It seems odd to me that of all the components to my fitness regimen, it’s my weight-lifting that’s going best. When I started this several months ago, I did so with a grudging heart.
Make no mistake: I do not love lifting weights. Sometimes it’s a chore. But it’s a chore I perform dutifully and [...]

Continue reading → Uplifting: Learning from the Things I Do Right

My neighbor, John, arrived home from Alaska over the weekend. John spends his summers on a 38-foot boat, fishing for fun in the waters around Sitka. He hosts friends and family a few weeks each year, but otherwise his time is his own.
During our winters, he spends a few months in New Zealand, helping friends [...]

Continue reading → 72 and Active: Staying Healthy by Working

Like every parent in the world, I want to raise my kids to be physically and emotionally healthy.  I want them to be confident, happy, friendly, outgoing, helpful, loving, kind, tenacious, protective, proud,  and fit–among other things I’m sure.  Sometimes I look at my kids and see the good things about Pam and me in [...]

Continue reading → How To Raise Healthy Kids: My Parenting Dilemma

There were quite a few comments about whether or not I should be waking up at 4:30 in the morning to get my exercise in.  Those comments ranged from whether or not rising that early is a “sustainable habit” to “you used to do it, so get your butt out of bed you lazy bones!”
Pam [...]

Continue reading → More On Early Morning Exercise

My, we’ve been a little bit glum around here lately huh?  Yep, it’s true, both JD and I are struggling with  staying on target.  Our weights are up a bit, our spirits are down a bit.  In the past, both of us would have given up by now.  But we’re still here and we have [...]

Continue reading → Small Steps

J.D.’s weight over the past two weeks

Number of hours spent exercising over the past two weeks: 2
Number of hours playing World of Warcraft over the past two weeks: 40
Gym memberships lapsed: 1
Weight on July 30th: 186.0
Weight on September 7th: 193.5

On Friday, Mac explained why he is fat. For him, it’s because it’s easier to be [...]

Continue reading → By the Numbers

I ate at Claim Jumper for the first recently. “Be careful,” Kris warned me. “The portions are huge.” I didn’t think much of her warning until my food began to come. The portions were huge! I ended up taking home enough food for two additional meals.
Get in my belly
By one measure, eating at [...]

Continue reading → Are Increased Portion Sizes Changing How Much We Eat?

Clive Thompson at Wired says that a fun way to lose weight is to turn dieting into a game. After watching one of his friends slim down with the Weight Watchers program, Thompson realized it was basically a type of role-playing game (RPG). He writes:

As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your [...]

Continue reading → Turning Fitness into a Game

I’ve been negligent about the one hundred pushups challenge, both here and in Real Life. I stopped doing my pushups for a week, and it’s been a while since I updated my progress here.
As part of getting “back on the bus”, I’m remedying that situation today. I performed a one-time exhaustion test as a [...]

Continue reading → Weekend Update: Doing the Right Thing

Yesterday was a good day. Finally.
The last month has been difficult for me, both mentally and physically. My mother has been in the hospital, I’ve been injured, and I’ve done a poor job of prioritizing fitness. If you think I’ve been whiney here, you should try living in my head!
“You need to go to the [...]

Continue reading → A Much-Needed Attitude Adjustment

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

On Tuesday’s discussion about defining fitness, I mentioned that my own pursuit of that ideal had been derailed. “I’ve been eating poorly and taking no exercise,” I wrote. “Tell us more,” said a couple of readers.
After Saturday morning’s aborted attempt at a sixteen mile run, I was feeling miserable. It wasn’t just that my physical [...]

Continue reading → Losing My Way, and Finding It

Yesterday was my daughter’s “half birthday.” I don’t really know where the idea came from, but somehow she got it in her head that half birthdays are almost as important as whole birthdays. Being the manipulative 3 and 1/2 year old, she finagled her mother into bringing home a box of brownie mix–and [...]

Continue reading → Chocolate Cake–Not JUST JD’s Vice

“After I do my pushups this morning,” I wrote on Wednesday, “I’m going to ride my bike twenty miles, lift weights, and maybe go for a run.”
A couple readers were taken aback. “Do you have a full time job? How can you afford a whole lot of exercise?” Juan wrote. And Mike said, “How do [...]

Continue reading → Change Your Habits, Change Your Life

During May 2007, I allowed myself to drink only water and two water-based derivatives: mineral water (including Talking Rain flavored waters) and non-caffeinated tea.
This was easy at first. Water is fine for a week or two, and I don’t crave alcohol under normal circumstances. But the last few days of the project were a [...]

Continue reading → Drinking Water Only: A Month-Long Experiment in Self-Discipline