Weigh Day

I got up this morning around 8am. Sleeping in was a treat, especially since I stayed up until 2am with my wife. We went to a unique and perfect gathering of friends last night. One of our friends died after a long battle with cancer two days ago. This amazing woman will be buried in a green cemetery in a cardboard coffin. It was her wish that her friends and their children decorate her coffin. We all gathered and did lots of hugging and crying. Like I remember funeral gatherings as a kid, the kids ran in large herds in and out of the house. Little girls put on make up and chased little boys while older boys played video games and discussed the merits of various gaming platforms. Everyone painted, from the smallest to the oldest. The kids covered the insert that her body will rest on. The adults painted all around the coffin both inside and out. We wrote notes and painted various things that represented how we felt and our relationship with our friend. Honestly, when I first learned that we would decorate the coffin I didn’t know what to think. I am not used to interacting with coffins. There were several amazing things that came out of it all.

One of the most important was that this act was what our friend wanted and we got to fulfill her wish. And we, unknowingly, fulfilled another wish of hers. We all know she loved these kinds of gatherings—tie die parties, potlucks of any sort—she loved her friends and their children because we were and are all family. Diverse and sometimes dysfunctional just like any true family. We did exactly what she wanted us to do. We had our usual potluck party where we all gathered and talked and played and remembered and planned for a good solid 11 hours. The whole event did another thing, at least for me. It humanized death. Knowing someone who dies is very personal and human. Once they are gone, we tend to disconnect from the physical part that is left. The objects associated with death become almost taboo except for close family and death professionals. We personalized that coffin, got to know it and put ourselves into it. When I arrived to see the coffin standing up in the garage, I was a bit shocked to see something associated with death so publicly on display. By the time I left, the coffin was just a container that we had put our love, thoughts and even a bit of blood into. It had become something of our own creation that would hold our precious friend until she could return to the earth. I don’t know about anyone else that was there, but I felt a little better about the whole thing having gotten to do what we did. The most fitting thing of all—something so outside of the norm as allowing kids to paint your coffin just fits our friend so perfectly! Like her life, her death has given all of us so much.

Anyway, back to the weigh in. I am 5’8” in a thick pair of socks. When I ran track and played football in high school I weighed in at strapping 145 lbs. I weighed myself New Year’s Day and in the intervening 27 years (since I graduated) I’ve added 60 lbs! That comes out to 2.22 lbs per year. Actually, the weight really didn’t start staying around until my wife and I started having kids. I’ve always joked that I gained 20 lbs with each kid and haven’t been able to get it back off. Well, here it is. This morning I weighed in at 203.8 lbs. According to the Mayo Clinic, who probably has someone on staff that knows what they are talking about, my BMI is 31. In medical terms I am OBESE. I guess I should change the name of the blog to the Obese Archaeologist. Here is what the Mayo Clinic tells me to do:

Consider the benefits of achieving a healthy weight — a reduced risk of serious health conditions such as heart disease, stroke and diabetes, increased energy and improved self-esteem, for example. Then talk to your doctor about the best weight-loss approach for you. To get started:

• Embrace healthy eating as a lifestyle by choosing a variety of nutrient-rich foods including fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

• Exercise. Before exercising ask your doctor about the right level and type of activities for you. Remember, even small amounts of activity provide immediate health benefits.

• Set action goals focused on specific healthy activities such as starting a daily food and activity diary.

Even if I knock off 30 lbs by le tour, I’ll still be overweight! In order to get into the upper range of normal, I need to get down to 160 lbs. I really need to lose 45 or 50 lbs. That is pretty daunting.

I said I would start today. So what am I going to do? Well, for one I want to get some kind of exercise in. Because I have kids and we homeschool them, I am never without my kids except when I go to work. At one level, kids are good at keeping you active. At another level, it is hard to go on a walk or bike ride for exercise when the kids come along. It is more like a gentle stroll or slow-moving, noisy bike parade. I need to exercise without the kids. Today is a holiday (thank you MLK for trying to help us meet our goal of becoming a just society) and so I don’t have to work. Still, there is a memorial service to go to and I may end up watching a gaggle of kids while a couple of moms go to the service. Then my kids have ice skating and skateboarding in the afternoon. Oh and my wife needs to drive to Augusta to get our Macbook looked at because it keeps spontaneously shutting down. Yeah and we loaned our second car to a friend who came from out of town to attend the happening surrounding our friend’s death. At the moment, I am not even sure how I am going to get all that done today. Without sounding too much like a martyr, I guess I need to put my health stuff on the same priority level as ice skating and misbehaving computers.

My plan is to go for a walk for at least a half an hour. I’ll report back in on that. As for diet, I’ll have a reasonably normal breakfast and try to eat fruit and have a protein shake for lunch. Dinner? That depends on when I get back from the skating rink. What ever I do, I’ll put it in a food journal.

So I got a good 30-35 minute walk in. My route through the subdivision took me up and down some light hills and one pretty good one. I broke a pretty good sweat and felt my legs getting heavy. I feel like that is a pretty good start, but the key will be to keep this up for the long term. Looking back at my food journal, I am doing OK so far. Honestly where I do my best backsliding is after dinner. I’m looking forward to the start of the TDU later this evening. If I am home I’ll follow it online. I expect Sky to dominate but Greipel will get his licks in there too. I am not sure where, but I expect that if LA wants a stage win then Team Shack will get one.