Nine pounds!  I’m not going to say I was surprised when the scale read such a huge loss, mostly because I’ve said it far too many times already, and don’t want to sound like a schmuck.  Still, I’m more than happy that chunk of weight is behind me, rather than on my behind.  That’s 144 ounces less for me to worry about, which is a gross amount of weight.

Get it?  144.  Gross.  Ah, nevermind.

I’ve been in the gym for three weeks now, averaging three or four visits a week.  So far, I’m only taking advantage of the treadmill, walking 20 minutes each time I visit.  The speed has been bumped up to 2.4 miles per hour – still painfully slow for some of you hares out there, but this tortoise is more than happy to trundle along while mumbling “slow and steady wins the race”.  (Sure, tell that to Olympic sprinters.  Sorry, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, we’re giving your gold medal to Myrtle Diggs of Nowhere, Arizona.  She runs the mile in just under two hours, but only if she’s got her walker!)  Fortunately this isn’t a race; there’s no competition to reach a goal.  I’m not on The Biggest Loser.  No, it’s just me, slowly shedding the pounds I always thought were holding me back, were causing me to eke my way toward the murk and quicksand at the deep end of mediocrity.

It wasn’t the weight, of course;  I know better now.  I was held back by the combination of a gross (there’s that word again!) misunderstanding of my situation, a general disregard for the future of myself and those I love, and a stifling fear of the monumental effort it would take to change.  And of those things, fear was likely my most daunting opponent.  After all, how do you overcome fear if you have no hope?

Easy answer: You don’t.

Hope is the antidote for fear.

There will be no weight loss post this week.  That’s because there was no weight loss.  Now, don’t get me wrong, there was no weight gain, and that, my dear readers, is just fine with me.  I don’t have anything particularly enlightened to say this week on the subject, so I’ll just leave you with a quote, something Ms. Awesomesauce said to be a while back, one of some philosophical and interpersonal significance.  She’s a sweetheart that way, always coming up with encouraging observations about my life and my choices.  With no further ado, welcome to April, 2006.

Ms. Awesomesauce:  You must be going somewhere; you have your pants on.

What’s this?  A mid-week post?  It is!  It is indeed!

I’m afraid I’ve left the tremendous number of readers I have here (all three of you) a little in the lurch by not posting anything but Friday weigh-in blogs.  Well, this is not a weigh-in post, and it’s not Friday, so rejoice!  After all, I’m only going to take a few minutes to say how things are going in the healthier living front, and then on to other subjects.

Healthier living is becoming second nature, I think.  Last night, I had two sandwiches rather than one, and was more than stuffed.  I’m making a mental note not to have more than one at a meal from here on out.  (Besides, they were pretty big sandwiches!  One for lunch today got me full.)  A couple hours later, once everything had settled, I scooped out ice cream cones for the family, including myself.  Ms. Awesomesauce and I like this blueberry-pomegranate flavor, and weirdly enough it’s only available as the cheap brand at Wal-Mart.  Well… last night was the first time I tasted it in months and it was just too sweet.  Freakishly sweet.  Sweet like hot fudge on Cocoa Puffs.  Sweet like the diabetes-inducing lovechild of a sack of sugar and Rose from Golden Girls.

Next time, I’ll stick to celery and peanut butter.

I’ve gone from walking at the track to walking at the gym.  Can’t believe just how slow I am, too.  Slow.  As in I might be able to crawl as fast as I walk, if it wouldn’t murdelize my knees.  Okay, maybe not that slow.  But I started out at 1.8 miles per hour.  That means it was taking me more than thirty minutes to go one mile.  One stinkin’ mile.  Slow!  I’m up to 2.2 today, and I’m upping it by .1 miles per hour every day.  I’ll plateau at 2.5 on Friday and stay there for a week, then I’ll slowly work my way up to 3 miles per hour.  Eventually I’ll jog.  Eventually.  When I’m down to a weight where I won’t leave holes in the sidewalk or demolish a treadmill beneath me if I try.

So, enough of that.

