So around November, my wife started looking into debt consolidation companies. She’d been handling our finances, and she could tell that we were overextending ourselves. When she came to me about it, I started adding up the numbers and realized she was right—we just didn’t have the cashflow to pay for all the bills we had each month.
If you’ve never used one of these places, the scenario is basically like this:
They work out a plan they think they can negotiate with your credit card companies based on what they’ve been able to get for other people before. They “consolidate” this into one easy, monthly payment.
The first month, they keep the entire payment for themselves. This pays for their bills and the month you’re late on your credit card payments gives them leverage with your credit card companies to get a lower monthly payment, lower interest rates, and waived late fees. Sounds great, if you don’t mind the hit on your credit rating—I’ve heard a lot of credit providers view debt consolidation the same way they view bankruptcy.
It’s really nothing you can’t do for yourself. I’ll post more about what I probably should have done instead sometime, but at the time we were so behind we felt like we had no choice.
There’s a million companies out there, and it’s not the kind of thing they have at the mall. We found one of them on the internet and set it up.
The name of the company is Pinnacle Financial Management Corp.
So first month comes and goes and we start getting letters from some of our cards (we had four) stating that they’ve accepted the terms of the offer. One card, though, never sent a letter. They sent letters saying things about how we needed to hurry and pay.
It didn’t seem to be a problem with the card provider—one of the other cards was from the same provider, and they’d accepted that offer. When we called, the provider told us they hadn’t heard from Pinnacle yet.
The month drags on, and still no payment on any of the cards. We start to worry, and we start making phone calls. My wife leaves messages on the voice mail of the guy who helped her set up the account, who was, apparently, pretty cool.
Days go by, and none of the calls are returned. At this point, we’re both worried. Flashing neon signs are blinking in my mind, and they all read “SCAM.” Next time we call, after we get the answering machine we click over to the operator. There’s a message saying they’re on holiday until the first of the year. We leave a message anyway. Sounds like a relief, but there’s still that nagging voice in my mind saying a week-long holiday is a great way for scammers to make a getaway.
Finally, on the 29th, we get a letter from one of the card providers stating that since our provider had failed to meet the outlined terms and we were being dropped from the program. This, combined with the other card that still hadn’t sent word they’d ever received the offer, put me over the top.
These guys might be on vacation, but somebody had to be home. I sent the kind of email I was sure would get a quick response from anybody who happened to be there, even if it was the janitor. It basically said I was concerned about the legitimacy of their company and that if I didn’t get my phone calls returned by the first (the day they were going to be back anyway) I would go on every internet financial forum I could find and post my experience with them, and that from there I would do whatever else was necessary to rectify the situation.
Did it get me a quick response?
Yup. At 6:45am Monday morning, two days after this blog went live, I got an answering machine message from some guy named Joseph saying that he’d got my email with my concerns and that he was going to drop me from the program. If I posted anything on the internet about my experiences with him, he’d get his lawyer to sue me for slander.
Yeah, you read that right. This guy’s way of reassuring a concerned customer was to cut him off at the knees.
My phone call back to him was an insane argument—the kind of argument you’d expect to have with your little brother—about whether my email was too mean for him to be able to continue to do business with me.
And this wasn’t just some poorly trained customer service rep. This guy assured me during the call that he was the owner of the company. The owner of Pinnacle Financial Management Corp. was going to cut me lose for fearing his company wasn't legit.
Once I finally calmed him down (yeah, you read that right) he explained to me the delays that happen in each month because of the ACH’s.
Now he was speaking my language. I understand completely about ACH’s—electronic debits—and how after they happen, there’s a seven day delay that the person who withdrew the funds isn’t allowed to consider them “collected.” Since there are two ACH’s—one from us to Pinnacle, and one from Pinnacle to the debt consolidation service—that’s a two week delay from when his company gets the money to when it posts at the providers.
The letter from the credit card company was a mistake on the credit card company’s part.
Now, I can safely say our banks have received their payments. The whole thing’s been worked out fine, and the road bump’s over.
