Gotta Catch em all--fit by numbers

Hey all,

It's July the heat is on and I am feeling awesome..why you ask?? let me tell yah I made a few right moves and the universe opened up a path for me.

1. I returned to Paleo, limited carbs, heavy on good fats and lots of protein and no processed food to the best of my ability.

2. My wife set up some apps on my phone for tracking my work outs along with everything I put in "Ma belly"! I wear a fitbit and insist on hitting at least my 10,000 steps a day (about five miles).

3. I met with Ethan Brandt of https://www.facebook.com/psychostrength/!!

Ethan is trainer and a walking inspiration of positive thinking and smart working out. I told him I'm not a gym guy but went out to meet him and he has a very impressive gym. Still I stuck to my guns and said thanks but not for me, Ethan sends me a note asking what my goals are and a week later sends me a basic start plan to bust some fat and raise my heart rate. This man is killing me, I find myself waking up at 5am to try some of the moves he sent. I feel the pain two days later and feel I should spend my days trying to find a way to hurt him back.. but I also note I'm feeling stronger day by day.

I started this on the last week of June, and something is changing inside of me along with the outside.


 I am not competitive !



OK so now I'm a man on the move walking here and there putting a hobbit to shame, when I get invited via Fitbit to compare my "steps" with friends of mine.. What the hell?? Mary F just passed me by, I don't think so. Off I go for another walk!

The universe is not done with me yet..Pokemon on the Go is ..well you can look it up but it is taking over and nerdy folks are dare I say it...WALKING OUTDOORS IN THE FRESH AIR!!!! My kids have never even been in my back yard unless you count a Google Earth fly by. Now they have discovered my beloved walking paths and near by parks. Groups of pale over weight teens have been seen  moving about here and there. I saw the wonder in one lads face when it started to rain and he was so confused.

I tell you its wonderful and creepy all at once. Now let step up and show my cards here, I don't play any video games and know next to nothing about these Poky creatures,but I do know people are moving about and that is a good thing!

I an not competitive!


My wife  I should point out is deep into the cult of catching these video imps as well and no one was more shocked then me when she said lets walk a little further!!! WOW

On my nerd side I'm looking at the same time as  people are chasing little blue and yellow cartoons at the number of steps other Fit bit players are getting. I have different competitions going on and one is can you get in more steps in your work week than the other guy.  I think I can, and then my new Fitbit dies and as I decide what to do my numbers stop while I get lapped by Jim C. and Mary F ( I 'm not sure who they are but they are ahead of me) this will not do at all. I am still not competitive.

On Tuesday night I get a new FitBit but I'm way behind...I start waking two miles at my office, and slowly I catch up..Now its Friday the last day and I'm in third place. I have walked 10,000 steps and I'm still in third. I drive home and think not bad considering I was out for a day, I get home its a nice night and I think if I walk to point A and back that is a five mile walk a second 10,000 steps now we all know by now I am not competitive, I walk the extra five miles and BOOM I am in the lead!!!

I sit back watch a movie and enjoy my victory, my film is coming to an end and I am enjoying a glass of wine when my phone alerts me that Mary F. has just passed me by with 17 minutes to go!! Its almost midnight I am a 52 year old man and I look at my wife and sa y "pause the film I need to walk for 17 minutes, you wanna go find some Pokmon?!! Off we go and at Midnight Mary F receives a note saying Mark C (whoever that is she thinks) just slipped past you to victory!

Now I am not competitive, but that is the reason I was walking two blocks from my house at midnight in my Led Zeppelin PJ's .  Side note my wife also went up a level.


You may ask yourself what does this have to do with fitness and health, well I'm not sure except my family is moving and laughing  and I feel great. There's lots of ways to lose weight and Ethan and kettlebells, walking , eating the right calories are part of my plan and now its looks like I have some company on the trail to health ; a bunch of pale folks sweating away chasing monsters that will help them get stronger.  I'm cool with that. Peace and Love

Paleo I'm back 90%

Hey all,

So I have dabbled with a few different styles of eating since I took on my Century (100 miles) bike ride last September and I discovered that I was wrong..imagine that. I kept my weight off for three or more years with little effort and then boom my weight shot back up to nearly 245 lbs over the winter and I have not been able to drop a pound in spite of all of my efforts.

Two days ago I pulled up all of my notes and realized I was fighting a losing battle and I needed to return to my paleo ways and quick!

Now the problem was I chose carbs so I could ride 100 miles , I did pull that off but I also damaged my Achilles tendons and sent my body back into a carb craving machine that was not able to ride. I had committed myself to a fifty mile ride this weekend and I have not had the energy to ride much at all with my extra 20lbs.  In short this made for a lackluster ride of 43 miles before my body just gave up and my legs turned into cement.

On the ride I chose to leave music behind and think about what had go wrong in diet. I had made what was easy very complex and it was showing in my health.

Calories in/ out are important and can not be ignored. You can look up some sites on the web and with a little math get a good idea of how many calories your body burns at rest.

