I'm a child of the '90s. My heyday was the age of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and especially Nirvana. I was a big Nirvana fan. I did the whole flannel/wallet on a chain/long unruly hair thing. I even dyed my hair fuscia for a while (you can see the picture on my Facebook page, but I'll spare you the image here; suffice it to say, I looked awesome). I also fancied myself pretty deep at the time, and I ate up the nonsensical lyrics of the grunge scene.
What does this have to do with my health journey, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. There was a band at that time called the Meat Puppets. I was never a fan myself, but they had a song called "Plateau" that is relevant for today's discussion, and which was covered memorably by Kurt and the boys in their fantastic appearance on MTV's "Unplugged."
Yes, as you may have guessed, I'm on a bit of a plateau. This week I gained 0.01 Jesses. It's not wholly unexpected, as it often happens, when I embark on an plan to lose weight, that I gain around the three- to four-week mark. I guess that's the way it goes. It's rather annoying, though, since I fastidiously tracked what I ate this week, and I ate good stuff (including some rather good homemade vegetarian soups), and I worked out at least four times.
So in an effort to salve my bruised ego, I will draw some inspiration by interpreting the Meat Puppets' memorable anthem. So here we go.
"Many a hand has scaled the grand old face of the plateau / Some belong to strangers, some to folks you know"
You know what? Lots of people have been in this place before. We're all making an effort to better ourselves, and we all end up here sooner or later. I'm in good company.
"Holy Ghosts and talk show hosts are planted in the sand / To beautify the foothills and shake the many hands"
Hm ... I guess, you'll meet a lot of people on the journey. Along the way, you might start feeling so good that you'll join some of those people in trying new things, like community service or volunteering for a political campaign.
"Nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop and an illustrated book about birds"
Striving toward a goal is always a chance to clean up ourselves, and our lives — and you just might learn something while you're at it.
"You see a lot up there, but don't be scared / Who needs action when you've got words?"
Change can be scary! Your vantage point will be completely different, because you'll be different. And you'll be wiser, apt to look and consider before you leap.
Thanks, Meat Puppets. You gave me a deep-sounding, bizarre song to pretend to play on my guitar while scaring girls. And now I've learned a little about myself.
Friday, March 8, 2013
Friday, March 1, 2013
Day 21: Pood
Weigh-in day. This week I'm down 0.03 Jesses, for a grand total of 0.31 Jesses. Yes, I've lost nearly a third of a whole person. Not a very big person, but still.
I did my bodyweight/kettlebell workout today, and I feel great. So allow me to rhapsodize a bit on the virtues of the kettlebell.
I've done a lot of weightlifting in my days. I've done higher reps and lower reps, lots of sets and not so many sets, this exercise split and that exercise split. Mostly what I've done over the past few years is heavier weights and lower reps. When I stick with it, I get good results; I can gain strength pretty quickly.
I have felt more and more over the years, though, that what I want is not to be strong, it's to be useful. I want to be able to do things in real life, not just in the gym. And while I can gain strength lifting regular weights, it's so strict and regimented that it never really made feel that I was gaining that usefulness.
So I've done some fooling around with designing bizarre exercises in hopes of mimicking real-life actions. They never really worked out that well, and I often felt like I was a millimeter away from injuring myself.
Sometime last year a read an article in Men's Health about the way that the Army is revamping its fitness program. They're going away from just running, push-ups and sit-ups to more functional exercises to prepare soldiers for the battlefield. The new program has six principles:
1. Train movements, such as pushing, pulling, planking, stepping, and squatting, rather than muscles.
2. Train to your side and three-quarter view, not just to the space in front of you.
3. Train on two feet.
4. Learn to control your body weight in a full range of motion, with good form, before adding loads.
5. Train speed.
6. Train the reduction of force — the ability to land and catch and absorb force and decelerate — as often as you train the production of force.
These ideas really appealed to me, so I've begun doing bodyweight exercises and more explosive-type stuff than I'd done before. I'd never really done much bodyweight stuff, 'cause I figured that's not really working. I mean, I carry my body around all day. But it really is a workout. So I added that to my kettlebell stuff.
