Weekly weigh-in, Julie and Julia, and more

Oh dear.

Where I have been?

Living my life. Swimming. Eating 2500 calories a day. Falling in love. Working on the blogs that I must work on because they have hundreds of paid subscribers who will throw me to the curb if I do a disappearing act.

And I can barely pop my head in here even today after 10 days away, so I know that I am being accountable onlyt to myself, but hey, that's something, isn't it.

So, first and foremost, you like apples? Good. How do you like these apples?


I like 'em a lot. This is the best, most gradual and sustained, that I could have hoped for. 25+ pounds since January and 13.4 pounds since I started swimming in mid-May. On track for 225 by my pal's birthday and the end of the year! Way to go! (Question: I know there's some state that still has a law on the books about how many yards of clothing a woman must wear lest she face arrest, but how much gift wrap would I need?)

I swam 3 days last week and felt great, but now the pool is closed for 3 weeks for its annual repairs. Not to worry. Thanks to Annie (Danny's mom and the best ex any guy could have), I have a one-week pass to the pool at the Waltham Y. I'll think about after that after that.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking about Julie Powell. And, of course, Julia Child.

My pal and I saw the movie yesterday. There was lots of butter. I wanted to stop for dinner afterward at Chez Henri. This morning I placed an order for Mastering the Art of French Cooking (as did, apparently, about a gazillion other people, since Amazon has now sold out clear into the Fall). So BMGS may be headed for hell in a handbasket.

But I feel some kinship with Julie. As a personal blogger on a mission, I love her story, and I love the way it has been turning out for her over the past six years.

I'm going to spend some time looking at her original blog and her current efforts over the next few days. And I'll be back.

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.

Weekly Weigh-In: There's More Than One Way to Get My Exercise

The past few weeks have featured an interesting kind of triage in my life:

* I finished moving into my new home and office in Arlington. I suppose moving is always an ordeal, and this took dozens of hours and a lot of hard work, but I am done and it feels wonderful.
* I completed work on a major effort to resolve a very specific financial situation that was threatening to be challenging for a long time without resolution.
* I finished several weeks of hard work on my most recent book and published it -- FREE: How to Get Millions of Free Books, Songs, Podcasts, Periodicals And Free eMail, Facebook, Twitter and Wireless Web With Your Amazon Kindle -- and it is doing great as you can see from this screen shot:
So, long story short, the past 10 days were crunch time and I didn't get much formal exercise into my days. This is not something I can afford to do very often, but the reality over the past few weeks was that I was getting a lot of everyday exercise because of my move, and I was also making a point of eating healthy.

So I am happy to be back here, posting an entry after getting back in the pool for a half-mile (36 laps) swim tonight, flipping back and forth between a couple of pretty good ballgames:

• here in Boston Josh Beckett is one-hitting the Tigers through six on the way to his 14th victory with Jason Bay and Mike Lowell providing all the needed offense by going 5-for-5 between them with two doubles, two home runs, and four RBI; and
• over in Chicago a future Hall of Famer named Pedro Martinez (5' 10" and 175 pounds) has fanned four in three innings and leads the Cubs 4-1 in his first appearance of 2009.

And just as happy to report that I did my weekly weigh-in yesterday and I am almost a full pound ahead of schedule at 245.2, down over a pound from last week:


I'll be back soon.

Weighing in after a way too busy week

There have been some great weeks in my life -- and most of them have in one way or another involved my three children and my grandson -- but this past week, in spite of the fact that moving is much more of a challenge than it was when I was younger, has been a thoroughly wonderful week. Perhaps at some point I'll have more to say here about my pal, but it's good to maintain some privacy here for all concerned, so I will just say, again, this has been a wonderful week and I am very grateful for the blessings in my life.

What with moving, finishing another book, and several other serious challenges, I will have to acknowledge that most of the exercise I have gotten the past 10 days has been moving related. But I did get to the pool twice last week for, each time, a nonstop mile of swimming. And I have been eating healthy and moderately, and when I stepped on the scale this morning for my weekly weigh-in I liked the reading: 246.6, down almost 2 pounds from my last weigh-in 10 days ago.

There's no time to say more, now, except Thank You, Great Spirits.

