Heft on Pavement

Heft on Wheels

I've decided that, since I haven't made as much progress in the last month as I'd like to report, I have to post photos.  I freely confess that I'm that guy, as in "Mom!  Look at that guy on the--what is that?"  If you ride a bike like mine, you have to be comfortable with two things:  1) explaining to people what it is; and 2) falling over at stop signs.

It's a recumbent bike, and one of several ignored loves in my life.  I was inspired to buy it after I hurt my back in a bowling accident and read Mike Magnuson's book Heft on Wheels.  Be relieved that I haven't been inspired to photograph myself as he is depicted on the cover of his book.  It's not pretty,  I'm jus' sayin'.  Someday, I'd like to ride her from my house to my favorite spot on Lake Superior.  Maybe this year.  Wouldn't that be great?

The only problem with an often ignored, but beloved recumbent bike with clipless pedals is that since I don't ride it very often, I have to reteach myself the little move it takes to detach my shoes from the pedals.  If I don't do it just right, I panic.  Panic leads to forgetting about gravity, and forgetting about gravity leads to me falling over at stop signs, in my driveway, in the parking lot at the hardware store.  You can call that Heft on Pavement, I suppose.  Fortunately, I don't have a photo of that, but you can imagine how it sounds.

Kid:  "Mom!  Look at that guy on the--what is that?  He fell over!  He just stopped and fell over!  It looked like he forgot to put his feet down!  I don't know what he's doing, but I don't think he knows either."

Mom:  "It's not nice to laugh at people.  He could be hurt.  Why isn't he getting up?"

Kid:  "I think his feet are stuck to the pedals."

Heft with Bat

The second photo is of my good friend Doug pitching a wiffle ball to me in the hallway outside my classroom.  Answer me this:  Isn't this the most soul-killing hallway you've ever seen?  You can only see about one-third of it in this picture.  What you cannot see is the devastating hit I got just a second later.  Wouldn't it have been exciting if I'd hit the sprinkler?  I hope this gives you a picture of how hard English teachers work.  Actually, this was just this afternoon, the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.



Don't drink calories.

Several things are going on this week:  1) I keep forgetting to wear my cool pedometer, and I had gotten my step count up over 4,000 several days in a row.  The problem with a cool pedometer for me is that I lead just about the most sedentary life a person could imagine and not be paralyzed.  I get that 3100 steps on a typical day is not very many.  Thirty-one hundred is a number I can understand.  I could probably count that high without getting lost.  Ten thousand is unimaginable.  Ten thousand people, $10,000, 10,000 days--I have no idea what to think about these things, but 3100, that's within my realm.  I walk up the same 40 steps from the parking lot to my office and classroom daily, and I count them.  Forty-one, if you count the curb.  I use the handicap ramp just to avoid the debate over whether or not a curb is a step.  Thank God for the ramp down to the office door.  If it weren't for that moment of joy--wind in my hair, lactose acid burn in my thighs--I probably wouldn't survive the 40 steps.

When I start to parse out activity units into meaningful numbers, I realize how little I actually accomplish standing up.  It's not that I take only 3100 steps a day that bothers me.  It's that I take the same 3100 steps everyday and that I can count them down to the steps to the office and the worn spots on the floor in my classroom.  There are so few of them that, if I worked at it, I wouldn't have to assign numbers to them.  I could call them by name.  "Hello, Curb Ramp!" I might say.  "Here come The Forty," I could observe.  "Thank you, Other Ramp," I surely would express.

2)  My scale is having a bad week. I don't blame it, however.  It's been coming in with encouraging numbers for awhile.  Setbacks happen, and it's new to the job.  I did get a good piece of advice from a friend who has lost some inches since March.  Perhaps he'll join the discussion.  A potential follower!  He said, "Don't drink calories."  Fantastic, I thought.  This I can do, and celebrate my success on Soda Saturday.  I'm not good about abiding by it in the morning, though.  I need coffee to wake up, but I don't like the stuff, so I have to have sugar--that beautiful, raw kind.  Sugar isn't enough to mask the taste of coffee, so I have to have an equal share of skim milk.  As I've said on The Perfect $4.00 Breakfast, I really only like sweet, warm, caffeinated milk.

3) I have a photo op on the 30th to showcase my progress.  April's photo op was huge. Wasn't it?  I was thinking about getting my hair cut Saturday morning.  Not so I look better.  I'm hoping it helps my scale come in with better numbers.  By the way, I'm not announcing my scale's total this week out of respect for its effort.  No need to dwell on misfortune.  But, the second I started thinking about not drinking calories, I started thinking about all the calories I could drink.  Drinky calories are everywhere.  It has taken me a few days to get my head around what I'll have to do to drink no calories.  Last night was the Bulls game, so I had a host of drinky calories to suit the occasion, and it gave me the chance to think about drinking no calories, but I only realized that after I'd had more than my scale should be asked to tolerate.  Next time, I'll be better prepared.  I'm sure the pulled-pork sandwich and fries didn't help either, but they were good.  Really, really good.  One of the only pulled-pork sandwiches in town and waffle fries.  Worth every ounce!

