Eating Light On The Road vs. Wasting Food

Fire Pit Grilling

I depart in a few hours, flying from Austin, Texas to Raleigh, North Carolina. The last few weeks I have been rigorously watching my food intake, weighing and measuring food to ascertain the calories I have consumed. However, the next 36 hours will involve eating at airport eateries and restaurants where one typically finds excessive food portions (and high cost). Having grown up in a "clean your plate" family, I find it difficult to leave quantities of food on my plate.

I saw recent Reuters article about studies that report we Americans waste 50% of our food which further elevates my consternation at throwing away food. However, from a health perspective, I must, "get over it" and leave the food on the plate. Better the food waste on my plate than accumulate in my waist. I wish there was a way to turn our food waste into food products to help the people in countries where starvation and food shortages persist.

During the financial crisis of 2008 I read "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck. I read it because it was a classic available for free on my Kindle. But it turns out to have been a book that could be written today because the same bank overreaching and excess that destroyed people's lives during the great depression was occurring as I read the book in late 2008. Additionally, "Grapes of Wrath" described piles of food left to rot in fields to preserve profits, even as the depression era migrants suffered hunger. Thus learning of today's 50% food waste ties today's events to another historical description of waste and excess from the Great Depression.

To conclude - a boring exercise report - I walked Penny 20 very brisk minutes, followed by the 16 session KB strength regimen, followed by 60 non-stop KB swings. I feel pretty good today! (The previous blog's photo showed us building a fire pit - this photo shows me cooking over the resulting pit.)

Overcoming Travel Exercise Interruptions

Family Fun - Building a Firepit

This week and next week I'll be travelling with overnight hotel stays. There's two aspects to this that impact my current fitness tracking - the lack of being able to weigh myself and not having my comfortable home dog walking and Kettlebell exercise regimen. For the former, even if I found a scale with which to weigh myself, the data point obtained may not be consistent with  the scale I use at home due to potential inaccuracies between scales. If I can find a scale though, I will weigh myself.

For the exercise aspect, I am reasonably certain that most hotels these days provide fitness rooms. The issue there for me is overcoming a mild dread in having to work out in an unfamiliar local. The travel involves a rather stressful situation where I will be speaking to a lot of people I don't know and to get to exercise early in the morning I will need to put aside the worry for the upcoming day. To do so, I will need to prepare everything I need the prior evening so as to not have an excuse to not exercise. As I write this my intention is to get the exercise I need while traveling. I'll report on my success later.

Today while executing 150 KB swings, I noticed a tiny twinge of pain in my left shoulder. It repeated during the Turkish Get Ups, but the pain wasn't severe enough to stop. I need to be mindful of that area to see if there is a repeat.

Woodworking As Exercise?

Removing Table Saw Burn Marks with Scraper.

Saturday I got my dose of exercise by walking the dog, going bowling (as part of buying a new ball), and turning a bowl on the lathe in my garage woodworking shop. Is woodworking exercise? Some forms of work I perform can be considered exercise as demonstrated in the photo above. It took several hours of scraping on that walnut tabletop to remove the burn marks left by the table saw. This was definitely a physical endeavor, pushing the scraper over the wood, walking the length of the top multiple times as I cleared and smoothed the entire surface. The photo below shows this table in its finished form. (I need to improve my product photography...)

Other examples of woodworking as exercise involve strength conditioning while moving lumber and plywood through the production flow. A typical 4'x8' 3/4" sheet of plywood weighs between 60 & 75 lbs and is a bear to move around. In addition, I never sit while woodworking - I continuously walk from tool to tool to assembly table to finishing table and finally cart the finished product to its new home.

However, there are forms of woodworking that are less strenuous. For example, the last two weekends I turned two bowls on the lathe. Although I stand the entire time, there is not much physical effort except that needed to maintain precision while applying the tools to the wood. If there's anything to be said for this it is that I get to exercise my fine motor controls and hand-eye coordination to produce a quality turning.

Even if it's not a big calorie burn, I believe it is important to regularly exercise fine motor skills. I used to play golf (but gave it up due to how long it took to play a round) and I noticed over the years that any lapse in practice or play resulted in immediate loss of "touch" for the short game. The short game requires fine motor skills and not regularly practicing that aspect of the game results in subsequent performance loss.

Today (Monday) it was raining so I didn't walk Penny. I performed my KB strength 16 sessions with an extra 30 KB swings appended to the session. I was uncommonly sore and tired after the session, mostly due to a sleepless night.

Can One Really Accurately Count Calories?

Hiking Forest Trail in Montana September 2010 (Ranch 63 Vacation)

My weight loss as of today stands at 18.5 lbs since the beginning of the year. I'm keeping pace at the recommended 2 lbs per week loss through calorie counting and exercise as I've blogged these past few weeks. My strategy on the calorie counting is to just count the food calories I consume and not take into strict account the exercise calories I expend. My goal is to have a weighted moving average that stays around 1800 calories per day. The following chart shows my daily ups and downs but the trend stays pretty steady around 1800 calories. Almost every peak on the chart occurs on Saturday or Sunday.

Counting food calories today, with the help of Google (or your favorite search engine), is easy, if, and only if, you believe and trust the data presented in the search results or approach results variability in a consistent way. I say this because for every food search I conduct, I find multiple different values at different weights. For main ingredients, like specific cuts of meat or pasta, etc, the calories specified usually remain consistent per ounce or per gram across various sites. But when one starts searching for complete recipes, the numbers given become increasingly less consistent.