Balance and another weekly weigh-in

Lots going on here in the land of BMGS:

• a wonderful visit with Zach and Mary who came for blueberry pancakes and years of catching up on my pal's deck Tuesday morning,
• preparing to move home and office the end of next week,
• a mile in the pool last night,
• nibbles from a traditional publisher on my Worried Citizen financial crisis book,
• some serious work (and expenditure) to arrange my own financial life more beneficially for all concerned for the long haul,
• daily life, which never lets up, and
• Leonard Cohen reciting the sound and textual track of my life in the background.

Balance is not always at the top of my list in such times, but it should be, because it makes everything else possible.

And so, three days late, I have administered my weekly weigh-in, down from 249.2 to 248.4 in the 10 days since my last weigh-in, moving in the right direction even if I am 6 ounces behind schedule, and firm, at the very least, in my resolve to continue the BMGS 2.0 campaign's regimen of several days a week of swimming or other exercise and 2500 or fewer calories a day.

Night Swimming

I returned about an hour ago from a great swim in the pool. Another 108 laps, or 1.5 miles, which replicates what I did on Tuesday and has kind of transformed my "long" days into something that I can repeat 2 or 3 times a week.

Both Tuesday and today I was in the pool for an hour and 40 minutes and did the 108 laps nonstop without any break. Back in my running days, running for that long a time, on the clock, was close enough to a "long run" that I certainly was not doing anything that long more than once a week. That amount of time on the clock meant a run of 10-12 miles at my leisurely pace, and that was as much as I did except in the final weeks of training for a marathon, when I trained properly as I did in '78, '93, and '94.

So the astonishing thing, at least to me, is that I have been able in a little less than two months (since I first jumped into the pool on May 19) to build up my conditioning as a swimmer to the point where I can sustain a workout of one hour and 40 minutes without a break.

I just looked up the relative calorie counts of swimming and running and they are pretty close: I am probably burning off a little over 1200 calories during a 1.5 mile swim, or about 120 calories per 10 minutes. If I run for an hour and 40 minutes I will burn off 1500 calories, but the problem is that I will also be on crutches in the morning.

During my best workouts on a treadmill or elliptical machine over the past few years, I might have approached burning off 1,000 calories, but not often.

So this swimming thing is working for me.

Don't get me wrong. It wears me out, even when Marilyn is not there, and I sleep like a baby. But it doesn't beat me up, so the result is that I can do these long swims a few times a week, and get into better and better shape.

For each set of three 1.5 mile swimming workouts I do, that's 3,600 calories. And 3,500 calories equals one pound of body weight, gained or lost, for us humans.

I can do the math, and I'll keep coming.

Dreaming a life - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A quick update at the start of a busy day this morning, July 15, 2009:

• A wonderful day at the pool yesterday, swimming 1.5 miles (108 laps, 100 minutes) without so much as a five-second rest along the way.
• Coming out of the pool with a brain full of endorphins, singing "That's No Way to Say Goodbye" in the shower without embarrassment and another 50-something comes up to me and asks if I caught Leonard when he played here a few weeks back, no, but leading to a fun conversation about Cohen, whom I saw for the first time in '66 or '67 at the Melody Tent, playing the piano for Judy.
• A bit of a difficult evening with my pal which ended up in our feeling even more connected, which is all one can hope for.
• A nice and unexpected email and telephone conversation with an old friend, opening the door to some nice, if optimistic, visions of ways in which much of the hard work I have been doing these past few years might lead to pleasant and appropriate rewards.

Dreaming a life

Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 Wednesday, November 14, 2007

35 pounds today. Another multiple of 5, and some real progress the last few days after slogging for a while.

When I was a distance runner in high school, we had the toughest, hilliest course in New England. I don't know if I succeeded or not, sometimes I did, but I tried to be a mudder, the type of guy who embraced the conditions whatever they were. The last couple weeks of the season we had some snow, a sub-freezing race or two, some mud. I had imagined myself a mudder, and I had my best races then.

So I slog on. I won't say a lot more today, but I'll listen to this music, "Dreaming a Life" by Native American flutist Carlos Nakai. Listen. In a small way it is what I am trying to do here, a struggle of positive self-invention.

