Over 3 months ago and close to 15 lbs (not a typo, yes 15) was the last time that you heard the thoughts and observations of Mr. Lemonhead. If you haven’t seen me in a while you may be thinking, “Well good for him. He was able to overcome his humungous appetite, train for his marathon in April, keep that momentum and now is down to a good looking 223.” If those were your thoughts, have you not been paying attention for the past 8 months of my mostly sporadic entries? If instead you thought, “Oh great, he said he was going to do this and that, developed some grandiose plan, lasted about 5 days, essentially gave up and for the past 3 months has been fueled by fountain sodas, doughnuts, candy and watermelon (3 cheers for summer!!!). If those were your thoughts, then you as well have not been paying attention to my entries. If instead you thought, “Oh great, he said he was going to do this and that, developed some grandiose plan, lasted about 1 day, essentially gave up and for the past 3 months has been fueled by fountain sodas, doughnuts, candy and watermelon.” If that was your response, then you, my friend, truly know Mr. Lemonhead.
Being that you haven’t heard from me in quite some time (sorry to deprive you of my witty entries for so long) a lot has changed. Last time you heard from me I was sharing the news of another Larson that would be welcomed into the world in October (the due date is September 27 but as I have learned over the past 13 years, Jamie is never on time for anything). Since that time, I have been to Italy and back, struggled through a marathon (4:15:23 – not too shabby for an obese guy like me), got too out of shape to run any races during my racing season (everybody’s favorite time of year) - consisting of the Cherry Festival 5k, Turkey Festival 5k and culminating with the Steamboat Festival 15k, where I am the reigning Clydesdale division champion (just the thought of not being able to retain the crown is too much to handle) and have essentially eaten everything in sight. I have also brought into style a new look of “skinny corporate wear”. Skinny jeans are so yesterday, you can imagine how stunning I look in khakis that are too tight to hold anything in the pockets and dress shirts that show your every curve and roll. Needless to say I have eliminated about half of my wardrobe as I have moved along the sliding scale of weight from obese teetering on the edge towards just overweight to morbidly obese with no end in sight.
Everyone reading this diary knows that I have a habit of making promises and not following through with them. I have promised a certain number of runs in a week, a certain number of miles that I would run a week, that I was going to give up drinking regular coke for a period of time, that I was going to drink diet soda, and even that I wasn’t going to drink any soda at all. To be honest, when those promises were made I had full intentions of keeping them but it seems as if my will power has slowly left right along with my athletic ability. I wish I had some sort of reason for this disturbing trend besides my laziness and my love for anything and everything that is unhealthy for you. I have joked about it before but this morning I put on my morning wear (my running clothes which have become my 5:55 AM – 7:00 AM pajamas) and the shirt that I put on could have easily been confused with an Under Armor spandex shirt. You would have thought with me putting that on and it fitting that way I would have immediately gone out for a run to try and start a positive trend, but instead I made an excuse and went to my 2nd bed for my 2nd shift of sleeping.
So now that I have taken out the world’s smallest violin and have played for you my sob story, what does this mean? Am I going to promise you a weekly diary entry, a month where I abstain from fountain sodas, a month where I rid myself of the habit of eating dessert after every meal, or maybe even a period of time where I only eat breakfast, a healthy mid-morning snack, lunch, a Fiber One bar for an afternoon snack and then dinner? No, unfortunately you will read no such promises from Mr. Lemonhead this time. All I am going to say is that for the first time in a very long while I am actually going to try. For the past 3-4 months I haven’t been able to say that. When something popped into my head that sounded good (which surprisingly happens about 6,340,076 times a day) I would naturally go and locate that source of abundant calories and eat it or drink it immediately. My lack of effort wasn’t limited to my consumption of food and beverage but also expanded into my exercise routine. Over the past 3+ months I have earnestly been trying to drop the title of runner (not on purpose). If you were to witness my 9.11 mile run on Saturday (no, the distance is not just a coincidence – I stopped a little short to reflect how I was feeling at the time) you would indeed immediately pity me for putting myself through such an epic 9-mile struggle. From the slow pace I was running you would have thought I had just finished a marathon but I didn’t have such a claim to hang my hat on. You may be surprised to hear that I haven’t been running but then decided to go enjoy 9 miles of country – well it wasn’t exactly planned to be that distance and I got to a point of no return. Consider the said 9.11 miles an outlier from my normal routine.
Eventually I knew this day was going to come but for some reason it took this day happening to realize that I needed to change things up. The impetus for another Mr. Lemonhead entry was me stepping on a scale today and seeing my weight being greater than 1/8 of a ton. I have now gone to a place that I had been before and vowed never to go back. It is not as if I hadn’t see these particular digits on the scale recently, but I always had some excuse for seeing them. It could have been that I was wearing clothes or it was in the afternoon and the only weigh-in that matters is in the morning or it could have been that I had just eaten a big meal (who I am kidding, over the past 3 months they have all been big). This morning I stepped on the scale in the buff after waking from my second sleep and it read 251.6. There were no excuses just me and an entirely too large number on the scale. Now to have to avoid wearing clothes is one thing because maybe they had shrunk, but when the scale is telling you what you have feared for so long (that being that I am morbidly obese) it is an entirely different matter. This, in turn, has led me back to where it all started for a source of motivation, to you, my readers. Much like my eating and running I have made too many excuses for not penning any more entries and none of them were very good. While I will not guarantee weekly entries, I will promise that they will be more frequent than every 3 months. I will try to allow you an insight into the ugliness that is my fight against my raging appetite.