There are a few ways to deal with varied values. One is to be optimistic and consistently choose the lower values. Another is to be pessimistic and always choose the larger values for a given food, and a third way is to choose something in the middle. I tend to do the latter, often adding a fudge factor to get closer to the larger pessimistic value. Even though I say I do this because I would rather overestimate than underestimate calories consumed, my optimistic nature results in choosing a middle value rather than the largest possible (pessimistic) value.

In the long run though, the progress of my weight loss over time confirms that I am being consistent in keeping my calorie count below that needed to maintain (or gain) weight. If you track calories and you're not loosing weight, then you may be choosing to underestimate the weights/quantities of food you're eating or you may be using unrealistically low values provided by search engines. For the former, it would be wise to actively weigh and measure food quantities consumed. I found myself completely surprised at how little food makes a "portion" as stated in recipes and food labels for calorie quantities.

The second part of calorie counting consists of tracking calories burned. I choose to ignore those explicitly, but implicitly I know that I burn some calories at rest, during my walks, and during Kettlebell exercise sessions. Also, when I'm gardening or constructing ranch outbuildings, I know that I've burned a significant quantity of calories. Today, I stomped, twisted, yanked, and pulled my way through 1-1/2 hours of broadfork bed preparation which produced sore muscles, elevated heart and respiration rates, and a sheen of sweat. If that ain't burnin' calories I don't know what is. Although I don't strictly account for the burned calories, I do allow myself to not feel too guilty with weekend food calorie spikes when I offset consumption with heavy gardening exercise.

So even though it may not be possible to accurately count calories, one can reach their goal by applying a consistent approach to tracking calories, combined with observing feedback of weight gain or loss achieved over time.

Perpetually Resisting Never Ending Trail of Treats

Meadow Dance a la Sound of Music

Here at work there's an area where folks gather in the afternoon to shoot the breeze and in that space is a file cabinet which invariably has a bowl of sweet treats. There's usually snickers, or peanut or plain M&Ms or (one of my personal favorites) tootsi-roll pops. Until this year I, as many others do, made sure to pass by this tempting location to sooth a sweet tooth. Lately I just avoid the area because when I do pass the area I am sorely tempted to grab a piece. My temptation would be enhanced though if they had semi-sweet dark chocolate as that's what I enjoy the most. Day before yesterday I joined the afternoon gab fest but avoided the candy cabinet. That evening though, I ate two small pieces of dark chocolate at home (84 calories).

In addition to the candy cabinet, we have monthly birthday celebration day in which folks bring in a variety of cakes. I just received an email that notified us that today's the day for February Birthday treats. And yesterday we had cake to celebrate a co-worker's impending child birth. For the latter I was served the usual american chocolate slab cake, 2 inches tall with 1/4 inch of icing, and sliced to about 3.5 inches square. That's 24.5 cubic inches of almost pure sugar. I did partake but ate only a 1/2 inch slice off the front of my piece and tossed the rest (what a waste!) So I reduced my pure sugar intake to 3 cubic inches. Today I'm skipping the birthday bash to avoid the sweet treats altogether.

About today and yesterday's photo: one of the reasons I love to travel to Germany is because it is such a walking friendly country. There are walking trails everywhere. In the woods, around towns, in towns, well, just everywhere. The picture from yesterday was a trail through the Schwarzwald in autumn and the picture above was taken from a meadow we hiked to above the town we stayed in 2006. My daughter (the photographer) noted the meadow we hiked along looked like the hills from "The Sound of Music" and suggested we dance in the meadow like the movie. Walking and dancing all all at once!

Observing Physical Responses to Exercise

Walking Wooded Path in Schwarzwald

Maintaining mindfulness while working out is something that occurs in small bits during my exercise session. I'd say that no more than 5 percent of my time is spent truly observing how my body is reacting to the stresses I'm applying during the workout. Today, for example, I performed 10 sessions of 15 kettlebell swings, followed by 3 Turkish Get Ups on each side. Most of the time I'm just counting the reps and the sessions to keep track.

But during the counting today I observed that the first two sessions flew by and the rest session between swing sessions was only to a count of 4 or so - very short. By the 4th session I noticed that I could feel my pulse rate increase in my neck but I wasn't winded. By the 7th session, I was beginning to feel winded and the pulse was very noticeable and my brow reflected a sheen of sweat and the rest period between swings had lengthened to a slow eight count. On the final session the sheen actively dripped into my eyes, my breath labored and my heart pounded.

I immediately picked up the 20 lb barbell for the TGUs and moved to the bedroom rug where I took a few long (labored) breaths before diving into the TGUs. I found my strength reduced from the swings to the point that it took two hands to get the barbell started into the shoulder press from which I start the TGUs. (Most videos of people I watched started TGUs from the floor, stand, then return to the floor. I start standing with a shoulder press, descend to the floor, the get back up to my feet for one repetition on one side.) I was able to perform 3 TGUs today but I observed that swing fatigue and the 20 lb barbell resulted in increasingly sloppy execution on each one. I was really happy that I completed the last one and it was over.

Chest Development the Fun Way!

Kayak Fishing on our favorite river, the Llano River

Just eight more days before I post the before and after pictures of the progress of my physique shaping workout. Standing before the mirror this morning I can see better definition of my chest and modest shrinkage of the stomach. Related to this I want to point out that the picture above shows an activity where I have found I gain good definition of the chest through a fun non-exercise activity. In the picture above I've just caught a Guadalupe Bass on the Llano river in Central Texas. Fighting this monster bass gave me a chest like Arnold Schwarzeneger! (ha!)

