writing

On Professionalism and Bullshit: A Weightloss Story

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“I’d try weightlifting. But I don’t want to get too bulky. I don’t want to look like a man.”

“Weightlifting is fun, but I don’t want to do that because I’ll get fat.”

“I have to lose some weight. So I’m going to stop weightlifting and drop some body fat. I wish I could do both.”

I’ve been hearing these excuses, in one declarative form or another, for as long as I’ve lifted weights. I’ve also complained about them ad nauseum, on my social media soapboxes, to people in the gym, or over pints. I don’t know what compels me to believe that writing something more formal and of greater length is going to accomplish anything. They say writers write what they know. And after years of being acquainted with it, I’m something of an expert on this one field: Your Bullshit.


I’ve been big my whole life. Not Paul Bunyan, corn-fed, farming stock big. I recently went into a Duluth Trading Co. store and found out how comically small I am compared to actual big Americans (I’m a medium there). But I’ve had a 50 inch chest since before I ever started lifting weights to get strong. My shoulders span the breadth of most doorways. I was 5’10” at a physical when I was 12. They said I would grow to well over 6 foot. I am still 5’10”, possibly slightly shorter.

Being big is accompanied by an appetite. Maybe I could blame the evolutionary survival mechanisms that my grandmother instilled in us, even generations removed from attempted genocide in Ireland. We had food a plenty. Your plate was filled with it. You ate until that plate was empty, because someday, young man, there might not fecking be any. Of course, this hasn’t been the case. America isn’t the only country with obese people. But it’s the only one I’ve been to so far where I notice the obese poor people. And as new Americans, my family embraced the plenty of food, with no thought or education on nutritional content. Shepherds Pie all day.

I don’t recall the rate of advancement of my bodyweight and/or height. I do remember going to sign-ups for Pop Warner Football, somewhere around 13 or 14 years old. I remember the intense, collective gaze of all the coaches from across the room, salivating as I walked towards the weigh-in area, praying that I was under the cap of 180lbs. I can’t remember the exact number, but it was north of 200. I would be excluded from the simulated gladiator sport of American Football until High School, by which time it became evident to me that I was way behind in the skills necessary to succeed in the sport. I’m actually thankful that happened, and disappointed rugby or weightlifting didn’t find me sooner.

With the exception of a few years at the end of high school and just after, physicality and sports have been apart of my life enough to keep me from joining the outright obese quadrant of our population. Again, this is not to say I’ve ever been thin, or even knew how to take care of myself for much of this time. But it was enough moving around to keep on moving around without issue. It wasn’t until I found and started thinking about weightlifting as a sport that I ever really considered being aware of what I weighed everyday. By then I was sitting around 250lbs, usually somewhere between 110-115kg. This put me in the unlimited category against men who typically weigh a minimum of 300lbs and comes with a culture of tending not to really care much at all what you weigh. But in a sport obsessed with absolute numbers, you keep it on your mind.


I was only ever told to train hard, sleep well, and eat a lot. Your body will determine what you need to weigh. And for the most part, this general wisdom still holds true. We, as coaches, could do with a little more communication on what types of things you should be eating in abundance. And we, the coaches, aren’t the only people to blame for the very prevalent, failure to understand basic nutrition science. This age of leisure for the general populace is still a very new idea. After millenia of trying to understand and battle ailments outside of our control, humanity in certain parts of the world has rapidly been presented with the issue of self-inflicted disease from our own marvelous abundance and reduction of survivalist activity. Exercise as a hobby is a privilege only the wealthy and landed have known until the last century.

So I lifted and I ate, until one day I found myself up to 130kg, or around 285lbs. When you’re only 5’10”, that feels like a whole lot more. I couldn’t stand it any more. So I got help. I learned and made lifestyle changes. I added in an hour of walking, because after you train with heavy weights 9xWeek, walking is about the only thing you have the extra energy to do. Slowly, I lost 10kg/22lbs. My body composition improved. I was training the same volume at a higher average intensity, going heavy in both the mornings and afternoons. I increased my competitive total. My absolute strength either remained the same or slightly increased. With the exception of tearing my shoulder labrum, this was probably the best I’ve felt in my life, physically and mentally.

