I don’t know if I’ve posted any of this here before, but I write comic reviews for WatchPlayRead.com.  It’s a cool group of nerds, dweebs, and geeks that congealed because we love to watch, play, and read things.  I’m constantly honored and awed to have been allowed to be a part of the group and I feel like everyone should love the group, and the site as much as I do.

Here’s my stuff, if you’re interested.

 

 

In my last post I talked about assholes I’ve been in the past, which is not to imply that I am in any way not one now…just hopefully a less egregiously one.  I thought on this a bit and realized that there’s something that’s been eating at me for a while now on this topic, though, which I will now impart upon you.

I’ve mentioned in the past how when I went into the hospital for my heart attack I’d been getting back into better shape.  I was down some weight from where I’d been, was starting to fit into a pant-size I hadn’t worn since early High School and was seeing some definition in new places.  I was on the right path, or so I’d thought.

But why did I need to get on that path?  I’d always maintained a fairly stable mass throughout my life; bigger than I wanted but not extreme, varying from ‘thick’ to ‘buff with a bit extra around the middle’.  Since about 23 or 24 I’d exercised pretty regularly and by about 28 I’d cut back all of the worst of my habits, except drinking and smoking.

Back in October of 2012, I decided to quit smoking.  I knew that generally when people quit they gained weight so I prepared accordingly.  I adjusted my diet a bit and started eating healthier.  I started exercising on more of a schedule and kicking up the length and intensity of my bike rides.  I thought I’d done what I needed to and kind of coasted at that pace.

And then one day, about two years later, I walked by a mirror in my room without a shirt on and caught my profile.  I stopped in my tracks.  What the fuck?  I stepped closer to the mirror, sucked in, flexed out, puffed a little bit.  I texted my girlfriend; I’ve always joked about being fat, but this was literal, a little panicked.  ‘Babe, I’m way too fat and I’m sorry.’  From that day I started hitting everything hard again, cut back on drinking (a little), added more stuff to my by then anemic workout routine, ate better.  The pounds started (painfully) slowly coming off and I found myself shaping back to the size I was more used to.

And then, you know, I had a heart attack.

Which spurred this more drastic change at its more drastic pace.

‘What does this have to do with being an asshole?’ you might ask.  I’m glad you did.  Let me tell you.

When I started dropping pounds before the shit hit the fan I started getting a lot of compliments and comments on how good the change was looking.  After the shit, and to this day, I still get a lot of comments and compliments.  One of the things that stands out, though, is how many people have mentioned how they’d noticed how big I’d gotten.  My internal response to this is always the same.  Why the FUCK didn’t you say something?!

I don’t think telling me I was fat would’ve saved me from my fate, and I still stand by the doc saying this was primarily genetic pretty heartily, but it sure would’ve cut the time and effort required to get down to a legitimately healthy shape, and it probably would’ve saved me a few of the residual bits of sag and stretch that come with large amounts of weight loss, which I’m now just stuck with as a fun reminder of the fat-days.  I was at the biggest I’d been in my life at the point I noticed the mirror, by far.

My previous post mentioned my being an asshole because I used to be the guy who lamented political correctness taking over.  Fortunately I can now acknowledge that anything we can do to make the world a better, more understanding, and more easy-to-live-in place is a good step.  I wrote that because I absolutely believe it.  But here’s the ‘but’ that always seems to come from we the privileged.  I absolutely believe we need to be a more sensitive caring world…but I sure as hell wish someone would’ve taken a minute out of their day to tell me I was getting, or had gotten, fat.  Or maybe not just one person but many.  And maybe I would’ve been hurt and offended, and maybe I would’ve said something mean in response, but maybe that also would’ve spurred me toward making a change sooner than later, and maybe..just maybe..that would’ve saved me a little heart-ache (heh).

‘Fat shaming’ is a real thing, and a bad one.  It needs to stop, bottom line.  But here’s the deal:  I was fat.  Not just a little extra around the edges.  I look at pictures of myself from a few years back and I was honestly just fucking fat.  I was big and gross, I looked and felt like shit, I was literally dying of diabetes, and nobody told me, because nobody wanted to be the insensitive one, because we’re told we have the right to love ourselves no matter what the shape or size we occupy is.

Fat people aren’t ugly, or lesser people because they’re fat, and people who say they should work to not be fat might just be assholes, but they also might just be concerned, legitimately so, for that person’s health and well-being.  I can say from experience that sometimes, if the change is gradual enough, you don’t actually notice that you’ve gotten bigger, at least not until it’s too late.  I can also say that sometimes you do notice it, but you don’t have the right push to do anything about it.

So it’s a fine line.  We want people to be happy, and comfortable, but also alive and healthy.  9 out of 10 cases of newly diagnosed Type II Diabetes patients are obese.  Obesity has been definitively linked to Diabetes, high blood pressure, strokes, heart disease, depression, and so on and so on.  When I was taking med classes we had many discussions about how needles were having to be designed to be longer and ambulances bigger to accommodate the growing number of people too large to be serviced by standard means.  Airlines caught a lot of criticism for charging double for people so large they literally took up two seat spaces some years back.  There is an obvious problem that needs to be addressed but the question is how?

Maybe what needs to happen is for the aesthetic element to be removed from the conversation completely.  Maybe we just need to find a way to be conversant without being combative or insulting and, alternately, to receive criticism as constructive rather than offensive.  We need a way to say ‘hey, we’re concerned about your health due to your size’ and not have it mean ‘hey, you’re lesser as a person because you’re bigger’.  I don’t know how that happens, just that it needs to.  I just work here, I don’t set the rules.  All I know is I wish someone would’ve taken the time to fat shame the hell out of me back in, say, mid-2014.  Who knows, if that’d happened maybe this shitty blog might not even exist.

