Viva la difference: Messing with perfection

I've lost 24 pounds since the first of the year, and 12 of them at a very consistent pound-a-week since the middle of May when I took out a new membership at the pool and started swimming several times a week. My progress has all been based on the accountability that comes with posting regularly here at BMGS 2.0 and acting reasonably on the knowledge that I will lose a pound a week if I limit my calories to 2500 a day or fewer and get regular exercise. This is not rocket science.

But I suppose it has made an impression on my pal, and in the past couple of days she has kind of asked me if I would help her do the math so that she could get on track herself and maybe drop a pound or two by the time she celebrates what some might consider a big birthday in late December. Although I am not one to mess with perfection, I have agreed to help.

She is 5'8", and that is all you need to know. Although I have recorded other data in the table that follows, I am a wise man who understands the value of the little Google Docs gizmo that blacks out certain fields. If it worked for Bush and Cheney, it can work for me. Some information is best handled on a need-to-know basis.

As you can see from the table, life is not fair or gender-blind when it comes to the arithmetic of weight loss:


My pal's exercise program involves:

• a) a combination of walking and running for 30 to 60 minutes on the bike trail near our home,
• b) the 8-minutes-a-day workout program with weights, and
• c) situps
• c) some yoga.

Based on her numbers, my take is that, if she does (a) and (b) 4 times a week each and does (c) and (d) once a week, her BMR based on the "moderately active" calculation would be 2087 calories a day, or 14,609 calories a week. That is the rate of calorie intake that would keep her weight at its current level. In order to lose a pound a week, she would have to consume 3,500 calories less than 14,609 each week. In other words, her target rate for daily calorie intake is 1,587 calories.

Now that I am finished with the considerable exercise involved in moving and I am back to swimming with an occasional day of walking and jogging, my exercise program involves:

• a) swimming laps for 60 to 90 minutes without resting;
• b) walking and slow jogging for 20 minutes; and
• c) crunches, pushups, or weights.

Based on my numbers, if I do (a) three times a week and (b) and (c) once a week each, my BMR based on the "moderately active" calculation would be 3227 calories a day, or 22,589 calories a week. That is the rate of calorie intake that would keep my weight at its current level. In order to lose a pound a week, I have to consume 3,500 calories less than 22,589each week. In other words, my target rate for daily calorie intake is 2,727 calories.

It isn't fair that I can lose weight just as quickly as my pal while I consume 1,140 more calories a day, or about 8,000 more calories a week, but, well, viva la difference!

Sources: BMR Calculator, BMR Calculator2, Harris Benedict Equation Calculator.

Afterword: In my 12-step program, this draft post would be called 12th-stepping. But whether I post it will depend, of course, on whether my pal feels her anonymity is protected.

Back in the pool, and 3 ounces behind schedule

I got hit by some little viral bug last week -- it didn't hit me nearly as hard as it hit Danny and his Mom, but knocked me back enough that I knew I had better stay out of the pool and conserve my strength. So it was a week of laying low, not much exercise, and purposely backing off the BMGS regimen that has been working for me.

It's all well and good to listen to one's body, and something that I have grudgingly improved at over the years, but I should also admit that I was a little anxious that I would lose all the ground I have gained the past eight weeks. Especially with yesterday being pretty much a day devoted to hanging out and barbecuing on my pal's deck, capped off with two very good cheeseburgers and two Sam Lights while Kip was visiting for dinner last night.

Not to worry.

I won't go into great detail now, but I am pleased, all things considered.

First, I was back in the pool today for 48 laps and I felt great. Nothing special, no sprints, just a good 2/3-mile swim with no rest breaks. And when I arrived home afterward I didn't feel like crashing immediately (as is usually the case on my long days but would not have surprised me today).

Second, Monday's my weekly weigh-in and and I came in at 249.2, down a little bit from last week, and just three ounces above my goal for this week's weigh-in. Got to step it up just a little this week, but all is well.

