For my last entry in the “Jake Gets Jacked” series, I’ll be doing my best Usher impression as I make some unfortunate confessions.
About a week or so ago, I stopped working out and exercising. I stopped eating a diet high in protein and carbohydrates and stopped counting calories. I reverted to my old sedentary lifestyle full of light activity and lighter salads.
And then I abruptly lost all 13 of the pounds that I had put on during the last two months.
Stepping on the scale for the last time was devastating. I knew that the number I would see would be smaller than I’d have liked — I had given up early, after all. But I would never have imagined ALL of the hard work I had put in could be erased in a short week and a half.
The project might have ended on more depressing terms than I would have hoped, but was it all for naught? What was learned when it’s like nothing ever happened in the first place?
An awful lot, actually. This experience has been one of the most enlightening looks I’ve had into what it feels like to undergo some kind of body transformation. The changes my body went through weren’t super drastic, but they were enough to get the attention of my peers and make me feel better about my image.
Working alongside Eli, Maghan and Jessica has shown me just how big of a business nutrition and fitness has become in America. For just about any question you could have about diet or nutrition, there are plenty of people who specialize in the subject and have the answers — even at Ohio University.
But the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that doing something like this takes a tremendous amount of persistence, determination and effort. Eating 4,000 calories a day isn’t really something you can half-ass; you either do it or you don’t, and that’s that.
Even if I had given it my all throughout the last bit of the trial, I doubt that I would have come much closer to meeting my goal. As if trying to gain 30 pounds in two months wasn’t ambitious enough, the demands of student life make any kind of weight training a hassle.
These are all obvious points. These are things that, had you given yourself the moment to think about the nature of what I’m doing, you probably could have concluded on your own.
But they’re things that you don’t truly realize the weight of — ha, pun intended — until you’ve gone through the process. It’s one thing to understand that it sucks when things don’t work out — TWO PUNS IN TWO SENTENCES — but it’s another when you remember that feeling of every muscle being on fire and knowing that it was for nothing.
To wrap this column up once and for all: I’m not bitter about how things ended. Doing this was kind of a ton of fun and I greatly appreciate the hard work of everybody who helped out.
Lastly, thanks to those who kept up with me here. I’m sure you all can catch me around a set of stairs or two, as I’ll now go back to impersonating a handrail.
jd202409@ohiou.edu
