It’s time for a change, in so many ways. This chronicle of my quest for several particular kinds of personal change will focus on diet, exercise and lifestyle changes. I will report meaningful things that occur along the way, positive and negative, inner and outer. I’ll deal with the present, the past and my goals, hopes and fears for the future. Feel free to join me and to share your thoughts, the music, and whatever else falls from these branches.
Soundtracks for the Best Days of Any Week
Independence Day - 7.4.08
April 2008
April 26
"He has you at any stage in your life. He has your youthful idealism. He has you when your relationship is splitting up. He has you when you can't face the world and you look for something higher to get you through. He has you at all stages."
I did most of the work on my weekly Kindle Nation email newsletter yesterday morning, writing a lost post that I feel pretty good about under the title "Wake Up, Amazon!"
Then I hung with Danny who was home sick from tweener summer day camp from 2 to 6 and he cleaned my clock twice at Clue, Simpsons version. We also went outside with Brownie for a while so he could take a hammer to a matchbox el-caminoed Cadillac which he had purchased for two bucks at Newbury Comics for the express purpose of seeing how hard it would be to demolish it with a hammer. That's my boy.
I got to the pool at 6 and did my 40 laps, which got me to a little over 3 miles for the week. Hot damn!
Arrived back at my house about 7:30 knowing I needed to do about two hours of work to send out Kindle Nation. Took a 45-minute nap with the replay of the previous day's Sox game as ambient TV noise, then got up, made myself a sardine sandwich and a cup of coffee, and hit "send" on Kindle Nation at 10:35 pm.
Included, in Kindle Nation, a note saying that there would be no issue this coming week. Just like the New York does in the summer sometimes, except they plan their breaks a little further ahead.
I was asleep by 11, like a rock on the pillow. Okay, a big rock.
Wandered through the house looking for coffee some time this morning, sat down and read an email sent by my pal suggesting I give her a call at 11:17 pm, looked at the clock on the computer and it said 5:52 am.
Had a bowl of flax cereal and two cups of coffee and spent the next two hours extremely productively while lying down: reading the chapter about my friend Jim Koch's friend John Wing in the The Smartest Guys in the Room, then making notes toward an amazing business plan for a new media company.
I also made a long list of things I could do today, and have done some of them.
Had a lovely conversation with my pal, although it was not about anything.
This is the cover image of Bowl of Cherries, the debut novel of Millard Kaufman, who celebrated his 90th birthday last March. Yes, I said “debut” novel. As in, his first novel.
You gotta love that. I do. I listened to an interview this morning on the radio, and l read some print media notices.
Then I ordered the book, which is published by an absolutely wonderful indie publishing house called McSweeney’s. I’ll let you know what I think. (It’s not like Mr. Kaufman doesn’t already have his writing chops. He wrote the screenplay for the Academy Award-nominated Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). and was a co-creator of Mr. Magoo. But still.)
But first, just this. This is why we live. This is why it is worth pulling out all the stops to get back into great shape when we are 57. Because there are decades and decades left, and also, there might be a book signing party when we are 90. And we’d want to be in shape for that, looking our best, and feeling our best.(I type this as I listen to Daniel Schorr’s commentary on this week’s news on NPR. Yes, he is older than Mr. Kaufman.)
It would be easy, at any point, to throw in the towel. To say, “No Mas,” or just to quit trying for anything but the pillow at the end of the day.
But life is best when we live it for its best moments, and refuse to accept the sentence to mediocrity implicit in Thoreau’s line: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
It is arrogant of me, and pretentious, and prideful, I am sure, to see the best in myself after having faced the worst. To envision great productivity and wonderful results in my future. But it is also a gift to myself. Sometimes, at my most hopeful, I even believe that it is also a gift to my children, to their children, to my loved ones, to my friends and fellow citizens. Life is long, or could be, and one never knows.
So I try to work out almost every day, and to keep the calories 1000 to 1500 a day below my daily “maintenance level” of about 3200. Not because I’ll ever get those sixpack abs back, or run a sub-4:40 mile again, or be a babe magnet, or recover my wildly delusional dream to someday play third for the Sox.But because I want to be around for a long time, do some serious good work, and enjoy my life and my loved ones.
If I am around at 90, I want to expect every bit as much of myself as Millard Kaufman does of himself. I wonder what his next project is.
One of my several literary heroes, D.H. Lawrence, used his fiction to struggle with the issues in his life and to remake himself as a man. For now, I will admit, this same sort of struggle is one ulterior purpose for my blog. But I probably shouldn’t call it “ulterior.” My weight-loss goals and my everyday struggle to renew and remake my life are, at some fundamental level, one and the same. (And I am untroubled by the sheer ridiculousness of the implied comparison).
So I will write today. And do my other work. And get to the gym. And read my daughter’s blog. And hang out with my 9-year-old son. And email my friends. And count calories.
Saturday's Soundtrack
This one may seem insufficient as a dance tune, unless you are really, really in the moment with it.
This may be the perkiest song ever recorded by a good band. I'm not totally down with it. If you watch the video it won't be hard to decipher which character I identify with. But it's okay. A perky song can be a kind of place-holder until my medication kicks in, yes, Doctor? I do like REM a lot. If it weren't for their other songs that I like a lot I probably would never have listened to this one. Here are the other songs:
One other thing that I like about Michael Stipe and his band is that they commit themselves to the videos, which tend to be pretty good.
Monday's Soundtrack
A nice season comes to a nice conclusion for the Sox, playing a nice game.
I have to admit ... I am a little glad it is over. Now I can get back to eating right and getting to sleep at a decent hour!
Tuesday's Soundtrack
It's difficult to describe now how important it was, growing up in a sleepy little town on Cape Cod in 1965, to be able to hear the occasional messages like this that slipped through the seams of the dominant culture.
You'd always think, "Whoa, what's he getting at? Oh, yeah, it's that thing again, that thing that you think about all the time...."