Chose an activity  you love that burns calories, walking , hiking, and biking and some kettlebell works are my plan for a t least one hour out of my day.

Figure out a goal that you want to reach, a great one if you're over weight is 10% weight loss.

In my case this morning I weighed 236 lbs , that's a pound lighter after my four hour bike ride which gives you and idea that this is a long slow process unless you intend to workout four hours every day.

I want to get below 200lbs this year as my goal, so I have a full seven months to lose the weight, and I expect too see  it go some like this. Down 10lbs the first month and then the maybe six pounds over the next two months and then a plateau where my weight loss stalls for several weeks. When your weight has stalled that's the time to recalculate your numbers and start over, because you're eating too much again.

Stick with the basic rules, eat clean and lean, easy on the carbs, move often,play in the sunshine and sleep good at night.

Already this morning a fog is leaving my mind and I feel back on track.

Peace and love

 

Simple Weight loss and Workout

Hey all,

This is my fourth year or so of living as clean as I can, I have made a ton of mistakes and learned a lot as well. This is what I'm doing now and what I intend to continue to do until some magic comes my way.

I'm keeping track of the amount of calories I eat compared to the amount of calories I burn! Pretty radical thinking I know.



You can find all sorts of apps and web site calculators online to help you find your number. My plan was instead of looking to how to lose weight I chose to see what I would have to do to maintain my ideal weight.
I went to a site entered my height /sex/age and then chose the weight I want to be at! Now to me  this is thinking outside of the box but in a good way. The first few weeks might get tough but already it has made me very aware of the extra calories that sneak in there in the course of my day.

If you were to start out at your current weight in time you will have to cut back, I would rather get to where I need to be eating all the time.

As for working out, I think that depends on your personal goal. I'm in my early 50's and I want to be fit and pain free to do all the activities I enjoy.

My workout is based on short intense focused bursts of power. I use my kettle bell and do 40 swings at least every other day as soon as I get up. I repeat this in the evening as well. I bike a 16 mile course at least twice a week and in between that I have hill days where I bike up a steep hill.

So these are simple workouts , brief no gym but they add muscle and tone along with burning a few calories.

Now I still try and make the calories I eat as clean and healthy as can be, if I have a night out and go a little over board than I know this will be at best a maintain night and not a weight loss night.

Here's to keeping it simple, life can be hard enough.

Peace and Love

Aldi's Etiquette

Hey all,

Since my blog is about all aspects of life, here's a recent story that might amuse you.

I stop off at Aldi's grocery store Saturday afternoon and they have this policy of all the shopping carts are chained together and you need a quarter to unchain them, thus for the price of a quarter you save the store by returning your cart for your quarter the store saves money and passes discounts on to you win win for all involved.

On this Saturday in question I pull in and like a good healthy person I park further away from the door to get in a few extra steps. I keep the prized quarter in a tray in my car so it is always handy for shopping day.  Now every time I approach the line of carts several options start to pop up as follows:

1. No one there and you walk up plug in your coin take your cart!

2. As you're about to pick out your cart someone else has just finished and says here take my cart and you inturn hand them said quarter, end of transaction.

3. Awkward in between time of people almost finished with their cart and they do not want the long walk back  and give you the look of "hey if you could just stand here for two minutes I will be ever so glad to give you my cart for your quarter thus saving me that god damn trek to the line, and I will also require your quarter"!

4. Rare but has happened someone really needs a cart but has no change and offers you a one dollar bill..so of course you say "just take my cart, its cool" well its cool until the next time you pull into Aldi's and find out you have no quarter.

5. The pass it on, in this scenario your fellow shopper says : here take my cart ,someone else handed it too me no charge so pass it on!

The pass it on is where my epic tale begins!

I'm walking up to the line of carts and this woman says"here take my cart, some guy gave it me so pass it on!" I thought that was very nice and at the same time I thought oh great now I have the task of finding someone to pass it on too or have an extra quarter rattling around my dashboard tray. I go on with my shopping and by the way Aldi's really rocks!! Great store, anyway I check out and as Im putting the bags in the trunk of my car, a woman pulls up and shouts from the window "Hey I want your cart, I will give you a quarter!!" I was very happy that she new the Aldis rule #2 I listed.  I close my trunk and notice that she is the one person to have found a further spot to park than me. So now I have the choice of waiting for her to walk over to me or I walk my now empty cart to the far side of the parking lot to her and claim my quarter.

I then remember Aldi rule #5 and think hey I will walk over and and say "here you go , pass it on!" and that will be that.

I push my empty cart pass several other shoppers who are now holding out quarters in their hands thinking this guy has no idea about Aldi's etiquette and must be a Dierberg's shopper who got lost.

I ignore these people walk up to the lady in my  best Sir Galahad  and  say "here you go, pass it on" well she heard non of that and is digging through her purse for a fucking quarter and at last I say it again and leave the cart next to her car.

As I am walking back passed the same people I had just ignored she yells from her car " Hey your a good soul!!" So I get to strut pass them with my new accolades of being a "good soul".

