Finding Brian 

I know I have not posted on this blog in many years, I am going to use it again to talk about my Journey into the this new life. 2015 was a very difficult year, I had vertical  sleeve gastrectomy surgery. I did this because I was tipping the scale at 540 pounds. I had a complication from the surgery that the surgeon did not see coming. The complication I had was Wernicke Korsakoff Syndrome. I received brain damage from this and I am working on repairing the damage. I was in the hospital for 124 days where I need to relearn many things I took for granted,  like standing, walking, and eating. 

Enough about the past, let's talk about what's going on now. Today is a new very different time, I am dealing with so much now. I am trying to find out who I am, I know that sounds funny for a 42 year old guy not to know who he is. I don't really know, Fat Brian I think had no idea either. Since I came very close to dying my view of life has changed greatly. I don't want to waste anymore time with things I don't think really matters anymore. So here is what I have come up with so far, I like to walk, so I am going to try to walk more outside. I have figured out how I like to cut & style my hair. I know I still love to cook. I also like to workout, not the crazy shit I did before, but a calmer kind. As I work some of this stuff out, I guess I am finding This new Brian. 

Things are all over the place as I am trying to understand how my brain works. Most days I wake up ready to conquer the world. Then there is the other days I wake up and feel very overwhelmed. Unfortunately for me I have not really found any middle ground yet. I know this may sound strange but what I find the hardest is this not working thing. It's very hard to sit still and if I have a rest day or a day with very little to do in it I feel very restless. The other very strange thing is that my older memories are what is coming up, so I am remembering real old shit. It's much easier then remembering stuff from now, Like did I have breakfast, or who was that I bumped into at the Walmart the last time I was shopping. It is very frustrating, 

I am a Brain Damaged Warrior  fighting my way back. It's a lot harder than you could imagine. 

Fresh Start

It has been quite some time since my last blog post. I would love to say that the last 10 months has been smooth sailing, but that would be a big lie. It has been a very hard struggle. I know it maybe be hard to understand as I was doing very well there for a long while. The full truth is I gave up. My family and friends ask why, quite a bit and I am not sure they understand when I try to explain what happen. Here is the just of it, I was told in order to have my apron removed I would have to lose another 145 pounds. At that point yes I had lost 190 pounds it took over 2 years to get to that point and so much time on a treadmill. The apron was in the way of everything in my life. The more I lost the lower to the ground it got. So I felt very impossible that I could get there., and I was angry. It was not an I am done kind of thing it just slowly started to happen.  Plus I was losing control of the food, and lying to myself about it. I am an addict, food is my drug of choice. Not great food, shit food like  chips and chocolate. It is hard to stop once that shit is back in my body.  Once you  start putting that shit back in and the weight starts to come back so does that demon inside me. Shouting "see you could not do it, your not strong at all, why spend time on the treadmill you suck". I started to believe that shit again, and cardio day turn into sitting home back on the couch again. Also I slowing became grumpy again, not wanting to see friends and family because I was  embarrassed that I gained some weight back.  

This is not a New Years resolution, but it is a new year and I feel like it could be a fresh start. I need find some of that drive I used to have. So I am going back to the beginning and doing some of the stuff I did to gain some control back. To start with not more lying to myself and remember success is not a goal, it’s a by-product of hard work.

So I gain back some weight, no lets not lie, I gained back 80 pounds that is quite a bit of weight. I am slowly gaining control of my eating habits, still doing bootcamp with Damir and slowly making cardio a habit again. I have a plan and I am putting it into play. 

So this weeks goal is get on better eating routine and cut back on the shit food. 

The Decision

February was one of the roughness months on my weight loss journey. My Stress level was very high as many area’s in my life were showing signs that a change was needed. I like things very routine, I thrive on the basics in my life stay the same day in day out. So when I can see changes are on the horizon, I began to get stressed out.

