MopeilityWOD

Edit: I’m getting hits from teamliquid.net, does anyone know why?

Today I felt great benching. I hit up my medial scapular border with a lacrosse ball pre-workout so my shoulder extension and internal rotation were in pretty good shape. I warmed up with 135 –> 185 –> 220 –> 245, and 245 felt ez enough that I figured that this would be the day that I benched 270lbs x 3 for the first time in a while. I completed 265 x 3 a few weeks ago, but since then have been stagnant and have either barely managed 255lbs or failed 260lbs. Today I took down 270lbs x 2, which is leaps and bounds better than I have been doing in the past few bench sessions. I asked a trainer at the gym for a spot for this set, and it took me a solid 4-5 seconds to grind out the second rep. He was unimpressed. Part of me hoped that he didn’t think I was asking for a spot because I thought he would be impressed with the dickhead Asian “benching a lot for his bodyweight.”

He went back to training his client, and I dropped down to my back-off set at 260, figuring that if worse came to worst, I could just terminate the set once it felt like I was going to failure. A 14 year old girl was waiting on her mom to finish her workout, texting on her phone – this will have relevance at the end of the story.

I took 260 out of the rack, benched it for two reps, the second was slow but I didn’t think I stalled too hard, so I took a breath and took the bar back down for my third. I got it off my chest, took it to the sticking point, but instead of grinding through, it stopped, and began to come back down. I didn’t panic – having failed many, many reps before, I thought I was adept at dumping weights and looking like a dickhead.

Not today.

I tilted the bar, but the well-made competition-style bench was too wide, and I couldn’t tilt my torso or drop my shoulder enough to dump one side of the bar. I dipped left, then right, and all I got was the plates on one side to slide a little. The bar was crushing my diaphragm. If it had cantilevered towards my neck, I wouldn’t be typing this. I couldn’t breathe and was basically suffocating. The trainer saw me about fifteen to twenty seconds later and saved me from what should have been my death. I said thanks and began to unload the bar.

“What do you want on here?” he asked.

“I’m done,” I said, and he grinned in response, because he thought I was an idiot. Justifiably so. “Good idea, right?”

“Right.”

The 14 year old girl was standing 20 feet away while all this happened, and she didn’t move from her spot. This is not a criticism of her. She – rightfully – didn’t give a fuck if I was going to die or not.

Today’s MopeWOD: come close to your sweet release from this mortal coil. Live with the shame of having someone save you from your self-imposed doom.

* * *

Krutzed writes:

i def agree with the tragic family shit and people just hiding there feels. w/e. ive been thru some tough shit BRB best friend shooting himself in front of whole platoon and i BRB shitty deployments with mutitlated/ dead people/marines. but honestly who the fuck am i? some ass that went thru for like a year of my life what a third world kid grew up in and will die in. im not special that’s why literally i don’t talk about it. not to my wife or the few people I see or am forced to see (with the exception of drunkin nights w buddies that went thru it AND mope WOD).

that’s why fat people who think they are entitled make me fucking sick. or just most people in general make me sick. who the fuck do you think you are? your nothing. your not special and your life means absolutely nothing. Then I go off on a rant and remind myself that I’m acting like Walter off of big Lebowski.

well said.

emancipatedfreak writes:

blogging about suicide and killing cashiers and harpooning fat people. If you have your finger in a dam, are you brave enough to take it out???

I am not going to keep my finger in this clenching butt hole forever.

beonick writes:

Brent i swear if you stop blogging i will find you and mob your right vastus medialis so hard that i’ll put you in a wheelchair for 10 months. That’s the precise amount of time where you hope and even look forward to recupperating. but when the last week comes around you’ve no desire to start all of the pain and torment of lifting all over again. You will live out the rest of your days as a fucking cripple eating 600g of refined carbs and watching Yu Yu Hakusho until you die, sad and alone at the age of 34.

Check your blogging privilege.

Dub or sub? Subbed Yu Yu Hakusho would be fucking badass.

shido5everalone writes:

Everyone tells me that I should be happy and frankly it gets fucking annoying. Its not like I can turn on some kind of happy switch and be happy. The only person who hasn’t told me to be happy is the girl I like and shes now going out with her ex boyfriend.