My wife hates any form of interaction between a stranger and this would have put her in a clinic for shots.

I chalked it up to another adventure in Markie world and drove away very happy with my single quarter waiting for my next shopping cart drama...

Peace and Love

Having fun yet?

Hey all,

Just asking out loud along with all this eating clean, working out, hiking, biking etc..are you having a good time? If not, your doing it wrong. Life is painfully short, and I for one am doing my best not to waste time on drama and bullshit like self pity or worrying for a moment what people think of me. I consider myself to be very fortunate in the fact that I’m an ugly guy. Made all the difference in my life. If I was born with a handsome face and athletic body my path would have been much different. I knew who was popular very quick in school and I noticed with all of my flaws one thing I did not have was that sense of desperation the hip kids all shared. I never felt jealous of these groups because they never seemed to very interesting people once you met them. Now all the social misfits were well read, paid close attention to films, had lots of free time to learn an instrument or become artists.
I always felt like a bit of an outsider and found strength in my solitude. Now as an adult looking back I had a great childhood and my teenage years even though I was alone a lot I never felt lonely. The day I met my wife I walked up to her without a second thought and asked her out. I had no thought of how cool I was or not, I was confident in myself and 25 years later we still hold hands when we walk.
My rambling has a point, laugh it up while you can. No one has a free ride, enjoy being yourself, shoot for the best version of you by all means but have room to laugh at yourself.
I just found out that my daughters friends after seeing me wolf down a large bag of banana chips came up with a name for me years ago…”Mutton!!”  I thought it was hilarious, I’m sure there's been all kinds of Mutton jokes about over the years.
Having fun is very serious thing, make sure you take time to laugh at yourself as well. We can try and be perfect but we all know we are not, still going to try and I will still fuck up. That’s Ok laugh it off and keep going.

Peace and Love

Fake it until its real

Hey all,
Its been awhile since I posted anything except for my Facebook page (please like it if your interested) so today the sun is out and its got me feeling good. 
So Spring is not far off and the Winter can be tough if you slip up, which I did. So on a day like today when it’s the middle of Winter and bam its 77 degrees out!!!  I grabbed my bike and hit my favorite path and was sucking air in no time…but so what, I knew I was not going to go much more than five miles so I decided to hot dog it and pass as many people as I could. I’m in bad shape and have zero stamina at this point …so I faked it. I just pumped hard and toughed it out. Downed a ton of water here and there and kept up my hustle.
The result was a short but very hard workout for my body and I had fun in the sun. I know in a few months I will be riding 16 –20 miles day but in the mean time I’m going to ride like a badass on these little trips. Each ride I feel myself getting closer to where I want to be. When I work out or ride I don’t see myself as I am , I vision who I want to be. I fake it, and think what do I need to now to maintain this level.
I choose to see myself as a fit person and act like one, eat clean, sleep eight hours, work out on a regular schedule …these little fake outs soon become second nature and in no time there is nothing false about it. You’re a fit person!


Peace and Love !

How I learned to meditate

Hey all,

So I always wanted to learn how to meditate and reach that sense of calm that monks reach, right before they start kicking ass! ...OK I watch a lot of movies, but I still wanted to know what was going on and how do you reach that state.

So I did a little research here and there about the Beatles and how they went to India to study with the Maharishi Yogi near the Ganges river at the foot of the Himalayas. The Yogi would give them a phrase to repeat all day while they sat in the sun and try to get there mind to stop wondering.

So how did they do in this mystic land with a real life Obi-wan?? Ringo left after ten days and the rest of the guys were gone a few months later. They did write some good songs including "Dear Prudence"  The problem they had was it was boring and they had other things to think about like the fact they were the damn Beatles.

I tried it myself and I would repeat a phrase and then my mind would wander off to think about getting a glass of wine or did the Beatles minds wander and think about a glass of wine and maybe I should try and record "Dear Prudence" well shit my mind wandered off again!!

Then I recalled a book I had come across about how to hypnotize yourself and others. The book started with its not what you think it is and first you need to be calm. In order to reach the calm state you create a safe place.

This is how I now meditate, I have created two separate stories I tell myself every night before I go to sleep. The results are I have a very deep sleep and my dreams are very intense and detailed. I switch the stories as I feel like and more and more after two years I have become stress free.

Story one:

The brief version, I take an elevator  to a secret room where no one can reach me, it is my sanctum sanctorum or my Fortress of Solitude if your a Superman fan.

When I tell myself the story the details have become crystal clear to me, I know how the room smells,the feel of the carpet every little detail.

Story two:

I'm alone in the woods  walking through a blizzard and I must find shelter. Once again the details are very important, gathering wood for a fire, making a shelter from old branches etc..

Now your story will be up to you, and I have been repeating my tales for two years or so to the point I can think of my "safe room" during my work day and calm myself down and release any pressure.

I do not know what a teacher of mediation would say about my habits or how I am going about it all wrong. I do know that I have a place I can tap into at any time and feel calm.

Peace and Love