August 2004 Archives

Dropped off the Home School Affidavit at the school district office yesterday. Today begins our first official day of home schooling our kids. How long will it last? I dunno, but we are committed to a year of it. I figure this could be the best or worst thing that has ever happened to our family and I will let you know as times passes which one it is.

How did the girls take the news? Elsie & Miriam both had a bit of sadness about not going back but after sharing their thoughts it was business as usual. Elsie said she would be sad cause she had plans to sit with her friend Anthony on the bus. Miriam was sad cause she will never know who would have been her 1st grade teacher. I felt bad for her for her. I can remember getting excited about who my teacher would be and somehow I stole that from her.

But here is the good news. On the first day of school we will take off in the afternoon and go to Hershey Park. So while all the other kiddies are sitting in school I hope to be standing in a short line to ride the scrambler. Hopefully that should make up for any sadness they might be feeling.

Smoothie, our pet guinea pig, had her babies today. She had three little ones but one of them didn't make it. The babies are pretty darn cute. Below smoothie is cleaning off number 3 while number 1 is hiding under her back end. The kids are pretty exited.

Ok, I found this little Geography game online. Find all 50 states in 60 seconds. Can you do it? I found it tonight and took the test while my mother was talking to me I got a 40 out of 50. Try it and let me know how you do.

60 SECOND STATE GAME

Today was Shelly's Birthday and we did what she wanted. We went to Hershey Park, rode tons of rides, ate some good bar-b-q ribs, and finished the day off with a Golden Almond Bar. All in all it was a good day.

Now begins a special time of the year for me, for 50 days every year I am married to an older woman. When my birthday clicks around in October I will go back to being married to an equal, but for 50 days I am the younger man.

Okay so the Olympics are on and my friend TIVO is taping them like mad and I am watching them selectively. I have fast forwarded through more hours of TV than I have watched, but like most americans I have watched Michael Phelps. To be honest, swimming is not where it is at for me as far as sports. But Phelps has made it worth it for me. I don't really care how many medals he won, what has impressed me is that he is a good guy, and a team player. When I read that Phelps had given up his spot on the final relay race so that his team mate could race for the Gold it actually brought a tear to my eye.

I really think that 'being a team player' is lacking in our world today. So many people are out for just themselves that they forget the value and strength in being aligned. I think this is apparent in broken families, marriages and churches to name a few. I know I forget about being a team player sometimes myself, but I hope I can pass this value along to my children. I think Ecclesiastes 4:12 sums it up very nicely:

Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12

And I thank Michael Phelps for reminding me of that this week.

Every years since Elsie was born my in-laws have given us a season pass to Hershey Park. With the birth of Ruth at the beginning of the Season we decided last year to hold off on our passes for this year thinking we might have our hands too full to get use out of the passes. Since June we have been regretting our decision. The summer has been a bit milder that last year and has had a bunch of fair weather days that would have been great to go to the park.

So a week ago Grandma Yordy was here for a picnic and she asked what we were thinking about Park Passes for next year. Shelly and I both agreed our family would be glad to have passes again and that we were sad we didn't get up to the park this year. So upon checking out the details for purchasing a pass for next year we discovered if you could buy a pass for 2004&2005 now that the season is almost over. This way we can take advantage of the last few weeks of the park this summer and all next.

After work today we went up to the season pass office and got passes for 2004&5. After getting our passes we headed into the park for the rest of the night. One of our traditions as we head into the park is to measure the kids at the front of the park to determine what rides they can ride. This year Elsie is a Twizzler, Miriam a Hershey Bar and Caleb a Reeses'. This means they can all ride 4 of the parks roller coasters including the Comet, Sooper Dooper Looper, Roller Soaker, & Trail Blazer.

When we got in the park we imediately hit the small rides at the front of the part including the carousel, kiddie rides & the scrambler. After a few rides Caleb was begging to ride a roller coaster so we headed down to 'Comet Hollow' and I took the kids to the Sooper Dooper Looper while Shelly fed Ruth. The kids were all nervous and excited, Miriam and Elsie changed there minds a dozen times. First they wanted to ride it, then they wanted to get off, then they wanted to ride it. In the end, Elsie & Caleb rode with me and Miriam waited for us. After eating we went back and all three of them rode with me. Elsie and Caleb loved it, I think it freaked Miriam out. Along with being the kids first time it was also the first time I rode a roller coaster in 20 years.