Fill your life with emptiness. Like a powerlifting “career.”

21s4gunz writes:

How do you feel about the fact that there is another Olympic-weightlifting Asian who is named Brent, except he qualified for Nationals in his first year of lifting and cleaned 300 lbs yesterday?

By the time chad Vaughn was 26, he’d already been to the Olympics. I’m 27 and I write for a floundering blog with unfulfilled potential.

One last thought on Ragen, from her post today:

My fat body is the constant companion that helps me do every single thing that I do every second of every day and it deserves respect and admiration.

If you are incapable of appreciating my body and treating it with respect and admiration that is your deficiency not mine; work on it or not, but I do not care. Nor am I interested in hearing your thoughts on the matter so, if you want to be around me, you are 100% responsible for doing whatever it takes to keep those thoughts to yourself. If you are incapable of doing that I will stop spending time with you – I spend my time with people who can treat me appropriately.

I will wield my beautiful fat body like a weapon. I will love it, I will care for it, I will move it, I will show it in public, I will viciously defend my body against anyone who seeks to classify it as anything but amazing. You’ve been warned – back the fuck off.

Knowing that she wouldn’t approve my comment, I went ahead and asked her a question that, in normal humans, would create a need for at least a moment’s reflection:

Dear Ragen,

This is not fat acceptance. It is one thing to not want to be ridiculed and criticized. You are demanding to be put on a pedestal. Please check your privilege.

Sincerely,
A loyal fan.

Honestly? Demanding respect and admiration? For dancing in your living room for 30 minutes a day? For bullshit pilates poses that don’t require much more than a functioning brain stem? Not entitled at all. Fat acceptance has nothing to do with acceptance and everything to do with entitlement. “I’m entitled to be respected, I’m entitled to be adored.”

Well this is America, goddamn it. The only thing you’re entitled to is marrying someone of the same sex and then shooting yourself in the fucking face – with your very own gun – for the life you’ve wasted pursuing some illusion of happiness, whether that’s in a meaningless job, a family that’s falling apart, or lifting jelly dicked weights at rinky dink meets where there are only two people in your weight class.

* * *

So I was at Starbucks the other day, and I ordered my usual bullshit iced coffee with hazelnut sweetener and a splash of breve, and when the barista brought my drink out, she said, “Have a nice day.”

“Have a nice day.”

The last time I had a nice day was before I lifted. I was wearing a black JROTC t-shirt inside out, because even in high school I was ashamed to be a part of that program. I had also recently purchased running shorts from Target, not aware that running shorts are notoriously small, and I felt self-conscious running in them in my neighborhood. I completed what couldn’t have been more than a 2 mile run, the weather was hot and humid (for Texas), and I felt like my abs were finally cumming through. It was early evening and the weather was great. Then I did some bullshit stretching routine that I had completely made up, ate a Korean stew with less than 20g protein per serving, and played StarCraft until 6am with my friends over a 56.6k modem.

Every day since then has been one missed rep after another.

We are struck by reminders of how much we hate our lives on a regular basis.

I check-out at a grocery store, with the same eggs, spinach, onion, butter, and whatever beef is on sale that day that I buy twice weekly. “How’s your day been?” the cashier asks me.

People have no idea how triggering questions like these are. My day’s been horrible. I’m spending hundreds of dollars a month (on food) – I am still NO CLOSER to completing my mission (of benching 300lbs). I cleaned 300lbs and 305lbs as if they were warm-ups and still missed the jerk. I have to mob 30 minutes every day before I can even do a back squat to depth. That’s how my day’s been.

“Paper or plastic?” the cashier says.

“Check your serotonin privilege,” I said.

People don’t realize the ubiquity of serotonin privilege. The assumption is that everyone, under the surface, is capable of being happy. This quite frankly isn’t true. Reminding them of this fact shames serotonin-inhibited people and only further alienates them from serotonin-privileged society. It’s cruel to say “have a nice day” when you never have nice days.

Today’s MopeWOD: spread awareness of serotonin privilege. If someone tells you “have fun,” you tell them to fuck off.

