Yeah wasn’t too anxious to give you all the goods on my success (or lack thereof ) after my grand announcement in October that I was going to embark on a weight loss journey. Oh it started enthusiastically enough, I said all the right things, even did the right things – I was keeping track of my calories and watching what I ate – started eating smarter. It was great and it lasted all of 2 weeks.

That’s when the excuses started piling up. “Well it’s October, Halloween is here. How do you expect me not to eat all the kids left over candy” and then it was “Hey man it’s Thanksgiving,  you really think I’m gonna miss out on turkey dinners during Thanksgiving! Give your head a shake!” Then Christmas arrived and well… by then everything was out the window. I skillfully avoided any discussions about my blog post.  I ate whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted and in copious amounts. I pretty much gave up. I was disappointed in myself to be honest and preferred to steer clear of any weight discussions. This went on till the 3rd week of January. Me blissfully avoiding the issues (meanwhile packing on even more pounds) while others around me became concerned. Actually one of our friends happened to ask at a party when my next blog post was going to be (Blast you Will Walton) which I laughed off with a witty comeback, but internally I knew I had done absolutely nothing since the last post.

That’s when what I like to call “the intervention” happened. I like it because it sounds very dramatic and serious and if this was a documentary and not a blog there would be people – family, friends, those dear to me –  gathered, unbeknownst to me, in my living room waiting for my arrival to finally confront me on my issues. Raised voices would ensue, harsh words would be said, tears would flow and I would head to rehab full of contrition and anger. Alas this intervention was not quite so dramatic. It basically started with my loving wife carefully mentioning… “so I was talking with your brother…” and I knew immediately what this discussion was going to be about. Graham and Michelle had talked and they wanted me to know that now was the time to do something about my weight. (at one point Michelle even said that when she saw me sitting on the couch the other day I actually looked pregnant! LMAO! which is true, of course she said it in the most loving way possible.)

Michelle didn’t know it at the time but I had quietly stepped on the scales and knew things were not good. In fact much worse! I was now 237 lbs. (last post I was 230) I didn’t tell her at first but later on confessed when she started her own workout sessions and started marking her weight weekly for us both to follow. I should say right now that my wife is awesome. The support she’s giving me is fantastic, she’s setting aside her own schedule to allow me to get in workouts at night while juggling the kids bedtimes and all the other stuff she has to fit in. She does the shopping and the junk food I love is no longer purchased. She quizes me on my portion sizes to make sure I’m not overdoing it and keeps me on track to not eat after dinner (I get the serious stink eye when I do).

This past Monday night my brother Graham showed up at the door to go for a walk. Now you need to understand when I say walk, we’re talking serious power walking here. You know how when you were a kid and you’d walking with your dad and you would have to run along beside him every so often to keep up with his pace? That’s what it’s like walking with Graham even as an adult. His walking pace is my jogging. I think he’s doing like 8km’s an hour. I don’t think I could run 8km’s that fast.

I should point out however he looks absolutely ridiculous when he’s doing it.  Here’s something that should give you an idea of what he (we) look like – give a click below…

Race Walking for the Beginner

When I was out with Graham last night I was very clear in that I would only ever be doing this under the cloak of darkness! Nobody would see me doing this in the light of day.  The great thing is he doesn’t care how it looks and he really pushes me – Coach Graham.

At the same time my pal Marcus down the street is trying to get back in game shape after tearing his achilles tendon a few months ago and he asked me to join him in a walk/run. He’s doing the thing where you walk for 1 minute and run for 1 minute for a total of 30 minutes obviously increasing the time you run and the total overall time as you progress.  He asked me to go on the Tuesday and I was all in cuz I had just been out with my bro the night before and I was freaking sore! Besides he’s still a cripple from his injury and I figured he was more my pace!

… he’s a cripple from his injury and was more my pace!

To date I’ve been out four times this week. Each time has been between 4km – 5km and I’m tracking the time – it’s been around 50 mins each time. It aint easy I tell ya. I took tonight off because I’m just too sore and I need a break. Hopefully I’ll be out tomorrow as well weather permitting.

