Thanksgiving - The day after

For me, the week leading up to this Thanksgiving was nothing short of terrifying.  As much as I would try to not let it show, I'm sure that it did.  Any time plans were being made for food, my anxiety levels would skyrocket.  Not only do we do one large Thanksgiving meal, we do two.  Sarah's family for lunch, my family for dinner.  LOTS OF FOOD (and not just any food, a lot of my favorites).

The night before Thanksgiving I got very little sleep, agonizing over the thought of what I was going to eat, sure that I was going to eat far too much.  I woke up that morning, and did my best to occupy the time by baking a dessert, picking up the house, and doing my best to be helpful to get ready for lunch.  Then the meals came, anxiety at an all time high.  But I ate lunch, and enjoyed it, and didn't overdo it.

Then we moved on to dinner with my family.  This is when all of the family staples that I grew up with come out and I always used to look forward to.  Going in, multiple times with Sarah's help, I had to remind and reassure myself that "You know what, it is physically impossible for someone to eat 'too much' in one day."  Even throughout the evening I would feel the anxiety start to bubble up, but I was able to overcome it.  So I did eat, and actually ate until I was comfortably full.  And then I also had dessert, and actually ate until I would consider myself uncomfortably full.  And guess what..... THAT'S OK!!  and that's without doing anything that would be considered "intentional exercise".  No walking, no running, no weight lifting, nothing to make me feel like I had "earned the right" or anything.

So that brings me to today, the day after Thanksgiving...  I woke up and I wasn't hungry.  I did end up skipping breakfast, but not because I was trying to convince myself that it wasn't ok to eat or that I needed to make up for eating so much yesterday, I just really was not hungry.  It's honestly been a really long time since I could say I really have not felt hungry.  And it's really quite freeing...  My mind feels so much more clear.  I'm not hyper focused on convincing myself to not eat, or worrying about what I am going to have for lunch or dinner when I do finally allow myself to eat some small calorie restricted meal.

I know that this is just a small step in the right direction, and there will still be ups and downs but I can definitely say that today I'm really feeling up and want to build off of it.  It's just important to remember that as much as I didn't need to exercise or restrict other meals to "earn" the right to enjoy a big meal, I don't need to anything today or tomorrow or moving forward to "make up for it" either.  So today, I hope to continue breaking up my routine and my rules by eating and enjoying another one of the best parts of the holidays... the leftovers.  And yes, that will hopefully be including even more dessert.

Eggs and Toast

 

I had 2 fried eggs and 2 pieces of toast for breakfast this morning. To most people, that is going to seem like a very strange thing to be proud of, but let me explain...

It's been quite a while since I've written anything. I don't even remember what was in my last post. Let's just say, it's been an up and down struggle. I thought that I could continue running and get everything back under control... I was wrong.

After running my last half marathon, I made a commitment to reduce the amount of miles I was running and to help with that, I also committed to no longer running any competitive events. I thought the lack of a competitive goal would help remove my need to run X number of miles per day/week/month. For a little while, it seemed as though it would work. Once again though, it became a challenge in my own mind... "Well, if I ran X number of miles yesterday, I couldn't possibly run less than that today or it won't be worth it". Or, "it's not my scheduled rest day, I HAVE to get my run in!!".

On top of that mindset, my eating once again was tied to the amount of miles I had run that day and the number of "active calories" that my garmin said that I had burned. The obsessive, numbers driven nature of my mind had turned it into a VERY dangerous but apparently all too common game for people with my type of mindset... "more active calories burned, less calories eaten".

So.... Where am I now and why am I writing this? 3 weeks ago on a Saturday morning, I had breakfast with Sarah and was getting ready to get changed so I could go out and get my regularly scheduled long run in. I kind of had a mini breakdown... I didn't WANT to run that morning, but I felt like I HAD to run. Over the previous month or so, I had hit a point where I would actually dread going out for my daily runs. It wasn't something I wanted to do anymore, but it was something that I felt like I had to do in order to earn my right to eat for the day.

I sat down with Sarah, and we talked it through. That was the day that we decided that the only right decision was for me to quit running altogether. I took off my garmin watch, handed it to Sarah, and she agreed to put it away for me. I can't have anything tracking my steps, calories, etc.

