A Post About Music and Other Things

I've been listening to punk rock ever since I was 12 years old. I started in early 1994, when I heard Green Day for the first time as they entered the mainstream. A lot of punk rockers hated (and still hate) Green Day for "selling out" and having the nerve to make lots of money playing music, but in the days before YouTube and high-speed internet, going mainstream was the best thing they ever did for pre-teen suburbanites like myself. I didn't even know that new punk rock even existed. I had heard about 80s punk rock bands before that, but didn't have much interest in them when I was 12 years old. They might as well have been classic rock to someone my age. After that, The Offspring went mainstream too, and I was able to listen to a genre of music that I wouldn't have known about if it hadn't been for them deciding to make it big on MTV.

When I got into high school, I made friends that knew about underground punk bands. I learned how small record labels would release sample CDs so you could learn about new bands and buy their albums. Sample CDs were albums with twenty different bands with twenty different singles. It was the way underground bands could get noticed while bypassing MTV and the top-40 radio stations. My music collection was filled with them.

Now that I'm older and technology has improved, I listen to punk rock via satellite radio and Spotify. XM radio has a station called Faction, and it's the only one in their network that consistently plays punk rock.

I was driving home from work a few months ago I noticed that the music on Faction had remained largely unchanged from five years ago. They were still playing the same punk rock songs they played in 2010. Even Marky Ramones' radio show, Punk Rock Blitzkrieg, was mostly playing songs from the 80s. I realized that it had been a while since I had heard any new punk rock. Even my newest punk album in my Spotify collection was from NOFX, and while it was a new album, NOFX had been around for 25 years.

Holy shit, did punk rock finally die?, I wondered.

That night I went online and searched for new punk rock bands. Thank Christ, punk rock was not dead. The genre of music that I've listened to ever since I was a 12 year old boy was still very much alive. I found one of the bands mentioned and put it into my Spotify before I even read anything about them, and listened to them the next day while I drove home from work.

I wish I could tell you which band it was, or what the song was, but I deleted the album after listening and have been unable to find it since. The only thing I remember about them is that one of the songs was some emo-ish number that was talking about how all we need is to live for today and not worry about anything else.

I've never been really big on emo-punk, and I could've just deleted the album for that reason alone, but it was the lyrics that made me angry. "How in the fuck are you going to tell me to only worry about today?", I thought. "I'm in debt up to my eyeballs, I have to work 60 hours a week to get my bills paid on time, I have a college degree that I'm sitting on, and I have to raise two kids. HOW IN THE FUCK ARE YOU GOING TO TELL ME TO LIVE JUST FOR TODAY?! NOT WORRYING ABOUT TOMORROW IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY I HAVE MONEY PROBLEMS!"

Oh, shit. Punk rock didn't die. I fucking outgrew it.

There was nothing unique about that song. Punk songs talking about living for today and not worrying about tomorrow are common as dirt. I listened to them when I was a kid. Pennywise has a song called Living for Today, and they're so 90s their albums might as well come with a pair of parachute pants. When I was in Iraq ten years ago, Rise Against's Swing Life Away was a song I listened to when I was stressed out and missing home, and the entire song is about not worrying about life's problems.

A few days ago on Facebook, both New Found Glory and MxPx posted a link to the same article where they said they were proud to be the inspiration of the new generation of pop punk rock bands. The majority of the list was filled with bands that either formed or got discovered somewhere between 1997 and 2002. Blink 182, Yellowcard, Jimmy Eat World, and a whole bunch of great bands were on the list, and I didn't even realize that they were considered old school now. Not only was I surprised to find that the bands I listened to were the "old men", but I was pretty pissed off that Operation: Ivy was not on the list. There would be no pop-punk if it weren't for Operation: Ivy! These goddamn kids today and their taste in music, I tell ya! Do the words "Sound System" mean nothing to them?! Probably not!

There's a reason why NOFX was my newest punk rock album. They, like the Dropkick Murphys, MxPx, and a whole bunch of old bands still releasing new music, grew up with me. Their lyrics aren't meant for an audience of teenagers and young adults, even if they might like them, too.

Getting old sucks. Not just physically, but also emotionally. It's bad enough when I'm in the gym and have to keep dealing with the realization that my body is no longer 22 years old. Knowing that even my favorite musical genre has started to slip away really sucks. What the fuck am I going to listen to when the kids become the old men?

Anyway, all this ranting about music and getting old does have a point about mental health, and there's a story behind it.

A couple of Friday's ago my wife suggested that when the kids fall asleep, we have my stepdad watch the kids and go see a movie. This has become a routine for us. I didn't want to go to the movies again, but we both didn't know what else to do. We're too old to go clubbing, too broke to hit up the bars (and also old enough to not want to be wasted behind the wheel), and that pretty much left bowling, which we also weren't in the mood to do. While we were discussing what to do, a glorious idea went into my mind.

