Well, I did it again, by which I mean I both lost weight in March but also lost just one pound. This was a bit puzzling to me, as I thought I had been better about watching what I ate, and exercising more. I’d have thought the loss would have totaled three or four pounds.
On further reflection, though, March was quite cold and most of my exercise came in the last few days of the month. In fact, March was colder this year than December last year, and it was the coldest March in the last 20 years. That explains the lack of exercise. And, um, the weight bench is still not assembled.
As for the eating, that’s another matter. While I certainly believe I brought my lunch more often than I did in February, I could be entirely wrong about that.
So, to resolve these matters of exercise and diet, I have a new plan. No, I’m not going to count calories; I’m way too lazy for that. Instead, each day I will note on the calendar whether I exercised, and whether I was bad (in terms of what I ate). What constitutes being bad? The following behaviors will result in a “was bad” tag:
- Eating lunch out
- Eating dinner out
- Eating breakfast out
- Consuming unhealthy snacks (chips, candy, hot dogs, etc.) between meals
- Eating more than is really necessary at any one meal
- Eating dessert, and
- Drinking pop.
Note that these are not mutually exclusive. I could get hit with a double “was bad” tag if I both eat out and eat more than is really necessary. For example, if my wife and I go to dinner at a Mexican restaurant and I eat three baskets of complimentary chips before my meal arrives, I will earn a double “was bad” tag for that. (Because I should have stopped at two baskets.) Also, if I bring my lunch to work but also eat more than is really necessary, I will still have to tag myself for that transgression.
Likewise, each day I exercise, I will give myself an “exercise” tag on the calendar. If I exercise more than once per day, I could earn multiple “exercise” tags.
At the end of the month, I’ll total up the “was bad” tags and compare them to the “exercise” tags. This should provide some insight as to why I lost a particular number of pounds.
When I conceived this idea, I figured I could limit myself to earning just four or five “was bad” tags in a month. So far in April, I’ve collected two. And I know I have two more (at least) “was bad” events coming this week. Gonna be a long month. Here’s hoping it’s warmer, too.
The title of this post was my reaction after seeing a vanity license plate yesterday that read “SWTYPY.”
Surprised they didn’t take a second look at that and think, “It’s probably not worth the trouble.”
Time for the monthly weigh in update! As noted in a previous post, I anticipated that losing my pound in February would be the toughest of the year. The hurdles I faced included:
- a short month (28 days)
- Valentine’s Day—extra calories from dinner out with my wife
- my birthday—extra calories from multiple dinners (natch) to celebrate
- weather incompatible with outdoor exercise, and
- a continued lack of exercise equipment at home.
On top of all of this, I let my lunch discipline slip a number of times and failed to pack one at home. Rather than having a salad or something reasonable, I went to Wendys. My excuse is that I had a coupon. At one point, about halfway through the month, I had gained back all but one of the 5.5-6 pounds I lost in January. I was disheartened, but I knew the blame was mine.
Determined to still meet my goal, I started packing my lunch, and a small one at that: a sandwich and a container of yogurt. Breakfast was a bowl of cereal with 1% milk. I kept dinners at home small. I made sure to shovel snow even when I didn’t really have to. I refrained from buying beer or opening a bottle of wine at home. I walked (2.5 miles) to and from the train when I could, and spent two hours walking last Saturday. Small sacrifices that all contributed towards losing that one pound.
With six days to go, I still needed to lose five pounds. For the next four days, I lost about 0.8 a pound a day. With one day to go, I weighed exactly the same as I did on February 1. That last day, I did not resist a chocolate muffin or a small bag of potato chips, but otherwise all I had to eat was a container of yogurt and two peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
When I weighed in this morning for the official tally, I had dropped 1.2 pounds for the month of February. Is there a word for “elated depression?” It could have been so much more if I had shown just a little more effort.