At least, I hope it is. Because in the back of my mind, there’s still this little blinking sign plugged into the memory that my debt consolidation company’s owner sounds like a 20 year old kid in his garage.
But what the heck. I’m a 20 something paranoid kid, too. At least for another seven months. And if this guy’s getting his own company going—well, I hope that’s where I am in a couple of years. Power to him for being that far ahead of the game. I’m envious.
Of course, if he screws me, my offer still stands.
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Friday, January 07, 2005
Shouldn't Have Said Anything
Okay, you remember that emergency I was saying wasn't in the budget?
Well, this morning, after discussing various ways my wife and I could divert a couple of bucks from the budget to do something fun for our anniversary on Saturday, I headed for my car to go to work, only to discover the passenger side window had been smashed in. The contents of the car had been turned upside down.
What were the bad guys after? Did I have my much discussed and top-secret weight loss and debt reduction plans in the car? Were they a druggie, desperate for a fix, who had spotted money through the window? What were they after?
A remote for the gate.
It's the second time it's happened. At our apartment complex, you need a remote whether you're coming in or going out and while there's plenty of people to let the remoteless in during the early evening, by one or two in the morning waiting for someone could take a while. That frustration can drive people to other, less time-wasting alternatives, like smashing somebody's car window and taking their remote.
Somehow, causing over a hundred bucks damage to my car for a $15 remote seems sensible to people in the middle of the night.
I was frustrated, but not too worried. We'd just discussed ways of redirecting a few bucks to do something this weekend. Now we'd have to change our plans, but we already knew where to get the money.
Except that when we further researched, we discovered two things. First, glass was way more expensive than it had been when we'd bought it in April (Why? Did the war in Iraq cause a glass shortage? Or because people with broken windows are more desperate when it's raining?). Also, a $58 uncollected bill from last month was suddenly pulled from our bank account yesterday.
Yikes. It looked like the "anniversary savings" was gone before we'd even figured out how to save it. And that left us with just enough money for next week's gas.
So, how to handle it . . . Hit up my folks for some money? Get a payday loan? Ask my boss for a loan?
No. Spending money I didn't have is what got me into this mess in the first place.
So I'm choosing option D: None of the above.
I don't have the money, so I'm not fixing it right now. For the next week and half, I'll drive with plastic over my window. I'll keep a towel over the seat to fend off some of the heavy rain we're supposed to see.
That's just how it's going to be. I've decided on my priorities this year, and not having plastic and duct tape on the window of my car isn't on the list.
Well, this morning, after discussing various ways my wife and I could divert a couple of bucks from the budget to do something fun for our anniversary on Saturday, I headed for my car to go to work, only to discover the passenger side window had been smashed in. The contents of the car had been turned upside down.
What were the bad guys after? Did I have my much discussed and top-secret weight loss and debt reduction plans in the car? Were they a druggie, desperate for a fix, who had spotted money through the window? What were they after?
A remote for the gate.
It's the second time it's happened. At our apartment complex, you need a remote whether you're coming in or going out and while there's plenty of people to let the remoteless in during the early evening, by one or two in the morning waiting for someone could take a while. That frustration can drive people to other, less time-wasting alternatives, like smashing somebody's car window and taking their remote.
Somehow, causing over a hundred bucks damage to my car for a $15 remote seems sensible to people in the middle of the night.
I was frustrated, but not too worried. We'd just discussed ways of redirecting a few bucks to do something this weekend. Now we'd have to change our plans, but we already knew where to get the money.
Except that when we further researched, we discovered two things. First, glass was way more expensive than it had been when we'd bought it in April (Why? Did the war in Iraq cause a glass shortage? Or because people with broken windows are more desperate when it's raining?). Also, a $58 uncollected bill from last month was suddenly pulled from our bank account yesterday.
Yikes. It looked like the "anniversary savings" was gone before we'd even figured out how to save it. And that left us with just enough money for next week's gas.
So, how to handle it . . . Hit up my folks for some money? Get a payday loan? Ask my boss for a loan?
No. Spending money I didn't have is what got me into this mess in the first place.