When Elsie was 10 months old I had lost about 40lbs. I was feeling great from my weight loss and we went to Hershey Park for the day. To give us some 'alone' time Grandma Yordy took baby Elsie for an hour and we waited in line to ride the Wildcat(the Newest Roller coaster at the time). We waited for about 45 minutes when we finally tried to board the 'train.' To make a long story short, even though I was feeling 40lbs skinnier the seat belt for the ride would not latch when stretched around me and I had to get off the ride. That was an awful day. Shelly never told anyone about my difficulties but nonetheless I was mortified. I made an oath that I would never ride or attempt to ride a roller coaster again.

Well today for the first time in 2 decades I rode a roller coaster with my kids and it was great! I hope I will continue to ride with them for years to come.

I would be lying if I let you believe that loosing weight makes me feel great everyday and I never have any issues. The truth is loosing weight is hard physically, mentally, emotionally. It is an awful roller coaster of feelings and thoughts powered by your body's chemistry.

This past few weeks I have been in a good slump. I think it all started with my gull bladder surgery and has continued since then. I have never been successful at loosing weight before, never, obviously if I had been I wouldn't still be trying. So I have a huge need to feel like I have accomplished my weight goal(s). Even though I am close I will continue to feel like a failure until I meet my goal(s). (Actually I do not feel any guarantee from myself that once I meet my final goal that I will feel much better, but I can hope.)

Bad news is my goal has never been set in stone so It is not a perfect measuring device. And any positive thinking go get em speaker will tell you, you need to have a measurable goal when you start something. Somehow I just thought I would know when I arrived at my goal. My only thought is that I am relying more on my feelings of feeling good about myself and I just don't. The even sadder news is that I should be able to stop at any time cause you should be able to feel good about yourself no matter what your weight. (even though I know this to be the case, it still doesn't work for me right now)

A few months ago I thought I came up with a creative answer to my end goal/feel good with my result issues. The idea of throwing myself a weightloss/birthday party was supposed to help with that but it did not. It actually made me feel more pressured and depressed and go figure, canceling it has left me feeling aimless and depressed. So no matter what it just seems like I am feeling low. I know this to shall pass. Just wish it went away yesterday.

I apologize, this is long and a bit personal. Reader discretion is advised. . .

Other than stomach stapling there is one other kinda awkard, semi-private question people have been asking me. Since loosing most of my weight, I have had several friends and one or two enemies ask me about what I am planning on doing with my extra skin. Up till a month or two ago I had not given it much thought. Then while channel surfing, Shelly and I watched a show about plastic surgery. It had on a boy about 14 yrs. old that had moobs. Moobs=Man Boobs. For a 14yr. old boy his moobs were larger than normal so his mom was going to pay to have them removed(via Gynecomastia-official term). So then the doctor came on and explained that 33% of men have moobs to varying degrees. Mostly due to inheriting them from some family genes. Anyway the procedure is the same as a woman's breast reduction. They take out the fat and remove the excess skin. In this case cause he is a boy they make him totally flat instead of a smaller cup size. About half way through the show I was ready to flip to something else but Shell wanted to finish it out so we did. The next segment was on a lady who had a tummy tuck & some liposuction, the final sgement was about a lady who had a Panniculectomy(basically left over skin removed from around her midsection after loosing a bunch of weight.)

By the time the program was over my head was spinning. I never really believed in most cases that plastic surgery was needed by anyone. Yes kids with problems(cleft palettes, etc.) and car crash victims, sure. But just cause you do not like the nose God gave you? Nah, not worth it. However, seeing the boy with the moobs and the lady with the excess skin really hit home for me. I have struggled with moobs my whole life. I believe moobs have been the source of much of my personality flaws. As a chubby kid with chubby moobs I was the one to get picked on and made fun of, I can't tell you how many times kids grabbed them and twisted them or how horrible i felt when in gym class we had to pick teams to play a game and my side was the one who had to play skins. My chubby moobs bounced as i ran after the basketball and it was probably the most dreaded thing of my young life.

