No time for a video today. I’m out and about with friends making music and having a great time. Tomorrow will be a full week of this life change. I’ll be doing a video and a summary. Weekly summaries, monthly and quarterly are in the future.
Speaking of friends, one of them reads this blog and sent me this as an inspiration. Thanks buddy, with friends like you I’m bound to make it.
We’ve been emptying out my father-in-laws house for a while and it can be exhausting work. Had to haul out a pickup truck load this morning. I was rushed because I had to be in Cleveland by noon to play in a poker tournament.
The tournament didn’t go well as I was abused from the get go. Oh well, variance is a bitch. I’ll survive and in a couple weeks I’ll be in Las Vegas playing in The World Series of Poker Main Event.
I got home late but walked in the dark on a beautiful summer evening and got my steps in.
I’m feeling better and getting used to eating less and more exercise. I plan to step it up next week and add some more exercise. I’ll talk more about it on Monday when I do my weekly summary.
My father-in-law died back in February and we’ve been emptying his house over the past few weeks. It’s a lot of lifting and sorting. It’s been emotional for my wife and I’ve done my best to be supportive. It’s odd carrying boxes as I did that at UPS for thirty-seven years. Haven’t done it in six years and I never did it when I was sixty. Tiring.
As a reward my wife took me to Oberlin for a nice meal at Aladdin’s. I had the Kibbe appetizer and the Beef Kafta Rolled. It is delicious but bumped my all day calories to around 2000. I’ve been keeping it around 1500-1600.
After the meal I needed to get some steps in so I walked around Tappan Square. It was on the verge of rain but a nice walk. I’ll be making some adjustments soon but right now things are going well.
I had a friend ask me what my BMR was? I’ve never really thought about my Basal Metabolic Weight.
ba·sal met·a·bol·ic rate
ˌbāsəl ˌmedəˌbälik ˈrāt,ˌbāzəl ˌmedəˌbälik ˈrāt/
noun
So, essentially what your body burns every day without you doing anything.
I looked at a bunch of calculators and got a low of 2081 from MyFitnessPal and 2298 from active.com
So, if I take the lowest number and and ingest only 1500 calories a day I’m burning over 500 a day. That means I would lose a pound a week without exercise. With my walking that would get even better.
A friend gave me a copy of Tim Ferris’s’ book The 4-Hour Body. I’ve only skimmed through it but it seems like it has a lot of silly stuff in it. When I finish it I will do a full review. It is fun. I do like the disclaimer he puts at the beginning.
TIM’S DISCLAIMER
Please don’t be stupid and kill yourself. It would make us both quite unhappy.
Consult a doctor before doing anything in this book.
I’m doing well. I’m down seven pounds. I assume most of it is water but that is ok. I’m on the right track.
I put up a hummingbird feeder a few weeks ago and I’m surprised at how many I am seeing. I took a short video of the latest one and added it to my daily video. I slowed it down and think it looks cool. I’m a sucker for nature.
I’m trying my best to keep my calories around 1500 and walk at least ten thousand steps a day. According to my calculations there are 2182 steps in a mile for me. If I want to walk five miles I need to walk 10,910 steps. I’ve been doing that or more most days with only a slight wrinkle when I have a long poker day.
Pardon the cheesy music and video editing. Playing around and having fun.
I’m doing it.
I’m limiting my calories, drinking a lot of water and walking five miles a day. I will be constantly monitoring what I’m doing and adjusting. I will be doing daily videos.
I was trying to get motivated so I turned to Netflix. Found a documentary by Kenny Saylors. It is called Facing the Fat and it is a ripoff version of Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead. It was made in 2009 and it was pretty horrible. The guy weighs in at 315 and decides to go on a 40 day water fast. Forty days because that is biblical. It ends up being 55 days. He ends up losing 48 pounds but he is still morbidly obese and doesn’t look healthy to me.
Since this was eight years ago I look him up on FB and other places on the net and find that he ballooned up to 473 pounds That is about what my first Suburu weighed in 1976. He started a new video series to drop the weight where he does a daily video series called Reinventing Kenny. I began following him on FB and Twitter. Currently he is on Day 107 and down around 85 pounds. Good for him.
So, I’ve decided to do the same thing. Only I’m going to do it quite differently. I’m going to try keeping calories low, drinking a lot of water and exercising. Mainly by walking. I’ve failed so many times but not this time.
After my horrible gout experience I’ve decided I needed make serious changes in my life. As I was thinking about this an interesting thing happened. I was playing in a poker tournament at The Jack and a friend was sitting to my right. He cracked my kings with ace king and annoyed me a bit. He then said he was going to walk to his car during break and get some aspirin. I said I’d walk with him. He looked at me in a concerned way and said, “I walk pretty fast and I take the stairs.” I was surprised. I’m able to walk at a nice clip for five miles at a time. Then I took an honest look at myself and realized that I am a seriously fat guy. Way too fat for a guy who is sixty years old and wants to live a quality life for a lot longer.
Back in February I had ballooned up to 298 pounds. That is some serious tonnage. I need to make some serious changes. I will be doing that soon.
Some cyclists go beyond cycling. This guy is my hero. He should have a headlamp. Safety first.
Chubby For Life? 