Take A Bite: Part Six

In order to lose the massive amount of weight I'd gained I took to walking 10km/6miles per day. It was the peak of summer and at the time I was living in Western Sydney, which isn't close enough to the coast to get the fresher, cooler winds. It was the best I could do with what I had, which was mostly nothing; I slept on a futon bed that was supposed to be a lounge chair, all of my clothes fit into one degraded cardboard box and the only pair of shoes I had were long worn out. But every day I would get out of the house and walk. Before I knew it I was losing weight. Ecstatic and motivated by the success I continued to push myself to walk longer and faster. This proved to be a problem once the few clothes that I did have began to fall off me; not having any belts I had to resort to AV cables of simply holding my pants up by the inside pocket, or better yet jamming my wallet between my gut and the pants. This eventually motivated me to find full time employment, which I fortunately found. It was a hotel in the city where I was given a position that required me to sit on my arse all day and take phone calls, so it was a win/lose situation. This wasn't helped by the fact that I'd discovered a set of scales at the train station near the hotel that gave me a printed read-out, up until this point I really didn't know how much weight I'd been losing and it was clear to me that I'd stopped losing any at all. So I took drastic measures to counter my inactivity.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can a lot. Breakfast and lunch is usually small but dinner is always something large enough to feed a whole family. The biggest benefit of working at a hotel was that they provided breakfast and lunch in a little canteen area however the food was often stale and inedible, which caused me not to eat much at all. Then I would get home and eat even less. And just before bed, so that I could sleep with a full belly, I would eat kilos/pounds of apples, grapes and carrots. Even though I had a great deal of fruit in my diet I was seriously malnourished by the time I stopped the dieting nonsense. Eventually I lost enough weight that my old friends didn't even recognise me but it was a serious cost to my health. In an attempt to educate myself on health and fitness I took it to the other extreme; it got to the point where I ingested stupid amounts of protein powder and supplements. On the plus side I was gaining some serious muscle but I was making myself sick by putting so much unnecessary waste through my system. And this went on for many months, I was even carrying a little pill box around just so that I had my fish oils and B shots with me all the time. Eventually I learned that good protein can be taken from real food and so can the oils and other essential minerals and vitamins, so I stopped pissing away my dollars on it and began wising up to the real balance of good eating and regular exercise.