As I said, I think those things have shaped my personality. I learned to become very quick and vicious with my tongue because others hurt me with theirs on a daily basis. I had to hurt them before they could hurt me. (as they say, "a good offense is your best defense") I used to dread going swimming in the summers, even though it truly is my favorite sport and past time. (In Boy Scouts I actually got a patch for swimming a mile.) It was just the way people stare at you. Whether they were looking at my fat body as a whole or specifically staring at my moobs, didn't matter to me. I can understand how some people can be so emotionally and psychologically controlled by there fears cause when it came to swimming and gym class or showing off my body, I was.

So now my life and body have changed, but I am left with the same fat High School Kid on the inside. My thinking has yet to change. The way I look at myself has changed very little, I am still a fat person living in a slightly thinner body. I am still struggling to deal with my moobs and after loosing a lot of weight they are still there, as is lots of flab in my stomach, thighs, upper arm, neck. This is disappointing to me to say the least.

My flab:

So am I gonna rush out a get some surgery to correct my flaws? No. Practically speaking I don't have the money to do it and if I did there are so many other things that I would rather do for and with my family that I would never spend the money on the surgery. If some TV show offered me the surgery on a silver platter I would probably accept. (but I haven't filled out any apps, so this is unlikely). And if someone is gonna give me that much money to get rid of my moobs I would rather take it and put in a swimming pool and get some more exercise equipment. So even I would turn down the chance to get rid of my flab. In other words my moobs & flab are here to stay.

Thinking I am just gonna cancel my birthday/weight loss party. Not sure what I was thinking when I came up with the idea. I think it would have been fun, but now it just looks like an exercise of over endulgance. When I first came up with the idea I thought it would be fun to plan and execute a party and I thought it would be the motivation I needed to finish out my year of weight loss. But as time gets closer and I am forced to make plans, the evening the way I wish I could do it is gonna take more time/effort/resources than I am willing to sacrifice on behalf of my family.

I think it is important to have goals, dreams, and rewards when you are trying to loose weight. I thought a party would be a good motivating reward, and I think it was. It occupied my mind for a good bit of time. I have spent hours while running deciding what I was gonna do and how to make it fun, I actually think it might have been an amusing evening. But my recent time I spent running I been thinking through the party and the ramifications of continuing to plan. With everything our family already has scheduled and all the 'pots' we have on our stove. We don't need something else taking up time. So the party has to go.

Today was the fourth annual Good Picnic. The Goods are my wife's mother's family, and every year for the past four years we have had them at our house on the first Saturday of August. Picnics are always is a nice way to spend time with family. We eat good food, chat it up, play some games, the kids beat open a piﾒata, we eat some more, talk some more, and then after dark we set off some fireworks.

This year was a bit different because this past spring Grandma Good died. The family had not been together as a group since the funeral and there were a few boxes of her possessions that needed to be dispersed. The biggest of which were contained 100 Hallmark ornaments from the mid eighties. Grandpa Good was a big Hallmark Ornament collector and Grandma still had some left that she decorated her tree with at the nursing home. So after some games and the piﾒata the brothers and sisters gathered around and divided up the ornaments. It was interesting to watch who picked which ornament. Mostly because they held a special memory for that person about Grandma or Grandpa. and to think some of those ornaments were probably worth a few hundred bucks on Ebay.(just a guess).

Well as I type this, the picnic is over for another year. It is a bunch of hard work to pull off and clean up, but it is well worth it.

3.6m 45m -111.1t

A friend wrote me this week they preparing to do some low carb dieting and asked for any tips or advice. So I find myself thinking about what to tell them. I do not know if any of this works for anyone oher than me and I can guarentee it is not scientifically tested, but here are my thoughts.

