Depression Sucks

Gonna toss out a content warning (as we leftists love to do on Facebook nowadays):
Depression, anxiety, and thoughts of suicide will be discussed here.

First things first, here's my obligatory meme so I can really show off my link on social media:

As we've entered into a near year and we're all another year older, I can say that I've had depression for nearly twenty years now. That's a long fucking time!

Most people think of depression as this permanent fixture, as though you are always sad. This isn't true. Despite my long history of depression, there's been moments where I've experienced happiness. Hell, this blog started with showing me as a very happy, new, thin athlete. My year after I had bariatric surgery was pretty nice. There's been other times when I've felt pretty happy as well. My wedding day. The birth of my kids. The first days when I got home from war. But eventually, depression (and its best bud, anxiety) have always come back.

I've seen therapists and they didn't have a lot of help for me. I saw three therapists between 2015 and 2018, and I ended my sessions with them after each one asked me up front, "What are you hoping to get out of this?" Along with other things they told me, I understood that it was psychologist speak for, "I don't know how to help you." Some would put me on pills, and they would help for a while, but eventually, I'd be back at square one. I began to think I was broken. Three fucking therapists (as well as the VA nurse that I saw back in 2011) couldn't get me to be less depressed and anxious. I am just stuck living with extreme sadness and fear until the day I fucking die.

And that's when you start going to dark places. "What's the point of going on if I have to spend the next 40-60 years of my life feeling like absolute shit?" is a question I've asked myself more than once.

Mental health advocates have long been telling people that depression is something that's in your head. "You have a chemical imbalance in your brain", is what they like to tell you. A lack of serotonin or dopamine is why you feel this way. So when the pills eventually stop working, it makes you feel like shit to know that your brain is fucked up. You go back to feeling broken. Nobody can fix you.

And it's all bullshit.

Almost a year ago I came across a video in my Facebook feed that was interviewing a man named Johann Hari (shown below). The first thing he says is, "You're not crazy. Your pain is not a pathology. Your pain makes sense. We are depressed and anxious in this culture for perfectly good reasons." That is some very comforting words to hear when you've been told for years that you're in pain because you're broken.

After seeing that, I immediately downloaded Johann Hari's book, Lost Connections to my Kindle. I read the entire book in two days. The basic premise of the book is, You're not depressed because you have a broken brain. You're depressed because your life sucks, and it's (probably) not your fault.

After being told for years that I'm depressed because my brain is fucked up, being told the obvious-that my life sucks and I have perfectly good reasons for being depressed and anxious-felt like a breath of fresh air.

Johann Hari's book lists nine reasons why people in our society face depression and anxiety, and I plan on doing a separate post on each one of them, as well as a tenth that I'm adding in. Here's the list of those:

1. Disconnection from Meaningful Work
2. Disconnection from Other People
3. Disconnecting from Meaningful Values
4. Disconnection from Childhood Trauma
5. Disconnection from Status and Respect
6. Disconnection from the Natural World
7. Disconnection from a Hopeful or Secure Future
8. Genetic issues
9. Long Term Effects of Depression on the Brain
10. Poor Nutrition

The last one is the one I added, and I'll probably be discussing that first.

The biggest takeaway from the book is that there aren't any easy solutions for depression. For decades, self help gurus have made a fortune selling books with easy answers, because those answers were always solutions done individually. But they typically don't work, because the real solutions to depression are collective ones. Meaning, we as society need to make major changes. Major changes, that are going to have to be sold to the populace at large before they can be made.

The past three months have been really hard for me. Depression does come in waves, and for the last three months, it's been a rough one.

In my past, depression was easy to manage because I only had to take care of me. I'd wake up whenever I felt like it (I worked nights, so I didn't have to worry about sleeping past my work time), would get drunk and/or high, and spend my whole day playing video games. All the drugs and distraction kept me in a pleasant state of denial about my mental health.

The past few months, I fell back into those habits. I drank to excess almost nightly. I started smoking weed again. And I would spend my night hours playing old Xbox 360 video games. Problem with that now, is I'm a husband and a parent. I can't just wake up whenever and do nothing. I have adult shit. I have to cook food, clean, and spend time with my kids. I got tired from the depression and hangovers, and still had to do all that adult stuff (as well as my job). I would feel good when I was seven sheets to the wind and capturing my thousandth Man of War on Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, but being completely drained the next day only made my depression worse.

