Weight Loss for Geeks: Step One: See a Doctor!

How many times have you read diet advice that begins, "see a doctor?" (Or, more pretentiously, "consult with your physician?") I hate that advice. For several reasons, I'm skeptical of our medical system. About fifteen years ago I had a doctor who seemed to want to prescribe a pill for everything. I never left his office without a grab bag of pharmaceuticals. He didn't seem so much an actual doctor as a salesman for drugs.

So, I changed doctors, and my new doctor suggested I might have a food allergy that would explain my persistent allergies and said he'd order some blood work. He didn't tell me that the blood work would cost SIX-THOUSAND DOLLARS! It seems like, I dunno, the kind of thing you might mention. The blood work came back telling me I was "sensitive" to pretty much every food on earth, wheat, onions, tomatoes, radishes, and a long list of stuff I can't remember. I started reading up on food "sensitivities" and came away feeling like the whole thing was a scam. Obviously, there are legitimate food allergies, but the sensitivity stuff felt like pseudoscience designed to give doctors an excuse to issue bills for six grand.

After that, I went a decade without seeing a doctor. It was only a few years ago when I started drifting to sleep while I was driving home at 3pm that I thought, you know, maybe it's time I see a doctor about my never ending drowsiness.

It took about thirty minutes and an inexpensive blood test to diagnose me with a thyroid deficiency. The thyroid medication is dirt cheap, and my energy levels were boosted at least 200% once we got the dose right. But, I was still having to take naps in the afternoon. So, my doctor recommended a sleep study, saying I probably had sleep apnea. I suspected this was true, since I often woke up to discover I was sitting upright in bed, since I would stop breathing when I was laying down. I was really worried about using a CPAP machine when I first got it, but now using it is no hassle at all. I get great, deep sleep, and make it through my days without needing a nap. Heck, I even miss my afternoon naps and sometimes try to sneak one in and find I can't fall asleep because I'm not tired enough.

It's possible that I might have been able to lose weight if I'd cut calories and upped my exercise while I still had my thyroid deficiency, but it's doubtful. My metabolism just couldn't burn the calories I ate efficiently. It's also possible that I could have cured my sleep apnea by losing a significant amount of body weight. But, I didn't have the energy to do this until I started getting good nights of sleep by using the CPAP machine. I also couldn't have broken my addiction to soft drinks without CPAP. I used to require bottle after bottle of Mountain Dew to get me through a day. Now, I genuinely can't remember the last time I had a soda.

Even if you don't have an underlying health problem causing your obesity, if you are obese, it's likely that you're developing health problems. I was on the borderline of high blood pressure and flirting with diabetes before I changed my lifestyle. My latest blood work had all these numbers pulling back well into the safe zones.

Information is power, if you have the wisdom to use it. Your doctor has information you need. Get it.

Final Weigh In: 225.

Today was the final weigh in of the weight loss contest where I work. In this second round, my final weigh in was 225, or 19 pounds down since the end of January. My weigh in at the start of the first round of the contest last September was 284, so I've lost 59 pounds since getting serious about changing my diet and exercise habits. This is the before and after of what that looks like:

I'm not done! Not reaching 224 nags at me. I'd rather say I've lost 60 pounds than 59. I'm definitely going to continue moving forward with the goal target of being below 220 by the time of my next convention, ConCarolina's in early June. But, I fear these next five pounds are going to take more effort than the first 50. In the last week, I walked over 30 miles and biked another 13, and came in well below my calorie goals on all but one day, and still only lost 3 pounds for the week. My body is very efficient at moving me across long distances. When Cheryl and I first went biking on the American Tobacco Trail three years ago, we were wiped out after biking 7 miles. One one trip, five miles left me so tired I had to walk my bike up the final hill, and we're not talking a real hill here, just a very mild grade of a few degrees. This time, we did the first seven miles on Saturday barely breaking a sweat. Even after 13 miles, we weren't completely spent. I think we could have easily managed another couple of miles if we'd had time.