Followers, Friends, and Some Kind of Liquid

Oh, yeah, that's three followers. This gets more fun by the day.  There are no friends like old friends.  Spead the word.  It's a movement.  So far, I've learned four things:  1) Nothing like a friend to lend some encouragement. 2) Eat good food.  Taste it.  If you're going to eat a burger, eat a good burger--grilled, tomatoes, onions, mustard, toasty bun!  That includes a bag of chips now and then.  3) Have a snack in the afternoon. 4) Wash it down with water.

I also learned from a witty poet--but this has nothing to do with losing weight, getting happier, and gaining some energy back--that the solution to every problem usually involves some kind of liquid.  I take that back.  It has everything to do with it--just depends on the quality of the liquid.

The scale is my friend again this week!

My scale is proud to announce that its numbers came in very good for the third week in a row--327.2!  Maybe Wednesday will work out after all.  But, it's nice to have Thursday as my backup.

Most importantly to me, I have another follower!  Okay, it's my other sister, but that's huge--twice the number I had!  I have a brother, too, and a wife and son.  If I work it, I just might have five soon.  Where could I go from there?  Karen's commenting, thank you! My mom has claimed by email that she doesn't blog.  What's that about, Mom?  You can blog anonymously.  I won't tell anyone it's you.

Yes, you can play by phone now that I set up the rss-feed.  This is becoming great fun.  I'm open to suggestions, encouragement, entertainment, followers, fellow flabby pacifists.

Cardinals Hat and Walking

As it turns out, buying a pedometer, no matter how cool, does not motivate one to walk more.  I've been hovering around the 3100 steps level for a few days.  I'm shooting for 4000 consistently, but it feels like I'll have to add something to my day in order to get that.  Perhaps an evening walk.  Not terribly exciting to me.  You'd think I'd like aimlessly walking.  Tried it the other day.  Not so much.  A guy questioned my choice of hat since I live in the land of the Cubs, and I was wearing my favorite Cardinals hat.  It was the evening of the first game of the first series of the season between the two clubs. But, I politely said hello to him, his family, and dogs.  He said, "Is that a Cardinals hat?  Yeah, that's a Cardinals hat."  Then he, family, and dogs walked on.

I need a point for walking, I think.  General health isn't a good enough goal for me.  I need an incentive.  Now, I have a friend who has one of those pedometers that has a USB connection so she can download the pedometer's info into a tabulation program.  I wonder if the anticipation of downloading activity units--steps walked, calories burned, miles covered--motivates her to walk.  I bet it does a little.  Wouldn't make me walk in a cold rain, but it might make me walk around the block.  Then, go in and download stuff and then go back out.  Could be fun.

Diggin' it!

Hey, hey!  My sister's reading my blog--my first friend!  Now, if I can get my mom to click that comment button, that'll be two, and I haven't even started working on my wife.  I'm feeling the pressure, and I'm diggin' it!

Once for Each Tooth

Did you read the advice in the Weightloss Tip of the Day today:  "Chew each bite 12 times.  This prevents overeating by giving your stomach time to realize what you've eaten?"  Now, I'm going to suggest that the 12th chew is a little too late for me to realize what I've eaten.  No doubt I've eaten some pretty sketchy things, but I knew what I was doing long before I was 12 chews into it.  Perhaps, I could prevent overeating things I can't recognize until at least the 12th chew simply by not eating things I don't recognize.  How's that for a fix?  I hope somebody's making huge money off that tip.  If he is, then surely I can expect a big check for this one:  Look at the thing you're planning to put into your mouth before you do.  If you don't realize what it is, then sniff it once or twice.  That ought to do it, but if it doesn't, poke it a few times with a fork.  Touch it.  If it seems like food, then bite it.  If you're a couple of chews into it, and I mean two, and it turns out you still don't recognize it, I'm suggesting that you spit it out.  I'm jus' sayin'.

Next, I thought we were supposed to chew each recognizable piece of food 32 times--once for each tooth.  I haven't had 32 teeth since I was 20, but I still think 32's a good number.  To me, 12 seems grossly ineffective for most food.  I swear if you chew a healthy bite of the Ruebenesque from Boloney's Sandwich Shop only 12 times, you're going to pay for it a few hours later.  The point is, look at it.  Take in the smell of it.  Touch it.  If it doesn't run when you poke it with your fork, then stab it and take it in.  Chew--a lot.  If it doesn't stand up to the process, mark it off your list of things to eat.  It's not worth the effort.