 

There was a while, not too long ago, where I was spending an inordinate amount of time irate at the people I considered friends and acquaintances on various social media platforms.  I couldn’t, and still can’t, believe the level of dumb being leveled at me day by day and hour by hour.  It was as though I’d stepped through a portal and everyone I’d ever met had gone completely insane and/or dropped about 30 IQ points.  I did some shuffling, some blocking, and some straight-up deleting, and now my feed is a lot less irritating.  Now the only source of my feeling like I might possibly be living in an alternate reality is the fact that Donald Trump is actually considered a viable political candidate.

All the afore-mentioned dumb got me thinking.  How is it scientists are shunned for youtube nobodies and actual science is shunned for conspiracy shill?  How can blatant facts, easily observed, become fabrication and conspiracy?  How can black people getting murdered for the color of their skin be turned into a pity party for white people?  How does social equality becoming a real possibility become ..I don’t even know…whatever it is the crazies are afraid of it becoming?  We live in this strange world where being accepting of one thing is considered to be absolutely exclusionary of all other things, and it’s weird.  And honestly, how the FUCK does Trump get where he’s gotten to?  The man is abhorrent, disgusting, and people lap it up.  In all honesty, Trump makes me far less sick than the thousands and thousands of people who support him because ‘he speaks his mind’.

I’ve always considered myself a progressive kind of guy.  I’m absurdly liberal when it comes to most political issues.  I don’t go around oppressing people.  I’ve had friends, lovers, and business partners of multiple shapes, colors, backgrounds.  I’ve tended to date very strong, intellectual girls/women.  I was the first person many of my gay friends came out to, back when that was more of a stigmatized thing.  I’m still often someone people come to for advice about potentially sensitive or polarizing subjects.  I’ve always tried to treat everyone as equal because I don’t understand how race, color, gender, etc can be a delineating factor in your quality as a person.  All in all, I’m a pretty swell fellow.  The exception to the white middle-class male rule, perhaps.  I am goddamn magnanimous.

But my course of thought took me down some roads through the past, where I’ve said and thought some things that, in retrospect, are pretty damn unsavory.  At the time they felt justified, righteous, or funny but now..well, now I realize I’ve certainly had my share of dumb as well.

I’ve been that guy who (in my early 20’s) felt like it was totally unfair for there to be a BET and a black history month, but no white equivalent.  Living in a predominantly conservative, white, city/state, nobody ever checked me on this.  It took a personal moment of realization that, holy shit, all TV was WET, and all history classes were white history.  I feel dumb for even having this lapse in judgment and even dumber for thinking it was funny or remotely original, but the fact of the matter is it was a thing that happened in my brain.  I had entered that mindstate of ‘if it’s not about me, it’s bad’ I guess.  This is the thinking that leads us to people not being able to comprehend why #blacklivesmatter is such an important thing.  It doesn’t excuse it in the slightest, but I understand how a head can get turned in the wrong direction about it.  You see plenty of the ‘well white people are getting killed too’ thing posted around.  And yes, it’s true, white people do get killed by cops fairly often.  But so do black people, very often, and often times for little more reason than just existing somewhere.  This is unacceptable and it’s important for change to happen.  For change to happen in a big way there has to be a rallying cry.  Black Lives Matter is a good thing.  Here’s a tip for all you (us?) white guys out there…nobody who says that phrase also says ‘white lives don’t matter’.  Or, maybe one guy who’s super pissed off and abrasive does somewhere, but he’s not the movement and he’s not the voice.  He’s just super pissed off and abrasive, and wrong…just like you are.

Back when I was fresh out of HS I worked at an independent CD store, the cool one..the alternative to the alternative one.  It was staffed by all of the people you’d think of when picturing a late-90’s independent CD store.  I fell somewhere between the hardcore/goth/hippie kid, we had the ska guy, the hot girl who didn’t know anything about music, a few riot grrl’s, a few burnout hippie guys, and then the ‘I love all music and all people’ kind of people.  It was awesome.

One of the girls that worked there was this badass punk girl named Helen Black.  Multi-color dyed hair, High-eyelet Docs, plaid, piercings, vegan (I believe), drank beers with the best of them, early adopter of the derby girl thing, so on and so forth.  I was awed by her cool, and awed by her intellect.  Being the punk girl of that era, she was also very locally politically active.  She worked all kinds of causes, from Food Not Bombs, to volunteering various places (shelters, I believe), with a strong focus on women’s empowerment.  One day Helen decided to put up a poster of Ani DiFranco, arm raised in victory, hairy armpits flown proud.  I was never a fan of her music, she’s phenomenal at guitar but her song structure and voice are awful, so I drew a little cartoony fly wafting from her pits.  Totally benign, only intended as a statement on hippies.  The response was a diatribe (in writing, in marker, on a poster..because independent CD store) about women’s rights and oppression and how dare I comment on hairy armpits which, to be fair, I wasn’t.  To be unfair my response was of some tribal woman, I’m not sure which..either with a stretched neck, bound feet, or plates in her lips.  My comment something to the effect of ‘tell me about oppression when you’re this.  We make the same money, have the same title, enjoy the same privileges’.  In this case, I was checked.  Punks aren’t known for being passive and quiet, obviously.  I got called out.  We ended up having a great talk and I was enlightened, to a degree, and we stayed friends; all’s well that ends well.  Only, I walked away from the ‘great talk’ scoffing.  I was right and she was wrong.  Why?  Because I hadn’t seen the oppression that happens.  I certainly hadn’t lived it.  To this day I’ve never overtly noticed sexism in the workplace.  Many of my bosses, CEO’s, colleagues, etc have been female and well respected.  I’ve mentioned this to quite a few female co-workers, friends, etc, and most have reported the same thing.

