Pep talk

I mentioned to Andrea that I was half heartedly thinking of a Spartiate outfit from the movie "300" but dismissed it since I lack the washboard abs that most (if not all) of the Spartans were sporting.

God bless her, this was her response:

Dude, you are in Spartan enough shape after all that training! I'm just crossing my fingers that everyone who orders one of these has a body to go with it, or at least be mostly in shape. Mostly is all I ask for.

After all, if my job description included strutting around half naked like this guy or I had abs like him, I wouldn't have even given it a second thought:

As a child, I was somewhat heavy. No, make that fat. I was humiliated when I had to go to the department store and have to go to the "husky" rack. I recently came across a picture of myself at 8 years old when I went to the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. I weighed more then than I do now. I had heard all of the common and uncommon excuses - from "That's just baby fat" to "You've got heavy bones" (I actually have extremely dense bones, but that's beside the point and no, I'm not part-Kryptonian!)

The high point in my (then young) life was the first time I could fit into "regular" clothes. That was sophomore year in high school.

And I make damn sure that I stay that way. I wear 30" waist Levi 501s and have for the past 20+ years.

I also keep one old pair of Levis. If I try them on and they're tight, I cut down on my intake and increase my workouts until they feel comfortable again.

There's been a lot of controversy going on about low-fat vs. low-carb diets. I do my own low-fat and low processed carb diet.

Anything that has hydrogenated, coconut or palm oil I skip.

Any stuff with a lot of sugar (store bought cake, cookies, etc.) I skip.

Delicatessen meats or salads I skip.

The "Mediterranean" diet staple of olive oil actually raises my bad LDL and lowers my good HDL, so I skip that too. Go figure.

Lots of fresh fruit, fresh or frozen veggies, grains, cereals (Honey Nut Cheerios and Vanilla Almond Special K for the most part, plus Kashi Go-Lean) and I'm set!

This sort of eliminates the "fun" foods like pizza, chinese or ribs from regular consumption, but then again, they shouldn't be regular consumption. I can treat these as "very special occasion" items and not feel deprived. And I limit the amount even when I do splurge.

I've decided to go ahead with the Spartiate outfit. The definite pieces are the cloak, brooch, leather speedo (hehehehe), greaves, vambraces, sandals and xiphos+scabbard. I also learned my lesson from before - Andrea is doing the cloak and JJ the armor. I'll describe the whole process in another post.

Now, I'm just deciding on which optional pieces I really want. Helmet? Shield? Spear?

And find time to do more abdominal exercises.

Maybe if I start taking Ambien, I can get in some sleep-crunches ...

UPDATE:

After a considerably long time, I am finally sporting a fairly nice-looking six-pack. The rifts and valleys are coming along, due to being extremely faithful to versions of the '300 workout' as posted on YouTube. I'm also down to a 29" waist.

While most of my contemporaries are expanding around the waistline, I'm shrinking!