Fast forward 3.5 years and I find myself in a slightly different boat. It is no longer my job to train 9xWeek. My ability to train my sport is significantly limited from the surgical repair in my shoulder. I have the added responsibility of running a weightlifting program/gym, a constant source of stress that is probably responsible for 99% of the arguments I have with my spouse. I’m painting this picture for you to understand something: my give-a-fuck was pretty low. When things aren’t going right for you personally or professionally, it’s easy to fall back on the crutch of something familiar, like eating to your heart’s content.

The only possible means I see of getting things done when you don’t particularly have the willpower is to clearly define your why. Examine if your why is significant motivation. Do you really care about your reason for doing “x”? Because if not, odds are you won’t be successful at all.

With your why examined and affirmed, you can reverse engineer concise goals, and then establish a professional system that guides you to achieving them. I use that term, “professional system”, for a reason. Most of you do not work what might be described as your “dream job”. There are likely varying shades of fulfillment from certain tasks in your workplace, with some of them being quite rewarding. Everyone I know has some bullshit thing they must get done, because it is their job to do it. My lifters come and tell me some new bullshit thing they had to get done that day. It is remarkable how many bullshit things people don’t particularly want to do get accomplished every single business day.

Your goals must be approached with that level of professionalism, or you will not achieve them. The benefit of your goals, is that they come from an intrinsic passion to achieve something dear to your heart. You get to do this. You don’t have to. The reward to you personally will be immensely satisfying. Achieving it will differ in no way from the workmanship you display in your daily profession.


Let’s go through this together, using my own situation as an example.

Why?

To push my body towards its highest possible physical capabilities in the sport of Weightlifting without the use of illegal drugs. To leave to no opportunity unexamined. To walk away with no possible shred of regret or doubt on what could have been.

Goal

  • Compete at the Weightlifting World Championships.

Requirements

  • Lose 13kg in 4 months
  • Set Personal Best in the Total, post surgery, in a qualifying event

Means

  • Regimented Nutrition and Meal Preparation
  • Elimination of Social Activities that may lead to food or beverage choices that do not fit parameters
  • Intense Training Protocol
  • Quality Sleep Hygiene
  • Supplemental Cardio sessions as needed

I came off the worst competitive performance of my weightlifting career and decided I wasn’t going to settle. My why gave me my tangible goals, and I executed them with the same professionalism as when it was actually my job. Body composition improved again. My strength did take a little hit, but my weightlifting total improved. I was feeling the most physically prepared in some time. And I achieved the end goal. There was no bullshit task too great. I had to. There was no other option.


Which brings us, rather discursively, back to our original discussion on your bullshit. Weightlifting is not for everyone. The vast majority of happy, exercise-minded individuals will not have my why. Discover your own, and determine what may be worthy of your professionalism. I want weightlifting to be available for those with casual interests and those with serious competitive aspirations alike. I think both of those relationships with the sport can still teach some very real lessons about yourself.

If you’re going to walk into my gym and learn about weightlifting though, please leave your bullshit at the door. Don’t tell me you can’t lose weight because lifting makes people fat. Your fatness makes you fat. Your lack of discipline makes you fat. Your binge drinking four days a week makes you fat. Your pispoor intensity and lack of conviction in your physical efforts makes you fat. How dare you accuse weightlifting. Your why for losing fat simply isn’t strong enough. This is ok. Self-examine, and find a why that might be sufficient.

Do not tell me you need to stop training with weights because you need to lose weight. I have lost a cumulative total of 23kg or 50lbs while training my ass off for competitive weightlifting, and improved my performance along the way. Your why for training weightlifting simply isn’t enough. This is ok. Reflect and examine. What why will give you enough contentment to pursue whole-heartedly? I have watched you grow more rotund, after turning away from hard training with your bullshit, piddling around in search of the next thing.