February started out strong, that first week I was doing my cardio 2110 Fitness three days a week, 2 hours each day. My sessions With Damir were amazing; he pushed far beyond my limits with most sessions. I enjoyed my reward for reaching my weight loss goal in January; I did Damir’s Saturday morning kickboxing class. The kickboxing class was awesome, I got to partner with Sandra it was such a great hour. We laughed, and sweated our butts off! It was awesome.
Things quickly changed, First my cat Chibi stop eating. So Kristy and I had to force feed him Several times a day. So this meant on my cardio days, I needed to come home and feed him then do my cardio in my basement on my own hamster wheel. At first this was hard after feeding Chibi; I needed to get by my comfy lazy boy chair to go to the basement. After a few days I found my routine and made it past, and found my stride. As the month continued more home repairs surfaced and I had to make a tough decision. I had to stop Partner Training with Damir. This was a very hard decision to make, after several days of struggling with it I talked to Damir about it and we made a plan together what I would do when we stopped training. Two days later my kitchen sink started to leak and that was it I had to make the decision to stop and go forward with the plan. So our last session would be on February 28th.
The day of our last session came quick. Just before Ryan arrived for our session Damir asked how I was doing, and I smiled and said “I am good”. But he could see right through me. He replied “No I think you’re sad, and scared about what is going to happen after today. The new Boot camp will be like having one of your sessions with 20 other people!” Our last session was all the great exercises from the past. Hammer slams, tire flips with burpees, Alternating Cleans, 15 incline on the Treadmill, and Damir even threw in my favourite from when we were at Alive, Pushing him up the hallway, or maybe I should say fighting him up the hallway. At 2110 Fitness we did from one end of the gym to the other. It was one of the best sessions I have ever had.
March 1st was my first day at Damir’s new Boot Camp. There were lots of Familiar faces, Sandra, Lara, and Kat Jacob, Jamie and Jen and lots of new ones. It was nice to catch up with Kat Jacob before class. When Damir said the boot camp would be like one of my sessions with 20 other people he was not kidding. It was just as intense, no maybe more intense then one of our session. It did not feel like there was a lot of time resting at all it was just go, go and go. It was awesome!!

The biggest thing I will miss about Partner training is my partner. My Best friend Ryan and I have been Training together for a very long time. It was always very motivating to workout with Ryan. He would push and push me, call me out when I was slacking and celebrate with me when we did something an amazing, which was almost every week. I will miss that.
I did not reach all my goals I set in January. I lost 7 pounds, not the 12 I was hoping for, I did reach more than my goal of 70 km, and I did 81 km on the hamster wheel. 68 of them on the hamster wheel in my basement. I also did 60 km on the Airdyne before my cat got sick, I would have surpassed my goal. The biggest thing I learned in February is that I can do cardio away from the gym in my own basement, which is where I will do most of it in the future.

Looking over some old photo and I have added a few from Day 2 of my Journey taken on June 4th 2009 and one from last summer as that is the latest photo I have of my whole body. I think I see a difference. I will never go back to that weight ever.

