Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

weight loss 2 Comments

2008 Weight Loss Challenge

Starting weight: 212.5 lbs. That’s up fourteen pounds since August. My goal weight for this challenge is 202, at which point I will have lost 5% of my body weight. It’s a start.

I got James’s starting weight and calculated his goal weight; I’m not sure if he wants that posted here or not, so I’ll let him add it in the comments if he wants.

I had a good first full day of paying special attention to what I eat and how active I am. (I don’t want to call it a diet, per se — that has such negative connotations. Let’s just call it the Challenge.)

I look forward to getting back down to the weight I was, so I can start over and lose the weight I wanted to lose in the first place.

In other fitness news, tonight’s aikido gave me sore toes, skinned knees, and new mat burns. I plan to go more often this month, though, since I test for rank in only four weeks. I’ll be either adding to the collection of aikido-related almost-injuries, or figuring out how to avoid them. We’ll see…

weight loss

A Present To Myself

I never thought of myself as competitive; in fact, I usually find that I’m quite the opposite. In general, I like to be behind the scenes, making things go, rather than vying for attention and praise or fighting to be seen amongst the elite.

Last March, though, when my co-worker James and I had a friendly fitness wager, I discovered that striving to prove that I had just a little more oomph than someone else really helped keep me on the straight and narrow, fitness-wise.

A couple of weeks ago, I proposed a new challenge to James, and he accepted. I had been going to hold off on announcing the challenge until January 1st, but I got to thinking of it today as not only a challenge, but a present to myself. It’s not even a New Year’s Resolution — it’s a present to myself. I will help myself to lose weight and get more fit; plus, I’ll do it before James does. 🙂

The terms of the wager:

  • On the morning of January 1, 2008, each party will weigh and make their weight known to the other party. This may be done privately, via e-mail, or publicly, via dianaschnuth.net.
  • The first party to lose 5% of his or her body weight AND maintain that loss for seven consecutive days wins the challenge.
  • The party who loses the challenge must buy dinner for the winning party and the winning party’s spouse.

(I realized afterward that weighing on the morning of January 1st might help me avoid indulging too much on New Year’s Eve, too — bonus.)

After we agreed on the terms, I thought that maybe it would be fun to get our spouses into the challenge. After all, I know Christina was on a weight loss kick for a while, as was Aaron; plus, it’s always easier to keep with a program if your significant other is on the same program. I haven’t gotten a definite yea or nay on either spouse. If one or both of them decide to get in on the game, though, it’ll make winning and losing a little less clear-cut, as there will be a first, second, and third (and possibly fourth) place. Will the winner disqualify him or herself by gaining back a certain percentage of weight before one of the last two challengers loses their five percent? I suppose we’ll have to solidify that once we find out who’s in.

As it stands now, I’ll have to lose 10 or 10½ lbs to make my five percent. Expect a detailed post in one week for the beginning of the challenge. The participants are encouraged (but not required) to post their initial weigh-ins in the comments of that upcoming post.

As a side note: the aikido dojo is closed for the week between Christmas and New Year’s. Since tonight is when I usually go to aikido, and my lower body is usually what’s sore afterward, I did a short lower body workout in lieu of keiko. My set consisted of 25 leg adductions with a resistance band, 25 wall squats with my balance ball (body weight only; no dumbbells), and 25 stiff-legged deadlifts with 5 lb dumbbells. I did 25 reps of each exercise in a superset (no rests), took one or two minutes for a drink of water, then did them all again.

My short but intense (for me) lower body workout promises to give me the weekly soreness I crave, in the absence of my normal aikido workout. We’ll see…

college, weight loss 3 Comments

My Weight History

I got to thinking about the home videos I digitized from back in 1999, and how the first thing that pops into my mind when I see that image of myself is how fat I was. I was 23 years old, in a stable relationship, living with a roommate who had become my best friend, spending the holidays with my family, generally happy overall — and all I can see now, looking back, is my weight.

That’s sad on so many levels…
Continue reading →

health & fitness 1 Comment

Turn The Beat Around

Now that I have a new job (OMG!), I think it’s about time to start turning over a new leaf in a few other areas of my life. Namely, fitness — both physical and mental.

I’ve been trying to eat better this week. Not necessarily go back on a diet, but do the things I know I should be doing, but haven’t been. Avoiding sugar and high fructose corn syrup, eating only whole grains, drinking more water, getting more protein, stuff like that. It feels like I’m running in place, though, or doing a one-step-forward, one-step-back sort of dance.

For instance: dinner was steamed cauliflower, homemade cheese sauce, and frozen salmon. When I checked the package of salmon, the fourth ingredient was sugar. Farther down was MSG. And I think I saw high fructose corn syrup in there, too. And here’s another one: we decided to splurge on graham cracker crusts for a couple of cheesecakes I want to try to make (that’s another mildly amusing story). When I checked the ingredients on those, not only did they contain HFCS, but they also have some kind of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. Trans fats. *sigh* Of course, I’m still going to use them, and eat the yummy cheesecake I’ll be making.

At least I’m making a conscious effort to monitor what I eat again. These several weeks I’ve been unemployed have helped me pack on several pounds.

