fitfather

A peeve of mine

Do people at your gym do this?  Do they take free weights off of the racks, go to a bench some ways away, exercise and then just leave the weights sitting there while they go on somewhere else?  Gah, this kills me!  People, put your weights back after you finish using them.

The Bally's that I work out at is adequate for my needs.  It has a decent selection of weight machines, cardio machines and free weights (though they really could use more than just two sets of all the lower poundage dumbbells.  Seriously, how many people are going to use those 70 and 80 pound sets?  Hardly anyone.  Those 20 to 30 pound sets though get used all the time.  So word up Bally's, get more lower poundage dumbells) as well as childcare.  I wish it had a pool, a running track and raquet ball courts but I don't need those to have a good workout.  What I do need, is for the people who also exercise there to be courteous.  Put your dumbbells back!  Don't leave weight plates strewn across the floor!  And for God's sake, wipe your sweat off the machine when you are done.  I can live with loud pseudo-sexualized grunting.  I can live with the Bally's house special music (though really, would some classic rock or maybe XRT be so bad once in awhile?).  It kills me to spend minutes of my precious time, work out after workout, tracking down an errat 25 pound dumbbell so I can do my bicep curls that someone has left half way across the gym.

Measuring Up

Chest: 47"
Waist: 45"
Hips:   45"
Upper Arm: 15"
Thigh:   26"
Calf:  16"
Neck:  17"
Weight: 229

That waist size is bad bad bad.  I am one of those men that carries most of his excess weight in his belly.  If you don't know, that is a very dangerous, bad correlate to a host of health problems.  I don't have any idea if any of those other measurements are bad or good or nothing in particular.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that I need to do more than I am doing right now.  I must be subconciously sabatogueing my weight loss efforts by eating more food than I used to eat before I started weight lifting.  I do purposefully eat a snack after each workout that incorporates some simple carbohydrates (chocolate milk, for instance) as well as something a little more substantial (like almonds) to give my body some fuel to build more muscle - perhaps it is just these extra snacks that are offsetting whatever increase I might have made to my metabolism.  For whatever reason, I am not loosing any weight.  The weight lifting is starting to pay dividends - I can lift more weight than I could when I started, and those parts of my body that aren't covered by fat are showing tone and definition, but that weight number, it hasn't budged.  Oh, some days it's a couple pounds lower but other days it is higher.  I am about ready to start dieting seriously.

My plan all along has been to gradually incorporate the elements of fitness into my own life and by doing so, make them permanent healthy habits that I can follow.  Weight lifting as primary exercise was my first habit goal, and in that respect my plan has succeeded.  Still, I expected that I would have lost a little bit of weight by now, so the loss of no weight has been disappointing.  The other two main physical healthy habits that I want to achieve are fitting in regular cardio workouts (right now I rarely do cardio, which I know I need to do for optimal health and fitness) and to revamp my dietary habits.  Revamping the diet is going to be by far the most difficult thing to do.  I have years of sloppy eating habits to overcome, and I am dreading the process a little.

We (Jessie and I) might do the South Beach Diet.  Other than the initial two week period, the diet is pretty much an ideal all of the time sort of healthy diet, that would help me not only lose weight but develop the sort of healthy habits I can use for the rest of my life.  We might even do it with my mom.  I think we're starting on Monday - wish me luck!

On exercise

It's surprising to me, but I think I love working out.  I have certainly had a shift in my attitude towards getting out there and exercising.  All the other times (you know, going back years) that I have tried to start and maintain an exercise regimen it always felt like a chore, something that I had to force myself to do.  Now, I am finding myself looking forward to going to the gym.  I love the way my muscles feel after lifting weights for an hour.  That mildly fatigued-but-in-a-good-way feeling tells me that I just did something worthwhile. 

I have realized that lifting weights and working out is one of the most important, and most enjoyable things I can do with my time. 

It is an investment in my future health, sex life, energy level and drive. 

I have realized that it is more important than spending time on the computer. 

I have realized that it is more important that watching another hour of TV. 

I think it is more important than doing housework (Jessie might not agree!). 