Back in September, I wore pants with a 42 inch waistband. Now, my best fit is a 36" waist, and I'd probably be buying a 35" waist if they sold men's pants in odd sizes. I tried on a 34" waist yesterday and was able to get it on, but it wasn't comfortable. I'm highly doubtful I can get below a 34" waist, since I think that's what I wore in college when I was skinny as a rail.

In the coming days, I plan to do a few posts about my weight loss strategies. I have a very geeky approach; basically, I treat my body like a characer in an RPG game and constantly work to improve my stats. I used to spend five hours sitting at a computer hunting through virtual dungeons in hopes of getting my character to go up a level. Now, I spend five hours a week exercising to get my weight stat to tick down another notch. And, like an RPG, the further you go, the tougher it gets.

Week 13: 228

Up a pound this week, on the pentultimate weigh in. But, I'm eating vegetarian up to the final weigh in, and over the next two days I'm doing a marathon distance, walking 27 miles over the course of two days, basically covering all of the American Tobacco Trail from Herndon park down to 64. My target is to reach 224 by next Monday so I can finish with a nice round 20 pound loss for this latest contest, and a sixty pound loss since September.

Last week, on a whim I tried on a pair of 36" waist jeans in the store to see how much more weight I'd need to lose to get into the smaller waist band. (In September I was a 42" waist.) To my shock, I not only got them on, they were actually a little loose! Yay! Except, groan, I already spent a ton of money on new clothes at the beginning of the year. Now, it's shopping time again. Sigh. But, I guess that buying new wardrobes is the literal price you pay for losing weight. Weighed against potentially lengthening my life and avoiding the diabetes that was almost certainly on the horizon for me given my family history, it seems like a worthwhile trade.

Week 12: 227!

I broke through my plateau of 231 finally and made it to 227 this week! Woohoo! When I started my new eating and exercise habits back in September, I weighed 284, so I've now lost 20% of my old body weight.

One reason I got through the plateau was the return of better weather for walking. And jogging. I still can't jog very long, but I'm definitely getting faster. For the first time ever, I did a mile in under 15 minutes, clocking in at 13:45. My knees aren't giving me any trouble at all since I started wrapping them. I'm looking forward to building up my endurance.

I've got two more weeks left in the competition. This week, I'm going to do a couple of medium sized hikes in the five mile range. The following week, I plan to shoot for some real distance. The furthest hike I've yet made is 11 miles, and I want to beat that by a good margin. After how hard it was to break through my last plateau, I'm not as positive that I can hit 224, which would be 20 pounds down in this latest competition. But, I'm damn sure going to try.

Week 11: 231

Back to 231 this week. Still on my plateau, even with an 8 mile hike at Pilot Mountain on Saturday. My goal of getting into the 220s by the end of April is still plausible, but much more daunting than it looked to me a month ago. My real milestone will be 227... if I hit that number, I'll have lost 20% of my body weight since starting my fitness project last September. However, when I hit 230, I'll have lost 20% of my body weight since my checkup last March that led to my sleep apnea treatment. I weighted 288 then, so there's big difference between how I looked then and how I looked now. Even though my weight has plateaued, I'm definitely seeing my waistline continue to shrink. The new clothes I bought in December are now pretty loose. I tried on some shorts the other day that were a 36" waist and they weren't tight at all. I wore 42" pants back in September. Progress!

Weeks 8, 9, 10: 232

Sigh. I know it's usually called a plateau, but it sure feels like a rut. It's frustrating because my weight at home has frequently been dipping into the 220s during the morning. Last Wednesday, I got as low as 227. But, for some reason, on Mondays at work, I'm just stuck at the same number.

We've had a couple of weeks of terrible weather that's kept me from making any long hikes. This week, I'm going to be too busy on my novel to carve out time for three or four hour hike, which are the exercise that really moves the numbers for me. I have been working in jogging when I get out, but the three mile sessions I have put in just haven't been enough, apparently. Oh well. It's a long term game. I'll keep going.

Week 7: 231

Since wrapping my knee worked so well at relieving my knee pain while hiking, I actually tried jogging this week. But, I'm either a fast walker or a slow jogger. My best pace jogging was only 15 minutes per mile. But, I can walk on the American Tobacco Trail which is flat and paved at 16 minutes per mile. I'm not sure that the time saving is worth it, but I'll probably keep working it into my routine to see if I get faster. My knees okay this morning, but I could definitely feel the impact of jogging while I was actually doing it.

