Ropes

I bought four new jump ropes. One is a weighted speed rope, another a plain cheap plastic speedrope, and two school yard ropes with sections of plastic. The last two are slow and make me want to sing, "Bubble gum, bubble gum, in a dish...."

So THIS will be the key to my getting back into shape. :-)

Wei Wu Weight Loss

Okay, this has gotten embarassing. It's like the episode of Friends when Phoebe first tries to visit her father, and she sits there in the front seat of the cab, with Joey and Chandler encouraging her from the back, and she keeps saying, "Okay, so here I go. I'm going. Here I go." And yet she doesn't budge.

That's like me and my recent weight loss attempts. Bold proclamations followed by...nothing. My weight has continued to hover in the 260-270 range.

Still obese.

But now I am changing my tact. The Taoists have a phrase, wei wu wei, which means doing without doing. This is most often taken to mean doing without striving or fretting or over-thinking. In martial arts, it is like the concept of no-mind. Letting your subconscious or muscle memory or whatever do the moves, while your mind remains essentially at peace.

And so that's my new plan: have no plan. Just get healthy.

Not sure how engaging this will be in terms of blog entries. We'll see. You can always comment to let me know.

One more round, Tommy, one more round

Okay, so here I am, back at it. I weigh 266 -- down from the infamous high-point of 280. Finished 10 weeks of Weight Watchers at Work with a net loss of, like, six pounds. (The first half of the session I gained weight, no fault of Weight Watchers, just me.)

So here's the plan:

• Count Points (a Weight Watcher thing)
• Work out everyday at lunch
• Lift twice a week with Josh
• Walk a lot

Not rocket science.

My ultimate goal is 208. Since my current weight is 266, that means I've got 58 pounds to lose. I've set the following milestones to achieve:

• 256
• 248
• 240
• 232 (weighed this briefly -- one week -- in 2006)
• 224 (weighed this in 1995 at Saturn before Josh was born)
• 216
• 208 (weighed this in 1987 before I got married)

Not much more to the plan at this point. But I've got some momentum.

I'll keep you abreast of my progress.