"Grab your keys. We're leaving", I told my wife.
"Where?"
"Don't ask questions. Just get in the car."

I told her to stop at the 7/11, and grab any drink she wanted that had a large amount of caffeine, as well as any snacks she felt like eating. After that, I told her to drive along any road, preferably a rural road with few traffic lights.

I didn't want to tell her what I had planned, because on the surface, it sounded stupid. But I remembered when I was young and an old friend of mine named Mike would drive around the middle of nowhere while we blasted punk rock and sang along to it. It was one of the most fun things to do when you're too young to be allowed into night clubs and you lived during a time when gas was $1 a gallon. Not only did we do it, but I remembered a lot of friends that were going through fits of depression did it by themselves. They'd tell me about how they just enjoyed driving around listening to their favorite music late at night. It was a way to relax when you're filled with teen angst. It's therapy for the young.

My wife even picked the same route that Mike liked to take. I did a search on Spotify for "90s punk", and an album called, "Punk Goes 90s, Volume 2" popped up as the first result.

Punk Goes 90s? You gotta be shitting me. Is this a joke?

I calmed down once I realized that the punk bands of my time did 80s cover songs, so I should get over it.

The first track was a cover of Lit's "My Own Worst Enemy" by a band called Get Scared. They did an even better cover than the original (I can't say the same about the rest of the album). I put it on and within a minute my wife and I were smiling as we cruised down the road screaming, "PLEASE TELL ME WHYYYYYYYYY, MY CAR IS IN THE FRONT YAAARRRRRD, AND I'M, SLEEPING WITH MY CLOTHES ON!!!!!" We did this for about 1 1/2 hours as I kept searching for songs from our youth that we both liked. It was the most fun we've had in a long time.

There's a healing power that music has that I had long forgotten about. When you're old, music isn't the same as when you're young. When you're old, music is just something to listen to, but when you're young, it's everything. It's more than entertainment; it's a part of your identity. You don't just listen to music when you're young. You wear it. You have friends that are as passionate about it as you are. It doesn't matter if it's punk rock, hip hop, country, or whatever. Music when you're young means that much to you. When you get old, those old songs have the same connection. They have the power to make you feel happy again.

If you're having a shitty day and can get out of the house, just go driving and crank that sound system up. It's still one thing that you can depend on.

A Funny Post About Food

I was going to write a story about my recent workout, where I lifted more than 200 pounds for the first time in my life, and how my fitness was going. But after the news this morning (if you don't know what happened, don't bother looking it up. It's depressing as fuck all), I decided to write a funny story instead, to make sure that someone's Facebook feed had something more than the shit we've been reading about all day. Enjoy.

In my search for tasty, yet healthy meal prep recipes that I can cook all in one day and take to work with me the rest of the week, I found a website called Fit Men Cook. The website shows a bunch of tasty, yet healthy recipes that are easy to make. Many of those recipes are meal prep recipes, including the Epic $75 Meal Prep, which makes five days worth of food for $75.

The past few weeks I've been trying out a few of these recipes. Two weeks ago, I made honey mustard chicken with long grain brown rice. It's an easy recipe that takes a lot of time to make, due to the use of a slow cooker (which, thanks to my wife, we have in our house). The meal was so good that I promised I'd make it for my family as a dinner meal.

On Friday, that time had come. I tossed the chicken and all of the ingredients into a slow cooker, set it on high, and waited to enjoy some chickeny goodness. I added peas so the kids could have a green vegetable to eat, too.

I made a big mistake while making it, though. Here's the list of ingredients for the recipe:

• 3 3/4 cups cooked long grain brown rice
• 1 3/4 lb (794g) chicken breasts
• 1/3 cup Dijon mustard (you can add more according to your preferences)
• 1/2 cup raw honey
• 1/3 cup low sodium soy sauce (or Bragg Liquid Aminos)
• 1 tablespoon garlic (paste or minced)
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

Like I said, I put ALL of the ingredients in there, including the cayenne pepper, which was optional for a reason.

I have a three year old and a one year old. I learned the hard way that they have no business eating spicy foods at their young age.

Unlike my previous batch, this didn't taste just a little bit spicy, like the spicy chicken sandwich you get at some burger joints. Not even pretty spicy, like your local Mexican cantina. This tasted like every red pepper that had ever been grown in the State of Texas had marched itself right into my mouth.

Funny, I don't remember this recipe calling for The Merciless Chili Pepper of Quetzalacatenango.

As I watched my kids take the first bite of their dinner, I realized that I had left them without anything to drink. So I broke out into a marathon sprint to get them their milk cups so they can eat this dish and not die. Once I set the milk on the table, they drank it like they hadn't drank anything in days.