* * *

There’s 106 comments on yesterday’s post and I am not going to bother going back to respond to them for a Q&A. Glad that most of you guys liked it. I’m not surprised that some of you didn’t – this blog is a fucking prison right? When is Berenstein going to talk about something interesting, like swollen meat rods and how much of a boner peri-scapular soft-tissue release gives him?

I’m fucking over this website, can’t wait for the subscription to run out.

Some of you may be aware of Ragen Chastain of Dances With Fat. In a nutshell, she’s an obese fat acceptance/HAES blogger who also bills herself as being “athletic.” Her claim to athleticism is dancing at a cabaret. Recently she walked a 5k. Just in case you missed that, she WALKED a 5k, which is yet another crumbling brick in the unsound foundation of “I’m obese, can’t tie my shoes without breaking a sweat, and climbing more than two flights of stairs would utterly destroy my terrible work capacity, but I am still just as athletic as someone who is 185lbs, 15% bodyfat, and deadlifts 575lbs. I, too strength train, but I don’t lift weights because they are damaging for your joints. Instead I do mild, limited-range calisthenics during which I don’t break a sweat.” Her time to walk 3.2 miles was 1:09, for those of you wondering.

As an aside, she claims to be able to develop Type II muscle fibers “very easily.” I clean 305lbs at less than 160lbs bw, and I know for a fact that I don’t develop Type II muscle fibers period, because I’ve been doing this for like fucking seven years and I’m still shoveling shit. Since she doesn’t participate in sprint-effort activities, she couldn’t even confirm this through a roundabout personal observation. I left a comment on her blog asking how she came to this conclusion and if she’s had a muscle biopsy done, which is truly the only valid method of determining whether someone is “Type II” dominant. It’s still awaiting moderation, and she’s not going to answer it, because despite pretending that she is a scientific individual, waving around studies that prove that diets don’t work (in powerlifting and weightlifting we see people move up and down in weight classes on a regular basis but fuck them, right?), she will not face challenges to her positions and instead chooses to pretend that they don’t exist. All versions of the DSM will call this behavior “delusional.”

As another aside, if you read her 5k post, one of the highlights of that day for her was acting like an entitled piece of shit over not getting a 4XL t-shirt for a 5k that she did not truly participate in. I just want to point out that many people walk 3.2 miles to the bus stop every morning, and they don’t get a fucking t-shirt either. I also want to point out that when they walk to that bus stop, it doesn’t take them 1:09 to get there, because then they’d be late for work, and they’d lose their job. I ALSO want to point out that I don’t buy meet t-shirts, ESPECIALLY at national-level meets, because I don’t want people to point it out and say, “Oh hey you went to Raw Nationals? How’d you do?” and then for me to answer that I benched less than 300lbs. Do you want to know why? Because I’d feel like a fucking farce having to answer that. But this is apparently not something that an “athletic privileged” person worries about.

This brings us back to “athletic privilege.” First of all, unless you’re making a living doing your sport, you are guaranteed to not have athletic privilege. It means you’re not talented enough to make it in a professional sport, or you are competing in something that isn’t actually a sport, and therefore not athletic. Walking a 5k in 1:09 guarantees beyond all doubt that you do not enjoy athletic privilege.

If we follow Ragen’s definition of “athletic,” which apparently is simply showing up at an event, demanding a t-shirt in 4XL, and then proceeding to do what foot-traffic commuters do on a daily basis, only better, then let’s talk about what “athletic privilege” to the average person truly means.

Athletic privilege means you get classified as a “junkie.” If you like to a run, you’re a cardio junkie. If you like to lift weights, and are halfway decent at it, the average layperson will probably accuse you of steroids – whey protein and creatine are steroids, after all.

Athletic privilege means that your intelligence is denigrated because you choose to do something physical. This is especially true if you lift weights. You bench press 315lbs? Get a load of this dickhead.

Athletic privilege means that your body image is now up for criticism to the general public. “For someone who runs so much, she’s not that skinny.” “For someone who lifts weights a lot, he’s not that buff.”

Athletic privilege means that your doctor will now tell you the dangers of whatever sport you choose to do. “You need to stop squatting, you will injure your back sooner or later.” “Running is great, but really only in moderation. All you need is 20 minutes of moderate cardio a day.”