Ah, the kettlebell. If you've never seen one, I can tell you that it's basically like a cannonball with a handle attached. The thing that makes it cool is that the weight is not centered in your hand, as it is with barbells and dumbbells, so the center of gravity shifts as you swing it around, causing your body (and pretty much your whole body) to adapt. As a result, you get a workout that trains you for strength (if not size, which I don't really care about) as well as cardiovascular fitness and endurance. Good stuff.
Now that I've been training with a kettlebell for a while, it's time to move up. I have a 20-pound kettlebell, but I plan to get a 35-pound one. See, kettlebells were invented by Russian weightlifters, and the standard weight was called a pood (an old Russian unit of weight), which is about 16 kilograms or 35 pounds. So I'm going after it. I'm sure I'll be jacked and lifting cars off of old ladies in no time.
I did my bodyweight/kettlebell workout today, and I feel great. So allow me to rhapsodize a bit on the virtues of the kettlebell.
I've done a lot of weightlifting in my days. I've done higher reps and lower reps, lots of sets and not so many sets, this exercise split and that exercise split. Mostly what I've done over the past few years is heavier weights and lower reps. When I stick with it, I get good results; I can gain strength pretty quickly.
I have felt more and more over the years, though, that what I want is not to be strong, it's to be useful. I want to be able to do things in real life, not just in the gym. And while I can gain strength lifting regular weights, it's so strict and regimented that it never really made feel that I was gaining that usefulness.
So I've done some fooling around with designing bizarre exercises in hopes of mimicking real-life actions. They never really worked out that well, and I often felt like I was a millimeter away from injuring myself.
Sometime last year a read an article in Men's Health about the way that the Army is revamping its fitness program. They're going away from just running, push-ups and sit-ups to more functional exercises to prepare soldiers for the battlefield. The new program has six principles:
1. Train movements, such as pushing, pulling, planking, stepping, and squatting, rather than muscles.
2. Train to your side and three-quarter view, not just to the space in front of you.
3. Train on two feet.
4. Learn to control your body weight in a full range of motion, with good form, before adding loads.
5. Train speed.
6. Train the reduction of force — the ability to land and catch and absorb force and decelerate — as often as you train the production of force.
These ideas really appealed to me, so I've begun doing bodyweight exercises and more explosive-type stuff than I'd done before. I'd never really done much bodyweight stuff, 'cause I figured that's not really working. I mean, I carry my body around all day. But it really is a workout. So I added that to my kettlebell stuff.
Ah, the kettlebell. If you've never seen one, I can tell you that it's basically like a cannonball with a handle attached. The thing that makes it cool is that the weight is not centered in your hand, as it is with barbells and dumbbells, so the center of gravity shifts as you swing it around, causing your body (and pretty much your whole body) to adapt. As a result, you get a workout that trains you for strength (if not size, which I don't really care about) as well as cardiovascular fitness and endurance. Good stuff.
Now that I've been training with a kettlebell for a while, it's time to move up. I have a 20-pound kettlebell, but I plan to get a 35-pound one. See, kettlebells were invented by Russian weightlifters, and the standard weight was called a pood (an old Russian unit of weight), which is about 16 kilograms or 35 pounds. So I'm going after it. I'm sure I'll be jacked and lifting cars off of old ladies in no time.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Day 20: Intractability and '80s desert adventure movies
Yikes. It's been more than a week since my last post. My reader must be so disappointed.
First, the weekly weigh-in. As of Friday the 22nd, I am down another eight-hundreths of a Jess, for a total loss of 0.28 Jesses. I know what you're thinking: "Wow, he lost 0.28 Jesses in two weeks? That's really good! ... Or ... is it?" Because you don't really know how much that is. I've received some blowback for measuring my progress is Jesses, because of the inherent opacity therein. But I am unconcerned. You'll just have to trust me. It's good. Better than I've ever done before.
But there is news. Strictly speaking, the juice fast is over. Before you call me a quitter or a loser or a blackguard, read on.
I noted in my last post the difficulty I was having with just juice. I was finding it unsustainable, because I was simply not getting enough calories — in the neighborhood of 900 or so per day. One of my stated goals of the fast is improving my health, and I don't think such a drastic reduction in calories, to a level that is really not good for a guy my size, will meet that goal. And since I have found myself unable to get my calories up where they should be, something had to be done.
