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March 22, 2005

Schiavo

The level of hypocrisy is painful. The coverage is crap. The pandering is classic. The ruling is correct.

Posted by tat at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

March 06, 2005

Weight for Me

For the first time in my life, I moved down a size in clothing. I slipped on some older jeans I haven't been able to wear in about five years, and they actually were a bit loose for me. Weight Watchers and exercising every day has resulted in about a 25-pound loss for me in two months, and I'm steadily losing more. I was inspired by a fellow educator's experience of losing 86+ pounds.

Two things prompted my dedication to shedding pounds: Molly and medication. Molly's birth underscored my own mortality and gave me pause to realize how long I'm gonna have to live in order to see my grandchildren, and the stress from teaching put me on blood pressure medication for the first time.

Weight Watchers is a really clever program of points. Foods are rated according to fiber, fat, and calories and given a single number, which add up to your daily total, making for a high-fiber, low-fat diet. The good news about that is we were already basically eating within our limits, so it wasn't much of a lifestyle change. The real change occurred with exercise. We invested in a treadmill, which sits in our living room. I've worked my way up to 30 minute sessions every day by starting at 20 minutes and adding 15 seconds per day. In addition, because of my military history I guess, I am working toward 30 pushups and 30 situps a day. I call it my 3-30 plan (applause).

Denise does aerobics, but I can't bring my self-conscious self to do them. I just feel silly and, well, unmanly. Call it chauvinism, but there you go.

My ultimate goal is 180-200 pounds by December, which is about right for a 6-footer, at which time I will be devastatingly attractive and probably leave teaching for a modeling career. :)

Posted by tat at 11:16 AM | Comments (3)