Athletic privilege means that any injury you accrue is because of your sport. Back hurts? Stop deadlifting. Feet hurt? Stop running. It doesn’t matter that sedentary individuals also face injury, and if they do get injured, it’s from doing Mickey Mouse bullshit that an actual human would be able to walk away from and never think about again.

Athletic privilege is being criticized for even trying hard to be athletic, “because all that muscle will turn to fat once you stop.”

Of all the privileges, “athletic privilege” in the context of the average person is the fucking dumbest. Also, if you are 300lbs+ and don’t bench that equivalent on a barbell, I have a lot of trouble believing that anyone is going to treat you with it.

Thank you I’m Brunch Khar.

Thanks to jonxedge for the pic:

So I cleaned 300lbs today and squat 420 x 3. This is the highest my squat has been in a while. The last time I got this far, the next week I attempted 425lbs x 3 or 430lbs x 3 or something and the first rep stapled me. Then I never squat that heavy ever again. Can’t wait. I can’t remember if I’ve done 425lbs x 3 or not high bar.

While I’ve never progressed beyond these weights, I’ve been here like, quite a few times. It’s just that every time I got to this point, something set me back. Shoulder strain, SI joint issues, sudden and traumatic weight loss (BRB going from 163lbs to 149lbs in 7 days for no reason). So while I would fucking love to go above and beyond this point, it probably won’t happen. I can only imagine what kind of bullshit is going to stop me this time.

Today’s MopeWOD: you’re good enough to get better. You really are. It’s just not going to happen. You’ve got a job. You’ve got kids. You have responsibilities which don’t allow you to eat 100g of protein within 2 hours post-workout, and constraints which don’t allow you to eat a decent meal pre-workout. You have a life – however unwanted – outside of the gym. Enjoy your fading opportunities at achieving the lofty lifting goals in your life.

But I guess this won’t stop you from funneling a disproportionate amount of your time and resources into this bullshit, unsatisfying, and intensely damaging neurotic behavior you call a hobby.

mediocrepl writes:

You get good at doing manly stuff by doing manly stuff, the two movers probably do manly stuff all the time. Go dig some holes or something.

So basically you want me to go shovel shit, right, got it.

I was wearing an American Top Team shirt at the gym today. It’s one of my favorite shirts to wear because it’s red and in addition to being extra medium, has shrunk after a few cycles in the dryer and now makes my traps look bigger than they actually are. There was a friendly couple there who took note of me doing snatches and cleans and they asked where I usually trained. I wanted to get done with my workout so I wasn’t rude, but I was pretty good at not making eye contact and perhaps giving the impression that I was developmentally disabled.

When I was done I decided that I’d had enough social ostracization in my life so I decided to go over and introduce myself.

“So you went to American Top Team?” he asked me.

“No,” I said.

I was the equivalent of a guy wearing a TapOuT shirt, but not having actually done anything in mma other than watch the first season of The Ultimate Fighter.

To be fair, I did go to a bjj/mma gym for about six months total in college. I had low self-esteem, hated my life, and thought the girl I loved would notice me if I did something interesting. She didn’t notice me and I got beat up by a 17 year old who had been boxing for like four years.

I have discovered that my problem with snatching recently may be related to my knee flexion. Haven’t been rolling my gastrocs, calves, or working on my suprapatellar pouch, and my distal quads were starting to feel tight and inhibited at the bottom of my squats. More knee flexion allowed me to squat with a more upright torso, especially at the bottom, and it seems to have let me snatch 235lbs twice in the past week and 240 once. It’s also allowed me to clean 295+ on a pretty consistent basis.

My calves have been pretty sore after helping Chris move, my right more than my left, it’s fine, not like asymmetric development loses points, I don’t work out to have a good physique anyways, I just lift to not qualify for international meets. I PVC rolled them and it felt like a tendon on my right side was inflamed, at least it won’t detach and require me to get it surgically reattached.

* * *

newgetelqueso writes:

Brinner, you clearly need to do more calf raises and hammer curls.

I have noticed that hammer curls actually don’t do much for my forearm development and that focusing on supination and a slow negative with a regular dumbbell curl does a lot more for my biceps than hammer curls have ever done. So I now just do regular dumbbell curls.