March Goals
· Lose 10 pounds
· 80 km on the hamster wheel

Back in Action

I had 3 goals for the past month, lose 10 pounds, get the food under control and run/jog 60km. Also in January I wanted to work on finding balance in my life between working out, family and friends. January went by so quickly.
January had some pretty amazing workout. I spent more than a few hours on the hamster wheel; today I am sitting at 45km in January. Not at my goal but after tomorrow I will be at 50km and that is a good start to the year. To try and work on balance in my life I tried to using the treadmill at home a few times, but have decided that it is best to workout out at the gym as I don’t push as hard at home. Sandra and I also worked out together at 2110 fitness this month. It was awesome to pound out the hamster wheel work with a friend. It was motivating as she would go hard so I would do the same. After the hamster wheel we did a hardcore workout, it was awesome.
My sessions with Damir were kickass as always. Almost every session we have spent time on the hamster wheel. The hamster wheel with Damir is hard with a purpose. The best one this month has been the exercise I call the double hamster wheel to hell. Damir has me power walk at a 15 incline for 5mins and Ryan jogging on the treadmill beside me, every time I hop off the treadmill to rest or hang on to the treadmill he increases Ryan’s incline, if Ryan hops off the treadmill he increases my speed. It is brutal.
I have had some success with my weight this month. As of last Monday I am down 11 pounds so far in January. It seems the more I stick to my food plan the better I feel and the weight comes off faster. I found out this month that I like avocado and almond milk. I really love the avocado in my salads. Not sure about have almond milk in my oatmeal; I think I prefer water but I am getting used to it. I officially step on the scale tomorrow for my last weigh in for January. But as of yesterday I am only down 1 pound. I am sure it would have been more this week, however I had a very bad cold this week so I did not do much cardio outside my sessions this week.
As I look back at the month of January I must decide if I have reached my goals and if I should reward myself. I did lose more than 10 pounds so that is a good thing. I am thinking I could have lost more with a little more focus. I did not reach my goal of 60 km on the hamster wheel. I did spend time with family and friends this month, I reached that goal there. The old Brian would ask everyone what they think and not make my own self evaluation. However I can do this on my own. I did lose more than the 10 pounds I was shooting for, so , so since I am not a dog, I will reward myself with one of Damir classes in February if there is room not Food. I was 10 km short on the hamster wheel goal. The consequence to that is I am adding 10 extra to the month of February.

February’s goals
· Lose 12 pounds or more
· 60km on the hamster wheel
· 10km extra on the hamsterwheel
· 100 km on the Airdyne

Hey, Hey, My, My

Well I took a little break from posting my blog as it has been a tough 3 months. As I struggled I felt it was best not to share my struggle as I did not want to let anyone down. Many friends and family have pointed out to me that struggling is a part of my journey and posting will help me with the struggle. To be honest I have lost and regained the same 10 to 15 pounds in the last three months. I am referring the last 3 months as the dark time. In my darkest time I was sitting in McDonalds staring at the menu board for quite a long, debating to have a Big Mac or not. I did not have one that day, but have caved last week and had one. It was not worth it.

In order to regain control of my weight loss journey I need to find balance in my life. My lifestyle will always have fitness in it now. But I need to find the balance between my fitness lifestyle, my family, friends and work. In 2011 I did not see my niece enough. Every time I did get to see her, she looked so much taller. In 2012 I need to make time to see her. I also have not seen my friend Pam in months, my friends Chad and Michelle had a baby and they brought her into Wal-Mart to meet me. These are all signs I need to take time out and spend some time with family and friends. So even if I work hard all week and I am very tried I need take some time on my weekends off to see family and friends.

The good news is that I have a good plan to regain control of my food. Also I am make big strides learning to run, and made some great fitness goals for 2012. My biggest goal is to eat clean for 100 days, doing this will bring good food habits in my life. Second goal is to run a 10k in May and get my time under 2 hours. In the summer I would like to play football. These will take allot of training and running so cardio is very important. So my ass will be on the treadmill 3 to 4 times a week. 2110 Fitness has also changed the gym layout; with the new layout it is very easy to do suicides up and down the turf. I plan to do this 2 times a week; this will also help me get used to running on the ground not on a treadmill.

Hey, Hey, My, My I have come a very long way, but I still have a quite a way to go. It is easy to forget how bad I was in the beginning. Damir, Kim, Kristy, and Holly have helped me come so far. There was a time I could not tie my own shoe laces, walk up a flight of stairs without becoming winded, fit into a booth at a restaurant, get up off the ground if I fell, do burpees, do a 5k; well I could go on forever here. Since it has been a while where these things were issues in my life I have forgot and lost my focus. But I don’t want to go back to not have a life again so I am taking time to refocus and get my mojo back.

