James Pearl Thinks Blogging is Dead

Not to get all "old man screams at cloud", but I think there's a simpler reason than political correctness for why most people wouldn't say anything: they don't notice. But not because losing 26 lbs is not noticeable (it is - I mean, shit, you basically lost almost 12% of @Norm !) I think most people don't notice because everything in our lives reinforces the notion that we should act like we're the center of the universe, so when someone else has something going on we either won't notice at all because it's not about us or we'll spin it around to make it about us - for example, "Wow you lost a lot of weight ... I wish I had the time to focus on fitness like that." Everything gets filtered through that lens if the signal even gets through at all. And to be fair, I don't even want to say that's a difference today vs. the past. I just think that it's more obvious today because the way most people "connect" is via media where we don't have to experience another person's frame of reference in any concrete way. And I think that possibly spills over to a greater degree today when we actually interact with other people - we're less accustomed to direct social interaction than we are to indirect social interaction, so we don't even look for the clues that would elicit the social obligation to compliment the positive changes we should perceive in someone else.
 
1speed said:
you basically lost almost 12% of @Norm !)
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I see what you did there.

about 1 std deviation?

1speed said:
most people "connect" is via media
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This is interesting, cause now people "announce" they've lost weight which "permits" (?) everyone to congrats them,
and say they look great.

-----

Nice job @Norm - you're looking lean and healthy.
 
@Norm I noticed you were eating really well when we went to lunches - chose not to say anything because it might imply - before you ate worse? differently? I am obsessed with other people's food? As you know I am using a CGM to get better at my meals from a Glucose perspective. You looked happy and strong on a bike - and to me that is where I like to see my friends. What that means for you in terms of lbs isn't my place to say but I am happy that you are happy with your progress!
 
Had to remove inadvertent photobomber dude. Couldn't help myself.

I'm in the camp of not commenting on anyone's physical appearance whether it is good or bad.
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Being in the fellow former fatty category, most people don't say shit. Then there's a few that won't recognize you. I agree that most are probably either self absorbed and didn't notice, or don't know if something is wrong or how it might come across. Either way screw them, it's about staying healthy and being happy with yourself. It is nice for others to notice. Good work man!
 
As a former fat guy I will weigh in here (man that was too easy).

If I go back to when I was about 300lbs, many moons ago, no one EVER told me - hey man youre getting fat you should lay off the pasta, beer and cookies. Back then my motivation for me and the wife was to not be the fat dad and mom when we wanted to have kids (both my parents were very overweight when I was growing up so go imagine the ridicule I got...). It wasnt until I took a hard look at myself one day and also was borderline diabetic and high blood pressure at 28 years old that I had to do something.

Anyway, my first rounds of weight loss back then were significant enough that friends and family immediately noticed and said something. But I always wondered why no one ever told me Man you are so Fat. even 20+ years ago I guess that's not politically correct but I sure wish someone told me with some tough love.

Fast forward to around 2012-ish I had come off 3-4 years of stressful work and travel and could not fit into any of my clothes again, I bought myself a Fluid2 trainer and hit the youtube videos in the basement and from Dec - April that season dropped 25+ lbs. Back then I didnt ride outdoors in the winter or cold so when I showed up at the bike shop for a repair and tune up the guys were like Holy F*ck how much weight did you lose. 10 years later, and i can say the last 5-ish years I have been lucky to be able to keep riding and improving while maintaining my weight and general fitness. I get some random comments here and there like during a long overdue lunch meet up with some former colleague/friends who tell me - dude eat a sandwich but thats the extend of it.

To @Norm point tho, to me it comes down to the latest culturally acceptable behaviors, and who you socialize with and what experiences they have. IMHO anything to do with mentioning to people about how they look, how they dress etc... is a danger zone these days for being at risk of offending someone. I cant imagine someone at work who i may only see occasionally ever commenting about my weight. It seems to be more acceptable among people you hang with or ride with more frequently, as is the case when I join some group rides and maybe I have not seen a few of the folks in a while they say something like - man ian youre looking lean these days.

So my conclusion is that really I maintain my fitness and health for ME and my family, and while getting the unsolicited feedback is a HUGE booster, I am less interested in that anymore.

@Norm - glad you are happy with the progress and keep up the good work.
 
I woke up 2 pounds lighter today than Sunday. Elmo Shrug.