So I was right, right?  I didn’t see it so it obviously wasn’t a problem.

Only, that’s not how the world works.  I am one person, living a fairly insular circle of people, from the hundreds at work to less than that personally.  And then there are the billions of others out there.  Millions in my state alone that I will never cross paths or share any kind of experience with.

The litany of my foolishness could go on for a long time but I wanted to touch on one other failure in particular.

I have been guilty of being the guy who lamented how (to paraphrase myself) ‘this culture of political correctness is ruining everything’.

I’ve always been of the opinion that nothing is sacred when it comes to talk, comedy, life, etc.  I still feel that way a lot of the time and will likely, to my dying day, be party to some of the more inappropriate conversations ever had.  But there’s this thing finally happening in the world, where people are trying to be better at being people, and trying to be more understanding of who and what we all are.  We’re breaking the gender binary and the long-established bounds of love and relationships.  We’re striving to make people feel more comfortable just being who they feel they are in their own skin and it’s awesome.  We’re trying to show people that their worth isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, determined by their skin.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched people suffer, occasionally even losing the battle of life, because they didn’t fit in with what the world told them they should be.

So we’re fixing that, day by day, piece by piece.  Part of the fix requires a hard-world change.  Part is a thought change.  The rest is a conscious swing toward living the way we ought to.  Some of this is language.  The words and phrases we use in our daily lives feel innocuous.  We don’t give thought to the power they may have because they’re just things we use constantly.  They do, however, have power, and often times they can be hurtful.  It’s easy to say ‘buck up’ when it’s not you who’s been hurt, and that seems to be the common response, but what needs to happen is the harder thing, which is to introspect and think about how the things we do can affect others, whether we want them to or not.

Maybe it’s weak (another hotly-debated word) to say hey, maybe we shouldn’t be saying certain things, and here’s why.  The easy response is to aggress or defend.  In the long run, though, that response is the weaker overall, the reactionary one.  You’ll notice the people who argue ‘it’s only a word’ generally still have things they won’t say..at least in public.  More ‘only words’, but ones they aren’t comfortable with.  It takes a lot of strength to analyze and change the things you’ve engrained over years and years and it’s what needs to happen.  There are things I’ve had to train myself to not say anymore (I used to say things were retarded pretty constantly), and there are other things I’m working to be conscientious about.  If that makes me weak, so be it.  If it makes me a better person, here’s to it.

For some stupid reason it took a long time for me to realize how wrong all this thinking was, and I feel dumb for not having realized it sooner.  How could such a ‘progressive’ guy be so neanderthal inside?  I’m honestly not sure.  I think maybe part of it is that, no matter how much we may differ from them, we’re still part of our environments.  I was a ‘progressive’ guy in a conservative place.  Maybe I just never had the proper checks and balances to say hey, you’re doing this wrong.

Maybe I’m just an asshole.  (Maybe you’re just an asshole.)

 

But I’m trying to be less of one.  You should try too.

 

I’ve posted a lot about food, and weight loss, and exercise, and how miserable it all is, etc.  Here’s something that shows progress/results.  You can tell I love being in photos…

The me on the left was almost two years ago exactly (Aug, 2014) and the me on the right is me this morning as I was finishing up weight sets at the gym.

To be fair, the two year ago me realized shortly after this picture that he’d let himself go quite a bit and started working out more again.  By the time the year ago me happened, I was down some pounds and a few pant-sizes already.

But yeah.  The left me sure had a lot more fun, but the right me looks much healthier.  So now you know when I say I’m doing things and they seem to be working, that I’m not just blowing smoke out my ass.

To skip to the meat of this post click here.

Over the last eight months or so, a lot of people have asked me if I’d help them out with their diet or, at least, share what I do so they could modify and adapt as necessary.  I’ve promised to do so but when it comes right down to it, I’m a bad person and I just haven’t made the time to sit down and crank it out.  At long last, and without (much) further ado, I present to you…

Oh, wait.  Before I write another word..and I think this is pretty common knowledge, but I want to say that I’m not a doctor or a scientist.  All of our bodies are different and react differently to things.  My diet is strict but it’s the genes, more than anything, that tried to kill me.  What has seemingly worked amazingly for me may not work as well, or at all for you.  Hell, it may kill you.  As I’m not a trained professional, I can’t say for sure that it won’t.

What I can say is this:  I obsessively read and study.  I’ve always been interested in nutrition; how varied it is, differing schools of thought, etc.  I’ve spent the last few years exercising in spurts and reading about what it was I should be doing.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.  The thing that all of the educated folk have been saying for pretty much eternity…the thing we all know and pretend we can avoid…that’s it.  That’s the secret to losing weight and being a more healthy person.  So here it is.  Are you ready?  Eat healthy stuff.  Exercise regularly.  That’s it.  Shocking, I know.

And I’m not going to lie, a total bummer.

Here’s the other thing I know.  In just over a year I’ve lost 60 lbs.  I’ve managed to stay alive (thus far..man, I hate writing stuff like this) after my body tried to kill me.  I have gotten to a point where I do not take any medication for my diabetes and my blood sugar is like clockwork every time I check it.  I’m in better shape, visibly, and actually, than I have been in my entire life.  There are some things that just come with getting older but, them aside, I have a body I would’ve done some pretty horrible things to have attained when I was in my teens/20’s.  Also, apparently doctors and nurses think I’m inspiring.  Which is weird.  Whatever.

I’ve written about a general sense of what I eat and do, but I’m going to take a few minutes here to lay it out in a heavier level of detail.  This could be a rough guide or a starting point.  I do this daily.  You’re lucky.  You don’t have to.

Final note before we get started:  I’m giving some pretty serious thought to going vegan, which I know turns a lot of people off.  This diet, with some very easy tweaks, could be made vegan and still contain all the current benefits.