March should bring warmer weather, which should allow for more outdoor exercise. I’ve also bought a weight bench, which looks lovely in its box in my basement. I have no weights to go with it, save for two dumbbells. Three additional days are available this month compared to February, which should work in my favor.
I hope I never cut it as close to my pound-a-month goal as I did this month, but I know it will take constant, vigilant attention to keep on the right path. I had a bacon cheeseburger and fries for lunch today.
Time for the first update for the Pound-a-Month Club (PAMC)! As you’ll no doubt recall from an earlier posting, I’ve set a goal to lose one pound per month. In January, I lost somewhere between 5.5-6 pounds. I don’t know the exact amount because I switched scales in the middle of the month.
My old scale was a traditional spring-loaded bathroom scale with the numbers that spun to the right when you stepped on it. It also had the little calibration wheel on the end that you could use to tighten or loosen the spring in order to reset it to exactly 0 if needed. The scale was around 15 years old, and recently I’ve had to fiddle with the calibration wheel extensively, both before and after I was on the scale. Therefore, I didn’t have confidence in its ability to accurately give a reading, especially when the difference could be as little as one pound.
The new scale is a sleek, glass digital one. The numbers magically show up in a futuristic-looking blue light, and it flashes the final reading. This is the scale I used for today’s weigh in, but I also stepped on the old scale (hope I can sell it at a garage sale this spring!) and it, too, registered a loss for me this month, but it’s hard to say if it was as great as that indicated on the digital scale.
A few other notes on the weight loss in this first month:
- Some exercise was involved, but not much. I was able to get in one good week where I either walked to the train station or rode my bike. This is a good five miles, round trip from my house. Obviously, I would have preferred more days where I could have gotten in this kind of exercise, but the winter’s cold is a harsh mistress.
- I did not buy a treadmill. I have not ruled it out, but money is a bit tight at present. Additionally, it’s not clear when such money could become available so this purchase will have to wait.
- Much of the weight loss came from monitoring my diet. I tried to eat less, avoid sugar (especially pop), had little red meat, and partook of fried foods but two or three times the entire month. Bringing a lunch to work also contributed significantly to cutting my caloric intake. I won’t even pretend to be disciplined if I’m eating out for lunch at work. I have this irrational fear that I won’t consume enough, and then I’ll become ravenously hungry again before it’s time to go home and have to eat an emergency Big Mac or something.
- Although I’m happy with my ending weight for January, I am not at my lightest weight throughout the month. I’m about 1-1.5 pounds heavier than I was at one point during the month.
- I do feel a bit better with the weight off that I’ve lost. I’ve noticed, though, that if I gain back even two or three pounds I tend to feel bad. It’s a fine line I’m walking for now.
Looking ahead to February, I have high hopes for being able to lose my pound for the month. Although winter is not yet over, next week’s weather looks conducive to walking to the train each day. I can also be a better steward for myself in terms of bringing my lunch to work. It’s a minimal task with a dramatic payoff over time. Two obstacles loom large: Fat Tuesday (which I don’t normally indulge in much, except for an occasional paczki), and my birthday at the end of the month. I’m sure we’ll go out for my birthday, so I’ll need to account for that extravagance before then, in order to ensure I’m sufficiently below the one-pound threshold.
The above sign is in the window of a drugstore near my office. I’ve always been a bit puzzled about what it means. Is it trying to say, “You shouldn’t loiter, because police will notice you?” Or is it asking police to take notice of people who are loitering: “Police, please take notice of loiterers.” Or is it purposefully ambiguous because it’s trying to say both things and appeal to multiple audiences at once?
At any rate, the sign seems to be defeating its purpose because all it seems to do effectively is attract people to stand in front of it for extended periods of time, trying to determine exactly what it’s saying.
Bill Barnwell wrote a column today on Grantland explaining why the various NFL head coaches and general managers were recently fired from their respective teams. Barnwell named Lovie Smith’s dismissal from the Chicago Bears as the most surprising, but really it shouldn’t have been.