So I'm choosing option D: None of the above.
I don't have the money, so I'm not fixing it right now. For the next week and half, I'll drive with plastic over my window. I'll keep a towel over the seat to fend off some of the heavy rain we're supposed to see.
That's just how it's going to be. I've decided on my priorities this year, and not having plastic and duct tape on the window of my car isn't on the list.
The Three Keys
There are three things you have to have before you can accomplish something:
Desire
You've never done anything in your life that you didn't want to do.
It's true.
Now keep in mind, I'm not saying you were excited about doing it, or that it was the thing you wanted to do most. You might have been motivated by fear of consequences (like getting fired) or by emotion (in that you didn't think through the consequences, but acted impulsively), but for some reason, good or bad, you wanted to do it when you did it.
I'm also not saying you wanted all the consequences. An abusive husband may not want his wife to leave him when he hits her, but at the time, he wants to hit her, for whatever reason his sick mind has dreamed up.
But at some point, you have to muster up enough excitement, anger, fear, logic, or insanity to want to do whatever you do. If you don't, you just don't do it.
Discipline
The magical thing about discipline is that discipline actually decreases the amount of desire you need to accomplish something.
An undisciplined person might need a lot of factors to enter the picture before they're willing to start making changes. Maybe it's creditors calling every day, maybe it's a doctor warning them about the health risks of their lifestyle, maybe it's something else.
Discipline is about a balance between your natural man instinct to get by with the minimum amount of effort and the inherent desire for greatness most of us possess--the desire to be the best we can be.
Discipline is a matter of overcoming those natural tendencies to, as the saying goes, put off what we want now for what we want most.
Knowledge
Of course, desire and discipline are worthless if you don't know how to do whatever it is you're striving for. So a little bit of learning may be necessary to get us where we want to go.
We live in an age, though, where we suffer from both information extremes. Sometimes we know absolutely nothing about things.
Other times, we suffer from information overload. One study will say a high protein, low carb diet is the way to go. Another study will say a low fat, low sodium diet is the way to go. Yet another study will say you only have to eliminate sugar.
Is it better to get out of debt, or to build monthly cashflow by leveraging? Is it better to do cardio or weightlifting?
Hopefully, this year I'll sort through a lot of that by experimentation and explanation. We'll see what medical science backs and what it doesn't, and we'll even see what works and what doesn't in the brutally honest laboratory of real life.
But the knowledge will only be part of it. The other two keys, desire and discipline, are just as vital to the process as knowing how to do it.
In my case, the weak link has always been discipline. There's no good time for exercise. Rolling out of bed to exercise in the morning is hard. Exercising after a full day's work is hard. I read a study that said the optimal time for working out is 4:00 in the afternoon. Who's got time to exercise at four in the afternoon?
Not me.
That's part of why I created this blog. It creates accountability. My measurements, weight, and (Coming Soon!) my debt are right there in the corner for everybody to see. The increased pressure increases my desire and motivates me to be better disciplined.
If you haven't done something yet, you have to figure out which of these things is stopping you. Resist the natural inclination to find an external obstacle. If you have one you've been blaming, think about which of these three keys you'd need to overcome that obstacle.
Do you need more knowledge, to know how other people got around it? Do you need more discipline, to divert resources from other parts of your life into overcoming that obstacle? Or do you need more desire, since your desire to cling to the obstacle are so great?
Desire
You've never done anything in your life that you didn't want to do.
It's true.
Now keep in mind, I'm not saying you were excited about doing it, or that it was the thing you wanted to do most. You might have been motivated by fear of consequences (like getting fired) or by emotion (in that you didn't think through the consequences, but acted impulsively), but for some reason, good or bad, you wanted to do it when you did it.
I'm also not saying you wanted all the consequences. An abusive husband may not want his wife to leave him when he hits her, but at the time, he wants to hit her, for whatever reason his sick mind has dreamed up.
But at some point, you have to muster up enough excitement, anger, fear, logic, or insanity to want to do whatever you do. If you don't, you just don't do it.