Arrogant, pretentious and prideful... that is what those who call me who are living lives of quiet desperation. Life is to have fun with and to have our positive thoughts create our wonderful future! I find your blog very inspiring! Donna
5/19 - 12 laps 5/20 - 14 laps 5/21 - 16 laps 5/26 - 18 laps 5/27 - 20 laps 5/28 - 20 laps 6/1 - 22 laps 6/2 - 22 laps 6/3 - 22 laps 6/5 - 30 laps 6/8 - 24 laps 6/9 - 30-minute jog 6/10 - 24 laps 6/11 - 36 laps (1/2 mile!) 6/15 - 26 laps 6/16 - 48 laps (2/3 mile, no rests) 6/18 - 26 laps 6/19 - 26 laps 6/22 - 10 laps (Pool was overcrowded with 4 people swimming clockwise in each set of double lanes, collisions, and craziness, so I gave up to live another day after 10 frustrating laps) 6/23 - 72 laps - 1 mile! - I last swam a mile the day I got my junior lifesavers patch when I was 12. That was not recently.
I was talking with my pal this morning, after my swim.
I hadn't been sure about my swim. I was physically tired yesterday. I needed to skip a day at the pool and that's what I did. Felt right. Even thought that maybe -- what with the pool being open for adult swim Monday through Friday -- I should start scheduling a regular mid-week day off from the pool. Then I had a bit of a comfort-food dinner last night and, well, when I rolled out of bed at 7 this morning I wasn't feeling like a paragon of physical discipline. (Which is good, because I am not).
Got myself to the pool though. But once I was in the water, I didn't think I would be able to complete 10 laps. I just felt like I was working harder to swim than I had been working lately. plus, and this is important, there was the thing about not feeling like a paragon of physical discipline. My feeling like I hadn't been with the program yesterday sapped my motivation to get back on it today. Not the blues exactly, but it is definitely an ingredient of the blues, that thing where your brain starts working against you, negotiating with itself against your better angels, making deals to let you off easy.
But I persevered. I had a feeling that brain was at work, and I also had a feeling that the best thing to do was to work through it.
So I got to 10 laps and I kept going. I've been doing 22 laps a day the last 3 or 4 times I have been to the pool. Once I got to 10 I was pretty sure I could get to 22.
And then I kept going. Yes I did. Past 22 laps, two at a time, until I had completed 30 laps, feeling strong, and 750 yards.
Sitting here typing, I feel my arms, my legs, and my confidence that I am back on track. I came back and had a high-protein bachelor breakfast. You don't want to know. Okay, what the hell. I had a can of sardines. I like sardines. My sister Deborah, a very knowledgeable foodie, says they are really good for me. Maybe not if I have a date soon afterward, but otherwise.
Anyway, that brings me back to talking with my pal. She was at her office, a little after 9, telling me she had been feeling foggy all week, not getting much done.
Whoa, said I. I kind of recalled her finishing some big projects on Monday and Tuesday, and I also recalled that what she had done on Tuesday, which is a work-at-home day for her, was exactly what she had planned to do. I pointed this out. "Oh, yeah," she said, and I could tell that she was sincerely surprised.
"So, in fact, you have been feeling foggy and not getting much done for a day," I said. "A little different."
I'm just saying. Isn't it interesting how are brains are constantly negotiating with reality, revising our sense what we have or have not done and how we feel about it. And it isn't always a good thing.
Far be it from me to tell my pal how to think about her work, but with me -- especially on this BMGS 2.0 campaign of mine -- it really matters that I write things down just about every day, and make sure I give myself credit for what I do. Otherwise I might have managed to get in the pool this morning thinking I hadn't accomplished anything, or eaten in a healthy way, for days. I might have allowed myself to give in to my brain with the notion that it didn't really matter what I did today, because I had been drifting so aimlessly.
Instead, I had a great day in the pool, a good healthy smelly breakfast, and I have going to have some cantaloupe and toast before I clean the house a bit before Danny comes over in a couple of hours.
And I'm on track for another happy weigh-in on Sunday.
Life is so simple. Much more simple than this troublesome brain of mine.
I'm mighty pleased today. I started out 40 days and 40 nights ago at the preposterous weight of 273.5, and 10% of me is gone.
I have done this by following the most simple of rules:
1. Cut down my calorie consumption, without starving myself by undereating. 2. Increase my exercise to burn more calories, without wearing myself out by overtraining. 3. Stay accountable to my plan by keeping track of #1 and #2 above by writing 'em down here, rather than subscribing to the stupid belief that either (a) it is not important enough to keep track of; or (b) I can just wing it and not keep track.
I wish there were more steps so I could write a million-dollar diet book, because I will be honest: I do need the dough.
Anyway, if I continue to lose 10% of my body weight every 40 days I will be down to 106 next August, which is about what my Dad weighed when he died of lung cancer at the age of 59 in 1986. I won't go that far, I promise.
But I will celebrate today, with a really huge salad, a great workout, and some of my favorite music. Party on!
Of course, not all 15-year-old kids are dorks, as I was. These guys have it going on. Thanks for the link, Ned!
Total commitment to anything is what makes anything possible, whether it's hitting the high notes on a solo, throwing an unhittable first-pitch circle change with 97-mph arm speed, or getting your weight down. These guys believe in themselves, so they get it done.
As I wrote on my Facebook page today (June 3, 2009), I am "amazed and grateful for your wonderful outpouring of birthday wishes. I began my 60th year with an absolutely wonderful dinner with multiple generations of family and loved ones last night at Za in East Arlington. I know I am a sap, but so far, it is a great, great year."
Also worth mentioning that both yesterday on my birthday and today in its aftermath I got to the pool and did my 22 laps, and despite a very nice dinner that included what Danny calls "freaky pizza" (others might call it "gourmet"), a pint and a half of Smutty Nose dark beer (I split the second pint with Kippy), and some extremely sinful "bourbon pecan pie with whipped cream," I got on the scale today and can report that I right on track as I head toward my next weigh-in on Sunday.
