I have begun the next phase of "the next phase" (a phase within a phase, a prelude to phases yet to come) of my acting career: dieting. Since I last spoke about it in my blog in the bodies in space entry, yes I've been going to the gym with increased frequency, three to four times per week for the past month maybe? In the meantime though, beginning with when I was working on R&G Are Dead, my eating habits have progressively been getting worse. I would say they had been worse, got better when I started living with my girlfriend and got back into the habit of cooking at home and eating vegetables instead of burritos from Felipe's for multiple meals of the day, but at some point I started eating a lot more junk food. Specifically processed sugar, cookies and mountain dew and all those other kinds of shit, which I used to not really do so much. I mean sure I'd have a scone a week or something from a coffee shop, or the occasional sugary drink or snack but I found myself indulging all the time and not stopping myself. It had to do with the brownies my girlfriend made me for my birthday, which I ate most of cause that's maybe my favorite desert and then from there things went downhill.
Then, the other day, I weighed myself... "oh I've been going to the gym, maybe I lost a few pounds", but then let's just say I wasn't happy with the result. Mind you I don't have a good recent basis of comparison, and actually I think my weight is where it was the last time I took it like six months ago, but still, like many Americans stepping off the scale I committed myself to taking action... but will I succeed where so many routinely fail?
A little about my history, I was a heavy kid. It weighed upon me, growing up, especially in the second grade when it first became a subject of ridicule from a certain 2nd grader in my new school, it had it's first real impact on my self esteem. But I grew taller, and my weight stayed the same, that old story, and I did thin out somewhat, more or less to the state you see me in today with some fluctuation.
And the name of this post is the actor's journey (besides the reference to the song by The Band, that's what that is) and this is something professional actors deal with, it's part of the job to look a certain way. Now, I'm a character actor, my weight is much less relevant to casting people then in the case of someone who was more of a "leading man" type, but this is going to be a life long journey and I don't want my physical type to affect my potential success, I'd like to look... well, good. And then feel good. And do good work. And have a good career. And not get diabetes, which runs in my family.
As to the nuts and bolts of this process, I'm still figuring that out. My strategy is just to eat less. Today, before going to the gym which I will do after I press "publish", I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with my coffee, no added sugar or salt in any of the ingredients, so that's good, and I put it on one piece of bread folded in half instead of two. BOOM less calories. It's a start, onward from there.
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