School’s going well enough.  I think I bombed my Developmental Psychology exam.  Can’t have gotten more than seventy percent right, if that.  Of course the downer-emo-bad-poetry feelings creeping in due to that dismal failure were beaten back by the “strong A” (my prof’s words!) in Spanish.  Because Spanish is going to be so much more helpful to me when I’m a psychologist.  (You know… I’m actually right about that.  It probably will be more helpful.)  Tomorrow is the second Biology exam, followed by another one in the same class the next day.  Two exams in two days; imagine that!  What’s the teacher thinking?  What’s she trying to do to us?  Why doesn’t she just give us all big, red Fs and send us home, already.  Alright, okay, I’m stopping.  She’s got a good reason, and I don’t expect either test to be all that difficult.

I’d also mention the quiz and upcoming presentation in Philosophy, but… why?

I think that’s it for now.  Okay, so I spent most of the post talking about health stuffs.  It’s a big part of my life right now, and it’s about time.  This fat isn’t going to fall off on its own, after all, and I don’t have some magic cream that turns my excess cellulite into little tubby aliens who wander out into the street to get beamed up to a mothership waiting to take the younglings to another planet in dire need of a population.  (Thank you, Doctor Who.)  No, it’s going to be a central focus of my life – and my writing on here – for a while.  And as I slowly work back into making more regular posts, you, gentle reader, are probably going to see even more about what’s going on behind the scenes in my life.

Hope you stick around.  Exciting things are afoot.

I spent the entire seven days of this last week thinking I was going to gain weight.  No, I wasn’t being negative, I was just watching the cycle of how my weight loss has been so far, and I thought I had it figured out.  Apparently I was wrong.  I figured I’d go in to the clinic and the scale would place me at 471 or so.  Imagine my surprise – pleasant surprise, of course! – when the scale readout showed I had lost four pounds.  I was so shocked, I had to check three more times!

So there’s another lesson learned; never assume you’ve got everything figured out.  Oddly enough, that’s been one of the concepts bouncing around my Introduction to Philosophy class this past week, too.  Weird how things work out that way, don’t you think?  I’m beginning to see little patterns like that, and while I’m certain they’re coincidental (insofar as my metabolism didn’t conspire with my professor to provide the same message), I like how the bigger picture develops.

Which, of course, leads me to the other thing I’ve been musing over:  Attitude.

You see, for most of my life, I’ve lived under the notion that we should take one day (or one hour, or one minute) at a time.  After all, who I am might have been influenced by my history, but my history isn’t me.  Nor is my future part of my real self.  No, I thought, I am the person I choose to be at this instant.  Each moment, each decision I make defines who I am and what I will present myself to be to the world.  The problem with that way of thinking is it allows an easy out.  My mind, free from the constraints of my past and unwilling to speculate on the future, presented me with solutions unfit for a rational person, but quite acceptable to someone who lives for the moment.

It’s because of those choices that I spiraled into depression and severe weight gain.

A week ago, I discarded that aspect of my life entirely.  I refuse to live moment by moment – no more “one day at a time, sweet Jesus” for me.  My life is something greater than the moment in which I am living.  My choices right now are influenced – even predetermined, at times! – by what I have done and what has happened to me in the past.  My future is the result of what I do today.  If I try to take a look at one day, one moment, I feel as though I will lose sight of the grand gift life really is.  I learn something new every day, I grow and I become, as an individual, greater than I was the day before.  Yesterday I only knew so much.  Today, I am more complete.  Incomplete, of course, but closer to the much-vaunted “perfection” we’re all trying, in our own ways, to attain.

I doubt I’ll ever reach it, at least not in this world.  But I’ll certainly get closer than I am now.

With a title like this one, well, I feel like Richard Simmons.  With the exception of our vast weight difference, of course.  He was a big guy once, too, I’ve read, but never quite the same kind of big guy I am.  Vast difference between being three hundred pounds and being five hundred.  Still, I like what he does (even if I do find him a little weird) and hope one of these days what I’ve done with my life will help people in much the same way.

Except for Sweatin’ to the Oldies.  You will never see me in candy-striped shorts dancing to fifties and sixties rock.  Not gonna’ happen.