Wednesday's Soundtrack

Some nice Zim footage from "The Last Waltz." I had so many thoughtful emails after yesterday's post. Thank you.

Thursday's Soundtrack

When I look into your eyes
I can see a love restrained
But darlin' when I hold you
Don't you know I feel the same
'Cause nothin' lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it's hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain
We've been through this such a long long time
Just tryin' to kill the pain
But lovers always come and lovers always go
An no one's really sure who's lettin' go today
Walking away


Guns 'n' Roses - November Rain

Friday's Soundtrack

Some of my favorite bubble gum music.... covered with an edge in the first instance.



Joan Jett and the Blackhearts covering Tommy James' & the Shondells "Crimson and Clover"



"Friday" by The Cure


"Hang on Sloopy" by The McCoys -- there was a time in 60s pop when love always trumped class warfare, and I'm embarrassed to say I believed it, whether it was "Sloopy," "Patches," or "Rag Doll"



"Silence is Golden" by The Tremeloes, who must have thought they were showing up to audition for roles in "The Full Monty"

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.

Rhythm, no blues

Filed by Steve on Friday, July 3, 2009

Terrific rhythm to my life in the last 24 hours:

• 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.
  

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

Welcome to Our World, Rose Helen Jackson!

No doubt there are a few readers who are squinting at that little fraction-of-an-inch patch of Rose's face and saying, "Awwww, isn't she cute!!??"

And I am sure she is very, very cute. But I am here to say that this little girl is also very lucky, because she was born last Tuesday to two wonderful and grateful parents, Jennifer and my old roomie Paul. A little over 8 pounds, or about twice as big as the puppy Danny got for his fourth birthday.

It's been a blessing to watch all of this unfold over the past couple of years, Rose, and I can't wait to meet you. And I am also looking forward to sharing some of the experiences of fatherhood with your Dad.

As for the Big Man Getting Smaller, fatherhood continues to provide one amazing experience after another. Today, Danny got poked in the nose in karate, and it bled. Second time for this, but a big difference from the first time, which was a little bit teary. Today he just sucked it up, went in to the bathroom to clean himself up, and went about his business. That's my boy.

And of course, Danny is at or near the top among the many reasons why I am hard at this quest for fitness and health and longevity. Who would want to miss and of what I experience day after day and month after month with kids like Danny and Kippy and Moriah and a grandson like Callum? Nobody in his right mind, that's who.

So I swam again today, 40 laps in the pool at 6 o'clock. After swimming half a mile (36 laps) without a rest, I finished the workout with two 50-yard freestyle (crawl) sprints in 64 and 63 seconds. The U.S. mens' record, a little over 21 seconds, is safe. But I felt like I was moving in the water, and it felt good.

And I also got on the scale for my weekly weigh-in, and it was good. Down 0.8 from last week to 250.6, still ahead of schedule, and within spittin' distance of my little side goal of getting down into the 240s by July 1.

It's been a hell of a week here in East Arlington....

Amazing week.

In a very intense and disciplined burst of energy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I put the finishing touches on a book that I have been working on, off and on, for months. It is still going through its paces in terms of final proofing, documentation, backmatter, line-editing, and cover design (see image at right), but I feel great about the book and I am looking forward to seeing it in a Kindle edition by the end of this week and in paperback later in July.

Tuesday evening I swam a mile in the pool. 72 laps. I think I have already crowed about that, but, well. A mile. I started the swimming regimen on May 19 and prior to that I had now done anty lap-swimming, or any real swimming other than sloshing around in the ocean or a pond, for over 40 years. I am still feeling great from that, and I was back in the pool Thursday for 30 laps Thursday evening.

After I got out of the pool I picked up my pal at her office and we went to a party. Not just any party. The 60th birthday party of a great old friend from my undergraduate days hanging out at the South House Grille, wetting our whistles with a gallon jug of Vino Fino on Saturday nights, and other pursuits. During the past couple of years I have been blessed to enjoy wonderful times re-connecting with a great group of people from those years, and spending some time with Jim has been one of those treats. Being at his 60th birthday party was special, and the beer, the lobster, and the vintage music were damned good too. And I danced -- much to the astonishment of my pal, and dance partner.