Depression literally sucks. It sucks the life out of you, and it makes being a responsible adult insanely hard.

Fortunately, I feel like my spell of depression finally broke a few days ago. It's too early to tell if I'm out of the woods (for now, anyway), but at the moment, it feels like coming up for air after nearly drowning.

Lost Connections is available at Amazon or your local library.

On Masculinity...

David Reimer was born in 1965 in Canada. Because his doctor was a fucking idiot, he lost his penis when the doctor botched the circumcision. The parents didn't know how to deal with it, so they went to see Dr. John Money in Baltimore, who was known as the top psychologist on gender roles in the world at the time. Because it was 1965 and medical ethics were completely fucked, he decided to use Reimer for a social experiment. He was to be given a surgical sex change and be raised as a girl.

To say that it didn't go well is an understatement. David (called "Brenda", at the time), told his parents he felt like a boy, refused to wear dresses, and fought his brother to play with his "boy toys" of guns and cars while refusing to play with dolls.

I'll mention why I'm bringing this up in a bit.

A few years ago I first heard of the concept of "toxic masculinity", and what I read about it was originally in the context of teaching men why we need feminism, which made it easy to digest and didn't cause me to have a knee-jerk reaction of "How dare you say being manly is bad!"

The article explained that as men we're expected to do things that are awful. Not just awful to women, but awful to other men, and awful to ourselves. We're told to repress emotions. We're not allowed to feel sadness, fear, or well, pretty much anything other than joy or rage. This causes us to be unnecessarily aggressive towards people, and causes depression. Showing emotion is "girly". You're also not allowed to do "girly" things, like baking or cleaning the house.

That really struck a chord with me. For years I was suffering from depression and I didn't know it, because it manifested itself as anger. I was in the Army for most of my 20s, and you're not allowed to be sad in the Army. The Army doesn't issue you any tears, soldier! You're allowed to be angry, though. So I was a ball of rage for most of my adult life. This led to me being kind of a shitty person. Or as my wife once told me, "Yeah, you were kind of an asshole back then."

The article concluded by saying that we should be willing to embrace what is seen as "girly" to become better men. Be free to be sad sometimes. Do the fucking dishes. Bake some cookies.

I took that advice to heart. I work on trying to be more honest about my emotions, even when it puts me in a position of vulnerability. I've turned into quite the chef. I'm still a slob, but I'm working on it.

I also took the main idea of that article to heart. Men need feminism. When society truly sees women as equals, doing all that "girly shit" won't be seen as bad.

So the years have passed, and I'm working on being a better man. But there's something that has been on my mind for a while:

What is masculinity without the toxicity?

The left has really failed to answer this question, and I think that's a big reason why there's been a massive backlash to the new feminist movement.

I imagine that some folks are reading this and thinking, "Are you shitting me, Grasshopper? People are against feminism because they're sexist assholes! Are you trying to tone police us?"

Of course not. There's always going to be a sexist backlash to any feminist movement, and yet I think that a lot of that backlash could be dealt with if we had an answer to the question I've been asking myself: What is masculinity without the toxicity?

The left has done a great job at showing why being more, well, "girly", for lack of a better word, isn't something that men should be ashamed of, but they've failed at creating an idea of masculinity that doesn't have the toxic elements traditionally associated with being a man.

If you go on social media to search for "positive masculinity", you'll find groups, pages, and Twitter feeds showing men being good, decent people, but I'm often at a loss when I ask myself how their actions are masculine in nature. Yes, these men are doing good things, but I don't see how anything they're doing is masculine. The positivity part is there, but the masculine part feels lacking. What are they doing that could be different from a woman expressing femininity?

Oh, so you're saying we should have well defined gender roles? Geez, why not just start quoting Jordan Peterson while you're at it?!

No, that's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is that there's going to be traits and actions that men have and do to express their masculinity, just as women have and do the same to express their femininity. We need to start talking about how we men can express our gender identity without being toxic.

Which brings me back to David Reimer.

