Tag Archives: Doctor

Padre John's Sermons

Finding Fitness Is Like Getting Back on a Bicycle

I was a skinny kid.

My mom took me to the doctor, who prescribed this yucky elixir to gain weight.

I also had to add a powder to my chocolate milk to bulk up.

They didn’t seem to work.

I recall walking home from school and getting pushed into cars by strong winds.

Lightweight John on the right, circa 1978.

It wasn’t until high school that I took fellow About Men Radio posse member Chris’s advice to eat a pint of Carvel ice cream each week. [Editor’s Note: Chris has no recollection of having done this and middle-age and lactose-intolerant Chris would strongly advise against this approach.]

I was the kid who could eat a whole pizza in one sitting. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have done it in mixed company.

I’d also finish off a whole plate of spaghetti and lose a pound or two.

I’m guessing that it wasn’t until college when I discovered the endocrine system and how my metabolism used up the fuel in my body, thus keeping me skinny.

I also rode my bicycle to and from school every day, so that was about a 10-mile workout daily.

I used to enjoy leaving the college after early classes and taking a ride throughout Yonkers and Peekskill.

One day I rode up to the Kensico Dam. That was the farthest that I biked after classes. I know that it doesn’t seem far, but you must  pedal back home as well.

So, what happened?

Well, in my senior year, my dad let me use the car.

My bike started to become a clothes rack.

Driving became the rage.

After college, I walked to work.

 While I kept on my feet at work and participated in recreational activities, I also started to put on a few pounds.

The pounds came on gradually and the next job was 50 percent field work and 50 percent office work and so the pounds accumulated.

Pedro rubs John’s belly for good luck in February 2016.

I would take the bike out once or twice a month, mostly to pedal to the health club to work out for a few hours, then pedal back home.

I guess the bike then became part of my workout routine and less of a fun activity.

 Occasionally, I’d pedal to Orchard Beach and take a quick swim.

The next job was 99 percent in the office and on one evening I was working late, and the bus stopped running after 10 p.m.

While waiting for an alternate bus, I decided to walk home. I decided that I’d walk home once a week, preferably in the daytime.

Last month, I set up my bike to my stationary bike stand and have it facing the TV in my living room.

I have a nice cushioned seat and am gradually losing the pounds.

I put them on gradually and the best way to keep them off is gradually.

Related:

Going Old School to Get Into Shape

Can My Doctor Just STFU About My BMI Please?

Battle of the Bulge: The Struggle to Eat Right and Exercise

Mele's Musings

Clean Living — Is It Worth It?

I had my annual physical and all was well.

Except that my blood pressure was a little high.

And my blood sugar was borderline.

Oh, yes, I had gained 10 pounds, which the doctor wants me to lose.

No problem. I kind of expected those results.

But then she lowered the boom and said she wanted me to increase my daily workouts to 60 minutes from 30.

That hurt.

I just turned 53, did my second mud run in August and work out regularly four to five days a week.

Not bad for a middle-aged guy with a sedentary job.

But her directive to work out more frosted my rage cake.

C’mon! You want me fit and healthy even if it kills me!

I have no delusions that I am going to grace the cover of “Men’s Health” magazine anytime soon and that’s OK.

For my age and lifestyle, I have worked hard at beating back — with some success — the inevitable physical effects that come with reaching your 50s.

But the doctor’s order underscored a peculiar balance you start to confront at a particular age: Do you sacrifice certain things now to prolong your life later?

For instance, do I extend my workouts by 30 minutes, cutting into time I might be doing other things, like spending time with my wife, so that I can live into my 80s, when my quality of life would undoubtedly be less?

It feels like a shoddy tradeoff.

As it is, I do not smoke, I drink in moderation, have stopped taking sugar in my coffee and have given up on my Frisbee-sized weekly cookies from my favorite diner.

I also spurn fast food, try to eat a healthy serving of fruits and vegetables and “clean” proteins like chicken and fish.

And if that is all not enough, the doctor wants me to exercise more? What a killjoy!

I understand the importance of staving off diabetes and heart disease to have a better quality of life. I get it. But I want to enjoy my food and drink now, not 30 years from now when it will be puréed baby food.

The struggle to behave and eat right is difficult given the stresses of daily life and the bonanza of temptations out there.

I do like my dark chocolate, coffee, wine, vodka and tonics, margaritas and indulgent dessert once in a while.

But if comes to moderation vs. deprivation, I will almost always go with the former.

At some point, you just have to pick your spots and assign a value to the things that you enjoy that may not be good for you and the things that are good for you that you may not enjoy.

