My neighbor, John, arrived home from Alaska over the weekend. John spends his summers on a 38-foot boat, fishing for fun in the waters around Sitka. He hosts friends and family a few weeks each year, but otherwise his time is his own.
During our winters, he spends a few months in New Zealand, helping friends [...]

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Continue reading → 72 and Active: Staying Healthy by Working

Like every parent in the world, I want to raise my kids to be physically and emotionally healthy.  I want them to be confident, happy, friendly, outgoing, helpful, loving, kind, tenacious, protective, proud,  and fit–among other things I’m sure.  Sometimes I look at my kids and see the good things about Pam and me in [...]

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Continue reading → How To Raise Healthy Kids: My Parenting Dilemma

There were quite a few comments about whether or not I should be waking up at 4:30 in the morning to get my exercise in.  Those comments ranged from whether or not rising that early is a “sustainable habit” to “you used to do it, so get your butt out of bed you lazy bones!”
Pam [...]

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Continue reading → More On Early Morning Exercise

My, we’ve been a little bit glum around here lately huh?  Yep, it’s true, both JD and I are struggling with  staying on target.  Our weights are up a bit, our spirits are down a bit.  In the past, both of us would have given up by now.  But we’re still here and we have [...]

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Continue reading → Small Steps

J.D.’s weight over the past two weeks

Number of hours spent exercising over the past two weeks: 2
Number of hours playing World of Warcraft over the past two weeks: 40
Gym memberships lapsed: 1
Weight on July 30th: 186.0
Weight on September 7th: 193.5

On Friday, Mac explained why he is fat. For him, it’s because it’s easier to be [...]

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Continue reading → By the Numbers

I ate at Claim Jumper for the first recently. “Be careful,” Kris warned me. “The portions are huge.” I didn’t think much of her warning until my food began to come. The portions were huge! I ended up taking home enough food for two additional meals.
Get in my belly
By one measure, eating at [...]

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Continue reading → Are Increased Portion Sizes Changing How Much We Eat?

Clive Thompson at Wired says that a fun way to lose weight is to turn dieting into a game. After watching one of his friends slim down with the Weight Watchers program, Thompson realized it was basically a type of role-playing game (RPG). He writes:

As with an RPG, you roll a virtual character, manage your [...]

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Continue reading → Turning Fitness into a Game

I’ve been negligent about the one hundred pushups challenge, both here and in Real Life. I stopped doing my pushups for a week, and it’s been a while since I updated my progress here.
As part of getting “back on the bus”, I’m remedying that situation today. I performed a one-time exhaustion test as a [...]

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Continue reading → Weekend Update: Doing the Right Thing

Yesterday was a good day. Finally.
The last month has been difficult for me, both mentally and physically. My mother has been in the hospital, I’ve been injured, and I’ve done a poor job of prioritizing fitness. If you think I’ve been whiney here, you should try living in my head!
“You need to go to the [...]

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Continue reading → A Much-Needed Attitude Adjustment

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

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Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

• Local US Political Historical Memorabilia Collectibles

Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

• Local US Political Historical Memorabilia Collectibles

Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

• Local US Political Historical Memorabilia Collectibles

Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

• Local US Political Historical Memorabilia Collectibles

Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

• Local US Political Historical Memorabilia Collectibles

Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

I was nervous when I joined the local gym last March. I was worried that I wouldn’t use the facilities enough to justify the cost. But I was also worried that I wouldn’t fit in. I visualized a crowd of preening lunkheads boasting about how much they could drink and which chick they scored with [...]

• Local US Political Historical Memorabilia Collectibles

Continue reading → Mr. Muscle

On Tuesday’s discussion about defining fitness, I mentioned that my own pursuit of that ideal had been derailed. “I’ve been eating poorly and taking no exercise,” I wrote. “Tell us more,” said a couple of readers.
After Saturday morning’s aborted attempt at a sixteen mile run, I was feeling miserable. It wasn’t just that my physical [...]

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Continue reading → Losing My Way, and Finding It

Yesterday was my daughter’s “half birthday.” I don’t really know where the idea came from, but somehow she got it in her head that half birthdays are almost as important as whole birthdays. Being the manipulative 3 and 1/2 year old, she finagled her mother into bringing home a box of brownie mix–and [...]

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Continue reading → Chocolate Cake–Not JUST JD’s Vice

“After I do my pushups this morning,” I wrote on Wednesday, “I’m going to ride my bike twenty miles, lift weights, and maybe go for a run.”
A couple readers were taken aback. “Do you have a full time job? How can you afford a whole lot of exercise?” Juan wrote. And Mike said, “How do [...]

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Continue reading → Change Your Habits, Change Your Life

During May 2007, I allowed myself to drink only water and two water-based derivatives: mineral water (including Talking Rain flavored waters) and non-caffeinated tea.
This was easy at first. Water is fine for a week or two, and I don’t crave alcohol under normal circumstances. But the last few days of the project were a [...]

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Continue reading → Drinking Water Only: A Month-Long Experiment in Self-Discipline

Life has a way of blindsiding me sometimes. Last week was great: I was down to 194 pounds, I lifted hard on Tuesday and Thursday, and I ran 21 miles between Monday and Thursday.
Then Friday evening rolled around and I knew I was in trouble. We ordered pizza (actually, I ordered pizza). [...]

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Continue reading → Whoa! Bessie–Slow Down And Think About It!

On Saturday I ran for twelve miles and then biked for 29. In the middle of the ride, I suddenly became very very hungry. We stopped at a country store so that I could load up on calories. I bought a Hershey bar with almonds and a bottle of Propel fitness water.
“This candy bar is [...]

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Continue reading → The Best Part of Exercise: Indulging Your Food Fantasies

I came home from the driving range the other day and was greeted by my little girl as I jumped out of the truck.  When I first saw the door open, I thought it was my wife so I hastily stowed my convenience mart snack in the back seat, climbed out of the cab and [...]

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Continue reading → Old Bad Habits Never Die–They Just Get Better

Pam recently told me that Martha Stewart sometimes says, “Tidiness begets tidiness.” Last night, after the kids went to bed, we spent about 45 minutes cleaning up the house. Later on, I told Pam, “We made a good dent in the housework tonight, we should do that every night.” Maybe there’s something [...]

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Continue reading → What Motivates Me To Get Fit

Ever since Pam and I moved to Oregon, we’ve been bombarded with advertising from Sonic: America’s Drive Thru. Their commercials are pretty funny, often depicting two people sitting in their car bantering back and forth about the food they’re eating. But what really makes me drool (literally) is the splash images of their [...]

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Continue reading → Uh-Oh: Sonic Comes To Salem

I received this email from J.D. yesterday morning:
Yikes. I just got up. It’s my swimming day, but I do *not* feel like going. Is it wrong to skip a workout? I’m not sick — just lazy. I could always go for a run in the afternoon…
–j.d.

My first thought after reading this it was: “Why [...]

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Continue reading → Sometimes, Your Heroes Need Help Too

Just to be clear, not everything in my current fitness regimen is peaches and cream. My exercise program has been going very well indeed, but like Mac, I’m beginning to have food issues. Maybe that’s stating it too strongly. What I should say is that last weekend was difficult for me.
Most of the time, [...]

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Continue reading → Gluttony Is Its Own Punishment