The man who was born a boy but raised as a girl hated being forced into his role as a female. He felt he was male. He wanted to do things that boys typically do. He didn't want to play with Barbie dolls. He wanted to play with toy guns and cars. No matter how much he was forced into a role as a girl, he knew he was a boy. He identified as a boy, and wanted to do the same stuff that boys do.

This is common with transgender people as well. A friend of mine recently posted a story on Facebook that revealed a study that showed that transgender people tend to have brain activity that resembles the cis-gendered people of the gender they identify with. We have scientific proof that gender identity is more than about physical attributes. We cis-gender men and transgender men have masculinity as part of our identity, and we need to know how to express it without the toxic elements.

So this isn't about gender roles. It's about gender identity, and how best to express that identity.

Expressing gender identity is different than gender roles. Gender roles dictate we must do things because we are a man or woman. Men are required to be stoic, angry, and be the bread winner in the family. Women are required to be passive, submissive, know how to cook, and raise children. Gender roles are limiting and lead to harm.

Expression of our gender identity, on the other hand, is when we choose to do things because we are a man or woman. We want to express our masculinity or femininity. This brings freedom and self-care. We need to have a conversation over what that means. We need to start talking about what it means to be masculine without being toxic.

However, I think we on the left are scared to have this conversation, because we're worried that we're going to be dragged.

The left loves to eat their own, and if you make even the slightest misstep in talking about gender, Leftbook and Twitter will fuck your world up. Nobody wants to be set up for being bullied and dragged through social media because they accidentally said something problematic. So having this conversation is scary. I'd be worried about it if my blog reach expanded anywhere past my friends on social media. Even so, I've spent several hours reading and re-reading my blog draft to make it clear that I'm not talking about gender stereotypes or gender roles. I'm saying that we need to start talking about how men can express themselves as men without being toxic. And I'm certain that despite my best intentions, I still fucked it all up somehow.

It doesn't matter. This needs to be said, because the right is having this conversation, and if I, a 37 year old feminist man is wondering what it means to be a man without toxic masculinity, I can guarantee that there's 17 year old boys that are asking themselves that. And if Roosh V, Jordan Peterson, and the Proud Boys are the only ones willing to have this conversation, we're going to have another generation of misogynistic, angry, and mentally unhealthy men to contend with.

There is, however, one place in all of the internet that I have found as a good source of information for wholesome masculinity. The Art of Manliness has been around for some time, and it provides a great resource for advice for men in a very non-toxic manner. It has advice for everything from basic things like how to make small talk or tying ties, to more complex things like parenting and relationship advice. And it does it without all the aggressiveness and false bravado that you get from toxic masculinity.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. Let the dragging begin!

How to Have a Healthy and Nutritious Thanksgiving

Worried about how to have a Thanksgiving without adding on a bunch of calories? I'm here to help!

Here's my tried and true way to make a Thanksgiving dinner that's nice and healthy!

Step 1: Don't.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk!

Seriously though, no matter how dedicated to health and fitness you are, there's three days where it's completely acceptable to stuff your face.

1. Christmas
2. Your birthday
3. Thanksgiving

Don't be so dedicated to fitness that you don't get to enjoy life. Go ahead, eat the pie.

If it helps, just tell yourself you're bulking. :)

Starting Over Is Hard

There's a reason why I haven't written in over six months.

Back in May, I lost my job. I lost it despite the fact that I thought I was irreplaceable. I was an EMT at a security firm that couldn't afford to lose EMTs. I lost it by doing the one thing that I could do that would cause me to lose my job. I crashed a patrol vehicle.

Over the past months since, I lost that job, got placed at a less paying job that didn't care about my EMT skills, and ended up taking a much better paying job at a place I love working at.

There's a lot of thing I wanted to write in those six months, and even have a long draft written on the whole deal. I decided to not publish it because it's only half done, and at one point, I realized I was writing a novel.

But I can't write about anything else until I mention that. So to sum up the last six months:

1. Losing your job sucks. I don't care who you are. Even if you're a socialist (as I am), losing your job feels like a judgment on your self worth.

2. I was depressed during that time, which was why I wasn't working out much.

3. I tried a new workout during that time, but I kept getting injured, so I gave up on that, so now I'm starting over with the 5x5 method until I do something new.