Discipline
The magical thing about discipline is that discipline actually decreases the amount of desire you need to accomplish something.
An undisciplined person might need a lot of factors to enter the picture before they're willing to start making changes. Maybe it's creditors calling every day, maybe it's a doctor warning them about the health risks of their lifestyle, maybe it's something else.
Discipline is about a balance between your natural man instinct to get by with the minimum amount of effort and the inherent desire for greatness most of us possess--the desire to be the best we can be.
Discipline is a matter of overcoming those natural tendencies to, as the saying goes, put off what we want now for what we want most.
Knowledge
Of course, desire and discipline are worthless if you don't know how to do whatever it is you're striving for. So a little bit of learning may be necessary to get us where we want to go.
We live in an age, though, where we suffer from both information extremes. Sometimes we know absolutely nothing about things.
Other times, we suffer from information overload. One study will say a high protein, low carb diet is the way to go. Another study will say a low fat, low sodium diet is the way to go. Yet another study will say you only have to eliminate sugar.
Is it better to get out of debt, or to build monthly cashflow by leveraging? Is it better to do cardio or weightlifting?
Hopefully, this year I'll sort through a lot of that by experimentation and explanation. We'll see what medical science backs and what it doesn't, and we'll even see what works and what doesn't in the brutally honest laboratory of real life.
But the knowledge will only be part of it. The other two keys, desire and discipline, are just as vital to the process as knowing how to do it.
In my case, the weak link has always been discipline. There's no good time for exercise. Rolling out of bed to exercise in the morning is hard. Exercising after a full day's work is hard. I read a study that said the optimal time for working out is 4:00 in the afternoon. Who's got time to exercise at four in the afternoon?
Not me.
That's part of why I created this blog. It creates accountability. My measurements, weight, and (Coming Soon!) my debt are right there in the corner for everybody to see. The increased pressure increases my desire and motivates me to be better disciplined.
If you haven't done something yet, you have to figure out which of these things is stopping you. Resist the natural inclination to find an external obstacle. If you have one you've been blaming, think about which of these three keys you'd need to overcome that obstacle.
Do you need more knowledge, to know how other people got around it? Do you need more discipline, to divert resources from other parts of your life into overcoming that obstacle? Or do you need more desire, since your desire to cling to the obstacle are so great?
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Speaking of Ads
I'm really excited about my newest sponsor, Tabasco.com (McIlhenny Company)
.
You may wonder what Tabasco has to do with a diet and finance blog.
The last time I succeeded in losing weight, I used Tabasco on practically everything. I had read somewhere that eating spicy foods can increase your metabolism, so I used to spice up all the bland stuff I was eating.
I know that to Tabasco purists this may sound like heresy, but as much as I like the original my favorites are the flavored kinds. The Green Pepper Tabasco has a fun texture and the Habanero Tabasco has a lot of kick, but enough fruit to keep it flavorful.
So go spice up your diet.
You may wonder what Tabasco has to do with a diet and finance blog.
The last time I succeeded in losing weight, I used Tabasco on practically everything. I had read somewhere that eating spicy foods can increase your metabolism, so I used to spice up all the bland stuff I was eating.
I know that to Tabasco purists this may sound like heresy, but as much as I like the original my favorites are the flavored kinds. The Green Pepper Tabasco has a fun texture and the Habanero Tabasco has a lot of kick, but enough fruit to keep it flavorful.
So go spice up your diet.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
Why Ads?
You’ve probably noticed this blog is plastered with ads. More so than other blogs you’ve probably glanced at.
One of the primary goals I have for this 365 day turnaround is to get out of debt. And when your debt represents more than half your yearly income, you can’t get out of debt in one year without taking drastic measures.
One of those drastic measures is getting a part-time job. At least until such time as the debt situation is resolved.
So I’m taking a risk. I’m making writing my part time job.
Rather than loading boxes at Wal-Mart, I’ve chosen to try to make money blogging.
Now if you know anything about blogs, you know that a blogger’s typical income compared to that of a Wal-Mart stocker is something like my current salary compared to that of oh, say, Bill Gates. “Wealthy as a blogger,” is not a phrase you hear bandied about a lot in Wall Street circles.
