One of the things that I sort of miss about driving a car in LA traffic (I ride a Suzuki Burgman 650 most of the time) is that I *don’t* get the time to let my mind wander while semi-parked in the ever-present bumper-to-bumper traffic. On the bike – if things slow down – I check the openings and slip between lanes to continue on. This means that I’m pretty tightly focused on the present task at all times.
But recently I had a chance to run some car-only errands using a friend’s BMW. On the plus side, it has a performance envelope that’s akin to a motorcycle – on the minus side – it can be uncomfortable as hell. There’s a reason for that – this type of BMW is not designed for fat people. When you’re stuck in traffic with various parts of a racing-inspired bucket seat forcing you into proper posture, you start to notice these things. Mind you, I’m actually smaller compared to my peak weight when I worked the day-gig in IT (~30lbs and counting) but I’ve noticed along the way that the little things I say to myself have gone from “hey, not bad, your pants have gotten baggy” to “you’ve got to tighten up that gut or no one’s going to let you near the pool for fear of a harpooning incident“. That’s the difference between the “Fat Guy” in my head controlling the conversation versus the “Fit Guy” calling the shots. It was something that dawned on me while sitting in stalled traffic – another all too rare moment of clarity – imagine my surprise.
Every once in a while (particularly when I’m at the end of a longer treadmill run) I’ll still hear Fat Guy trying to negotiate with the Fit Guy. “Hey, that’s as long as you ran two days ago and you’re not gasping for breath this time – why not take a break to celebrate?” This is the same voice that would say “Hey, your boss is a jerk and you work really hard – why not go out for a big juicy hamburger and a chocolate sundae?” – the familiar sound of that voice – always looking for the easy way out. And quite frankly, that’s why I think I’ve recently plateaued in the pursuit of several fitness goals. So yesterday Fit Guy told Fat Guy to shut the hell up – amp’ed up the weights, blew out my sets and even slipped into the sloppiest form I could tolerate – and quite frankly Fat Guy thought I was going to die.
But I didn’t die! Not only that, I’m not really that sore today. Fat Guy is shocked. Fit Guy is unimpressed.
So I’m going to use this little revelation as an opportunity to put Fit Guy fully in charge. Fat Guy gets to take a back seat (where the cushions are more comfortable anyway). I’ll be setting up some sort of workout/fitness tracking blog on this site to mark my progress – both to keep friends and family in the loop and to keep myself honest. Once I figure out the form that will take I’ll post a follow-up with the plan and layout.
Fit Guy out.