Stu writes:

Hey Brant. Every time I read your blog I feel a little better about myself. Thank you for being my inspiration.

I missed the final deadlift because I forgot to talc my thighs. I’m still going to count it as a PR. Also, I won my weight class. I was the only lifter in my weight class.

Nice lifting, looking thick solid tight keep us updated with your pics and vids wanna see how freakin thick and solid you get.

Chris moved out of his 3rd story apartment into another 3rd story apartment this weekend, and I helped him. He got a mostly free moving crew thanks to the apartment search he and Ellee used, so two stocky and fairly jacked Mexican guys moved all the furniture and the difficult stuff like the washer and dryer.

“You should make that a MopeWOD,” Ellee told me, “‘Think you’re a badass? Well this Mexican mover can probably smoke your fucking shit.’”

And it was true. Chris and I only moved boxes and smaller piece of furniture, but by the end of the day we were pretty fucked. My calves are real fucking sore from climbing up and down stairs all day, and my grip has gotten a better workout moving bullshit household items than I ever have from heavy deadlifts, snatch or clean pulls, 300lbs+ cleans, weighted pull ups, and bent over rows. Can’t wait to see how this helps my lifting Monday, I’m sure I’ll never clean 300lbs again.

The Mexican guys asked Chris “if he was into that Power Man stuff, lifting balls and shit,” and Chris said yeah. They didn’t ask if I lifted. In fact, as I staggered up the stairs carrying a pretty light book shelf or some bullshit, one of them asked me, “You need help?” implying that he didn’t think I was going to make it, even though I was wearing an extra medium t-shirt that accentuated my underdeveloped bis.

Oh yeah, those are also sore, my biceps tendons, hopefully one of them completely ruptures in the middle of a snatch tomorrow. Can’t wait.

Today’s MopeWOD:

Train for an “Olympic” sport. Mob your fucking dick off. Sliding surfaces in great shape? Anterior hip is pretty open? Well-managed scapular mobility and positioning without upper trap dominance and well-activated lower traps? Get your shit fucking rocked by regular life activities. At least you’re supposed to better prepared than a sedentary HAES fuck.

* * *

Andrew writes:

What did you envision this “community” being when you started this blog? How has it deviated from that original vision?

nobodystopsdblob writes:

Yes, tell us how much we have disappointed you.

beonick writes:

And tell us how many people visit it a day. Is it actually popular, or is it pretty obvious that all the posters are the same person?

I was hoping it’d be mostly people like me, who enjoyed self-deprecating humor, and normal people who enjoyed self-deprecating humor. Now it’s full of burgeoning erotica authors, sociopaths, and a lot of gay men.

I get 400-500 unique visitors a day, with 1200-1400 hits, which means that some of you fucks are obsessively clicking refresh. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.

shido5everalone writes:

Went to get pick up some dinner with this girl who is basically like my sister. Picking up order she asked me what was the time because she needed to go pick up her boy friend from bart (its like rail system in the bay area). I didn’t have my phone so I didn’t know. Why dont you have your phone? Because I have no friends to text or call. On that basis she asked me why I have been depressed lately because she felt like she can’t do anything.
“Its okay, no one can.”

Pretty sweet.

Pete writes:

“Someday, someday my dream will come?” One night you’ll wake up and you’ll discover it never happened. It’s all turned around on you, and it never will. Suddenly you are old. It didn’t happen, and it never will because you were never going to do it anyway. You’ll push it into memory, then zone out in your barcalounger, being hypnotized by daytime TV for the rest of your life. Don’t you talk to me about murder. All it ever took was a down payment on a Lincoln Town Car, and that girl… you can’t even call that girl. What the fuck are you still doing driving a cab?

Out of curiosity, did anybody else catch the Collateral reference? I used to worship Vincent when I first watched that movie and thought Collateral was good. Now the only part I like is when Vincent wastes those two dudes in the alley, but everything else is just rambling, masturbatory bullshit from the man who once made the best police shoot-out scene ever in Heat.