As for what’s going on right now… I lost one pound this week.  That may seem insignificant, and you might be right, if that’s what you’re thinking.  Still, one pound is one pound; once I lose the pound, it’s gone.  Sure, my body might fluctuate a pound over the course of the day, but I’m not going to let that deter me from checking off that tiny extra bit of weight from the total I need to lose.  No way.

Every step is a little greater success.  Every day is a greater opportunity to move forward, to improve, and to make your own life – and the lives of those around you – a better place.

Other stuff:  After three months, I had a second A1C done, and I am not diabetic.  The change in eating habits is largely to thank for that – I rarely eat anything sweet, and don’t touch too many unhealthy carbs (like white bread and potatoes).  Ms. Awesomesauce and I did have lunch with a friend yesterday, and I pigged out on much more than I should have eaten, but really, I’m not going to starve myself to get better.  I want to come out of this a normal person with normal eating habits and normal activity levels.  That won’t happen if I skimp too much.

It’s been a busy week, too – which explains the lack of posts – between school, doctors appointments, family, and everything else circling around my life right now.  I’m now a member of the local gym, and will start using their services (which, for me, means the recumbent bikes and heavy-duty treadmills) next week.  Also, my doctor found a lump in my throat; she’s pretty sure it’s a goiter.  I had to look the word up.  Turns out it’s a thyroid problem (which is what she told me, actually, but without going into detail), and it might be hereditary, since The Do-It-Yourself Mom had the same problem a decade or so back.

Still, I’m taking this as an opportunity to learn more.  What’s a goiter, specifically?  How did I come by it?  What can be done to fix it?  I’ve looked up all the answers and absorbed them, and just that bit of knowledge itself enriched my life enough to counterbalance having one.  That’s something I’ve been trying to cultivate a whole lot more lately – positive attitude.

More on that later.  For now, have a great Labor Day Weekend!

I lost seven pounds this week.  Pretty cool, huh?

One of the biggest pieces of advice I hear, pretty much from everyone, when I talk about losing weight is this:  “Don’t think of it as having to lose over two hundred pounds, do it in five pound chunks”, or “take baby steps and you’ll get there!”, or “one day at a time; set little goals and celebrate when you reach them”.  They all basically mean the same thing; I should stop focusing on the fact that the ultimate goal is to be three hundred pounds less than I started out, and start thinking about the next few pounds.

While I understand the sentiment – after all, it does seem a daunting task, doesn’t it? – I’m built a bit differently.  Or at least I am now.  There was a time I could have never looked a goal like this in the face and said, “I’m going to win; I’m going to lose this weight and that’s final!”  Ambition wasn’t part of my vocabulary, and I rarely accomplished the small projects I started.  I’ve made a lifestyle, in the past, of my laziness, so much so that one friend could find no other word with which to adequately describe me!  At least he did so with the utmost respect.  If he’s going to have a lazy friend, he’s going to have one who’s good at it, I suppose.

I’ve changed, though.  In less than a month, I’ll be thirty seven years old.  I’m an aging member of Generation X whose cohort (Aha!  That Developmental Psychology course is paying off!) is made up largely of people who have come into their own.  The guys who started Google, for instance, are both younger than me (though certainly not by much).  Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, is a few years my senior, but has an online empire of tremendous proportions.  My generation, while not all tales of prosperity, ushered in a new kind of success, one built less on brand and company loyalty – the customer and the employee being devoted to the corporation – and more about customer loyalty.  The new paradigm is for the business to cater to the needs of both the customer and the worker, whether blue or white collar.

These people have become successful not because they took baby steps, or because they created small, doable goals and worked through them, but because they saw a big picture, a greater potential, and went for it.

Now me, I don’t think I’ll ever own a multinational megacorporation with income in the billions and clients worldwide.  I just want to take the same outlook, the same view, and apply it to my weight.  Right now, I’m four hundred sixty nine pounds.  I’d be happy at two fifty, but my ultimate goal is two twenty five or less.  That means I have a minimum of two hundred nineteen pounds to go, and if I want go all the way, it’s closer to two fifty.