Said she'd never been in trouble, or even in town
Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 10/8/2007
A little over a week ago Donna made a very thoughtful comment that I’ve been kind of waiting for the right moment to engage:
22 Pounds! That's very good for one month! How does all this make you feel? I would imagine you are having feelings of accomplishment and power, and loving yourself more and more. Those are the real benefits of having a goal, focusing on it and doing it! Donna
I think those very positive feelings are there, definitely, and as she says they are direct benefits of focusing on a goal and achieving it.
Yet I have to admit that it is so easy to lose touch with the positive feelings, even while I am doing it. It is my proven nature that, far too often, even when things are going exceptionally well, I have a tendency to get all wrapped up in the other things I want to accomplish, the other goals that are not being met, the various and manifold ways in which I am flawed. If that were simple humility it might be a good thing, but I think it is as many parts pride as humility.
I am not bringing this up just now to try to figure it out or conquer it, because I would not be optimistic regarding my chances in that battle. I only want to say that it is part of the condition of things for me, something I must live with and try to keep in its place.
And what I must say beyond that, the almost naming of this probably pointless angst, is that this is a large part of why it is good for me to write things down as I am doing, to record my progress toward this very serious goal – the goal of getting into good shape, a goal that I haven’t yet made specific in terms of an ultimate number. By writing things down here, of course, there is the obvious gravity of accountability that helps me stay on track. But there is also the fact that I am allowed to look at this blog each morning, a few times a day even, and say, “Yeah, keep it up, you are doing it, you hot shit,” or words to that effect.
And every bit as nice is that I get comments like Donna’s and emails and other nice feedback from people who know me and people who don’t, along the way. It helps, and I absolutely believe that I will live longer as a result.
I am getting younger every day. The problem with that is that I could keep going, way too far, and end up a dorky kid again, back in 1965, knowing nothing ... sort of like these guys ... give it up for The Critters. Really, they called themselves that.
American pop music had it moments in the 60s, it really did. These guys made two mildly interesting songs, and just go ahead and try to tell me that this line isn't deep:
Said she'd never been in trouble, or even in town
It's a great line, is all.
Here's a somewhat more interesting cover of the same song, by an English-language band out of Hong Kong,Teddy Robin and the Playboys:
In honor of Tarzan (aka Johnny Weissmuller, June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) I got up and hit the pool shortly after 7 am for 22 laps. Felt great, and my 59th birthday seemed like all the more reason to stick with my routine.
I don't want to get too far ahead of myself and try to project what I am going to do in honor of the Beaver, aka Jerry Mathers, but I'll find something. After all, I'm a big fan.
Swimming is really working out for me, I'm here to say after two weeks. I'm getting a good workout in 5 days a week, and I have not experienced a single moment of pain. Even back when I was running marathons and training 40+ miles a week in the mid-90s, I invariably finished each day's workout wondering if I was going to be able to work out the next day, or if nagging injuries would keep me from it.
And as a good exercise routine almost always does, it seems to be helping me to rest, to eat in a generally healthy and moderate way, and even to focus more in a more effective and satisfying way on the rest of my life. So I'm being a little bit of a cheerleader for "my program," here, but that's just another part of making it work.
What a terrific birthday I am having, and it's been going on since Saturday! The people who care about me have been taking very sweet care of me, and I am even enjoying this rather remarkable Facebook phenomenon of experiencing lots o' love from long-time friends as well as FB Friends of a more recent variety.
Some of you have known me since the time when that photograph on the left was snapped of me running cross-country at Mount Hermon back in the Fall of 1967. (I don't know who took the photo, but thanks to Keith McCasland for scanning it from the '68 yearbook and emailing it to me). Anyway, that's the guy I am looking for now, my inner 17-year-old, when I jump in the pool each morning these days. I don't have any illusions of being 17 again, but I am feeling more confident each day that this year I am beginning today, my 60th year, will be a year in which I feel younger each day. It's all up to me ... and, in a way, up to Tarzan and the Beaver.
Thanks for checking in, and thanks to many of you for your birthday wishes!
Cohen's namesake, my friend, Kindle colleague and long-ago classmate Len Edgerly, mentioned in a very lovely comment yesterday that on [my] "birthday [he'll] be listening to our mutual friend Leonard Cohen at the incomparable Red Rocks outdoor theater in the foothills of Denver." I am a wee bit jealous. If Cohen is magical indoors these days, I am sure that outdoors he will be, well, mystical.
And indeed, it was outdoors that I was first introduced -- a few months after I stayed up all night as a 16-year-old reading Beautiful Losers -- to Cohen the musician (I know, it sounds like a Singer story, and may be). I first saw him in two outdoor Judy Collins concerts in the round at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in the mid-60s, as he began to come out of the shadows from being just -- as if he ever was just -- her pianist and frequent composer.
I can't think of a man who inspires me -- yes, this me, the BMGS at 58.997 -- more than Leonard Cohen. The beauty and power of his golden voice is no less wondrous whether he is singing or writing, music or poetry or fiction, whether he is teaching or observing or being silly, whether he is 75 as he is today or 33 as he was when I first heard him sing, whether he is giving a self-deprecating interview on NPR or the CBC or (as I imagine him) chanting with the other monks or thanking Janis for making an exception at the Chelsea Hotel. And yes, did I mention he is freaking 75? He has lived through experience beautiful and terrible, and among his many lessons the best come as simple observations, and the best of these may be those that tell us that we should hope to be so lucky as to live and love another day.
"He has you at any stage in your life. He has your youthful idealism. He has you when your relationship is splitting up. He has you when you can't face the world and you look for something higher to get you through. He has you at all stages."
Last night I watched a terrific film. I'm not usually much for documentary/tribute films about musicians, but I absolutely loved I'm Your Man, which is about, for, and with Leonard Cohen and a pretty amazing cadre of other musicians including Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Bono, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Beth Orton, Nick Cave and others. Cohen's a remarkable man, has been from his days as a novelist and poet in Montreal to a songwriting and singing career that reaches into and illuminates and gives texture to the most needful moments of so many lives to his own rekindling as a Zen monk at the still point of the turning earth, again and again. The film is a tour de force spiritually, musically, and as a filmed inquiry into the heart of human creativity. So I guess I have to give it a thumbs up.
