photo credit: drp

Well, back in February I issued myself the challenge to lose 42 pounds in 21 weeks, but I have fallen far short of the goal. In reality, I’ve lost about 20 pounds, which is respectable considering my occasional (okay, frequent) lapses in motivation. If not for the guidance and encouragement of Paul (that awesome guru of personal training in Cleveland), I’d probably have lost nothing. So at this rate I’m losing less than a pound per week, but at least I’m losing. Progress is being made. Blubber is retreating.  Perhaps I have stumbled onto a universal weight loss (and life) truth. Huge sacrifices need not be made, only small and frequent sacrifices combined with the passage of time. You don’t have to give up chocolate or mayonnaise or tortillas, you simply need to spend time with them less often, and you need to be in it for the long haul. That’s it! Just make some small adjustments, give it a year, and you could be amazed by how much weight you’ve lost. I have 20 pounds more to lose to reach my goal, but I now know that I can reach it without taking drastic measures. Patience.

ShareThis

photo credit: Nicholas_T

Okay, so I pretty much suck at this weight loss thing.  At this rate I’ll be slim again just in time for my teeth to drop from my gums and liver spots to set up shop all over my shiny, bald head.  In all seriousness, I guess some weight loss is better than no weight loss, and I suppose I should be thankful that at least I’m making some semblance of progress.  I owe it not to a better diet, not to running, not even to a better mental outlook (because I have yet to incorporate any one of these things into my life).  Alas, I owe it simply and entirely to the fact that the earth’s orbit around the sun has once again placed it in a position whereas North America receives a greater amount of direct sunlight thereby allowing a warming of the air and a renewal of all plant and animal life.  In other (less pretentious) words, Spring is here (and is already damn well over), and the warmer weather has allowed me much more time to get outside and actually utilize my muscles.  Just getting out and working in the yard a few times a week is doing wonders.  I’m also trying to glean more wisdom from my friend up north who is a beacon of hope to millions on the Cleveland personal training scene.  He is the fitness Jedi Master and I am doing my best to learn from him.  Will I still lose 40+ pounds by July?  Common sense would say no.  But with the force all things are possible.

ShareThis

photo credit: Oliver Ingrouille [ mr oji ]

In January I wrote a post for one of my other blogs called the “Top 10 Ways To Kill Your Spirit” that has been a pretty big hit as of late, so I decided to produce a sequel. I’m shamelessly opportunistic like that. Here goes:

1. Think about the past as much as possible. Your mistakes. Your most embarrassing moments. Live in that world for as many minutes of the day as you can squeeze in, because replaying it over and over is paying such wonderful dividends. Not only do you get to relive the pain every day, but thinking about it really cuts down on the time you have to create new experiences and meaningful relationships in the here and now. Bonus!
2. Don’t think about the past at all, EVER. The past is for losers and sentimentalists. Taking a glance back every once in awhile is to be avoided at all costs because it might make you realize that you were wrong on some things. And being wrong means apologizing. And apologizing is a sign of weakness. Maintain the cold war between you and your sick, aging mother because that is preferable to being seen as weak.
3. Compete with friends and family. They are the testing ground for achievement in the real world. Rubbing their noses in your accomplishments is not a matter of your arrogance, it’s a matter of their insecurities. You must make them feel as small as possible and then, only then, will you truly feel good about yourself. And feeling good about yourself is what really matters in relationships.
4. Watch reality TV.
   
5. Refuse to tolerate weirdness. People that act and think differently from you are to be shunned, ridiculed, and corrected. They offer nothing of value to a decent society, and give you these occasional, uncomfortable feelings that you might be less intelligent than they are. Eccentrics like Albert Einstein and Salvador Dali could have really been groundbreaking if only they had been normalized at a young age.
6. Work as hard as you can to be liked. You must learn to amputate from yourself any and everything that shows the slightest inkling of originality or independence. Just be like everybody else around you and things will be easier. When the boss tells a racist joke, laugh. When your friends start picking on a co-worker, join in. When your spouse tells you you’re looking old, get a face lift. What’s most important is not the quality of your relationships but the quantity. What matters is not that you dig yourself but that others dig you (or at least that they dig the pretend you).
7. Drink. A LOT. There’s nothing like a nightly 12-pack to take the edge off. Never mind that you can no longer distinguish your dreams from reality, or that your kids’ most vivid memory when they grow up will be of you, face down on the floor, unconscious. The point is that it helps you to cope. It gets you from day to day, and a day to day existence is all most people can hope for. Right?
8. Look for the worst in people. You have a gift for quickly identifying others’ flaws, and so it behooves you to point them out to anyone that will listen. Not only does this make you feel powerful and perceptive, but it gives you that much-needed daily confidence boost. After all, if someone else has problems, maybe yours aren’t so bad after all.
9. Make the pursuit of money your primary goal in life.  So you’ve had to burn a few bridges, stab a few backs, and miss a few school plays to secure your financial future…big whup.  It’s a dog eat dog world and sometimes you have to be ruthless if you want to make it big.  Besides, there’s still a 50/50 chance that your estranged son will show up for your funeral, and maybe then he’ll finally be sorry for refusing the lavish gifts you’ve tried to buy his affection with.
10. Forget to laugh.