That about sums it up. I've been wanting to write more on all of this, but since I've not written anything in the last six months, here it is.

There's a lot more I want to write about. Everything from fitness, to politics, to everything else. But I couldn't get started until I finally finished this. So good, we're done. Moving on.

The Quest for a Better Cheeseburger

This post is at least two years in the making.

I love cheeseburgers. They're my Achilles' heel any time I'm trying to cut weight. No matter how good I'm doing on a cutting plan, I eventually give into my craving and go get a burger. I fucking love them. Most of us do, too. How many of us go a week without eating a burger? I'm guessing that absent my vegetarian friends, there's not too many of us that do so. Like Samuel Jackson said, they're the cornerstone of any nutritious breakfast.

Was he being sarcastic? I'm not sure.

So I've spent no less than two years trying to find a way to make one that's low in fat and doesn't taste like ass. This has been one major headache after another, with massive fail after massive fail, and I'm going to share all of that with you now before I get to the good version. Consider it a cautionary tale so you don't do all this shit yourself.

1. Just buy the lean stuff (96% fat free) and cook it as you would a normal burger

Why does this fail? Because the stuff is as dry as the Sahara. Until you try this, you don't realize how important fat is in making a juicy, delicious cheeseburger. On its own, this stuff takes like mushy, overcooked steak. I even put this shit in spaghetti sauce once and it didn't do anything to make this nasty stuff any less dry. On its own, it's fucking awful.

2. Buy the lean stuff and put fat in it

I did this when I went to Medical Weight Loss Clinic a few years ago when I made a hard effort to cut weight. Because I was allowed one tablespoon of Land O' Lakes spread and 4.5 ounces of lean ground beef, I put the two together after I read some stuff on the internet suggesting adding fat to the ground beef. This did work to make the burger taste good, albeit with a slight buttery flavor. However, I stopped doing it after I ended my MWLC diet plan because I found that when you add fat to the burger, you're pretty much breaking even with 80/20 traditional ground beef. I could get away with that when my diet was restricted to 1,600 calories a day. Not so much now.

3. Use a substitute for ground beef

I do enjoy a good 85/15 turkey burger. It's not as good as ground beef, but it's good nonetheless. Still, after I checked the calorie content on turkey and ground beef, I found that when you account for an equal percentage of fat, the difference in calories is pretty negligible. The only way to see a severe reduction in calories is by getting the super lean ground turkey, which leads to the same issues as above.

Bison is another substitute for ground beef. Like its turkey counterpart, it's delicious in its own right. Unfortunately, it also has 17 grams of fat per 4 ounce serving, and is also expensive as fuck. You will never find bison on sale. It's always going to be $11-$12 a pound, and the fat content is about the same as your average 80/20 ground beef (18 grams per 4 ounce serving).

Don't even bother with that ground chicken shit. I love chicken and still won't touch that garbage.

4. Grind up your own lean steak into ground beef

This really sounded great on paper when I decided to try it. I bought an inexpensive meat grinder on Amazon, set it up, and tossed in some lean sirloin.

You know what happens when you grind up lean sirloin and try to cook it as a burger? It turns right back into a steak. Steak is delicious, but you don't do this because you want a steak. You want a burger.

5. Find success on accident

Since I watch a lot of healthy recipe videos on YouTube, I stumbled onto a channel from a guy that calls himself Remington James. The first video that I came across showed how to make a mini deep dish pizza made with fat free shredded cheese. Until then, I didn't even know that fat free shredded cheese existed. 

Fat free cheese is very hard to find in Southeast Michigan, which made it pretty infuriating that it was obvious that Remington James was buying his stuff from his local Kroger. It wasn't until a few months ago that my local Kroger started stocking fat free cheese slices and fat free cream cheese (which I've used to make some delicious low calorie protein cheesecake). I downloaded apps from several grocery stores into my phone, only to find out that the closest place that has fat free shredded cheese is at a Walmart two towns away. I'm letting you know this in case you need to know how to get it yourself. Download all the apps of nearby grocery stores into your phone, and search until you find one.

I just realized I turned this into one of those annoying Instagram posts where the writer shares their life story before getting to the recipe. Ugh. My apologies. Recipe is coming up, I promise. I just want to give credit where credit is due.