But really, kayaking is the fun chest development activity and the Llano River is one of our favorite kayaking destinations. We drop off the kayaks at the river crossing at County Road 102 west of Llano, Texas, park the truck out of the way, and paddle upstream as far as we can go. Along the way we portage about four small rapids pulling the kayaks up with ropes (class I rapids in normal flows) and finally we end up at a location where there's a long steep rapid where there's not enough water to float the kayak.

We usually lunch there, pick up river rocks for our rock garden landscaping, then float back down, and joyously run the rather tame rapids raising our paddles in victory. A normal day on the Llano with fishing and swimming stops takes three to five hours. In the couple dozen times we've paddled that stretch, we've only come across one other fisherman. It's like having our own private paradise with lots of nice swimming holes and great fishing to boot!

From a fitness perspective I have observed that kayaking is a wonderful, fun way to build up a man chest! The Llano River kayak workout requires heavy paddling to move upriver, and to navigate the rapids. Even though most of the drift down stream requires only light, easy paddling, it takes a lot of strong paddling to hit each rapid at the right speed, to hit the right entry point, and to maintain the line through the rapid so as to not get stranded on a rock. But as much as I enjoy the fun of the river paddling, if the goal is to develop the chest, the real work comes when I go paddling with my wife on local lakes.

There is no movement without paddling on lakes and add to that the fact that my wife is a paddling machine and lake kayaking with her is about constant motion and workout. Personally, I like to drift and quietly take in nature, but paddling with her is all about keeping up. When we paddle Brushy Creek Lake north of Austin, it takes 1 hour and 45 minutes from kayak drop off at the dam all the way up the lake to where Brushy Creek is too shallow to paddle and back, paddles digging water all the way. What a workout! Within a couple of weeks of regular paddling I notice very good development of the chest.

Speaking of workout, today I got back on track with the first 16 session strength training this week, having skipped Monday. Yesterday I bumped my KB swings from 120 to 150 and for the first time used the 20 lb barbell for Turkish Get Ups. With the extra weight I could only do the "old man" style on the left side, but was able to perform "strong man" TGUs on the right side even with the 20 lb weight. However, with the extra 30 swings and the extra barbell weight I dropped from 3 TGUs each side to 2. During my strength session today I also added the 20 lb barbell for presses, windmills, and curls. I used the 30 lb Kettlebell for everything else and I added an extra 20 swings at the end of the session because I was feelin' pretty darned good! My muscles are glowing nicely this morning!

Bustin' Sod for exercise

In the spirit of improvising a solution, I clamped my cellphone to a fence post in order to record video of my using the broadfork to prepare a section of my garden and posted the results to youtube last night. I figured I'd embed it here in this fitness blog to demonstrate how gardening can be a beneficial form of exercise. I was thinking about what gym exercises or equipment I'm replicating through the use of the broadfork and some ideas were step stools, rowing machine, and jump rope (sort of). There's some aspect of balance there too when pushing the tines into the soil, but I don't know of balance equipment except a balance bar, which is static unlike the broadfork.

Yesterday was the first day since I got the kettlebell that I didn't perform any sort of exercise. I got up at 5 a.m. to prepare for a very important day-long meeting so even poor Penny didn't get her walk. I always feel guilty when I don't take her for a walk.

Workout Break: Not Really!

Dog giving musician (me) a shower. Exercising my mind and fingers through music.

I purchased a 20 lb dumbbell Friday evening and Saturday after I walked Penny I hefted it a few times but don't consider that a workout. Sunday I didn't officially workout too. But it was another weekend workout of the non-traditional kind. Saturday I moved about for several hours in my woodworking shop turning a bowl from Red Cedar. Our neighbor's stately, tall, beautiful pine tree, which once perfectly shaded their home from the afternoon sun, died in the drought in 2011. It saddened me to see such a beautiful tree die. I happened to stop by for a visit three weeks ago when they chopped it down and volunteered to turn souvenir bowls from the tree for them to remember and share with their family. Yesterday I turned the first one and I have to say, that tree will deliver some beautiful bowls. The red of the cedar will finish to a lovely luster. Today was another garden workout along with my first chainsaw wielding. There was a large fallen branch that needed removing to clear a main trail and I chopped that branch to nice firewood sized chunks as I cleared the path. Thus, I enjoyed a weekend of exercise outside the bounds of walking and kettlebelling.

A very good friend of mine recommended the book, "Fat Chance: Beating the Odds Against Sugar, Processed Food, Obesity, and Disease" written by Robert H. Lustig. I am currently 3/4 way through the book and so far I have learned a lot. The author's purpose isn't to sell a diet, it is to educate the public about new scientific studies that pretty much damn our society's food culture as it stands today and how our obesity epidemic (pandemic) is related to the crap on our grocery shelves and in restaurants (fast food in particular). It is also a reasonably easy read too boot. I have recommended the book to my wife, my children and to friends around me as there is much to learn here that could really affect your life if you start applying the concepts to what and how you eat.

If you recall a few posts ago, I mentioned that Inge and I eat around the perimeter of the store, and from that perspective, we already follow his guidelines. That was a bit of a relief to find out. But I still came away with the knowledge that I must still further reduce the quantity of sugar I consume if I want to get to the type of fit where my lipids drop into very good range as well as dropping the weight. The only thing is, his assertion that it's impossible to just diet your way to weight loss is unsettling. In a way I've succeeded in yo-yo-ing once (down 40 lb, up 20 lb) and I hope that I can get to my goal and stay there through lifetime feedback weight maintenance. So I choose to ignore his statements about the impossibility of maintaining the loss and continue to keep calorie reduction tracking. I'm just going to have to prove him wrong!