Also, none of the companies I mention below know I exist.  It’d be cool if they paid me to eat their stuff, but they don’t.  I eat it because it’s what my research has led me to as the best.

Ok, here goes.
GENERAL NOTE:

The core of a lot of this is whole grains.  Every week or so I boil 3 dry cups of some sort of grain with 8 cups of water.  I strain and put these in a container in the fridge.  It saves so much prep time it’s unreal.  For grains, I like the Bob’s Red Mill ‘Ancient Grains’ line.  These consist of things like Bulgur, Kamut, Farro, Spelt, etc.  These are nutty, occasionally slightly sweet, have great texture, and cook like rice or pasta.  Bulgur cooks in roughly 15 minutes, so it’s easy.  Kamut takes about an hour but it’s both nutty and sweet, and is my favorite.  These could be replaced by brown rice for anything but the breakfast (though I guess you could do that too..weirdo).  Trader Joes sells 3 packs of sprouted brown rice for about $3.  They microwave in a few minutes and are also great.  Replace in the same quantity as the grains.

The nice thing about any of these options is there is zero sodium, very little fat, and the carbs are 100% whole grain and high fiber.

BREAKFAST:

90% of the time breakfast consists of a whole grain of some sort, skim milk, and berries (depending on the grain).  If I’m using the pre cooked whole grains I mention above I will add a small handful of blueberries or other assorted berries.  If I’m not using them, I generally have Muesli, again from Bob’s Red Mill.

1 cup grain of your choice.

1 cup skim milk.

Handful berries.

That’s it.  It’s ready almost immediately, delicious, and super good for you.  Hint: if using the pre-cooked grains I put everything into a cup the night before and eat it when I get to work.  The milk soaks into the grain a bit and the berries plump and flavor the milk.  I’ve read that the traditional way to eat muesli is to soak it overnight in water with lemon juice, but I like it dense and crisp.

LUNCH:

Lunch is generally either extra dinner from the night before or salad/similar composition as follows:

1 large handful dark leafy greens

3 medium mushrooms

Sliced Onion to taste

Sliced carrot or beet.

Small handful cranberries.

1 cup quinoa or pre-cooked grains

1 large chicken breast or cubes of tofu.

1 bell pepper (prefer orange/yellow). Sliced or chopped.   I prefer this on the side.

A small amount, generally 1-1.5 tsp of  dressing.  I stick to oil/vinegar or low-fat balsamic.

Cracked pepper to taste.

Note: Once you realize the average person puts and absurd amount of dressing on their salad, only using 1-1.5 tsp becomes more than enough.  The trick is drizzling it in such a way that it can be mixed and cover most fork-fulls.  It honestly makes me a little sick now when I see people drowning their greens in thick goopy stuff, like I used to do.

DINNER:

Dinner is fairly homogenous.  I try to change up sides and extras, and to switch between chicken and fish but the core is consistent.  Yeah it gets a bit old sometimes, but it’s quick, easy, nutritious, and always tastes amazing.

1 cup grain.  Can substitute brown rice.

Large handful leafy greens.  I use any of the dark mixes or swap in Chard, Spinach, Broccoli tops, Kale, etc.

1 bell pepper (prefer orange/yellow/red) sliced thin.

1/4-1/2 small onion or a few green onions, chopped.

Chopped garlic to taste.  I like a TON.

Sliced Mushrooms, thin or thick..personal preference.  I like the brown baby Bella’s the best.  Mushrooms are a freebie for me so I eat as many as I can.

1/4 can rinsed no-sodium black beans (or any other beans with no salt added.)

1-2 small tomatoes, cubed or sliced.

1 large chicken breast or fillet of fish.

Small amount olive oil.

Note: While this is pretty consistent, I don’t always do the beans and tomato.  They are excellent, but pretty much change the whole character of the meal.

Turn oven to high broil.

Coat a non-stick pan with olive oil.  Use only enough to coat.  You don’t need a lot.  Turn burners on low, basically just warming up your pan.  Add chopped onions and garlic and let them sweat, but do not let the oil start sizzling.

Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil.  Spray with PAM.  Butterfly chicken breast or wash/cut fish and lay the on the foil.  Season as appropriate (see below for SEASONINGS).  Put in oven on middle/upper-middle rack.  Leave until cooked through (10-15 minutes, generally).

Add tomatoes, grains, and greens to the warm pan and turn up the heat to just below medium.  Let these simmer for a minute or two, turning until the greens begin soften.  Add any seasonings as appropriate here.

Add the rest of your veggies and cover with a sauce-pan lid.  Turn the heat up a little more.  Stir as necessary.  You’ll start to hear things sizzle now.  Cook until al dente or until uniformly cooked through.

Once the main ingredients and the meat are done, plate however.  I like using big fluted bowls for all of it but it’s all personal preference.

Note: You can play a little here.  Some days I like to stop when the veggies are just barely past raw, other days I’ll let them soak in the tomato juices for a while.  Some days I crank the heat and let the garlic grains start to crisp.  Little things like this make the same ingredients with the same prep into a different kind of meal.  You can also put all the ingredients in a bowl uncooked and whip up a vinaigrette for an awesome salad.  For variety, change up the veggies and/or the spices.  Different greens have different tastes and textures, as do different types of mushroom.

DESSERT:

If I’m hungry at night I generally allow myself the same as breakfast.  I actually find myself craving this now.  For ‘dessert’ I will often add a handful of a different type of cereal on top of the whole grain stuff.  So if I have muesli I will sometimes put some shredded wheat squares or a handful of stone-ground whole grain flakes with a little cacao in them.  It makes a big difference and feels like a huge splurge, even though it’s a very minimal change.

MEATS:

Meats generally play a secondary role in my diet.  There’s usually chicken or fish with dinner, but it’s just to provide the protein.  With that said, it’s always pretty tasty too.