But sharing my experiences with you is far more satisfying to me than loading kitty litter onto shelves in the middle of the night. So I’m giving it a shot. This and a few other writing projects are my shot at that few extra bucks I’ll need. I’m going to give what I’ve got to making the information on this blog valuable to you, to make the other things I’m writing the best they can be.
Will I have to do the kitty litter thing before the year is out? Who knows. But if I do, you’ll hear about it.
In the meantime, I have ads here.
Because I really am an optimist.
One of the primary goals I have for this 365 day turnaround is to get out of debt. And when your debt represents more than half your yearly income, you can’t get out of debt in one year without taking drastic measures.
One of those drastic measures is getting a part-time job. At least until such time as the debt situation is resolved.
So I’m taking a risk. I’m making writing my part time job.
Rather than loading boxes at Wal-Mart, I’ve chosen to try to make money blogging.
Now if you know anything about blogs, you know that a blogger’s typical income compared to that of a Wal-Mart stocker is something like my current salary compared to that of oh, say, Bill Gates. “Wealthy as a blogger,” is not a phrase you hear bandied about a lot in Wall Street circles.
But sharing my experiences with you is far more satisfying to me than loading kitty litter onto shelves in the middle of the night. So I’m giving it a shot. This and a few other writing projects are my shot at that few extra bucks I’ll need. I’m going to give what I’ve got to making the information on this blog valuable to you, to make the other things I’m writing the best they can be.
Will I have to do the kitty litter thing before the year is out? Who knows. But if I do, you’ll hear about it.
In the meantime, I have ads here.
Because I really am an optimist.
Updated Tale
In my quest to find my true weight, I have finally settled on a scale. Worried about the inaccuracies of the various scales I encounter in my own home and those of the folks who allow me into their homes, I have used my highly placed and confidential connections to gain access to the "True Weight" scale in the department of Weights and Measures for San Bernardino county. My updated weight is at right. It will be updated once a week.
(Thanks, Dad.)
(Thanks, Dad.)
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Thanks
I want to thank a couple of people for linking to my Blog.
Becky, the PhotoNinja, posted about it here. Like she says, it was in large part her success this past year that inspired me to do something like this, and I thank her for her example and support.
It is perhaps because Froggie and I share a birthday that she and I so often find ourselves dealing with the same issues at the same time--after all, when you're in sync on both the western and eastern zodiacs, that means you're doubly sure to have the same horoscope every day, right? Right?
Thanks to both of you, and to those who've emailed me, for your support and for being so cool.
Oh, and welcome to everybody surfing in from Musings From The Doc. That guy's alright, too.
Becky, the PhotoNinja, posted about it here. Like she says, it was in large part her success this past year that inspired me to do something like this, and I thank her for her example and support.
It is perhaps because Froggie and I share a birthday that she and I so often find ourselves dealing with the same issues at the same time--after all, when you're in sync on both the western and eastern zodiacs, that means you're doubly sure to have the same horoscope every day, right? Right?
Thanks to both of you, and to those who've emailed me, for your support and for being so cool.
Oh, and welcome to everybody surfing in from Musings From The Doc. That guy's alright, too.
Number Crunching
Debt reduction and weight loss are both about numbers. It's math, really. And the equations are pretty much the same.
When calories burned are greater than calories eaten, you lose fat.
When the money you bring in is greater than the money you spend, you can pay down debt and build wealth
End of story.
It's amazingly simple.
Well, not really.
Because nowhere do those equations consider that there's this strip across my abs, right above my ribs, that feels like it's about to pop because of sit-ups I did yesterday morning.
Nowhere do they consider that I have to spend this month praying there's not one single emergency because it's not in the budget.
Yeah, on one level it's just math. But I've never had so much emotion tied up in a math equation.
Now just because the process ain't easy doesn't mean we can't use the formulas. If weight loss and financial freedom come down to two factors each, we should do everything in our power to take control of those factors.