I “hiss” when I lift. That is, I exhale after breaking past the sticking point with a “TSSSSSS” noise. It’s come to my attention that this is one of those grunts that people mock you for doing. I also think it’s entirely possible for me to lift without making any noise at all and lift just as well, but the action has become pretty automatic and it would require a substantial amount of effort at this point for me to NOT make any noise for a stupid reason – just because I stop hissing doesn’t mean that I’m going to cum off as any less than a fucking piece of shit.

The only reason this bothers me is I hate cumming off as a pretentious dickhead. Hissing apparently is thought to be a narcissistic effort to draw attention to oneself. I can’t even remember why I started doing it. Does hissing even count as an effective use of valsalva?

* * *

From this article:

If you care about fat people’s health, then you care about their mental health, their emotional health, and their access to the exact same level of health care that thin people enjoy. If you don’t, then you don’t care about fat people.

I just want to point out that as someone in health care, I actually don’t care about fat people. I also don’t care about former meth-head addicts seeking narcotics, or the hysterical upper-middle class mom pretending that she can live in a $500k house without driving herself into ridiculous amounts of debt wanting us to give “something stronger” than motrin or tylenol for the pain her 8 year old child’s ear ache is causing. I don’t care about the mid-20s Caucasian male who refuses to believe that he’s tested positive for IgG antibodies of Herpes Simplex type II, and I don’t care about the Caucasian 50 year old guy who checks-in complaining of a cold, then states that the only reason he’s here is for a 30-day supply of Cialis.

Newsflash: your doctor probably hates you. So does your waiter. Your girlfriend’s parents, your best friend’s friend, your professor, most of the people you knew from high school, your neighbor’s dog. They all fucking hate you. If you’re lucky, your spouse will hate you, and divorce you – the alternative is that they feel sorry for you, and stay with you out of pity and just not giving enough of a shit to make a change. This is true whether you are fat, skinny, Asian, or an otherkin.

We don’t live in a happy, caring world. I read about this guy who gets on the MTA in LA, dies. Six hours he’s riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around the city, people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.

Where did the idea that “I deserve to be treated well” come from? The first thing I expect out of everyone I meet is for them to not give a fucking shit about me. If they learn my name, I feel like a fucking winner, even if it’s just because they say, “Braushert, if you go to the gym so often why aren’t you buffer” so much. And this is cumming from a cis-gendered male.

Maybe some of these social justice folks didn’t get the memo, but life fucking sucks.

Something I am trying to get a doctor to tell patients who say, “Alright, you’re giving me antibiotics for my strep throat, but what about my pain?” or “So I need to ice and rest my NOT fractured and BARELY sprained wrist, but what about my pain?” (and I want him to do this whether the patient is skinny or fat):

“You know, look, sometimes in life, you hurt.” And then proceed to give them a patronizing speech about why sometimes life can be a challenge, and why they are just going to have to drink some water and wait a few days for their supposedly “10/10 on the pain scale” throat to feel better.

From the title of the article: “Doctors Aren’t Mean to Fat Patients, They’re Just Nicer to Thin Ones.”

“Life isn’t fair because we’re not put on a pedestal.”

* * *

I was talking to my girlfriend about the unusual community surrounding this blog, and asked her if I should feel bad about what it’s become.

She responded, “I don’t see what your problem with the community is when you sound like a sociopath. They’re a milder version of you.”

Honestly I don’t think the community is bad. I think that we are painfully self-aware, and that we take the idea of “self-deprecating humor with a little too much honesty” and turn it into an excessive razor blade fiasco, but it’s fine. I also think that most of us are unmotivated, suffer from at least mild anhedonia, and have no real goals because nothing is worth doing, and imo there’s nothing wrong with that.

I would rather have this community than an obnoxiously positive and happy one.

Again, should I see a therapist?

A lot of you guys are also talented writers. I’m mostly talking about the erotica. You guys really take it to the next level. At least we use our talent on a blog which glorifies failing as individuals and humans as opposed to doing something successful with it, like writing the next Shades of Gray.

Hey guys, first of all fuck you, I am sick and just got off work and need to work in the morning but I am blogging instead. I’m not even going to look at the comments, which I haven’t checked after 3pm today, I’m just going to half-ass some fat-shaming bullshit real quick and go to bed. Basically I am just going to talk to myself at 11pm on a Wednesday night, what else is fucking new right, I’m already over this horse shit.