But that’s the picture I’m looking at.  I’m looking at the whole thing.  Because that’s the person I want to be.  I want to be the Jeff Bezos of my own weight loss.

Believe me, if I can do it, I’ll be richer in so many ways than if I had started Amazon.com myself.

The country has been divided on the notion of changing the Pledge of Allegiance for a while now.  I know… why don’t we just rewrite the whole thing, and water it down?

I infer preference to the flag of the United States of America (as long as the nation’s actions don’t violate my personal beliefs), and to the Social Democracy that it represents, one nation (until Hawaii and Texas secede), under God, divisible (by discussions of politics, religion, or the price of genetically altered beef products) with liberty and justice for those who can afford such comforts.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for removing “under God” from the pledge. That’s right. Dump it.

Get rid of it altogether. The words “Under God” have no place the The Pledge of Allegiance to the United States of America. We have no authority, as a nation, to insist that those who do not hold a belief in God or a god must claim the “indivisible”, “one nation” status of our great country while placing themselves under the reign of a deity in which they do not put their faith. That was not the original intent of this Pledge, nor should it be the intent of The Pledge today.

If we are indeed to be “one nation indivisible”, we must return The Pledge to its original state, removing a reference that serves as a stumbling block and divides the people of our nation.

We are not a Christian nation. We are not a particularly spiritual nation. We are not God’s chosen fair-haired boy. God is not inherently on our side. If we were a Christian nation – not just a nation of churches that gather for social meetings on Sunday mornings, but Christians who really took the time to figure out how it was that Jesus and his Apostles walked and follow their footsteps – if we were that kind of nation made up primarily of that kind of Christian, I might say keep it in. Then again, I might still suggest leaving it out, in deference to those who did not believe as I, because even if we are a “nation under God” we don’t worship him through our political process, but through our prayers, our deeds, and our lives.

You, Atheist, say you’re offended by the words “under God” remaining in the pledge because it undermines your fundamental right not to believe in God, if you so desire. I am offended, too… offended that we would dare profane God by associating him so closely with petty politics.

Dump it. It doesn’t belong.

But we might as well start saying the pledge how the people of the U.S. mean it today – which is pretty much what I’ve written above.

Celebrating my return to actually losing weight this week, I’m introducing a new scale image!  I was getting a little tired of the 1 vs. 100 copycat routine my little graphic was doing, and thought I should put up something that was more me, so I created this little podium with Fat Silhouette Man standing on it.

But… on to the point of this post!

I weighed this morning, and the scale put me at 476.  That’s right, down three pounds from last week.  I was elated!  Almost back down to 475, and then beyond, to a weight I haven’t been in at least seven years, and possibly more!

Now that I’ve started school, I’ve been having trouble finding specific times to go walking or work out with the tire pell and escrima sticks.  I’m not sure it matters much, since I get plenty of walking time on campus between classes, going from building to building.  In fact, this week I only hit the track once, but making sure I was on time to all my scheduled courses put the screws on me.  I managed it, though; I was out of breath and drenched in sweat, but I made it.

Maybe all I need is a more active lifestyle.  Could be.  After all, I see hundreds of people every day who never work out and maintain a respectable figure.  Then again, they haven’t done to themselves what I’ve done to myself over the course of the last fifteen years.  No, it’s more than just being active, I need to make certain my body moves as often as possible, eats as little as possible (while maintaining a healthy diet, of course!), and drinks a gallon and a half to two gallons of water every day.

Fun stuff, but the long-term goal is worth it.

Holy cow, has this week been busy!

School started on Monday for the kids, and Tuesday for me.  I was scheduled to be there Monday evening, but the Spanish class was canceled.  Fortunately, I found another – and I say fortunately because I’m truly enjoying the class so far.  It’s small, with only five students, and the teacher is upbeat and moves the class along on a quick but comfortable pace.  Interestingly enough, Spanish is neither her first nor her second language; she’s fluent in Romanian (the language of her homeland), English, Spanish, and French, and knows a little Italian, as well.  Think she’s found her niche?  I do.