Take the fitness equation. Usually when we think of weight loss, we talk about "diets." And diets work, in theory. Regardless of whether we did one tiny smidgeon of exercise, if we merely ate just a wee bit less than we burned, we could lose weight.
However, there comes a point where you hit a wall. You can't stop eating altogether. Despite what this diet or that fad will tell you, your body really does need fat, it really does need protein, and yes, it really does need carbs. You can't cut back on all calories completely or your body would start reacting in odd ways like, well, dying.
It's the other end of the equation where we have greater potential. There are billions of things you can do to burn more calories. Simple things like parking farther away from the store. I read somewhere that drinking ice water burns calories because your body has to heat all that chilly liquid up to 98.6 degrees. You can also:
1. Exercise. Duh.
2. Build muscle. Your body has to burn calories just to keep muscle on your body. That means you'll be burning more calories even when you're just sitting around.
3. Eat more often. Note that I didn't say eat more. Just eat more often.
4. Fidget. Every movement burns calories, so do some movement. If you're watching TV, knit or cross stitch, whatever floats your boat. I practice card tricks.
The list could go on, really, but that's another post.
The point is, once you simplify the insanely emotional factors involved in these things down to an equation, it brings some order to the emotional chaos.
Before I started thinking of money in terms of this equation, I thought saving money only meant cutting back. I had to find ways to live more cheaply. Believe me, I'm doing that--you'll hear about all the ways I'm doing it as the days go by. But even if I was able to completely eliminate all possible expenses--If I got my room and board free, if I got my food free, and if somebody filled my gas tank for me, I would still be limited in how much I could save. I'd be limited to my salary.
As with weight loss, it's the other side of this equation that has more potential. The amount by which I could potentially increase my income is far greater than the amount by which I could potentially reduce my expenses. In fact, in a perfect world, my potential for income would be infinite.
Of course, there's really small number in my Quicken register reminding me this isn't a perfect world.
But by realizing both weight loss and financial independence come down to two factors, you can save yourself the frustration of trying to solve either one with only half a solution.
Because that would be like riding a one-pedaled unicycle.
When calories burned are greater than calories eaten, you lose fat.
When the money you bring in is greater than the money you spend, you can pay down debt and build wealth
End of story.
It's amazingly simple.
Well, not really.
Because nowhere do those equations consider that there's this strip across my abs, right above my ribs, that feels like it's about to pop because of sit-ups I did yesterday morning.
Nowhere do they consider that I have to spend this month praying there's not one single emergency because it's not in the budget.
Yeah, on one level it's just math. But I've never had so much emotion tied up in a math equation.
Now just because the process ain't easy doesn't mean we can't use the formulas. If weight loss and financial freedom come down to two factors each, we should do everything in our power to take control of those factors.
Take the fitness equation. Usually when we think of weight loss, we talk about "diets." And diets work, in theory. Regardless of whether we did one tiny smidgeon of exercise, if we merely ate just a wee bit less than we burned, we could lose weight.
However, there comes a point where you hit a wall. You can't stop eating altogether. Despite what this diet or that fad will tell you, your body really does need fat, it really does need protein, and yes, it really does need carbs. You can't cut back on all calories completely or your body would start reacting in odd ways like, well, dying.
It's the other end of the equation where we have greater potential. There are billions of things you can do to burn more calories. Simple things like parking farther away from the store. I read somewhere that drinking ice water burns calories because your body has to heat all that chilly liquid up to 98.6 degrees. You can also:
1. Exercise. Duh.
2. Build muscle. Your body has to burn calories just to keep muscle on your body. That means you'll be burning more calories even when you're just sitting around.
3. Eat more often. Note that I didn't say eat more. Just eat more often.
4. Fidget. Every movement burns calories, so do some movement. If you're watching TV, knit or cross stitch, whatever floats your boat. I practice card tricks.
The list could go on, really, but that's another post.
The point is, once you simplify the insanely emotional factors involved in these things down to an equation, it brings some order to the emotional chaos.
