The blog of Luther M. Siler, teacher, author and local curmudgeon
A couple of days ago, I was at 287 pounds on the scale. Objectively, that’s a lot, especially at my height. However, that’s also the lightest I’ve been in at least four years and probably more like five or six. I’m down over thirty pounds.
Today I had Qdoba for lunch, two doughnuts, and McDonald’s for dinner.
Kinda want to die.
Never change, Busuu.
So all last year I worked at a job where I was too fucking lazy to bring my lunch to work 95% of the time and so I spent a shitload of time eating fast food every week. Then I got sick in September or October or whatever and I’ve basically been sitting on my ass at home for the last five months.
I have lost substantial amounts of weight twice in my life. In grad school I got down from 240 to 200 pounds through a combination of diet and exercise. The exercise? Swimming. I love to fucking swim. I don’t even care that it’s exercise. So I will do it. Daily, if necessary.
A couple of years ago I dropped from 260 to 220 through, almost exclusively, diet. Why no exercise? No pool.
I weighed three hundred and four fucking pounds when I got on the scale this morning.
I have been laboring under the mistaken notion that South Bend lacked an adequate lap pool. There are two that I am aware of in town: one is at the YMCA and another is at a local neighborhood rec center called the Kroc Center. Both have, to put it mildly, hours for lap swimming ranging from inconvenient to “why the fuck are you even bothering?”
Last Thursday I discovered the existence of a heretofore unknown third pool at a facility that has been here for the entire time I have lived in South Bend but which was previously somehow hidden from me.
I am deeply angry that this place has been out there being all perfect for my needs and this is the first that I’ve heard about it.
Their lap pool is open the entire time the facility is open and, at least for my hours of activity, the facility may as well be 24 hour. On Friday I took a tour of the gym. This morning, after a meeting with my doctor (believe it or not, this place waives the enrollment fee and drastically drops the monthly rate if you can get your doctor to claim there’s a medical reason you need exercise. I’m very very fat! I need exercise!) I signed up. And I went swimming. I made it 10 laps in a 25-meter pool; at my most fit I could do a mile without stopping. I then spent ten minutes in a hot tub and went home.
I’m done with this bullshit now. I’m so fat, at this point, that buttoning my pants can get me out of breath, because I have stupidly short arms and the way I have to shunt my gut out of the way to deal with my pants actually compresses my lungs. There is a chair in my house that I occasionally avoid sitting in because getting out of it again can be so obnoxious. I have other stories, some more embarrassing; I think you get the idea.
I’m done with this bullshit now. I turn 40 in a few months. I can either get control of my shit again or I can be dead by 45. Those are my fucking choices.
Enough.
It is 2015 and the future. Time to ruin my body with experimental food!
Have you heard of Soylent? I ordered a week’s supply in July, partially because I was genuinely curious about it and partially because I am a glutton for punishment and thought it might make for a hilarious series of posts for the blog.
Let me say that again: July. My Soylent arrived yesterday. They are backlogged like a sumbitch in supplying new orders, although the website claims that reorders will ship within a week or two. At the moment, I don’t actually plan to re-up, but we’ll see what happens. Today you get the unboxing and some theories on when I’m going to actually eat this. I’m thinking about starting next Friday, because I’ll be out of town all weekend and… well, there’s a reason I’m calling the series THE FARTENING– users have reported some minor issues with adjusting to a Soylent diet. The first taste may have to wait a little bit. We’ll see.
Your Soylent arrives as two boxes inside of a bigger box. Exciting! There is no packaging foam or other nonsense inside; luckily, nothing is especially breakable.
The two boxes inside the box. One contains the actual Soylent products, the other is my customized pitcher that came FREE! with my eighty-five dolla worth of powder and oil.
Everything inside both of the containers. The boy was super excited by this entire process and wanted to touch everything; I’m amazed that I kept him out of all of the pictures. A day’s worth of Soylent fits in the pitcher; that’s all I’m supposed to eat for the entire day. In three separate meals. This is going to be interesting.
At any rate: one pitcher, one scoop, seven bottles of oil, seven packages of Soylent, one information card, one instruction booklet.
The Official Soylent Scoop is actually pretty well-made (so is the pitcher, for that matter) and supposedly gives the proper dimensions for a single serving of the stuff. I might indulge in one serving tomorrow just out of curiosity; we’ll see. I also need to check and see if this is any sort of standard measurement because it really is a nicely-made measuring cup.
A close-up of one package of Soylent. One package is three meals; supposedly a day’s worth of food. One of the decisions I need to make is whether I’m going to try and go whole-hog on this stuff or just eat it during the day at work and then have a regular dinner; the first makes more sense as SCIENCE! and is definitely going to be better for the blog (you guys are never happier than when I’m miserable) but the second would fit into my life better. We’ll see; I’ve got time to think about it.
A closeup of the oil bottle. Soylent is 100% vegan, by the way.
Man, it really is the future. Food comes with instructions now! This thing’s like fourteen pages long!
Can I point out that the “L” in the “Release notes” font is terrible and drives me crazy? I can? Good.
More later, as I decide exactly how this is going to work.
Okay, I don’t take ibuprofen before bed every night, but c’mon. I’m 38 not 83.
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