2024-11-30 08:00:00
I took longer than I wanted, but I’ve finally accomplished a major step in this year’s New Years Resolutions. I only wish I knew what my actual highest point was. The problem with going a long time without a scale, it becomes harder to identify the highest points.
But, I am incredibly grateful to have gotten to this point. Signing up for personal training has absolutely helped me fill many gaps in my understanding and begin making serious progress. My trainer has helped me a great deal in building up my mobility from the ground up, and has also helped me with strategies to get food under control. The last few months have been a wild success far beyond what I believed to be possible.
I hope you’ll enjoy today’s “Walk with Gabriel” audio, and are having an excellent day yourself.
The big goal for 2024, is to be down 100lbs! I’m ~30lbs away and have ~30 days to go! It’s certainly possible, but I have to really ramp up the cardio, so I’m going to push as hard as I can. Walking is helping, but I’m also planning to focus on sprints while swimming. Excited to see how close I get to the goal for 2025, which will be an excellent birthday gift to myself. Then the real push is on as I go through 2025 doing everything I can do keep this pace up for the entire year.
Guilt, Shame, and Anxiety: Understanding and Overcoming Negative Emotions
My most important social theory interview? The Dominance of Dominance
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2024-11-27 08:00:00
I’m continuing the “walk with me” series, this time with my thoughts on what’s helping me stick to my difficult weight loss journey. Starting out talking about my current status, where I’m getting over a fairly brutal cold. To spoil the major theme, I think the three things that have helped me really keep at it have been:
I received a very kind e-mail from a reader.
just found your blog as it was mentioned on Hacker news some months ago (don’t remember which specific blog post was talking about).
Since then i was periodically look for updates on your “journey”, i wish you the best and i find really cool that you are pushing your updates in a very sincere way and be “accountable to the world” about your weight loss also by showing your troubles.
I would say i root for you and that i hope you’ll reach your goal, but i’m pretty sure that if you continue this way you’ll surely reach it.
I really appreciate it. I wanted to share this because it’s great to highlight that there are many kind strangers out there on the open web who take the time to drop words of encouragement. It absolutely helps me a great deal!
Discussed items:
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2024-11-24 08:00:00
Update: I think attempting to remove the background noise did more harm than good. The audio has been switched with a much less edited version, which I think is easier on the ears.
In trying to find the motivation to go for more walks. I decided to record an off-the-cuff monologue about my thoughts on the major social/societal challenges to the future of digital liberty. I’m hoping to do more walks, and get better at recording / cleaning audio from outdoors.
I apologize in advance, if you’re used to listening to clean audio you’ll probably consider this unbearable. This was an experiment in recording on the go. For starters, I’m very obese and still in the process of getting in shape. You’ll hear many breaths and the pacing isn’t quite natural because of it. I’m also just ad-libbing so this is all just a stream-of-consciousness. On top of this it was pretty windy, and there’s a fair bit of outside noise. I’ve made a small attempt to clean up the worst of it, but it’s still very hard to listen to. I’m also a bit stuffed up, so I didn’t expect to sound 100% to begin with. If you struggle through it, I hope you got something out of it.
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2024-11-17 08:00:00
One of the greatest challenges of losing large amounts of weight is that it takes a large amount of time. Living with this requires an extreme level of focus, patience, and dedication. Small achievable milestones are something that has absolutely helped me stay sane during an otherwise immensely challenging last few months. In hindsight, I could have lost weight consistently by counting calories and just playing Star Citizen, but I think I would be going completely insane. Exercise has been a non-negotiable part of changing even if for only the sanity benefits. I truly can’t express how gratifying it
Before I started working with a trainer, I definitely didn’t understand progression. I didn’t understand how to meet myself where I was and gradually increase the effort to get more out of the same time spent exercising. While I was working to improve, I didn’t have much thought put into it. I’ve learned that when one puts some planning and thought into their exercise, even a beginner can get a lot more out of every workout.
Everyone has many days where you don’t feel like doing the right thing. That’s where growth occurs. In those days, in those moments that’s where it’s important to do the right thing. You’re pushing back against your impulses and whims. That is where true growth occurs in the long run. On the days when you do not want to do the right thing.
