Day 7 – Walking through the past

Damn near through DeKalb County

The Tread-Desk Diaries, Day 7

Miles walked – 6.3

Speed – 2.2

Incline – 3%

Total miles – 29.3

OK, another day, another six miles and change. Checking my virtual journey, I see I’m damn near out of the next county.

Hmmm . . . what else to say?

How about a little history. Looking at the Google Earth image of my current situation, you might guess that I could have stood on the same spot a hundred years ago and I wouldn’t be able to tell the differnece. Farm land pretty much as far as you can see in any direction. But that doesn’t mean nothing ever happened around there, even in sleepy DeKalb County, Illinois.

In 1874, Joseph Gliden of DeKalb County received a patent for barbed wire fencing. The folks in DeKalb County are pretty proud of that, and like to promote DeKalb as the ancestral home of the stuff. The folks in Kent, Ohio might disagree, but the fact is barbed wire was instrumental in the development of the American west, and Gliden’s version is the one that really kicked things off. It’s still the stuff that keeps the cows out from in front of your car, and we wouldn’t have one of our best Steve McQueen memories without it. (Go to Google and search for motorcycle + The Great Escape if you don’t know what I’m talking about.)

So before I cross into Lee County (and that sucker is oriented more east to west, so I’ll be there a while) a quick tip of the hat to DeKalb County, Illinois for helping keep the cows out and the inmates in since 1874..

Day 6 – Boy, you’re gonna carry that weight . . .

The Tread-Desk Diaries, Day 6

Miles walked – 6.1

Speed – 2.2

Incline – 3%

Total miles – 23

As promised, each Monday I hop on the scale. Down a pound. That’s a relief. What with blowing off the weekend, I figured I’d be lucky to break even.

I think back to the first time I tried this tread-desk business. I think I dropped four or five pounds the first week. But I was walking pretty much all day every day. That got old and after a while I quit on it. This feels, I dunno, sustainable?

Going from five to six miles was no biggies, especially since I was doing more like five-and-a-half on average anyway. Except Monday was conference call hell, and it turns out the treadmill is a little too much background noise. So I only had 1.6 miles in by 3 PM, which meant I had to walk the rest of the workday. It did feel a little like clock-watching by the end.  Not tired or sore or anything, I guess I just hate it when I have to do anything. 

Since we’re talking weight today, I’ll throw this in. As mentioned, I’ve made the bath-time libation and every-other-day thing, but other than that, I’m not on a diet, not formally restricting my calorie intake. I am thinking about it a little, though. Just taking a second here and there before I stuff something in my mouth and asking myself if I’m actually hungry. Sometimes the answer is yes, but a couple of times  the answer has been no. It all adds up, I suppose.

OK, one week down, one pound down. Onwards and downwards.

 

Days 4 and 5 – all right folks, move along, nothing to see here . . .

The Tread-Desk Diaries, Days 4 and 5

Miles walked – 0

Speed – eh, well, zero

Incline – see speed

Total miles – 16.9

 

Hmmm . . . it’s a lot easier to write a post when I’m hitting my goals. But being honest is part of the deal here. And I can’t say I’m looking forward to the promised Monday weigh in tomorrow.

Looks like weekends might be a problem. I don’t have the predictable hours-long stretches of computer time that make the tread-desk work so well during the week. Family obligations, errands – shit happens.  Sure, some weekends, I get in nice long blocks of writing, but this wasn’t one of them. I did talk the wife in to walking up to Mother’s, the local diner we often have breakfast at, on Saturday, and that’s a three-mile round trip according to the Yahoo! Maps people. I was tempted to slip that in to my total, but that wasn’t the deal. It’s not like I never walk anywhere. I gotta walk the dog and so forth. The deal was to use the tread-desk to ADD mileage, so I don’t get to tack on regular walks.    

“Oh yeah?” you ask. “You’re on the computer right now.  Why aren’t you racking up some miles?”

‘Cause I’m watching football, that’s why.  I’ve spent a good part of the day watching football. And the tread-desk isn’t in the TV room. But that’s a thought. The way TV prices are these days, what’s a little TV go for, say a 19”? Free or close to it, I suspect. So maybe get one of those, mount it on the wall in front of the tread-desk, find out how much I’ve got to shell out to the Comcast people to wire up another location . . . might be worth looking in to.

Or maybe I need to revisit my program, add some miles to the weekday goals, figure the weekends will be iffy. 

OK, this week, I’m going to go six miles a day, M-F, which will leave only five miles total to squeeze in on the weekends. And I’ll check out the TV deal and get back to ya’ll on that.

Hey, I didn’t figure going from a lazy fat-ass to a normal sized human being was going to be easy, and I’m still in the first week of this, still shaking the bugs out. But knowing you’re out there watching, keeping me honest, it makes a difference.