ShareThis

photo credit: slimmer_jimmer

Welcome to those of you that found your way here by way of my other blog.  Please check my about page for disturbing revelations about yours truly, and I hope you’ll consider subscribing to my feed, because I need validation.

Thanks!

ShareThis

photo credit: normanack

Okay, so it’s been over three weeks since I issued myself the challenge of losing 42 pounds in 21 weeks,  and I’ve lost a grand total of zero pounds.  I’ve been drinking two slimfast shakes a day, as planned, but what the purveyors of this product didn’t count on is that between shakes, before shakes, after shakes, and during shakes I’d also be consuming chips and dip, sandwiches with extra mayo, pop, brownies, girl scout cookies (I swear those peanut butter ones have crack in them), and other building blocks of a well-balanced diet.

Couple this with the fact that only two days ago I started walking on the treadmill, and the lack of results that I’ve achieved should not be astonishing.  So now the pressure’s on because I’m not moving back my goal of dropping 42 pounds by July 13.  Honestly, though, this is pretty typical behavior for me.  I’ve always had a tendency to put things off until the last minute, which makes the early stages quite fun and laid back but makes the latter stages a scrambling, nerve-racking, self-berating, and exhausting (though occasionally thrilling) sprint to the finish.  Yet another aspect of my personality that needs some work.  Maybe this will finally teach me the lesson, because now I have to lose 42 pounds in less than 18 weeks.

I’ll continue to drink two shakes a day, but they just aren’t enough to keep away the hunger pangs during the day, so I’m going to make a bigger effort to work some fresh fruit and vegetables into the mix whenever I need a snack.  The salt and sugar is killing me.  That, combined with walking 30 minutes a day on the treadmill will hopefully yield better results.

ShareThis

photo credit: Clive Arundell

In order to allow for the continual expansion of your mind, you must learn to set aside your need to always be right. Show me someone who thinks they know everything and I’ll show you someone who really knows next to nothing. How can one learn if one believes that there is nothing to be learned? How can a mind make new discoveries if it is content to merely defend what is already known?

The Most Arrogant Person You Know

Think about that person at your workplace or in your extended family who is extremely arrogant and obnoxious. This shouldn’t be hard. Hint: It’s the one who interrupts a lot and is always telling you what to do with your life. Now, you might respect this person. You might even love them. But do they strike you as very intelligent? Would you characterize them as wise? Do you seek them out for advice?

I’ve found that in most cases the greater one’s ego, the greater one’s ignorance. Ego can be an important agent in personal productivity, but ego gone wild will prohibit you from discovering a more truthful and meaningful life. It is only when you allow some humility to guide you that you can acknowledge your shortcomings, which then can lead to self-improvement and a more enlightened perspective of yourself and the world at large.

There Is No Greater Tragedy Than The Stunted Mind

It’s always a bit depressing to me when I see people who refuse to grow mentally and personally. If at 40 you have exactly the same opinions and thought processes as when you were 20, then I pity you, because you are wasting your mind. You are satisfied with a worldview that, at best needs tweaking, and at worst needs a total overhaul. I can’t think of a worse existence than to consciously refuse to meet that more aware version of yourself. I think of what I was like when I was 20 and I can’t imagine spending my whole life in that mindset. I’ve tried to challenge myself to consider different viewpoints and ways of thinking, and it has made a greater difference than I can even articulate.

Approach Your Life Like A Scientist

Look at your life like a scientist looks at his research. Have strong opinions that are based in logic and direct observation and testing, but be willing to accept that occasionally your theories will be wrong. Just as the scientist must be willing to change his mind when new evidence presents itself, so too must you have the courage to face and accept new and sometimes groundbreaking evidence which flies in the face of what you once thought true about life.