I spend plenty of time here focusing on how I am undertaking this campaign to reclaim my health and live a longer life, and about the nuts and bolts of what works for me. File this post under why it is so important.
And, oh, by the way, 22 laps at the pool this morning and I feel great!
I'm just taking a few minutes to squeeze in a post before my pal and I head over to my sister Deborah's house for a pre-birthday dinner, since I've got nice things to share.
Tuesday will be my 59th birthday and it must be a sign that there are great things going on in my life that I seem to be in the midst of several days of birthday celebrations. Last night my pal took me out for dinner at Pho & I and then to a really fun, high-energy, funny performance of Pirates! at the Huntington Theater. Dinner tonight with Deborah, and on Tuesday we're getting together with Danny, Annie (his Mom, my ex), and Kippy for a double birthday do.
All of this might be challenging to the plans and programs of the Big Man Getting Smaller 2.0 -- no more than 2500 calories a day, daily swimming, and losing a pound a week -- but I am doing right fine with it. Just keeping my eye on the priorities and the plan, and I'm happy to report that my weekly weigh-in confirmed my progress:
I lost 1.6 this week after losing 2.2 the week before.
1.6 pounds may not seem like much, but it means that for the week my net calorie intake was 5,600 calories less than my maintenance level. The devil is in the details.
I'll keep on. Maybe by Tuesday I will even feel confident enough to enjoy a piece of cake! But the important thing is that, in addition to enjoying my life and the people I love, devoting myself to this effort gives me hope that this 60th year that will begin Tuesday will be one in which I feel younger at the end than at the beginning. That, after all, is what I am here for.
A little after 5 p.m. yesterday I was headed over to watch the Red Sox’ first playoff game with Danny, and I hadn’t made a plan for dinner.
I don’t know about you, but nothing spells danger for me, in terms of food and eating and weight gain, like a couple of hours of watching a baseball game. If there is food in the house, well … isn’t that why they have those 17 little breaks at the end of each half-inning?
I needed a plan.
I needed dinner, but that was only the beginning.
There’s a Whole Foods Market half-way between my house and my son’s, and I pulled in.
Five minutes later I walked out with vast quantities of fresh fruit (strawberries, blackberries, and bananas) and veggies (celery and carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes and broccoli florets). There was a container of ranch dip, but I took a little of that and mixed it with balsamic vinegar to lighten it up and thin it so it lasted longer.
I had most of the fruit for “dinner” while Danny had mac and cheese. Then half the veggies and my “homemade” dip sustained me quite well during the game. All in all it came to just over 500 calories, and the other half of the veggies are in my fridge.
Was it the greatest game-watching fare I have ever eaten? No, but it wasn’t the worst either.
It cost less, even at Whole Foods, than I would have spent if I had sat at a bar and watched the game with a sandwich and a beer.
And the Sox kicked some backside, which is especially nice.
I had a nice email the other day from old friend Nick Wyman, writing from Sarasota where he will appear beginning October 13 in the pre-Broadway premiere of A Tale of Two Cities at the Asolo Repertory Theatre's mainstage, The Harold E. and Esther M. Mertz Theatre. My efforts to get back to my old playing weight struck a chord with Nick, and he told me he’d been struggling to keep his weight where he wants it.
One significant difference between us that bears mentioning here is that Nick is 6’5”, while I am 5’11 on a good day. In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I have sometimes envied very tall people their ability to wear a few extra cheeseburgers more elegantly than the rest of us.
But I know that is silly, and I understand that it is every bit as much of a struggle for Nick as it is for me. He is doing admirably with a regimen of yoga, gym duty every other day, and some sensible meals. But he got me thinking about another Nick.
Nicky D. was also 6’5” and struggling with his weight when I knew him a few years ago. He was doing time for some drug-related problems (like a couple of million other Americans). Who am I to hold that against him? Like Nick Wyman, Nicky D. was a great guy who I loved being around.
But there was a big man. He had started out somewhere over 1100 pounds. No, that’s not a typo. 1100 pounds. Of course nobody starts out at 1100 pounds, but I think you know what I mean.
He worked at it so hard. He lost over 500 pounds, down to under 575. Yeah, he lost the equivalent of 3 grown men of normal proportions. He did it by eating healthfully and walking every day. He had a lot of extra skin hanging here and there on him, but it wasn’t hard to imagine he might continue his successful effort and get back down around 300, which he had carried well as a high school football player 20 years earlier.
Then he got a job in the kitchen at the prison where he was doing time. Not surprisingly, he was a very good cook. Everybody else in the joint wanted him to work in the kitchen, I heard.
But within a few weeks I could see that things had changed. The scale started moving in the other direction. (He had to use an industrial scale). In a few months he was over 700 again. He could gain 5 pounds at a single meal, and ate around the clock, but the key to it all was that his kitchen job gave him unlimited access to foot after a couple of years of deprivation.
There are morals to the story. Simple ones. Being 6’ 5” is no protection. And if weight issues challenge you, don’t get a job in the kitchen, any more than an alcoholic should be serving drinks or a gambling addict dealing cards.
5.28.2009: Maybe it was the big dinner, the good company, or the Dos Equis, but I slept like the most interesting man in the world last night and didn't open my eyes until after 7, well more than an hour later than usual. So instead of getting to the pool around 7:15 as I usually do I took advantage of the fact that there are 10 more days of mid-day swimming hours for adults, and I did my 20 laps at noon. All is well with my exercise, my calorie counts, and the scale, and I'll be back tomorrow. Until then:
Sticky Situations Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 10.1.2007
Did you ever notice how we get ourselves into these situations? I mean, sticky situations? Did you? Or is it just me?
Quite often they begin with the best of intentions. Mine always do.
Sometimes, in my past, they became very, very sticky. I’m not going to write about that now. It is neither the time nor the place.
But this weekend, while the stakes were not nearly so high in the short run, was one of those sticky situations.