While on the subject of bubbly older female professors, my Developmental Psychology instructor reminds me of a strange combination of Angela Lansbury and Julia Child.  Well, without the alcohol.  Granted, I doubt she needs it.  She’s all over the place, very intelligent outgoing, and even wants me to bring the three Younglings (or would the Digital Kid be a Padawan now?), along with the children of other students, to form various panels on adolescents and teenagers.  Sounds like fun… and I’m certain they’ll be happy to take a day off school to oblige.

Philosophy began with the eternal question:  “Why?”  We weren’t allowed to proceed until someone offered the professor the correct answer.  I’m happy to say I did just that.  Then again, so did everyone else who bothered to answer.  “Because” was mine, but others ranged from “I believe in God” to “It’s better than sitting around the house in my BVDs”.  Apparently any answer was “right” because philosophy is about how we perceive reality, not how reality might really be.  In other words, there might be dumb answers, but there are no “wrong” answers.  Supposedly.

That said, when he asked about the meaning of life, I knew he was right.  My answer, of course, was 42, the question leading to which is “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”  Suddenly I could perceive the world the way I wanted and received my free unicorn in the mail from the Obama administration.  I’d let you see it, but it’s invisible.

Last on the list is biology.  The teacher is a little Indian (as in from India, not Native American) woman who still hasn’t quite grasped the English language.  I’m not sure if it’s cultural, but I’ve noticed (via tech support and customer support calls, of course, since we’ve outsourced so many of them to New Delhi) a distinct absence of words like “the” and “a” among English speaking folks from India.  My biology professor shares that trait, and I have to admit, it’s a little endearing.  She’s sharp and, while she’s not exactly witty, she’s attentive, which helps a whole lot, especially since biology is the one science which interests me the least.

Anyway, that’s the first week of the Return to College in a nutshell.  More to come!

I had something interesting happen on Wednesday, and I figured I’d share, a bit belatedly.

Earlier in the week, The Digital Kid asked if he could go check out a new place in town, called The Haven.  Now, I’d seen the place, looking over the edge of a bridge that crosses a series of Santa Fe Railroad tracks.  It’s in a run down old building with a dirt parking lot.  Windows are high on the walls, and it’s difficult to see inside.  Perfect place for a bar, I thought.  I assumed a bar is exactly what it was, at least until DK asked me if he could go.

A quick search on Google revealed The Haven to be a new hangout for teens, so I called the owner.  She let me know they have free pool tables, foosball, air hockey, and an Xbox 360 hooked up to a huge television.  They’re set up as a non-profit organization, run by a Christian couple with four teenage children of their own.  So far, so good.  I gave DK the go ahead and Wednesday he walked across town to have some fun with a few friends.

Fast forward a couple hours.  I drove Adventure Girl to her volunteer gig (she works at a therapeutic horse ranch – more about that another day), and afterward decided to stop by and check the place out for myself, to see if it was a place the younger two could enjoy, as well.  Inside, it looked much like I expected.  Used couches, a stage, pool tables, a corner dedicated to video games, and a refreshment bar with reasonable priced snacks.  Good stuff.  I talked with the owner, a very nice woman with a quick wit (probably sharpened by having to deal with four teens at home).  Early on, she mentioned I looked familiar, but neither of us could place each other.  After chatting for a while, the conversation turned to the small town where we lived.  I admitted I preferred bigger cities, having grown up in the Metro Phoenix area.   She seemed a little taken aback.  After all, that’s where she grew up, too.  In fact, she lived in or around the town where I lived, Gilbert.

Great!  Common ground, right?  Things go weird when I mentioned my parents dragged us from Arizona and plopped us in a little town not far from where we are now.  I mentioned the name of the town, Howard.  She smiled and said she had relatives up that direction.  Knowing Howard as well as I do, I asked her who, and she told me.

I had to laugh.

“No wonder I look familiar,” I replied.  “I’m your cousin.”

That’s right.  Not second cousins.  Not first cousins twice removed.  Cousins.  First cousins.  Only I hadn’t seen her since 1988 – twenty one years ago!

Yeah.  Strange.  But very, very cool.

More about The Haven later.