Reaching goals this year is very important to me this year, I lost my way with that in 2011, this year goals will have deadlines. I think if I give myself reasonable deadlines I will have better success. Also I stop rewarding myself when I reached goals. So in 2012 I will be rewarding myself when I reach small and big goals. My first small goal is to drop 10 pounds and to run 60 km before the end of January. My rewards will be non food rewards. When I reach my first goal my reward will be to drop in to one of Damir’s Bootcamp or Kickboxing classes in February.

Also I won’t go so long without post a new blog entry again, so look forward to new entry weather I am rocking it or weather I am struggling.

Not only did I meet my goal I destroyed it.

The last 2 weeks have been amazing, my workouts have been extreme, and I hit some great strides. In my last blog post I talked about the toughest workout I have ever done. Well the following Tuesday Damir tweaked it and made it much harder.

It started with Damir explaining that there would be two stopwatches, one will time the workout, and with the other, he would be timing the amount of time that I was taking a break or switching from the Airdyne bike to the hamster wheel. The workout was 1min on the Airdyne and then 2mins on the hamster wheel and so on... until I reach 10mins on the hamster wheel. As I started out I was on the Airdyne I was thinking this is going to be hard, really hard! At the 6min mark I was not sure I would be able to finish this workout. I must have jumped off that treadmill 10 times in that 6min run. That is when Damir started raise his voice a little, letting me know that if the break stopwatch reaches 10mins the workout is done. At the 8min run on the treadmill I was freaking out, it was crazy hard, but dug deep and finished the 8mins. Now Damir could see I was not doing well mentally and while I was on the Airdyne he sat on the bike beside me and calmed me down. Now the 10min run was the hardest thing I ever did. The speed of the hamster wheel was high, and as I ran I just started to panic, and I jumped off time and time again. Now Damir is yelling, because I was over 8mins on the rest stopwatch, every time I hopped off he got louder and louder. The last 2mins of that 10min run I had Meghan on the treadmill beside me cheering me on, and I was crying it was so hard, it was so bad. I did finish with 9:15 of rest. I was so pissed, so I asked immediately asked if I could do it again 10 days later, on next Thursday.

I decided that was not good enough, I wanted better under 8mins of rest is what I was thinking would be good. So at boot camp I tried to push hard, and these were hard boot camps. The great thing about Boot camp is that everyone in the class is very supportive and certain people will call me out if I am slacking. The first boot camp workout after that hard workout we had to pick partners, so I picked Shaimaa, she pushed me good. During the several circuits in the few weeks I tired to be close to people who would call me out and push me, like Meghan, Sandra, Jacob or Paula. Boot camp was good and I gave it my all.

So the redo day of that workout came, this time I was so focused. Damir said “are we still shooting for under 8mins of rest?” I said let’s just get it under 9. This time I controlled my breathing, taking each time on the treadmill 2mins at a time. When I was on the Airdyne I really focused on my breathing, before I knew it, I was doing the 8min run and this time Damir did not raise his voice once. In fact he kept saying... “Oh we are going to have changed this for next time; it is too easy for you!” I kept focused and finished the 8min run. During the ten min run I only stopped 3 times. I finished under 7mins of rest. Not only did I meet my goal I destroyed it.

This week started off with a bang, Tuesday’s session was awesome we got to play with the Big Ass tire and I am very much improving on that.

Fear starts to set in

This week started with a bang. Monday, Damir was still away from boot camp so Kate was the Sub instructor again. It was another awesome class, the warm up was very intense, the spin bike and push ups one hand on a step one hand on the ground. It was hard we did that for about 10 to 15 minutes. The rest of the class was the same way very intense. Kate made me realize I can do more cardio then I think I can and I enjoy the way her class flowed. It was great she is definitely as crazy as Damir.

