Today was a great day.
As many of you know, the Portland Marathon was held this morning. I spent most of the spring and summer training for the race, suffering a series of injuries, and learning how real runners run. My goal was to run 26.2 miles this morning.
I didn’t do it.
I didn’t walk the race, [...]

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Continue reading → Marathon Day

Since we’ve been documenting our journey towards a healthier lifestyle, one of the things I’ve noticed is how people are changing their views about the “D” word–”Dieting.”   Recently, there’s been a lot of comments about food attitudes.  We’ve heard our readers’ perceptions about our relationships with food and we’ve heard about how they view [...]

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Continue reading → Eat To Live Or Live To Eat?

I have no problem making this site monetized, I don’t even have a problem making it known that I monetize the site. It would be nice to make a few bucks for my writing and candor. The problem is finding the right way to monetize while maintaining integrity and upholding the values on which I [...]

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Continue reading → Why I will not use Google Adsense on this site

Saturday was my “free day” on the Body for Life program; I could eat what I wanted. What I wanted — what I’ve been craving for weeks — was blueberry pancakes. I went to a local diner and enjoyed two enormous pancakes topped with blueberries — not the blueberry compote found in most places (comprising [...]

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Continue reading → The Gastronomical Me

This weekend, I experienced a lovely reminder of a valuable lesson I learned while writing Shape magazine’s Weight-Loss Diary column: I am the sum of the small decisions I make every day. When you’re trying to lose a significant amount…

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Continue reading → The Sum of Small Decisions

I’m sure my story is quite like most. When I was about 5 or 6 we went to McDonalds for the first time, and was wow’d by the colors, and the playground, and the good tasty food. The Big Mac was my favorite. By the time I was 15 the Chicken Nuggets had taken reign [...]

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Continue reading → My Story - Part 1 of 3

The idea began with a roast beef sandwich and a jamocha shake at Arbys. I had just got done swimming at the gym and really wanted a smoothy to replenish the energy I expended, but there were no smoothy places around. I figured that the protein from the sandwich would help and made a choice [...]

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Continue reading → The Beginning …Sort of

In a nutshell, I’m fat because it’s easier to be fat than it is to be a healthy weight.
It’s easier to be sedentary than to make time to exercise every day..  It’s easier to eat at Sonic, Outback, Denny’s, and Taco Bell than it is to shop for and cook healthy food for your family [...]

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Continue reading → Why Am I Fat?

The average child in America eats in a restaurant 167 times per year! That’s more than three times per week. With piano lessons, tee ball practice, private tutoring, ballet class, and homework, it’s often easier for parents to hit the drive thru at the local fast food joint than it is for them [...]

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Continue reading → Kids Meals–Not So Small After All

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

I feel pretty defeated today.
For the second Saturday in a row, I had to cut my marathon training run short. The pain in my knee was too intense to continue. Today’s three-mile walk back to the car was excruciating. I had a lot of time to think about my progress, my current physical state, and [...]

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Continue reading → Back to the Drawing Board

As a parental team, Pam and I try to provide our kids with a well rounded diet including a variety of fruits and vegetables. Fortunately, our kids tend to like vegetables more than most kids I have met. My current working theory on why this is so stems from the fact that Pam [...]

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Continue reading → Fruits and Vegetables: Fresh, Frozen, or Canned?

“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

I’m going to do something a bit different for the next two weeks. I have two trips coming up where I’ll be traveling in a car for 2 days to a course in BC, and overseas for work. So I thought I’d talk about how I deal with that in …

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Continue reading → How to eat healthy when dining out or traveling - Part One

The main focus of this book is getting healthy over the long term, so right off the bat it moved to the front of our book shelves. Too many diet books promise readers the moon and deliver only yet another fad diet that doesn’t work or leaves the reader open to future weight gain since [...]

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Continue reading → The Gold Coast Cure

Which foods are a bargain? I don’t just mean in terms of cost, but also in terms of calories? At Health Assist, one writer decided to take a look, creating the 300 calorie food picture gallery.
I think this is fascinating. It’s fun to look at these photos and say, “Yeah, that’s worth the money (and [...]

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Continue reading → The See-Food Diet

Back in April, I asked you all if you’d rather be fit or thin. A lot of the responses suggested that they would rather be fit than thin.
Recently, I found two articles that say you better think twice about that.
The first article from CNN.com suggests that exercise can reduce a woman’s chances of developing obesity [...]

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Continue reading → So, You Say You’d Rather Be Fit?

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

Driving home from this morning’s workout, I craved cereal. Sugared cereal.
I don’t keep sugared cereal in the house. That’s dangerous. In fact, the only thing we have that’s close is Trader Joe’s “blueberry morning” instant oatmeal. Blueberry morning instant oatmeal is a poor substitute for Lucky Charms. So although I knew I shouldn’t, I [...]

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Continue reading → The Inner Game of Health: Battle in the Cereal Aisle

Yesterday was lower-body day at the gym. I did leg extensions, leg presses, leg curls, seated knee raises, and more. The workout felt good. I had taken the day off from my last lower-body workout because I felt like I was overworking my legs, so it was nice to do some more exercise.
When I got [...]

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• Fitness Equipment Gym, Workout Yoga Exercise Fitness

Continue reading → Don’t Let’s Start: Coping with Oncoming Injuries?

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

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

Let me say it again, this time with feeling. I BEAT STRESS EATING! Have I mentioned before that I’m a stress eater? When things get tough, I head for the fridge. Well really, I head for the carb cupboard or the ice cream, but you get what I mean.
I’m having a [...]

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Continue reading → I Beat Stress Eating!

Kris and I recently spent a long weekend in San Francisco. I was worried about how I’d handle my fitness regimen while away from home. Turns out I had mixed success.
On the down side, I didn’t get any regular exercise in at all. I didn’t have time. My three days were scheduled from start to [...]

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Continue reading → Healthy Choices While on the Road

Every once in a while, I read something on the internet that both amazes me and makes me feel like I should be doing more for people other than myself. The other day, I found this article about a woman who likes to run AND likes to help others.
This article hit home for me [...]

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Continue reading → Giving Back?—Not Yet