The only reddit I can marginally tolerate is FCJ and that is because it is a subreddit dedicated to mocking other people. I would link it but they ask people not to, though I am sure that if you are reading this blog, and you reddit, you already know about FCJ.

Anyways check out this bullshit right here, I just want to point out that I was actually not making a caricature, I was directly referencing several fat-acceptance bloggers who have spoken out on this issue, and in fact in the instance of declining to be weighed I was referencing countless patients who come to my work.

Let me just make an aside right here – from that first link:

Complaining can be powerful. As I’ve mentioned before, I once visited an urgent care facility whose large blood pressure cuff was “out for repair.” I declined to have my BP taken with a too-small cuff (which can strongly elevate BP readings). Long story short, they manipulated/badgered me into agreeing, the numbers were very high, and I was furious that those inaccurate numbers were now in my medical record.

So I wrote a letter of complaint to the clinic, to my insurance company, and to the head of medicine. I reminded them that I had the right to refuse any medical test or procedure, I included research that showed how much BP can be altered with a too-small cuff, and I quoted the American Heart Association’s policy on cuff size. I demanded that they get a working large cuff, that they train their staff on the importance of its use, and that they remind staff of the right of patients to decline testing. Boy, did THAT get results.

I need to talk to you guys about health care for a second. One of the reasons that doctors are doing a lot of stupid fucking tests for patient that are basically irrelevant (BRB CBC, chest x-ray, EKG, and CT chest on a severely codependent 16 year old having a panic attack because her boyfriend left her) is because health care has developed a culture of “early prevention.” A lot of patient’s families have sued medical practices because the signs of an impending heart attack or stroke or other catastrophic event were there, and so now medical documentation that all bases have been covered are necessary in a lot of places governed by a corporate structure.

If her office had gone ahead and NOT taken her blood pressure, this fucking lady would be one of the first people to sue her physician when she strokes out and loses the ability to move the right side of her body and speak without an impediment. Let me write the blog post for you:

On June 21, 2013, I had a stroke. It was not related to my weight. Hypertension runs in my family. My family history is pain-stakingly documented on my chart, as I have made it clear that while my BMI is 35, it is not an accurate predictor of negative health outcomes as proven by three studies which I have provided through weeks of Googling, but I do like having the people entrusted with my care to be aware that I may be genetically predisposed to certain conditions. Three months ago, my office did NOT take my blood pressure. It would have given me an early-warning that I should monitor it, and perhaps have my blood pressure meds adjusted (as I am currently taking 8 different medications for borderline hyperthyroid, diabetes, high cholesterol, major depressive disorder, anxiety, and fibromyalgia). They neglected to cover that aspect of my care that day (which was an office visit for a cold that I had for 12 hours). I have to wonder – if I weren’t obese, would they have taken my health care more seriously? This is further proof of the stigma against obese patients and how doctors just don’t care about them.

Also – why the FUCK would you be enraged about having an isolated incidence of an elevated blood pressure documented on her chart? This is basically her treating her medical records – filled with fake illnesses and injuries and vague complaints of “fatigue” WHICH ARE UNDENIABLY RELATED TO HER WEIGHT, LACK OF ACTIVITY, AND EATING HABITS – as though it were some fucking report card. Which in her case, it is, because she needs to feel validated that she is “healthy” at all times because the spectre of her own looming LITERAL physical downfall weighs heavily on her.

This is the fucking kind of lady who, when I take her blood pressure and report, “It’s at 130/78 today, top number’s just a little high,” MAKES IT A POINT TO RESPOND

“OH NO, THAT IS VERY HIGH FOR ME. WHAT DO YOU THINK COULD CONTRIBUTE TO THAT?”

I DON’T KNOW LADY, MAYBE THE FACT THAT YOU WEIGH 330LBS AND IT’S HARD FUCKING WORK HAULING YOUR BLOATED CARCASS OFF OF CHAIRS, INTO HALLWAYS, AND ONTO DOCTOR’S TABLES, HAVE YOU LOOKED INTO WEIGHT WATCHERS, YOU MIGHT LIKE IT.