To Fast or Not Too Fast

Medium difficulty post hole digging for shed

Yesterday I mentioned the plateau I had reached in weight loss and mentioned my plateau busting method of fasting from dinner Thursday to dinner Friday or about 24 hours. I find myself torn about whether to continue this because so many recent studies seem to show that fasting is not effective for weight loss due to the tendency to over consume upon conclusion of the fast. My personal experience is that, yes, I do eat a bit more after a fast, but it still results with a daily calorie consumption at least 30% below normal daily calorie intake. My only quibble or problem with that is that the method I use results in finishing the fast on a Dinner meal which means I've thrown a lump of consumables in my gut that may not have time to be fully processed by my normal 10 p.m. bedtime and thus may contribute to nighttime gut junk.

I didn't fast today because, at least for today, I broke through the plateau with a 2 lb drop (187.5). Fasting is hard so I'm not too fast to fast. I have a pet theory, probably perused on one site or another, that fasting could be beneficial because we continually consume food that contains all kind of stuff, some of which may not be the greatest for our bodies to process. Thus I look at a fast as a way to give my body a break from intake of those potentially less than healthy materials. I don't know that 24 hours is long enough to purge much of anything, but I am the master of my own beliefs and I'll cling to this belief that fasting provides a potential cleansing effect until something scientifically based convinces me to change my outlook.

Another 25 minute walk today with the 16 session KB strength exercises. I completed the workout but was a bit sweaty and drained afterwards.

About the photo - I've had the occasion to dig some 40+ post holes on The Gruene Weide of which there were three ways to dig post holes. The easiest was when a neighbor brought in his tractor with a post hole auger that knocked out holes with no more effort than my placing the auger bit at the hole location and stepping back. For most of the holes for fence building and shed building I rented a power auger which does take a bit of effort to operate as it takes application of physical weight to facilitate faster digging and there's a lot of muscle power required to resist the torque of the bit wanting to spin instead of penetrate soil. There's quite a bit of strength conditioning involved with hand operated motorized augers. Finally, there's been a good half-dozen holes which were dug with post-hole diggers. That's the heavy duty hole digging method and darn good cardio exercise.

Waxing and Waning of Strength

My brother (L) and myself building ranch shed Feb 2011

Note: I've decided to post randomly selected pictures from my photographic library to add visual interest to these posts. Where possible, I hope the photo will show something where I was directly or indirectly exercising. 

Another brisk morning, so I bundled up in sweats, hoodie, gloves, and knit cap to walk Penny for another 25  minute route. Normally it would be a 30 minute route, but for whatever reason today she didn't stop to sniff stuff as often as usual so there was a lot of continuous walking which I enjoyed. Sometimes I get aggravated when she wants to sniff at every bush. She gets really sniffy after rain or drizzle or very humid periods.

After the walk I performed the Tue-Thu 8-session KB swings, for 120 swings then tackled three Turkish Get Ups per side. I was able to execute the "strong man" version of TGU on the right support side, but I could only do so once on the left side today before reverting to the "old man" TGU technique for the last two. Thus the post heading - my observation that from one day to the next the level of strength I possess varies. Even though mentally I felt no different than Tuesday, physically I was just unable to support my body weight with my left arm during the TGU. Did I over-tax myself Tuesday leaving too little in the tank for today? Or was there something in my diet over the last few days that reduced my strength for today?

The body is a wonderful mechanism, but subject to swings in responses to environment and input. I see that in my daily weigh-ins. The daily variance can swing at least plus or minus 3 lbs day-to-day and that is mostly due to the fact that our physical make-up is somewhere around 70% water. So dehydrate one day, loose 2 lbs. Drink tons of coffee and water and gain it all back the next day. That's why it's necessary to track progress through the weighted average of the daily data because it's hard to interpret progress through the noisy data.

Speaking of which, I've entered my first plateau. I've been bouncing within 1.5 lbs of 190 now for seven days. Often I've broken out of these plateaus by fasting for 24 hours. Typically I do so from after dinner Thursday until dinner Friday. (Thus it's not always exactly 24 hours but close enough...) I'll talk more about fasting in a future post.

Back on the waxing and waning topic: I wonder if there's a way I can track the progress of my strength and fitness through the noise of "old man" vs "strong man" TGU technique differences. I can evaluate this subjectively, but that's open to positive spin interpretation of the data rather than concrete and objective progress tracking through some metric analogous to the smoothed weight tracking. I hope to ascertain fitness and strength improvements in little victories like consistently doing "strong man" TGU and finding that my 30 lb Kettlebell has become too easy to wield. But my engineering mind would be really happy to put a concrete number on the progress from which I can derive a feedback mechanism to improve performance.

Daily Dabble and Benefits of Mindful Driving

The old truck that was totaled - kayaking trip to Brushy Creek lake.

Today was a bit chilly but I bundled up to walk Penny for an invigorating 25 minute walk. Afterwards I hit the KB for the 16 session strength workout. There are two things I switch to dumbbells for, the overhead press and curls. I do not have the strength for either of those with the 30 lb KB. However, the heaviest dumbbell I have is only 10 lbs and that is not enough for either press, curls, or Turkish Get Ups. So if I get some time this week I'll head over to Academy to pick up a 15 or 20 lb dumbbell. To choose which, I'll heft them both and take the one I can barely manage. That's how I chose the KB weight too.