I'm very close to 229. I actually saw that weight on my home scale last night after jogging, so I'm really hopeful I can reach it at work next Monday. It was roughly a year ago I first went to the doctor for my sleep apnea and weighed in at 288. So, if I get to 228 before the end of March, I'll be 60 pounds lighter than I was a year ago. This is a very motivating goal. Onward!

Week 6: 234

Back down to 234. I got in a six mile hike on Saturday that I think did the trick. If I hadn't stuffed myself on Sunday night, I might have been even lower. But, with the nice weather, we had some friends over for a cookout, and one of the guests brought a chocolate cake, and it would have been rude not to eat a piece or two.

Mr. Cavin advised me to wrap my knee before hiking to help with the knee pain and, wow, it worked great! I had zero pain during the hike, and no significant stiffness the following morning. I would have been happy if it had helped reduce the pain, oh, fifty percent. I didn't expect it to remove the knee pain completely. We'll see if the results hold up this week, which has a lot more walking slated due to the longer daylight hours thanks to last weekend's time change.

Weeks 4&5: 237

Last week, I bumped back up to 237 from 234. I wasn't too suprised. Like most people, my weight fluctuates in a range from day to day, and 234 was definitely a lower number than I expected, on the lowest end of my daily weight shifts. Last week's weigh in also followed by weekend at Mysticon, so I'd had three days of no real excercise and eating out leading into that weigh in. But, this week, I have no excuse. I'd walked over ten miles the previous week and had been under my calorie goals all but one day. Oh well. I'm trying to console myself that I'm still down seven pounds for this contest, better than a pound a week, which doesn't suck.

This week also brought a milestone. I track my calories using a program called "My Fitness Pal" and yesterday it informed me that I'd logged on for 180 days in a row. Six months of continuous weight loss isn't a bad milestone, and helps me to remember to keep a long term perspective. The real achievement won't be the weight I'm at the end of this contest. It will be if I'm still keeping the pounds off a year from now.

Still, I do wonder just how to get past this plateau. The days are getting long enough to get in walks in the evening, but I have a finite amount of time in my days, and I'm not sure I can carve out that many more hours. Plus, I don't know if my knees can take it. My knees feel fine when I'm walking, but after I rest a while, my left knee aches enough that I limp. The stiffness and pain go away once I walk for a while, but I'm taking the pain as a warning that pushing much more might lead to real injury. Haven't tried biking yet this season. I wonder if that will hurt my knee?

Week 3: 234

I'm a little stunned by the number, but I weighed in this morning at work at 234. I've lost 10 pounds since the new contest began, and I'm now down 50 pounds since the first contest started in September.

Ironically, this week was my least active week since the contest began. I did manage to sneak in some hiking, including a two mile trek on Saturday in the snow with Cheryl. But, even with the reduced pace, I've still logged over 30 miles in the past three weeks.

It's starting to show, too. This morning I added another notch on my belt. I've easily lost five inches of waistline since September, and now the new pants I bought near the end of that contest are starting to feel a little loose.

This coming week, more lousy weather is lined up for my days off, and over the weekend I'm going to Roanoke for Mysticon. It's hard to watch my diet when I'm eating out three days straight. But, a week of slacking off might prove useful. People are always asking me if I feel better now that I've lost this much weight. Really...no! I'm worn out from walking all the time! I bought my walking shoes new in October and have already worn the tread smooth. The only walking I want to do this week is to go shoe shopping.

Week 2: 238

Probably for the first time since I was in my early thirties, my weight is finally under 240. Last week I walked over 13 miles, and Cheryl and I did nothing but vegetarian dinners at home. I finally prepared tofu in a way she enjoyed it, so now we can start working it into our rotation more often. Really, except for a rather sad attempt of turning cauliflower into a pizza crust, our veggie dinners were all pretty kick ass. Still, tonight, I'm definitely sinking my teeth into some sort of meet product.