Something like that.

My oldest kid, Hailey, usually doesn't eat anything unless it's fruit, bologna, or PB&J. So as usual, after taking one bite, she drank her milk and sat, staring off into space. Laurel, my youngest, on the other hand, has never met a food that she didn't like. She'd take a bite, get up from the table, and walk in circles as though she was determined to take another bite, no matter how much pain she would have to endure! It was looking less like she was hungry and more like she was psyching herself up for a fight. She'd take another bite and do the same thing.

After about ten minutes of watching one kid eat nothing, and my other kid look like she was looking more to get in the ring than finish dinner, my mom gave them a bowl of fruit for dinner.

My wife also said that she, "isn't a fan" of the food. For those that have wives that are sensitive to their husband's feelings, the scale of how much they enjoy your cooking goes as follows:

1. I love it! - She loves it.
2. I like it. - Does she like it? I don't know.
3. It's okay. - She doesn't like it.
4. Not a fan. - WHAT IS THIS POISON THAT YOU DARE CALL FOOD! YOU'RE LUCKY I DON'T DIVORCE YOU RIGHT NOW! I'D RATHER EAT PRISON FOOD THAN THIS SHIT! HOW DARE YOU! HOW! DARE! YOU!


Moral of the story: If you're going to make spicy food for a toddler and an infant, don't.

Why I Just Quit My Gym

Alright, after going totally dark in my last post, here's another one about fitness.

Well, not really. I'm airing my grievances about gyms, and why I just quit Anytime Fitness.

After an orthopedist removed the calcium deposits from my shoulder last year, I decided to start lifting again. I would go to Anytime Fitness in the morning, and would work as hard as I could to regain all the upper body strength that I had lost. There was just one problem:

The gym had one barbell, and one rack to use it on.

One fucking barbell, for an entire gym. If you want to do squats, deadlifts, a barbell bench press, bent-over rows, or literally ANYTHING that required a barbell, there was a line.

One day, a group of five friends decided to come into the gym and workout together. They decided to do bench presses, and bent over rows. I watched as these five inconsiderate shits hogged the only barbell in the gym for over an hour. I asked one of the trainers about it, and he said he was mad too, because he wanted his client to be able to squat, but couldn't. There were no official employees on duty (the trainer was a subcontractor himself), but he promised he'd let management know about it when they came in.

That problem was never solved, so I decided to go to another Anytime Fitness gym that was in the next town over. Unlike all the other Anytime Fitness gyms I attended, this one had multiple racks and bars. I was happy, especially after I started the 5x5 program. I could do my exercises without waiting for other people to be done with theirs, and I didn't have to feel like a dick for hogging the gym's only barbell. Every single Anytime Fitness facility I used in the Southeast Michigan area (and I've used a lot of them) had a single rack and barbell except for this one.

I went to that gym a little over a week ago and saw a sign declaring it permanently closed. So, I hauled myself over to another Anytime Fitness in a different town to ask why it had closed.

Anytime Fitness wouldn't renew the owner's contract, because they, "weren't doing things the way Anytime Fitness wants them to."

I explained that that was the entire reason why I was going to that gym in the first place.

I finished my workout at the other gym. Fortunately, it was a quiet time of day for them, so I was able to use their single barbell without feeling like an asshole for hogging the thing.

This isn't a problem that's unique to Anytime Fitness. I've noticed that many of the newer gyms have the same problem. I saw it at Planet Fitness (from here on out, it will simply be referred to as "Planet Shitness", because their gyms suck), I saw it at Snap Fitness, and just about every one of the newer gym franchises out there. You can get on a bunch of machines where you can select your weight and lift, but if you want free weights, you're shit out of luck.

Most fitness experts will tell you that machines are pretty worthless compared to free weights, but the machines are what bring in the "casual gym goer". They're the 80% (give or take) of people with a membership that stop going three months after they signed a twelve-month contract. They're also the types that will attend Planet Shitness to get free pizza.

Why does anybody think a gym that gives out pizza gives a fuck about your health?

Those people don't really have a strong desire to be stronger, faster, and better than they were before, so they don't take the time to learn how to do the kinds of exercises you do with free weights. Machines make things easy for them.

Without casual gym goers, there wouldn't be a lot of gyms, let alone gym franchises. So that's who the new gyms are pandering to.

Anyway, my town still has a couple of old-school gyms, including the first one I joined. I went back to that one. It used to be a World Gym, but now they call themselves "Iron City". The gym isn't a franchise, so I can't attend another gym just like it somewhere else; however, it's got plenty of free weights, racks, benches, and barbells so there's no worries about lack of access to the equipment. They also serve protein shakes, have a day care with limited hours, and a room for group classes.