Cool Pedometer

Okay, so Thursday, as it turns out, was a better day for my scale.  Perhaps Thursday will become my official weigh in day.  Anyway, the numbers were 328.6 lbs.  It was the 3178 steps I took that did it, I bet.

Wednesday's tomorrow! I need a cool pedometer.

First, and most importantly, my mom is reading my blog!  Mom, next time click that comment button and say what's on your mind. You don't have to hold back.  Tomorrow is Wednesday, and that's about to become my official weigh in day, unless I have a setback and have to hold off the weigh in until I hit calmer waters, or just forget.  But, when you own a powerful new scale like mine, you can't help weighing in 7 or 8 times before you leave in the morning.  Scales should be more accurate so that they can detect the weight lost through elimination.  A before weight and an after one.  In fact, there should be an incredulity button on a scale so that when you do something remarkable like lose a pound in five minutes it says, "Can you believe it?  Check it out!"

There should also be an empathy button for those times when its numbers come in higher than they should.  Hit it and it says, "Oh, man, sorry!  Come back in the morning, and I'll have better numbers for you.  I must be tired or something."

Anyway, I'm taking an old friend's advice and walking off a few calories today, but I have to go to LL Bean to get a cool pedometer.  I bet I just coined the phrase cool pedometer, so I copyright that.  Maybe I'll fasten it to my belt and check it every few minutes to see how far I've walked, how many steps, how many calories burned.  I could turn into my dad who's walked for exercise for years, logging steps and miles.  He has years of calendars that detail his accomplishments.  Sounds like a job for LL Bean--just nerdy enough not to laugh at me when I ask if they carry cool pedometers.

I'll let you know how the weigh in works out in the next day or so.

Luck and Redemption

Bought a new scale and refilled the thyroid meds. Didn't feel like weighing in at the Nurse's Office, so I decided to buy a bathroom scale today.  The new scale's cool--BMI, BWI, and LBS.  Now, if I can find one that'll give me a BMW, I'll be set.  The coolest part of the scale is that its numbers came in at 330.2 lbs!  I'll take it given that I haven't been able to commit to as many things as I'd like, but I've added some activity to my weekly schedule, cut back on mid-morning lunch, added a snack at 1:00, and recommitted to Soda Saturdays.  This week, I'll get back to drinking more water, but there's no way I'm going to drink from the school water fountain.

Still haven't called Patrick the PTP back, but everywhere I've gone this week I've seen advertisements for personal trainer people.  Perhaps, I'll call one of them to catch a better deal.

My outdoor activity today was going to be mowing the lawn for the first time this season, but the rain saved me from that. Blessed rain!

I guess it gets serious now.

Stalled before I really started. This weightloss thing's not easy. Getting started is hard; staying started harder. I need a quick injection of confidence, motivation, inspiration, something. I don't want this to end up in the same boneyard as my other boneheaded attempts to be the person I want to be.

Would it be fair to say that your motivation level is high, but your confidence level low, he asked?  Yeah, it'd be fair, and my motivation level is low. Little steps, little steps.  If my steps were any littler, I'd be walking backwards.

Even Soda Saturdays aren't working for me.  I tried drinking soda only on Saturdays for months, and I sometimes even miss a Saturday or two in there, but I think I've just replaced soda with coffee and tea.  When did water become hard to find?  I'm not drinking it out of plastic bottles.  That just strikes me as wrong, but drinking out of the tap doesn't seem particularly healthy either.  I'm a teacher, so I'm not drinking out of the water fountain.  I've seen what people do in those. Having to eat lunch at 10:00 AM isn't a good idea, either.

Doomed.  My project feels doomed.  I think I'll go to the Nurse's office and weigh in.

Things Done and Undone Things I Ought to Have Done

Got the bike out again Sunday morning! Must've ridden four miles all told Saturday and Sunday--from breakfast to lunch. I have a good friend whose hypothetical weightloss plan is to set up meals about 15 miles apart and force himself to walk to them. He's a person of some girth himself and a lot of time on his hands in the summer. My armpits are healing. I can raise my arms above my head without silently weeping. Must be time to go back.

My current dilemma is this: I haven't called Patrick the PTP back yet. I know that's not really a dilemma. It's just a shortcoming, "an undone thing I ought to have done"--to quote my father. In reference to hiring a trainer and losing weight, someone said to me the other day, "Oh, they do that at the Fieldhouse." Now, I feel like I should do some comparison shopping. Get the best deal and all. We're in a recession, you know. The Fieldhouse is close to my house, but it's also public. Too many people around to see my girthiness. I like Patrick the PTP's place--only room for two clients at a time.