Before I started thinking of money in terms of this equation, I thought saving money only meant cutting back. I had to find ways to live more cheaply. Believe me, I'm doing that--you'll hear about all the ways I'm doing it as the days go by. But even if I was able to completely eliminate all possible expenses--If I got my room and board free, if I got my food free, and if somebody filled my gas tank for me, I would still be limited in how much I could save. I'd be limited to my salary.
As with weight loss, it's the other side of this equation that has more potential. The amount by which I could potentially increase my income is far greater than the amount by which I could potentially reduce my expenses. In fact, in a perfect world, my potential for income would be infinite.
Of course, there's really small number in my Quicken register reminding me this isn't a perfect world.
But by realizing both weight loss and financial independence come down to two factors, you can save yourself the frustration of trying to solve either one with only half a solution.
Because that would be like riding a one-pedaled unicycle.
Monday, January 03, 2005
Before Pictures
I took a before picture today.
No, you can't see it.
Well, not yet anyway. For right now, it's just going to sit there, festering.
Before pictures are not meant to be shared. If you want to know how bad the situation is, check out the "Tale of the Tape."
Some of you may not know that there is an art to before and after pictures. When you see a "fitness contest" in a magazine featuring before and after pictures of people, you may not know those people are fitness models. Just like some people make a decent living by winning writing contests, some people make a decent living by entering fitness contests.
Most bodybuilders go through two phases in their training: a bulking phase and a cutting phase. During the bulking phase, they eat tons of calories, so they can gain weight. They want to gain muscle, but they know their body isn't that specific about where it packs the calories, so it gains a lot of fat as well. When they hit the peak of this phase, they snap a "Before shot."
From that day on, they cut back like mad, trying to trim that fat while keeping the muscle. Naturally, some muscle gets lost, too, but overall, they end up looking hot and winning the contest, while you busted your tail back home, thinking the contest was meant for "amateurs."
Some of the keys to taking a good before picture:
Load up on sodium for a few days before you take the picture. Also, drink a lot of water. The increase in sodium will increase water retention.
Look sad. Don't comb your hair.
Try to position your arms in such a way that they are partially obscured by your belly. This will hide your already-buff arms, making them look smaller, and make your belly seem even bigger.
While you don't want the "before" picture to look professional, try getting your professional photographer buddy to take the picture. He's probably got a lens with a slight "fish-eye" distortion, which will make you look even rounder.
To be honest, I didn't do any of these things. I may have looked sad and not combed my hair. But basically, I just stuck a digital camera on top a dresser, took off my shirt and set the timer.
Truly, though, I mean it about you not seeing it yet. "Before" pictures alone are just depressing.
It is now my job to start producing some pleasing "After" photos.
No, you can't see it.
Well, not yet anyway. For right now, it's just going to sit there, festering.
Before pictures are not meant to be shared. If you want to know how bad the situation is, check out the "Tale of the Tape."
Some of you may not know that there is an art to before and after pictures. When you see a "fitness contest" in a magazine featuring before and after pictures of people, you may not know those people are fitness models. Just like some people make a decent living by winning writing contests, some people make a decent living by entering fitness contests.
Most bodybuilders go through two phases in their training: a bulking phase and a cutting phase. During the bulking phase, they eat tons of calories, so they can gain weight. They want to gain muscle, but they know their body isn't that specific about where it packs the calories, so it gains a lot of fat as well. When they hit the peak of this phase, they snap a "Before shot."
From that day on, they cut back like mad, trying to trim that fat while keeping the muscle. Naturally, some muscle gets lost, too, but overall, they end up looking hot and winning the contest, while you busted your tail back home, thinking the contest was meant for "amateurs."
Some of the keys to taking a good before picture:
Load up on sodium for a few days before you take the picture. Also, drink a lot of water. The increase in sodium will increase water retention.
Look sad. Don't comb your hair.
Try to position your arms in such a way that they are partially obscured by your belly. This will hide your already-buff arms, making them look smaller, and make your belly seem even bigger.
While you don't want the "before" picture to look professional, try getting your professional photographer buddy to take the picture. He's probably got a lens with a slight "fish-eye" distortion, which will make you look even rounder.