I drive a Nissan Frontier pickup. It's a mid-sized six cylinder vehicle that allows me to transport the stuff I need for our ranch and my woodworking hobby and kayaks yet it's not so big to have miserable gas mileage. The one I drive now is the 2nd of the same model as the first was totaled by a woman who T-boned my truck when she ran a red light. The old one was an upscale version that had a built-in MPG display which showed that I typically averaged 16.5 MPG. The replacement Frontier didn't have the MPG display so I put a small notebook in my truck and kept track of the mileage and fuel consumption manually and the newer truck still averaged 16.5 MPG.

After a few months I decided to try to see if driving in a different manner would have an impact to the MPG. So instead of my usual head snapping rabbit take-offs from stops, I consciously made every effort to veerrrry sloooowly accelerate from every stop and not punch the gas for any reason. My driving schedule and destinations are very consistent day-to-day and week-to-week which allowed for a reasonable comparison to the prior MPG results. Although I observed that my slow starts aggravated a lot of folks behind me, I found that my average fuel consumption jumped to over 20 MPG. That was almost a 22% improvement simply by going turtle.

It takes a great deal of conscious effort to maintain that style of driving because during normal daily commute driving one tends to follow the herd that is usually leaping off every red-to-green light change. (I find it funny to see so many of the Prius's that appear to drag race everywhere - there's no way their driving style will result in the vaunted 40+ MPG with such heavy-foot driving.) I therefore postulate that turtle take-off driving qualifies as mindful driving.

Today I'm back to mindless driving but I exercise a lot more restraint and don't jack-rabbit off the start like I used to. Along the way I also changed my methodology of tracking fuel consumption by downloading an android app that keeps the statistics as I enter the data at every fill-up. Currently, with my somewhere between turtle and rabbit acceleration habits my average fuel consumption is 17.95 MPG. However, if the price of gasoline continues climbing to back over $4 per gallon, I'll switch back to mindful turtle mode.

In the Swing of Things

Montana Mountain Ridge Ride

As one of the objects of this blog is to track my fitness and health progress, on occasion I will briefly describe my activity of the day (to include previous days as needed.)

Today, being Tuesday, I get an early and late dose of exercise. This morning I took Penny for a walk in a dense drizzle which felt like walking through wet spider webs. The temperature was pleasant enough with a light jacket and we took one of the 15 minute routes. After returning home I headed upstairs, shedding the long sleeve layers as I went, then grabbed the Kettlebell for my Tuesday swing session. (Sounds like a dance!)

On my Mon-Wed-Fri sessions I use the droid timer app to keep the tabata session on track. But on Tue-Thu I know that it takes 13 swings to cover the 20 second swing session. Being enthusiastic though, I bump that up to 15 swings and thus I performed 8 sessions of 15 swings for a total of 120 swings with a slow 8 count between each swing session. After swinging about I headed to the bedroom rug with my 10 lb barbell and did 3 Turkish Get Ups per side. One change in the TGU for today was to switch sides for each one instead of sequentially doing the 3 per side. Also, today I had a minor victory - I was able to execute the "strong man" TGU on BOTH sides. To an outside observer the procedure would have looked quite shaky, but it felt good to be able to fully support my weight with my left arm.

The second dose of exercise (?) comes courtesy of my participating in a bowling league on Tuesdays. I added the parenthetical question mark because participating in a league consisting of 5 man teams means one doesn't bowl with a frequency that really tasks one's physical abilities. But it is movement and it is fun (except nights where I just suck and have bad scores...) I tend to berate myself for sub-par performance.

As a related aside, in 1995-6 while working in Massachusetts I spent several months practicing Tai-Chi at work several days a week as this was provided as a lunch-time workout by a co-worker who was a Tai-Chi Master. I really enjoyed the practice and my balance and strength increased significantly after some time of that practice.

Coincidentally, my bowling average at that time improved to the best I've ever had including several games in which I beat my personal best score. I strongly believe the balance and strength gained through Tai-Chi directly resulted in improved bowling performance as consistently good bowling is a function of balance and timing (as well as mental focus). I moved back to Texas though and didn't find a close-by and convenient Tai-Chi practice source and lost touch with the art. This past year my bowling average has deteriorated and it is my hope that the strength and balance benefits of Kettlebell training will translate to a return to better performance in my bowling game.

Interpreting Mindfulness

Sun Highlights Jewish Settlement, Jerusalem

I live my life in a constant state of exploration. Google is my friend and youtube is a close second. I love to research topics that flow across my consciousness over time. At about the same time I learned about the Kettlebell training, I came across an article about Mindfulness with respect to health. I discovered an article where Dr. Ellen Langer described how experiments she performed showed that it is possible that a lot of our physical and health conditions can be mentally influenced. I always end up taking away odd things from articles and stuff I read and what I took away from this is that it is far better to live life being mindfully aware of what you're doing and how you're living than to stumble mindlessly along.

In an odd coming together of an act before the understanding occurs, I had come across a living circumstance where I had switched from mindless to mindful application of something quite common in daily life. Late last year I went in for my bi-annual dental hygiene and during the session the hygienist mentioned in passing that she always started brushing her teeth in the same location. So the next time I brushed my teeth I did as usual, jammed the toothbrush into my mouth and started randomly swishing here and there. In the midst of that mindless random swishing her comment popped into my mind and I realized that my approach to tooth brushing was very random and inefficient. So from that moment I started brushing from the lower inside right, around the lower, the upper, four times, and switched to the outside upper and lower, four times around. It took several days to make that the ingrained habit of how I brush my teeth, and to this day if I'm in a rush I'll briefly forget and do the jam and random swish before I remember and get back on track to efficient brushing.