All of that -- Thursday's 30 laps and the subsequent partying -- also occurred after I completed an intense day meeting Thursday's weekly deadline for my Kindle Nation email newsletter, with over 3,000 words of fresh content.

Then on Friday -- after my mid-day nap -- my pal and I took my son Danny, who will be 11 in six weeks, to a concert. David Archuleta, KSM, and Demi Lovato. I had noticed Archuleta's name before, only because Louise Archuleta -- no relative, I assume -- was one of the community leaders with whom I was honored to work as a community organizer in Danieldale, Texas, a little over 30 years ago. (We brought picnic baskets and blankets and occupied the offices of the City of Dallas; director of parks and recreation until we wona commitment of CDBG funding for what came to be known as Danieldale ACORN Park, but that's another story.) Otherwise, these were not names with which I had been familiar. Let's just say that while we had great fun at the concert, the experience did not knock the Stones and BB King at the Garden (November 1969) from the top spot among my all-time list of favorite concerts. And I lasted as long as Danny.

Tonight my pal and I are going to babysit my 15-month-old grandson Callum, and this afternoon after making some good progress on the cover design above I went out on a beautiful day and had a great sweaty 35-minute run -- something I can only do now and then, but which I enjoyed greatly on a day when the pool was closed.

And those are just the things I can tell you about.

A mile!

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.

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.

Off to a good start, and "A fundamental struggle - Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 October 21, 2007"

June 18, 2009: Hugely busy day today in which I am trying to squeeze in some househunting, dinner with a friend, and a meeting on the day I already am up against my weekly Kindle Nation Daily deadline. But I have already been to the pool for 26 laps, so I am off to a good start. feeling great, getting my exercise, eating healthy. We had a nice dinner at Kitchen on Common in Belmont, around the corner from an apartment I'm scoping out and a few steps from Danny's next-year middle school. I'd never knowingly had arctic char. It was exquisite.

A fundamental struggle

30 pounds today, which pleases me much more than 29.5.

I seem to have moved beyond a little plateau, by drilling down on the basic elements that have been working for BMGS these past 7+ weeks: pay attention to the calories, and work them off. I shall keep it up.

It seems from the emails I get that nearly all my 50-something male friends are fighting the good fight when it comes to weight. We can do this. There are powerful forces working against us, but together we can fight the power!

To succeed, for me, it has required that I treat this struggle as if it was really, really important. There are ways in which I think it is important, but others in which I know it is trivial. But if I let it become trivial for me, I will fail.

My pal Stewart wrote the other day about the importance, also, of focusing on the things that are really important:

“Do good. We really are in fundamental struggle for soul and future of this country and our kids. Weigh in. We need your voice--in big fights and little ones. For instance, great news about Merle Haggard. Every word and action for democracy and people and justice matters today--great or small. Don't mean to meddle or tell you how to spend your time. But you have a gift for writing. People will read what you write. Values matter more now than ever. The country hungers for honorable and fundamental values and for folks to voice those values.”

Word.

He is right about every bit of it, and I accept the responsibility and the challenge, even as I am still feeling my way into acting on that acceptance again after lo these many years.

That said, I am drawn for a moment back to trivia.

A good night for the Boston 9 last night. Their $70-million right fielder redeemed himself after a season that had some fans calling him Nancy Drew rather than J.D. Drew. (Not me, I am a Nancy Drew fan). Tonight their $103-million #3 starting pitcher has a similar opportunity. They put it away so early and easily last night that I was able to vacate the bar sometime in the 4th inning. This was a good thing. I had worked out at the gym shortly before the game, and consequently was more than a little thirsty. Bud Light is probably not the right way to rehydrate, but it was cold and good, and I had allotted myself the calories for 4 pints. Problem was, at the rate of the pint per inning that I was sucking down, I don’t think I could have gone the full 9 innings if my team had needed me.

I first heard today’s soundtrack back in the mid-80s when I owned a community bookstore called the Dorchester Reading Authority. I used to play a Celtic music show on the weekend, which may have been a precursor of some kind to Brian O’Donovan’s program, and this song seemed to get play every week. Well-deserved play.

Go Sox!

