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This year, I want to slim back down to where I was in 2012…

4 minute read

February 19, 2015, 3:28 AM

While I was between jobs, I put on a bit of weight, most likely due to reduced activity due to my being out of work, and out of a routine.  My current job, where I operate a bus, is not exactly conducive to physical activity, considering that I sit strapped to a seat for nine hours a day.  Pushing pedals and turning steering wheels does not count as physical activity, though I was getting nighttime leg cramps from it for a while. I also was a bit lazy when it came to exercise once I finished training and got my own assignment.  I work late afternoon into the wee hours of the morning, and initially would tend to sleep in a bit.  The only exercise I got was just under two miles on Sundays, going to and from a street relief that was just a shade under a mile away from the bus garage.  I also now drive to work in my car, which means that I don’t get any activity related to my own commute.

However, now that the bus has finally become routine and I’m really starting to get the hang of things (and – heaven forbid – having fun at work), I can start getting serious about fitness again.  After all, one of my more recent splash photos shows me looking like this:

The October 2014 splash photo, taken on July 5, 2014

However, roll the clock back to early 2013, and I looked like this:

The March 2013 splash photo, taken on March 3, 2013

Photo taken February 27, 2013

This is where I want to be again.  I got there once, and I’m going to get there again.  I liked being that size, and I was displeased to have lost some of the figure that I had worked so hard to attain.  After all, this was me in October 2012:

  

I’m still convinced that this was a trick mirror, though.  But anyway…

In any case, I am going to look like this again, just you watch.

However, I do have certain mixed feelings about getting down to that size again.  On one hand, I know that it’s a healthier size to be at, and as such, it’s the right thing to do.  But at the same time, when I was that size was not a particularly happy or fulfilling time in my life.  Something clicked when I turned 30, and it’s like I got more mature all of a sudden.  My interests started to shift, and my career started to stagnate.  I started to find the people that I used to joke around with a lot to be amazingly immature, and I found myself being left at the sidelines at work on things where I used to have a more prominent role, and my pushing for additional responsibility led to a significant demotion, which ultimately caused me to leave the company.  In other words, I was happier when I was heavier, as strange as that may seem.  Now I’m doing things that interest me and that energize me (not just anyone can sling an artic around a major city and have fun doing it), rather than pushing papers around for a nonprofit that didn’t appreciate what I did for them.  But I’m also carrying around about 50 pounds that I wasn’t carrying in those less happy days, and I don’t like that.

Of course, now that my job is starting to become routine, and I know my block numbers by heart, among other things, I’m working the pool back in.  My goal is to swim from 11:50 AM until 12:45 PM on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, do my walk to my street relief and back on Sundays, and hopefully work in another swim or a deep water running session on one of my days off.  Then once it warms up, I want to take the bike out and about.  I’m thinking it’s worth just going a few miles out somewhere, and then throwing it on the front of a Metrobus to go home again.  I did that in July, biking up to Olney and taking the bus home, but I also ground up the chain pretty well on that trip (oops), so it was either take the bus home or walk home in that case.  Would also be a good time to get a new helmet, since mine doesn’t really fit as well as I would like.  But in any case, I want to have a destination in mind, and not just pedal around aimlessly.

And then, of course, I would be delighted if I have to go back to Muscatello’s to get my uniform tailored again for a new, slimmer size.