So I made a change. I'm now, for the next two weeks, drinking juice, but also eating fruits and vegetables, as well as nuts, beans and seeds.
I know there's a chance that my reader will be disappointed with this change. This blog, after all, is about a 60-day juice fast, and I'm cutting it off after 14 days.
That said, I am encouraged about the progress I've made. Specifically, I again feel like I have more energy, enough to have done a rather vigorous bodyweight/kettlebell workout last week. I've felt good enough during those workouts to have completed two full circuits each time, something that was the goal when I designed the workouts but which I had been previously unable to do. I also went swimming this week and felt great.
However, the weight stubbornly clings to me, probably because I'm still not getting enough calories and my body's freaking out. It's tough, I tell you. But I will persevere.
This reminds me of a song. The '80s, as you may know, were a golden age of awesome, and awesomely bad, movie songs. An example of the latter, in my opinion, is Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going," from the 1985 adventure comedy The Jewel of the Nile, starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. First of all, the title is ridiculously long (a particular pet peeve of mine). Billy Ocean was also responsible for the laughable "Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car," so he knows something about long song titles.
But apart from that, the song was a mystery to me when I was a kid. I thought it meant that when the going gets tough, the tough leave, which I thought is a misrepresentation of what it means to be tough. I now understand that it means the tough get to work.
Well, Billy, I guess it's about that time.
By the way, Jess (yes, the Jess) found out on Monday that I'm using her to measure my progress. She is excited to one day become a standard unit of measurement on the Internet.
First, the weekly weigh-in. As of Friday the 22nd, I am down another eight-hundreths of a Jess, for a total loss of 0.28 Jesses. I know what you're thinking: "Wow, he lost 0.28 Jesses in two weeks? That's really good! ... Or ... is it?" Because you don't really know how much that is. I've received some blowback for measuring my progress is Jesses, because of the inherent opacity therein. But I am unconcerned. You'll just have to trust me. It's good. Better than I've ever done before.
But there is news. Strictly speaking, the juice fast is over. Before you call me a quitter or a loser or a blackguard, read on.
I noted in my last post the difficulty I was having with just juice. I was finding it unsustainable, because I was simply not getting enough calories — in the neighborhood of 900 or so per day. One of my stated goals of the fast is improving my health, and I don't think such a drastic reduction in calories, to a level that is really not good for a guy my size, will meet that goal. And since I have found myself unable to get my calories up where they should be, something had to be done.
I know there's a chance that my reader will be disappointed with this change. This blog, after all, is about a 60-day juice fast, and I'm cutting it off after 14 days.
That said, I am encouraged about the progress I've made. Specifically, I again feel like I have more energy, enough to have done a rather vigorous bodyweight/kettlebell workout last week. I've felt good enough during those workouts to have completed two full circuits each time, something that was the goal when I designed the workouts but which I had been previously unable to do. I also went swimming this week and felt great.
However, the weight stubbornly clings to me, probably because I'm still not getting enough calories and my body's freaking out. It's tough, I tell you. But I will persevere.
This reminds me of a song. The '80s, as you may know, were a golden age of awesome, and awesomely bad, movie songs. An example of the latter, in my opinion, is Billy Ocean's "When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going," from the 1985 adventure comedy The Jewel of the Nile, starring Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner and Danny DeVito. First of all, the title is ridiculously long (a particular pet peeve of mine). Billy Ocean was also responsible for the laughable "Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car," so he knows something about long song titles.
But apart from that, the song was a mystery to me when I was a kid. I thought it meant that when the going gets tough, the tough leave, which I thought is a misrepresentation of what it means to be tough. I now understand that it means the tough get to work.
Well, Billy, I guess it's about that time.
By the way, Jess (yes, the Jess) found out on Monday that I'm using her to measure my progress. She is excited to one day become a standard unit of measurement on the Internet.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Day 11: The Costello Principle
What do apples, oranges, spinach, kale, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries and cantaloupe have in common? I currently hate them all.
Today is day 11, which means I have completed the initial 10-day fasting period. Originally, Katie and I had planned to do a stepped plan where we did 10 days of juice fasting, followed by 10 days of juicing plus eating fruits and vegetables, followed by 10 days of mostly homemade soups and salads, and then back, for a total of 60 days. But then we decided to go for the whole 60-day juice fast.