I'm trying not to use sex to sell this blog, but tonight it is important to stand up for what is right.

Soundtrack for Sunday

I would never steer you wrong. This is a song for all ages, all races, all souls. Listen, drink in the music and the lyrics drawn directly from a man's letters to his son who had made the crossing, and the images. It is just an amazing fusion of music and narrative, and yet entirely artless.


The song was written about 25 years ago by a fellow named Peter Jones, and this recording features Robbie O'Connell, Mick Moloney and Jimmy Keane.

"I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscienc

2 numbers

I just came home from my pool workout, and since I had the time and wanted to break up my workday with a good workout I decided to make today my "long" day. I felt good when I got in the water, but I feel even better now: we're talking some serious endorphins for Dolphin Boy here.

There are two key numbers that sum up my experience in the pool tonight.

The first is the number of laps I did.

The second is the number of rests/recoveries between laps.

The second number was 0.

Yep, zilch, zed, zip, zero.

The first number was 48.

48 25-yard laps without a rest in between. 1200 yards. Two-thirds of a mile.

And I feel mahvelous, dude.

It is kind of amazing to me how great this swimming thing is working for me. My conditioning, breathing, and muscle tone are just kicking in at a higher level just about every time I jump in the water, and rather than kicking my rear end with nagging injuries, it makes me feel more limber every day.

That's all. There's pasta and broccoli boiling.

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)

BMGS WEEKLY WEIGH-IN FOR 6/15/09 - EMBRACING THE FOCUS

Weighing in each week is an absolutely essential element of the accountability process for BMGS, but I will admit that it is sometimes a part of the process from which I shrink a bit, er, no pun intended. Nobody ever guesses my weight when they see me (either that or they are very kind to me, which is entirely possible whether deserved or not), so it doesn't thrill me to share the actual numbers here. But who's kidding who? The whole point of the project here is to bring fundamental change in my health, my eating and exercise habits, my body, and mybody's appearance. Being embarrassed by, or hiding, the reality of the numbers would be a bit of a telling dodge.

So once a week, without putting too fine a point on things, I can accept the focus on the numbers, the weigh-in, the number of pounds. I can even embrace it, even if part of my ability to do so comes from my knowledge that I'll be done with that for another week.

So, here's what I got:

• I'm still ahead of schedule, and I have lost weight every week.
• The funny thing is that when I weighed myself yesterday I didn't think I had lost weight, because I had forgotten the numbers from the week before, and until I checked the chart I thought my June 8 weight had been 251.8 instead of 252.8.
• So, in the past two weeks I have gone from 253.2 to 252.8 to 252.2. Funny how a swing of a pound can matter.
• I'm not concerned that my weight loss is slow. Like I said, I am ahead of schedule, and what is far more important is that I am building a really strong foundation of exercise with my daily swims and off-day jogs and walks. This week's swimming plateau is at 26 laps a day, which is what I did yesterday including, in the middle of the workout, 200 yards (8 laps) without a break. That exercise and the conditioning that is coming with it will ultimately be the most important part of my success.
• I have been eating pretty healthy for the most part, even when out for dinner the last two nights -- for a Community Servings benefit at Scullers Sunday night and a Boston Writers Union get-together at Tavern in the Square last night. For the most part.
• I am feeling very confident that I will drop another 13 pounds by the end of the summer, and then another 13 by the end of the year. I am projecting that I will be at 225 by December 28, which will be, speaking of 13s, 13 years to the day after I reached a New Year's Resolution goal to run a 6-minute mile by the end of 1996. I was heavier than 225 when I ran that mile, which was on the treadmill at Wellbridge, about 7 months before I blew out my ankle in the Sugar Bowl 5-miler in Southie and ended up crutches for weeks and unable to run for years. I'm not planning any 6-minute miles this year. I'm just planning to make sure I do not end up on crutches.

I ache in the places where I used to play, but as long as they keep playing the music I'll keep playing.

Old Coot Shocks the World! (Or, at least, pleases himself....)

If I'm going to go to the gym to swim on a day when it is (1) deadline day for my weekly Kindle Nation email newsletter and (2) the day my Kindle DX arrived and half the sentient world is waiting with baited breath for me to post my incredibly interesting impressions of it, then, well, I better make something of the trip.