The coming week looks pretty soggy. I'll be interested in seeing what kind of numbers I post next week without the hiking I've been doing.

Week 1: 240

Today was the weigh in after the first week of the weight loss competition at work. I've lost 4 pounds, putting me at 240 even. That means that, from the start of the last contest in September, I've lost a total of 44  pounds. It's also the first significant weight loss I've had in weeks. I was pretty firmly resting on a plateau of weights in the mid 240s. To get off the plateau, I literally walked my ass off. I logged over 17 miles of walking last week, with over 12 of that hiking along the Eno. 

The forecast is for good weather this Tuesday and Wednesday, so I'll get in some good distance those days too. This week is also going to be a night of all vegetarian dinners. So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a good weigh in next week. I didn't lose the most weight this week at work, but I know I've already lost the easy pounds. My only hope of taking this is to keep on plan, keep watching my calories, and keep walking. 

New Weight Loss Competition: Weigh In: 244

We're starting a new weight loss competition at work. I won the last three month cycle by losing 37 pounds. Since then, my weight has been mostly stable, fluctuating in a range between 250 and 245. (My final weigh in weight last time was 247.) I weighed in yesterday at 244.

My goal is to wind up with my weight in the 220s. The upper end of that range is only 15 pounds away. Some weight calculators I use tell me that my ideal weight should be 195, which still seems like an improbable goal for me. I suspect I'll lose a lot of my motivation once I hit the 220s. But, who knows? Cheryl and I have maintained better diet and excercise habits since September, and together we've lost over 70 pounds. There are some bad habits I feel confident I won't go back to, like drinking sugary sodas, or eating fast food a half dozen times a week. Perhaps a year from now, 195 won't look like such an absurd number.

But, for now, my real goal is stay a step ahead of everyone at work. Last time, my exercize goal was 4 hours of walking each week, about 5 miles a week. This time, I'm doubling that to 8 hours and 10 miles a week. Unlike the last weight loss competition, there are no big food holidays on the calendar, and no big personal milestones that require me to eat cake, the way my one year anniversary did. 15 pounds should be the minimum I can achieve.

Now... off to hiking!

Bitterwood is now even freer!

Last week, I announced that I had made Bitterwood free on Smashwords. Now, I'm pleased to announce that Amazon has price matched and the novel is now a free download for Kindle! You can get your copy here! Anything you can do to help spread the word will be greatly appreciated. Blog, facebook, twitter, or just tell a friend. I want to really build some buzz about this series before releasing the fourth novel of the series, "Empire of Angels," as part of "The Complete Bitterwood" next month. That should lay the groundwork nicely for the Bitterwood audiobook, coming in March!

Nook readers, don't despair! I'm confident B&N will price match before long. And, don't forget, the Nook compatible epub is already available for free at Smashwords. Since I don't have an Ipad or Iphone, I can't check the Apple store, but if anyone reading this has one of these devices, I'd love it if you'd check to see if it's been price matched there and let me know. Thanks!

Are E-Books Environmentally Friendly?

At Illogicon over the weekend I was on a panel discussing the likely date when books printed on paper would shift from the most common way to distribute long narrative prose to just another object of interest to collectors. I have no doubts books will be printed a century from now. Vinyl records are still being made, and there are still people who manufacture saddles a century after the automobile pushed horses from the roads. But, the lower cost, ease of purchase, and vast possibilities of choice all but guarantee that e-books are going to be what people mean when they say “book” a few decades from now.


One benefit mentioned on the panel was the notion that e-books are better for the environment. One of the panelists, Tony Daniels, scoffed at this notion and said that all the energy needed to store and distribute e-books had an environmental cost. I was incredulous that he believed that that cost was greater than the cost of manufacturing and distributing books. But, the more I’ve thought about the matter, the more I suspect he might be right.

First, the costs of paper books: It takes energy to produce and distribute them. Shipping cases of books around the country (and even internationally) uses up a lot of fuel. Storing the books in climate controlled warehouses also burns up energy. Since I work in the printing industry, I can assure you that printing them requires equipment that sucks down electricity, and the main component of books, paper, is also rough on the environment, as anyone who has ever lived near a paper mill will attest.