Lots of good commentary in the last few days, and much of it touches on different truths across the spectrum. To be clear, I'm not losing weight in an effort to fish for compliments. As anyone who's lost a lot of weight knows, while it can be a gateway to feeling better and people commenting on it, it can also be an exercise in answering the question, "Man, how did you get so fat?" The primary reason to lose weight is to be healthier, and to enjoy my hobby more. If I were racing, or had any inclination to do so, that would be another reason. But it's not. Health & hobby - these are good reasons.

I think @1speed really nails a lot of it. People are very focused on themselves, which of course includes everyone. It's not fair to say that I'm not in that boat. I mean this is a blog I'm writing about me. At least today. Maybe tomorrow I'll discuss the Orange Project. But today, all eyes on me, GD it.

@Santapez reminds me of a conversation D and I had recently about [unnamed person] who I thought lost weight, but D did not agree. Last night, I brought this up with the guys on the ride and they had the EXACT same conversation. 2 of us thought [unnamed person] lost a decent amount of weight. 2 of us did not. Strange that we can all be so off with our assessment. It is what it is. There's always next year.

@2Julianas - I usually use post-bike lunch to cheat. I guess I was just being good. You're always allowed to say something!

I will relate a story from my 20s. Like @iman29 I was a fat fuck. You old timers know the biggest number, 289 at one point. I worked in an office in Piscataway and one of the guys there was super friendly but very open with what he said. He flat out asked me why I wasn't doing something to lose weight. This is in the category of people clearly saying something. I remember this still today. I think there was obviously an aspect of me that knew I was a fat bastard. I mean, ok, I knew I wasn't thin. But how far along that spectrum was I? I mean, you know you're not skinny.

So in a sense, he was telling me something I already knew. I think this is maybe why people don't say something. Knowing the guy - his name may have been Frank - he genuinely wanted me to be healthier. I know this now and I knew it then. He was being a friend. Did I want to hear this? Not really. Did it make a difference? Maybe. It was around that time I bought a road bike. Maybe not that day, or that week, or that month. But it was in that ballpark. And given that this is like 25 years later, it obviously left a memory in there. So maybe it had something to do with the start of my biking, and why we're all here and this site and team is what it is.

So in a sense, you can thank Frank from Piscataway in part for making MTBNJ what it is today. Elmo Shrug, part 2.
 
Fat guys always save all the shirts they used to wear, hoping that 1 day they'll be able to fit into them again.

As of this morning, I've lost exactly 30 pounds. My calorie tracking app (Lose It) tells me this is the equivalent of 3 watermelons. No matter which way you slice it, that's a lot less watermelon to drag up the hills. Or the steps. I'm not aggressively pushing to lose more weight. But it's slowly creeping down which I'm pretty ok with. I have no idea where I'll stop. As you can see in the other thread, holding serve is the harder part of that equation. I would love to get to 180. Sitting at 192.x the past few days. But whatever, not worried about that. A roadmap for another day.

But that's not why I'm here today. I'm here to say that I now have a whole new wardrobe because I saved all those old shirts. I even have a bunch of shirts I got in the last 2 years that were kind of a bit snug, or more than a bit snug. They all fit me now, which is pretty awesome. This is 4 months to the day I started this, so it's been a pretty big change in my wardrobe. The stuff I was wearing up to June 1 is too big now. It's a good thing.

When I went to Halter's the other day, Jay gave me 2 shirts. I wore 1 of them this week and we were on a call with a newer client (yeah, so no, I don't dress up for client calls) and we had the camera on. I was moving my standing desk up (or down, I forget) and the guy on the Zoom call remarked that I must be a runner. Maybe it's the camera making me look thinner than I am, but I was pretty surprised to hear that. Anyway, I corrected him on the running versus biking thing. But yeah, you know, kind of a nice step.

This has all had a pretty strong positive effect on my riding, and my desire to ride. While it's raining right now, we have some solid plans in the next week+ and I hope to round out the year with some good rides. I hit Sourlands with Kirt on Friday and this was 1 of the better rides I have done in a while. Place is a lot of fun and infinitely better to do with a friend who knows it. Trailforks tells me I had not been there since 2016, when I can tell you I had a miserable time.

Next weekend is our last Vermont trip of the year, and we have 4-5 spots picked out that we haven't ridden in 2022 yet. So it's shaping up to be an awesome long anniversary weekend. I don't post as much about what I have going on. But there's always something happening. Things moving on the JORBA front, work happening at CR, the MTBNJ team is probably as strong as ever, and the NICA season just kicked off today.

Hope to see some of y'all at the CR group ride in a few weeks. Also, this goofy mf'er turned 2 yesterday:

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Norm said:
Fat guys always save all the shirts they used to wear, hoping that 1 day they'll be able to fit into them again.