As my old man used to tell me:

“OK, Chris, now remember about clean living: No booze, no smoking and no carousing with loose women. It’s clean but is it living?!”

AMR Fitness Challenge, Mele's Musings

Weighting For the Moment of Truth

This is the latest installment in the About Men Radio Fitness Challenge in which members of the AMR posse have pledged to eat better and adopt a healthier lifestyle in order to lose weight. Chris Mele has this update:

My moment of truth arrives on Monday.

I go back to see the doctor, who when I last visited, said she wanted me to drop 15 pounds.

So after doubling down on my workouts for the past two months (after being sidelined with an illness for a month), after cranking up the intensity of my exercise, curbing my sugar intake and tracking my calories with an online app, I stepped on the scale today and…

I GAINED two pounds.

To borrow a line from “Blazing Saddles”: “What in the Wide World of Sports is going on here?!”

I mean, c’mon!

I have extended my workouts to nearly an hour and six days a week.

I really have tried to keep track of my food, entering the calories on the conservative side and being honest about my unhealthy snacking, namely the Frisbee-sized cookies I get from the Jefferson Diner in New Jersey.

But there was the readout on the scale, unblinking: 203.7.

Of course, when I get to the doctor, her scale will say something worse because it always does.

I was aiming to lose 15 and gained two.

Once upon a time, 15 years ago, I dropped 40 pounds but I did it by eating scant calories (mostly carbs) and doing only industrial-strength cardio (cardio videos, running, biking, etc.)

The result though was I looked bony and unhealthy. Plus I was cold all the time.

I’ve been doing a bit more weight lifting and taking in more protein.

I do have to say I feel like I’m filling out a little bit (and not in a paunchy in the poochy kind of way either).

My wife says I have dents in my torso (I guess to match the ones in my head!) and my clothes do feel like they fit better.

So I guess I am doing something right.

Maybe weight is not the final arbiter of whether you’re healthy.

In this case, I feel like the doctor has put her thumb on the scale and made me more concerned with hitting a number than with how I’m doing overall.

Will see what she says on Monday.

Related blog posts:

Going Old School to Get Into Shape

Battle of the Bulge: The Struggle to Eat Right and Exercise

 

Can My Doctor Just STFU About My BMI Please?

 

 

 

Food, Mele's Musings

Can My Doctor Just STFU About My BMI Please?

 

I recently had my annual physical and I was like pffffft….I’ve got this thing in the bag.

Heart? Sounded A-OK.

Lungs? All clear.

Yes, I wear my safety belt. I drink alcohol in moderation. And no, I don’t smoke.

I was sailing toward a bill of health cleaner than my mother’s kitchen when…

The doctor looked over my paperwork and saw my weight. Hmmmm, she said, for your height and weight, your BMI is high and you are very close to being obese.

For those of you who are not familiar with BMI, or body mass index, it is a conspiracy cooked up by health professionals to figure out new ways to guilt you into losing weight.

It takes into account your height and weight and then comes up with a score to determine if you are like porridge in a Goldilocks fairy tale: Underweight, overweight or just right.

But even at the news about my BMI, I was not fazed.

Then I raised the question that I should have left unasked.

So, doctor, how much weight do I need to lose? (I figured five pounds would be a reasonable answer.)

“Fifteen pounds” came her reply.

The room started to spin.

My righteous indignation started to rise.

Protests began to form on my lips.

Fifteen pounds! Now look here, I work out religiously four to five days a week, at least 30 minutes of hardcore exercise each time.

She acknowledged that was good but said the issue was probably my food intake.

Oh. That.

You mean my beloved cookies the size of Frisbees that I get at the Jefferson Diner in New Jersey?

IMG_1729

You mean the processed snack bars that are promoted as healthy but are still loaded with a bit too much sugar and carbs? Or my less-than-optimal daily intake of vegetables?

In the Supreme Court of Calories, I want to strike a plea bargain.

BMI is an imperfect measure of body fat that was originally intended to assess the obesity rates of a population of people. Applied to individuals, one size does not fit all.

Further, it does not differentiate between fat and muscle, so if you work out with weights (which I do) you could be penalized.

An article in Men’s Health magazine makes the point that you know if you are overweight.

How do your clothes fit? Do you have trouble making it up a flight of stairs? What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Now, it is true that what you eat matters more in some ways than how much you exercise. That is an area where I do have room to improve.

So I’m resolving to try to cut back on my sweets and maybe watch my portion control a little more closely. And maybe extend my workouts a bit each day.

I figure what I have got to lose — except 15 pounds.

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