It is more important than napping.

At this point, I am working out three times a week, exclusively lifting weights each time.  I stay at the gym for 60-75 minutes each time, and exercise each body part at least once.  I know that I need to start mixing in some cardio work.  My plan is to start taking Katie to the gym's child play area, so I can workout during the day.  Right now I am usually going during the evening, which means that I end up staying up late because I have all this post workout energy.  It would be nice to put that to more productive use during the day, and be able to spend the evenings with Jessie.

I am starting to see some results.  The muscles I have that aren't covered with fat (arms, upper chest, shoulders, legs) are looking larger, more toned and more defined.  I am also lifting more weight and doing more sets for each exercise.  I should take some before pictures.

who needs sleep?

I have a very bad habit that I have picked up, basically since Katie was born.  For pretty much the last nineteen months, I have been going to bed too late, with the full knowledge that I'm going to have to get up before I am ready to get up.  I usually then end up taking a nap later in the day, oftentimes in the morning when Katie naps.  This has gone on long enough that I think I have reprogrammed my body's sleep schedule, and I don't know how to fix it.

About a week ago, Jessie worked from home and let me sleep in until I woke up on my own.  I slept around eight hours and woke up at about 8:30 in the morning - not incredibly late, but much later than the usually 7:00 rise and shine.  I felt rested and energized for the day, and got a lot of stuff done with time left over for reading and TV.  I was tired in the evening and went to bed with Jessie at 10:00 - two and a half hours earlier than my usual time.  I didn't think sleep would be a problem - I felt sleepy and physically exhausted, and I had no trouble getting to sleep.  I woke up at around 3:00 that morning, and didn't doze off again for well over an hour.  When I got up the next day at the usual 7 AM, I wasn't refreshed or invigorated or ready to start the day.  I felt like I usually do in the morning - fuzzy, groggy and resentful for 7 getting here so damned early.

My body seems to think that I only want it to sleep for 6 hours, give or take.  I have done this to myself.  I want to get myself to bed earlier, to not have to take naps five times a week just to get through the day.  I want to have the energy to do all of the things that I want to do during the day.  I want to be as productive as I can be, but I feel perpetually sleep deprived.  I don't want to go to bed early and end up waking up in the middle of the night.  Middle of the night thoughts are awfully lonely.

I am trying to break the cycle.  Last night I got myself to bed at a little after 11:30 - a little later than I should be going to bed (11:00 is my target - that way I can get the proverbial eight hours), but not terribly so.  Certainly better than 12:30.  And this morning, I resisted the very, very strong temptation I had to take a morning nap.  Oh lord, that was hard.  It's definetely programming - I just started to get sleepy at about 10:00.  So I made myself coffee and forced myself to sit down and write some music.  Let's see if I can get to bed at a decent hour tonight.

Swallowing my pride, getting back on that horse, happy birthday to me

So, it’s been over two months since I have written an entry, and in that time I have not succeeded in losing any weight. In fact, I have pretty much bounced back to my starting weight. I’m not sure which is more… humbling? Humiliating? That my weight-loss journey is going to be two steps forward, one step back, or that the step back happened so damn quickly.

It’s easy to understand why I got off track. I was away for a week, for a conference, and eating cafeteria food, plus banquets and such makes smart dietary choices difficult. Furthering the problem, the conference schedule was so packed that I just didn’t have any energy (or really even the time) left to get in my regular workouts, even though the hotel had a small gym. When I got back home, my Bally’s guest membership had lapsed, and we couldn’t afford to add me to Jessie’s membership just yet (fun car repairs!). My arrival home also corresponded to Jessie’s birthday week (yes, we like to stretch out the festivities) which meant much cake, eating out and general merry making. Through all that, the bad eating habits started coming back, and my weight crept back up.

On the plus side, when I did finally get my full-fledged Bally’s membership (about a month ago) I started going religiously, and I am starting to notice that the muscles not covered by fat are getting more toned and defined. The other major plus is that I am still in the weight loss mindset. Through the last two months I have never fully let myself go – weight loss and fitness have a permanent spot in my head now.