For 3 weeks now, I've not run a single mile. Sarah and I take walks together around town most evenings instead. And you know what? The vast majority of the time, I don't miss it. Occasionally, when talking about past races that we've run or seeing some friends post online, I start to miss it a little. But, as odd as it sounds, I know how bad running is for me. It's actually given me a sense of freedom by feeling like I HAVE to give up time to run every day.

Challenge 1: Give up running - COMPLETE!

Now for the next challenge... Learning what it means to eat normally again. This has been very stressful, but I would like to say that Sarah has been AMAZINGLY supportive and patient, and I couldn't be doing this without her. For so long, I've been in "diet" mode and I've starved my body of what it needs just to survive, let alone be healthy.

Eating disorders are a funny thing. I know they're not all the same, but I'll try to describe what goes through my mind on a regular basis:

1. In my mind, I've developed a list of "safe foods". Most of the time these are the lowest calorie options available. Think vegetables, egg whites, low carbs, low fat, sugar free options, etc. I know what's "safe" for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Anything that causes me to deviate from these "safe" foods will cause my stress levels to go through the roof and enter panic mode.
2. I'm very routine driven. I like to eat my "safe" meals at certain times throughout the day. Again, deviation from this routine causes internal panic.
3. Hunger plays no role. If it's outside of a "normal" meal or snack routine, I won't give in to the hunger. If I do, I feel like I've somehow failed. I will also try to make up for it by reducing what I eat later, or eliminating a later snack. Again, this is regardless of how hungry I actually am.
4. My mind is constantly calculating the number of calories in an item and determining whether or not it's "worth" eating or if I've exercised enough to justify eating it. Most of the time, meal selections at a restaurant are chosen based on perceived calorie count instead of what I truly want and would enjoy eating the most.
5. Along with the foods that I've deemed "safe", I have what are considered "fear foods". These are mostly foods that I absolutely love. Macaroni and cheese, chicken and biscuits, pizza, etc. I think it's mostly based around the idea that I'm afraid that I won't be able to control myself around them and will eat what I consider to be too much. If I know that we are going to be having any of these items for dinner, it will be almost all I can think about throughout the day.
6. The thought of food is all consuming. Many times, it's all that I can think about. Whether it's dreaming about how much I would love to eat something that I won't allow myself to, waiting for that next time that I'm "allowed" to eat, regretting something I just ate because I thought I ate too much or it had too many calories, or even dreading an upcoming event or meal that I know is outside of my typical routine (sometimes even if it's a week or more away).

These are just some of the things that I'm now working to face head on (again, with TONS of help from Sarah). The reality is that not only do I need to learn what normal eating is again, I actually need to make an attempt to eat enough to gain back some of the weight that I lost and allow my body to rebuild itself.

Why share this? Many people seem surprised that I'm so willing to be as transparent as I have been. Let me be clear... I'm not ashamed at all by what I'm dealing with. It's far too easy for these types of things to be hidden away behind the guise of pursuing a healthier, more active lifestyle. If my experience and willingness to share can help someone else that's going through the same thing, all the better!

So yeah... It's a small victory, and I know that there will be plenty of ups and downs in the future as I try to work through this, but I had eggs and toast for breakfast, and it was great.

Actually No, I'm not "good"

Why am I writing this?  As what is supposed to be my first full marathon approaches, I’ve suddenly developed an injury that is quite likely to sideline me and keep me from running it at all.  This is something I’ve been training for and heavily focused on all summer long.  Because of this, I’ve been quite depressed.  However, this has also led me to do a lot of internal reflection.

One thing you may notice if you read through this, is that something is missing.  Throughout, I make no mention of God.  I’m not sure when, but at some point this had become all about me and I had placed God on the sideline.  As I wallowed in self-pity while my wife and I were talking, we both seemed to ask the same question at about the same time.  “What if this injury, at this most inopportune time, is supposed to be a wake up call from God?”

So, with that, I am hoping to take it and use it as such.

"Actually No, I'm not good"

How many times do we pass by each other, look each other in the eyes and say something along the lines of "Hey, how's it going?" usually followed by a response of "I'm good, you?". This type of exchange has become so common that any answer other than "good" would seem to violate the "social norm."  Which begs the question, how many people are struggling, searching for the right opportunity to give a REAL answer other than the "good" that everyone expects to get in return?  This is where I'm at, and it's time for me to open up and be honest to anyone that cares to read this.

