Day 17 – The Wall

What do Pink Floyd and Robert Frost have in common? A wall, of course. Although the wall we finished today was outwardly more like “another brick in the”, functionally it was more like “good fences make good neighbors”. And trust me, with three English majors in the family, we had some Frost discussions over these past few days.

For a 55 year-old wall it was really not in bad shape. It partly fallen down in a few places, but it needed repair, not replacing. Some things just need fixing, not tearing down. Which is sort of how I feel about myself. This focus on weight and exercise and journaling is about fixing up, not tearing down. After years of neglecting a wall or two, I am trying to set them right again.

And how am I succeeding? Well, this morning my pushup reps were 14-18-14-14-20; that is 80 if you are counting. Tonight I get some rest so tomorrow I can work on my walls again.

Day 15 – Exhaustion Test #2

My pushup program says that at the end of two weeks I am supposed to take an exhaustion test. When I started I was able to do 23. Now, two weeks later…36! That is still a long way from 100 by week 7, but I am definitely going in the right direction.

I may have sweat off a few ounces helping my brother-in-law Joe lay bricks in the 90 degree heat. I know a lot more about mixing mortar and laying a straight line than I did yesterday. Anyway, the wall is looking good and our neighbor is very happy.

Our big event today was going to the Museum of Biblical History in nearby Collierville. They are about to open a great exhibit on the St. John’s Bible, the first commissioned hand-scripted and illuminated Bible in hundreds of years. We got a sneak peek, and the prints we saw were outstanding! If you are unaware of the project, see their website; your time will be richly rewarded.

Day 14

Weigh day number 2, and I am down to 180 pounds! That’s another two pounds lower, which isn’t bad considering the week I have had. Today was another one of those.

It started fine with my pushups (16-17-14-14-max). My max was 23 today which matches my pretest from two weeks ago, so I felt great. My plan was to do a little work at the office and come home to help rebuild a brick fence along the property line. (Short story… my brother-in-law has many skills, one of which is laying bricks.) But I was kept away by a copier salesman, a dead phone, and, sadly, a sick dog.

One of our two dogs, Hannah, was diagnosed with cancer today. She is a 12 year-old American Eskimo. She only has a short time left, so we are going to give her some loving these next few days and maybe let her chase some squirrels while she feels up to it. We have lost a dog before, so I know what we are in for.

Day 13

I finally went out and got a new bathroom scale: a Taylor 7023 with a lithium battery. I’ve gone digital! I figured that if I am going to measure my weight loss every week, I might as well be as accurate as I can be. My only problem is that I don’t know if the scales are calibrated the same. Like two violins that are in tune to themselves, it doesn’t mean that they will be in tune to each other. I guess all I can do is presume that they are the same and go on from there.

One of the things about digital scales is that they read out in tenths of pounds. That sounds natural until you realize that the British (or American or Imperial) pound is made up of 16 ounces and is not easily divisible by 10. Have you ever heard of a newborn baby weighing 7.3 pounds? Of course not!

Do you remember when you were in school and the teachers confidently told us that by the time we were adults, American roads would be measured in kilometers and gasoline in liters? The metric system was just around the corner! Years later and nothing has changed. Nothing, that is, except for bathroom scales where Taylor has apparently invented the metric pound. Who would have guessed?

Day 12

The last two days have involved a fast and harried 1600 mile trip. Needless to say, blogging took a back seat to driving. But the trip gave me some insights to trying to control eating on the road.

Travelling the way I was, I didn’t have time for nice sit down meals. So the two most readily accessible food sources were 1) fast food restaurants and 2) convenience stores. Trying to get anything not built exclusively with carbohydrates is almost impossible at a convenience store unless you are inclined towards beef jerky (which I am not). Trail mixes can have lots of nuts, so there is one possibility. I was trying to avoid carbonated beverages, too, but I have a stubborn resistance to buying water in a bottle. So mostly I settled for fruit juice or ice tea.

