In the 8th grade I ran an 8 minute mile during PE class one time. That was my highlight as a runner up until my 30's. Running has long been a graceless exercise in frustration for me. I looked like a mythical Orc headed into battle when I ran. All I was missing was an axe. I never really enjoyed it and my weight and my frame did not lend itself to endurance running.
Birthdays and New Years are good markers to reflect upon what you have learned. To assess what works and what doesn't work and adjust accordingly.
I don't subscribe to the belief that "age is just a number". I also don't feel like someone's age is the be all end all of who a person is and how they should behave. I feel like I'm getting the best of both worlds. At the same time I have become wiser I have also become more positive and vibrant, dare I say youthful?
There was something about Bernard Sumner's guitar tone that transcended the mere trappings of audio and set off resonance that cut it's way deep into your soul, to the places that you yourself were afraid to go.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
2014 changed my life. 2015 nearly ended it. 2016 was the year I was going to change other people's lives as well.
I insisted that it was going to be free. Free with donation if people were so inclined. I was tired of people getting scammed, I was tired of the weight loss industry taking advantage of people. I was going to include only the information that people needed to stop the endless cycle of crash dieting and systemic illness due to excess insulin production.
My last post was pretty heavy. 2015 started out with a lot of conflict, but I wasn't going to use the injury as an excuse to slip back into old bad habits. I struggled to get my act together but eventually got back into my diet and exercise routine. I am going to post my progress photos from April to the end of 2015 with my weight, goal weight and additional notes in the captions below each photo.
Two years have passed since my mountain bike accident. I go through oscillating versions of reality where it doesn't seem real and settle into the fact that I almost died.
"I'm tough, a little bike accident couldn't do me in."
"No, you almost died."
"..."
"No, Phil. You literally came a centimeter away from being paralyzed for life and a little further than that and you would have severed your spine, killing you instantly. Leaving your wife without a husband and your son without a father. Devastating your family and those friends and family who love you. You felt the icy chill of death against your neck. When people say 'you're lucky' you have no idea how right they are."
And I relent to fact.
In this post I will continue with my fat loss progress for the remainder of 2014. Every Wednesday I took a shirtless picture of myself on my iPhone and emailed the picture of myself with my goal weight, actual weight and other details like my belt loop and activities I was doing. The text of these emails will be in the caption below each photo. I went through ups and downs, successes and failures, wins and losses but I came out on top. It's really great to see these pictures again and revisit this dramatic change I made in my life. I hope you get something out of it.
This is an interesting bit of a post. It was hard to keep going with this story because I got derailed. I got derailed in a way that changed my life. This blog post was supposed to chronicle my next steps and all the information I learned from Rick. That changed when I realized that it would take several blog posts to complete and wouldn't be suitable for a blog format. So, I started writing a book instead.
I was debating with myself on how to proceed. I think it's important to understand where I came from in regards to my weight and self perception.
Certain angels enter your life and change the course of it. My bass teacher, Louis Johnson was one of those. I'm going to tell you know about one of my bass/guitar students changed my whole idea about what being healthy was.
I was highly motivated to kick this cholesterol thing. I made it through Thanksgiving and started a fitness program in December. It's a program that I had done several times in the past and had some success with. It's an ipod workout program called Fitter U and it's designed by a guy called Yuri Elkaim. The program is three months long and it starts you from a zero base level of fitness and progressively gets you into competent condition. The download to your ipod and the pdf files is $99 dollars and I feel like over the years I got my moneys worth.
I lost 50 lbs in 6 months. Since then I have hovered around 190 to 185 comfortably. I've never been this healthy or happy with my physical well being in my life. I have become an avid cyclist and try to get out every weekend. I never saw myself living this way or being a "health nut" as Monica calls me. The reasons I got as big as 235 (again, mind you. I was as big as 245 in my 20's but that's another story) were the usual ones. Busy life, work. Being a parent and that first year of sleep deprivation and trauma. That first picture was at Julian's first birthday party. His first year of life is what I call "the lasagna year" What we ate was primarily frozen food that had to be thawed and delivered loads of calories in short order. I was not happy having my picture taken. My reaction to my self image was "I don't care. Who am I trying to impress?" These were just excuses that I gave myself, I realize now. I knew I could do better but was not willing to make the lifestyle changes necessary to positively make a change.
Then, the doctors visit. This was in November around his first birthday.
You have borne witness to an American tragedy.
You have witnessed the American electorate nominate a xenophobic buffoon into the highest office of the land. This high office has been made low. The American presidency is now a joke and it's not even a funny one. The joke is classless, in poor taste and the more you look at it, the sicker you become.
My life can be split into a pre- November 12th 2012 phase and a post November 12th 2012 phase. My entire perception of life, love and family shifted on the day I became a father. I used to hold value to things that are actually worthless and now I treasure things that I used to take for granted. Little moments, subtle phrases, nuanced idiosyncrasies give me the greatest joys and the biggest laughs.
I have been inactive on this blog and on social media the last few months due to the ramp up leading to my first triathlon. I wanted to eliminate all distractions and focus purely on training. Now, with the event five days past I am ready to turn back to whatever state of normalcy I had earlier in the year. This was my big physical goal for 2016 and I have been preparing for my triathlon since the beginning of the year. Here's a somewhat complete story of how I accomplished the tri.
I have come to a place of clarity as of late. It was tough going for a while, I was worried and wasting tremendous amounts of time on Youtube and news articles studying the Trump phenomenon. It was worrisome, scary, fascinating and a waste of time that could have been spent on other more constructive things. Then it recently hit me once I listened to a podcast on NPR's Fresh Air called "Trump Revealed". It hit me like a wave of calm because I could finally put my head around the guy, compartmentalize him and deal with his persona.
A soothing voice enters my ears via my bluetooth headset connected to my phone.
"GRADUALLY BECOME AWARE OF THE PROCESS OF BREATHING. NOTICE WHERE YOU FEEL THE BREATHE MOST DISTINCTLY."
Okay, I feel it in the center of my nose and in my torso. Back feels a little sore. Maybe it's because I hit the pull-ups too hard this week. Maybe I should skip it today?
I have been shuffling a heavy workload lately and have been basically burying myself in my cave to catch up. All in all, good problems to have. Since my last blog post, news of the world outside of my cave has been catastrophic.
Civil unrest, terrorist attacks, mass shootings. I choose to employ a tactic of disengagement from social media the last month but I couldn't get away from all the bad news. Things are looking very grim in the world at the moment. Louis missed all this, he would have been saddened by the state of the world right now. I often think of him and the things he taught me. I am constantly meditating on one thing he told me in particular.
Now let me ask you music teachers out there, do you have any student's that don't practice?