At this point, attrition has set in. Upon beginning this fast, I did not reckon with the difficulty of ingesting so much liquid in a day. In order to get enough calories to prevent my body from going into starvation mode, I really need to drink six 16-ounce juices per day. That's almost a gallon of juice per day, plus water, which means I basically need to be drinking something at every moment. That's tough. And I end up feeling like I've got stuff sloshing around in my stomach all the time.
As a result, I'm struggling a bit. I'm a little tired of juice. This weekend was particularly difficult, as I just got kind of sick to my stomach when thinking about juice, so I just didn't drink it. That's not good.
But let me tell you more about this weekend. I made beef stew for Katie's grandfather. It smelled amazing. We went to her parents' house while they were having homemade meatballs and pasta for dinner. Grrr. We went to the movies, where the aroma of popcorn filled the air. Normally I'd have eaten a whole bucket. Then we went to a diner on Sunday afternoon — I love diner food.
In summary, it was a weekend custom-designed to test my resolve and make me hate my life. If someone had thrown in Chipotle and/or Five Guys, I'd be writing this post during a 300-foot free fall.
Dealing with temptation is one thing; I did manage to weather it. The problem is that I have tired of the juice, so I'm barely ingesting anything. As a result, my weight loss, paradoxically, has slowed to a crawl.
I am reminded of an old Abbott and Costello skit. Bud tries to set Lou up with a job as a stuntman, but tells him he has to lose weight by going on a diet. "You know what a diet is, don't you, Lou?" "Sure, that's when you can eat all you want of everything you don't like."
Well said, Lou.
Today is day 11, which means I have completed the initial 10-day fasting period. Originally, Katie and I had planned to do a stepped plan where we did 10 days of juice fasting, followed by 10 days of juicing plus eating fruits and vegetables, followed by 10 days of mostly homemade soups and salads, and then back, for a total of 60 days. But then we decided to go for the whole 60-day juice fast.
At this point, attrition has set in. Upon beginning this fast, I did not reckon with the difficulty of ingesting so much liquid in a day. In order to get enough calories to prevent my body from going into starvation mode, I really need to drink six 16-ounce juices per day. That's almost a gallon of juice per day, plus water, which means I basically need to be drinking something at every moment. That's tough. And I end up feeling like I've got stuff sloshing around in my stomach all the time.
As a result, I'm struggling a bit. I'm a little tired of juice. This weekend was particularly difficult, as I just got kind of sick to my stomach when thinking about juice, so I just didn't drink it. That's not good.
But let me tell you more about this weekend. I made beef stew for Katie's grandfather. It smelled amazing. We went to her parents' house while they were having homemade meatballs and pasta for dinner. Grrr. We went to the movies, where the aroma of popcorn filled the air. Normally I'd have eaten a whole bucket. Then we went to a diner on Sunday afternoon — I love diner food.
In summary, it was a weekend custom-designed to test my resolve and make me hate my life. If someone had thrown in Chipotle and/or Five Guys, I'd be writing this post during a 300-foot free fall.
Dealing with temptation is one thing; I did manage to weather it. The problem is that I have tired of the juice, so I'm barely ingesting anything. As a result, my weight loss, paradoxically, has slowed to a crawl.
I am reminded of an old Abbott and Costello skit. Bud tries to set Lou up with a job as a stuntman, but tells him he has to lose weight by going on a diet. "You know what a diet is, don't you, Lou?" "Sure, that's when you can eat all you want of everything you don't like."
Well said, Lou.
Honeydew-I-have-to-drink-this?
1 honeydew, seeds and rind removed
1 small bunch fresh mint leaves
1/4 cucumber
2 Granny Smith apples
1 handful spinach
1. Juice it up.
2. Suck it down.
Friday, February 15, 2013
Day 7: Flushing
Today marks the final day of week 1 drinking only juice. So far things have gone well; as you can see from the chart to the right, I have lost 20 percent of a Jess to this point. A good start.
There have been some interesting effects. As I've noted, I'm not as hungry as I'd expected. But I'm also not as tired as I'd expected. This, despite the fact that I am completely off caffeine for the first time in many, many years.