The people are also there to work out. With the exception of the older members, the people in that gym are there to become stronger. I haven't met a casual gym goer in there yet.

The gym isn't perfect, though. They're not open 24 hours, I can only attend their single gym, and they insist on blasting the classic rock station.

Bohemian Rhapsody is a great song, but good luck working out to it.

For those that are wondering why I don't just work out at home at my tiny workout room, I do, but there's limits for what I can do there. I can't work out in the early morning hours because it's right above Laurel's bedroom, and I can't do anything that requires me to lift anything over my head because of a low ceiling. I do what I can there, but I'm still going to need a gym for certain exercises.

The Depressing Post

Like I said before, I've had a lot of things on my mind this week, so I planned on writing a lot. I wrote two funny posts to warm you up to where this one is going. Buckle up bitches, this one is going to get bumpy, because we're back to talking about mental illness, and this is going to be spitting some real shit.

As I've already mentioned before, I have General Anxiety Disorder and PTSD. It's hard as fuck to talk about, and I had originally planned on not discussing it at all when I started this blog, but as I've said before, obesity and mental illness are connected. There's a reason why I've struggled with my weight for most of my life.

I'll also admit that a lot of this is hard to talk about. It's hard to admit that there's a part of your brain that isn't working right. Part of this is because we live in a culture that treats mental illness as a weird deformity, something that we'd best make sure we ignore and pretend we don't have, so we can do our best to fit into the world. Yet another part of it is because we're scared to admit that we have weakness. We live in a culture that loves to kill and eat the weak. It's the second part that makes it hard for me to talk about this, as I hate to admit to having a weakness (you'll see why later).

Most of the people that read my blog are friends on Facebook, and they've been giving me compliments on writing posts like this, because they also suffer from mental disorders, and it gives them some courage to talk about theirs. It's for that reason that I'm writing this post. What I'm about to write about is embarrassing as fuck, puts me in a vulnerable position, and yet I have to talk about it so others out there know that they're not alone. We're all fucked up, and it's okay. We didn't get to being fucked up out of nowhere. We NEED to let people know that we need help, and our country has done, and will continue to do, a shit job of helping us until we start talking about this. So here goes:

I've just recently had some really good insurance thanks to my wife, who got a job as a school teacher (the great benefits teachers in Michigan have almost, but don't entirely make up for, the shitty pay that they receive). Because of that, I decided to get myself some really good mental health treatment.

Before Obamacare, I was left at the mercy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, which ABSOLUTELY SUCKS when it comes to mental health. To get an appointment for mental health, I had to go to my nearest outpatient clinic, and all but threaten to break down the door to get an appointment. Even then, the best they had was a nurse practitioner that knew nothing about mental health, but was all too happy to prescribe you some pills so you would be more sane.

After Obamacare, there was a time when I was able to get insurance through Medicaid expansion, but even then the mental health options SUCKED. There's not a lot of mental health professionals that are willing to take Medicaid. The best I could find was some marginally trained counselor that would refer me to yet another nurse practitioner that would prescribe me more pills to keep my shit together.

So when my wife got a teaching job with great insurance, I took advantage immediately. I didn't just want another marginally-trained counselor that would keep me on pills. I don't want to have to be on pills when I'm in my 50s to keep my shit together. I wanted the fucking John Rambo of psychiatry to treat me.

Mental Illness, meet YOUR WORST NIGHTMARE!

I'm fortunate enough to be living in Southeast Michigan, where such access to mental health care is possible if you either, a) Have a lot of money, b) Have good health insurance.

I'm now in the latter camp. Thanks, love!

So a few weeks ago I made a call to the office of Carolyn Diatch to receive mental health care under her. It turns out she doesn't even take insurance, and requires well over $200 per session to receive help under her. She is the John Rambo of anxiety disorders, but unless you're really well off, she won't see you (I guess this makes her the Han Solo of anxiety disorders) . I was sent to one of her subordinates instead.

I won't name the person I'm currently seeing, but she does a good job.

During the first session, I was forced to realize some hard truths of what caused my General Anxiety Disorder. I used to think it started when I was a teenager, when a real bastard of a preacher had me convinced that I was going to Hell for not being a good enough Christian, but was exacerbated during my time in the military. Sadly, the truth is much harsher.

I was bullied since I was in the first grade, because I was a nerdy kid that liked to read. On top of that, I was extremely tall for my age, so the combination of being a nerd and a giant made myself a target for bullies that wanted to feel good about themselves by picking on a big kid that didn't like to fight. I was taught that fighting other kids was wrong, no matter what the reason, and I was stupid enough to believe all the adults that told me so.