1. Know what you are doing before you start. I find myself talking to at least one person a week who is gonna try a low carb diet and has no idea what they are doing. I have talked to people who think low carb is a strictly meat diet(it is not). I talk to people who think taking the top bun off their burger is low carb(it probably isn't). Or they think it is a license to binge on fatty foods (it shouldn't be). and on and on and on, In the last ten months I have heard all sorts of things. Anyway, what I am saying is know what you are doing! Get a book(atkins, south beach, etc.) read up! Go to some websites, read what people are saying and doing. I believe if you follow the diet as it was written you will lose weight. Do yourself a favor and do it right.

2. Exercise. You need to exercise to lose weight and feel great. Don't fool yourself. There is no way around this. 3x a week minimum. Also I believe in exercising first thing in the morning. Two reasons: Get it out of the way. Exercise on an empty stomach and then waiting an hour before you eat can burn more calories.

3. Keep track of what you eat. http://www.fitday.com Offers a free food journal. You can even add all your custom foods. It helps to really know what you are eating. And makes counting carbs easy!

4. Manufacturers lie. If the food you are eating says 0 carbs but common sense says it has to have a carb in it. It probably does. They are allowed to fudge in the nutritional info to a certain degree and they do. If the item has .5 carbs per serving they can round down to 0. and then you go and eat two servings and end up with a carb.

5. Spend time in the grocery store. Figure out where they have low carb products hidden in your grocery store. Walmart in Lebanon has them in tons of places. Why? I dunno sometimes they are with similar products like low carb salad dressing with the other salad dressings. Sometimes they are in their own community set apart in a different row altogether. Don't miss out on low carb options cause you are not looking.

6. The first two weeks on low carb are known as induction. Be strict. Do not fudge this part. Stick to the simple foods on the plan and stay away from the low carb manufactured foods. All the sugar alchohol type products can screw up a good start. I also try to avoid bars and shakes during this time. My body takes about 5-7 days to get used to low carbs. So the first few days I always feel worse until the 'sugar' leaves my blood. So sticking to induction seems best to me.

7. You will loose water weight during your first few weeks.(common in all diets) This is encouraging to see the scale go down. Just remember if you stop you may quickly gain a few pounds back so keep that in mind when you are determining how much you want to loose and when you plan to stop.

8. Set goals & rewards real or imaginary. It is important to keep your eye on the prize and positive reinforcement helps. Even if it seems crazy. I have had a ton of goals and rewards going on in my head over the past year. Perhaps I will write a separate entry on this subject. It would amuse some of you I am sure.

9. Avoid the scale it is your enemy. It will lie to you and discourage you. Don't get me wrong it makes you feel good at times too. But for every time it makes you feel good there are ten times it makes you feel discouraged. So try only to weigh yourself at the same time every few days. Cause you do not loose weight everyday, so avoid disappointment. However, if seeing the scale not budge is a freaky motivating factor weigh yourself every few hours. (for more about my relationship with my scale search my blog)

10. Calories are still the deciding factor in any diet. Consuming less calories will help you lose weight faster. USING LOW CARB AS A LICENSE TO EAT TONS OF FATTY FOODS IS A CRIME. Keep track on fitday.com and maintain a reasonable calorie level for you!

11. Snacks- Lebanon Balogna(non-sweet) Carb Options Skippy Peanut Butter, Hood Carb Countdown Chocolate Milk, Cajun Pork Rinds, Atkins Bars, Celery, Broccoli, Diet Rite Soda, are all good when you need something. ( But I try to avoid the manufactured snacks during the two week induction)

12. Myoplex CS Powdered drinks. I love them. They are low carb protein drinks with tons of vitamins. Found at GNC centers, I like them better than Atkins drinks(although they are good too). The price of the box is pretty expensive and I joined their gold club to get the discount. I drink one of these a day. Put powder in blender with 7 ice cubes and 16oz of water. YUM

13. Sugar Alcohol in products is great when you want something sweet without the digestible carbs. Just beware it can upset your stomach.