Day 3 – A man’s got to know his limitations

The red line shows my trip so far. Now a mile or so SE of Waterman, IL

The tread-desk diaries, Day 3

 

Jan. 20, 2012

Miles walked – 5.5

Speed – 2.2 mph

Incline - 4 percent am (3.1 miles), 3 percent pm (2.4 miles) 

Total miles – 16.9

As planned, I goosed both the speed and the incline this morning, to 2.2 mph and 4 percent, respectively. Little changes, big difference.  It turns out it was more the incline than the speed. After doing 3.1 miles in the morning, I was actually a little sweaty, and the walking, while not taxing exactly, was feeling enough like work that every so often it distracted my attention. I found myself checking the time and mileage, wondering how close I was to my five miles, wondering if I could sit down and be done with it yet. (It doesn’t help that I was writing an article on how expiring tax credits influence exit strategies at the limited and general partner levels for investors in affordable housing projects. Kathy Bates in a g-string could tempt one’s attention away from that.)

But point noted. Up until now, the walking never really entered into my mind. That’s why I’ve gone over my five-mile target both days. It wasn’t a conscious choice to do a little more, it was just that, when I checked, I was past my goal. And that’s the whole point here – the tread-desk is supposed to be a way to burn some calories essentially for free. By which I mean while I’m working anyway, so without eating in to time I’d like to devote to something else. And by which I mean without any of the pain associated with actual exercise. An activity completely in the background, one that isn’t competing for my attention or making me feel bad. While I’m on the tread-desk, if I’m thinking about the walking a whole lot more than I’m thinking about breathing, then I’m not doing it right.

A minor epiphany. Here’s where I went off the rails those several months back when I first tried this. I didn’t have a miles target, so I was walking on the treadmill all day everyday. I was impatient for results, so I was constantly pushing the speed or the incline. I was sweaty. I was getting tired. My feet hurt. And that gave me a reason to quit.

So, in the afternoon session, I dropped the incline back to 3 degrees. You wouldn’t think that would matter much, but it did. The 2.2 mph? At 3 degrees, that felt fine. And sure enough, when I thought to check, I was half-a-mile past my goal for the day.

A man’s does have to know his limitations. Hey, if you can’t trust Harry Callahan, who can you trust?

Day 2 – Walking is cool, or should I say hot

Damn near out of Kane County

The tread-desk diaries, Day 2

 

Jan. 19, 2012

Miles walked – 5.8

Speed – 2.1 mph

Incline – 3 percent

Total miles – 11.4

OK, 5.77 miles today, but I had to do this in two sessions. I had a conference call. It turns out, with the cellphone on speaker, the treadmill (and the sound of my size 12 feet tramping on it) makes a little too much background noise.  Too bad. I’d really love to be able to walk through my conference calls.  As I figured, it’s really no big deal getting in five miles. Gone over both days so far. I’m holding off on the temptation to push it, though. Like I said yesterday, I’m sticking with my plan.

Gotta fidget with things, I guess. It’s my nature. As I mentioned when I kicked this whole thing off, I’ve used the tread-desk before, and back the first time around, I ended up walking at between 2.4 and 2.6 miles and hours most of the time. I just figured I’d start at 2.0 and work up.  But 2.0 does feel a tad slow. In fact, I found myself having to consciously think about NOT walking too fast and bumping into the desk or stepping on the front edge of the treadmill. And the walking-while-you-write deal definitely does not work if you have to think about the walking instead of the writing. So I bumped it to 2.1 today, and will bump it to 2.2 tomorrow.

Turns out this tread-desk thing may also be environmentally friendly. Usually, I’ve got the thermostat set at 70. With all the walking, though, I was getting a little toasty, so I dropped it down to 65. I’ll have to crank it back up when the missus gets home, but through the workday, I’ll be saving some dough on heat and cutting down on my carbon footprint. I expect Al Gore to be by with some roses any day now. Hey, he’s single now, maybe he’ll slip me a little tongue.

Changing my map strategy – sticking to the roads was too big of a pain in the ass, so I’m going due west cross-country. Total distance so far is 11.17 miles, which puts me just southwest of Big Rock, IL, in the middle of some cornfield, twisting my ankles on the frozen clumps of dirt and the stubble of sawed-off corn stalks. Some fun, huh? Looks like I’ll get out of the county tomorrow.

Day 1 – Sticking to the plan

The tread-desk diaries, Day 1

Where in the world is Fatso San Diego?

Jan. 18, 2012

Miles walked – 5.5

Speed – 2.0 mph

Incline – 3 percent

One day down, 364 to go. Two hours and forty-five minutes on the tread-desk today, pretty much in one fell swoop. I could have gone longer easily, but I’m thinking back on previous excercise initiatives – how I’d go gangbusters out of the gate then flame out. I’ve got a plan, I figure, why not just stick to it, at least at first.  Gets to the point where I’m doing that, making some progress, got a month or two under my belt, and then I want to stretch it out some? Fine. But I said five miles a day, let’ s just stick to that for now, shall we?

