The Diet

Well im back on the "Velocity Diet." A friend turned me onto it last year and i gotta say... It works. It sucks, but it works. In a nutshell it involves 5 protien shakes per day along with fish oil 4 times a day and some other supplements. You must be thinking "how can you eat if you are drinking 5 protien shakes a day? Well the answer is, you dont. You only eat one solid meal per week. This meal is not a "cheat" meal, it is a healthy solid meal usually consisting of a chicken breast, healthy vegetable and some fruit for desert. You do that for four weeks and then transition for two weeks with one healthy solid meal per day. This is a challenge but it does a few things for me personally. First, and foremost, it breaks the habit of eating junk all the time. Second, by the end you end up being much more conscious about the food that you do eat. And last, for me, it gives me something to do for six weeks to take my mind off where I am, Iraq. I can focus on something other than the 120 degree heat for a little while. But this diet, along with going to the gym EVERY DAY, works very well. when i did it last time, i lost about 20 pounds in four weeks and put on quite a bit of muscle. I am relatively skinny as it is so i use this as a way to tone up. Currently I am 6'3" 187 so im not looking to lose weight so the gym is very important so i dont end up looking like some coked out rock star. As i write this I am on the fourth day. I wanted to wait to have my weekly meal but due to circumstances outside my control I ended up having my meal last night. The hardest thing about this diet for me is the fact that i am at work all the time and constantly riding a firetruck with two other guys who are not on this diet so when they want to go to the chow hall I have to go with them. I usually just sit in the truck because I dont trust myself to go inside and watch them eat without taking a few bites. Ill keep you posted on how it turns out but rest assured with all the money i spent on protien and other supplements (my room looks like a GNC outlet) i will be sticking with it.

My new lease

Now i know what your thinking. Your thinking "wow, did he just buy a new car or maybe a house?" Well ladies, gentlemen and any other random person who stumbles upon this blog I am here to tell you that my car is paid off and I don't have a house. The lease that i am referring to is my new lease on life. There was a time or two in my life where i didn't expect to live past 30 and now i sit here excited about the future. When I was younger I was like many other teenagers. I drank, experimented with drugs and drove too fast. However, I liked to do all of these to extremes. I was addicted to taking high doses of drugs like LSD, XTC and Cocaine. One of my favorite past times was taking 6 or 7 hits of real strong acid, snorting a few grams of coke and going for a drive. I lived my life with no concern for anyone but myself. I will discuss the extent of this further in a later blog. What I am talking about right now is my life after all this. So to make a long story short, I was majorly fucked up for a long time but managed to pull myself out of it. I had help from many people in my life that are very close to me. But to look at my life right now the average person would have no idea of the way i used to be. I have worked very hard at putting that life behind me and the question now is... How do i keep myself from fucking it all up?

I have found myself in a great position to get my life started. I am overseas and my current job allows me to save just about every dime that i make. I only have 1 bill, all my old loans and outstanding debts are paid off and I have no wife or kids to support. However, I don't quite feel like I am far enough away from my past to trust myself. It would be so easy to fall right back into it. It is my hope that this "awareness" will keep me on the straight and narrow. I guess what I'm saying is that i would like to forget about the person i was and just move on but the fact of the matter is that it is "that person" that makes me want to be the person that I am striving to be today.

This is the first blog that I have ever written and i feel like i owe it to the reader to be intimate. I honestly think that i will be OK. I have come a long way and I am forever in debt to the great people that have always had faith in me and offered help when i wouldn't ask for it. I promise that future posts wont be as somber. This is just how i was feeling at the moment. This is just one of the many scenes from my head.

-Lando