I had originally wanted to write this entry last Monday – my twenty-ninth birthday, but well all that birthday merry making was going on and it didn’t happen. Here it is though now, better late than never.

Jared? You can shut up now.

If you watch TV at all, you've probably seen a commercial for Subway sandwiches, featuring Jared - that dude who used those same sandwiches to help control his eating and managed to lose a lot of weight doing so.  Congratulations Jared - I have tremendous respect for someone who can lose over a hundred pounds at all.  That he has managed to turn his weight-loss efforts into a lucrative spokesman job must be gravy (I make no assumptions that this blog, when I get down to 175 pounds of whatever, will suddenly start making me lots of money).  I think though, that it's time for Jared to move on.

Jared's continuing presence on the Subway commercials is designed to lend veracity to Subway's claims that their sandwiches are healthful.  In a currently airing commercial, they compare a particular Subway sandwich with chicken to a Burger King sandwich with chicken.  They cherry pick the fat numbers as an illustration of the relative healthy qualities of each sandwich - the Subway sandwich predictable has little fat, while the Burger King sandwich has an excessive amount.  The viewer can then extrapolate from this context free statistic that the Subway sandwich is good for you, while the Burger King sandwich is not.  My problem is not that Subway is lying about the Burger King sandwich being good for you - the sandwich they chose for their illustration (the Tender Crisp) is a whopper (ha!) to the body - but both the assertion that Subway sandwiches are good for you and the way they go about doing it.

Subway deliberately chooses the worst (nutritionally speaking) chicken sandwich Burger King makes.  Let's look at one of the worst sandwiches Subway makes - the tuna sub.  The 6" version has 530 calories and 31 grams of fat, not to mention over 1000 mg of sodium.  The chicken teriyaki (the subject of the commercial, I believe) has over 1200 mg of sodium - almost the entire recommended daily requirement.  Burger King makes a chicken whopper - this has only 570 calories and 25 grams of fat - very similar to the Subway tuna (a sandwich that you might foolishly think was actually going to be good for you).  I hate cherry picked statistics. 

I don't mean to be too hard on Subway here - I actually like some of their sandwiches, I like that you can get fresh vegetables on them (which is in my opinion really the thing that sets them apart from other fast food restaurants).  But Subway is still fast food - this means it is processed with way too much salt, and there are plenty of unhealthy options on their menu.  You need to be especially careful if you order a 12" sub.

My biggest complaint here is the choice of fat content as a comparison.  Can the whole notion of fat being bad for you just die already?  Can we replace it with the nuanced view that some fats are bad (trans fats = horrible!), some fats are good (omega-3) and that you do in fact need to eat some fat everyday.  There is also ample evidence that low fat diets do not work - besides the food tasting bland and unappealing, people trying these diets do not feel as full for as long.  The human body is very, very good at turning excess calories into fat - it does not care where it came from!  A 7oz bag of Jelly Belly jelly beans is a fat free food (yay, right?).  Eat it all, and you've eating over 1000 calories.

Ok, so this post ended up being more about Subway in general and less about Jared in particular.  Still, whatever valuable lesson Jared can teach is can be summed up as this:  control your caloric intake and move your body more.  What I want to know from Jared, is how he managed to two Subway sandwiches a day for as long as he did.  That would be both expensive and boring.  The way to achieve that willpower is infinitely more interesting to me than any particular suggestion of eat this, not that.

Focus? This entry don't need no stinking focus!

Has this ever happened to you?  It's hot - you're marinating in the humidity, your car is broken, you're trying to decide to do with the stray kitten you took in who is really sweet but you really don't want another pet right now, your toddler has just decided to empty her dresser onto her bedroom floor for the third time today, not to mention all the other crap she's strewn throughout the condo and Baby Bach is repeating for the... 4th?  5th? time that day (and woe to the father who turns it off!) and now that toddler is whining at you because she's really tired but she won't nap, so you just have to head to the kitchen and grab a diet coke and that Almond Joy you bought at the store last night, because right now, you need Need NEED that Almond Joy.  Who doesn't need a little Almond Joy once in awhile, right?

