For far too long I have been neglecting my weight. Oh, I’ve had some good excuses some of the time (last year, I was frequently too sick to go to the gym; this year, I injured my back and took several months before I returned to a more-or-less normal amount of mobility). But the fact remains that I’ve let my body shape go, and I’ve finally got motivated enough to get (back) in shape.

It helps that I’ll have some great support for at least the first leg of this journey. Last Sunday, a friend and I decided to set the goal of losing 10 pounds in 5 weeks–a very difficult but not unattainable weight-loss goal. We took the dreaded “before” pictures. And NO, I’m not sharing mine! We took all the basic body part measurements. We weighed in. Then we entered into a “contest” with the winner and loser receiving various rewards and punishments…

I’ll wait until the end of the process before revealing my full details, but I will say that my BMI was 27.3. Here’s how the NHI evaluates the BMI numbers:

Underweight = <18.5
Normal weight = 18.5-24.9
Overweight = 25-29.9
Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater

What a wake up call! In the past two years of paying very sporadic attention to my weight, I gained about 20 pounds… What a mess I found myself in, and what a wake-up call. The BMI tells me that I’m in the mid-point of the Overweight range, half way from “normal” and going on “obese”! I probably put half that weight-gain on in April and May after my back injury, when “comfort foods” supplemented my daily dose of multiple pain killers to help me get through the pain.

The goals I set with my friend are still in progress, and I’m determined to lose all the weight that I can do quickly yet in a healthy way. The first week went well: I did cardiovascular exercise at the gym six days per week and improved my diet significantly, resulting in a weight loss of 1.1 pounds.

Unfortunately, my goal was 2.0 pounds, so I have had to crunch the numbers to see where I could improve … and quickly (only 4 weeks left). It seems that I had been eating relatively healthy foods, mostly natural and minimally processed. But I was eating too much. I crunched the numbers on my daily calorie count and realized that I was going to have to eliminate snacking almost entirely and adhere to a strict 1,500 calorie per day limit.

And I also gave into temptation last Wednesday and had a cheeseburger and three light beers. I also realized that as wonderful as it had been to get in 45 minutes on the exercise bike, if I wanted to succeed at my goal of 2.0 pounds per week, then I would have to boost my daily cardio to at least an hour.

My agenda for the next several weeks is simple: create a daily calorie deficit of roughly 1,000 calories per day by limiting my caloric intake to 1,500 while simultaneously doing about 1 hour of cardio (and some light work with weights, too). According to the math, I should create a calorie deficit of 7,000 calories per week, resulting in weekly fat loss of 2.0 pounds. By September 21, I should have a BMI of 25.8. Let’s see how the math holds up in the real world!

I know there are many ways to skin a cat, and I’m sure there are folks who have many great ideas that have worked for them, so I’m not saying my approach to weight-loss is the best or only approach. But it’s the approach that makes the most sense to me in light of my current goals.

I hadn’t planned to blog about my weight-loss goals, but I don’t see what harm it could do. I suppose the worst thing that could happen is I fail and everyone knows. But I don’t think I’m going to fail, and blogging might make the journey more fun. So I’m going to keep an online journal of my progress not merely over the next month, but over the next 12 weeks.

Why 12 weeks? Sadly, because I’ve gotten heavy enough that even if I adhere to an aggressive diet and daily exercise, I can’t expect to erase the pounds in only four weeks. It will realistically take at least another 12 to return to my ideal healthy weight, at a “normal” BMI (around 23.0 to 24.5). And even this goal is aggressive (however, I feel that an aggressive approach is the best for me).

12 weeks seems like forever at the moment, but it’s really not so long. Look for updates along the way!

Technorati Tags: health

Originally posted August 10, 2007.

Talking yesterday with a friend in the 12-step universe, we were discussing (and disagreeing about) contrasting approaches to the recovery process. I’ve shared my basic orientation to the recovery universe in Soulfully Gay. So let me now paraphrase: Recovery, like all aspects of life, is an evolving process. It traverses phases that accompany us through the various phases and stages of our lives. To speak for a moment of recovery as it is most commonly understood, as a process of learning to recover from addictions to alcohol and other drugs, sex, overeating, gambling, etc., then it is fitting to speak of recovery as a dysfunction of the magenta (impulsive) and red (self-esteem) waves of development. (My preference is to speak of addiction as a pathology of the red stage of development; however, there are other ways of speaking about recovery that may be just as valid, or more valid, than the approach that I find most useful.)

For persons who are caught in this active pathology of the impulsive and self-esteem oriented developmental process, addiction can become a fixed (some would say permanent) feature of red, working to sabatoge healthy development in all subsequent waves of development and stations of life. It is sometimes the case that addicts will find themselves stuck in red as a fixed station of life. Recovery, therefore, is a process that is often encountered as an attempt to overcome aspects of personality that are stuck at unhealthy red. In amber recovery, abstinence and dependence on a Higher Power and a Higher Collective Order is the remedy. In orange recovery, building healthy ego strength in the service of rational decision-making to unmask the irrationality of addictive thoughts and behaviors is the prescription.

Technorati Tags: 12 steps, addiction, health, integral, recovery

Thank you for visiting my Weblog. To longtime visitors, I’m glad you’re back!

Over the past 20 months, a string of successive health challenges have kept me from working in the way that I used to take for granted. Work on my book and screenplay has stalled, and even my blogging has been quite sporadic. I’ve been preoccupied with much more fundamental concerns than expressing my creativity, and that has truly sucked.

Only a year ago, I was in dire straights in the hospital with about 30 T-cells, opportunistic infections, and the surprise onset of diabetes. I was forced to cancel all my out-of-town travel to publicize my brand new book, Soulfully Gay (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007).

Well, my health has remarkably improved since then. I am deeply grateful to my friends and family for their support, my doctors for their wonderful care, and Merck & Co., Inc. , for creating drugs which have literally saved my life. Overcoming these various challenges has left me feeling more grateful, more blessed, more sensitive, and perhaps more compassionate and committed to life than ever before.

That’s why I’m now taking steps towards resuming work. I’m priveleged to be able to spend my time doing writing that I love, not any old job that pays the bills.

I’m getting back into the groove with blogging. You’re looking at my new Weblog, now titled eponymously. Its contents will certainly change over time to reflect my current interests; however, as with my previous three blogs, this space is committed to expressing and exploring what it means to have an integral outlook on life.

As I psyche myself up for blogging again on nearly a daily basis, I find that my attitude is dramatically changed this time around. Over the past years of frequently crappy health, I had to force myself to sit down before my computer and struggle for enthusiasm and mental clarity. For the first time in a long while, I feel ready to write with a spirit of equanimity and joy. Ready, set, go!

Yours truly,

Joe

P.S.: I’ve been blogging on and off since 2003. But I’ve never been the sort of blogger who likes to keep his archives publicly available forever. I have yet to hear a complaint, so I’m keeping with my longstanding practice of wiping the slate clean of my old posts. The truly dedicated reader can always search the Internet archive.

I intend to post some of my old blogs’ “greatest hits” here over the next few months. When I recycle a post, I’ll make a note of its original publication date.

P.P.S. (July 5, 2006): Since writing this post, I have miraculously discovered a way to transfer self-hosted Blogger posts (which have no “export” feature built-in) to self-hosted Wordpress blogs. Damn I’m good. I have therefore added the archives of one of my old blogs, Whole Writing, to this one. Unfortunately, I discovered the magic trick too late to do the same sort of transfer for my other blogs. So now joe-perez.com has some archives! Very cool.

Technorati Tags: health, HIV/AIDS, Joe Perez