Oh, the map. I figure everybody loves a visual aid. Everybody loves a marital aid, too, but that’s different. Anyway, I figure I’ll track my progress on this map, like I was actually going somewhere, adding up the miles and seeing where it takes me. I’m heading west, just like I was a young man. So far, I’m somewhere on the northern fringes of Sugar Grove, IL. And for the smart-ass out there who’s getting ready to point out that it’ s illegal to walk on an interstate, what part of virtual don’t you understand.

Observations? Probably need to throw a little stretching into the mix – I’ve been off the treadmill for several hours now, and I can feel things tightening up some. So I’ll stretch a little before bed, a little when I wake up, see if that helps. Probably will. Also, it can’t hurt to cut down on calories somewhere, so I’m skipping my traditional bath-time bourbon tonight. Gonna make that an every-other-day thing for the duration. That’ll add up to something like fourteen-and-a-half bottles of booze over the year if I’ve done my math right. Gotta count for something.

Well ain’t I just a model of virtue and probity? Christ, now I’m old, fat and boring.

Via con queso, me amigos.

There’s a loaded gun in my face? How did I miss that?

The treadmill desk

I’m fat, and if that doesn’t change, it will kill me. Science says so. My family history says so. Geeze, you think I would react to a threat to my life with more alacrity. Some guy points a gun at your face and you see a way out you bolt like you just got a cattle prod enema. But being fat? That’s one of those frogs-in-boiling-water threats. Just kind of sneaks up on you while you’re washing down the Paula Dean recipes with beer and bourbon. It doesn’t feel like getting pistol whipped – it feels all warm and comfy.

Guess it’s finally sunk in, though. Something’s gotta change.

Yeah, there are a couple zillion diets out there – and that Atkins deal? Steak-and-egging my way to Marky Mark’s old underwear model body? Don’t think I’m not tempted. But we all know none of that crazy shit works, not for most people. And we all know the math. You want to weigh less, then burn more calories than you take in. Like most things in life, it’s simple, just hard, and people keep trying to find some way to make it complicated and easy.

Thing is, I’m a writer. Writing about boring shit is my day job. Writing about killing people is the hobby I’m trying to turn into a second job. Lots of nice things about writing, but even if you can type real fast – and I can type like a fucking demon – it ain’t exactly exercise. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite.

A couple years back, I hit on the solution. I built me a treadmill desk. And for a while, that worked great. For a while, I was doing a lot of my writing at 2.6 miles an hour, and, in a few months, I was down nearly 20 pounds. But then I drifted out of the habit. Can’t say why. It’s not like it was physically taxing. But the belt on the treadmill got fucked up, it took a week to get it repaired, I got out of the daily habit and . . . thus inertia doth make fat men of us all.

But I’m getting back in the habit, and ya’ll are going to help.

The fact is, I’m a tad narcissistic. A tad, some of you are saying. A TAD? Shut up, I’m talking here. But I do work better with an audience. Call it what you will – a lack of discipline, a need for external accountability, an addiction to shame as a motivator, whatever. But on my writing blog (GOING BALLISTIC), I cranked out the first draft of a couple novels by writing them in public – by committing to cranking out chapters daily, or nearly so, until they were done. It’s just harder for me to fail if I’m doing it in public.

I’m gonna try that for weight loss, too.

So I’ve dusted off the treadmill desk. The goal? At least five miles a day.  With all the time on the computer, if I can’t squeeze in five miles a day, then I’m not trying. The Mayo Clinic folk say a 160 pound person walking two miles an hour on a treadmill burns 183 calories an hour. I’m bigger than that, so I’ll be burning more, but let’s use their number. Two miles an hour for two and a half hours a day is five miles, and that will burn 457.5 calories – I’ll round that up to 460, since I’m hauling an extra 80 pounds around. Burn 460 calories a day for a year, and you’ve got 167,900 calories. You’ve gotta burn 3,500 calories to lose a pound. So, if I stick to this and I don’t ingest any more calories than I have been on an average basis (hard to imagine THAT happening), then, in a year, I should be down 47 pounds and change. That would put me under 200 pounds for the first time since the waning days of the Carter administration.

This is the diary – the accountability part. Every day, I’m going to post how many miles I got in along with my current speed and incline settings. Every Monday, I’m going to weigh in.  And I’ll throw in any observations I have along the way, maybe even a recipe or two if I hit on some healthy crap that doesn’t taste like, well, healthy crap.

Starting weight? 242 pounds.  Here we go.