The bullying took a few years off in elementary school (second and third grade were peaceful), but after that, I was bullied from then on until the seventh grade. The worst part about being bullied is that all those adult authority figures that told me that fighting back was wrong were also the same enablers of the bullies. They refused to punish bullies that hurt me, but when I finally decided to fight back, the punishment was swift and severe.

It was swift and severe when my babysitter's kid would beat me up constantly and didn't face any punishment for it. But when I decided at nine years old that I had enough of him beating on me and decided to cold cock him, dropping him like a sack of potatoes, I was punished. My babysitter actually paddled my behind and I had to spend days apologizing to the very bully that beat me up constantly but never got punished for it.

It was swift and severe when my own brother would constantly beat me, but my parents wouldn't punish my brother. Yet when the day came and I snapped and hit back, we were both grounded.

By the time I entered middle school the lesson they taught me wasn't clear to my conscious mind, but it was clear to my subconscious mind: Bullies are allowed to beat you with impunity. Standing up to them means discipline against you.

So it was during the seventh grade that I started telling on my bullies to a school counselor. After the third or fourth incident of being bullied that had me and the bullies in his office, he finally told me words that would change my life:

Look, you're going to be punished for it, but you have to HIT BACK!

My school counselor had had enough of trying to convince bullies not to bully me. Teachers weren't protecting me. My own parents weren't protecting me. He didn't even want to protect me anymore.

The only solution was to defend myself.

His words were exactly what I needed; an adults permission to finally be able to protect myself from bullies, because NO ONE ELSE WILL.

A couple weeks after that, a bully challenged me to a fight. He was another of the smaller kids that was looking to take a big kid as a trophy. I beat the piss out of him. I took the In-School-Suspension that awaited me merely for defending myself like a champ.

The rest of middle-school and early high-school I took on bullies. I won some, lost others. But it was when I was 15 years old that I decided to start taking karate lessons. At the time, it wasn't because of bullies that I decided to take karate lessons. I originally wanted to take sword fighting lessons because I was a big fan of The Highlander (yeah, yeah, I was a 90s kid. Say what you will).

After I started doing karate, even my bullies never got past the shit-talking stage. Once a challenge was made by me to, "Don't just sing it, BRING IT!", they backed down. I had confidence. Power. A strong defense against bullies.

As of sophomore year, not only did nobody fuck with me, but I was the protector of my band of "freaks and geeks" that were my friends. Some of them I'm still friends with to this day. I was the marital artist of the group. I was their Bruce Lee. When they needed a protector from a school bully, from an abusive stepdad, from anything, I was there. I was trained and ready to stomp any threats from them into the dirt.

But nobody was there for me. I was left to defend myself on my own.

The years from 16-19 were some of my best years because I was happy. The reason that I was happy was because I didn't have anyone to fear. By the time I got my black belt when I was 19, I wasn't just invincible, I KNEW I was invincible.

It was that ability to defend myself that kept my anxiety at bay for a time. It still didn't keep emotional bullies at bay. They aren't the types that attack you physically. They attack you emotionally. Like shitty karate instructors like Darwin Bannister (yeah, I'm calling you out, asshole! Say some shit if your name comes up in a Google search! You TOOK MY PANTS OFF IN THE MIDDLE OF A KARATE CLASS WHEN I WAS BARELY AN ADULT! WHO DOES THAT, YOU SICK FUCK?!)

It's one of the many reasons why I got fat. Being fat, while being terrible for my health, at least provided protection against physical threats. People don't know that 360 pound people can't fight. They see a giant, and they run.

All this didn't stop financial bullies, like the Drill Sergeants I had in Basic Combat Training after I joined the military, and the shitty NCOs I had afterward. I didn't care if they gave me pushups as punishment, but when they threatened the pay of my broke ass I put up with way more of their shit than I should have allowed.

I had constant bullying in my childhood and early adulthood, and nobody was there to help me. It's because of that I'm a 35 year old man that constantly has this one lesson in the back of his mind:

People are coming to hurt you, nobody is coming to help you, and you're going to be punished for protecting yourself.

That is why I have General Anxiety Disorder. I know that I'm on my own against the bullies of this world, whether they be an abusive boss, a criminal that means me harm, or even the shitty coworker that talks shit behind my back. Nobody is going to protect me from the worst that society has to offer. Either there are people that can and they refuse (like the teachers with the bullies of old), or they're unable to because they can't even defend themselves (like my friends of my high school days). I have people that love me. They care deeply for me. But do they even lift? No, they do not. Can they protect me? No, they cannot. I still have to protect them. As for anyone to protect me, I'm just like I was when I was bullied in seventh grade. I'm on my own. It's why I lift. It's why I train. It's why I did martial arts when I was young and want to start training again when I have the financial means to do so. It's why I have a CPL and carry a gun when I'm outside the home. I need to be prepared for when evil comes to attack me, because nobody in my entire life has been either willing or able to protect me.