Did I?

Yes I did.

I started off feeling good and committed myself, right from the get-go, to lengthening out the segments between my 45-second rest-and-recoveries. Yesterday I lengthened out the segments from 50 yards to 100 yards (4 laps). Today I added another 50 yards to each segments and only rested after each bundle of 6 laps.

Then, during my second rest period, I happened to look up and see a sign on the wall that I somehow had not noticed before. Maybe it was new, or maybe I just have a way of filtering out what does not apply to me. Until it does apply.

The sign said:

1 lap = 25 yards 72 laps = 1 mile

Okay, I had noticed the top line. Not the bottom line.

Once I noticed it, my fate for today was sealed.

I was determined to complete a half-mile swim. 36 laps.

So that's what I did. It felt great, all the way. It's probably pathetic that I get such motivation out of such games. But I do. I knew I had done 30 laps last Friday, so getting to 36 isn't shock-the-world stuff. But for most of my daily swims I have just been adding 10% a week -- or that's what I am saying I am doing -- so the long-day jump from 30 to 36 feels good. Here's the log for the past 3 1/2 weeks:

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!)

I'm just starting to get into a book that I picked up on fitness swimming, so I am probably a couple of weeks away from the craziness of timing my laps, swimming intervals, etc. But gaming the workouts a bit just helps to make it fun, and writing it down the way I do plays a big part in allowing me to see -- and celebrate -- the progress I am making. But as it is, I'll have to tell my friend Martha -- who sat next to me in Western Civ freshman year but swims so much that she still looks 37. Don't you think? She did 2 miles in 60 minutes this year, so half a mile is nothing. But it's a start.

I've never considered myself enough of an athlete to get seriously competitive with other people. Or at least not in a long time. But I do find it very easy to take inspiration from them. And I also find it very easy to feel self-congratulatory when I accomplish anything. Which is part of the brain chemistry that keeps me coming back.

A friend of mine got up before 5 this morning and went right out for a walk and jog, and then she said it was no big deal because she had already been up so early. I'm just the opposite. Give yourself credit! That's the way I look at it. And it is partly because I know that feeling good about what I did today will help me to go out and do what I need to do tomorrow.

It's a gray, slightly drizzly Thursday in East Arlington, but I barely know it. I am in the zone.

Sometimes when you start walking you do not know where you will end up until you arrive there. So, too, with writing. Sometimes. When you start.

6.10.2009: File this under Life is Good. Whatever ailed me yesterday has moved on to bother someone else. 24 strong laps in the pool this afternoon, and for the first time I broke it into 4-lap segments rather than 2-lap segments. Wind and strength are improving with each workout, it feels like. And Amazon shipped my Kindle DX today.

Originally posted to BMGS 1.0 - October 17, 2007

The last few days have revealed a slight dip in the usually relentless sugary cheeriness of the Big Man Getting Smaller. Surely this can’t be a result of the Sox being down 3 games to 1 in the ALCS, can it?

That may be a part of it, in a mix with being a little tired, working too hard, working out too hard, missing people who are close to me, listening to too many sad songs, and so forth. It’s always something.

So today I’ll get out of the house a little and take a walk, talk to my daughter Kippy and best friend, maybe even take a drive out to Waltham for my daughter Moriah’s cross-country meet this afternoon.

Tomorrow I’m heading down to Plainville for a GA meeting to celebrate the 2-year anniversaries of two very good friends. I’m bringing the cake, and it looks like it will be a good one, from the picture on the bakery website.

I’ve been basically on course with the regimen of BMGS, even though I have gained a pound and a half, so I am confident that my progress here will continue. No workout yesterday, which affects my day to day weight, no doubt.

Come to think of it, I haven’t been to a GA meeting in 12 days, which is the longest I have been without one in over a year. This is no accident. Ever notice how it is always the little things?

The point, I guess, is that the things that work in our lives don’t just work for what we intend them for. Often they work in all kinds of other ways.

I started going to GA 8 ½ years ago because I had to deal with an enormous problem I had with the stock market, with gambling, and with my life. GA was a great fix for that problem, but it also became, over time, a really important part of my ability to keep my life in general on an even keel, to keep moving forward, to be the man I want to be, the father I want to be, the friend I want to be.