Compare this to the tiny bits of electricity need to send an e-book across a network to your Nook, and it’s hard to think that an e-book isn’t better for the environment.

And, for the short term, it might be. But, what about the cost over decades, or even centuries? One nice thing about books is that, with care, they can last a very long time. A book printed today can sit on your library shelf for twenty years and then be read without adding anything to that book’s environmental cost. Lots of books do just this… sit around on shelves. They aren’t often simply thrown away. As a commodity, they are heavily recycled, passing from user to user, and when they do finally hit the end of their useful lives, they can be pulped to make more paper.

Your e-books, on the other hand, are read on electronic devices that are designed to be obsolete after two years. Suppose you have a book you read all the time—let’s just use the Bible as an example. A printed Bible can last a person many years. Let’s say that one has a useful life of twenty years of frequent use before it falls completely apart. An e-book version of the Bible over that same twenty years is going to probably live on a dozen different electronic devices. Every time you want to read it, it will drain a bit of power from your battery, power that will have to be replaced from the electrical grid. All the dead and obsolete electronic devices discarded over that twenty year span are going to have batteries made of toxic metals that are terrible things to put into landfills. The environmental cost of the total waste generated by obsolete electronic devices over the course of a decade is almost certainly greater than the environmental cost of obsolete books.

Finally, if you are worried about CO2 in the atmosphere, most paper is made from trees grown especially for pulp. This means that these trees suck CO2 out of the air, where it gets locked into paper and removed from the atmosphere for many, many years.

Someone a bit more dedicated to doing the actual data gathering on the environmental costs might come to a different conclusion, but, I think Tony Daniels was right. E-books aren’t better for the environment, especially over a long span of time. If you want to save the world run out and buy all the physical books you can get your hands on. I don’t have the hard evidence to prove it, but I think that books with dragons on the cover are especially good to purchase if you care about the planet.

Weight loss update

The second half of December was a challenge, given all the holiday meals and events we attended, not to mention that everywhere we turned we were being offered candies and cookies. Still, Cheryl and I at least stayed stable during the month.My final weigh in at work on 12-31 was 246, though all the snacking I did at my New Year's Eve party probably ensures I went into 2013 a bit heavier than that.

There's talk of doing another weight loss competition at work. I'm all for it, since the competition helps keep me motivated. But, even if not, I still plan to keep on track. I have a few modest targets that I can aim for to build momentum. I just need to hit 244 to have lost 40 pounds since I started, then 240 is another nice milestone right behind that. After that, it will probably be a long slog through the 230s. Hopefully we'll have at least a few nice days this month where I can get out and do a major hike. Eating right is useful for keeping the weight off, but to really lose weight, nothing beats a hike that lasts for several hours.

Could guns be made safer?

Let me state up front that I believe in the constitutional right of Americans to own firearms. It's been our tradition for centuries, and the Supreme Court has affirmed the right. The Supreme Court also said in the same ruling that regulations and restrictions were allowed. Presumably, a ban on private citizens owning rocket launchers and fully automatic machine guns are acceptable. Congress also has the power to set manufacturing standards on pretty much any product sold across state line. So, if they wanted to mandate limits on the size of ammo magazines, I can't think of any legal impediment to this, only political ones. A sizable number of Americans don't feel safe unless they can fire 30 bullets without reloading, and they elect politicians who feel the same way, and, for the foreseeable future, they are going to hold the majority in the house and at least a filibuster sized plurality in the senate. This isn't purely a Republican/Democrat split, either. There are plenty of Democratic senators and congressmen with A ratings from the NRA.

This isn't a politically correct thing to say so soon after the Newtown shooting, but, statistically, guns really aren't all that dangerous. There are something like 300 million guns in the US, and about 20,000 gun deaths a year from these. We have a similar number of cars, and they contribute to over 30,000 deaths per year. Of course, the vast majority of these automobile deaths are accidental. But, a fair number of the gun deaths are accidental as well. I haven't found precise numbers I trust while googling this morning, but I feel safe to say that the number of children killed each year in accidents playing with their families guns far exceeds the number of children each year murdered in mass shootings, probably by a wide margin.