I eat for comfort.  I know what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, but you know what?  When I need that food comfort, I do not care.  Luckily, I don't usually need much eating comfort - this isn't a typical, or usual, thing for me.  What is more dangerous in my experience, is the eating because I'm bored, which since I've started this blog and been so much more concious of my dietary inputs has mostly stopped.

Weigh-in after my workout late last night:  225.  In a little over two weeks of eating right and moving my body more.  I can tell I am on the right track.

Rambling Man - looking for advice

How do you continue a healthy lifestyle when you go on vacation?  The family got back on Tuesday from our trip to visit friends in Cincinnati.  It wasn't too bad - we didn't eat out at all, other than on the drive, and snacking was minimal.  We went for a few strolls around the neighborhood.  I kept eating my "power breakfast" (pomegranate juice, healthy cereal, soy milk, grapefruit).  Still, it wasn't exactly a model weekend of healthy vacation living.  On the 3rd, I made grapefruit margaritas (which are tasty and full of sugar).  On the 4th there was grilling of burgers and red hots, and I ate entirely too much grilled meat.  And of course on the driver there was fast food and candy to make the 6-7 hours in the car with a hollering toddler bearable.  I know it could have been worse - Jessie and I were at least very conscious about what we were eating the whole weekend, and we had several conversations with our friends about diet and weight loss.  Turns out that these two tiny, dear to us people, both struggle with their diet and weight (it's not laziness - dieting is hard!).

Overall, I am feeling very good about this new path I am on.  Jessie and I walk to and from the El train each morning as she goes to work.  It's about 0.8 miles one way so I'm getting a lot more exercise than I was just a few days ago.  Jessie has started going to Bally's at 5:30 in the morning to workout (yay Jessie!  You are an inspiration!) and we just got me a guest pass to Bally's (we might add me to her membership) so I can go workout also.  Eating is better too.  I've made up side salads several times now, as well as made breakfasts, lunches and dinners too.  My idle snacking on a bag of chips or a candy bar is pretty much gone, though I still will enjoy a small bowl of ice cream in the evening.  It's still hard though - the siren song of friend crunchy goodness is hard to resist, and damn, salads are one of the most boring foods ever. 

So here's a plea for two bits of advice - 1) how do you stick to your healthy eating when you vacation, and 2) how the heck do you spruce up a bed of leafy greens?  I know they're good for me - that's why I eat them.  How can I make myself enjoy eating them, without adding gobs of creamy dressing, cheese, or friend chicken strips?

"We thought she was just lazy"

A while back I was out with a group of guys, drinking, partying and having a good time.  At some point in the evening, the conversation turned to a mutual female friend who had recently lost a significant amount of weight.  "Just wait till you see her," one of my buddies said, "she's really, really cute now."  He went on to add "turns out she had a medical condition that caused her to gain weight, and that's under control now.  We thought she was just lazy - it was a medical condition!"  Most of the guys laughed, and looked forward to seeing her.  They drank more beer, fueling their own growing guts (none of them was a vision of fit athleticism).  I was silently uncomfortable.  I knew this girl before she lost weight.  I never thought she was lazy.  I just thought that she was what she was.  I wondered - what do they think of me?  My belly is the biggest here - am I also "just lazy"?

I guess part of the problem is that weight loss is an active endeavor.  You can't just lose weight by doing nothing.  Every fat person who wants to lose weight knows how to do it - you eat less!  Exercise more!  It should be easy, but it's not.  Losing weight and maintaining the loss are one of the very most difficult things a person can try to do.  What are the statistics?  Four out of five dieters gains back more than the weight they lost?  It's something like that.  I'm one of those four.

I'm not lazy though.

The thought of silent judgment kills me, especially when my suspicion is that guys judge women much more harshly in that regard then they will other men, or themselves.  A medical condition is an adequate explanation for excess weight - nothing else will do.  But food tastes good.  I like to eat because chocolate, steak, beer etc are all delicious, and one does not have to eat much too much of this to gain a lot of weight over time.  Besides, gyms are expensive and my time is precious - I like to see my wife in the evenings.