I almost never eat red meat.  I don’t eat pork.  I only eat the white of eggs.  80-90% of the chicken I eat is white meat.  Fish is fair game, but I try to be mindful of the extra sodium in it when planning everything else.

A note on chicken.  Chicken these days is pretty gnarly.  The vast majority of it has been brined and has a ton of sodium.  Even the stuff that says it’s ‘reduced’ is still pretty absurd.  I try to limit myself to chicken that has not been brined.  It costs a ton more (I get two large breasts for the price of 4-5 regular ones) but it has a hugely lower amount of sodium.  If you look at some of the numbers, eating regular chicken is almost the same as lean red meat.  I try to avoid both.

A concern with as much as I exercise is that, if I don’t eat red meat, etc, how am I going to get enough protein.  This is an American thing, I believe.  We’re taught that every meal needs a massive slab of flesh to accompany it and that if you don’t you’ll be a scrawny weakling.  In point of fact, I just saw that the guy who either is, or was, Mr Universe is vegan, as is his wife who is also a top ranking bodybuilder.  Sometimes I fall prey to this, though.  Bulksupplements.com sells some amazing pure supplements.  I’ve bought their whey isolate on occasion and if I’m hitting the weights harder than usual or feel like I might need some extra bulk, etc, I will throw a scoop or two in with my cereal, or mix some into a tiny bit of water after the gym.  With looking into maybe going vegan again I’ve discovered that a mix of brown rice and pea protein is as complete as whey protein and supposedly digests easily.  The nice thing is, most of these are isolates, so all you get is protein, and maybe a tiny bit of salt.

A note on supplements:  In looking into protein supplements I realized that the majority of supplements, even the isolates, are chock full of cholesterol, sodium, carbs, etc.  I know this is what some people want, but I feel like for my needs and those of most people it’s absolutely unnecessary.  If you’re buying supplements, be prepared to do some research and to pay extra.  The company I mentioned above are actually pretty cheap, and their stuff is all pure.  There’s also Naked Nutrition, whom I will be buying some brown rice and pea protein from shortly.

SIDES:

I play sides by ear.  Generally I don’t need them.  The above is actually a ton of food and I’m usually stuffed by the end.  Occasionally, I’ll use a few scallops (high sodium) or bok choi, green beans (excellent with horseradish), mukamame, etc if I feel like I need some variety.  The other day I sliced some tomatoes from the garden and cracked pepper over them.  A tiny splash of herbed olive oil, and they could’ve been a full-on appetizer.  They worked perfectly as a side, though.

SEASONINGS:

Pre-mixed seasonings will get you every time.  This is where a HUGE portion of hidden sodium in people’s diet comes from.  I don’t use salt and I don’t use any seasonings/spice blends that have salt in them.  There is still a surprising amount of amazing spices from around the world that can be used.  Basically any ‘pure’ spice is fair game.  I use a lot of curry, gram masala, paprika, shichimi, chipotle powder, etc.  Fresh cracked pepper was a forgotten revelation to me.

There are some pre-made seasonings that I occasionally allow, depending on my meal content the rest of the day.  Chili Garlic with the rooster on the bottle has about 90mg sodium per tsp.  1/2 tsp goes a long way when added while cooking the veggies and only adds a minimal amount of sodium.  Mina Harissa has about 60mg per tsp and also goes a long way.  Creamed horseradish is awesome and generally has only 5-10mg sodium.  Some really good mustards have higher sodium, but they can be found in lower sodium iterations in regular stores.

The real secret to the dinner is that I love garlic and onion.  By sweating them before all the rest of the dish goes in you’re creating a seasoned oil that the rest gets cooked in.  Often I don’t use any other spice, but it just depends on my mood.

All of this applies to seasoning meats as well.  A scallop has a ton of natural salt in it.  A splash of cayenne pepper, a crack of pepper, and a pinch of garlic and green onion on top is incredible.  Garlic powder works great on chicken or fish.  Pepper goes a long way too.  If you buy good meat, it shouldn’t really need much to help it out.  Even in the good old days it killed me to see people put steak sauce on steak.  I just don’t get it.

RULES:

Sodium:  I try to keep my intake to under 1000mg a day with a max ‘allowance’ of 1500.  I have read that the body needs, at a minimum, 500mg a day, but 700 should be the lowest amount consumed.  On an average day I’d estimate my sodium to be between 700-100, depending on the portion size of the meats I consume.

Fat:  I try to not eat anything that is over 8-9% of my daily RDA of fat.  If each meal is around that, I’m keeping to around 40% of the daily RDA.  I will occasionally add a tsp of chia seeds to my cereal in the morning, or have a small amount of high cacao dark chocolate.  This, especially, if I have been, or will be going to the gym.  Almost all of my fat comes in the form of either olive oil, white chicken, fish, or the natural fats in oats and similar products.

Cholesterol:  I don’t buy anything that has cholesterol in it.  I don’t eat egg yolks.  Again, I don’t really do red meat or pork and I eat white meat chicken or fish only.  This should mean that, in general, any of the cholesterol I do consume is the ‘good’ kind, whatever the hell that means.

Calories:  Calories are one thing I honestly don’t count.  When I was starting all of this I balanced my meals based mostly on carbs, fat, and cholesterol.  When I did the math, the calorie content was right in line with where it should be.  To wit, I have lost the 60lbs, but I work out heavily and regularly.  I don’t put on massive muscle like I used to, but I’m stronger and leaner, and the muscle I do put on is hard.  My weight bounces between about the same 3 lbs day to day and if I gain or lose it’s usually over the course of 2-3 months now.

