Maniac

On the ice-filled line of sanity
It's a place most never see
It's a hard-won place of mystery
You can touch it but can't hold it

You work all your life for that moment in time
It can come or pass you by
It's a push of the world but there's always a chance
If the hunger stays alive

It's funny, but those were the lyrics that came to mind when I made the agonizing decision NOT to go get a muffin yesterday. Yeah, I know.

About a month ago, I hit my lifetime high weight of 137. Luckily, I realized that everything that I believed to have stood in my way during the last couple of years was either resolved or very near resolution. Like when I was offered my new job, I quickly realized that having a new job wouldn't in and of itself make me happy, but by leaving my old job, I had removed my most major excuse for not being happy. However, I still had to make the decision to get over it.

So I started riding again and quit worrying so much about whether I felt like riding or not. Then I pulled the trigger and signed up with a coach again. Then I stopped eating crappy food. Then after a couple of weeks it actually got easy to do all of these things again.

Which leads to me to the muffin. I was having a stressful morning and I just wasn't imagining the bean soup that I had brought for lunch giving me the happy shot of dopamine to the brain that I thought I needed. I craved something sweet and strongly considering going out for a muffin after I ate my soup, but after I was done with the soup I realized that I already had the blood-sugar stabilizing protein and fiber that I really needed. While I still wanted a happy shot of sugar-induced dopamine, I decided losing the 20+ pounds that I've gained over the last year and a half was more important.

What I can't understand is how I could make that decision yesterday, but not a couple of months ago when I was busy gaining those 20+ pounds. It's a hard-won place of mystery. You can touch but can't hold it.

I don't think there's a better way to describe the way that my weight has fluctuated through about five major ups and downs in the last 10 years. It really has nothing to do with which self-prescribed regimen I'm using, it's whether I "have it" at the moment or not. I just wish I knew how to keep it.

For the moment, I am rocking the first two weeks of my new training plan and I've lost about three pounds. I'm super tired, and I get hit with overwhelming hunger every couple of hours, at which time I eat 200-400 calories of something healthy and move on. I just need to remember that after months of not really needing any nutrition on the bike, that the overwhelming hunger will likely hit in the middle of the ride and I need to have some Rapidade or gel ready when it comes. Two hours with 2 x 14 minutes tempo kind of sucked last night on just water.

How far can I take it? We shall see.

Along those lines, I have decided that "She's A Maniac" will be my 2009 theme song, since that seems to be something that I like to do. There was "Livin' on a Prayer" in 2007 and "The Long Way Around" in 2008.

At first glance, choosing the song from an 80's movie training montage seems really lame. I didn't really even like the song until I heard an a capella version in the movie "Hamlet 2". Once I got the "Rock Me Sexy Jesus" song out my head (watch the movie), I started thinking about the "maniac" lyrics. There's actually some pretty good wisdom about self-efficacy in there. No overly inspirational crap about getting what you want if you work hard enough; more of a "you won't know unless you try" message. I like it.