As far as fast food, we found a relatively healthy alternative in Chipotle’s. Their meals are filled with rice and beans (not bad), and if you go for a burrito bowl and forgo the big tortilla it is even better. All in all I got home feeling only half as bloated as I usually do after a trip like this. And you know what they say: half a bloat is better than…no, that doesn’t work, does it?

Day 9

I now understand comfort food so much better than I have before. This weekend has brought with it some stress related issues, and for some reason I didn’t care about drinking Cokes and eating ice cream. Who could have guessed? I have always talked about comfort food in the abstract, always knowing that I had them but never really thinking about what they were. Coke and ice cream. I’ll bet if I had had any chocolate in the house that would be gone by now, too.

So how much does one eating binge hurt a weight loss program? I can’t tell you yet. You see, my wife’s curling iron fell onto my scale in just the wrong place and popped the spring. Now the scale is stuck on 170. I guess I could stand on the scale and pretend that I have gotten down that far, but I will probably just have to go get another scale.

Tomorrow starts week 2 of pushups, so I had better get some rest. Maybe after a bowl of ice cream.

Day 7

And the magic number is…182 pounds. That is 2 pounds down in the first week. I know better than to get excited about this. First, my home scale is the old-fashioned spring-based model, so I am trying to read the little hash marks. Second, I could probably regain the weight by dinner if I tried. But I am moving in the right direction, so all is good.

Here is what I have changed: 1) I cut way back on the Cokes. In the last 7 days I have had four, which is down from a typical 10-14. I am still not drinking enough water, but one thing at a time. 2) I have cleared out my snack drawer. Usually I have something sweet in there to munch on while I work. I may get some pistachios there eventually, but for now it is empty. 3) I focus on proteins over carbs, especially at breakfast. 4) I cut back on my nighttime snacking. Usually I like a bowl of ice cream or a brownie, but I decided I can do without most of that. I often have a few hunger pains when I go to bed, but I can live with that easily enough. 5) I started the 7 Weeks to 100 Pushups plan. Exercising 30 minutes per week won’t drop my weight by itself, but it may reshape what I have and, just possibly, get me motivated to do other things as well.

Speaking of pushups, this was the end of week 1. Today’s reps (with 120 second rest intervals) were 11-15-9-9-max (at least 13); my final rep was actually 17, so I think I did pretty well! Now I take a few days off and start fresh on Monday.

Day 6 - Cheesecake and the Rapture

Have you heard that the world is ending on Saturday? According to the people who run FamilyRadio.com, the Lord will come back to rapture all Christians on May 21 at 6:00 pm local time, advancing around the globe hour by hour. Stringing together a bunch of scriptures and some bad mathematics, they are not the first to predict the second coming, nor will they be the last.

I’m really not interested in the theology, not today anyway. What interests me is the irony of the Lord coming so soon after my starting a weight loss program. If this week was my last on earth, would I want to depart doing what I can to lose weight, or would I want to go out with cheesecake? Improving myself is good (even going into eternity), but I do love cheesecake. Tough call.

Anyway, tomorrow is weigh-in day. I have not been working strenuously at this, so I don’t expect much loss yet, if any. But I feel that I am on the start of something good. Tomorrow I’ll write about what I have been doing.

Day 5 - Deluged by Diet Books

Pushup day again! Today it was 10-12-8-8-max (at least 12) with 90 seconds between. I did 14 in my last rep, putting me up to 52 total for the day. The good thing is that I am not as sore afterwards as I have been. Let’s see how I am doing on Friday.

I went to Books-a-Million yesterday to check out the section on diet books. Wow! I knew there would be a lot, but there were conservatively 150 titles jammed on the shelves. (Someone jokester had wedged a copy of I’m OK, You’re OK in among them!) Being neither a nutritionist nor a speed reader, I can’t offer any significant insight on them other than to say that most seem to fall into one of two categories: cut calories or cut carbs. There were also the random books promoting weight loss through hypnosis, veganism or grapefruit, but carbs and calories still top the list.