As you may know, I have had for some years now a, shall we say, decided preference for a particular brand of soft drink: Diet Mountain Dew. Some have called it an addiction. I'm not sure I agree with that. But past attempts at kicking the habit have made me realize that I have a greater psychological dependency on it than I had been willing to admit. For whatever reason, drinking Diet Dew makes me feel like all is right in the world, at least for a little while.
A side effect of this predilection is that I have been pumping my body with a steady stream of caffeine on a daily basis. I had never really thought much of this, because it has seemed to me that caffeine has little effect on me. I know people who can't have soda* after 6 p.m. or they'll be up all night. I can drink Diet Dew right before bedtime and fall right asleep.
My caffeine insensitivity is bad enough that at one point in college, when I needed to pull an all-nighter to finish an art project, I knew soda wouldn't do the job, so I reached for Vivarin. The box says to take two at the start, and one every hour. I took four to start, and two every half-hour. I felt like one of the walking dead. But as soon as I finished my project and went to bed, I was asleep within a half-hour.
So now, I've gone a week without caffeine. And I feel oddly alert, and kind of energetic, though still sleepy at times. But I think I'm sleeping a lot better and waking up less frequently. Despite the fact that I don't tend to feel the effects of caffeine, it may be that I'm feeling the effects of getting it flushed out of my system, and replacing the stimulation with the natural energy of juice.
We'll see how this plays out, but it's been good so far.
On another note, yesterday was Valentine's Day. Since I couldn't take my sweetheart out for the evening or make her dinner, I made homemade sorbet instead. It contains an ingredient that's probably not allowed on this fast, but I used it anyway, instead of white sugar and corn syrup. Sue me.
8 oz. strawberries, sliced and with stems removed
Juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cup cane syrup (such as Lyle's Golden Syrup)
1 cup water
1. Wait until your wife is at class.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the sliced strawberries, lemon juice and cane syrup. Refrigerate for one hour.
3. Puree the strawberry mixture in a food processor or mash by hand. Add water and stir until combined.
4. Transfer the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to directions.
5. Serve to a grateful wife upon her return from class.
*A concession to my readers. I call it pop. Don't hate.
There have been some interesting effects. As I've noted, I'm not as hungry as I'd expected. But I'm also not as tired as I'd expected. This, despite the fact that I am completely off caffeine for the first time in many, many years.
As you may know, I have had for some years now a, shall we say, decided preference for a particular brand of soft drink: Diet Mountain Dew. Some have called it an addiction. I'm not sure I agree with that. But past attempts at kicking the habit have made me realize that I have a greater psychological dependency on it than I had been willing to admit. For whatever reason, drinking Diet Dew makes me feel like all is right in the world, at least for a little while.
A side effect of this predilection is that I have been pumping my body with a steady stream of caffeine on a daily basis. I had never really thought much of this, because it has seemed to me that caffeine has little effect on me. I know people who can't have soda* after 6 p.m. or they'll be up all night. I can drink Diet Dew right before bedtime and fall right asleep.
My caffeine insensitivity is bad enough that at one point in college, when I needed to pull an all-nighter to finish an art project, I knew soda wouldn't do the job, so I reached for Vivarin. The box says to take two at the start, and one every hour. I took four to start, and two every half-hour. I felt like one of the walking dead. But as soon as I finished my project and went to bed, I was asleep within a half-hour.
So now, I've gone a week without caffeine. And I feel oddly alert, and kind of energetic, though still sleepy at times. But I think I'm sleeping a lot better and waking up less frequently. Despite the fact that I don't tend to feel the effects of caffeine, it may be that I'm feeling the effects of getting it flushed out of my system, and replacing the stimulation with the natural energy of juice.
We'll see how this plays out, but it's been good so far.
On another note, yesterday was Valentine's Day. Since I couldn't take my sweetheart out for the evening or make her dinner, I made homemade sorbet instead. It contains an ingredient that's probably not allowed on this fast, but I used it anyway, instead of white sugar and corn syrup. Sue me.