Dairy:  I have skim milk with cereal in the morning and a lot of nights.  I’m probably switching to almond milk soon.  You’d be just as well served using any of the alternatives.  I’ve heard hemp is good, though it’s a bit high fat for my tastes.  Cheese is all high sodium, high fat so I just stopped using it.  This is a hard one, because cheese is a phenomenal substance.  If you have to have cheese, have no more than a 1 oz cube’s worth, which, if you look at it, is not even enough to make it worth having cheese.

No snacks.  If I need to snack I’ll get a handful of veggies or a SMALL handful of granola, etc.  2 Egg whites are surprisingly filling and are good here and there.  They can also be made in bulk and kept for a week or so.

No salt:  I don’t add salt directly to anything.

No refined carbs:  No white rice.  No white flour.  No excessively sugared things.  If you need rice, make it brown.  If you need bread, get whole wheat, multi grain, seeded, hippie shit.  The only reason I don’t eat more bread is that good bread is salty and, again…see above.

No drowning food in sauces:  If I get chicken wings (boneless, white meat) I get sauce on the side and just dip a tiny bit.  It’s amazing how quickly you adjust and how crazy it is to see how much gets used in general.

Very little processed food:  The majority of my diet is put together from individual ingredients.  They are mostly fresh veggies, locally bought (though produced elsewhere).  Whole grains.  Beans.  Etc.  When you start reading labels you start to see how shitty the content of most processed food is.  There are a few exceptions, but for the most part, I just don’t eat stuff that’s made in a factory with a ton of ingredients.
So there it is.  I’m honestly a bit tired of writing, so I’m going to do a pt2 that has my workout stuff later on this weekend or in the upcoming week.

RESULTS:

So this is my life now.  I’m not going to lie, I often lament the fact that I can’t have certain things anymore, or at least not in quantity.  I have always thought of myself as a ‘foodie’ and it’s shitty to walk past the cheese bar at Harmon’s or to ignore all the beautiful bread everywhere I go.

As I noted a few times, I’m down 60 lbs and I believe I’ve kind of landed at or around my body’s natural ideal weight.  I’m hoping that with some new workout plans I might actually gain a bit and put on some more noticeable bulk.  I still have a little fat to get rid of too, but not a ton.  I can run further and faster than ever before in my life.  I can ride harder than I ever have been able to.  My hikes are limited more by time than lack of condition.  And so on and so forth.

When I’ve had my blood checked, every 60-90 days or so, all of my numbers have come back good.  My A1C is at a level that I’d wager is below most non-diabetic people out there.  My cholesterol and triglycerides are perfect.  Basically on paper, I’m as healthy as shit.  For a dying guy, that’s not too bad.

So this stuff works.  For me.  For now.  I honestly wouldn’t recommend anybody living like me unless they had to but, then again, maybe if I’d lived like me before I wouldn’t find myself saddled with all this debt and these crazy lifestyle changes.  I want to put in writing again that I’m no doctor, scientist, nutritionist, etc.  I’m just a dude who’s had to make radical life changes, and has seen some awesome results come out of the ashes.  Plus enough people have asked me that I figured it’s maybe worth putting into writing.

I’m so much older than I can take.

Things serve explicit functions in my life these days.  And, typing at 1am the potentially hidden meaning in that phrase doesn’t escape me, untrue though it may be.  What I mean is this:  I don’t just do things anymore.  I do things because they do things for, or to, me.  I eat to survive.  I work to pay my bills.  I go to the gym to work out my frustrations and to feel some of that glorious testosterone madness.  I do yoga to find peace, fleeting as it comes.

Music, though.  Music is a thing I do because I have to, because if I go too long without it, I start to go crazy.  Music is magic, and powerful, draining and salvative.  Iggy Pop once said in an interview about music ‘when I’m in the grips of it, I don’t feel pleasure and I don’t feel pain, either physically or emotionally.’  The first time I heard that, after having poured my soul out in bands for years already by that point, I had this transformative realization.  The man was right.  I played music and I thought I wanted to be a big rich rock star, but the real reason I’d always been drawn to it is exactly how he said…when you’re in the grips of music your you vanishes. There is a presence and a creation, and a symbiotic relationship between the flesh and the tools that conjure vibrations, but deep down at the core of it..there’s a beautiful, wonderful nothingness.

It was this nothingness I always craved.  A rare handful of moments in which my brain stopped racing and my body stopped aching, my self-consciousness disappeared.  Maybe that’s what being a rock star is all about–forgetting for a while that you’re flawed.  Maybe those moments are why we find them so beautiful.

Over the last few years music has become a more sporadic enterprise for me.  I haven’t played in bands in ages and the guitars come out less often as I get busy.  Recently, however, between writing scores for two features and a long-format series of shorts (two of which I also did cinematography for, toot-toot) has me back at my recording station, playing stacks of synths at the same time, digging into drum machines and sequencing software, and with that, in the spare moments, comes a remembrance of all the other music.  The hollow-body made an unexpected appearance a few weeks back and I lost myself for a good long time just playing loud and overdriven mush.  Tonight I got lost in the land of iPad-based music creation.  I spent hours with generative music apps, drone synths, and clever sequencers that remove the rigid boundaries of square boxes with 16-32 sequence buttons.  If I’d had more free money to spend I’d probably still be digging into the 6 or 7 other apps I added to my ‘wish list’, hopefully to be remembered at some later time.

So I have this newly awakened desire.  For the last month or two I’ve been thinking about writing a ‘score’ for an already existing movie, but making it very beat-centric.  Once that’s done I want to get a few of the local hip hop people to throw some words over it.  And that will be cool and all, but I don’t really see myself making it terribly far in the hip hop world.  But now I’m motivated, and after that’s done I think it’s finally finally FINALLY time to write that album that’s been churning through my brain the last few years.  Interestingly enough, my friend who works for a recording studio expressed the same burning feeling tonight, purely at random.  Who knows, maybe we’ll make something great.  Or, more likely, maybe we’ll make something that sounds like two mid-to-late-30 year old irrelevant dudes threw together.  Either way, it’ll be a nice return to something that’s always been a major driving force in my life.