Do not tell me you will get bulky and look “like a man” from teaching your body how to strength train, while touting the benefits of toning in the next sentence. There is no muscle toning: there are only strong people and weak people. I promise you will never look like me or any athletic female you project your own body dysmorphia onto. Not only do you not possess the physiology. You simply lack the mental ability to undertake so great an exertion for the prolonged body of time that would make such a physique possible. We can teach you. We can show you what it means to actually try fucking hard at something. We can show you how to cope with the failure of your immense efforts. These lessons will reverberate through your being and exercise themselves into every facet of your life thereafter.

I expect none of you to do the things I have done, for so mediocre of a career, in an arena the general populace can’t be bothered with. Instead, I hope that you find something meaningful enough in your life to escape your bullshit and sacrifice more than you would’ve ever dared possible. I hope you find a love so consuming that you can’t possibly live without it. Absence from that thing is not life at all, but a death sentence with the added indecency of eternal longing for a missing piece of yourself. I hope you find whatever that is, and it absolutely kills you with sublime grace.

Coffeeshop Exchange: A Portrait on the Collapse of American Dialogue

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“You know, it ain’t right. How Pelosi can just tell the President what to do. She’s elected by 250,000 people and the President was elected by 64 million.”

“Thank goodness for the Electoral College. The most perfect stroke of genius ever devised in the Constitution.”

“You know, there’s style and then there’s substance to a President. I have to admit, Obama really had some style. He was smooth, looked good in a suit, and held his head up high. But he had no substance. That’s why I love Donald. He doesn’t kick the can down the road. His style may be crude, but he’s all substance. He’s done so much for this country, that he can fuck all the hoes he wants as far as I’m concerned.”

I’ve accidentally stumbled upon the Wednesday morning meeting of the local RNC old boys chapter at the coffee shop. They’re worried about what happens if someone like Bernie or Warren get the primary. And in the same breath of being worried, they claim the Dems will be shooting themselves in the foot if either get the nod. Why worry about assured destruction? It tells me what they fear the most.

I’ve stopped reading about American politics since the 2016 Election. I’ve withdrawn. The landscape is intentionally muddled by the Fox News and Huff Posts of the world, twisting facts to fit the narrative of their shareholders. Infotainment has consumed the major media outlets anyhow. Gotta sell papers; gotta get the ad revenue.

In withdrawing from reality, I’ve let them win. That’s the strategy of the times: to absorb the flock too ignorant to filter the noise or to deafen into submission those who no longer wish to take in every insidious note. I’m not a bureaucratic insider or some savant of political discourse. I just have a healthy constitution of skepticism, the training to interpret critically, and a pretty reliable bullshit meter. And fuck, I’m tired of that thing reading off the charts.

I don’t want to be involved in this conversation. I come to work at coffee shops because, if you can believe it, I actually like people. Well, I find observing them comforting. Call it an evolutionary instinct to be amongst the tribe. It is comforting to see people living their lives, even the vapid ones. Even this group of old white men closed in their own personal echo chamber. I admire that they come together and meet in this place, what feels like a semi-regular basis, to seek validation from one another. They refuse to go quietly into the night. They are raging against the dying of the white light.

I should put my headphones in immediately. I came here to be productive. I have work to do. I am in the rarefied love of a muse who actually wants to help me pen some words to paper today. I’m not even diametrically opposed to their party: I’m in the silent third of American voters who don’t cling to one party or the other. The last thing I want to do right now is to be an apologist for Democrats, the presumptive intellectual superiors who are guilty of the same sins. Except they have a penchant for the cardinal sin of losing.

I can’t help myself. Maybe it’s the Californian in me. Something about the stinging inaccuracy of how many people actually live in San Francisco’s 12th, or inflating the numbers of the popular vote by over a million brought the words out of my mouth.

I don’t attack, but I’m direct. They’re taken aback. Maybe they weren’t expecting someone who looked like them to be a dissenting party. They see my Dodgers hat sitting on the table, and all of a sudden it makes sense. I’m one of “them”. A progressive.

