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

Student of the month - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 - Tuesday, October 23, 2007

JUNE 19, 2009: I drove down to my old stomping grounds last night for a nice dinner with a great friend and a terrific meeting back "home." The pillow was awfully comfortable when I first opened my eyes at 6:54 this morning, but somehow I managed to be in the pool an hour later for 26 laps. We endure. Happy Juneteenth!

Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 - Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Student of the month

My daughters were never skeptics about their old man when they were little. They called me “Little Man” 20 years ago, for reasons that I am sure had nothing to do with this blog or its naming. I think it was a nice counterbalance for them, a way of taking me and my deep voice and authority and bringing me down to their scale. It always made me happy that they felt comfortable to do that. They are 29 and 27 now, and for many reasons they do not need to re-name me to bring me down to their scale.

My son, who is 9, is more of a skeptic. Not only about me but about nearly everything. That doesn’t keep him from applying himself very seriously, which is great. He does his homework without being told, he is very good to his mother, and he is the October 2007 Student of the Month at the American Martial Arts Academy in Belmont.

He takes some interest in my blog. I’m pretty sure he’d prefer if I looked like a guy on a SoloFlex commercial. I get no points for having looked like that 40 years ago.

But he did say “Good” when I told him the other day that I had hit “30” in pounds lost. 

Then he said, “You were in the 20s for a long time.”

True enough. I started at 273.4 on August 31. 

It took me 3 days to lose the first 10 pounds.

Then it took me 20 days to lose the second 10.

And 28 days to lose the third 10.

I explained that weight loss does slow down a little the longer you are at it.

Then I explained the more important reason, which may be evident in the food and exercise logs here but about which I may not have been properly analytic.

It’s the Red Sox. Sort of.

I’m not just making a silly excuse. About 8 months ago I stored my TV in the basement. It was taking up too much space, and I almost never watch TV. I grew up listening to the Sox on the radio, and I kind of think that baseball was made for the radio, or radio for baseball, or something.

But comes the postseason, and I am watching a good chunk of every game. When they were playing early enough I could watch at the gym while I was on the elliptical. Now they are starting all their games at about 8:30, and the gym closes at 6 or 7 on the weekend

So I have been a regular, game nights, at the Newtowne Grille in Porter Square. They know me there. A pint is $3 and 146 calories. The food has a few more calories. I have allowed it to put me over my daily calorie target a number of times. Not enough to gain weight, but to slow down the process of losing it.

So, there are only 7 games left. Some I will watch in other settings. But I will try to limit myself to just 2 or 3 at the Newtowne Grille, where I am sure they can survive without me counting their calories. If I stay on track with this, maybe it won’t take me 28 days to go through “my 30s.”

Tuesday's Soundtrack

"At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing as she sat there softly singing
Pretty nursery rhymes shed memorised in her daddy's easy chair."



Marianne Faithfull, "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan"

"At the age of 37
she knew she'd found forever
as she rode along through Paris
with the warm wind in her hair"

Annie and I saw Marianne Faithfull perform live in a kind of recreated cabaret setting at the ART in Cambridge in the mid-90s. She's a remarkable performer, partly for the shocking transformation from what she first seemed when she appeared on British invasion shows as a teenager in the 60s, when one wasn't sure if she was anything more than Mick's arm candy. That was selling her way, way short.

Viva la difference - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 on 10.13.2007

I think I have mentioned my friend Diane before.

Back on September 21, inspired by Big Man Getting Smaller, she began a diet. Her goal was to get down from 144 to 125 by following the same basic rules that are working here.

1. Take in fewer calories than her daily maintenance amount of calories, which was 1,904 when she started.

2. Get more exercise, or a moderate amount of exercise 4 or 5 days a week.

3. Keep track of what she is eating, and plan ahead.

As of today, she is at 136, which means that she has lost 8 pounds in 22 days!

That is 6% of her body weight in 3 weeks, which is basically the same rate of reduction that BMGS is experiencing.

It is also considerably faster than I suggested to her when she I produced a chart of weekly calories intake, etc., that would get her to her goal of 125 on February 1.

So congratulations, Diane!

But she is frustrated that it isn’t going more quickly.

Part of this, of course, is the impatience that any of us feels when we don’t get fairly constant positive feedback from, in this case, the scale. We’re working hard at something, and we want to see the progress reflected in some kind of meaningful metrics.

Another huge part of it is that Diane, when she started, was a 144-pound woman. BMGS is a man who started out at nearly twice Diane’s size.

Viva la difference, of course, but there are some very specific differences:

1. Even now, after losing 10.6% of my body weight, my daily calorie requirement for maintaining my current weight of 244.5 is 3398 calories. So, if I take in 1,898 calories a day. I will lose 3 pounds a week. 1,898 calories is not an all-day pig-out by any means, but it isn’t bad. It isn’t starving. It allows for the occasional pint, the occasional steak, and even the occasional dessert.

2. On the other hand, if Diane consumes 1,898 calories a day, her weight will never change. Of course, that is not fair. In order to lose 1 pound a week, which is what I suggested she do in order to get to her goal by February 1, Diane has to consume fewer than 1,400 calories a day. It isn’t starvation either, but it doesn’t allow nearly as much wiggle room as 1,898 calories.

3. 1 pound a week is a lot less rewarding than 3 pounds a week. It basically means, if you are getting on the scale every morning, 5 or 6 days a week it isn’t going to register any weight loss. That is harder.

4. In addition to the good news that I get when I step onto the scale, I also get good news when I step onto one of the machines at the gym. Because I am big, I burn more calories when I work out. Twice this week I had workouts where I burned over 1,000 calories in a single session at the gym. It’s a lot easier to burn 1,000 calories if the number you punch in on the elliptical keypad is 245 than 145.

Oops, excuse me. 136.

So, it is natural that this is occasionally frustrating, and more so for a woman. If it weren’t frustrating, it would be easy. If it were easy, you would have already done it!

Keep it up, Diane. The amazing thing to me is that you are able to do it without creating a blog!

10% Smaller - Originally Posted to BMGS 1.0 on Wednesday, October 10, 2007

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!

Soundtracks for the Best Days of Any Week

Sunday Morning Coming Down - Johnny Cash

Come Monday - Jimmy Buffett

Ruby Tuesday - The Stones

Glory Days - Bruce

The Picture - Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow

We've Got Tonight - Bob Seger

Friday I'm in Love - The Cure

The Heart of Saturday Night - Tom Waits

Sunrise - Norah Jones

Wednesday's Soundtrack



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.

1 comments:

thoughtz said...

The best book cannot grant self control and discipline.
Donna

October 10, 2007 6:52 PM

The Beaver, Johnny Weissmuller, and Me

We all share this birthday.

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!

The Leonard Chronicles: Something Higher to Get You Through

As I mentioned we would, we had dinner last night with my sister Deborah. She had been to see Leonard Cohen at the Wang Saturday night while we were doing our Gilbert and Sullivan thing at the Huntington, and the indoor Cohen concert, by her account, was magical.

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."

--Bono, describing the songwriter Leonard Cohen, from the documentary film I'm Your Man, about which I wrote here 13 months ago:

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!

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

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.