One of my several jobs – they all have to do with writing and/or publishing in way or another – involves copywriting, writing web content that is neatly balanced between helpful information and marketing copy, for a variety of business websites. It isn’t bad work, and I like the 5-second commute. It keeps the wolf from the door.
I get to choose my assignments on my employer’s intranet site. Sometimes they are fun. Sometimes they involve decades of research. Sometimes they are short. Sometimes they are way too long.
This weekend I got caught up in an assignment that was way too long, 50 pages all about a little college in San Diego that provides various types of computer training. 50 pages! By yesterday afternoon I never wanted to hear another word about Bioinformatics or an inverted “career first” curriculum. But I had to finish. I did, a little bit late but still in plenty of time for the assignment to be included in third-quarter revenue.
What does any of this have to do with the enduring themes of Big Man Getting Smaller? Plenty.
It’s great not to have a 9 to 5 job, except when I get myself into situations where I have to work 15-hour days. Those were fine when I was in my 20s, but now they stress my body a lot more and create imbalances as far as sleep and exercise are concerned.
I made up my mind that I would not allow this weekend’s work to create an imbalance for me eating-wise, and I stuck to it. My calorie intake was in the 1800-1900 range each day. Having this blog with its built in accountability made a big difference. When I finished last night I was hungry and exhausted and I felt some ill effects from not getting any real exercise the last couple of days. But I knew I would be fine today if I just kept to the basics of my plan. So I had a celebratory dinner of a huge salad and a 400-calorie sub, caught up on a few emails, and went to bed.
I got back to the gym for a nice workout this morning, my weight is right where it should be, and I feel terrific.
There’s plenty more to say, but it can wait until tomorrow.
20 laps in the pool this morning, and I'm feeling a little less unfamiliar in the water each day. I swam every day as a kid -- who didn't? -- and got all the certifications and junior lifesaving badges, etc. But it's been, I dunno, probably 40 years since I did any significant amount of real swimming. I always preferred running, basketball, soccer, baseball and softball, and just about anything else I could do. But all those other things took their toll, and I am lucky to have swimming now, because it is working for me and it isn't beating me up the way any of those other things.
The other thing that's fun about these morning swims is that, in addition to perhaps doing a bit to hold off my personal aging process, I'm also getting a pretty good glimpse of where I am headed, age-wise. There are usually about a dozen people in the pool when I step in around 7:15 or so, and I am often the youngest among us. The men and women are friendly and solicitous, we exchange greetings, and some offer some words of encouragement -- "Good to see you back here today" or things of that nature -- since they may recognize I am, er, just getting my feet wet at this. I can see that for many of them the daily visit to the pool is a social event as well as an exercise regimen, which is as it should be.
I may be younger than they are, but I feel at home with them. The music that is piped into the pool area during the morning adult swim period is heavy on standards from the 1940s and 50s. "Is that Al Martino?" someone asked today about a finger-snapper lodged between songs by Sinatra and Tom Jones. No problem. We're all comfortable. Toward the end of my pool time most days the demographic changes as 30- and 40-something moms come in after dropped their kids off at school. That's fine, and it's not like it's uncomfortable, but I will say that I feel closer to the group that is older than the one that is younger. I'm just hoping I live long enough to enjoy my 60s and 70s as much as they are enjoying theirs. And to give myself to keep making my health as much of a priority as they are making theirs.
* * *
I had a very nice dinner and visit with my daughter Kippy tonight.
She just hit town from New York last night after finishing her work on the Public Theater production of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and she is starting work on an exciting new project to create a new play for the Ensemble Studio Theater through a grant from the Sloan Foundation.
I picked her up around 6:30 and we went to an old favorite where we've been dining together since she was about 8 years old, the Acapulco Restaurant in Jamaica Plain. It was comfortable and a bit nostalgic, and I ordered what I've been ordering there for over 20 years, Pollo al cilantro. Delicious, as always. And just for tonight, i did not count calories. Or chips.
It’s a good time to mention two very nice extra benefits, in the last few days, from keeping this blog.
First, my 9-year-old son Danny has taken an interest in my progress, and it is having an effect on his own health, too. After I mentioned the other day that my weight loss had reached 20 pounds, he told me that he is working out twice a week on the elliptical machine on the back porch. He also took it on himself to suggest that I give him fewer pretzels in his after-school snack!
Like me, he is a big guy, but he’s learning something about the meaning of calories and exercise and the benefit of keeping the two in balance. He is off the charts in height as well as in weight, so it is never too early to learn how to build a strong, fit body. Good for him! Just one of many ways in which he makes me proud.
The other nice thing I wanted to mention is that, because of the blog and the fact that I emailed Wednesday’s entry to a few old pals with whom I had been out of touch, I’ve had some nice email contact in the past 24 hours or so from some good friends from the past: Ned French, Nick Wyman, John Simon, and Steve Peterman. Nice people all, and I am in the process of being back in touch. I am certainly not alone, among men I have known, in being inconsistent at best in maintaining connection with people I care about. But it is so important, and I am grateful to be connected again with these guys.
Back to Danny for a moment. In honor of the fact that I am proud of him, and also of the fact that he helped me a lot on a recent copywriting assignment about Naruto (a teenage ninja franchise, or saga, from Japan), today’s soundtrack is a video that Danny told me yesterday was his favorite song.
Then there was Thursday's sound track... since I am kind of bridging the 2 days here with an overnight post after returning from my GA meeting in Plainville.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "Free Falling" -- Somebody worked pretty hard on this video
I'm not sure, but I suspect it may be a character defect, that I feel compelled to archive each day's soundtrack as if this is somehow the newspaper of record. I'll have to check the list of defects in Step 6 and see if it says anything about YouTube. Meanwhile, I am parking Saturday's soundtrack here, too, since I didnot post that day:
Sox clinch! Steve hits 22.5! I've gotta work like a youngster today to complete a 50-page assignment -- aargh! There must be a theme here somewhere.
I love it when we're cruisin' together.