I’m not really sure what the point of this post is, other than I felt like saying some stuff.  I worked a long, brutal week.  Went back to the gym for the first few times post-surgery.  Did some yoga, also for the first time in far too long.  Other than that, I forced myself to toil on these scores I’m trying to finish.  Drudgery music.  It’s draining, time consuming, and really frustrating when stuff doesn’t work.  But in those moments, when I stepped away and played just for me, the way I’ve always done…god damn was it good.  I’d say I wish everybody could hear it, but that would be a lie.  I got to hear it as I was creating it and, honestly, that’s the only thing that matters.

In relation to the mental state talk in my last post..I’ve been listening to the Nails a lot again lately, but this keeps standing out.  This song is me post-June 4th.

I don’t know how many of my posts have started with something to the effect of ‘I really need to update this more’.  I suppose if I counted my posts it’d be somewhere near that number.  Life took over and sometimes I honestly just didn’t feel like whining again, even to my super secret sneaky blog that nobody reads.  So I didn’t.  Looks like I haven’t even been here since March.  Lame.

I’m making a promise right now, dear no-reader.  I’m going to start updating this thing more, even if it’s to get on and say ‘nothing new here’ or ‘still alive’ or, if possible, ‘ded’.

I passed the year anniversary last month.  I survived a whole year past that destructive and world-altering event.  I honestly didn’t think I would’ve met that mark but somehow it happened.  On my FB I half-jokingly posted about how it was my first birthday and a few people gamely wished me a happy one.  I say half-jokingly because sometimes I honestly feel like an entirely new person, albeit one with the same issues and hangups as the previous person.  At the year-alive mark I am (was) 60 lbs lighter, my diet absolutely different, my social and non-social life structured differently, so on and so on.  The old me doesn’t exist anymore, for all intent/purpose.

Fast forward a few days from that landmark and I find myself back in the hospital; planned this time, fortunately.  I’d been fighting an inguinal hernia for the past 6-8 months and decided I should get it taken care of before it caused me another unplanned ER trip or death, as it is known to do somewhat easily.  So on the anniversary of my return home from the hospital I put myself in another one, as an outpatient, and then spent a week laid up at home basking in some pretty intense pain.

It’s now 3.5 weeks from that day.  The doc told me I should wait 4 weeks before any strenuous activity.  So no gym, no bike, no hiking, no jogging/running.  No lifting anything heavier than 10 lbs.  Going from exercising 5-6 days a week, sometimes multiple times in a day to nothing sounded like a dream, but in reality it’s miserable.  As much as I still dread going to the gym every time, and suffer every second of it, it’s become a totally integrated portion of my life.  This morning, being fed up and having survived some nice brisk walks recently, I decided to be naughty and go for a hike.  It was hot, oppressively so, but so nice to get out and do things like a real person again.  I felt the impact of my weeks off pretty heavily for the first half.  The uphill was a harder struggle than I anticipated and some of the plateau was still pretty miserable.  And then I hit a point where something basically unlocked; my breath came easier, my mind cleared, my legs stopped feeling shaky, and it was like I had found the me I was last month again.  It was such a great feeling I found myself smiling like an idiot, all by myself up in the hills.  I kept going as far as I could, given the time I had allotted, and then turned back for an excellent second half of the journey.

On the way back my mind began to churn, not in the usual bad way, just..thoughts and analysis, observation and such.  I got thinking about my first birthday (new not old), what a crazy landmark that was, what I’ve accomplished to that point, and I realized that the first year was Phase I.  Year one was survival.  Adjusting to the meds, the lifestyle, the new financial situation, and trying best as I can to cope with the sense of loss and confusion that comes with it all.  I think I’ve done a pretty good job, all things considered.  I really am in the best shape of my life now.  I can do things physically I’d never even dreamed of.  I have more energy than I can recall having.  I notice sly glances from the occasional girl or two, and I often hear words being used to describe my physicality that I would’ve laughed to hear just one year prior (and all my years before that).  On that note, I’m going to digress/diverge for a minute here.

Side story warning:
When setting up my surgery, I initially met with my GP, who referred me to a surgeon.  I looked him up and the reviews were stellar so we met.  He seemed skilled and confident and I immediately trusted his ability.  We talked a bit about my ‘medical history’, because I have that now, and parted ways with a date set for our next meeting; the one that would see me under the knife.  A few weeks later I walk into the hospital and get checked in.  I sit down to wait and finally get called back.  When the nurse leading me back to the prep room confirms my name she makes a comment about how they’d been talking about me for the last few days.  This is odd, as the only person in this group I’d previously met was the surgeon.  The anesthesiologist pops in to let me know that he has another person to prep and would be delayed by a bit.  His nurses, however, will begin all their prep-work and the timing should correspond about perfectly.  He ends with ‘we’ve all been talking about you up here.  It’s an amazing story and we’re all really proud of what you’ve done.’.  From the initial meeting with the nurse until I was discharged, literally every single person I talked to mentioned how I’d been the subject of conversation.  It was like I’d become some sort of weird medical celebrity or anomaly or something.  Very strange.  I’ve mentioned this to a few people since, and the reaction has generally been that seeing the changes I’ve made has been a positive thing for everybody else.  Many of my friends have lost weight, started exercising, eating better, etc.

And it’s really weird to think about being an inspiration to anybody in general, weirder because it’s me, but the weirdest part is the why of it all.  I imagine it’s something akin to the guy who has a disease named after him.  Years later nobody remember the guy, but every time the malady pops up he’s remembered.

