Category Archives: Abilene

Day 88: The Tale of the Anytime Fitness Shaman and Our Quest to Abilene

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So I am a day behind in the posting and for that I apologize.

Yesterday morning, we went and worked out again with my folks at Anytime Fitness (which I am falling in love with.) There were only about 4 or 5 of us in there and 1 of them was this older Pakistani man who was just minding his own business and doing his thing. Then, I got on to the machine next to me and he just started to randomly talking to me. I guess since I still look like I am pretty out of shape (because… I am) he starts going Tony Robbins on me. “A few months ago I went to the doctor and my blood sugar was at 350 and he told me that I could go home and die or start working out” he said. “You have to get off the chair, stop watching tv and come here and work out. You have to do these things. I work out here 4-5 hours a day because I am 75 years old and retired so I have nothing else to do.” (This exchange went on for about 10 minutes and then my dad and Megan came over and he repeated this whole diatribe.) Usually I’m not a big fan of people telling me that I need to lose weight. It just really gets under my skin (like the time in high school when I delivered perscriptions to older people and the first thing this women said to me was “You need to go on a diet kid”) but this man was pretty inspirational. I can only imagine how easy it would be at 75 to just say “I’ve had a good run” and just eat what you want and let nature take his course, but this guy is being proactive and doing something about his life! It was quite the way to start my morning.

Breakfast: 2 eggs and 2 1/2 pieces of bacon 6.5 points

Lunch: After breakfast, Megan and I made our way to Abilene where we went to undergrad and where I had lived when I was very young. It felt weird to go back even though it had only been 5 months since we had left. Anyways, I called up a few people from my old job at Zachry Associates, an ad agency in Abilene, and we went to lunch at Abuelos (which is one of the best non-whole-in-the-wall mexican joints you will ever go to.) It was great to see everyone again. It was really hard not to get my old favorite meal which was a shredded beef burrito covered in queso with beans and these refried mashed potatoes. Instead, I got the tortilla soup (which was awesome) and salad which had shredded chicken, queso (which I got on the side) and beans. It was a really good lunch and I didn’t feel weighed down like I usually do after eating there. They don’t have their nutritional info online (#socialresponsibilityfail) so we had to do some invsetigating on this one. We figured out that it was about 12 points which wasn’t bad. Thanks to Christi (of the awesome blog The Frugal Novice) for the sick action shot.

Dinner: So after running a few errands, visiting old haunts, and finding out I got accepted as a full time graduate student at FSU (oh.. did I forget to mention that? :)) we went to dinner at Jason’s Deli with a lot of our college friends. We just made a Facebook event and invited everyone we could think of and it was a blast! If you haven’t been to Jason’s, they have a killer salad bar that could even make the Hamburgelur a vegetarian. (Jason of Jason’s Deli, if you are reading this, please come to Tallahassee!!!!!!) Anyways, I made an amazing salad with lettuce, baby spinach, broccoli, bell peppers, sunflower seeds, artichoke hearts, other awesome stuff, and low fat ranch. Oh yeah, and this red pepper hummus which made me cry it was so delicious. Dinner was about 10 points. Sadly, we thought about taking an action shot after some people had left (sorry: Greg, Whitney, Sean and Amy!) Thanks: (starting front to back Martin, Shannon, Melanie, Cole (the one who looks like Jesus,) Kyle, Jeff (who thought of taking the picture,) Steph (of Rufus vs. The Farm) and last but certainly not least Evan (ya nasty!) Megan was a good sport and took the pic. It was so great to see all of our friends and it’s even better when the conversation just picks back up when you left. It’s good to have friends.

On the way home (we left Abilene around 8:30) we stopped in the big city of Hico and grabbed some Dublin Dr. Pepper which is made in Dublin, TX where Dr. Pepper was born (they still have this awesome bottling plant downtown) and is made with pure cane sugar. I don’t usually drink regular soda, but I had to have just 1. For a 12 oz can it was 3 points and it was very sugary but delicious. (To put some things in context, I used to get a 44 oz fountain Dublin DP every time I went home and came back to Abilene. That’s like 11 points a soda twice in a weekend. How I was not  diabetic I will never know. Anyways, on Thursday I got to about 31.5 points but I had exercise points so overall it was a great day. See ya tomorrow… or…. something.