Restrictions on the sale of guns are partially negated by the fact that guns are a popular target of theft. According to the BATF, over 25,000 guns are reported stolen each year. Again I don't have statistics, but my gut instinct is that stolen guns are probably used for criminal purposes far more often than legally purchased guns. If you're willing to steal a gun, you probably don't have many qualms about robbing a convenience store.

But, automobiles are also attractive targets of theft, and we take precautions to reduce the numbers of thefts, such as putting locks on the doors and on the ignition. To reduce the number of accidental deaths, we require seat belts and airbags and such safety niceties as headlights and windshield wipers and brakes. Most states also require annual inspections to make sure the safety systems are in good working order.

Couldn't manufacturers be required to implement similar safety standards for new guns? For instance, my wife's car has a wireless ignition key. She just sits in the car and presses a button to turn it on. Couldn't guns be built with a wireless safety? The legal owner of the gun could have a small radio key that he wears on a key chain or embedded in a watch. When he holds the gun, the safety can be switched off. If anyone else picks up the gun without the radio key, the safety can't be unlocked. This means that toddlers can't find the gun in their daddy's nightstand and accidentally shoot someone thinking it's a toy. If the gun is stolen, it's just a useless lump of metal. But, if you have a friend in town who wants to borrow a gun to go hunting, no problem. You just loan them the radio key.

Obviously, this does nothing to make the 300 million guns already in circulation safer. And, with so many guns, there will be a black market that persists for decades. But, changes made today could make the average gun safer fifty years from now. The cost of guns would rise a trivial amount, and firearm owners would be slightly inconvenienced by having to purchase a new battery for their key every couple of years. But, the trade off of knowing that your gun is less likely to be stolen, or accidentally discharged by someone when you aren't home, seems like a bonus for legal gun owners. And, unlike trigger locks, which gun owners oppose since it would slow them down if they needed to grab their gun to protect against a home invader, if you have the key built into a watch, the second you pick up the gun it's ready to go.

To respond to a few objections I anticipate, yes, I'm sure criminals could hack the lock system. But, why bother, when they could just find one of the older guns without the radio locks? If your gun had the lock, they probably wouldn't take the time to steal it. No, I don't think this would do much to deter mass shootings. Most take place with legally purchased guns. But, again, accidental deaths are a statistically more significant problem than mass shootings. And, yes, I know that most accidents are ones the legal owners inflict on themselves. But, just because all the safety systems on cars don't stop  people from driving off cliffs is no reason to repeal the requirements that we all wear seat belts. The goal here is to mitigate, not eliminate.

So, what am I missing? Why wouldn't this one small change help, over the long term, make guns less likely to hurt someone accidentally or be used for a crime after being stolen?

A Christmas Dismemberment

When I was a kid, I must have been aware that Christmas had some sort of religious significance. I knew about the birth of Jesus, both from endless hours of church, not to mention Linus’s little speech at the end of the Peanut’s Christmas special. I was also aware that Christmas was all about giving.

But, let’s get real. Until I was well past puberty, Christmas for me was about getting. And I don’t mean getting socks or a new lunch box. It was about the toys. I’d lay awake all night, my stomach knotted, imagining the awesome things that might be contained in the gift-wrapped boxes under the tree. There might be trains, or Lincoln Logs, or science kits with microscopes and little pre-made slides of fly wings. And there had better be some cars. Saturday morning cartoons had promised me Hotwheels and the corresponding miles of looping tracks on which to race them. Even better would be a radio-controlled car. Or a radio-controlled plane! Really, not getting my own motorized go-cart would certainly qualify as child abuse.

Alas, I never got my go-cart. I suppose there was a lesson to be learned about handling the disappointment of not getting everything you wanted. Christmas also taught me the disappointment of getting exactly what you wanted. I did get a toy train set. I set up the oval track in my attic, sliding all the little rails together with tiny metal clips and figuring out the weirdly elaborate mechanism for one car to hook into the next. Then, I plugged in the transformer and let the train fly! Or, if not fly, at least roll along at a respectable pace. Around the oval, then around again. And around again, then again. About ten minutes after setting my train in motion, I’d pretty much lost all interest in trains. I tried to revive my Christmas morning excitement by finding interesting things that the train might crash into. A Matchbox car mysteriously broke down right in the center of the tracks as the train was approaching at full speed. And the train’s brakes have failed! This was going to be the most horrifying crash ever!