I believe that people need to take responsibility for their own weight, but at the same time, society needs to change to be supportive of this medical problem.  It appears to be happening slowly.  The new food eating guidelines are a good start (much more healthful than before), fast food restaurants are constantly rolling out low calorie, low fat foods and grocery stores are stocking more whole grain, high fiber foods.

Still, weight loss is hard.  Not because its intellectually daunting, not because the options for success aren't out there, not even because society isn't as understanding and helpful as it could be.  No, weight loss is hard because it requires a whole-scale lifestyle change and that is daunting.

One down, two to go

Yesterday I finished one of the comprehensive exams required for my DM degree (Doctor of Music - specializing in composition).  Passing all three will admit me to DM candidacy (essentially an all but dissertation state).  It is considered a major hurdle - I  have several friends who have failed at least one of their exams once (you can take each exam a total of two times) though I do not know of anyone who has totally flunked out because of it. 

These exams have been a major monkey on my back.

I finishes my course work three years ago.  A normal student will then take their exams in the year following the completion of their course work (some even do them in the final year of course work).  I don't know of anyone who waited three years to do them - and I haven't even done all three yet.  See, the exams are administered by a committee put together by myself of professors I have a relationship with.  Each professor then works out a "question" to be prepared for and then asked about for the exam, followed by orals a week or so later.  Normally, a student does all three questions at the same time and completes the orals in front of the entire committee.  Normally, the chair of a student's committee doesn't leave the school for greener pastures in the middle of all this, yet that is what happened to me.  The chair of my committee is (was?) an extraordinary teacher and composer and a very sweet, friendly woman.  She did not have a tenure track position, so when she found one in Pittsburgh, she of course took it.  Security is a nice thing, no?  When I found out about this in April, my stomach sank.

This past year, I had been trying somewhat valiantly to get all of my committee members to work with me, get my questions in order and get my preparation for them underway so I could get them out of the way.  For whatever reason, two of these professors (neither of which was the one who is leaving) were really crappy about getting back to me - I finally had to get the dean involved.  I then got sidetracked when Jessie and I were searching for a home to buy.  Getting the email about my professor leaving got me back on the studying track, but by then it was too late for me to be prepared to write all three questions before she left.  Luckily, because a committee member leaving is a somewhat unusual situation, I was given the option of writing her question alone, or doing all three.  You can guess what my choice was.  I got my shit for her in order, then realized that I was going to have to write the exam (I chose to do a week long take-home) the week after Jessie and I moved into our new home.  Stressful!  I felt like such a deadbeat, seeing the boxes piled up, the mess accumulating, Katie needing attention not just in the day but also in the evening when Jessie was home - yet I had an exam to write and a very real deadline.  I somehow managed to get it done (30 pages of text!  one week!  several hours of library research in there too!) and mostly kept a good mood despite several near sleepless nights (and I still had to get up a 7:00 AM everyday - no sleeping in allowed by the Katie).  Jessie was wonderful throughout, dutifully watching Katie each evening and putting her to bed to allow me to concentrate and write.  Yesterday I did the oral component which was much less strenuous but still pretty stressful.  Then my professor hugged me, told me that I passed and that she would write a letter for me file to that effect and wished me all the best (and vice versa). 

I'll miss her - she was one of the few professors at school that I really bonded with.  It is to my great regret that due to my procrastinating ways I did not take advantage of her presence much the last three years and that I will now have to finish out my degree without her support and oversight.  It's a hard lesson to learn.  I understand that in the big picture, finding a new committee chair is not that bad - procrastination can cause people their homes, jobs, even lives in particularly extreme cases - so I am thankful to have a relatively gentle bad result from my put-it-off ways - but still, it is discouraging.

How frustrating is it, that of all the composition professors I have studied with in graduate school, the three best have all left the school, the fourth best has died, and the worst two are the ones who are left?

Still, I don't want to end on a negative note.  It is very satisfying to have made tangible, forward progress after so much wheel spinning.  The other two questions look to be even more manageable than this one was, and I now have the summer to get myself good and ready for it.  One down, two to go.