To be honest, I didn't do any of these things. I may have looked sad and not combed my hair. But basically, I just stuck a digital camera on top a dresser, took off my shirt and set the timer.
Truly, though, I mean it about you not seeing it yet. "Before" pictures alone are just depressing.
It is now my job to start producing some pleasing "After" photos.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
My Lot In Life
So I guess the first question is, where am I starting from?
Money
Money’s a real personal issue, and what almost stopped me from doing this blog.
Weight, after all, isn’t really a secret. No matter how well your clothes fit, when you’re toting 60 extra pounds, everybody can see you’re overweight. But when you’re sweating whether that last check going out will hit the bank before that next check coming in, you can grit your teeth and try to look like you’re smiling and nobody will be the wiser.
Trumpeting your financial situation seems to go against something ingrained in us as Americans. If you’re making lots, admitting it seems like bragging. If you’re making little, admitting it seems like you’re either asking for sympathy or, well, embarrassing yourself.
And I’m still not going to start tossing exact figures around. Anybody who works a 9-to-5 for a salary knows the conflicts it can create in the workplace when co-workers start finding out each other’s salaries, and I’m hoping that this blog will get popular enough that at least one or two of them will find their way in here.
I will say that I've got close to $20,000 in debt, and that my debt represents more than half of what I make in a year. Even when I created a monthly budget for myself based on the absolute minimum necessities of life, I still ended up about $140 short in my monthly cashflow.
So how much I make doesn’t really matter so much as the fact that at the end of the month I’m about $140 short of where I need to be. The proverbial, “Too much month at the end of the money.”
Whatever salary you’re making, whatever salary I’m making, that’s probably a situation you can relate to.
Weight
I’ve seen that joke attributed to everybody from Steven Wright to John Mendoza.
Whoever said it, I feel you, brother.
Right now I’m on a collision course with 275 pounds. In fact, I may have already hit that and smashed through without noticing. My weight’s yo-yoed so much that if you watched a timelapse film of belly since I got married it would look like a pulsating egg-blob in a science fiction movie.
Okay, I’ll admit that imagery was sort of . . . not pretty.
But to one degree or another, I’ll bet you have some idea where I’m coming from here, too.
Money
Money’s a real personal issue, and what almost stopped me from doing this blog.
Weight, after all, isn’t really a secret. No matter how well your clothes fit, when you’re toting 60 extra pounds, everybody can see you’re overweight. But when you’re sweating whether that last check going out will hit the bank before that next check coming in, you can grit your teeth and try to look like you’re smiling and nobody will be the wiser.
Trumpeting your financial situation seems to go against something ingrained in us as Americans. If you’re making lots, admitting it seems like bragging. If you’re making little, admitting it seems like you’re either asking for sympathy or, well, embarrassing yourself.
And I’m still not going to start tossing exact figures around. Anybody who works a 9-to-5 for a salary knows the conflicts it can create in the workplace when co-workers start finding out each other’s salaries, and I’m hoping that this blog will get popular enough that at least one or two of them will find their way in here.
I will say that I've got close to $20,000 in debt, and that my debt represents more than half of what I make in a year. Even when I created a monthly budget for myself based on the absolute minimum necessities of life, I still ended up about $140 short in my monthly cashflow.
So how much I make doesn’t really matter so much as the fact that at the end of the month I’m about $140 short of where I need to be. The proverbial, “Too much month at the end of the money.”
Whatever salary you’re making, whatever salary I’m making, that’s probably a situation you can relate to.
Weight
I’m in shape. Round is a shape.
I’ve seen that joke attributed to everybody from Steven Wright to John Mendoza.
Whoever said it, I feel you, brother.
Right now I’m on a collision course with 275 pounds. In fact, I may have already hit that and smashed through without noticing. My weight’s yo-yoed so much that if you watched a timelapse film of belly since I got married it would look like a pulsating egg-blob in a science fiction movie.
Okay, I’ll admit that imagery was sort of . . . not pretty.
But to one degree or another, I’ll bet you have some idea where I’m coming from here, too.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)