over the long run, that’ll be work nicely. But I’m impatient.

When I was 245, I figured out that I’d be in great shape at 200lbs. Well, now that I’ve lost almost 30lbs – 15lbs of fat and 15lbs of muscle – I have to push that goal back to about 180lbs. I didn’t intend on so much of my weight loss to be muscle. Not good. I weighed 140 at one time – I’ll tell you why later – and nobody liked the way I looked. It was nice to have a very low percentage of body fat, but I lost too much muscle and I just didn’t look that healthy.

If I continued the way I was going until this past week, losing 1.5lbs of fat and 1.5lbs of muscle until I got down to my goal of 200, than I’d need to lower my goal weight down to 160! Because half the intended fat was actually muscle and I’d still have too much fat to be where I wanted. I’m really not looking to be near fatless! Just in “very good” shape. That’s all. Once my waist is around 32 or 30 inches, I’m where I want to be. That’s it. I don’t need a washboard stomach. I just don’t care that much. Besides, I want to look like a man in his late 30s, not a teenage boy with no responsibilities other than working on his abs all day.

Anyway. I was up to 270lbs at one point – when I was lifting really heavy and trying to get huge. It was fun – especially all the eating – but I knew I couldn’t go on like that forever – you just can’t live very long like that. Plus, you start getting all types of health problems when you’re that heavy. So that was a short phase.

When I was at my lightest adult weight of 140lbs, I was training in mixed martial arts. I kept getting my ass beat in the 140 pound weight class – so my goal was to hit 130. Well, that never happened – and shortly afterwards, I broke my foot. Two years of not being able to do much other than hobble around is what brought me to 245lbs in the first place.

So now I’m trying to do something I can stick with for the next 10 or 20 years of my life. Weight lifting, which I love, and cardio.. I lift weights on Monday, Tuesday and Friday – and do 20 minutes of cardio afterwards. I do 40 minutes of cardio on Wednesday and Thursday and sometimes 20 minutes first thing in the morning on Saturday. I’m doing my best to get out and about these days – walking around as often as I can. I DO make my living out of my home office – which is nice – but it’s very rough in other ways.

Well, that’s all for now. While I was writing this, my wife called me twice and just texted me. It’s time for dinner at the Outback. Don’t worry, I won’t get anything that tastes good. :p

Sal C.