Tuesday session with Damir was awesome. I warmed up on the hamster wheel just walking as my legs were very sore from boot camp. At the beginning of Ryan and I session Damir Said “ let’s put u on the Airdyne bike before Ryan comes out of the change room” now I was very apprehensive about getting on as the last time we did that it did not go well. I got on and it went well, very well so we started on the bike. I started with 3 minutes on the bike, after that it was pushing and pulling a weight sled and Giant tire flips. The whole time Damir worked on fixing my form with flipping the tire. We made 2 adjustments and it felt a little easier to flip the tire. That was the first half of our session; it was tough but not super insane. That came in the second half session. The second half consisted of burpees, rowing in the weight sled (which felt extremely heavy), bear crawls and push ups. It was repeated 5 times, it was intense and went on for a very long time and there was no stopping to catch my breath. In fact all I heard was Damir “come on Brian.....Lets goo Brian ..... pick it up Brian ......good job not stopping Brian... chest First Brian....lets Go” like I said it went on for a very long time!!

Wednesday I took a rest Day

Thursday was Crazy I arrived at 2110 Fitness Damir was Training Kim, as I walked By, Damir Said “Remember last month when I said I can’t wait to put you through the workout that Kim was doing? YEAH we are doing that today!” now I did remember, it looked like Damir was trying to kill Kim with the hamster wheel and Airdyne. In fact I had never seen Kim work so hard ever, and she is an animal when it comes to working out. So I got changed, ate my snack, and hopped on the hamster wheel to warm up. I was walking for about 5 minutes when all of sudden Damir was turning off my hamster wheel and he said “Get off I want you to lift weights to warm up!” now he has NEVER taken me off the hamster wheel before a workout before so fear starts to set in. I fire a text off to Ryan letting him know he just pulled me off the hamster wheel, why should I be the only on freaking out. As I am doing the weights Damir suggested I am sure I look terrified..... Because well I remember that the two times I seen Kim do that workout she was doing it non stop! Off the Airdyne on the hamster wheel not stopping to catch her breath she just powered through the whole hour like a machine. I think she had 1minutie of rest the whole time. The half hour of lifting weights blow by very fast. Ryan arrived and I ask if he got my text he responded in his sarcastic tone “thanks for that”

I hop on the Airdyne and I start; it was 1min going as hard as I could, then off to the hamster wheel at a 15 incline. While I am on the hamster wheel Damir says “hope you boys are ready! Because this session will not be easy like all our other sessions” I am thinking are you fucking kidding me I am still feeling Tuesday’s workout and Tuesday was not easy! The first 2mins were intense. Then on the Airdyne again this time 2mins. now my heart is just pounding. Then it’s off to the hamster Wheel for 2mins now I am feeling overwhelmed, I remember something from the Zen Book I am reading and I just breathe and focus and the overwhelming feeling leaves. At the 5 min on the Airdyne mark I ask for the bucket in the corner just in case, but it turns out I did not need it at all. After the 6 min on the Airdyne Damir says that we were done. Ryan and I made it to 6mins I have to say we gave everything we had to it; Kim made it to 10min on each in her hour’s session. That is just crazy, she is a workout machine. She makes me want to work even harder on my cardio to be able to make it to 10mins on both as well. That Session went by so fast, I had all the signs of a great workout, light headedness, dizziness, I had to vomit and my shirt was soaked wet. I have done an hour on the treadmill with Damir many times before, which was hard; this was 10 times harder it rocked!! After that session I have named the Airdyne, Emma, because it is awesome, and I think I may have found my new love, it is much more fun than Sara (the curved hamster wheel). Best Session Ever!!

Friday’s boot camp was an awesome circuit, 13 crazy exercises. Started with burpees, that is my favourite station to start with as I don’t want to end the hour with them. It was a very sweaty hour, I felt bad for Kat Jacob as I think she shared a sweat spot with me through the whole class. She was very motivating we had lots of hi five and I think we both cursed at the same exercises. It was a great class I liked it a lot.

This week was so intensely awesome makes me excited to see what happens next week!