Eye of the Tiger

    So it has been a little over a year since I posted last. Life tends to glide by quicker than it should. It has been an eventful year; new job, changes around the house. I am still implementing all the things I learned last year but in a less extreme way. The main reason I hit the brakes a bit? I hated it. I honestly did. There was a point last year where I felt skeletal and out of sorts so I rebelled once winter came around. I went to the other extreme. As much as I hated feeling skeletal and worn out, the other end of the spectrum was now far worse. There had to be a happy medium right?

    Starting about three to four months ago, I reapplied the lessons that I learned last year and worked in a few more.  It has worked out well. "Well John, that is just great! Yawn! Snore! Good for you! Thanks for making me click to get here, I'll never get that finger movement back again, thanks a helluva lot!" Yeah, it's kind of boring. Boy loses lots of weight, boy gains back some weight, boy loses weight. Not exactly what I would call riveting news but something happened today that made me want to blog about all of this stuff again. A challenge! Well sorta, kinda, maybe.

    Today, my friend and I were having lunch at a fantastical place called Chino Bandido's - the perfect melding of Chinese, Jamaican and Mexican cuisine featured on 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives'.  Now my friend, who will remain nameless for reasons that I will explain shortly, was the perfect guide for the place. He has been eating there for perhaps decades and knows all the ins and outs. As we stood in line, he informed me that he had lost 15lbs doing P90X (awesome!). I have to say he looked really healthy since the last time I saw him which, in our terms, had been quite awhile; a month or even more.

    So as we ate our fantastic meal he told me he hadn't really told anyone. He wanted to keep it on the down low because when you tell people certain things they get a bit skeptical (my thoughts not his). Hence, the nameless friend. Now I will say, if he wants to disclose himself in the comments, he is more than welcome to do so. I can understand his feelings on the matter. When you try something that might seem trendy or a bit different you don't want people coming out of the woodwork to scoff or give you a hard time. I personally think P90X and other assorted 90 day challenges are excellent motivators. What I like most about P90X is that it is laid out for you in exacting terms but with some sense to it as well. You are getting great surefire advice and wonderful motivation that you can count on as long as you follow through with it. We talked also about the diet guidelines and they sounded great too.

   "Okay, okay, yeah you ate at a great dive and talked about work out plans and diets, SNOREARAMA!" Well yeah maybe to you but I love this stuff. I love learning and reading about this stuff. Often I have many chances to bore my wife with a new study or two I have read each week. Which reminds me, don't bring up studies about weight loss and diet to your spouse randomly, um-kay? They might get paranoid when all you are actually doing is trying to engage them in conversation. For the record, my wife needs no advice in this regard whatsoever which might explain the bored and puzzled looks she gives me.  It's like an elephant walking up to a cheetah and saying, "You know, if you lengthen your stride just so, you can run a wee bit faster. Oh don't thank me my swift footed friend, my advice is free of charge!'

    So I guess the truly interesting part of this whole post is that we, unnamed friend and I, are going to test our mettle a bit. Aha! Yes, a challenge! So here are the points of what we decided upon:

• We will endeavor to make ourselves excellent physical specimens.
• I will use whatever I have in my grab bag of tricks and unnamed friend will use P90X
• There will be before and after pictures (not my idea but I grudgingly agreed - grudgingly)
• First pic will be tomorrow morning (Saturday July 7th, 2012) but don't count on me posting it until we are done.
• September 14th or so is the date of reckoning because, hell people, we have lives.

    Now how are we going to tell who wins? We don't. In the end, we'll both win. That's not to say we aren't going to be ribbing each other a bit or motivating each other on any given day. The one thing we noted is how good we feel when we are relatively healthy; assorted physical indignities just drift away. So really pushing through to September is just going to be the icing on the cake. Not only will we feel good, we'll look great.

    I put the next item here because honestly it is a motivator and probably the song that is played on the most MP3 players during a workout - ever! I am going to beat you Draco (since you must remain nameless and I hate typing unnamed friend over and over and over)! Wait, wrong movie. Well right movie, wrong sequel. I just can't make myself call unnamed friend Clubber Lang. If you have no idea what I am talking about in this paragraph, well, I really don't know what to say then - politely.

UPDATE: I had no idea it was Stallone's birthday when I wrote this today. Ha!