Then the train nudged the car aside and whirred on as if nothing had happened. It wasn’t as if I lacked the imagination to pretend that the car had been scattered across three states. It was that my imagination was superior to the reality. Toys seemed designed to teach me that real life would never be as spectacular as daydreams.

Despite my instinct to simulate collisions, I wasn’t a particularly violent or destructive child. I don’t remember having much interest in toy guns. When I did get cap guns, I ignored the gun and triggered the caps by smashing them with rocks on the sidewalk. As for destruction, the primary thing destroyed on Christmas mornings was our living room. My sisters and I were not patient unwrappers who neatly folded back the paper to slowly reveal the secrets within. We would tear into those wrappers like sharks taking down a sea lion. Five minutes after we were unleashed, the floor was completely hidden by shreds of paper and the remains of cardboard boxes. Except for the tree rising from the clutter, our living room looked as if a violent but curiously localized tornado had struck.

While I may not have been destructive by nature, I was intensely curious. While I never set out to destroy a toy for pure meanness, from time to time, I’d steal into my father’s workshop and help myself to screwdrivers and pliers to reduce a toy to its component parts. Sometimes, I was even able to put them back together. I was especially fluent with bicycles. To this day, I could probably take one apart then put it back together blindfolded. But, I also wasn’t shy about taking wrenches to things like clock radios and lamps. I often explored the inner workings with the power cord still plugged in. That was the only way to see how things worked. My failure to electrocute myself is probably something of a Christmas miracle. Usually, I was able to reassemble my experiments, leaving my mother none the wiser.

I do remember one toy I couldn’t put back together. When I was about nine, I got a toy doll, or, to use the proper gender attribution, an action figure. It was of Captain America, evidence that my mother really didn’t understand comic books. Captain America was Marvel, and I was a DC guy. Superman or Batman would have been worthy fuel for my imagination, but the Captain? The Captain was just a cold lump of plastic to me. I discarded him almost the second I unwrapped him, and would have forgotten about him forever if he hadn’t slipped into the couch cushions where I accidentally sat on him.

I took a moment to study the Captain. He was made of blue plastic, with red and white stripes and just a tiny touch of flesh color dabbed on for his chin. The limbs were stiff, but articulated at the hips and shoulders. His head could turn a full 360 degrees, and his hands bent at the wrists, with one hand permanently making a fist and the other frozen into a karate chop that could slide into the little handle on the round plastic shield.

Examining the wrists closer, I found they were held on with tiny bolts with screw heads. I’d already started wearing glasses, and knew my father had an eyeglass repair kit in the desk drawer. Despite my fondness for taking things apart, I was wise enough to know better than to disassemble my glasses. But this toy… would my parents notice? Would they care?

In less than five minutes, I had both hands off and had already lost the nearly microscopic nuts that had held the bolts in place. Unable to hold his shield, the Captain had little reason to continue his existence, so I decided to satisfy my curiosity and find out what held his head on. As it turns out, not much. It popped off with just a little pressure, revealing a little plastic peg with a ball at the end that snapped into a corresponding hole on the torso. About what I expected, but the arms and legs were more mysterious. They had a wider range of motion, and tended to snap back in place when I let go. I could tell that the tops of the legs were rounded and sat in little cups in the hips, but why didn’t they just fall out?

Some mysteries are best solved with brute force. I twisted one of the legs until it snapped free. When I did this, the other leg instantly fell off. When I looked into the hollow cups that spanned the hips, something like a little brown worm fell in my lap. It was a snapped rubber band, small enough that it wouldn’t have fit around my pinky. The legs had little metal hooks screwed into them that the rubber band had been stretched between, holding them in place.