As of this morning, I've lost exactly 30 pounds. My calorie tracking app (Lose It) tells me this is the equivalent of 3 watermelons. No matter which way you slice it, that's a lot less watermelon to drag up the hills. Or the steps. I'm not aggressively pushing to lose more weight. But it's slowly creeping down which I'm pretty ok with. I have no idea where I'll stop. As you can see in the other thread, holding serve is the harder part of that equation. I would love to get to 180. Sitting at 192.x the past few days. But whatever, not worried about that. A roadmap for another day.

But that's not why I'm here today. I'm here to say that I now have a whole new wardrobe because I saved all those old shirts. I even have a bunch of shirts I got in the last 2 years that were kind of a bit snug, or more than a bit snug. They all fit me now, which is pretty awesome. This is 4 months to the day I started this, so it's been a pretty big change in my wardrobe. The stuff I was wearing up to June 1 is too big now. It's a good thing.

When I went to Halter's the other day, Jay gave me 2 shirts. I wore 1 of them this week and we were on a call with a newer client (yeah, so no, I don't dress up for client calls) and we had the camera on. I was moving my standing desk up (or down, I forget) and the guy on the Zoom call remarked that I must be a runner. Maybe it's the camera making me look thinner than I am, but I was pretty surprised to hear that. Anyway, I corrected him on the running versus biking thing. But yeah, you know, kind of a nice step.

This has all had a pretty strong positive effect on my riding, and my desire to ride. While it's raining right now, we have some solid plans in the next week+ and I hope to round out the year with some good rides. I hit Sourlands with Kirt on Friday and this was 1 of the better rides I have done in a while. Place is a lot of fun and infinitely better to do with a friend who knows it. Trailforks tells me I had not been there since 2016, when I can tell you I had a miserable time.

Next weekend is our last Vermont trip of the year, and we have 4-5 spots picked out that we haven't ridden in 2022 yet. So it's shaping up to be an awesome long anniversary weekend. I don't post as much about what I have going on. But there's always something happening. Things moving on the JORBA front, work happening at CR, the MTBNJ team is probably as strong as ever, and the NICA season just kicked off today.

Hope to see some of y'all at the CR group ride in a few weeks. Also, this goofy mf'er turned 2 yesterday:

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30lbs in 4 months is no joke congrats.

Can confirm fat guys save stuff like you said.

I also have the largest collection of bike event T-shirts known to man according to my wife but even tho some are XL or XXL I earned those things and hate to get rid of them 🤪

Extra like for dog and happy Bday Bear.
 
Norm said:
Fat guys always save all the shirts they used to wear, hoping that 1 day they'll be able to fit into them again.
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I did the opposite. I have a box of clothes in the attic that I labeled "Jim's fat clothes." I'm hoping to never fit in them again.

Congrats on the weight loss and the increased desire to ride bikes!
 
How ironic
Truth be told I am a clothing hoarder. Today I did the purge of probably 30 years worth of clothing.
Filled 2 contractor bags. Put my blinders on and loaded up. Almost all the old race t shirts and on and on. It felt good. I had stack of jeans with 34 waist lol like I'd see that again.
 
mattybfat said:
How ironic
Truth be told I am a clothing hoarder. Today I did the purge of probably 30 years worth of clothing.
Filled 2 contractor bags. Put my blinders on and loaded up. Almost all the old race t shirts and on and on. It felt good. I had stack of jeans with 34 waist lol like I'd see that again.
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I still have size 38 jeans in the drawer next to the 34s that are borderline too big.
 
I'm a big believer of saving your "skinny" clothes and tossing the "fat" clothes. It's like not having snacks readily available in the house.
 
Norm said:
What do you have against snacks? Are you some sort of communist? @MissJR what sort of poison have you been feeding him?
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Nothing. In fact some of my best friends are snacks!

Look, somehow I ended up with that full bag of walnuts from Kingdom. 3lbs. It's nearly empty. And that's fucking Walnuts. Anything that actually tastes good I just put in my mouth.
 
mattybfat said:
How ironic
Truth be told I am a clothing hoarder. Today I did the purge of probably 30 years worth of clothing.
Filled 2 contractor bags. Put my blinders on and loaded up. Almost all the old race t shirts and on and on. It felt good. I had stack of jeans with 34 waist lol like I'd see that again.
Click to expand...
#metoo.

I have so many cycling event shirts probably 75% of them are too big but I hate to dump them. I almost wish I got some participation medals instead at least those take up less space hanging in the garage.
 
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