As always thank you for reading and please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions as I fight against the chances of becoming this guy.
Being that you haven’t heard from me in quite some time (sorry to deprive you of my witty entries for so long) a lot has changed. Last time you heard from me I was sharing the news of another Larson that would be welcomed into the world in October (the due date is September 27 but as I have learned over the past 13 years, Jamie is never on time for anything). Since that time, I have been to Italy and back, struggled through a marathon (4:15:23 – not too shabby for an obese guy like me), got too out of shape to run any races during my racing season (everybody’s favorite time of year) - consisting of the Cherry Festival 5k, Turkey Festival 5k and culminating with the Steamboat Festival 15k, where I am the reigning Clydesdale division champion (just the thought of not being able to retain the crown is too much to handle) and have essentially eaten everything in sight. I have also brought into style a new look of “skinny corporate wear”. Skinny jeans are so yesterday, you can imagine how stunning I look in khakis that are too tight to hold anything in the pockets and dress shirts that show your every curve and roll. Needless to say I have eliminated about half of my wardrobe as I have moved along the sliding scale of weight from obese teetering on the edge towards just overweight to morbidly obese with no end in sight.
Everyone reading this diary knows that I have a habit of making promises and not following through with them. I have promised a certain number of runs in a week, a certain number of miles that I would run a week, that I was going to give up drinking regular coke for a period of time, that I was going to drink diet soda, and even that I wasn’t going to drink any soda at all. To be honest, when those promises were made I had full intentions of keeping them but it seems as if my will power has slowly left right along with my athletic ability. I wish I had some sort of reason for this disturbing trend besides my laziness and my love for anything and everything that is unhealthy for you. I have joked about it before but this morning I put on my morning wear (my running clothes which have become my 5:55 AM – 7:00 AM pajamas) and the shirt that I put on could have easily been confused with an Under Armor spandex shirt. You would have thought with me putting that on and it fitting that way I would have immediately gone out for a run to try and start a positive trend, but instead I made an excuse and went to my 2nd bed for my 2nd shift of sleeping.
So now that I have taken out the world’s smallest violin and have played for you my sob story, what does this mean? Am I going to promise you a weekly diary entry, a month where I abstain from fountain sodas, a month where I rid myself of the habit of eating dessert after every meal, or maybe even a period of time where I only eat breakfast, a healthy mid-morning snack, lunch, a Fiber One bar for an afternoon snack and then dinner? No, unfortunately you will read no such promises from Mr. Lemonhead this time. All I am going to say is that for the first time in a very long while I am actually going to try. For the past 3-4 months I haven’t been able to say that. When something popped into my head that sounded good (which surprisingly happens about 6,340,076 times a day) I would naturally go and locate that source of abundant calories and eat it or drink it immediately. My lack of effort wasn’t limited to my consumption of food and beverage but also expanded into my exercise routine. Over the past 3+ months I have earnestly been trying to drop the title of runner (not on purpose). If you were to witness my 9.11 mile run on Saturday (no, the distance is not just a coincidence – I stopped a little short to reflect how I was feeling at the time) you would indeed immediately pity me for putting myself through such an epic 9-mile struggle. From the slow pace I was running you would have thought I had just finished a marathon but I didn’t have such a claim to hang my hat on. You may be surprised to hear that I haven’t been running but then decided to go enjoy 9 miles of country – well it wasn’t exactly planned to be that distance and I got to a point of no return. Consider the said 9.11 miles an outlier from my normal routine.
Eventually I knew this day was going to come but for some reason it took this day happening to realize that I needed to change things up. The impetus for another Mr. Lemonhead entry was me stepping on a scale today and seeing my weight being greater than 1/8 of a ton. I have now gone to a place that I had been before and vowed never to go back. It is not as if I hadn’t see these particular digits on the scale recently, but I always had some excuse for seeing them. It could have been that I was wearing clothes or it was in the afternoon and the only weigh-in that matters is in the morning or it could have been that I had just eaten a big meal (who I am kidding, over the past 3 months they have all been big). This morning I stepped on the scale in the buff after waking from my second sleep and it read 251.6. There were no excuses just me and an entirely too large number on the scale. Now to have to avoid wearing clothes is one thing because maybe they had shrunk, but when the scale is telling you what you have feared for so long (that being that I am morbidly obese) it is an entirely different matter. This, in turn, has led me back to where it all started for a source of motivation, to you, my readers. Much like my eating and running I have made too many excuses for not penning any more entries and none of them were very good. While I will not guarantee weekly entries, I will promise that they will be more frequent than every 3 months. I will try to allow you an insight into the ugliness that is my fight against my raging appetite.
As always thank you for reading and please feel free to leave any comments or suggestions as I fight against the chances of becoming this guy.
Love.
Mr. Lemonhead
P.S. If you couldn’t tell when reading it, the first letter of the first 5 paragraphs makes a nice little acrostic.
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