Anyway, after watching his pizza video, a few others from him popped up in my "recommended" section, and two of them really stood out for me. The first was his "High Protein Bodybuilding Grilled Cheese Sandwich". I'm trying that later this week, as it looks like a tasty way to make breakfast. The second was his video for a "Healthy Bodybuilding Bacon Cheeseburger Recipe". Here's the video for that:

The macros for this is 15 grams of fat, 24 grams of carbohydrates, and 70 grams of protein.

For those of you that can't view videos for some reason, here's the breakdown of that recipe:

Ingredients:

A half pound of 96/4 lean ground beef

garlic paste (no measurement given, use to taste)

diced jalapenos (optional, I did not use)

28 grams fat free shredded cheddar cheese

One slice of fat free American cheese

One sandwich slim hamburger bun (we both used Kroger brand, I don't know if other stores have them)

Two slices of turkey bacon

I had never used fat free cheese or turkey bacon before, so I was worried about the taste. It came out fantastic. Trust me on this one.

Take all the ingredients except your cheese slice, sandwich slim, and turkey bacon and mix together. I recommend using a substantial amount of garlic paste to help add moisture to the burger.

Set your frying pan to medium heat and spray your frying pan with non-stick cooking spray (lean beef WILL stick to your pan) and cook the burger for about five minutes on each side, making sure the burger is cooked all the way through (unless you like a little red in your burger, that's up to you).

After the burger is cooked, put your cheese slice on it and set aside. Fry your turkey bacon and add it to your burger. Place on bun and eat.

This burger tasted great. The garlic paste and shredded cheese helped to add moisture to the burger without adding fat calories. I'm really surprised at how good the fat free cheese tasted. And turkey bacon is a lot better than it has any right to be. I just wish it could get super crispy like pork bacon.

I'll be making this again for sure.

Getting Old is Scary

When I was fifteen years old, I decided on some random Sunday afternoon to go to the park and shoot some hoops. Normally this is something that I would do on my own, but for some reason my dad wanted to play as well. So I went with him, my brother, and my step-sister to the park to play some basketball.

We ended up playing a game of twenty-one. While my dad was dribbling the ball down the half-court, I went in for a steal and swiped at the ball. My hand landed on one side of the ball, while my dad's hand was on the other. To this day he says I drew a foul, but I'll go to my grave saying that my entire hand was on the ball. That move was all it took to dislocate my dad's shoulder.

Ten years later, he was still getting surgeries to repair that shoulder. He was 41 when he got that injury. I'm 37.

Like I said in my last entry, my doctor said that I have calcium deposits in my spine. Right now, they don't hurt unless I'm squatting heavy. My doctor says that in twenty years, it's going to be an issue.

Despite our best intentions to not end up like our parents, sometimes we just can't help but end up that way. I've always had bad knees, like my dad. I've blown each of them out six times. My dad had to quit wrestling in high school because of them.

I also remember that my dad would make various attempts at health and fitness, but being that it was the 1980s and information on health and fitness was sporadic at best, most of his attempts were ham fisted and yielded little results. He bought an old school rowing machine with the metal arms. He used it for a week and then it just sat around. He bought a punching bag, and stopped using it after a week, after which is went away to parts unknown. He took the bag down and I didn't see it again for another twenty years after he had long divorced my mother and moved into a new house. This irritated my brother and I, as we enjoyed punching the bag as well. He even tried Jenny Craig once, which went about as well as anybody who does Jenny Craig.

You can't blame my dad for sucking at fitness. It was the 1980s. It's not like there was a lot of information out there, and even with the information that did exist, the science behind exercise was kind of a shit sandwich compared to now. He did what he could to increase his fitness

I think my dad did all this because he didn't really know how to navigate the world without being strong. Despite working an office job, he liked to intimidate people into getting his way (which is one of many reasons we don't spend much time together nowadays). When his body started falling apart, he started having mental health issues. I don't know much about that, other than family members have said that his medicine cabinet is filled with pills.

My dad has been a giant mess most of his life, and all of mine. I'll spare you the details.