Trying to Shed the Fat Off the Fotographing Fat Kid

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So it seems like for majority of my life I have been “The Fat Kid.” The proverbial punching bag for the insecure who had issues so they would take it out on me by making fun of my flab. From elementary to about 7th grade, I was made fun of at least once a day for being fat, the rest was for just being awkward. Eventually I learned that if you were just nice to people it would go a long way; and if you could make them laugh they would be too busy thinking you were so awesome that they would forget to insult you so that’s what I tried to do and it worked. When I was a Freshman in High School, I came to this realization that were two kinds of fat guys: the ones who were depressed about being big and the ones who didn’t care and wouldn’t let their waist size determine their attitude; so I went with the latter and it was the best decision I have ever made.

Let’s fast forward to 2010 shall we. Earlier this year Megan and I decided we were going to run the Mayor’s 5k in Abilene on Megan’s birthday, April 10th. To prepare for that we did a 12 week training through Nike+. You would run 3-5 times a week and the shortest distance was 2 miles and the longest was 7. I had it so when I would run, it would send the information to Facebook and it would say something “Nathan ran 4 miles at the pace 12:30/mile.” The general response was positive except for a few put downs, one of which linked my running to the earthquake in Haiti. After that I started to notice this odd negative response to a fat person working out trying to better themselves. In Abilene we would work out at this Anytime Fitness that was right next to this amazing Mexican Restaurant which was torture because you could smell its amazingness at the gym. Anywho, the treadmills faced this window by the sidewalk to the stripmall it was in so a lot of people walked by to go to the restaurant.  There were a ton of times that people would look in see me running on the treadmill and just give me this “Look at this fat idiot!” and then they would walk away. I feel like some people think it’s ridiculous for obese people to even try to work out and they feel sorry for them. Why would you ever put down someone who was obviously trying to get in shape? It’s so wrong!!!

Whew, okay the last two paragraphs were cathartic and were not intended for you to pity me, just for you to understand a little more about me. They were also things I needed to say pseudo out loud (are things you say on the Internet “Out loud?” Anyways…)

Now to the artery-clogged heart of this blog. Megan and I are taking the first steps to try to be healthier and ultimately thinner people. We have been fighting this healthy fight for about a year now and it has had it’s ups and downs. Abilene didn’t have really any healthy eateries (ala Little Panda and Pizza House) so it was hard to eat out so we started to eat at home a lot more which was great, but as moving day  grew closer, the convenience  of eating out usually won. Then when we moved to Tallahassee, there were hundreds of new restaurants that we had to try out so that temptation has continually won. Now that we have our lives a little more in order, we are on a new mission to undo all the indulging damage we have done to ourselves since July (and in my case, undoing the damage since… birth.)

So here’s the deal, Megan and I have started Weight Watchers sans the meetings because you have to pay for them. Thanks to the internet, anything you need to know about WW is online which is so legit. For those who don’t know, the way WW works is you have an assigned points that you are allowed to eat per day and it’s based on how much you weigh, I have 34 points a day. Everything you eat has a certain amount of points and it’s calculated by calories, fat and fiber amount so you calculate it with a points calculator like this http://ow.ly/2FBjd and then you have to weigh cost of whether it’s worth eating it… which sucks at first but then it eventually changes how you look at food. For example, tonight we went to Chick-fil-a and we each had an 8 piece nugget (6 points) and then shared a large fry (5 points each) and a Coke Zero (0 points). Now 11 points isn’t bad for eating out, but we kept it manageable by being smart about the little things like the sauce. I had BBQ (1 point a packet) and Megan had Honey Mustard (1 point a packet) but usually Megan gets 2 packets of Chick-fil-a sauce which has 110 calories and a whopping 13 grams of fat for one small packet. One packet has more fat than the 8 piece nuggets which is just bonkers!!! I used to think making switches like that were sacrifices but now I look at them as being smart and that that’s 13 grams of fat I won’t have to lose at the gym.

So here’s the real deal (I promise I won’t be this long winded everyday because I would develop carpal tunnel.) Starting tomorrow, I am going to post what I’ve eaten, how many points I used, how much I’ve exercised and any tips I have learned that day so I can help you out there who want to lose weight. I have been on diets before and they always fizzle out around the 6th week. I think that blogging something this personal will hold me accountable which is what I need.

What I need from you: I need your support, not just on here but everywhere. If we are out at lunch and I’m reaching for the fried pizza or the chocolate covered porkrinds, ask me if it’s worth it. It might sound harsh, but it’s what I need for this thing to work. Hopefully in turn it might help you look at food a different way as well. Also I’m asking for your prayers. This is something that is a struggle for me and I know that through God, anything is possible even me kicking this food addiction.