If you refuse to do this, if you refuse to accept that you might occasionally be wrong, you’re only cheating yourself in the long run. You’re like the scientists of centuries gone who refused to believe that the earth was round because it didn’t fit neatly into the worldview that they had spent a lifetime constructing for themselves. In the end the world left them behind, and now we amuse ourselves with their foolishness.

Stop wasting so much time defending your old ideas that everyone and their brother can now see are flawed, and instead get on with the work of incorporating new information into your life. You’ll gain a more fulfilling and stimulating existence, and the people closest to you will value your opinion more. The honest mind is more respected than the stubborn mind.

ShareThis

photo credit: radiospike photography

Today I voted to make Obama the Democratic nominee.  I’ve been watching this race closely for months, and I’m confident that he is better suited to tackle the job than either Clinton or McCain.  None of them is my “perfect candidate”, but I like the way he’s handled himself over the last few weeks and months.  He’s run a powerful, clean campaign, while Hillary’s has resembled chaos and indecision more than anything.  To me it’s a scathing indictment of her inability to lead, organize, or inspire.  Now if only we could get the rest of Cincinnati and Ohio to do the same!

ShareThis

photo credit: photographer padawan

I’ve been thinking a lot more lately about how emotionalism seems to trump logic and reason in this country, and perhaps in the world at large. There was the recent NY Times article about anti-intellectualism, which I found fascinating. Then the other day, my fellow Cincinnatian Bill Cunningham obnoxiously teed off on Obama, later justifying it by saying that he’d been instructed to toss the crowd some “red meat” in preparation for McCain’s speech.

Red meat? Those two words were a not-so-subtle suggestion of how the voters in this country are viewed by the elite. Quite simply, the candidates and their advisers view their supporters as mindless sheeple who are easily worked into a frenzy by empty and juvenile diatribes. We’re viewed as emotional, irrational dimwits.

Don’t get me wrong. Emotion has its place, and is important to our ability to empathize with and connect to others, but when it is allowed to outweigh reason, scary things can happen. I think we always need to be on the defensive against those who seek to convince us of their assertions by appealing to our prejudices and biases instead of our minds. The yelling and the screaming should, in fact, alarm us to the often uncomfortable reality that their position couldn’t pass muster if viewed intelligently. It takes an honest person to pull back the curtain of noise and pulpit-pounding so that the truth can be seen.

I’ve noticed in myself an occasional tendency to be easily swayed by demagogues, and it’s something I’m trying to improve on. First you must see it in yourself, and then you can address it.

ShareThis

photo credit: eye of einstein

I thought I’d kick this blog off by issuing a challenge to myself, specifically that I’d like to lose 42 pounds during the next 21 weeks. A friend of mine up in Cleveland is a personal trainer and advises that I not try to lose weight at a greater clip than two pounds per week.

Currently I’m 6′1″ and weigh 232 pounds, and my target weight is 190, which I’d like to hit by July 13 or sooner. My current resting heart rate is 82 BPM and I’d like to get that down as well by knocking the rust off my legs and actually doing some exercise for a change. My blood pressure currently registers at 127/80, which is higher than it should be (120/80 or lower is normal), so that’s another concern.

I probably haven’t had a jog in a few years, which is rather pathetic now that I think about it, and I’m not quite sure how my body will react. First I’ll start off with some walking and then gradually work my way up to running.

As far as my diet goes, well it’s pretty much a nightmare of sugar and fat. I eat a lot of fast food (whoppers are my favorite) and I rarely, if ever, eat things like raw vegetables and fruit. With my daily caloric intake its a wonder I’m not even bigger. I’ll be using slim fast shakes (one in the morning and one for lunch) in addition to a “reasonable” dinner every evening to begin the process, with the idea that at some point I can scale back to one shake a day as my exercise routine becomes more intense.

Why am I doing this? Put simply, I just don’t feel very good most of the time. I feel sluggish, tired, and cranky more than I used to, and it seems to me that my thinking is not as clear as it once was, either, which I suspect has been compromised by my sedentary lifestyle. In addition, my knees have started to ache a little bit these last few weeks, and I’ve just decided that enough is enough. 232 pounds may not sound like a lot to some people, but for a guy like me that was very slim most of his life (I was 150 pounds soaking wet in my senior year of high school), that’s quite a lot of excess “baggage”. I think that getting down around 190 is a good, healthy weight for me, and at that point I’ll probably try to mix some strength training in to tone up a bit more.

I’ll keep everyone posted as I progress.

ShareThis