Several weeks later, when I came across the concept of mindfulness I realized that my toothbrush methodology change demonstrated a great example of accomplishing a task in a mindful vs. mindless way. My exploration of the concept of mindfulness though found that the topic traversed into a realm of meditation and spirituality that crept into an uncomfortable range of thought for me. However, I found the concept of mindfulness to be quite useful in terms of dealing with daily life so I chose to limit my exploration and application to practical approaches of mindfulness in life that results in physical and mental well being, without exploring the spiritual depths of mindfulness.

Over time I will write in this blog the mental aspects of some aspects of life as related to mindfulness as well as how I can practically apply mindfulness to my pursuit of fitness.

Kettlebell Anfang (Beginning)

Time to discuss the "anfang" (beginning in German) of my Kettlebell training. What is the Kettlebell? As usual, wiki defines kettlebell quite well as, basically a heavy iron ball with a handle developed in Russia in the 18th century.

What I found by research and watching youtube videos is that this is a very dynamic way to exercise that encompasses both strength and cardio exercise in one bundle. Not only that, this one devise can be used for dozens of different exercises that can target virtually any muscle group you desire and provide a variety of fun. Finally, in the overall scheme of things it is relatively inexpensive and I can work out at home, not the gym. Just one 8 session Kettlebell Swings leaves me panting and with glowing muscles too. Given my penchant for giving up on exercise regimens due to boredom over time, I'm hoping the varied nature of this tool will have me exercising with it more over a longer (lifetime?) span.

Given my goal for use of this is to tone my body as it's not been toned since Army boot camp in 1978, I decided to document my use of the kettlebell over time to hopefully objectively measure results and see how my spirit responds to using this odd device over time.  Thus, below you will find the obligatory "before" picture so that as time progresses we all can see what affect kettlebell training has on my physique.

I took this picture January 28th which is the day I bought the Kettlebell and after I had already lost 10 lbs (194 lbs) with calorie reduction and walking alone. My online research recommended that a man starting with Kettlebell should purchase a 16Kg Kettlebell, but when I bought mine I found it to be too heavy so I bought the next weight down (30 lbs ~14Kg). I am hoping to get to flat (but not necessarily six-pack) abs and virtually no love handles and a more defined chest and arms. I'll take a picture once a month and post side-by-side with this picture to see if there's visible difference between before and after.

So what is my Kettlebell training regimen? I am working out a minimum of 5 times a week on on the Japanese Tabata training schedule where I exercise intensely for 20 seconds, followed by 10 seconds rest, until I reach the number of sessions for that day. Since each session is 30 seconds, I can double up to get to the minutes I want. I downloaded a free android app to time the sessions. My current KB workout sessions are:

Mon-Wed-Fri - strength conditioning currently for 16 sessions or 8 minutes.

• KB Swings, 2x  (core strengthening abs, thighs, glutes)
• Around the world, 2 X (left & right) (abs)
• KB Rows, 2x (L & R) (upper body arms)
• KB halo, 2x (L & R)  (abs)
• KB goblet squats 2x  (lower body)
• KB swings, 2x   (core)
• KB windmills 2x (abs)
• KB presses, 2x (L & R) (upper body)
• KB curls, 2x (L & R) (arms)

Tue-Thu (as schedule permits on weekends too) cardio/strength 8 sessions

• KB Swings 8 sessions
• Turkish Get Ups - as many as I can do - currently 1 to 3 get-ups

There are two types of Turkish Get Ups (TGU) which I describe as the "strong man" way where one lifts entire body and crosses the free leg under while supporting yourself on one arm, and the "old man" way where you cross the legs under while sitting on your posterior. I found out that I can do the "strong man" with my right hand but my left hand is too weak to support myself (as yet) so I do the "old man" TGU on left hand support and "strong man" TGU on right hand. (Search Turkish Get Up on youtube to see what this is.) Let me tell you, the TGU is a serious workout! Also, I am not strong enough yet to do a TGU with the Kettlebell so I am using a 10 lb barbell for TGU until I gain more strength.

Garden Workout - Double the Joy!

Examining Blackland Prairie Soil in Garden

I'll discuss Kettlebell training shortly as today my muscles are glowing from the Garden Workout. As mentioned in an earlier post, I like to get a lot of my exercise in non-traditional ways. Today, the workout consisted of planting four rows of potatoes, which using the straw bale method isn't massively strenuous, and I turned soil using the broadfork to prepare a little over 120 square feet of garden plot. Every year I tackle garden bed preparation over small chunks as performing such a task over the entire 1000 square feet of garden would lead to exhaustion, blisters, and massive muscle soreness. Although I have considered renting or buying a rototiller, I find that manually digging and turning the soil provides a great workout and somehow makes my soul feel good.

Sometime last year I stumbled upon a youtube video of someone preparing soil using a broadfork. That tool immediately caught my eye as it is quite efficient in preparing beds without as much strenuous work as using a shovel to turn soil, or the noise and soil pounding intensity of pulverizing the soil with a rototiller. So in January I purchased a broadfork from Valley Oak Tools as their video of how the fork was constructed showed great thought in dealing with the stresses involved in forking soil. In the video below you can see a bit of how I do the work. I forked the soil in two passes, north-to-south, and east-to-west, the latter being much faster and easier. It took 40 minutes to prepare that 120 square foot block of garden soil. After I prepared the soil, I furrowed two rows with a hoe into which I planted 80 yellow onion sets.

