Emotional Availability

This is a touchy subject for me. I haven’t been good at making myself emotionally available. I find myself fearing judgement. I don’t date much and I find the whole process to be infuriating. Dating has largely turned into a mind game of showing just the right amount of interest to keep someone coming back without showing too much and scaring them off. When I was younger I used to put it all out there. I came on too strong a lot of times (often alcohol induced). These instances and their outcomes often linger in my mind when I think about meeting new people. I have largely limited my alcohol consumption following the realization that I am a completely different person (one whom I do not like) when I drink. I may be more fun and outgoing, but I make poor decisions, become attention hungry and have found myself waking up next to unintended partners on several occasions. Basically I become a loud, obnoxious man-whore. While this seems to be valued by male culture and the expectation is to get drunk and get laid, this really isn’t me. The issue comes with the fact that I don’t find myself confident enough to meet women or put myself out there when I’m sober. This is something I thought would change when I lost weight. “If only I could get abs, then I’d be willing to put myself out there”. Nope. I’m still the shy guy. The scary thing is that when you look how you want to look and you still can’t put yourself out there and be vulnerable, then you realize that the issue was never with your appearance, it was with your emotions. I’m fit, but I’m not emotionally available… But I’m working on it.

Disordered Eating:

I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this before, but I have forced myself to vomit after large meals in the past. My sister has had struggles with bulimia in the past so as she reads this, I assume that this is going to be the first time that she hears about this. When I did this, it was usually after having a huge binge after having several good weeks of progress. This is not something that I have done in probably over a year, but somehow I figured that it was a good idea after eating a 2500 calorie “cheat meal” from 711. There are a lot of things in fitness culture that many would consider to be disordered eating. The use of pills, supplements, fasting, laxatives etc. All of these could be looked at as disordered eating behaviours. I can say that if I were examined by an eating disorder specialist, I would probably exhibit a few red flags. I am a proponent of intermittent fasting, I binge during my post work out meals, and I use stimulants (ephedrine and caffeine) to stave off hunger during my fasting periods. This being said, I do so in the healthiest way I can. I always start my binges with large quantities of vegetables, I don’t purge, I keep my fasts organized and make sure that I stay in a proper calorie range to keep from losing too much weight in a given week. I used to keep very meticulous food journals and weighed everything I ate. Now I find that guesstimating my calories is effective enough.

My question is where is the line drawn? At what point does dietary restriction and control become disordered? I once went vegan and was told months after stopping that my girlfriend and best friend were concerned that I had an eating disorder. This was weird to me because I wasn't thin. I ate lots. I always had an image of people with eating disorders being skin and bones like someone you’d find at a concentration camp.

When I was in high school, my sister was bulimic. She had no meat on her. Body image issues run in our family. We were raised by a father who was overweight (but is still the coolest and we love the heck outta him) and a mother who has a long history of yo-yo dieting (who is also super awesome and lovely) and has been employed as an aerobics instructor, a weight watchers leader, and a jenny craig saleswoman. We grew up constantly hearing about calories, weight loss, exercise, and marathon walks. I also heard that my grandmother put a lot of emphasis on being thin growing up. I don’t think that being overweight is hereditary in most cases. I also don’t think eating disorders are hereditary, BUT! I believe that if you’re going to learn an attitude towards food, it’s going to come from your environment. This is why I think my sister and I developed body image issues.

I love my sister. She is one of the most impressive people I have ever met. She has always been there for me and she’s overcome so much to get to where she is now. If I were to compare her now to where she was in high school to now, there would be two completely different people. While I never went through the things she went through, we were both the product of our environments (to an extent). It stemmed from our household, other kids at school being assholes, and our own expectations of ourselves. 

How do you break the chain? How does someone who exhibits symptoms of disordered eating teach their children not to do the same? Food is supposed to be enjoyable and nourishing, not something to be feared and calculated. My use of caffeine and ephedrine for reaching my goals can be summed up in one simple sentence. It turns food into math. You don’t care if you eat. You eat what you calculate as being appropriate. It turns eating from being a matter of willpower to being a matter of using your knowledge. “175 grams of deli meat at about 200 calories, plus 100 calories of raw vegetables, a half pound of fruit salad at about 150 calories, plus a low carb protein bar at 150 calories equals one post workout meal.” I may be undecided on whether I want children, but if I do have them, I don’t want them to see food like I do, but I also don’t want them to see them become overweight, not because there’s anything wrong with being overweight, but because I know what it’s like when your nickname is “Fatass”. 

My Life Story and first post

First things first, who am I? 
My name is Andrew Ujvary, That's me ^ July 2013 and That ^ is me as of last week. I was 218 pounds on the left and 192 on the right.
 I'm a Human Kinetics major who has intentions of becoming a Strength and Conditioning Coach. I'm a Precision Nutrition Certified Nutrition Coach, although I'm not yet practicing. I bartend part time to pay the bills, and I'm a frequenter of the hockey rink and the weight room.
The question of who I am is a lot deeper than the simple description of my limited education, and a few of my hobbies. I am a young man who has often struggled with my weight, depression, and my body image. I can say that most likely, sports and exercise have saved my life. I was never morbidly obese, my physical health was not optimal and I had weighed 238 pounds at my heaviest, yet it was not a huge risk factor for me. What sports and exercise did for me was give me my mental health back and give my life direction,

What is this blog about?
First of all I'm going to start with what this blog isn't. This blog is NOT a fitness or nutrition blog, I am not going to talk about my training and may very have very limited discussion about my diet.
This blog is about documenting the changes in my mental health throughout my weight loss. That being said, I have not reached my goal yet. I still have about 12 pounds until I reach my goal as I write this. Some of the subjects I look forward to talking about are changes in my perspectives on vanity, social comparisons and judgement, and how others treat me.