I’ve also been using a great website for tracking my food intake called www.dailyburn.com

It’s really useful because you can either add your own foods with all the nutritional value or search for the food in their user database. On top of that you can do the same for workouts that you create or find in the website to track. It’s a huge help because when you first start keeping tabs on how much you eat it’s rather astounding (embarrassing) how much you actually pack away. The screen shot below is your nutrition dashboard.

This shot is your detailed listing of the foods you’ve eaten and their nutritional value

The best part of it is that it’s free, if you don’t mind the ads. If you’ve got an iPhone you can download the app to keep tracking when you’re on the move and need to remember what you’ve eaten for the day.

While I wish I was giving you an update on my rip roaring success unfortunately I’m not. However I am being honest in the struggle of the battle of the bulge. I started the week (on Monday) at 237 lbs and while I haven’t weighed in yet I will be doing so this coming Monday. I’m pretty sure I’ve lost some weight as my belt has loosened up one notch. I’ve averaged about 1900 calories per day for the past 5 days and ran/walked about 15-20 km’s so far. To be honest it’s a tough row to hoe. The folks on the Biggest Loser make it look easy and as cheesy as it may sound they are pretty inspirational.

In the end I’m writing this for accountability, so many people mentioned the last post to me, everyone has been so encouraging. Making it public makes it difficult to avoid, I mean if Toronto Mayer Rob Ford (www.cutthewaist.ca) isn’t able to do it he’s gonna lose his voters. I’ll just lose face (heh heh). Plus, my kind brother Graham has decided to start posting our results and possibly (shudder) pictures on his facebook page. I figure I’ll be preemptive and get the word out before him.

So you all can expect a short post on Monday or Tuesday after the weigh-in to see if I’ve dropped, gained or stayed the same.

Good or bad, I won’t chicken out this time I promise.

Love, Peace and Hairgrease.

brodg

Since turning 40 what I’ve realized is that with age, apparently, comes weight. That’s right weight. Some of you may have seen my recent status update on facebook lamenting the fact that I was now bigger than my 5′ 11″ buddy, who happens to be one of those guys who lifted a lot of weights in his day. I, however, am 5′ 5″ on a tall day. I clocked in on Monday morning at 230lbs. (holy crap!) I’m quickly becoming as wide as I am tall.

Those of you who knew me growing up know I wasn’t exactly a big fellah. I was about 150lbs all through high school until I was about 27.  After 27 real life hit… I got married, had a real job (most of the time) eventually kids arrived and everything else that comes with them. I stopped water skiing, snow skiing and hockey, life had become very busy.

See? I used to be athletic!

I no longer had time. Of course I kept eating and drinking exactly the same despite the drop in activity. (Well maybe not the drinking part but you get the point) so slowly the weight crept up on me.

Of course it isn’t just the weight that’s crept up on me it’s health issues as well. Anyone that’s ever had the pleasure of living with me knows that I snore like a chainsaw. About 7 years ago it became pretty clear that I wasn’t snoring but basically choking my way through the night. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in 2005 – according to the Dr. I stopped breathing something like 75 times an hour. Basically I wasn’t sleeping.

Along with that I developed Plantar Fasciitis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_fasciitis) which is really painful and means I walk like an old man every time I get up from sitting for a long-ish period of time.

Both of these conditions are fairly minor in the grand scope and I’m not complaining  - many people have these issues and much worse but that’s the thing… so far… it’s not worse. It’s practically in my DNA to have a heart attack. My Dad has had a triple and quadruple bypass, a heart attack and angina. If there is a candidate to have a heart issue I would seem to be one. Thankfully nothing has arisen, I went for a stress test with the family cardiologist back in March and everything was good. I had to laugh because the Dr.’s comment was

“…well Brent things are actually good! Which is surprising considering your… uh… shape.”

Besides that I’m having trouble putting my socks on and tying my shoes as well! That can’t be a good sign, I’m out of breath before getting into the car in the mornings just because I tied my shoes! Yeah not good.

Every year we do a guys weekend in Parry Sound and Killarney. We start in Parry Sound at the cottage and make our way north to Killarney to do a canoe/hiking trip to the top of Silver Peak. It’s about a 45 min canoe ride to the opening of the trail then about 5k to the base of Silver Peak. After that it’s another 1.5km mostly straight up. For a person in reasonable shape it’s a challenge and in the end it’s about a 6 hour round trip, give or take.

