How I blogged my way to losing 40 pounds

102 days, 40 pounds.

I'm feeling great. Had dinner with my friend Paul last night, and we walked around Harvard Square a bit afterward. When I began this Big Man Getting Smaller thing at the end of August, a 20-minute walk would have had me limping, reaching for the Alleve, or both. It would have been pathetic, but another fat 50-something does not quite rise to the level of pathos.

Now I am walking more and enjoying it more. Just as I mentioned the other day, exercise comes easier the smaller I get. It can still be a challenge to work it into my day, but I know it is important.

In the ongoing process of evaluating and tweaking my regimen in order to keep it going, I made an important change a few days ago pertaining to exercise. Previously my daily target had been 1750 calories a day, but I was finding that on days when I worked out I ended up going significantly over my target: usually between 2000 and 2200 calories.

So I changed my daily target to 1600 net calories, with net calories being the result after I totaled up my calorie intake and subtracted the calories burned in my workout. This accomplishes three things:

1. It provides an incentive to work out
2. It reduces my net calorie intake slightly on days when I do not work out
3. It helps to keep me committed to this campaign by helping to keep me from "failing"

One of the great benefits about using this process of writing things down in a blog format as I try to accomplish something worthwhile and difficult is that it helps to keep me mindful. I think about what I have written, what I am going to write, and what is working or not working. I am accountable to the process. So it goes.

Monday's Soundtrack


It is remarkable that my two wonderful, brilliant, beautiful daughters have turned out as well as they did, given the number of times they had to listen to their Daddy sing this in the car and even, Baby Jesus forgive us all, as a bedtime lullaby. The BMGS will also stipulate that in the mid 1970s he personally rendered several Dallas honkytonk jukeboxes profitable by playing this song as many times as he did, even if may have hurt the overall profitability of said honkytonks by driving away a better class of clientele.

This would be David Allan Coe covering Steve Goodman's brilliant anthem to maudlin drunken miserable self-absorption.