Lose It!

I want to keep it real. And not to make excuses, but if I were living in a slightly different time, keeping it real would be a lot easier. In other words, I would like to do nothing more than put on my running shoes, have them transform me into something that I can not be, and then go for a run -- free on the earth.

But no, I am in this time and so surrounded by all these toys and gadgets. I'm typing on one right now. (An aside: I obviously have not been typing much on this gadget lately, especially for the purpose of adding to this blog, simply because I have not made it a priority. I find that with more time outside I have less time inside where the gadgets are, and by the time I do get in it's bed time. One of the reasons for this blog was to put myself "out there", as a motivation to run more consistently. I have been running anyway, so the only thing that has suffered is the exploration of my thoughts through the organization of them into a readable semi-readable form.)

So as much as I would like to keep it real (an expression I stole from Alice, a fellow runner at work), I am as addicted to this technology as anyone. But fear not, it's all part of my master plan to bump back down to books, postage stamps and sketch pads in my quickly approaching older years. We shall see. (Another aside: I haven't written in awhile so I'm enjoying all these nebulous digressions. Please bare with me.)

Other than Boston next spring, my running goals are fairly hazy. I have a yearning to run the Columbia Gorge Marathon this fall and I would like to take a real stab at breaking the 6 minute mile barrier. But neither of those things are concrete enough to give me real direction. I haven't yet plunked down any money on the race and my concentrated effort in meeting that single mile objective doesn't make sense until I drop the last few pounds of my muffin top. I've set a goal weight of 180 pounds before I start training for that.

Which leads me, f i n a l l y, to this entries topic. (I wanted to say this weeks topic but it has been too long since I have committed to a weekly entry for that to be proper.) I've said before in this blog and I still believe that we make maintaining weight and losing weight so much more complicated than it is. Now I understand some of the reasons for why this happens; people write books or make videos for profit and confuse the issue with a lot of imagined or soft science ideas and we, the over weight, buy them, especially when they tell us what we wanted to hear in the first place: "Forget low fat! The secret is low carb, high protein! Throw the steaks on the barbie!" Oh I like that diet.

I'm going to blog about this same idea sometime, parties telling people what they want to hear regardless of the actual product, especially as it applies to today's politics. But I am not going to take the time right now. Suffice it to say for now that I am very disappointed in our system and perhaps even more disheartened with our culture who seem to pick their politics like they do their sports team, more by locale and what color their f**cking slogan comes draped in. We blindly follow whatever these hired mouth pieces say when, just like a professional sports player, they could have just as easily played for the other team if that's where their money was coming from. But we the "fans" cheer for our side regardless of the realities, seeing every play and close call from our biased viewpoint. But.....I said I wouldn't get into that now. So where was I? Oh yeah...steaks on the barbie.

So like politics, you really already know what's right. You really already know how to lose weight. I don't need to tell you. Right? But okay, I'll just say it. Again. It's simply calories in versus calories out. Throw out all that crap about metabolism rates. Throw out all the confusion about insulin levels. Throw out everything you've been told about 65% of your lunch plate being protein but at dinner it can be as much as 72%.

All those things might be true, or maybe none of them are, it doesn't matter because your weight is no more complicated than the amount of fuel you shove down your pie hole (I love the movie "Fever Pitch"!!) in relation to how much of it you use up during the day. As my friend Alice might say, that's as real as it gets.

Which is where I want to introduce my new little gadget and get a little...well...unreal. I was browsing my phones app store when I came across one that does little more than track your calorie balance. It's called Lose It! and it's been very helpful to me in keeping track of intake and out flow of calories. Here is how it works:

After initially entering your vital stats and setting a goal, you start recording your food and your exercise. For example I entered my age, height and weight and that I wanted to lose 1 pound a week. The app gives me a budget of just over 2000 calories a day. It makes the assumption of a base daily calorie use. If I don't exercise that day, my goal can be rather tight. If I run for an hour, I have lots of breathing room. It's pretty easy.

At first I was looking up a lot of new foods on the programs built in database (it's not getting things off the Internet). But after awhile they are collected in an alphabetized list which you can spin to from a wheel you flick with your finger. Exercise is easily entered too. I just enter how long I ran and about how fast and it subtracts the calories from my daily total. You see right away where you are in relation to your budget goal for the day. You can also see all kinds of reports: graphs of your progress, a list of favorite foods, even a nutrients break down if you just can't let go of that low fat vs low carb debate.

I'm more than half way from my starting weight of 198 to my 180 target, so I can be ready for race training. This simple app has kept me honest and given me the information to manage the only number that count. Calories. And it can't help but work because it's just keeps track of the simple math equation. In and out. It just doesn't get any more real than that.

Mitchell Part 1 "Camel Humps" (Part 2 below)

A modern Google Earth view shows a school which has not changed much in 37 years

I didn't much like P.E. class back in 1973. I was a 7th grader at W.E. Mitchell Junior High in Rancho Cordova, California and WE JUST DIDN'T HAVE ANY FUN. What did do was run. Run for punishment. And we ran on a hot, dry, dusty, pumice dirt track.

The school itself was intimidating, especially to a kid who had just left a small grade school. Mitchell was more of a campus, resembling a small college more than a public school. It featured an outdoor area called "the quad". The modern bunker like buildings were laid out symmetrically, one side the mirror image of the other, and lunch was served not in a cafeteria but at series of windows where you stood in line and picked things off a menu like at a snack bar.