100 Laps Yesterday, and Younger Next Year

Given my schedule with my son Danny and the fact that the pool is open only at limited weekday times, my swimming routine is that I try for four days a week and sometimes only manage three days. I add in other exercise -- walking, running, maybe a little tennis with my pal this weekend? -- as I can, and it is working pretty well.

The structure of my workouts is to include one "long" day each week, with two or three other days on which I am trying to follow an old training principle from distance running, which is to add no more than about 10% to the distance of my workouts, week over week. That's been going great and I've gone from 16 laps my first day in the pool May 19 to half a mile (36 laps) on my regular workout days this week.

Yesterday was my long day. I did 100 laps. 80 laps without a rest, then I had to get out of the pool for a pit stop (and to stretch out a slight cramp in my toes), and then the final 20.

2500 yards.

1.42 miles.

I was in the pool for an hour and 20 minutes. If someone had told me 10 years ago that I would ever in my life spend an hour and 20 minutes swimming laps in an indoor pool I would have laughed out loud and said "you don't know me."

But I am enjoying it, thinking and imagining and ruminating as I swim, feeling better conditioned every day, and the endorphins, have I mentioned the endorphins? I went over to my pal's after my workout and sat on the sofa watching the Sox and she looked at my big silly endorphin-laced grin and said something along the lines of "You so goofy."

Yes indeed.

And that's not all.

You may recall that a few days ago I set a little side-goal alongside my usual cumulative goal of losing a pound a week (on which I am on track). Seeing that I had a shot at reaching it, I decided to make an effort to get "into the 240s" weight-wise by July 1.

So today I stepped aboard and weight in at 249.6, thanks in large part to my nice long workout in the pool yesterday.

It may come as no surprise to you that I like getting various kinds of positive feedback for my efforts. It helps to motivate me. Sometimes the feedback comes from others, and sometimes it comes from writing things down, keeping track, and charting my progress. It makes me feel good. I like to feel good, especially if in some small way I have earned it.

Getting into the 240s is good positive feedback, that will help me continue on this path. So is the progress of what I am able to accomplish in my long workouts over the past 4 weeks:

6/5 - 30 laps
6/11 - 36 laps (1/2 mile!)
6/16 - 48 laps (2/3 mile, no rests)
6/23 - 72 laps - 1 mile!
6/30 - 100 laps - 1.42 miles

And so are the endorphins.

And it's no accident that I got a haircut yesterday and I am going to the dentist this afternoon. You don't want to know how long it has been since I went to the dentist. But there's a trend here, and it's not all bad.

Without putting too fine a point on any of this, I'll just reference one of the section headings from a great book that I am reading on my Kindle thanks to my friend and college classmate Len Edgerly, he of the The Kindle Chronicles podcast. The book is entitled Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond, by Chris Crowley and Harry Lodge. (It's also available in paperback). I don't usually cotton to such books, but this one is intelligent, packed with a lot more interesting information than most fitness tomes, and totally on my wavelength.

The section heading that caught my eye?

"Just Say No to Yasir Arafat"

Just so.

(P.S. - My friend Ned asked me to post the recent photograph above showing the gills that are growing on my body. I couldn't get a profile view which would have been clearer).

Related posts:

Getting Younger Every Year - and a Good Weekly Weigh-in

Romance Leads to Regimen Leads to Results

Arrogant, pretentious, and prideful - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 on October 27, 2007

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.

The artwork is amazing, as is Ginsburg's reading.

Here are links to the parts:

Howl Part 1 by Allen Ginsberg

Howl Part 2 by Allen Ginsberg

Sunday Soundtrack

Ah, medication....



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:

Nightswimming

Man on the Moon (with Bruce!)

Losing My Religion

Everybody Hurts

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...."

1 comments:

thoughtz said...

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

October 28, 2007 12:41 PM

Update: Mr. Kaufman died in March of 2009.