I’m not really anything, I explain. In fact, I’m probably a Libertarian if that was anything more than a theoretical construct, when it is in fact entirely impractical for constructing a governing society.

The one nearest me sees an opportunity to recruit me. He volunteers for the RNC. He speaks kindly, but with an air of moral superiority only God’s children could have. He shares his copy of “The Epoch Times”–an “alternative news outlet that sets the record straight. Unlike The New York Times.”

I return his tone in kind. Sure. Let’s do this here and now. Let us four white men, from different generations, bridge the gap today and let the healing begin. Let’s open a dialogue.

I hear about all the great things the President has done. About how he’s more productive than anyone else ever, but you never hear about it. I concede, you don’t hear a lot about the “good” things, but to say he’s more productive is patently false. I tell them I’m not really concerned about his policies, because it is not really the job of the President to legislate. I’m concerned with his judgment, his narcissism, and his typically emotional responses to criticism. I’m concerned with his divisiveness and his proliferation of misinformation. They tell me he’s not once lied, he’s a straight-shooter, so I needn’t worry.

“Give us an example of one time he lied.”

I go with an easy one, even the folks at home know. “He popularized the birther movement and insisted that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.”

The black man across from me who has been working away studiously till now begins shifting uncomfortably in his chair.

“Oh, well that doesn’t really matter. And who knows for sure anyway. Give us a second one.”

“Why? The list is monumental in length. Why should I give you another one to brush aside and tell me it’s not important, when you don’t even acknowledge the first as a legitimate example?”

“You can’t give another example can you? See, the liberal media has convinced you that he’s terrible when you have nothing to offer.”

They’re half right. I’m ill-prepared. I’m not equipped to do this because my withdrawal has also robbed me of any munitions for discussion. I don’t have developed discussion points outside the superficial. Any I can actually think of are muddled with too much grey and not going to be fielded well in this crossfire. Most of the President’s lies aren’t really insidious. They’re “this hurricane will definitely hit Alabama” level lies. Shenanigans, if you will.

I tell them to have a good day and thank you for the discussion. I tell the RNC volunteer and Epoch Times subscriber that I’m disappointed he would sell out the values of his party, a party I grew up in, for the short-sided victory of keeping a destabilizing clown in power. They tell me I should consider seeking out the truth instead of being blinded by the liberal media.

I put my headphones in and concede defeat. The commotion had grown over the past fifteen minutes. I could feel my adrenaline pulsing. We are collectively uncomfortable. What I’m sure would’ve been a much longer gathering had been cut short by my interruption. The men begin packing up and inventing responsibilities they must attend to. I sit here and begin to write this, because damnit I need to write something today. Even if it’s a bitch piece that should only exist in some pseudo-journal that’s not particularly inventive.

The adrenaline and agitation from our conversation takes my thoughts dark. I am right to withdraw. There is no room for reasonable discourse on substance. We’re not even arguing about abortion or the death penalty anymore. I feel past Post-Truth. Post-Meaning. Post-Purpose maybe.

Just when I feel I’ll be wrapped completely in this blanket of nihilism and entombed, the third man, who was mostly quiet, lingers to gather my attention.

“You know, I’m more of a libertarian myself. Which compels me to disagree with a lot of these candidates on their social policies. But there’s no denying it: Trump is a terrible person, and I can’t stand him either.”

I thank him for his concession and willing to speak with such an unruly young man as myself a bit more. I apologize for ruining his morning meeting with his friends. We wish each other a good day.

I take a moment of comfort in his statement. It means all hope isn’t lost. Maybe there’s still hope to salvage the dialogue by better, more equipped persons than myself, possessing the necessary optimism and patience. This however, is met with an immediate return to sadness for the man who must wait until his friends are out of earshot so he can whisper his truths to me. I am sad the toxicity of division is so great that this man has closeted himself in the midst of his friends just to keep the peace. That’s not freedom. That’s not America. That’s not great at all.