The eastern flank of Silver Peak in Killarney Provincial Park

Last year around this time we made our annual trip. I was going in at about 190lbs. I had shed some weight over the past 18 months due to taking on a new role at a start-up company in St. Catharines and I had started to work out fairly regularly. It was during this time that I found that stress went directly to my stomach. Some people “stress eat”, I stress starve. I can’t eat when I’m under stress so as a result I had dropped over 30lbs before going on the yearly boys trip.

Last year I was like a gazelle just bounding my way to the top, to the surprise of most of the guys on the trip – got back to the base camp feeling like a million bucks and thinking “Man, I gotta keep this up!”

This year? Not so much… last to the top, last to the bottom. To be fair my cousin Michael was last but he broke his kneecap a couple of years ago so he get’s points just for making the trip, besides I certainly wasn’t way ahead of him when we finished. Got back to base camp feeling like a buck fifty thinking “Man, I should have kept it up.”

That lead to me asking our fearless leader Sean how much he was weighing in at this year only to discover he was lighter than me. That would be the TSN Turning Point for me.

So now I’ve gotta do something about it. Problem is I’m an awesome starter but a not so great finisher. I’m a fairly competitive guy so usually what I do is challenge a couple of other people to a “Biggest Loser” contest. Which is good – usually some money is laid down which makes it even more important for me to win. (I tend to be money motivated) And I’m good, real good while the contest is on.

The last time I did one of these things I went so far as to take x-lax the day before the weigh-in. Nothing in the rule book prevented it although it didn’t really take affect until 2 days later which was a bit of an issue and it wasn’t much of an advantage in the end, butt I was committed because there was like 400 bucks at stake! I won in the end, I was moved. (see what I did there? Oh my sides!)

Still, I’m not a great finisher – I’m pretty sure my wife is rolling her eyes just reading  about me starting another weight loss run, thinking “here we go again”. But as always she will support me and do what she can to promote a healthy lifestyle despite the fact her hubby has the focus of a 4 year old. (She’s a good woman and I love her so!)

Because of that I’ve decided I’m going to blog about trying to lose weight this time around. I’ll tell you what, nothing creates accountability like telling as many people as you can through one of the largest communication vehicles ever created in the history of the world that you’re going to get yourself in shape and lose weight. Not sure if you’re going to want to read about it on a monthly basis but I’m gonna do it anyways. You can watch me fly or fail.

I’m no expert but basically what I’m going to do is count calories and start some light exercise to get things going. Essentially this is how I’m looking at it.

3500 Calories = 1 pound of fat

You basically burn 13 calories per pound (depending on your activity level). Body weight x calories = daily calories intake. Right now at 230lbs I’m eating 2990 – my goal weight is 170 – now before you all react saying “dude that’s 60lbs!” keep in mind that my ideal “medical weight” should be between 141 & 154lbs. (I know crazy). So calories for me daily should be around 2210 which means I should be losing about 1.5lbs per week.

Calorie counting is interesting because it almost always starts with bad decisions on food and drink. Initially you think “Hey! I can eat anything I want as long as I don’t eat more than 2210 calories per day! Woo hoo! Pour me a beer! ” The reality is that wears of quickly when you realize you’re either drinking most of your calories throughout the day or eating stupid things like sour keys (oh how I love sour keys!) and are totally hungry all the time. Smarter decisions start after that – looking for high protein foods and snacks etc.

So we’ll see. I did my first 4k last night. And it was fun. If you like running in the dark, rain and blinded. By the way just for the record when I say “run” I really mean walk – I just can’t bring myself to say in an excited tone that I “went on a 4k walk last night!” Nomesayin?

For some unknown reason I woke up Monday morning  and decided I needed to throw my last pair of contact lenses down the sink. (I’m really not going to try and explain it) So now I’m wearing my glasses – which I hate. When I went out last night decided I wouldn’t wear them – it’s raining, they won’t stay on my nose, yadda, yadda. So out the door I went in my black workout pants and navy blue fleece.  I live in a fairly rural area and about  15 mins in I started to realize that maybe wearing practically all black at night wasn’t such a hot idea – considering there are no side walks where I was walking. Did I mention it was raining? Plus I wasn’t wearing my glasses – my vision is terrible during the day and that much worse at night so I really can’t see anything very well.  No sidewalk, dark, black outfit, poor vision, fast cars on the road – At one point I nearly fell down a bank on the side of the road – couldn’t see – and I ended up almost straddling a fence at one point as it started off at ground level and worked it’s way up – cable kind, very uncomfortable – of course, again, I couldn’t see it, right? Jeez.

