Playing Through
At the Boot Camp Challenge, 'what you hate the most works the best'
By Mark Fagan, Fri., March 20, 2009
"I just turned 40. I'm recently single and have no kids. I'm 5 feet 7 inches tall and weigh – according to the scale at the Chronicle, which many female employees claim is inaccurate, figure that – 196 pounds fully clothed (including hat). I've made some attempts lately to eat healthier, drink much less, and exercise, but I fear I'll slip back into my bad habits as the month of January fades into February. I need some help. Enter Boot Camp Challenge." Thus began my blog, Jan. 15, as I embarked on my six-week stint participating in Brooke Norris' BCC.
And, honestly, that wasn't the half of it. I need to turn all aspects of my life around. I lost my mom in January 2007, my dad in 1999, and my brother in 1993. Thank god I still have my sister. Once both of your parents are gone, you walk through life in a completely different pair of shoes. My health is one of the few things that I feel I have even a modicum of control over these days. Drinking, taking drugs, and overeating is a temporary respite from life's ills, at best – which is how I've dealt with my issues for the previous 25 years. And those "solutions" eventually create their own set of problems. My goal isn't to be young, sober, and free but to enjoy indulging myself in moderation while spending more time dedicated to improving my health and peace of mind. A good therapist can work wonders, but he or she can't help you take inches off your waist. Controlling what you put in your mouth and exercising does.
The camp meets three times a week, for an hour, at 6am. I usually go to bed around 2am (and have since graduating high school in 1987), so one of the biggest challenges for me was to get up and get to camp. I thought this would be the hardest part; it wasn't. Brooke and fellow instructor Janine Quiroga ran us through an array of exercises that were taxing for the most fit in the group and torturous for the rest of us. But I stuck with it, attending 16 of the 18 sessions. I've never been a paragon of self-discipline, but I'm trying, and boot camp has helped. A fit lifestyle leads to healthy habits, just like an unfit lifestyle leads to more bad habits. I don't crave junk food after working out, but Tamale House migas sound perfect after a night of hard partying. It all ties together. I signed up for the BCC out of pure vanity – to look better and to find a beautiful (and smart) woman to share my life with. I've gained so much more. I feel better physically, but I also feel better about myself.
My current fitness role model is Matthew McConaughey. Like him, I want to be fit but still get my party on – to look good and have a good time doing it. Now the battle is to take the lessons I've learned and continue to build on them. Maintain. That's the real goal. With that in mind, I started another BCC this week. I've lost four inches around my waist, dropped 10 pounds, and taken four minutes off my mile! Those are some results you can't fuck with, but I'm still not where I want to be, fitnesswise. It helps to remember, as a fellow boot camper exclaimed, "What you hate the most works the best."