Gwyneth may not know how to name a child properly, but she has talent. Or presence. Something, definitely something.
Among the thoughts I was thinking as I swam 18 laps at the pool this morning after the scale told me ever so sweetly that I was down another pound since Sunday's weekly weigh-in:
From the Fall of 1966 to the late Spring of 1968 (with the aid of a full scholarship which I am too hung up on class issues not to mention here), I attended Mount Hermon, a boys' boarding school set amidst astonishing beauty on the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts. A few year later, happily for its inmates, it was joined with an affiliated girls' boarding school across the river and has been known ever since as Northfield Mount Hermon, or NMH. But while it was just MH, its institutional notion of inter-gender social interaction centered around Saturday night dating events between the school and an extremely active traffic in sometimes perfumed letters between zip codes 01354 and 01360.
While I may not be an expert on normal, I can tell you that this structure of deprivation and brief, intense interaction (and yes, I can assure you that it was intense) was not normal for 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls.
I bring it up now not to launch into any amateur anthropology about teen dating, but because for me it introduces an important discussion about how we motivate ourselves to achieve or maintain higher levels of physical fitness.
Toward the end of my junior year I met an interesting, edgy, pretty girl from Flushing named Meredith. Merry and I dated perhaps a dozen times before school broke for the summer, and while I doubt that either of us would have said we were "in love," I for one had certainly achieved a happy state of limmerance. (It would be ungallant for me to speculate as to what Merry has achieved, but she did write to me and speak to me on the phone, and there were kisses).
That summer I had a great job as a fledgling sports writer covering the Cape Cod Baseball League, and I rented a room in Hyannis just a few hundred yards from an old, not very well kept cinder oval track. Although I was working well over 40 hours a week, nearly every day that summer I went to the track with my stop watch for intense, solo track workouts in which I tried to repeat as many 70-second quarter-mile laps as I could each day without any real sense of how to use rest days or even jogging recovery laps. I had no coach, and I would just run until I couldn't run any more.
I was pursuing a regimen with two purposes:
I was working to get my time for running a mile as far under 5 minutes as possible, so as to insure I would be a worthy contributor to the varsity cross-country and track teams at Mount Hermon during my senior year; and
I was doing all of this to please Merry, to impress her, to attract her, and perhaps even to make her want to smile at me and kiss me.
Now, as it happened, Merry could not have cared less about cross-country, track, or my time for the mile. She may have found some appeal in the temporary "sixpack" and muscles that were natural concomitants of the athletic accomplishments for which I was training, but I wouldn't put too fine a point on that. Long story short, her parents did not approve of the age difference between us, or perhaps of me, and they succeeded in putting the kibosh on our romance, as parents sometimes do, often with good cause.
But that didn't matter. The point is that romance led to regimen led to results. My attraction to Merry, and my desire to attract her, played a powerful role in my capacity to get to the track on a daily basis and do what I thought I needed to do there.
What I was doing at 17, although I was far from figuring it out then or in several other times since when I have acted on similar motivations, was tapping into forces older than our species itself. I won't try to offer any finer explanation here, but it would be foolish not to realize the power of these forces or to let them assist us when they are available. My life in this my last week as a 58-year-old -- and specifically the fact that I am what is called "single" -- is not all a walk through an open field. But to the extent that it has put me in a position to experience limmerance again -- and to say any more here, about that, would to get ahead of myself -- is nicely beneficial and even motivating to the ongoing efforts of BMGS 2.0.
I didn't plan it this way. But I'm happy to have it working for me.
The Yardbirds said it all, of course:
Yardbirds - For Your Love Lyrics
(Graham Gouldman) For your love. For your love. For your love. I'd give you everything and more, and that's for sure. For your love. I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door. For your love.
To thrill you with delight, I'll give you diamonds bright. There'll be things that will excite, To make you dream of me at night.
For your love. For your love. For your love.
For your love, for your love, I would give the stars above. For your love, for your love, I would give you all I could.
For your love. For your love. For your love. I'd give the moon if it were mine to give. For your love. I'd give the stars and the sun 'fore I live. For your love.
To thrill you with delight, I'll give you diamonds bright. There'll be things that will excite, To make you dream of me at night.
For your love. For your love. For your love. For your love.
All is well in the land of BMGS today, Saturday, May 23, 2009. A busy Saturday with Danny, and we're off to see A Night at the Museum 2 -- I love Bunuel! -- but we leave you with this post from 9.23.2007.
The key to the plan is the plan - Originally posted Sunday, September 23, 2007
Sunday morning, and all is right with the world.
Well, that’s not true by a longshot. But in my personal world there is a lot that is good. Threw some batting practice to Danny yesterday and he was hitting line drives over “the fence” in his yard. Got on the scale this morning and it said I have lost 20 pounds in 23 days. Took in the Red Sox last night eking out a nice, fairly dramatic 9th inning finish to a victory to clinch a playoff spot and cut their division magic number to 6. Got an email from Diane mentioning she has lost 4 pounds on her way to 125 by January. When I saw Danny he was very pleased with some really cool personally autographed Hannah Montana cast photos that an old college friend and classmate, Steve Peterman, had sent. (Steve was an amazing person when he arrived at the little college on the Charles almost 40 years ago and he is every bit as generous, funny and real today). All it takes are little things to make my day.
I got home at 5:30 yesterday afternoon and knew I had 90 minutes before the Sox game. I could easily have just kicked back for an hour but I knew how much better I would feel if I got to the gym. By 5:45 I was stepping on to the elliptical machine. I only did a little over 35 minutes, but I did a lot of climbing and resistance and had my heart rate over 150 for over half the time and really felt limbered up and good afterward. I had been a little stiff yesterday morning after my Fresh Pond run Friday, so it was really nice to loosen up, and I slept like a baby last night.
A little thing like getting to the gym one time made a big difference.