Anyways those are just some of the fantastic stories you have to look forward to if you decide to read this blog on a regular basis (how many actually do now is questionable). Maybe you’ll find it inspiring or maybe you’ll find it trite and dumb – doesn’t really matter I guess the point is to get off my ass and do something.

So here are the starting numbers:

October 4th - Weight- 230lbs

- goal weight 170lbs – no date set yet

Calorie intake – 2210 calories per day.

Wish me luck – talk to you in a month!

Love, Peace and Hairgrease.

brodg

Between the ages of 15 – 20 I was convinced of it. These were the 80′s and I was a popped collar bastion of cool. I wore safety pins in my construction pants which I of course bought at Hercules on Yonge St. I wouldn’t consider wearing any shoe that wasn’t a Bass Weejun, Tretorn or Vans. Polo, Lacoste, Club Monaco & Roots were all part of the uniform and of course my beachwear was Quicksilver, Billabong and Chip & Pepper.

This was back when The Edge was known as CFNY and Chris Sheppard was considered subversive.  The music of choice back then was alternative. Meaning Depeche Mode, The Smiths, The Cult, New Order etc.

Moving into the 90′s it became more about plaid and Doc Martins with very expensive ripped jeans. The music became heavier – Soundgarden, Nirvana – but still everything was calculated in order to maintain the cool factor. This was important to me, I wanted… no… needed to be hip. Frankly so did everybody my age and still does.

This brings me to the death of cool. Even at 38 I clung  to the idea that I was still “pretty cool”, but now I was a “cool dad” – having had 3 kids – hopefully a cool husband (only my wife can attest to that). The clothing is less calculated now, to be honest I wear whatever is in my closet that fits my expanding waistline regardless of how cool it is, music is still important but now I think what the kids are listening to is boring and all sounds the same.

But the final nail in the coffin of my coolness came last night… we bought a min-van. A Dodge Grand Caravan to be exact. The fact that Stow-N-Go seating was incredibly important in this purchase drove it all home. After the words “we need full Stow-N-Go” came out of my mouth when describing features we wanted in this van, I realized there had been a paradigm shift. I always swore high up and low down that I would NEVER buy a mini-van. I made fun of my friends who did so, told them they had just admitted far too much, told them that blue rinse in their greying hair was next yadda, yadda. To me buying a van was just selling out – you CAN’T be cool with a mini-van dammit!

Of course shoe horning my 3 little girls into the backseat of a Honda Accord was no trip in the park either. Sitting on the trunk lid to make it close because of the all the stuff we needed to pack for a weekend at the cottage wasn’t exactly practical. Not to mention the mountains of stuff piled up and around the kids in the back seat due to lack of trunk space. I also can’t fit my golf clubs in the trunk when it’s packed. If it were up to me we’d forego a few items of luggage to wedge the clubs in but my wife has other priorities. Apparently food and clothing can’t be substituted for golf clubs.

However with the new (trumpet blast) Mini-Van we can now fit EVERYTHING including the kitchen sink (as well as my clubs) into the van. And that seems pretty cool to me.

Being a single car family for the past 4 years has put a serious cramp on my wifes freedom and the van now gives her some much needed mobility. She’s very happy about that.

THAT seems pretty cool to me.

My kids aren’t practically sitting in each others lap beating the crap out of each other on long road trips.

This is cool too (and a lot quieter).

When I told my 6 year old, Emma, last night that we had bought a van she jumped up and down saying “That’s SO COOL Daddy!”, and showered me with hugs and kisses.

A happy wife? Happy kids?Lots of hugs and kisses?!…. I think my ideas of what cool is have changed.

And you know what? That’s cool.

Love, Peace and Hairgrease.

brodg

Who knows? I guess if you’re interested you’ll read… if not you won’t – deep eh?

At the very least I hope to make you smile – cuz as you’ll discover (If I ever post again) I tend to think I’m funny.

Love, Peace and Hairgrease.

brodg