What I love about garden workouts is my muscles glow with that touch of soreness that lets me know they've been used properly, and I get the added benefit that, God and His weather willing, my garden will produce a harvest of food. To me, there's no comparable secondary benefit to the gym or jogging and thus the double joy of a Garden Workout.

Ad Hoc Exercise Plan

I hate gyms! I can provide no reasonable logical reason for this so leave it at that. And after 12 years in the Army, I vowed I would never run again unless someone was chasing me intent on causing me physical harm. I have broken that vow on occasion, breaking out in a spontaneous jog while walking the dog, but it's never planned or intentional - only when the jog mood strikes.

So how do I achieve fitness if I don't follow the over-prescribed meme of gym and jogging? Over the past few years I've made a number of deliberate small changes in how I approach life such that I get exercise in a non-traditional manner that's just a part of how I live daily life.

Penny (R) pesters Pistol, her brother (L)

First and foremost on the list was acquiring our Chocolate Labrador, Penny. I knew that with Penny I had no excuses available for not walking - the dog must be walked! So every morning in every weather except significant rain (I even walk in drizzle and sprinkles) I walk Penny. And except for sniff stops, we walk at a blistering pace. Typically 15-25 minutes per day. Oh, and there is one other daily walk exception - I don't walk her when we go out to our 10 acre ranch (see my other blog: Manchmal Gruene Weide) because both Penny and I get plenty of exercise out there.

But, but, that's not enough exercise! You're supposed to exercise at least 30 minutes per day! (As recommended by the latest health guidelines.) Aha! I have that shortfall covered in several ways. For the last several years I made it a habit to park my truck at work under the shade of a tree as far from my desk as I can get. It takes me literally five minutes to walk from my truck to my desk (at the same Penny-walking blistering pace.) Thus I get at least 10 additional minutes of walking and that's doubled if I need to drive on an errand somewhere. In addition, nearly every day I go on an afternoon 15 minute walk with coworker(s) as a source of stress relief (and juicy work rumors.) And last, but not least, for the last 18 months I have been standing instead of sitting in my computer work cubicle. Using some scrap walnut boards and oak plywood I built a stand to elevate my keyboard to elbow height above the desk while standing and stacked phone books to lift the monitors to good viewing height. I scrounged a tall stool from the lab to perch on when my feet get tired, but I never spend more than a few minutes on that before I'm back on my feet. The funny thing is, within 3 weeks of setting up the standing work space I lost an inch off my waist without loosing any weight. I also spend more on shoes because my feet tell me when a pair of shoes is worn out.

To top all that off, nearly every weekend I head out to our ranch and at the very least walk. Most of the time though it's far more intense than that because we have an orchard (6 peach trees, 3 plum trees, 2 apple trees) a row of blackberries and raspberries, two grape vines, and a 1000 square foot garden plot. Oh, and Inge's donkey, Herbert, which requires lots of hay bale lifting in the winter. So I'm usually digging, hoeing, lifting, building, watering, and on and on. I always come away from the land with a glow in my muscles (and in my spirit!) from the work required there.

So I don't feel my life lacks a healthy amount of exercise. But I know there's room for improvement because 1) I'm not particularly strong, and 2) even when I had dropped to 180 lbs in 2006 I still had a bit of a paunch and love handles. However, a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon an article about Kettlebell training - something I'd never heard of before. After a bit of investigation I decided that the Kettlebell may be the tool for me to attack the paunch problem and improve my strength as well. I'll explain my reasoning and approach for adding Kettlebell training (real exercise!) to my lifestyle in the next post.

It's NOT a New Year's Resolution! Really!

The end of 2012 rolled around and I stood on the scale at 205 lbs, and for the third time in the last year I said to myself, "you've really got to loose that weight again!" The two previous times I made the mental effort, and once the physical effort to loose, even dropping to 192 lbs by July 2012. But there were two self-induced problems. 1) I didn't use my spreadsheet because I figured I could track my caloric intake in my head. 2) My attitude wasn't in the right place.

This time though, I decided to go back to the hacker's diet whole hog. After all, it worked once, to the tune of 40 lbs in six months. So I dug up the spreadsheet from 2006, cleared out the data and started from January 1, 2013 to track my weight and calories. I decided to go back below 180 lbs as a goal and the timeline was conveniently provided by my daughter, who is coming to visit from Germany the end of March. So I resolved to be at or below 180 lbs by end of March this year. (But I swear I don't do New Year's resolutions, it just happens my timing sucks!)

As far as the hacker spreadsheet tracking goes, my approach differs from the hacker's diet by my adding calorie tracking to the weight tracking. He recommended only tracking weight and using the smoothed line of weighted average as a guideline to indicate whether to consume more or fewer calories. However, I decided that I honestly didn't know how many calories were in what I ate. So I created a calorie tracking sheet and chart to go along with the weight sheet and chart. Once I started weighing food and calculating calories for what I actually ate, I discovered that it is very easy to eat too many calories. Once I learned how little food is required for weight loss or maintenance, I concluded that our obesity epidemic is strictly a function of far too much food availability and consumption.

I grew up in a family of 6 where food wasn't always available in big quantities and "clean your plate" was the norm. But what's on one's plate in a restaurant these days is sufficient to feed at least two people and if I followed the "clean your plate" rule at every restaurant, I'd be obese too. I find I still have to fight the "clean my plate" mentality at restaurants and at home. But at home, I solve the issue by not loading my plate with more than what is required for that meal on that day.