My PTSD is entirely another matter. General Anxiety Disorder may have helped make that happen, as I spent my entirety in Iraq thinking that whatever day it was, was going to be my last day on Earth (this says nothing of the days over there where I was CONVINCED that it was my last day on Earth, like the day after Christmas in 2005, when I nearly got killed by an IED). But after I came back from Iraq, my urge to protect myself from all threats had not only been cranked up another hundred times, but I now have things that specifically trigger some panic attacks. For the first few years that I had been home, it had been loud noises like fireworks. As soon as I heard firecrackers or any loud boom, I was looking for cover. My first Fourth of July at home was a nightmare. To deal with the fireworks, I finally got so drunk and stoned on weed that I could barely remember my own name. If I hadn't done that, the entire day would have consisted of me hiding in the lowest corner of my home with the largest sword that I had (I didn't own any guns at the time, and that's definitely a good thing, as I would have tried my best to explain to my family that I was okay, despite hiding in my basement with a loaded gun at the ready to kill any "insurgents" that made their way past the front door). After that, the weeks beginning and ending with the Fourth tend to involve me being hammered just so I can keep my shit together.

After a while, I wasn't as scared of fireworks as I used to be. I could handle them without self-medicating, at least from a distance. Until today, I thought the worst was behind me on the PTSD front. But then something incredibly stupid happened.

I was making breakfast in my kitchen when my dishwasher began making a loud noise. A loud, high-pitched noise, that exactly resembled the kind of noise that happens when a mortar attack is incoming. Exactly like when a mortar attack is incoming. Out of nowhere, I heard a high-pitched whistle, and I thought, "INCOMING! HIT THE FLOOR!" I screamed to my mom, who was in the living room watching my kids, "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!"

My mom had heard the sound coming from the dishwasher before, and said that it was just something gunked up in the works of the dishwasher (before that, I didn't know where the sound was coming from). I went out and smoked a cigarette while my eggs were cooking, hoping I would calm down with the help of some nicotine. I didn't. I finished my smoke and went back into the kitchen to finish making my breakfast. My mom asked if I wanted to turn the dishwasher off. I just said, "What's the point? The dishes need to get washed, and I'll still have PTSD!" I did my best to finish making my breakfast while I was hiding the fact that I was crying in front of my mom, and wondering why I'm so fucked up THAT I CAN'T EVEN KEEP MY SHIT TOGETHER WHILE I'M MAKING EGGS!"

I don't know if my mom saw me crying and kept silent about it, or didn't see it. All I know, is that it took everything inside me to keep from collapsing on the floor.

I'm lucky enough to have some good mental health treatment now, but I'm still far from cured. There's going to be some days where I'm stuck in that fucking desert, and today was one of those days.

It's hard as hell for me to admit this shit. It's incredibly hard to admit that I have moments of weakness that I can't control; that some of these moments have resulted from battles from my childhood, and others that come from a war that I had returned from long ago. But there's people out there that need to read this. For those that I'm friends with on Facebook and for those that may have stumbled on this blog from some google search, know that you're not alone. We have mental illness. It is what it is. But we need to stop being ashamed. Shit happened to us that shouldn't have happened because we live in a fucked up world with fucked up people. We need to let the world know that they made us this way, and we need help.

And if the world doesn't want to give that help, we better start demanding it, because we aren't going to get better otherwise.

A Long Post About Food

Two posts in one day. I told you I had a lot on my mind!

Up until recently, I hated cooking. It's one of the (many) reasons why I was fat. With very little knowledge of how to cook, my diet consisted largely of fast food, restaurants, stuff from the frozen food section of the grocery store, and the type of stuff that you can get at a 7-11. I've always been a picky eater too, so that limited my tolerance to try new things. That's changed, due to two things-a T.V. show that I love, and a bet that I made with my wife.

I started watching You're the Worst a few months ago. I loved the entire story line. For those that have started reading my blog because of my posts about mental illness, you should watch the show. Along with being my type of show (I love shows and movies where the protagonists are morally flawed), they do accurate portrayals of people suffering from PTSD and depression while somehow still being hilarious.

A running gag for the first season and a half was that the only time anyone on the show ever ate was when a breakfast dish was being served. One of the dishes was breakfast lasagna. They didn't say what was in it, but I just thought, "You took the best meal of the day and turned it into FUCKING LASAGNA! I MUST TRY THIS!"

I started looking on the internet for recipes, but didn't find one to my liking. I decided to make it from scratch using all the things I like most about breakfast, and combining it into a dish until I got this:

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair!

A perfectly good, two-layered breakfast lasagna, with eggs, sausage gravy, bacon, and cheese. My own personal recipe; not one I got off a website. I offered to sell the recipe to Tasty for one of their cute videos, but they haven't responded.

