All my life I have heard about the frog in a pot of water
who dies not by suddenly being scalded but in the comfort of sitting in
room-temperature water that slowly warms until the frog is boiled to death. I
suppose that analogy explains a lot of human folly, including the manner in
which we wake up one morning to find ourselves fat. Complacency, laxity, and
bad habits slowly take their toll until we find, to our horror, that we look
horrible and sometimes feel helpless to do anything about it.
I was heading in that direction after my dramatic weight
loss, slowly inching my way back to Fat City. Fueled by the humiliation of
being too heavy, especially by that image of the Overfed American in the hotel
window, I was able to succumb to the rigors of the diet, but after I got my
weight down, I grew more and more lax. That was the beginning of seeing my
weight creep up to unacceptable levels.
Then there was another factor that contributed to my slow
weight-gain: I replaced the 6 miles of running per day in the summer of 2005
with power yoga, and my weight increased to 230 over the next four years. In
spite of my added weight, I refused to go back to the running for several reasons.
One, the running gave me shin splints, plantar fasciitis, lower back pain,
chafing, and sometimes headaches. I was sick of applying gobs of Vaseline
between my thighs and across my nipples before every run and putting my reeking
ammonia-soaked gym clothes in the wash. I was sick of having to buy a new pair
of $100 running shoes every three months. I was sick of catching colds and
other viruses, including pink eye, from the gym’s filthy cardio machines. I was
sick of having to take a two-hour nap after my 6-mile runs and still not
feeling refreshed. And I was simply sick of the gym. I had been going to health
clubs since 1974 at the age of 13 and by 2005 I had lost my tolerance for all
the peacock strutters and self-ascribed training experts and other annoying
gasbags who frequented the gym.
But most compellingly of all, I quit the gym because I had
fallen in love with power yoga, the way it made me feel, the way it afforded me
flexibility that I never had before, and the freedom it gave me to exercise at
home. Before I did yoga, I could
not turn my head when moving my car in reverse without feeling a sharp pain in
my neck. After doing yoga for a few months, the sharp neck pain had vanished.
However, yoga has one disadvantage. It does not not burn calories
like running. My one-hour treadmill runs resulted in a expenditure of 1,200
calories. In contrast, my yoga workouts burned about half that. To increase the
calorie-burn of my workouts, I have made it more rigorous by incorporating
high-rep dumbbell and medicine ball exercises into my power yoga routine, which
I perform for an hour five or six days a week.
But in spite of my combination of power yoga, medicine
balls, and dumbbells, which burn between 700-800 calories per hour workout, my
weight has crept up to 230.
Another thing I miss about the running is the safety net it
affords me. If I indulge in some dessert or other, I can simply run it off.
Without the running, I have the heightened anxiety that no matter how hard I
work-out, one or two slices of boysenberry pie with vanilla ice cream could set
me back for weeks.
This is the condition I find myself in August of 2008. Four
years after reaching my target weight of 210, I’ve allowed myself to eat about
3,700 calories a day, resulting in a weight-gain of 20 pounds, the mid-way
point of the 259-pound Overfed American traipsing around the Kauai Sheraton
Inn.
Knowing this makes me very anxious. Something must be done.
I do not want to be like the average American troglodyte who indulges his
appetites without thought. I want to be in control of my life. I need a
boundary in a country that embraces reckless excess. One boundary that I think
I might be able to live with is 3,000 calories a day. It’s a good number for
me. I’ve been stuck at 230 for about a year now so apparently 3,700 calories
maintains my current weight provided I continue my intense home-exercise
routine.
Getting my weight down should be a very simple math
problem: There are 3,600 calories in a pound of fat. If I keep my calories at
3,000, that will be 4,900 fewer calories a week than I am currently consuming.
Over six months, or 24 weeks, that would be 117,600 fewer calories consumed,
which divided by 3,600 is 32.7 pounds of fat.
This number amazes me. I have to tell it to myself again
and again. If I simply stick to 3,000 calories a day for six months and
continue my current training, my weight will go from 230 to 198 pounds. That’s
more than 10 pounds beyond my target weight. More importantly, I will no longer
be marching toward Fat City. I’ll be marching to a much better place, a land of
boundaries, discipline, self-control, and the self-confidence that comes from
having a lean, muscular physique. Suddenly, my “vision” of 3,000 Calories a Day
seems like a miracle and bringing it to fruition seems like the difference
between heaven and hell.
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