Were the arms held on by the same configuration? I pried one up and twisted with a little less force. Sure enough, peering into the gap, I could see the tiny metal hook holding a rubber band. I wanted that rubber band, and I wanted it intact. Action figures were a plentiful commodity, but a tiny rubber band would be a treasure worth showing off.

I slipped the eyeglass screwdriver into the joint and carefully poked it through the loop. A few minutes of prodding and twisting freed it from the hook. I let the rubber band slip from the tip of the screwdriver and the arm on the other side fell off. The rubber band disappeared into the hungry gap between the couch cushions. Luckily, I found it, and held it into the light for closer examination like a precious gem.

Action figures are meant to stimulate imagination. For me, it was this rubber band that set the wheels of my mind in motion. If I had taken this rubber band off, that meant that someone, somewhere, had put it on. Captain America’s butt was stamped “Made in China.” When I imagined the factory, it was the elves workshop from Rudolf the Red Nose Rain Deer, populated by Chinese people in straw hats. It impressed me that this rubber band had been touched by someone on the other side of the planet. I couldn’t help but be a little awed that this toy had crossed an ocean to reach me, only to be taken apart a little under a half hour.

I found my mother in the kitchen and showed her the rubber band. When I explained that I’d taken apart the doll to retrieve it, she looked a little hurt that I’d destroyed yet another gift. She sighed. “What did you do that for?”

At the time, I didn’t have an answer.

From the perspective of adulthood, I do. I took the doll apart because I’m driven by a need to understand how things work. It’s why I took apart my bike and the lamps, and hinted at my future when I would be driven to more sophisticated bouts of creative destruction. I’ve taken apart friendships, even marriages before I could understand what made them work. I’ve aimed my curiosity at my own mind, analyzing the mystery of why I am who I am, figuring out my own clockwork, solving the mystery of what makes me tick. While I was never able to put Captain America back onto his feet, I like to think that I’ve bolted myself together in an improved configuration. I’m an adult who’s never let his imagination wither. To this day, I can still look at something as mundane as a rubber band and find myself thinking of foreign lands.

My parents never smothered my curiosity by putting an end to my destructive explorations. That, I think, was the greatest gift they ever gave me.

Week Thirteen: I lost 37 pounds!

Today was the final weigh in for the weight loss competition at work. 90 days had passed since I weighed in at 284. I finished today at 247. I lost 37 pounds, or 13% of my body weight.

The desire to win the competition definitely helped motivate me, but, honestly, I've been pretty certain I was going to win for a while. A lot of other people started off strong in September, but after the first thirty days I could tell that there was a fair amount of backsliding. In the end, I not only lost more weight than my closest competitor, I lost more weight than the next two competitors combined.

I couldn't have done this without my wife. She's a person who loves organizing and planning stuff, so she's taken to meal planning with a vengeance. I cook a couple of nights a week, but I tend to think about what to make for dinner a couple of hours before it's time to serve it, which means I sometimes give into the temptation to just take us out to eat. Cheryl has meals planned for several days in advance, and this protects us from impulse restaurant trips.

Cheryl has been seeing the benefits of our new lifestyle as well, having lost 24 pounds so far. Combined, we've lost over 60 pounds, and I'm hoping that 90 days from now our combined total might be closer to 100.

I certainly don't intent to stop at 247. I think that I can get down to 220 with my present practices, and would like to do so by my birthday, March 2.

Now, time for dinner, some delicious lentil and barley soup!

Week 12

253 this week. First down direction in three weeks. I'm cautiously optimistic I'll make it to 250 for next weeks final weigh in. We're having good weather from now until then, so I've got many, many miles of walking ahead of me for the next few days. Walking really seems to be the key to losing weight. I think my eating habits help me keep off the weight, but my biggest weight loss weeks almost always correspond to weeks where I've gone hiking, even if it's only a two or three mile loop along the Eno. My walking slacked off a bit in November, partially because I was aggressively trying to get to 50k words on my new novel, partially due to bad weather, and partially due to multiple family events. But, I hit my word count goal last night and the forecast is for lots of sunny days in the mid sixties from now through next Thursday. I really couldn't ask for better conditions to make this happen.