It's not at all healthy, but it's delicious!

Around the time I made that recipe, my wife joked about leaving me, and how I'd never get to eat any of her delicious cooking again. I called her out on that, saying that I can make lasagna just fine (she makes great lasagna, among other things). So we decided to have a contest to see who had the better one. I went looking for recipes on the internet, and found one called, "World's Best Lasagna Recipe". Well, if it's the world's best, it might beat my wife's.

Weeks passed, and we were supposed to have our contest on a Saturday, which is the only day neither of us are working, but I kept getting called into work at the last minute. Eventually, we both lost interest in the contest, but I still wanted to make that lasagna.

I finally got around to making it, and the recipe lived up to its name. It takes well over three hours to make, and it's worth every second of time. The recipe called for canned tomatoes, and I used them despite hating tomatoes (for some reason I've always liked tomato sauce, but not tomatoes themselves).

After that, I decided to start cooking on Thursdays, when I have time off. I made a few nice dishes from recipes I saw from Tasty, but wanted to start cooking healthier stuff, as opposed to high calorie dishes like breakfast lasagna. So I saw this delicious looking dish and decided to try it:

I trimmed the pork chops of most of the fat so they were lean, and cooked it up with garlic mashed cauliflower and a can of peas and carrots. A commenter on the cauliflower recipe said to quadruple the cheese, so I did. Despite me putting way too much garlic in the recipe (what I thought was a clove of garlic turned out to be an entire bulb), my family loved it. The mashed cauliflower had too much garlic for me to enjoy, but they did taste just like mashed potatoes, which was nice.

I also had to be less picky on my foods for that recipe. Because I couldn't find any scallions at my store, I substituted french onions instead. Anyone in my family can tell you how much I hate onions of ANY kind, but I decided to take one for the team and use them.

Despite making these awesome recipes, I was still eating poorly while I worked. When I was working on losing and/or maintaining my weight, I'd make lunches with sirloin steak or chicken, and either wrap them up in tortilla shells, or eat them with a salad. That got old very fast, so I fell back into old habits of eating high calorie carry-out from restaurants, or fast food. It was showing on the scale. I wanted to figure out how to make meals I can take for lunch that are healthy, not just because I wanted to lose weight, but also because my workouts are starting to become murder machines. Between the increased weight on my 5x5 routine and the exercises given to me by my doctor to protect my shoulders, losing weight isn't even my priority for eating healthy. I need to consume lots of protein and healthy food so I'll have energy to finish my workouts. Try doing a 5x5 workout followed by eight shoulder exercises after eating McDonalds all day and see how that goes.

I read about "meal prepping" on some fitness sites and decided to give that a try. Essentially, you take one day making several days worth of food in and store it in bulk. I looked at some recipes and decided to try this one:

I didn't use all of the ingredients because despite trying to get over being picky, I still hate onions. Fucking hate them. I've made my peace with the french onions (so long as they're cooked and in a massive amount of cheese, they're fine), but those and black beans are not happening anytime soon. I used a mix of corn, peas, carrots, broccoli, and green beans. Despite being less vegetables than what the recipe required, I still had a lot of leftover veggies when all was said and done. I also seasoned my chicken differently, using BBQ rub and generic chicken seasoning.

I ordered a portable electric oven off of Amazon so I could reheat them in my car. I tried them today for the first time, and they're delicious! Each meal is around 500 calories and they fill you up.

The healthier eating is paying off. While the real intention behind eating healthier is to become stronger, faster, and better than I was before, it's nice to see that my stomach is starting to shrink, too.

A Unique Problem

There's a lot of things that I want to write about, so there will likely be a couple of diaries this week. So, let's start with a funny story.

Last Friday, my wife and I finally got to have the opportunity to go out without the kids. We decided to go to the movies to see 'Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising' (which was hilarious. Go see it). We were both wearing shorts and undershirts, and I thought we'd be wearing the same clothes to see the movies. After all, I'm 35 and happily married. I don't have anyone to impress, so I don't care if I go out in public looking like a cross between a homeless person and a college kid that ran out of quarters to use at his dorm's washing machine.

See, he gets it!

My wife felt differently. She put on the clothes that she was wearing when she had been teaching earlier that day. I said to her, "So...we're dressing up for this one, huh? Okay, then."

Dressing up meant to me that I was going to put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt with words on it. About as classy as I'm going to get for going to the movies.

When I put on my jeans, I felt some pain around my thighs, like I was wearing those dumb compression clothes that marketing people swear up and down will make your more fit, but are just really tight clothing.

My legs have gained so much muscle that I can no longer fit into my jeans. They'll fit around my waist just fine, but not my legs.

