Perhaps I’ll engage in some lighter fare, and I do need to address a couple of long-lost topics that have gotten lost amongst the..er…heavier topics.
Actually I do want to talk about weight, specifically mine. My mass seems to be in a linear incline since I’ve pretty much given up the smoking. I say “pretty much” as I have had a couple of deliberate lapses lasting over a couple of 2 day road trips. But by and large, I’ve been good. The smokes still have a psychological pull, as I do miss them, especially during the stressful times.
But weight. Geez. After 10 years staying at pretty 219 lbs. or so, I’ve gone up to close to 240 over the past year. Today I found a place where I could calculate my BMI (body mass index) and I’m at 29.9! I’m 0.1 from going from “overweight” to “obese!”
My knees are suffering for it. Other systems are too, I’m sure. So I’m watching it to make sure I at least stop the incline, which I’ve done since February. But now I really need to get it off and this will involve some exercise.
I hate exercise.
I don’t mind doing something relatively purposeful. For instance I still use a push mower on my 2/3 acre lawn. Okay, it is self-propelled, but with the bagger I’m still pushing and sweating buckets in the Georgia sun. So once a week, I have that going. I still don’t like it much but at least it makes more sense to me than walking a track or running somewhere I don’t need to go. But my knees don’t really like this very much. Once a week is about as much as they’ll take of that pushing over the rough terrain that isn’t even that nice of a lawn..
Swimming is not something I do well, and since there’s no pool, river or lake nearby, that’s out.
Joining a fitness club: That totally seems like a waste of money for me. Pointless exercise, remember? This works for some and it is a yuppie thing to do to keep in shape. But it’s not like a real club, with dancing girls, a pole, cigarettes and mixed drinks.
Plus, the idea of driving somewhere else in order to exercise just seems odd to me. If I lived within walking distance, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But if more of us lived within walking distance of stuff, this probably wouldn’t be an issue at all.
Yeah, there is one sort of exercise for pleasure that I could totally be into. But my wife would sooner see me dead than do that 3x a week for 30 minutes. “Enjoy the heart attack, Fatman!” I can’t even get it once a month. Or even once a year.
I Finally did find something that looks like it might appeal to me. I recently read about a guy who played video games and lost a pretty significant amount of weight. Video games?
If you don’t like video games, you will totally not get it. At least this is true for Arwyn. I approached her with the idea and she outright scoffed. She admitted that I had gained weight, and so has she. But the idea of video gaming it off seemed absolutely preposterous to her. Her idea of an intense video game is spider solitaire. I’m more of an RTS man, like Age of Empires. But back in the ’80’s I spent vast sums of money on various video arcade games.
Anyway, I’m thinking of trying to step my way into shape using Stepmania, which is the open source (and free) version of Dance Dance Revolution. I downloaded the program and a bunch of the songs and it’s actually kind of fun to play on the keyboard. In fact I really like it as the music is real techno-ish and is heavy, heavy on beat. Perfect for dancing and I probably burn a few extra calories grooving around while doing it with the keyboard. It certainly is challenging and I notice that I am getting better at following the arrows, but I still struggle with anything but the easiest of selections!
Fortunately, Stepmania is fully configurable, so I can adjust and tweak it enough so it isn’t overly frustrating. I’m using version 3.9 at the moment, and it is compatible with most operating systems even PII’s with 64 Mb RAM (there’s also a Linux version for you that are Penguin friendly). Slowing it down for a middle-aged, overweight guy like me is a must!
My step mat has been ordered through eBay so we’ll see how things work, shortly. I suppose I could work a fitness/weight loss theme in here somewhere, amongst my other topics. Blogging is a good way to help with accountability. Sometimes. I’ve read a couple other blogs that had weight loss as somewhat of a goal or theme, but they didn’t do very well. The blogs were quite successful, but the weight loss– eh, not so much.
I’m actually getting two mats, so I can either have one at home and one at work or I can find a similarly slow, middle aged partner to compete against/play with. It would be nice to have a partner to play with.
D.
Posted by diggerjones 