One big part of that increase is my abrupt change in activity level; I don’t walk at lunch anymore. I see that my new office building has a fitness center on the first floor, though, so I plan to see how I can take advantage of that over my lunch breaks or before work. Plus, we’re right across from Promenade Park, so I can go walking by the river or something, too.

Also, I had a discussion with Sensei this evening about my stamina. I brought up the fact that I can’t really go all-out for an entire 90 minute session, but I can do an hour. He said that it’s OK if I show up and only do an hour, then excuse myself. That seems like a pretty obvious solution, but I wasn’t sure if that would be acceptable form. So, I’m going to make a concerted effort to go to aikido twice a week, instead of just once. And if I have to either sit on the back wall for 15 minutes or excuse myself entirely, so be it.

On top of all this, I should really be practicing zazen daily, instead of once a week with the sangha. It’s so hard to make myself stop everything — literally everything — for at least ten or fifteen minutes so I can meditate. It feels like everything else is happening without me, and I’m getting behind. But those ten of fifteen minutes a day can make a world of difference to my mood and my physical bearing.

All this is a matter of convincing myself to do these little things one at a time, even if I don’t feel like it. Eventually, I’ll realize that they all make me feel better, and I’ll look forward to doing them.

aikido

Aikido for Wednesday 10/24

When I read on the dojo blog that we would be focusing on weapons training leading up to the weapons seminar in mid-November, I thought that maybe this class would be a little less strenuous than the previous week’s keiko. After all, it wouldn’t be an entire hour of standing up and being thrown down. Right?

I had no idea how wrong I was.

We separated into ranks, with the mukyu and some new rokyu perfecting a basic solo exercise while the higher ranks faced off with one another. Basically, we faced the walls, chose a knot in the wood as our opponent, and swung the bokken diagonally up, behind / over our heads, and diagonally down the other side, attacking our chosen knot. Very basic form, just getting used to how the weapon should feel and where the energy should go. It was a very powerful feeling, though, once I got the hang of how low my stance should be, where my weight should stay, how my center was supposed to drive the movement, that sort of thing.

Then the cardio kicked in, along with the arm fatigue. And the wrist funkiness. Holy crow, what a workout. My hand and arms are still weak and shaky (to my embarrassment in Zen practice later).

Then we did the usual throwing and rolling. I actually started being almost comfortable with my lame bastard forward rolls, with the occasional flub. At one point during that exercise, one of last week’s scabbed-over mat burns on the top of my foot started bleeding, and I had to take a breather to hit the first aid kit.

After the rolling, we worked on everybody’s favorite, irimi nage, except this time uke begins with a wrist grab before running around behind nage to (try to) grab his other wrist. Nage then ducks under uke’s arm and performs the irimi nage I know and love.

A note: I love working with Rich-sempai. He’s one of those who is always smiling, always seems to be enjoying himself, but won’t half-ass the technique. If I’m supposed to be moving him and driving him to the floor, he’s not going to just flop down and say I did it right. He’s going to require me to put the energy into the movement and feel how it’s supposed to go. He’s also good at subtly indicating which way the energy should be going, if I’m unsure about a technique. I always learn a lot when I pair up with Rich.

After Sensei told us to switch partners, I had to sit out a round. I was just so exhausted, and my legs were jelly. We wrapped up with a suwari-waza (kneeling) tenshi technique that I didn’t know, and I watched another mukyu work with Amy-sempai’s brother until class was over.

So, in a nutshell, this class kicked my ass in a very serious and cardio-based way.

After keiko was zen practice. In the zendo, I saw that Sensei’s H2 digital recorder had come in, and I casually wandered over to see it. Apparently, my interest in and knowledge of the existence of the device projected my ability to fake my way through operating audio electronics. I’m cool with that; I actually kind of wanted to play with it, anyway. I ended up being the designated recording engineer for the evening, which was fun. I’m curious to see how our first attempt worked, since I didn’t want to sully the earbuds with my personal funk, and I didn’t let Sensei know that I’d figured out how to work the playback feature.

We ended up recording Teisho and our Dharma Discussion afterward. I hope they came out OK. I’m anxious to help them get a podcast going, and to help edit if necessary. I’m all about the new media revolution. I’m also all about feeling important, to be honest, which is kind of contrary to the zen-ness (a.k.a. “Buddha Nature”) I’m trying to discover in myself.

I also discovered something else about myself tonight: when the other party in a conversation is very calm and accepting and doesn’t offer much feedback about what I’m saying, I don’t know how to continue. I’m used to people giving me cues as to what they think about the topic, even if it’s just boredom or disinterest. But this attentive calmness is disconcerting to me. I’m not sure how to react to it, since I do not yet possess this calmness. I’ve never been good at conversation, honestly, but I’ve gotten good at faking it over the years. This reaction of calmness and acceptance is something I haven’t learned how to react to, and it makes me feel all bumbly and teenaged again.

Next week, Sensei will not be at the dojo on Wednesday, so I think I’m going to attend Monday’s keiko instead. Sure, an hour and a half of aikido will well and truly kick my ass, but I think I’d rather attend a class run by Sensei than one of the senior students. No offense, guys.