And I hate to beat a dead horse, but declining to get weighed doesn’t magically change anything. You are still fucking fat. If she feels that it’s an issue of “being judged for her weight” – THEY DON’T NEED TO FUCKING WEIGH HER TO JUDGE HER FOR BEING AN OBESE PIECE OF SHIT.

This lady is the fucking poster child of why fat acceptance is fucking dumb. The issue isn’t that fat people are treated like shit in society, the issue is that she’s an entitled piece of shit who makes people’s jobs difficult so that she can not face her crippling body image issues and low self-esteem. How much state welfare do you think she collects?

Back to my original point – my post in that subreddit wasn’t actually a caricature. I was quoting fat acceptance bloggers.

If you look at the guy’s response to me, he calls it a caricature, THEN AGREES WITH IT. “I ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THIS IS A CARICATURE, BUT YOU REALLY CAN FIND THREE STUDIES WHICH SHOW THAT OBESITY IS NOT RELATED TO DIABETES.”

If you read his other comments, in response to being told that diets only “fail” because people don’t adhere to permanent lifestyle changes and often revert to eating a family-size bag of frozen french fries drizzled with olive oil and ranch, he responds,

I don’t disagree, and I understand that diets fail because people just go back to what they were doing. Such permanent changes can be pretty difficult though. If they were easy, we wouldn’t have a problem with addictive behavior in general.

Diets don’t work. Diets do work, but people can’t maintain permanent changes.

Btw, I referenced a redditor named “aktcha” in my initial response, check out this fuckhead’s user history. If you’re a redditor, please downvote him. Anytime someone confronts him with a study contradicting his sample size n=10 studies in support of obesity NOT being detrimental to health, he says that they are cherry picking. Meanwhile he clutches desperately onto tenuous studies taken from pubmed with ambiguous conclusions.

Enjoy.

I snatched 240lbs last week and cleaned 305lbs for two singles tonight, my previous best being 300lbs. I’ve cleaned 295+ six times in the past week, and four of those have been 300lbs or greater. At least I can jerk what I clean.

Front squat 350lbs x 2, too, wasn’t that hard.

Can’t wait for something to set me back so I can spend another year getting back to PR levels.

* * *

As you all know, CrossFit posted a pointless article and a bunch of uni-browed neo-conservative fuckheads are now saying that CrossFit should not be political. I guess the libertarian, pro-military, pro-gun rights bullshit was OK, but dudes kissing dudes is not. Check out these gems:

“I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT A HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE IS HEALTHY.”

This is the same kind of guy who joins the Taliban, makes a law that women can’t go to school, and shoots them in the face when they try to read books in secret.

Something that I can’t stand in the typical reactions to stuff like this is, “I’m going to unlike this page,” AS IF ANYONE IS GOING TO FUCKING GIVE A SHIT. AS IF THE CROSSFIT ADMIN IS GOING TO DELETE THE POST AND PM THIS FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT, GROVELING FOR HIM TO COME BACK, “PLEASE I NEED YOU, DON’T LEAVE ME.”

Can’t do it.

“I’M LEAVING CROSSFIT.”

Great, you’ll lose business and the brand will lose a dick drip sub-300lbs squatter who flips his shit over someone posting an article that offends his repressed sexuality.

It’s like everyone from First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls gathered in that thread and decided that a facebook page shouldn’t post an article that talked about gay people.

w/e I’m audi 5000

* * *

Booter writes:

Brent could post “Hey guys, it’s Brent again. How are you today? I suck.” and we all would start the interesting shit-stream that is above.

Yeah it’s pretty cool.

hsilman writes:

if it helps to alleviate your failure, I feel like a real POS for actually caring. I plan on remedying this situation later with a lot of alcohol and emotionally abusing my wife.

No mysogynist but I was not expecting that final part about abusing your wife and immediately began to lol. I don’t normally laugh at anything you post but this was funny.

Andrew writes:

Damn Brent, way to invalidate the feelings of the thousands who read this blog just to sustain your greedy slog through the mindless, conformist life of consumption that the evil Republican capitalists programmed you for.

You need to check that thin, male misogyny privilege ASAP.

I would really enjoy it if there was an /r/shitredditsays-esque response to every single one of my posts where some form of social justice is pointed out.