The point is that I'm reaching the age where his body started falling apart, and I'm starting to notice the same happening to mine. I still have calcium deposits on my shoulder that have been there for years, and will probably be there until the day I die. My spine now has issues. My knees have always been pretty fucked.

Getting old is scary.

Don't get me wrong. Despite my gut reminding me that it's time to cut weight, I'm still in great shape. In my MMA classes, I notice that I'm probably the only guy that lifts weights, and isn't intimidated when the instructor "punishes" the class with pushups (why he, the Army, or literally any place on Earth that needs people to be physically strong thinks that threatening people by making them stronger is some sort of punishment is a mystery to me), and I'm hardly winded when class is over. This is despite the fact that many of the students are half my age and sucking lungs at the end.

It still doesn't change the fact that my time is coming. I'm going to be too old for this shit. My body will give out. Sooner rather than later. And that's fucking scary.

The most frightening thing to me throughout my life has been that I would be in a position where I can't defend myself. Where my dad got scared because the loss of his strength meant that he wouldn't be able to intimidate people, I fear being in a position where I'm defenseless.

People are coming to hurt you. No one is going to protect you. You will be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway. That's been the voice in my head since I was a teenager. A hidden mantra, tucked into my subconscious for years until therapy pulled it to the surface. It worked great until I had to face the reality that I don't have too many years left where I'll be able to defend myself.

Normally I'd try to put a positive spin on things in my posts, but I can't do that here. I really can't emphasize enough that getting old is scary. No matter how strong I am, no matter how well trained I am, my body has an expiration date, and that time is coming quick. And there ain't shit I can do about it.

I gotta leave some sort of pic or video for the Facebook crowd, so here it is.

It's Been A While

I know I haven't written in a while. There's a few reasons for that.

The biggest one is work. I've been working a lot of hours and haven't had much time for writing.

The other is that every time I thought I was going to write about something, I ended up on another part of my fitness journey.

Shortly after the last entry I wrote about making my way to the thousand pound club, I stopped working out for a little over a week. When I got back into the gym, I noticed I was squatting a lot less than before. I couldn't squat nearly as heavy as I once could without feeling intense pain in my lower back. When I couldn't squat 225 without feeling pain, I realized that it's not a lack of strength that was keeping me from lifting. I was injured. Off to the doctor!

After an exam and an x-ray, I found out that I don't have an actual spinal injury (thank Christ), but I do a calcium deposit on my spine that, when squatting, touches a nerve in my spinal cord. This causes intense pain.

The doc said that this is just an inconvenience for now, but in about twenty years, I'm kinda fucked. Goddamn, getting old sucks!

So my plan to get to the thousand pound club by the end of the year is put on hold. But I needed to put it on hold for another reason.

I really, really needed to start cutting weight.

I had been scared to start cutting weight because I didn't want to lose muscle, but with the calcium deposits on my spine fucking with my lift, I decided it was time to start dropping some body fat, anyway. I had already planned on doing this immediately after joining the thousand pound club, as I was getting concerned with what all the bulking was doing to me. My weight had gone up to 308 pounds. When I was bulking, I kept telling myself, "Don't worry about your weight. Just increase your lifts. We'll start cutting weight later.", but I was growing concerned with weighing more than 300 pounds. I promised myself I'd never weigh that much again. But after my plans to join the thousand pound club went to shit, I decided it was time to drop some weight.

Fortunately, one of my favorite YouTube channels, Buff Dudes, had started their own cutting plan right around the same time. So I started that one and also started doing MMA again. I've gotten my weight below 300 pounds. I'm still not lifting anywhere near where I want to be, but at least my weight is down.

The Buff Dudes are bodybuilders, not powerlifters, and bodybuilding is hard when you haven't done it in a long time. When you're powerlifting, you work the legs in just about every workout. You do a few sets of squats and maybe some deadlifts, and you're done. When you're bodybuilding, you work the legs once or twice a week, and you're doing several exercises. It really tests your muscular endurance. My workouts are also a lot longer, which makes it a struggle to find time to hit the gym.

The MMA classes are surprisingly easy. All my years in the gym has certainly paid off, as the classes feel like low-impact cardio.

There's a lot of other stuff I want to write about, but don't have the time to do so right now. Hopefully I can get it done during the week.