End side story

If last year was Phase I, then I’m now in Phase II.  The bummer thing is I guess I missed the boat for all of the I used to be a fatass and now I’m in shape money that seems to be floating around on social media.  Editor’s note: If you want to send me free shit I’m totally not above shilling it.  Kidding.  I think.  But yeah, I took stock during the return to civilization and one of the things that stood out was that, even though I’ve made a pretty serious change and the results are plainly visible, I only pushed hard enough to stay alive.  Basically I put in the hours at the gym, which naturally leads to results, I’m sore all the time as a result, the fat has left and muscles changed and grown, but I’m always just punching the clock.  I do my 30-60+ minutes to the degree I’m tired and feeling it, but I hardly ever challenge myself actively to push harder, or to exhaustion.

Phase I was about continuing to exist.  I’ve done that.  Phase II is about continuing to exist while pushing myself harder and making myself better.  Most of the soft edges are gone.  Now it’s time to polish the rest of them.  I will refine my cardio time and push it as hard as I can.  I will stack weights and work with my trainer to push myself in new and challenging ways, with an eye to adding mass and getting rid of the last of the softness.  I will also be realistic.  I’m 37 years old.  I started my gym-life at 36 after having a heart attack and being diagnosed with diabetes on the same day.  I smoked for a decade and a half.  I will never be a world-class athlete.  I know this.  I’m ok with it.  I can, however, be the best-class athlete I’m physically and mentally capable of being, rather than the one who does the bare minimum he feels is necessary to not nuke out and die.

One of the tougher things I realize I need to work on is the mental aspect of the new life.  I work day to day to get through all of this and to try to not drag everyone around me down.  I try to see the positive as much as I can but I can also acknowledge that this whole metamorphosis has either caused, or been the result of, some damage.  Plain and simple, it’s been a traumatic series of months since that insane day back in June 2015 and it’s hard to go day-to-day without getting stuck dwelling on the negative.  Especially because that’s where I live, in the default.

I’m aware of this, though, and that’s a big thing.  For now I need to focus on the physical.  I need to devote my time and my energy to making the structure safe and sound.  Once that’s locked down, I move on to the engine.

 

Written listening to Massive Attack, The Faint, NIN, Far, The Cure, and Crosses +++.  Shocking, right?

I’ve been meaning to come here and write about some of the cool stuff that’s been going on in my life, and some of the new things going on…because there has been a TON of stuff going on lately.  So much stuff.  An overwhelming amount, even.

But I find myself here tonight because my brain went to one of those places, and I was lying in bed feeling the weight of the universe slowly crush me, and I needed to talk.  But I don’t have anyone I can say these things to.

So there’s you, my no readers, and random bots from around the world that seem to stumble across my blahg every so often-this blog I keep promising myself I’ll spend time with regularly and then getting distracted from.

 

Tonight as I was finishing an episode of the new season of Daredevil (which is perfection btw) I was reminded about my aspirations from last year to finally join a boxing gym, and of a conversation from the weekend about learning some escrima.  And then I was reminded that I’m probably on blood thinners for the rest of my life.

So I took to the internet, to gauge the feelings of the masses, even though I knew the answer already.  Of course I did.  The answer is common sense, right?  But maybe someone somewhere would say differently and I could cling hopefully to that.

Alas, no.  There are no recommendations for high impact contact sports while on blood thinners.  And as an added bonus I learned that stents can occasionally rip through the artery wall unexpectedly, immediately killing their owner.  As a stent owner I find this incredibly troubling.  Moreso even than the plaque that had built up inside the artery.

So I looked into stent removal, if such a thing existed.  And it doesn’t.  Because the stent meshes in and integrates to the artery.

And here I am.  Dying.  In the peak physical condition of my entire life.  And I can’t do shit I should be able to.  Ever.

Think about your life for a moment.  Think about the word forever.  A lot of people figure their marriage will be forever.  Their church.  Friends and family.  But how often do you think about something that you absolutely will never have again, or do again?  You can always overcome obstacles if you try hard enough..right?
Not in my case.  There are now obstacles that are insurmountable, no matter how much I believe or how hard I try.  I have a lot of them now.  They wall me in and form my life.

And forever is a long time, especially when the owner of the word is someone who doesn’t believe in anything post-death.  Forever is now, and the few years ahead (possibly) and that’s it.  Eternity in a few years.  So I’m healthy.  Can almost run a 5k.  Lifting more than I’ve ever been able to.  Training.  Kicking ass at yoga.  Constantly pushing my physical limits to well beyond anything I could’ve done even in my youth.

But I can’t box, or spar…things I’ve ALWAYS wanted to be in good enough shape to do.

Ever.again.

Lying in bed felt really tiny.  I was starkly reminded just how powerless I really am in this world, and how absolutely bleak that feels.  Sometimes the hustle and the bustle distracts me from this.  Other times it comes crashing down, relentless on my stupid chest.  Sometimes it makes me want to cry, though I can’t seem to do that.  Sometimes it makes me want to punch something.  But then I’d bruise my hand, and then clot, and then die.

So I’ll just lay here for now, awash in the night, the gloom like thick mo-lasses that envelops me, and wait for sleep to hopefully take over.  Tomorrow I’ll get up, and paint on the game face, and head to the stressful job and spend some of my limited hours there.  Tomorrow night I’ll probably do the same thing, only I won’t write about it.

And I feel like there should be some kind of closing statement to this post…a zinger or a poignant reflection or something that makes a point to writing/reading it.

But there is none.  This is not art, or craft.  This is me dumping my whiny guts into the ether of semi-anonymity rather than burdening real people.  Sorry, I guess, but it had to happen tonight.

Every time I make a payment on my insane medical debt a little piece of the guy they saved dies inside.