Growth occurs when you push back when you don’t want to do something.
Steve Shaw Massive Iron Q&A November 15th, 2024
Recently, I’ve started applying this to my swimming trips. I’m on my own, so I have to ensure I’m pushing myself. Originally, I just set goals that seemed achievable, such as working towards doing 10 laps of the (reasonably sized) pool at a time. That took a bit to get to, but eventually I got there. Now I’m planning on increasing the amount of laps per visit. Today I went swimming and did 2 sets of 10 and 1 set of 20! I’ve decided now is the time to start recording my sets and total laps in my weight loss spreadsheet.
I find the best friend of progression is objectivity. That’s why weights have numbers and not feelings on them. I find it especially easy to underestimate what I am able to do, and so sticking to moving numbers higher (within reason) allows me to ensure I’m improving over time. I previously wrote that you can look up how to progress to basic body-weight exercises:
Don’t be afraid to modify!
Bodyweight exercises are incredible ways to get stronger quickly when starting out. A significantly heavy person may not be capable of performing particular exercises. A tip I stumbled on recently is that you can search for whatever exercise with the word “progression” and you’ll find ways to gradually work up to a particular exercise. It’s important not to feel guilty making modifications, as an obese person one is behind the starting line! Constant effort and gradual step-by-step modifications can make improvements way faster than one would think possible.
I think that’s the really important take-away. Doing anything you can to start small, and then figuring out how you’re going to take on more and more. With the right level of patience, effort, and consistency you would be astounded at how quickly you can make radical changes. One of my major goals this Winter is to increase the amount of laps I do per visit. I’m going to try to spend more time at the pool to make this happen too.
That’s me, I’m mfs.
I’ve really found that scheduling workouts on my calendar instead of “aiming for once every x days” has made a huge difference. Properly dedicating the time has helped me a lot. Sadly as it’s getting colder, I’ve been noticing myself struggle to stick with it. The painful progression for me at this rate is going to be being outside at all during winter. The more I can stick to my exercise schedule the better. I’ve bought some warmer clothes, in hopes that it will get me through the fall, but I am incredibly nervous.
If everything goes well, and I keep up the pace I can be below 400 by springtime. It’s a pretty ambitious target, but I’m cautiously optimistic. If I can really push through this Winter I’ll be able to bike again when the snow disappears. That will be so encouraging, I’m tearing up writing this. I’ve missed biking so much, and I’m looking forward to doing it again. If I succeed, I’ll have already mitigated many years worth of damage in under a year, which I’ll consider it’s own massive victory. I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m trying to keep it together until the next major victory (hoping to be under 500lbs soon).
Thanks for reading. Many more people are following these updates than I have expected. I’m hoping to introduce more audio-visual content for this. I’ve more or less neglected video/audio updates but I have taken a lot of photos that I’m in no rush to share. I’m expecting to have a lot more to say as I continue to make significant progress. Thank you for helping keep me accountable! My hope is that my updates either encourage you or somebody you know!
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2024-11-12 08:00:00
I’m almost down 70lbs, but I still have a long way to go! Not only am I excited to regain mobility that I had lost in gaining all the weight, but there’s a great deal of new experiences I hope to take on. I am really looking forward to opportunities that open up once I’m a healthy weight again.
Here’s what I’m most looking forward to at the moment:
One of the more surprising achievements recently has been starting to do sit-ups with a bit of momentum. This is something I hope to get much better at as time continues to move on by.
📉 Weight Tracker | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Weight | Current Weight | Weight Lost | Goal Weight |
| 574 | 496 | 78 lbs | < 225 |
| Last updated: 2024-12-05 | |||
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2024-11-09 08:00:00
This project was created by Hazlin who generously asked me to host it. I’ve always struggled to learn resistor values, and I think this is a great way to get your mind wrapped around ’em. It’s been a joy to see the updates as this was built in C++, Ruby and now HTML5 canvas! See the announcement post.
Inscribed in the source for the game:
I hope you enjoy the game!
Remember friend, Jesus loves you, and loves hearing from you.
If you have any feedback, I’d be thrilled to pass it along!
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