Surreptitious Strawberry Sorbet
(Adapted from Ben & Jerry's homemade ice cream book)
8 oz. strawberries, sliced and with stems removed
Juice of 1 lemon
3/4 cup cane syrup (such as Lyle's Golden Syrup)
1 cup water
1. Wait until your wife is at class.
2. In a medium bowl, combine the sliced strawberries, lemon juice and cane syrup. Refrigerate for one hour.
3. Puree the strawberry mixture in a food processor or mash by hand. Add water and stir until combined.
4. Transfer the mixture into an ice cream maker and freeze according to directions.
5. Serve to a grateful wife upon her return from class.
*A concession to my readers. I call it pop. Don't hate.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Day 5: Scorched earth
One of the reasons I wanted to do this fast has to do with Doritos and the Food Network. Allow me to explain.
I watch a lot of Food Network. Shows like "Iron Chef," "Chopped," "Good Eats" — they are tremendous entertainment. But I learn a lot too. One of the things that has especially struck me in the course of my Food Network viewing has been the comments of the judges on the competition shows like "Chopped." Regardless of the ingredients used (which can be quite bizarre), the judges have not only the ability to taste each part, but appreciate each one for its essence, whatever it is that it brings to the dish — the "thingness" of the thing.
By contrast, I often cannot taste and appreciate "thingness." I am a pretty decent cook, and I think I've gotten better over the years, but I do so despite the quite significant handicap that I am unable to taste, and so use the correct amounts of, things like herbs. I use a lot of thyme, but I don't really know what it tastes like. I can't judge the correct balance between oil and vinegar when making salad dressing. As far as I can tell, I can only judge three things: garlic, heat (spiciness) and salt. As a result, my dishes tend to be heavy on those three things.
I have a theory about why that is. For years now, I have subsisted on a diet of processed crap. One of my favorites is Doritos (nacho cheese flavor only, please). I can binge on Doritos like nobody's business. In some ways it feels like demon who tempts with the promise of pleasure, and who indulges you for a time, but who then jabs you with a pitchfork and tosses you into the brimstone. It is a pleasure that destroys.
Specifically, the destruction has to do with my taste buds. After years of living on only artificial junk, which tends to be strongly flavored, I feel like my taste buds have been burned out, and only able to sense ever-stronger flavor. I experience this in a tangible way. After I eat a lot of Doritos, my tongue can feel quite painful. And yet it isn't enough to keep me from eating more, which only exacerbates it. And I end up even more desensitized to flavor.
If I may employ an analogy: When the Soviets retreated in the face of the advancing German army in 1941, they burned the ground, crops, houses, fuel, everything, in order to give the Germans nothing to eat or use. It's a tactic called scorched earth. I imagine that the destruction made it so it took a lot to make something happen on that ground.
I'm hoping that this fast give me the chance to allow something new to grow on the scorched earth, something more subtle. I'm hoping for renewal.
I watch a lot of Food Network. Shows like "Iron Chef," "Chopped," "Good Eats" — they are tremendous entertainment. But I learn a lot too. One of the things that has especially struck me in the course of my Food Network viewing has been the comments of the judges on the competition shows like "Chopped." Regardless of the ingredients used (which can be quite bizarre), the judges have not only the ability to taste each part, but appreciate each one for its essence, whatever it is that it brings to the dish — the "thingness" of the thing.
By contrast, I often cannot taste and appreciate "thingness." I am a pretty decent cook, and I think I've gotten better over the years, but I do so despite the quite significant handicap that I am unable to taste, and so use the correct amounts of, things like herbs. I use a lot of thyme, but I don't really know what it tastes like. I can't judge the correct balance between oil and vinegar when making salad dressing. As far as I can tell, I can only judge three things: garlic, heat (spiciness) and salt. As a result, my dishes tend to be heavy on those three things.
I have a theory about why that is. For years now, I have subsisted on a diet of processed crap. One of my favorites is Doritos (nacho cheese flavor only, please). I can binge on Doritos like nobody's business. In some ways it feels like demon who tempts with the promise of pleasure, and who indulges you for a time, but who then jabs you with a pitchfork and tosses you into the brimstone. It is a pleasure that destroys.
Specifically, the destruction has to do with my taste buds. After years of living on only artificial junk, which tends to be strongly flavored, I feel like my taste buds have been burned out, and only able to sense ever-stronger flavor. I experience this in a tangible way. After I eat a lot of Doritos, my tongue can feel quite painful. And yet it isn't enough to keep me from eating more, which only exacerbates it. And I end up even more desensitized to flavor.