So, another person might say, “Fine, you haven’t been to a meeting in 12 days, but you haven’t gambled, so no problemo, right?”

But I have a better vantage point. I’m the guy who is living inside this body (that is 10% smaller than it was 7 weeks ago), and I sense a more generalized cost to my failure to make a meeting in the past week.

My regular Plainville GA meeting is a kind of home to me, complete with a kind of family. I need to be there. Tomorrow night, I will be there. With the cake. (Of which, by the way, I absolutely intend to have a piece.)

Plus, it wouldn’t hurt if the effin Sox could step up and earn their considerable keep tomorrow evening while I am at the meeting!

Monday's sound track

Whoa.

Unfortunately I can't embed this one in the site the way I usually do, but this man just sings the hell out of this song. I stopped keeping up with the latest in country music around the time I left Texas in '78, so I don't know a thing about Josh Turner, but he knows how to cover this old George Jones song. It's enough to make a happy man sad or a sad man sing.

1 comments:

Colt Coeur said...

Poppa,
I am so proud of you!
You are so wise and I love how actively, and aggressively(!), you seek greater peace and wisdom. Thank you for sharing so much of yourself on your journey. The words and the music are great sources of strength and inspiration for many I am sure.

Negative Splits, on a Bloody Mary Morning

After I mentioned to my daughter Kip that I'd been nursing a headache this morning, I joked that "a couple of Bloody Marys and I should be good to go." And there have been mornings that I began with "the hair of the dog," as we say. I would even go so far as to say that I may remember some of them fondly.

It's just that none of them have come in the last 30 years. And that's a good thing.

I didn't drink a drop last night, which means that last night was like most nights for me. I have beer perhaps half a dozen times a month, and once in a blue moon I'll chase it with a second. But the headache that I felt when I woke up about 5:30 this morning after a solid eight hours could have done justice to many a morning from my wayward youth.

Second cup of coffee, third cup, and that bad head was still with me. Ate some breakfast, didn't matter. The time when I should have left to get to the pool for my weekday morning swimming regimen came and went. There would be another adult swim period at 5 pm, and maybe I could manage that.

Then a little after 9, as I was beginning to dip a toe reluctantly into the day's work, I remembered another long-ago antidote to a hangover. When I was 20 there were occasional weekend mornings when I would wake with a throbbing head and go out for a ten-mile run. (Or maybe it was a five-mile run that felt like ten miles). I'm sure there were mornings even back then when I could not have managed it, but when I could, it have a marvelous effect not only on how I felt immediately, but on how I felt all the rest of the day. Suggesting that endorphins may be a better antidote than the hair of any dog, even on that bit you the night before.

Anyway, I was noticing through the day yesterday, after my 24 laps in the morning, that I have been feeling very good, and more limber than usual, the past few days. The swimming is doing its job -- Big Man Getting Smaller is also, for now at least, Old Coot Feeling Younger. And so, in a bit of a nostalgic nod to those mornings when I was 20, I pulled a pair of shorts on, laced up my tennies, and headed out for a run.

I don't want to overstate this. It was a slow run, be sure of that. But the reason I have been swimming in BMGS 2.0 is that I have not been able to get run enough to get sufficient exercise, due to the various joint, bone, and muscle injuries that I acquired over the course of several decades of overdoing the running, including half a dozen marathons, plenty of training, and 6-minute miles and 38-minute 5-milers as a late-40s Clydesdale competitor.

So I ran slowly for half an hour. It felt great. From my house down to the bike trail along Spy Pond and up a few streets to Pleasant Street, and back. All running, no walking, and I was never breathing hard.

And I suspect my friend Ned may be the only reader here who will get the significance of this, but when I got to my house on the way back I had to run another 50 yards to make the "back" of the out-and-back the same time-length as the "out." That means I did "negative splits," which means that I was going faster on the way back than the way out, which means that my creaky legs and knees and ankles and hips were loosening up as I progressed.

I know better than to think I could do this every day. The swimming is still the key. There are no final victories, especially at my age. But there are little tiny victories along the way, and I take great satisfaction in them.