My Life Story.
My whole life, I wanted to be lean and strong. I wanted to be muscular with bicep veins and a six pack. I wanted to be like the guys in the movies. I wanted to be an athlete... Instead I was chubby. All through elementary school my friends were all lean, and fast. We played sports and I was always being out run or getting deked out. I started playing goalie in soccer, which I was decent at, but I wanted to be the one shooting instead of just standing in net. I desperately wanted to play hockey, but my family couldn't afford it growing up. I eventually shied away from team sports to skateboard. All of highschool was spent at the skatepark. Once again, I was surrounded by lean, athletic looking people. I think a part of me felt that if I was around them and did what they did, that I would eventually end up like them.
So I did what they did. I skateboarded every day I could with them. I drank beer when they drank beer, I ate what they ate (lots of junk food and beer). These were the naturally thin types. I was not. I got fatter.
One thing I didn't realize for the longest time was how judgmental the skateboard scene was. We had a name for the gym nuts "Chongos". It was something we used to put a negative light on the people who put effort into the way they looked and concerned themselves with being strong. In our minds, they were douchebags.

For a long time, this was ingrained in my mind. If you train for aesthetics, you are a douche.

Enter the gym.
I fell in love. The feeling of accomplishment, the control over my own body. I bulked right up. I was religious. Group project at school? It can wait, it's gym time. Party with my friends? Only once a month. Social life? Fuck it. For 6 months I lived the gym. The one issue. I never got the hang of fat loss. I was strong, I put 200 pounds on my deadlift in that time. But I was still fat.
Grad Year life changed. I developed the YOLO mindset and didn't want to miss out on anything associated with the grad party life. I drank every weekend. I smoked. I gave up the gym.
One night at a party, a "friend" of mine told me "You're just always gonna be fat. It's just how you are"... That was one of the most devastating things anyone had ever told me. To this day, every time I lose another pound, I say a little  "Fuck you" in my head to this person.

First relationship.
After I graduated highschool I started seeing my first girlfriend. She was a lovely girl and I still have nothing bad to say about her to this day. I'm going to condense this part considerably as I could go on and on about this part of my life, but I'll save it for another day. The short version of what happened during this time. 1- I realized I was depressed. 2- I got fat. 3- I got dumped. 4- I developed a pack a day habit.

After my breakup, I managed to become a comfort eater, and a heavy weed smoker. I started having suicidal thoughts and spent most of my time in bed. I went to the seven eleven most nights and ate a myriad of processed junk foods.

I said earlier that my life was saved by sports and exercise. My life was probably saved by my therapist. She was amazing. She was the one who helped give me the push to get my life started. If it wasn't for her, I probably wouldn't have discovered how much I love physical activity. Thanks to this woman, I quit smoking, and started getting control of my health which lead to me getting control over my mind. Over the next year there would be ups and downs and I eventually I would decide to go back to school.

University.
I've always been bright. I did well in school and I could make sense of most concepts faster than most. Socially, I've been a little challenged. I still don't deal well with crowds and new people... great qualities for a bar tender to have. I made a few friends and spent my whole first year drinking way too much in order to compensate for the social awkwardness I felt. I got extra fat. Screw the freshman 15, I put on the freshman 30. I was 238 pounds before I decided to take control. Eventually I lost some weight but never really felt like I was in control until the beginning of this semester which is a year and a half after my heaviest weigh in.
Now that I've posted my whole life story, I feel like I can get into the interesting stuff.

The Interesting Stuff: Misconceptions.
Today I weigh in at 192 pounds. I'm not ripped, but for the first time in my life, I have the beginnings of ab definition. A few dimples that resemble abs. This is huge to me. For the first time in my life, I just want to be shirtless. I want to wear a speed-o at the beach. Basically, I'm confident...
That being said, It wasn't as ground breaking as I thought it would be. Growing up, I always thought, "If I can just get lean, then life will be so much better".
But why?
What is it that gives the expectation that something so superficial could make life better? I am still the same person. I still like the same things that I liked before. There was a little bit of a boost in confidence, but nothing too drastic. I haven't started meeting more women, I still feel shy and awkward around new people.
Nothing changed.

I actually had an unsettling realization. When I showed people my before and after picture from above, the most common response was "I'm so proud of you". I like to think I've accomplished a good number of things in my life. I get excited about it and when I tell people, they generally say "good for you" or "that's great" or some derivative of those comments. I don't know the last time I set a deadlift PR and had someone tell me that they were proud of me. I don't know the last time I scored multiple goals in a hockey game and had someone say they were proud of me. I have gotten A's on papers and haven't been told that someone was proud of me. I was told "that's awesome".
Why is this means for "proud"? Is it that I look closer to the body that society expects?
It feels cheap.

While I have worked my ass off (literally) to get to where I am, this isn't what I expected.