One book that did catch my eye was James Beckerman’s The Flex Diet. I liked it because it is not so much a diet (despite the title) as a lifestyle change. He recommends 200 ideas from journaling to restricting eating after dinner to wearing a pedometer. You choose the ones that fit best with your own lifestyle and start down the path to weight loss. His ideas are more common sense than groundbreaking, but I suspect that is true of most diet books. Despite generations of research, there seems to be no consensus about how the human body should go about losing weight. I am inclined to think that never has so little insight been packaged in so many different ways.

Day 3

I started off the day with a green smoothie. Leanna and I have one for breakfast 2-3 times a week. It’s not the most low-carb friendly breakfast, but it’s healthy nonetheless. Now I was ready for my pushups!

Speirs’ website recommends exercising three times a week for ten minutes at a time. A workout consists of several pushup reps with a break between each. Today’s reps were 10-12-7-7- max (at least 9) with 60 seconds between. I was still sore from my test two days ago, but I managed to get through with two pushups to spare. Next time the reps and the rests will both be upped.

So does the soreness ever go away? (You can tell I have never done regular exercising!) I guess it’s no pain, no gain. Anyway, I like having a specific goal of reaching 100 pushups. I’m not out to have a ripped body (like that would ever happen), just to tone up what I have.

Day 2 - Losing Weight

I don’t like the word “diet”. I know that it is a legitimate word, but for me it carries the connotation of a fad that doesn’t do much. So I am going with “eating plan” or “eating regimen”. I want to start an everyday way of eating that I can stick with for a long time.

What kind of eating plan is right for me? Well, I know this about me: I am lazy. So unless it is pretty simple I won’t stick with it. That means hardcore calorie counting is out. I am leaning toward a high protein/low carbohydrate plan, sort of neo-Atkins. I admit that part of this is because I like meat. But part of it is because I eat way too many carbs. But I need to do some reading. Maybe Gary Taube’s book Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It is a place to start.

What I know for sure is that two days into my new way of living we had a church potluck. Not a great place for healthy eating unless banana pudding is a part of my eating regimen.

Day 1 - Exhaustion Test

My official starting weight is 184. That may not seem like much to some people, but it is 7 pounds more than I weighed four months ago and 20 pounds more than I weighed a little over a year ago. I am going up fast. I want to start my weight loss now before I reach 210 and my path is more like a mountain than an steep grade.

My friend Doug recommended a book by Steve Speirs called 7 Weeks to 100 Push-ups. Since I am on the road to becoming that hollow-chested guy with a pooch over his belt, this seems like a good place to start. I am cheap by nature, so I am working from his website instead of buying the book.

Speirs says to start with an initial test by seeing how many pushups you can do in one stretch before dropping into a sweaty heap. I made it to 23, which is better than anyone in my family thought I could do. (So there!) According to the chart, for my age range that puts me at level 3 out of 7.

Now I have to wait a couple of days before starting Week 1. It is a three day per week program to help you reach your goal. That will give me a couple of days to research eating regimens.

T - 1 Day

May 13. Happy birthday to me. Today I am 47 years old. Middle age by any standard. Now, I really don’t mind the age a bit. It is the other thing I am not happy with: my weight.

Don’t get me wrong. “The Biggest Loser” is not about to call me. But at 180 pounds plus, I am heavier than I have ever been in my life. My doctor says I am at the high end of acceptable for my height, but I can tell a difference from where I have been. My shirts are tight, my pants are tight, and my face has subtly changed shape. I want to lose weight.

So what am I going to do? I am not 100% sure. I have some general ideas, but as I figure that out I will write about it here. So tomorrow I will begin to change my eating and exercise habits. I can hear some people saying, “Why not today? When better to begin a change of life than on your birthday?” First, because I like cheesecake on my birthday. And second, because I have always lived by the motto, “Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life”.

Kind of a shaky start, huh?