Three months. 12 Weeks. 90 Days. 2160 hours. That was how long it took me to completely make going into a bar, pub, club, even restaurant into a prediction that has never failed me. Growing up in Mexico, I grew accustomed to identification being close to naught. Getting into a nightclub at 16 was no harder than getting in at 18. Now, this might say something about how lenient police force is in Mexico, but still, I grew accustomed to not being questioned whenever I wanted to consume alcohol. Therefore, by the time I was 19, I was well versed in drinking, how to handle it, and above else, how to hide it from your folks as you stumble back into your house praying you can just go to sleep and make believe intoxication never happened to the prodigy child that your parents brought up.
I was quite the late bloomer, so when I was finally able to drink, I took it quite to the extreme. My inebriation reached such a level, that even after leaving the party in which I made a giant ass of myself, puking in my best friend’s car, passing out on the road while they cleaned it, getting showered by a friend, put on clothes that did not fit me so I would have to wear my puke covered clothes, my friend’s parents deemed me too drunk for them to take care of me. You see, the original plan was to stay over at this friend’s house. That way I would not need to worry about encountering my parents after my first experienced with being drunk. Not tipsy, or buzzed, but drunk. Unable to walk, talk, drunk.
Unfortunately, my luck being what it is, my friends' parents still called mine to come pick me up. Punishments were set, but I was eventually allowed to go and hang out with friends again. This was a huge change for me as my parents did not really let me fraternize with friends after school, so at least it was a change of pace. Unfortunately, being an only child, dogless, during your teens is not the best when you are surrounded by the deadliest trifecta there is to man. Video games, Internet, Food. It is an understatement how clueless one can be of their self-image, but while I was too busy achievement hunting and stuffing my face with incredible amounts of food, I was gaining weight, and fast.
This in turn really started to affect my life when I started to show interest in girls, and not have it be returned. This part of my life is a bit tough because I would approach relationships in a very American way. I don’t know if this makes sense to you, but it’s the only way I could put it. It's tough to stand there, and ask a girl out on a date, only to have them ask in return what a date was. Another factor was pretty much that any “sweet talk” that I could conjure up was in English, not in Spanish. That was a major problem, and if I were to try and speak to a girl today in Spanish, would be a catastrophe. Clearly, I was not the best at fitting in, and if you were to tell me how to get a girlfriend in Mexico, I am still as clueless as my pubescent self.
Anyways, no success with girls meant low self-esteem. Low self-esteem then made me turn to comfort food and comfort drink. It’s amazing how even though you know you will be miserable; one pursues alcohol to deal with these kinds of problems.Beer, wine, liquor, and all the food I could possibly imagine were at my disposal. The sting of a heart can be temporarily mended with sweet material things. Tacos, little Debbie snacks, tortas, donuts, the list goes on. Mixing Mexican cuisine with alcohol, plus going to Costco to stock up on snacks and food pretty much seems like a death wish. One where at the end, you will be pretty upset with yourself. My parents saw that I was gaining weight and becoming unhealthy. My father would tell me how I would never be able to achieve my dream of surfing because of my weight, and that stung a little more than girls turning me down, or me just bringing myself down before even attempting to talk to one.
Mom thought it’d be great to enroll me in the local gym, but Diego had other things than fitness on his mind. Fitness meant work, hard work, work that I did not necessarily want to do. I was extremely lazy, but I thought I was smart, see? Sure I’d tell my mom how my workout went great, but what she didn’t know is that I would just play video games in the bathroom, or go catch a movie while indulging in Frappuccino’s from Starbucks. Not only was this incredibly bad for my health, but I was pretty much pouring gasoline on the family savings, lighting a match and watching it all burn. In Mexico, you do not work as a teenager. If you do, that means the financial struggle is very real. Therefore, I did not appreciate money and would use it selflessly. Drinks, video games, food, more video games, the cycle would just not stop. I was getting an allowance to spend on myself, and for the first time, being able to get away with doing what I wanted was a real possibility, and it felt great. Sadly I was blind to see what I was getting myself into.
The last time I had weighed myself was about two weeks before school started. Cold scale under my feet, the number read 187lbs. I do not know if I ever went above that, but it is quite possible. Freshman year was full of drinking, pasta salads, pasta bowls, pizza, burgers, fries, Chipotle, chips, chicken tenders, mozzarella sticks, the list of fried shit I was putting in my body went on and on. I can’t necessarily remember when the change happened, but I had seen a friend of mine change from what, I guess, was an average body to getting absolutely ripped. I was pretty much done with not being able to conjure up any courage to actually go and put myself out there. A change needed to be done.
I believe that motivation is the utmost important part of trying to go through a drastic change. No matter how much you exercise, control your food, how much water you drink, or how much detox you go through. If you do not yearn for change, it will be the hardest thing to try and achieve. Mind over matter my friends, mind over matter. I had no idea what I was doing with weights, cardio machines, what muscles to target, pretty much any exercise science was not available to me. Help is needed in order to get results. One must learn from someone else, and one must have someone to push when they don’t want to be pushed anymore. Pain is very important. If it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t working.
It was tough getting accustomed to his workouts. I had never attempted any of the exercises that he made me do, so the pain was very real. One time I was not able to sit without groaning for a solid week, where I felt as if someone was grabbing me from my core and playing an ultimate tug of war. There was only one problem. Other things were on my mind. School, friends, homework, parties, social events. All of these things clutter the mind, and if you have them buzzing around when you’re working out, exercising will be even tougher.
I got conditioned during that second semester but it wasn’t enough. Summer came, and with internship over, and the whole campus at my disposal, it was the perfect opportunity to get absolutely ripped. Only one problem, I had no discipline. Once I started to research about food, macro nutrients, counting calories, which exercises do what, that is when I was able to figure out what I needed to do.
Getting up at an early time of the day, have breakfast, work out, have lunch, go to the beach and sweat some more, have dinner, chill out, have another snack. People don’t realize this, but food is the biggest factor, apart from state of mind, in trying to get fit. If you are eating less, you are doing it wrong. Now I am not an exercise science major, but from all of the research I did before starting to work out, what will help you out incredibly is metabolism. Nothing would be achieved as quickly if the only time you burn fat is during a workout. Look for "HIIT" (High-Intensity Interval Training) which basically means that for an extended amount of time, during some parts, you work out in low intensity, and then switch to a very high-intensity portion. Keep repeating, and your metabolism will be on afterburner for a solid half day after the workout. Combine that with muscle tearing strength exercises as well as just putting protein in you, and you will start seeing results.
That summer was just that. Work out like hell, every single day, eat a bunch of meat and drink ridiculous amounts of water. All while keeping in mind the hell that life was when I didn’t feel good about myself. It all began as a way of getting thinner, but soon it morphed into feeling good, not looking good. Sure you can look amazing, have a great head of hair, great abs, great legs, but if inside you are not ok, nothing good will come from it. After a couple of months, it becomes routine, and you find yourself watching what you eat and exercising as second nature. Once you break that wall, you’ll rue the day you haven’t been to the gym in a couple of days. It truly becomes part of life.
It was a whopping 40lbs that I lost. Not only had I managed to lose it, but now I am basically not the person on my ID. Any single place that I try and get into, anywhere I try and buy alcohol, asks for proof and my age only to take a good five minutes doubting if they would go to jail for allowing me to do so. I guess I had it coming, living all of those years without a single care. No complaint here, as long as I look like I’m 20 when I hit 40. Now that I can live with. ~ad astra ultraque