So let's put it out there right off the bat and get this thing rolling.  Over the last year and a half or so I seem to have developed an eating disorder, which has led to an exercise addiction and then followed up with bouts of depression.

Bare with me while I give a little background...

It started out innocently enough.  The company I work for was having a “biggest loser” competition to promote a healthy lifestyle.  Some co-workers needed another person for their team so I figured “why not?.”  I really had no expectation of losing a ton of weight or doing anything crazy, but being 5’ 11” and 193lbs at the time, I knew it wouldn’t hurt to lose a few pounds so I set a goal weight of 173lbs.

To begin with, I cut out unhealthy foods and stopped snacking throughout the day.  We already had an elliptical at home, so I started out doing 30 minutes every night on that.  I eventually started tracking my meals using an app on my phone.  This helped me to learn the calorie content of various types of foods and really get an understanding of food that I didn’t previously have.  I don’t remember the numbers from each weigh-in for the competition, but it was working!  I was consistently losing weight at every weigh-in and quickly hit my goal.  I was feeling great and the elliptical workouts were getting easier and longer.

At some point, a friend who was looking to get back into running learned about me getting into better shape and suggested we both start training to run a 5k.  It seemed intimidating to me at the time, but also sounded like good motivation to keep up the healthy lifestyle.  I followed a training plan, continued to watch my diet and track my food, and it wasn’t long before the 5k race took place.  What I learned through this process… apparently I’m good at running, and fast.  It wasn’t long before I ran a 10k, some more 5k’s and a couple of half marathons.  Each time turning in fast times, usually at least placing in my age group, sometimes placing (or winning) overall.  This eventually led me to sign up for my first full marathon.

On the outside, everything seemed great.  I was still losing weight, running a lot and by all appearances I had simply adopted a new, very healthy, very active lifestyle.

In reality, things were not “good”...

I’ve never really been “great” at anything…  In school, the most athletic thing I had done was bowling.  Sure, I’m good at my job (at least I think so…), but it’s hard to explain what it is that I do and it’s not like I get recognized outside of “professional circles” for it.

I can’t be sure, but I think this is what played into the addiction that slowly developed as I ran more miles, more races, and continued to get faster and faster.  I was being recognized for my ability… knowing that people were truly impressed with what I had been able to accomplish gave me a rush and a great feeling of pride.  It drove me to continue to push harder, run further, run faster.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the line I also gained a fear.  This fear seemingly took over and took control of too many aspects of my life.  A fear that if I stopped tracking what I ate or stopped running, everything I worked so hard for would come undone.

In my mind, I had created a direct link between running and eating.  If I didn’t run enough, I couldn’t “allow” myself to eat much, for fear that I might gain a pound or two back.  Especially if it were an unhealthy treat or indulgence (ice cream, cookies, cupcakes, etc).

I use a common app that synchronizes with my garmin watch to calculate how many calories I’ve burned each day.  Basically, it takes the calories that it determines I need to eat just to maintain my weight, adds calories burned from additional exercise, and that’s the total number of calories that you should eat for the day.  Then, as you enter the food you’ve eaten into the app, it subtracts that from your allowance.  The intention is that if you are looking to maintain weight, you want the number to be close to 0 at the end of the day… Simple enough, right? Calories in = Calories out.

I became obsessed with these numbers.  I was terrified that I would eat beyond my allowance and gain weight.  Everything I ate would be weighed on a small kitchen scale so I could be sure that I accurately entered all food, snacks, etc into the app.  I would check the nutrition labels of EVERYTHING.  If we were planning on eating out at a restaurant, I would try to find a place that had nutritional information available so I could accurately enter calorie counts for items I would order.  If calorie counts were unavailable, I would make a “best guess” and enter the info, usually making sure I aimed high “just in case”.  

My calorie deficit would continue to get further and further away from 0.

Eventually, if we were going to a party or just an informal get-together with friends or family, my anxiety levels would go through the roof just knowing that there would be “unhealthy food” available, and I would be terrified that I wouldn’t be able to control my eating and would over-indulge undoing everything I had worked for.  Many times, I would try to avoid these situations altogether by simply not going.  This is something I truly regret.