The three P.E. teachers, one was named Doherty and another Stephenson, were sadistic evil men. You could see the cruelty in their small bloodshot eyes. I'm not sure how they rationalized to themselves the heritage of negative experience to exercise and an active lifestyle that they were promoting year after year, but somehow it was allowed to continue.

After dressing down it all started with lining up on the tarmac outside the locker room for attendance and uniform inspection (A). Mitchell did have cool P.E. clothes. The shirts were reversible so potentially, if we should ever have time to play a game against each other, half of us could turn our shirts inside out. Unfortunately, I don't remember this ever being done. In fact the only time I ever saw the blue inside of the shirt was when I brought it home on Fridays to be washed. Everyone would roll the uniform up by putting their shorts on the shirt and roll it from the bottom up and pull the sleeves over the whole thing locking it in place. This made a type of crude football that we would play with while waiting for the bus and exposed the blue color that we otherwise would never have seen.

The outside of the shirt and pants were white with the blue logo of our school mascot, a lavish Marauder straight out of a pirate movie.

So we left the locker room and lined up alphabetically outside on the black top on our assigned number. I still remember being number 8. It was easy to take attendance that way, your number wouldn't have anybody standing on it if you were absent. The coach, usually Doherty, would start at number one, dressed in his navy blue mesh outfit and hairy bull legs, and start on down the line making notes about who knows what and having some comment about your appearance or said nothing. The whole ritual took a good 10 minutes and seemed such a waste of time. Then the fun started. He'd step back from the line and we'd all wait for the announcement:

"Three laps!"

"Ah crap" and off we'd go heading for the track. In those days there was a water fountain on the edge of the track and to make sure we didn't short him a full lap we had to begin and end by going around it (B). I was dreadfully slow, and like today, melted in the Sacramento valley heat. The track seemed endless and having to circumnavigate it two, three of four times seemed as if it would never end. I hated it not just because I was slow and dorky but because it was meant to be punitive.

You see when we got done running we reassembled back on the tarmac (C) , now panting with hands on our hips, in rows and columns for some seventies-style "calisthenics"; push ups, sit ups, windmills, up-downs and squat thrusts (and I was hoping to save myself for marriage!) we would knock them out in a cadence we screamed out as "one-two-three-four, two-two-three-four, three-two-three-four" etc... A couple of the suck up stud kids were made "squad leaders" to lead the rest of us each day.

It was hoot. But we weren't done yet. Hell there was war on and in five short years we might all be heading over to Nam kill someone or something.

All the jumping jacks being done we next moved over to the obstacle course (D). This consisted of a series of parallel bars, monkey bars, tires, rings hanging from chains and other galvanized contraptions which you negotiated or tried to. But the worst part was saved for last and we unofficially called the camel humps. This was a set of parallel bars in the shape of a camels back. You would jump up on the bars holding on with your hands and locking your arms so you were perfectly upright, use your knees and legs to kick your way up the first hump, down the other side and then repeat on hump number two.

Needless to say most of us couldn't do it, at least not early in the school year. Some kids never did do it. In fact some bigger kids never got more than a couple of feet up the first hump and then would just drop off. We all knew it was coming but we went through the ritual every single day. The same humiliation for the same kids over and over and over.

And this is where the punishment part came in. The "coaches" would take the number of boys who could not complete the obstacle course, divide that number in half and that's how many laps we started off with the next day.

"Four laps!"

By the time we got done with all this there was generally 5 or 10 minutes left to play whatever activity had been planned. Yee-haw!

It was all different after we packed up and moved to Oregon halfway through my 8th grade year and thank goodness gym class is different for my kids today. They have a love for being active. But back at Mitchell Junior High it just wasn't much fun and worse it buried the only athletic chance I chance I had-being a runner.

But there was a positive note that evolved out of this whole experience and I'll explain all of it in the second part of this story which I'll call "Two Stripes"...

Mitchell Part 2 "Two Stripes"

I never accepted the challenge 36 years ago. It seemed so unattainable, yet I never forgot it.

The physical education curriculum that so turned me off of physical activity did throw down a gauntlet of sorts and it has been laying there on the ground at my feet for all this time. I'd have to say that it was the only honest challenge of the entire P.E. program that could have caught my interest, but because of the poor delivery it not only was wasted on me, but I don't remember anyone else attempting it.

It was extremely simple: adding one or two blue bars made of cloth to the leg of your white gym shorts. Just how did you earn a bar for your shorts at Mitchell Junior High School? You might have guessed it...run around that damned track.

The rules were very simple too; run a mile. One blue bar if you completed the mile in less than 8 minutes. Two blue bars if you could do it in under 6.

I didn't get either one.

But... I want it now. Not the stupid single stripe either. Heck, I've already earned the single stripe lots of times. Fact is, I ran eight minute miles 26 times in a row just last December. What I want are those two blue bars. And if I can do it, if I can someday run a mile under 6 minutes, I'm going to buy a pair of while gym shorts with navy piping, just like the ones I had

so many years ago, and put those darn two bars on the pant leg and what I should do is call Mitchell and insist that they make good on the deal by looking around the old coaches office, seeing if they can find one of those patch sitting back on an old dusty shelf and send it to me.

But first I have to accomplish the feat. I can probably do a 6'30" right now if I push, but that's still a long ways to go. My plan is too lose a little more weight and start doing some training to work those fast twitch muscles. And then go for it!

It's going on forty years and I'm finally going to pick up the gauntlet.