If I may employ an analogy: When the Soviets retreated in the face of the advancing German army in 1941, they burned the ground, crops, houses, fuel, everything, in order to give the Germans nothing to eat or use. It's a tactic called scorched earth. I imagine that the destruction made it so it took a lot to make something happen on that ground.
I'm hoping that this fast give me the chance to allow something new to grow on the scorched earth, something more subtle. I'm hoping for renewal.
Accidentally Green
4 peaches, stones removed
4 oranges, peeled
1 yellow bell pepper, stem and seeds removed
1 handful spinach
2 Granny Smith apples
1 mango, pureed
1. Buy peaches in season, not from Chile.
2. Juice the spinach last, then add mango puree.
3. Wonder when you stir why the juice is so green.
4. Realize that it's because of the apple skins.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Day 4: One and a half Jesses
In the course of thinking about this blog, I've struggled with a dilemma: how much to reveal about myself?
I'm not an avid blog reader, but it seems to be the name of the game to be as gut-wrenchingly honest as possible. I read a blog about a guy's weight loss that, while kind of inspiring, was also awfully uncomfortable, as he went into great detail about his feelings and progress. Frankly, it was more than I wanted to know about this guy.
From whence does this exhibitionism come? I suspect American culture has a lot to do with it. We all want to believe we're special in some way, and that everyone would be thrilled to know exactly what's going on with us. Hence Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and whatever else.
Addressing this topic in a blog may make me a hypocrite. I accept that. But I can still avoid going over cliff of blog-disseminated oversharing by exercising some moderation in self-revelation, and thus preserve both my dignity and my readers' comfort.
The most obvious way that this discussion bears on this blog is in regard to my weight. One of my stated purposes for embarking on this fast is to drop some pounds. A typical blog thing to do is to note the starting point and progress, which would require me to disclose what I weigh now. That seems like a strange thing to broadcast to the entire world (as if my readership were that large). With that in mind, I will be using another method to track my progress.
I know a girl named Jess who is one of the smallest people I've ever met. And it occurred to me one day that my weight-loss goal is nearly exactly equal to one and a half times her weight. So I will be tracking my progress in terms of Jesses, and my goal is to lose one and a half Jesses. As of today, I have lost 0.12 Jesses in three days.
I'll also try to continue posting recipes. Here's one from my never-ending game of "hide the kale," inspired by a flavor of Naked Juice. Slainte!
I'm not an avid blog reader, but it seems to be the name of the game to be as gut-wrenchingly honest as possible. I read a blog about a guy's weight loss that, while kind of inspiring, was also awfully uncomfortable, as he went into great detail about his feelings and progress. Frankly, it was more than I wanted to know about this guy.
From whence does this exhibitionism come? I suspect American culture has a lot to do with it. We all want to believe we're special in some way, and that everyone would be thrilled to know exactly what's going on with us. Hence Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and whatever else.
Addressing this topic in a blog may make me a hypocrite. I accept that. But I can still avoid going over cliff of blog-disseminated oversharing by exercising some moderation in self-revelation, and thus preserve both my dignity and my readers' comfort.
The most obvious way that this discussion bears on this blog is in regard to my weight. One of my stated purposes for embarking on this fast is to drop some pounds. A typical blog thing to do is to note the starting point and progress, which would require me to disclose what I weigh now. That seems like a strange thing to broadcast to the entire world (as if my readership were that large). With that in mind, I will be using another method to track my progress.
I know a girl named Jess who is one of the smallest people I've ever met. And it occurred to me one day that my weight-loss goal is nearly exactly equal to one and a half times her weight. So I will be tracking my progress in terms of Jesses, and my goal is to lose one and a half Jesses. As of today, I have lost 0.12 Jesses in three days.
I'll also try to continue posting recipes. Here's one from my never-ending game of "hide the kale," inspired by a flavor of Naked Juice. Slainte!
So-my-wife-won't-hate-me
1 bunch kale
1/2 cucumber
10 strawberries
Handful of blackberries
Handful of blueberries
2 Granny Smith apples
1 banana, pureed
1. Make it happen.
2. Enjoy on the rocks.
3. Bask in the love of an appreciative wife.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)