Sugar Lover OR Sugar Blues

Well, I’ve started working out again. I started this past Sunday. I ran a mile, a 12 minute mile which for me is high—I usually run a 9 minute mile. Monday was chest and triceps and yesterday was legs and I think I pulled something in my calf. I knew I did something funky to my calf yesterday after the last exercise. When I woke up this morning it felt fine, but as the day progressed it started to hurt.

Beginning a new workout routine has been much more difficult this time than the last time I started. That was in October 2007, and I was very motivated then. Back then I was super-duper focused on working out, what to eat and proper planning (if you fail to plan you plan to fail, blah blah blah). My goal was to bulk up and in the process I reached my goal of gaining 10 pounds. How much was muscle I do not know. But then I abruptly stopped working out in February 2008, because of my many “theatrical endeavors” and started eating crappy. I love to eat crappy. Slurpees (7-11 has the best), Boston Baked Beans, Entenmann's (love those cheese danishes-love ‘em, love ‘em, love ‘em), pizza (mmm-mmm good, Peter Piper Pizza lunch buffet-always been a fan of their specially prepared cardboard pizza), Jack In The Crap tacos (great after a night of heavy drinking, except I don’t drink anymore so now they are great anytime), chocolate chip cookies, brownies, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Twix Bars, handfuls of powdered sugar, the list goes on and on. I can take consolation in the fact that soda never made it to this list. So there! Take that! Put that in your pipe and smoke it! I showed you!

I’ve always had a hard time gaining weight, but by reaching my goal of gaining 10 pounds I have opened some sort of Pandora’s Box-since February my weight has steadily increased to nearly another 10 pounds. That’s almost 20 pounds since October 2007, for those that are counting. And now I cannot fit into my beloved Levi's and I love my beloved Levi’s. I tried to squeeze into a pair this morning but it was of no use. I couldn’t even zip up. It was too much of a hardship on my family jewels.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more I find myself taking another stab at exercising and eating right and it is friggin’ hard because I am SOOOO not motivated. All I do is think about not going to the gym after work and instead stopping at 7-11 for an extra large Slurpee. Or gobbing down a bowl of ice cream at the end of the night. Or stopping at Mickey D’s in the morning before work and getting an Egg McMuffin and 3 chocolate chip cookies (McDonald’s has some great chocolate chip cookies).

Sugar is bad. It’s evil. I know because I’ve been going through major sugar withdrawals. I’m talking night sweats, cramping, sleepless nights, moodiness, ridiculousness, screaming at co-workers who always talk on speaker phone (I do this anyway), crying spells while watching C-SPAN, a need to watch every Lifetime movie that scores a rating of less than 2 stars (and that would be all of them), not finding Rachel Ray annoying, wanting to be friends with Ann Coulter. Sugar is evil, but not the same way Darth Vader or Hannibal Lector are evil. They are cool evil. Sugar is bad evil, like Jeffrey Dahmer is bad evil. Like John Wayne Gacy is bad evil. Like Dick Cheney is bad evil. Like Coldplay is bad evil-that’s right, Coldplay, I said it, so what? But I know it will get better. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life, my sugar-craving will subside and I will be superior to all of you evil sugar lovers everywhere.

(This article was featured in The Fourteenth Edition of the Carnival of Improving Life).