Two stupid little tips here, geeky ideas on the weight loss front:
In Diane’s email she mentioned the following: “I did this really nerdy thing. I gathered all my "take out" menus and highlighted all the foods I could order. Example, Chinese, 4 shrimp boiled and wrapped in rice & sea weed... Sub Shop, small side salad topped with seafood salad and a half pita pocket... you get the idea. I'm such a GEEK!!”
Well, you can call it nerdy, Diane, but in my book (or my blog) it is exactly the kind of thing that makes the difference between success and failure. Being prepared, so that you don’t get stuck making a hasty bad menu choice, can keep you within your daily target and make you feel confident in how you are doing overall. That kind of day-to-day confidence is as important as anything in being successful, whether it is a weight loss plan or something else.
The key to the plan is the plan.
Now here’s my own stupid little tip. As you may have noticed, my breakfast most days consists of some combination of cereal, fresh fruit, cream, and soy milk. Meanwhile, I have been trying to save calories, avoid artificial sweeteners and reduce my coffee intake by drinking my coffee as close to black as possible.
Ever notice how there’s usually a fair amount of cream or milk left in the bowl after you finish the fruit or cereal? The natural thing to do is to lift up the bowl and guzzle it down. But I do something slightly different. I pour it into my coffee cup. I’ve already counted the calories, and the result is a better cup of coffee, even if the last sips of coffee may be a little crunchier than usual.
Like I said, it is a stupid little tip. But it works for me.
In today’s soundtrack, The Robert Cray Band’s “Twenty” is a beautiful song about a terrible subject. 3,797 American dead. Roughly 10 times that many casualties, and who knows how many Iraqi dead? And for what? Don’t get me started, but did you notice Cheney admitted the other day that it’s all about the oil?
Maybe you can tell me that this isn't pathetic, or that pathetic is the new something or other and I should just embrace the pathos.
Or maybe you can tell me what I should do to protect my eyes from the chlorine in the pool. I walked to Walgreen's an hour ago because I didn't trust my ability to drive. But jeesh, this is extreme.
I bought some Naphcon A "Eye Allergy Relief" drops, and I have taken them twice. Er, applied them. (I do know enough not to drink them).
And I also laid out $3.99 for some cheap-o Walgreen's eye goggles. I got blue. I figured that was my size, not pink.
So, anyway, this is going to be a short post. I swam 16 laps today and felt great ... until about 3 hours ago.
When I was having dinner last night at Paparazzi to celebrate two inexplicable checks in a week from Google Books, my good friend told me that my eyes were red. I had noticed they'd been watery earlier in the day but I just thought (time-shifted viewing reference coming up here) that I was being a sap because Jack Bauer's daughter was risking her life for him. My friend asked me if I was wearing goggles in the pool. I hadn't noticed any goggles. Google, goggles, giggles, is it really up to me to notice all this?
This morning I got to the pool a little later, but I had a great swim and ran into an old organizing colleague, Michael Brown. I also noticed that about half of the people were, indeed, wearing goggles. So I figured I would pick some up over the weekend.
Until my eyes started burning like Jack Bauer had just released the canister right here in my home office.
Live and learn. But you know I will be back in the pool tomorrow. Looking like all the other Martians.
Calorie intake yesterday was about 2,000, including a healthy chicken fajita salad with iced team and only moderate chip-picking with my friend and ex-bro-in-law Pete at Jose's for lunch and a two-stop dinner (cottage cheese with apple sauce and Kashi at 6 and a vegan tofu-kielbasa quesadilla when I finished my weekly Kindle Nation newsletter at midnight). (Yes, I occasionally eat at midnight, but I try not to do it without a plan. More on that later).
The scale is moving in the right direction, down from 257 to 256.2 today. (Yes, I have a scale that measures tenths and I do weigh myself every day. More on that later).
Probably most important of these three items, in the long run -- I was back in the pool at 7:15 am and moved up from 12 laps to 14 laps, or 300 yards, with a slightly higher and thus more intensive ratio of breaststroke to backstroke.
The swimming feels great. It is taxing, and of course since I am already swimming more than I have swam, swimmed, or swum in over 25 years I notice that I am breathing heavily at the end of each two-lap segment. I take a little 60-to-90-second break between each segment and then start flailing my arms again. Each day, for now, I will try to add two laps to what i did the day before. We'll see how that goes.
I wondered if I would just be bored to death by the likelihood that I couldn't do enough to feel like I had done anything, but 12 laps and 14 laps on the first two days isn't a bad start. Those who've read my Boston Sports by the Numbers blog will not be surprised to learn that in my marathoning and coaching days I used to have a lot of fun paying attention to times, workout stats, interval clockings, and the like. Certainly swimming couldn't offer me that kind of juice. Then I noticed two guys in the lanes to my right this morning, consulting a printout after each segment and telling each other things like "dolphin down, butterfly back" and "19 strokes down, 15 back." So I started to realize that there might even be a future for a guy like me in the pool. They were doing 88 laps this morning, 1100 yards. I know 88 laps is a lot more than 14 laps, but somehow it didn't seem impossibly far away, today.
When I got out of the pool, showered, dressed, shot a couple of baskets at the outdoor hoop and walked to my car at 7:50 am, I felt terrific, maybe better than a heavyset 58-year-old guy has any right to feel before 8 o'clock in the morning. I had an impromptu breakfast with a pal and was doing productive work at my desk before 10.
Over breakfast, my pal and I talked about getting up in the morning. You'd think we would have it down by now. I've done it 21,535 times, and my pal has done it hundreds of times more than me. But my impression is that there is a constant need to re-train ourselves.
When my kids had to be at school at a certain hour, or I had to be at work at a certain hour, or both, it was relatively easy even if it was not always fun. But even then, there is a lot of difference between, say, rolling out of bed just in time to shower and get to work by punch-in time, and getting out of bed on my own time, early, with a plan to do one or two simple things aimed at getting my day and me off to a good start.
Meditation, swimming, running, coffee and a book on the deck, a walk around the neighborhood -- it can be any of a number of things, but for me and most others to whom I have spoken about such things, spontaneity is the enemy of success in such endeavors. Our brains are powerful, and most of us, when in bed, like to stay in bed.