Barnwell starts off by pointing out that Bears’ GM Phil Emery is like any other NFL GM: he wants to hire his own coach. He also conjectures that had the Vikings lost on Sunday and the Bears made the playoffs in their place, Smith would not have been fired this offseason. I disagree with the latter point. It would have been quite plausible for Smith to have been fired if the Bears had made the playoffs. A first-round loss to the Packers would have easily given Emery the excuse he needed to get rid of Smith.
But really, it should have been a moot point because of an earlier loss to the Packers. Smith should have been fired two years ago when he lost, at home, to the Packers with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. That should be a cardinal sin for any Bears coach. It’s one thing to lose at home. It’s another thing to lose at home in the playoffs. It’s yet another thing to lose at home, in the playoffs, to the Packers. But to do all that when the Super Bowl was on the line? Inexcusable. That’s the game you were hired to win! It’s your whole reason for being here.
I know Jay Cutler was hurt for that game. I know the offensive line has been terrible for years. At some point, though, the excuses become inexorable. This was the fifth time in six years the Bears missed the playoffs. No one should be surprised when a coach with that record is fired. Smith chose to have the Mikes Martz and Tice as his offensive coordinators the past few years. He has only himself to blame for their shortcomings, and the Bears are right to hold him accountable for their failings.
So no one who has been paying attention to the Bears the past few years (or has had to pay for season tickets) should say they’re surprised by Smith’s firing, or even that his dismissal is relatively the most surprising this season. The writing should have been on the wall for years. It would have been a surprise only if the Bears had allowed Smith to come up short for a tenth season.
Look, as I’m always telling my wife, I’m a pretty special and/or important person. But for the past few (16) years, I have been a little too special. Particularly around the middle. I could stand to be a little (lot) less special in that area.
I know weight-loss resolutions are trite to the point of being almost meaningless, but I have hit upon a solution that I believe will remedy the futility and uselessness of such promises.
See, the problem is that people aim too high with this particular resolution. They vow to drop 20, 30, 50 pounds! Sugar and fat will be cast out (until the first cookout, at least)! I will exercise for an hour every day!! Even if it means waking up an hour early!!! It’s all too much. I plan to tackle my weight loss goal in bite-size portions.
Specifically, I have formed the Pound A Month Club, or PAMC. The idea behind PAMC is simple: on the first of each month, I will weigh myself, and write that number on the calendar. My goal over the next month is to lose one pound. This could be through diet, exercise or donating blood. I’m not picky. Which is largely how I came to this problem in the first place, but never mind that for now.
On the first of the following month, I will weigh myself again and write my new, lower weight on the calendar. Now, here’s where the brilliance of PAMC comes in: I’m allowed to lose more than one pound a month. Yes! It is permissible to do so. However, once a certain weight is reached, part of PAMC’s goal is to never be above that weight again. So, if I start in January at 200 and on February 1 I weigh 195, that doesn’t mean I get to go up to 198 for March 1 and still consider myself to be on track. If I am at 195 on February 1, then on March 1 I have to be at 194. So perhaps I should call it ALAPAMC – At Least a Pound a Month Club.
Feel free to join in if you like. I plan to hold myself accountable by posting monthly updates on the blog. I might even buy a treadmill.
The obligatory blog post referencing the year past:
2012 began in January, which is kind of old hat for a year, which is kind of how last year went. A few notable changes, but not much new.
We lost our oldest cat, Ruckus, who was aptly named and is much missed. We gave up our oldest car (see previous post on Kermit). A new cat (Monday) came briefly into our lives, before finding a permanent home at a refuge for cats with feline leukemia.
Ruckus, making himself at home in whatever container he felt like.
New furniture and paint helped personalize the house we bought in 2011, but much is left to be done there. And the new living room furniture is perpetually covered to keep the cat hair off of it, so we only partially experience it.