During those times that I would “slip up” and let myself splurge on a great meal, or an unhealthy treat, I would have an incredible feeling of guilt shortly after.  Like I had just done something horribly wrong.  This would be followed by depression, and then likely cutting out a large amount of food the rest of the day or the next morning to “make up for it.”

At the same time, I was running more and more miles training for the marathon.  My schedule would ultimately look something like this:

Monday - 6 miles

Tuesday - 10 miles

Wednesday - 9 miles

Thursday - Rest (but usually would still walk 4+ miles)

Friday - 5 miles 

Saturday - Long run day, anything from 13 to eventually 23 miles

Sunday - 7 miles

This schedule on its own is probably not unusual for someone training for a full marathon, but it was just another part of my addiction.  I would let NOTHING interrupt my running schedule, and if something did, my anxiety level would once again be insanely high.

I knew in my mind that this was wrong.  It was killing me knowing everything that I was missing out on by doing this to myself, but for some reason I still don’t understand, I couldn’t stop.  Each time the scale would show me at a lower weight, it became my new line of what I needed to keep under.  Again, I knew that this had reached a level of being very unhealthy and dangerous, but felt like it was completely out of my control and something I had to keep doing.  

It’s so hard to explain what was going on, almost like being a prisoner in my own mind.

Apologies need to be made:

So far I’ve only talked about what was doing to me, but I know that it was also having a very unhealthy impact on my relationship with my family, our friends, my coworkers, as well as impacting my job performance.

I’m so thankful that I have a very loving wife who has been doing everything within her power to work with me through this, and doing her absolute best to understand what I’m going through.  I know that I’ve neglected her and put unnecessary pressure and stress on her.  Also with my son, who I know I’ve also neglected spending time with in favor of “having to get my run in”.  The times throughout this summer that I insisted on running for multiple hours, instead of spending time with him, is time that I’ll never get back.  Missed outings with friends and family because I was worried about over-indulging on something that “I shouldn’t” eat…  The list could go on.  To Sarah and Evan, I am truly sorry.

At work, I’m sure that my attitude, temperament, and focus have all suffered.  Days without getting a run, or being tempted and eating an unexpected cookie or treat (might seem funny, but it has happened more than once) causing my anxiety to skyrocket.  I know that there were times that this left me with an incredibly negative attitude, short/snappy responses, and getting angry at seemingly innocuous things.  To my co-workers, I am sorry.

I know there are details that I’m missing in this that I’m sure I could go into, and if anyone would like to talk I am willing to share and answer any questions that people may have.  My hope in writing this is two-fold:

1. That it helps me to realize and better cope with what I’ve been doing and make corrections back to a more “normal” lifestyle.
2. That if anyone else is struggling with something similar, you’re not alone.  Feel free to reach out to me if you just need someone to talk to who can understand.

At this point, I don’t expect things to be corrected immediately, but I’m hoping that by putting this out there and making things public it’ll help me get moving back in the right direction.  

No, I don’t plan to quit running.  It is far too enjoyable and I want to continue living a healthier lifestyle.  I’m just hoping that I can find the proper balance between keeping it enjoyable and not letting it get in the way of all other aspects of my life.  I’m hoping to also achieve the same balance with my food.  I LOVE food, I want to be able to enjoy food without feeling guilty.  I’m sure with time and the awesome support of my family and friends, I’ll be able to get back to that point.  These habits didn’t develop overnight, so I’m not expecting them to go away overnight either.

VMworld 2019 HOL Odyssey Competition. We won!!

As VMworld 2019 approached, I received a marketing email from the team at VMware Hands-on-Labs linking me to a blog post talking about a brand new competition this year called “VMware Odyssey.”  It would be a 3 day event, allowing teams to compete against each other by completing specific tasks in the hands on labs while being timed.  I thought it looked interesting, and decided “why not?” (not to mention it appeared that anyone competing would get a decent looking jacket out of the deal.  I’m always a sucker for unique swag.)  As I didn’t know anyone else competing, I filled out the form and left it open to be randomly assigned to a team.

The event schedule went like this:

Monday:  Check in with the Odyssey team and receive a briefing covering the competition schedule, rules, how the system functioned, etc.  24 teams would be split into 2 groups, “Group A” and “Group B”.

Tuesday: Round 1 - Group A would compete first, followed immediately by Group B.  Both groups would start with a lab on vSan.