14. Tomorrow is another day. If you blow it, it is ok. Just start again tomorrow. I find myself wanting to throw in the towel sometimes. but if i wait out my urges and my temptation tomorrow is always brighter. Also if you do blow it, it can take 2-3 days to get back to feeling better doing low carb.

Ok if i think of more after I post I will add them. But this is a start. If you have any good ideas to add please comment.

When I run I spend half my time looking ahead and the other half looking down. I look ahead to make sure I do not run into any oncoming traffic(and that they do not run into me). I look down for amsement. There are always things along the edge of the road. Paper, mostly fast food wrappers tops my list of things I see. Lat week I found a small pink purse with the letter 'a' on it. But today I noticed the most amusing thing, a butcher knife. How do you suppose a butcher knife ended up at the side of the road.

I know how fast food papers end up there. ou are eating a burger at 60MPH open your window and tada instant disposal. But exactly what were you doing in your car going 60MPH with a butcher knife when all of a sudden you thought perhaps I should dispose of this? Well with such thoughts novels are written I suppose.

3.6m 45m -107.5t

Congrats to Kurt Weaver! Kurt IM'd me today and told me he crossed a major barrier in his effort to lose weight and I am very happy for him! He has been going strong for 3-4 months now and his efforts are paying off.

Kurt roomed with me in Nashville at GMA in April, at that time I was pretty happy and had lost about 140 pounds. I had been running for several weeks and was in the best shape of my life. Kurt was in a slump. He had put on some extra pounds and was feeling like he needed to do something about it. Well let me tell you, looking back at it, I wasn't very nice to him regarding his weight. I know on several occasions I was a down right jerk to him. (for that I am sorry)

I had never been able to tolerate overweight people very well. I think it is because of my true hate for my own condition that I do not tolerate it in others. My wife would not be able to understand this because of her incredible compassion she would say, you know how awful it is to be overweight can't you feel that for your friend. But because i hate that aspect of my life so much I can hate it in others too and for awhile I have allowed myself to dislike others because of this. I think I have spent time dealing with this, but when I was rooming with Kurt I could feel that, 'hey buddy get your butt in gear' attitude coming out. I also was feeling pretty confident about myself and around Kurt I felt a bit cocky. For that I am sorry.

But back to Kurt, He is a guy very much like me. Kurt is Very smart, Very Hard Working, Very Creative, and Very Determined. So no doubt he will meet his weight goal. I congratulate him for his efforts. I also will take a small ounce of credit in pushing him over the edge. (even though I was a cocky jerk)

Congrats Kurt

3.6m 46m -103.9t

I don't talk to my neighbors across the street much. Not that we do not get along, we do, we are just from different worlds. However when the occasion arises we can chat it up. Tonight I started talking to the neighbor lady, it was actually the first time we chatted since last fall. After some small talk she finally asked the question she had been waiting to ask. 'Not to be nosey, I just need to ask you how you lost your weight,' she blurted. I told her low carb & exercise. She had said her husband and her had been wondering. They had seen me full size in the fall and due to the winter had not seen me again until I started doing outside work in the spring. So they have been wondering for months how I lost weight and pretty much had decided that I had my stomach stapled.

She is not the first by far to assume stomach stapling. In the last few months I have had a good handful of people slip me the question. It doesn't offend me, to be honest, a doctor at my local practice threatened me with a stomach stapling/belt on several occasions over the past few years. I looked into stomach stapling by using my secret geek super powers to search the internet. What were my findings? Well, while it seems to do the job when successful, it also looks risky with some very awful results and even death as a possibility. So after I 'weighed' the facts I decided that a stomach operation was out of the question for me.

(side note: while I am on this subject I want to say that I truly believe that this type of surgery is for morbidly obese people, which i did qualify. Recently, I have talked to a few people who have considered this for themselves who are and were nowhere near my obesity. I can't believe people who are not in a death threatening position would even consider this. It is their right, but I want them to know by my example that you can do it without an op. Actually, the bigger struggle is controlling self-perception and not food consumption. OK, I said it.)

So it turns out that low-carb and exercise has worked great for me and I am glad I can say I did it that way and I pray I will never be in a position to even consider a stomach operation.