So thanks for listening, if you read this whole thing, you’re legit. See you tomorrow.

Dr. Baddriving: How I Learned to Hate the Two Lane Turn

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Abilene drivers… suck. I guess I could just call it good right there, but I love the sound of my voice in my head.

Before I really get in to it, when I suggested this blog idea to some of my friends, one of them said “College Station drivers are the worst.” Although I would have to agree that Dallas drivers are terrible, Houston drivers are terrible, Austin drivers are terrible and San Antonio drivers are terrible; Abilene has there own special breed of illiterate motorists. The healthy mix of octogenarians and college students who just got their freedom is like combining vinegar and hydrogen peroxide with the same result: a nasty accident that pisses off you mother.

To me Abilene, for a town that is definitely in favor of creationism, needs to realize that they have Social Darwinism at work on the Winters Freeway. You have these younger drivers that are so bored with Abilene, they feel the need to re-create scenes of The Fast and The Furious amongst the gargantuan F-350s. I have sad news for you townie: it wasn’t cool when Vin Diesel did it and just because you put a Nos sticker on your ’94 Taurus doesn’t magically give it extra juice. You also have people in their Lincoln Towncars that are so closed minded that they are even against the invention of the turn signal so they just weave in and out of traffic, scaring the tar out of anyone within 5 car links around them.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love people of all age demographics in Abilene, however sometimes you just wonder where they learned some of these unwritten rules of driving. (The Driving Code of the Prairie perhaps?) Like I’ll be going down the street and I go through a green light which, last time I checked, was still kosher according the to the National Transportation Safety Board; but sometimes there are people who slow down at a green light. WHY!!!!!! Even if it turns yellow, you will still have enough time to get through it. I’ve never seen a cop pull someone for running a yellow (come to think of it, I haven’t seen anyone pulled for running a red. Knock on wood.)

You also have people, when stopped at a red light, sit and wait a good 10-15 seconds to actually go when it turns green. Didn’t everyone play red light/green light when they were kids? Green means go and red means stop. I guess when we played that when we were little we weren’t on our iPhones or yelling at the kids behind us, well if you had Turrets as a child the latter applies to you. But anyways, if your general driving reaction time is 10-15 seconds then I don’t want to be behind you because if I have to make a sudden stop then you would be 10-15 seconds up my bumper.

At this point you are probably thinking that I couldn’t gripe anymore about traffic, but if you have ever been in my car you know that I’m not even close to being done. Heck, I haven’t even covered the two lane turn yet. One other thing is the turning lane, especially on Judge Ely Blvd. It’s really used on Ely because of Sonic so when it’s Happy Hour, the idiots come out of the woodwork. One time I was driving down Ely and I went to turn into the designated turning lane like a good driver and all of the sudden a white car comes blitzin’ from behind, nearly demolishing my then new car. Abilene, I hate to tell you that you’re not hip enough to have a H.O.V. lane. This isn’t Dallas for crying out loud. That’s not what it’s there for.

When I lived Abilene when I was in elementary, I have some great memories and some bad memories; but the dominating memory is listening to my Dad complain about people who made two lane turns. I used to think that he must have been overreacting but during that first week of college when I almost got T-Boned via a two lane turn, I knew it was no hyperbole. It seems like people know when you don’t want them to two lane turn like if you are going down the road and they turn correctly right in front of you and insist on going 15 instead of the posted 40. They will correctly turn then of course but if you are there are two turning lanes lanes and you are in the right and they are in the left, they will feel the need to try to cut you off. Make up your minds people! This is you opportunity to be a good driver simply by turning correctly. To quote Captain Planet “The power is yours!” but like pollution, we have the power but still dump toxic waste into lakes.

I know that people probably think that I have been too harsh on Abilene drivers, but the fact of the matter is that this is a challenge for them to not suck as much at driving. Recently, the City of Abilene made a challenge to their drivers called “No Wreck Wednesday.” It lasted a total of 6 hours when a lady flipped her Explorer in an one car accident that morning. For a town this size it’s pretty sad how many accidents there are. I’m sure the way some of these people drive was acceptable in the ’70s when every car had as much metal as a tank. I’m sure back then driving in Abilene was like one big demolition derby. Unfortunately, with the invention of the SUV, the cellphone and the Soccer Mom, driving in Abilene has never been more hazardous. I’m sure the high rate of DWI’s in Taylor county hasn’t helped but that’s beside the point. So when you go out for your Saturday stroll, play some defense while your driving and for the love of all things holy don’t read this on your iPhone while you’re driving. That would be too ironic.