Wednesday:  Round 2 - Group B would compete first, followed by Group A.  This lab was based on vSphere Performance.  After this round, the field would be cut to the top 12 teams based on the combined times from the first 2 labs.

Thursday:  The top 12 teams compete in a lab on NSX-T for the Semi-Finals.  The field would then be cut in half again, and the top 6 teams would immediately compete in the Finals using a lab on vRops.  The winner would then be determined based solely on the quickest time from this final lab.

Tuesday morning at team check-in would be the first time I would meet any of my team members.  That's when I met Dmitry (@dvmikin).  I would later describe him to my wife as "this crazy Russian dude".  Dmitry was pretty intense and got REALLY into it, which was great.  Our third team member was MIA, and left just Dmitry and I to compete in the vSan round.  Unfortunately, neither of us really had any experience with vSan, but were somehow able to fumble our way through and pull off an 8th place finish.  This is when Dmitry noticed Nick (@nmorgowicz) sitting next to us who was competing solo.  His 2 other team members were also no-shows.  After chatting between the 3 of us, we decided to check with competition organizers to see if it would be possible to merge teams so that we could form a complete 3-man team.  We were told that after the 2nd round was complete, as long as both of our existing teams made it into the semi-final, we would then be able to merge.

On Wednesday, Dmitry and I were able to fly through the vSphere Performance lab fairly quickly as this was a strength of both of ours, and finished 3rd overall in this round. Organizers had thrown in a twist that required creating a virtual machine and enabling Virtualization Based Security on it and successfully getting it to power on.  A number of the teams missed changing the Operating System selection to Windows Server 2016 or newer (or Windows 10) which would enable the checkbox for VBS.  It also had to be followed up by setting the correct memory and CPU reservations to meet the requirements to power it on.  Nick was also able to complete the lab, I believe with a 5th place finish, which would mean we were then able to merge teams and compete together in the semi-finals!

Thursdays semi-final round would have us competing to finish 4 NSX-T based tasks.  Although we all had NSX-V experience, none of us were overly confident in our NSX-T abilities.  Nick had the most experience with the NSX-T based labs, so we decided it would be best if he drove the keyboard and mouse for us.  Dmitry was also extremely dedicated, and had been working in the lab until about 1am that morning cramming in as much knowledge as he could.  Nick did an awesome job driving, and we really came together as a solid team racing to a 2nd place finish in this round.  The three of us were all pretty psyched with such a strong finish and that we made the finals, but I'm not sure any of us really believed we had a chance at the top spot.

The final round would then kick off with 3 vRealize Operations tasks.  The first task was easy enough, use vRops reclamation to delete unnecessary snapshots from the cluster.  The 2nd task would take a little longer, create an alert definition that would take an action once triggered (I don't remember the specific criteria, but it was outlined in the requirements).  This one held us up just a little bit as we forgot to enable the alert definition in the policy after we had created it.  I remember checking the leaderboard after that had validated and saw that we were somewhere around 3rd going into the final task.  The final task required the creation of a super metric that would average the "CPU Usage %" for the entire cluster.  Nobody on our team had any experience with super metrics other than a little bit here and there through the lab environments.  The first couple of attempts failed validation and sent us back to reviewing the criteria.  After the 2nd failed validation, Nick thought to bring up the preview window under the super metric criteria.  He changed just one part of the criteria from "Depth: 1" to "Depth: 2" (ultimately making the metric flow deep enough to apply to the VM's within the cluster) and we saw the preview window update with data!  Nick then clicked the "validate" button and we waited… and waited… and waited.  It was at this point that I started thinking to myself "this is taking much longer, this HAS to be a good sign".  Nick then noticed that the lab manual stated something along the lines of "Be Patient, successful validation could take up to 2 minutes to complete". It suddenly sank in that it could be a reality that we were going to pull this off.  FINALLY, the green window with "DONE" flashed up on the screen and we all jumped up and cheered in excitement!

Three engineers who had met just two days earlier, were able to come together and work as a solid team to win the first ever VMware Odyssey competition.  Each of our strengths would somehow work out to perfectly complement each other's weaknesses, and it was awesome.

I feel as though this is a perfect example of our vCommunity as a whole.  So many people are willing to come along and help each other out with issues, and share their knowledge with one another.