When I have been most successful at using my mornings to get my day off to a great start, the key to success has been to make a plan -- "get up at 6:45 am and be in the pool by 7:15," for instance -- and allow myself no negotiation, or even any thinking, until I am inexorably on the path I have planned. In my own case, I actually pretend that I am being operated externally by remote control. (In my 12-step program, we call that "turning one's will over to a higher power.")
Maybe I am dumbing myself down, but the payoff is huge.
In my next post I'll try to come back to those "more on that laters" about midnight meals and daily weigh-ins.
By the time I got to the gym today it was over 80 with brilliant sun, just too beautiful a day to stay inside and work out on machines. My new gym is less than half a mile from Fresh Pond, so I got into my gym rat stuff and jogged over there to run the 2.5 mile loop around the pond.
I have run that loop over a hundred times. Every Saturday morning, 52 weeks a year, there is an old-school neighborhood footrace there, a classic event that has no entry fee, no prizes, no sponsors, no numbered bibs and no freeloaders (since everyone is a freeloader). If you think it is hyperbole for me to call it a classic event, I’ll just mention here that several times a year, in addition to its several dozen regulars, it attracts world-class Olympic distance runners. Numerous Olympic medal winners have run there. For several years Lynn Jennings was a semi-regular there, driving down from her home in New Hampshire several times a year trying to break 12:00 in the 2.5 miler. (My memory is fuzzy here, but I think she did not make it, that her best was 12:04).
My own personal best in the Fresh Pond Road Race was 17:02, on May 17, 1997. I remember the date because it happens to be the date on which I last got married. My best man and I ran it, and it was one of the few occasions where I ever kicked Stewart’s ass at any sport. I was in very good shape then. So was Annie, the woman I married that day. She’s still running marathons, and I am proud that she is, even though we are no longer together. As for me, I blew out my ankle two months later trying to keep a commitment I had made to my daughter Moriah to run a road race with her. Oh well, sometimes we make promises with our hearts, and our bodies just can’t keep them. I was on crutches the next day and have never been quite the same.
But it was nice to run the loop today for the first time in years. It was beautiful out, and I was feeling a lot of benefit from what I have accomplished, and chronicled here, over the past 3 weeks. My time was 36:05, a little off my personal best. But I ran the whole way, and it was the perfect workout for today.
Afterward I showered and took a quick Jacuzzi at the gym. I usually stay out of the Jacuzzi for hygiene reasons, but I needed it today. Then I got on the scale. I won’t dignify what the scale said by repeating it here. It was a hot day. I’ll just say that, as much as I might be charmed if the scale sweet-talked me into thinking my weight loss was already in the low twenties, the real message is that I have about 5 pounds of re-hydrating to do.
I lived on Huron Ave in Cambridge for a while. I loved it there. What a wonderful thing Harvard Square must be this time of year with the students back and things rockin'! Donna
In yesterday's post I said that today I would focus on how I am going to go about losing a pound a week, or a total of 30 pounds during the balance of 2009, and how this will fit into my other goals and plans in my effort to improve my personal health and the overall balance in my life. The basic arithmetic of weight loss doesn't change much, and some of what follows is drawn from an ealier post:
As I continue to make progress in reducing my weight, I am struck regularly both by how simple this is and how difficult it can be.
Simple because, regardless of all the other issues that may effect how I feel, how I eat, and what I way, the bottom line is inescapable. I will lose weight steadily if my net calorie consumption is less than the “daily calorie requirement” that would sustain me at my present weight.
It is easy to figure out that “daily calorie requirement,” also known as my basal metabolic rate. The factors are my weight, age, gender and overall level of activity from couch potato to triathlete. At present, based on today’s weight of 256 pounds, my number is 3352 calories a day. When I began Big Man Getting Smaller at 273.5 pounds, my number was 3516 calories a day.
3500 calories avoided, in this framework, means 1 pound lost. Using today’s figure, then, if I consume 2852 calories a day I would lose a pound a week. At 2352 calories a day, 2 pounds a week. At 1852 calories a day, which is about where I have been given my propensity to forget to include my supplements in my daily log, I should be losing about 3 pounds a week. That’s pretty close to where I have been the past couple of weeks, after the predictable, more dramatic weight loss of the first week.
So all that is simple.
What is difficult? Doing it. Even more so, keeping track. Writing it down. Holding ourselves accountable.
That’s why I’m doing this blog. Should everyone who wants to lose a bunch of weight start a blog? Well, you could do worse things, believe me. I know this has been a good experience for me in all kinds of ways that go beyond the obvious immediate goal.
But whatever one does, with any serious goal, it only makes sense to figure out some way to maintain a journal about it. So I am thinking about this, and I will have some more thought about it tomorrow.
I had a terrific breakfast with my daughter Moriah this morning, and she shared some really nice news with me.
So, long story short, as I renew my efforts now in May 2009: I will keep my daily calorie intake under 2500 calories, get at least 20 minutes of regular moderate exercise 5 days a week (walking, swimming, and elliptical), and lose a pound a week.
Mark Flanagan is an old and dear friend. All too many years ago we were copy boys together at the Boston Globe, and we built a largely nocturnal friendship exploring the magical, mystical and maudlin haunts of Boston and surrounding environs as we found them many nights after putting in our shifts and leaving the building on Morrissey Boulevard around midnight.
I tried way back then to make Mark a character in some fiction I was attempting to write, but I could never do him justice. It turns out now that he is doing justice himself to many a story: his own and others', in the lyrical songs and poetry (such as his "On Fireflies") he has created for the album Creekside Rhapsody.
"Pheromones" is a new occasional feature of this Blog, in which I will share and share alike from among the reader creations and suggestions that flow back toward me. Feel free to send yours in to me either as comments on the blog or by sending me an email at hppress@gmail.com .
Arrogant, pretentious and prideful... that is what those who call me who are living lives of quiet desperation. Life is to have fun with and to have our positive thoughts create our wonderful future! I find your blog very inspiring!
Donna