Our two beagles each had surgery. Opus’ gall bladder was removed, and Cecilia had to have a ligament reattached to her right knee. (Probably torn from chasing one of the cats.) Both are still convalescing, or, as they say in the ‘hood, convalescin’.
No particular progress was made with getting myself into better physical shape in 2012, but a plan exists going forward, and I did buy a bike in June and regularly use it to get to the train station.
I can’t say that anything significant happened professionally, either, in 2012. I hope that changes in 2013, but it will depend largely on budget money becoming available for additional training.
A trip to New York in August was the highlight of the year, but I was put off by the city’s lack of recycling containers throughout Manhattan. What’s up with that? I saw a couple of them in Central Park, and that was it. Everything else went into the garbage. And the service in restaurants was horrible, almost without exception. Is going out to eat in New York an exercise in being ignored or something? Is it some sort of performance art I wasn’t in on?
So that was 2012 – a year of buying furniture, giving away a car, saying goodbye to an old friend, tending to our pups and visiting NYC. 2013 has a low hurdle to clear.
Well, after 14 years and over 205,000 miles, my green 1998 Honda Civic EX (aka Kermit) is being retired. He still runs fine, but not well enough. He failed the state emissions test last weekend, and I can’t renew the license tag without passing the test.
A dealership I took him to last night asked for a mere $1,400 to fix the exhaust-related problems, plus another $800 if I wanted to also fix the driver’s side window, which does not go all the way to the top. Since the car itself is probably not worth $1,400, it doesn’t make sense to now spend over two grand on it.
Kermit was a faithful and reliable companion, lo these many years. True, I once tried to bring him sideways through a toll booth during an ice storm, but he never held it against me. He bears the scars of a city car parked on the streets of Chicago, but he never left me stranded by the side of the road. Other than the one time I blew a tire on a trip back to Akron, but I couldn’t stay mad.
My history with cars prior to Kermit was checkered at best. There was the mid-80s Chevy Cavalier I shared with an uncle during my senior year in college. I fused the engine together on a trip back from Christmas break. Turns out engines really like oil. I would’ve put more oil in it, but I was distracted by a loose cat in the backseat. But that’s a story for another post.
Then there was the gray 1990 Dodge Dynasty I bought off a different uncle. (Suddenly, a theme seems to be emerging…) This was the first car I ever bought. I loved its V-6 engine, but it constantly had problems. One time I lent it to a friend of mine, who was using it to lead a 5K foot race. As he gunned the engine with the start of the race, the car belched a thick black cloud of noxious smoke right in front of the runners. They were left doubled over, coughing and hacking before they’d even taken a single step.
When the brakes on the Dynasty were grinding against the rotors, I decided I’d had enough. That’s when Kermit and I found each other. I would’ve preferred a blue car, but green was the best I could do. I didn’t want to pay for the mud guards he came with, but I relented to finalize the deal. He didn’t have a CD player, but I put one in later. We made our first drive home on a Tuesday night. Next Tuesday night will be our last drive together.
Kermit is being donated to charity, where he will likely be auctioned off to someone who can appreciate the reliability and fuel efficiency he offers. He’s still a good car, even though the air conditioning stopped working several years ago, the fabric on the sun visors is flaking away, and a piece of the passenger-side panel has been missing since my wife was bested by a garage she was backing out of nine years ago.
For now, we will be a one-car family. Farewell, old friend.
Me ‘n’ Cleverbot
I was trying to come up with the perfect first post for the blog, but I was drawing a blank. Sure, I could tell you about myself, what interests me, the subjects I’ll likely cover, etc., but that seemed too obvious.
As a stalling tactic, I decided to go out to Cleverbot to ask it what I should call my blog. It replied, “I am your god and your master.” I told it I liked the concept, but was hoping for something shorter. Then it called me a cat.
So this first post is about how I decided my blog title could have been worse. Also, I promise not to have too many pictures of my cats.
Chimps Like Us 