Ah, pride. Eneder of empires, ravager of relationships, and enabler of stupid people keeping on doing stupid things - case in point, me. Feeling slighted at first, shortly thereafter I'd decide to actually prove them how wrong they were for not taking me back again. And the thing about me and my weight back then - and truly, until the very early '00s was that, though a part of me knew that I had put on weight, an even greater part of me didn't really feel bad about myself. Maybe I was in denial, or maybe I just really didn't care either way. But the fact of the matter was I either lost weight - and not a lot, but not that little also, or there would be no return to the air force for me. And bless me, the sort of dedication and discipline I drummed up to reach that goal, was awe-inspiring. I'd see the same fortitude in other similar situations in the future, and it's something I hope that I can somehow muster again nowadays. I think I need now more than I ever did, at least I feel that now there's more at stake than ever.
So I devised a two-pronged plan : I'd have to cut off all the crap I ate a lot of at the time - mainly junk food - and all the sodas and fizzy drinks I drank, plus the large assortment of sweets and cakes and suchlike I was prone to devour. And on top of that, I forced myself to go through a daily physical regimen that involved running - though I never knew exactly how much I'd run every day, I'd just do laps in a nearby stadium until I felt tired - and also swimming in the swimming pool. Now, I've always been a very bad swimmer, adn eventhough I ahd swimming classes in my youth, it was never something I actually enjoyed doing, so naturally, I always went half-hearted. BUt swimming, I know, is a really good exercise, and what with me having a swimming pool a few minutes away from home, I'd go every day, usually after running. The swimming bit, I think, I must have done all of it by myself, but when it came to the running part, and to help out with keeping me motivated, I sometimes had Dora running with me, but more often I had either S. or N. or both by my side and that always made it something much easier to do.
I'm not sure how long it took me to lose all that extra weight - there's a part of me that wants to say it was under a monthe, but it probably was a bit longer. There was a target weight I had to reach in order to get their OK, and I weighed myself every single day to see how I was doing. The day I finally hit that target, man, I pigged out a little and ate like half a roasted chicken and also some McDonald's. I went for a run that night to burn off some of that intake, and then on the following morning I also went for a run, and just after that I went back to the recruitment center, where - and though they said I was a tiny smidge off the mark, they gave me the go ahead. My military career was about to have a second chance. Or was it?
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