I would also like to thank VMware and the VMware Hands-on-Lab team for putting this competition together.  Like many others, I often find myself dealing with "imposters syndrome".  After signing up for the competition, there were many times that I considered dropping out to free up the spot for someone that would be "more qualified" to compete.  Developers have always had "Hack-a-Thons" to compete and demonstrate their skills, but I'm not familiar with anything similar for us engineers or architects (if I'm wrong, please let me know!).  Having this opportunity to compete, and ultimately win, has definitely (at least for the time being), given me a much needed boost in confidence.

So with that, I would like to encourage ANYONE who has the opportunity to take part in this competition or anything similar to do so.  It was incredibly fun all the way through, provided some professional validation, and gave me the opportunity to meet work with 2 amazing teammates in Nick and Dmitry.  

I sincerely hope that VMware decides to continue and even grow the Odyssey competition in future years!

I'm a vExpert! But how??

Well... How about that...  I was accepted as a vExpert this time around!!  I am really proud and excited to be part of this awesome community.

I'm sure that some people might wonder "how the heck did HE get to be a vExpert??  There's nothing on his blog."  And they're not wrong... as you can see, I only have 1 other post, and it's an old one simply introducing myself.  The good news is you don't need to be a blogger in order to become a vExpert!

So, what did I do?  There are 4 possible paths to becoming a vExpert.

1. The Evangelist path - this path would be for your public figures... authors, bloggers, public speakers, etc.
2. The VMware Partner Network path - This would be for employees of companies that are VMware Partners
3. The VCDX path - For VCDX certification holders
4. The Customer Path - This is for VMware Customers that are willing to be advocates for VMware within their company, provided customer references, participated in interviews for blog posts/media/etc, and just been an overall champion for VMware.

I decided to go for the customer path.  A large part of this has come from my participation in the VMware Champions community.  I learned about this and joined up at last years VMworld.  It's a community that occasionally posts "challenges" to complete, and rewards you with points that can be turned in towards different VMware Champions branded gifts.  Most of all though, it is used to educate customers, and these "challenges" have connected me with various people allowing me to participate in IDC interviews, and be used as a customer reference for different VMware products that I already use every day.

I also try to keep active on my twitter account.  Don't think that you need to tweet any profound revelation, just be sure to follow the various VMware accounts, other vExperts, etc and like/retweet any content that you find interesting and want to help spread the word.  

Basically, to sum up, BE ACTIVE in the community!  I'm proof positive that you don't have to be a popular blogger (or even blog at all) in order to be accepted.  Just be an active community member and VMware advocate!

About me

Welcome to murben.net.  My name is Ben Moore and I'm an IT Systems Engineer located in upstate New York.

I have no idea what this is going to be, or what will ultimately end up here but it was suggested that I start a blog.  It will likely revolve around my day job consisting mostly of VMware products as well as other related enterprise level technologies.

For a little bit of my history, I've worked in one form of IT for the past 18 years (ever since I graduated from high school).  That's right... no college level education here.  I started my career in the year 2000 by working in a little "mom and pop" type computer store which entailed building custom PC's, cleaning up the typical spyware laden machine, etc.  That store eventually closed up shop and left me unemployed for a few weeks.

Around 2001, after the computer shop closed up, I was hired by a regional bank and started out as an entry level systems technician.  This consisted of constantly running user to user correcting desktop issues, replacing PC's, basic end user troubleshooting, etc.  This bank is where I would spend close to the next 10 years working my way up and furthering my education and experience, and would finish out my time there as the Technology Services Support Manager.

After 10 years I realized that I preferred being able to be hands on with the technology rather than managing the people that did.  I decided that it was time to move on from the bank and in 2011 was hired at a local insurance company as a Systems Engineer.  Eventually I was promoted to a Senior Systems Engineer, and ultimately to the Lead Systems Engineer (the position I currently hold).

Throughout my journey, I've been able to acquire the following certifications:

CompTIA A+
CompTIA Linux+
Certified Novell Administrator 6.5
HDI Certified Support Center Manager
VMware Certified Professional - Datacenter Virtualization
VMware Certified Professional - Desktop and Mobility

I've had the advantage of being able to work with some of the top technologies in the industry and form some key relationships over the years.  I love what I do and will hopefully be able to share some of my knowledge and experience through this blog.

Thanks for stopping by!