So with the spreadsheet activated, AND loaded on the google cloud so I can access it anywhere I have a networked computer, I started again to track weight and calories, with the goal to maintain my calories, on average, below 1800 calories per day. With that level of consumption and with the exercise I get naturally, I should loose around the recommended 2 lbs per week. And so far that's where I've been tracking as shown in the chart below:

Red line indicates weighted average
Blue dots are the daily weights

The first time I used this method, I didn't exercise for about two months into the weight loss regimen. But after two months of weight loss, I started feeling pretty darned good and I developed a desire to exercise. So I started going to the work training facility and working out on the elliptical machines. However, I am just not comfortable working out in these places and it wasn't long before I stopped going. Instead, I started walking in my neighborhood at a brisk pace. I have been walking ever since, and now, with our chocolate lab, Penny, I walk every day except strong rain. I have more tricks up my sleeve when it comes to exercise and I'll discuss those and my discovery of the Kettlebell as an additional exercise source in the next post.

Creeping back to Unfit

So where am I today? After successfully dropping to my goal of 180lbs (at one point down to 178) I slacked off but vaguely paid attention. I now knew that the primary fact is that if I consumed more calories than I burned, I gained weight. Over time I began to slack off in paying real close attention and over the course of 2008 through 2012 my weight crept very slowly up. By the end of last year (and the ever present holiday food indulgences) my weight topped out at 205 lbs.

What are the consequences of this? The 220lb to 180lb drop in weight coincided with a cholesterol drop from 210 to 160. My Triglycerides dropped from 240 to 130. I walked vigorously nearly every day and felt fantastic. I still walk every day, but one thing I learned from The Hacker's Diet is that exercise can not make up for excess calories. A pair of cookies can negate a 30 minute walk calorie for calorie. The simple fact is I must change how I eat if I want to loose and maintain weight. This past fall, at 200 lbs, my cholesterol was 198 and my triglycerides 190. I was a bit shocked because I didn't feel that weight gain would make that much difference in my lipids, but it did!

Interestingly, from a quality standpoint, I eat well. My wife and I are excellent cooks but we eat her cooking most of the time due to my engineering work schedule. (We seldom eat out to the point I have to beg to eat out!) We've always "shopped the perimeter" of grocery stores, eating meats and fresh or frozen (or occasionally canned) vegetables.  The primary exception is both of us bake a bit. She bakes German cakes and pastries (which are not as cloyingly sweet as American baked treats) and I bake German-style rye bread. (Roggenmischbrot). The bread I bake is eaten with various cheeses and wursts. Therefore, any problem I have with diet is a quantity issue, not quality issue. And it is lack of self control in serving portions that invariably results in eventual weight gain. I love to eat Inge's delicious cooking and it is painfully hard to resist coming back for seconds on Schweinebraten, Sauerbraten, Erdbeerkucken (strawberry cake), etc. So the love of great food and double-dealing portions resulted in the creep back to 205. But the creeping gain is insidious! 25 lbs gained in 4 years amounts to just over half a pound a month.

At the beginning of 2013 I decided that it was time to return to 180 and below. Today I stand at 192 and I'll discuss how I got there next.

Genesis of Mindful Pursuit of Fitness

You might call it an attack of middle-aged angst or a desire to improve my lot in life, but over the past few years I came to the realization that the only person responsible for my health is me. I can't blame the condition of my health and fitness on society, on my family, on genetics, or on my wife. If I want to be fit and healthy, I'd have to take it upon myself to do so no matter the environment. Along the way I stumbled upon the concept of mindfulness and decided to pursue the path to fitness in a mindful (as opposed to mindless) way.

So here I am writing about my current and past travels along the road to my current and desired future state of health and fitness.

As an introduction of my fitness path here are two pictures of myself and an explanation of the thought process that caused the differences between the two.

The above picture was taken in Germany in 2006. (I love German Bier and German food!). At this time I weighed 220 lbs (at 5'10") and it was the heaviest I've been my whole life. Although I enjoyed the trip I was disgusted at how I felt and looked. Round pumpkin head and I was already growing out of 40 inch waist pants and a gut that started to look like my father and uncles, all of whom suffered multiple heart failure incidents.

So, upon returning from that trip, I set about finding out how to loose weight. During my research I stumbled upon a site that fit my temperament - The Hacker's Diet. Being an engineer, this approach fit how I approach life and helped me understand how to tackle the problem of weight management. My reading of his approach lead to my remembering two simple things, "Fad diets and gimmick nutritional plans obscure this simple yet essential fact of weight control: if you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight; if you eat fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight" and (my paraphrasing) any system can be managed with feedback. So the system he employs is a spreadsheet with daily tracking of weight, one line tracking the very noisy daily weight, and another line tracking the weighted moving average. The latter, smooths out the noise and, importantly, provides a direction. If your weight is on the whole decreasing, the slope of the weighted average descends. If, in the hard to interpret noise, your weight is increasing overall, the weighted average ascends. Simplified to the extreme, down, good, up, bad!

And after six months of hacking a diet via my own spreadsheet, which I will explain in a later post, I lost 40 lbs. At 180 lbs I never felt better! The above picture was taken 2 years later on a Fall trip to Germany, but the weight at this time crept up to perhaps 185. Still, the only time I felt physically healthier was after completing U.S. Army basic training in 1978.