I had this problem when I was 19 and had just started out lifting weights. The problem of weightlifter legs has returned!

Weightlifter legs are probably the firstiest of first world problems, but they're common. Put "weightlifter legs jeans" into a Google search and you'll see stories on Reddit and other forums complaining about how they're losing body fat off their stomach, but can't fit into their pants because their legs have gotten too big.

I shouldn't be surprised that this is happening, but I am surprised that it's happening this quickly. I'm only squatting in the mid 100s. I didn't expect this to happen until after I hit the 200s, or at least close to it.

I saw a few years ago that there is a market for this particular problem. Some geniuses decided to create jeans built for weightlifters, where you can buy them for the low, low price of $109 plus shipping.

I don't make the kind of money to be spending $109 on jeans, so I'll be wearing shorts and sweats for the time being. I'm just glad that the weather has started warming up.

Back to Basics

This is going to be one long-ass post about my fitness routine and my physical health.

I'm subscribed to a lot of pro-science pages on Facebook. They pretty much center around debunking psuedoscientific bullshit and generally don't talk about fitness very much. But one of them posted an article called, "Jack Lalanne's Death Anniversary/This Is, Hands Down, What's Wrong With The Fitness Industry". The story celebrates Mr. Lalanne for bringing gyms and exercise into the mainstream, but also laments that it was because of his ability to make a fortune selling fitness that created a largely ineffective multi-billion dollar fitness industry.

"If people forgot everything they ever read about dieting and nutrition, no one would be tempted to put butter in their coffee, think that fruit makes you fat or obsess over unnecessarily cutting out gluten. We’d use common sense, which says that fruits and vegetables are good, and candy and fast food aren’t. On the exercise front, we’d never have heard the nonsense that cardio is going to kill you or pay for some abdominal electro-shocking device."

 I was just getting over my first shoulder injury when I read this, and loved it. I asked myself, "Why am I constantly trying new things when what I was doing in the beginning worked just fine?" The beginning was when I was 19 years old, and decided to start lifting weights to help me improve in karate. My first book on exercise was based on the notes of Bruce Lee himself called, "The Art of Expressing the Human Body". If you do martial arts (especially East Asia ones), the general rule is that if Bruce Lee did it, so should you.

Bruce Lee was a fan of compound exercises. He believed that isolation exercises inhibit fighting ability. He had no interest in working out just to look good.

Let's be honest, though. He did!

My weight training evolved until I could get an entire routine done in under 20 minutes. One day I'd work my chest, upper back, shoulders. The next day would be legs, abs, and lower back. I'd do cardio on days I was working my legs. My strength improved dramatically, and so did my martial arts. I did very few isolation exercises. If I wasn't working two sets of muscles, I wasn't interested.

I got into a discussion in the comment section of the article posted and one of the guys started talking about Mark Rippletoe and after buying Starting Strength onto my Kindle, he recommended I try the Stronglifts 5x5 program, which is almost the same as the Starting Strength routine, except the program adds a bent-over row exercise. The exercises are all compound exercises (Rippletoe is a huge advocate of those over isolation exercises as well). On day one, you do squats, the overhead press, and you deadlift. On day two, you do squats, the bench press, and bent-over rows. You rotate the two workouts every time, and you only work three days a week.

I started doing that, but my shoulder injury came back after my first day. So I had to do other things. After a few weeks, I got tired of not lifting, so I decided I'd start the 5x5 program again. I downloaded the app to my phone and after giving them some personal information, they recommended that I start with nothing but the bar. Normally, I would tell the app to fuck off and I'm not bench pressing 45 pounds, but I decided I might as well, seeing as I'm injured. At least it would give me an excuse to work on my form.

I noticed that when I did the upper body exercises with perfect form, there was no pain in my shoulder. After my session was over, I'd feel less pain overall. I consulted the orthopedist that worked on my arm the last time, and he confirmed that I had new calcium deposits on my shoulder. From what I've read and been told about them, they're not really a serious injury. It just feels that way. Unfortunately, the doc also said that I'd have to have more extensive surgery to remove them. I said no to that, because it would require time off from work, and since our country doesn't guarantee us paid medical leave, that's a no go. So he gave me some exercises that I can do to work my rotator cuff, had me make a follow-up appointment in six weeks, and said that there's still a chance that they can go away on their own. I hope so, because I really don't want the surgery. Not only would I have to take 1-2 weeks off from work, but it would take four months to recover.

I'm running again too, albeit very slowly. Maybe it's because of all the squats I've been doing, or maybe it's because I quit running for three months, but my run time is terrible. I'm running 13 minute miles. I'm still running, though.

Despite all of the injuries and setbacks, I'm still determined to do what I can to reach my body's full physical potential. I know that at 35 years old my potential isn't what it used to be, but I'm still determined to get there.