3.68 Miles Today

2.5 or so of these miles were at Silver Falls State Park. Doesn't sound like much, but a mile down into the canyon and another mile back up plus miscellaneous hiking around. Pretty grueling really but at least it was a nice day. Austin was worn ragged as well, so it wasn't just me. :o) Also, I only consumed 839 calories today (against a burn of 2649 calories) if I added right. Am I skinny yet? Not quite. Another month or so to go I think. Ugh. I haven't bothered to weigh myself 'cause the first few days are always all water loss anyway. Maybe tomorrow.

4.54 Miles Today

...and almost zero carbs. Do you know how hard it is to eat no carbs? Yeah, since if you're reading this you're probably related to me, you probably do. Speaking of which - is anyone reading this? Seems like mostly cobwebs and echoes in here. Spooky.

Improvement, but...

4.37 miles today - a marked improvement over yesterday. The bad news is that walking only burns about 85 calories per mile. Clearly I'm going to have to diet as well. To illustrate the point, look at the handy little Fitbit graph. Can you see the difference between today when I walked 4.37 miles and yesterday's 1.42 (the two right-most bars)? Not much, is it? The days where I did next to nothing aren't dramatically different from those when I was quite active This supports my theory that while exercise is important for other reasons, you can't walk yourself thin without also drastically reducing caloric intake. I'm consuming about 2500 calories a day and that needs to be more like 1500 to make any significant headway. By the way, did you know a grilled cheese sandwich has 400 to 500 calories? Won't be having another one of those soon. Likewise, our favorite Roundtable pizza runs about 350 calories per slice. Yeah, I usually have four or five of those. Ouch. Widmer Hefeweizen (my favorite beer) has 156 calories per 12 oz bottle. Not as bad as I thought. Could I just have ten of those a day and forgo solid food? Hmmm... Might have other, unintended consequences.

The Rest of the Story

As Paul Harvey and my sister Cari know, there's always more to the story. My sudden desire to lose heft isn't particularly sudden, and it's not just that I'm too flabulous for my own good. Yeah it's uncomfortable, unhealthy, and I don't like the way I look, but I'm having trouble walking again and that's just unacceptable. It has much more to do with bad knees than being overweight, but I can't help but think the extra pounds are just wearing things out that much faster. Austin seems to be looking forward to me using a cane (like Yoda!), but I'm not so hip (ha ha) on the idea. As it happens, I finally bought a folding cane to put in my backpack in case I get "stuck" someplace, but I'd actually be pretty humiliated to use it. So, there you have it: the carrot of looking and feeling better and the stick of, well, the stick.

Here We Go Again

According to my company's annual health survey and report, I am overweight. Not just overweight, but at the extreme, extreme end of the overweight scale just before it turns into "obese". Allegedly, the healthy weight for a man of my height should be somewhere between 132 and 167 pounds. I'm going to choose the upper end of that range, thank you, and select 165 as my target weight which means I need to lose about 40 pounds.
I bought a FitBit recently, which is like a pedometer for data geeks. I'll post how far I walked more or less daily and, on the off chance that anyone's actually reading this, you can cheer me on. Or not. Mostly, the point here is that the only thing worse than the humiliation of failure is public humiliation.
Above is a delightful little photo that Rudy snapped a couple weeks ago showing me and the similarly rotund pug doing what we do best: nothing. All I need now is a full length mirror in the bathroom and I'm set.

Darwinism

Yesterday I was feeling all ambitious and decided we'd lived here long enough without indoor stairs to the basement. I got as far as moving some wiring, relocating a post, and cutting an enormous hole in the floor with the big Milwaukee Sawzall I bought a couple years ago but never used. Sawzalls are handy for this sort of thing, for cutting cars or small houses in half. But you know those old cartoons where the cat/dog/coyote cuts a hole in the floor he's standing on and falls to his doom? Yeah, that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Summer, where art thou?

Statistics can be misleading, but these seem to tell the story...

Officially sunny days in Portland since April 1?: 4

Last June wetter than this one?: 1888

Current temperature July 4 at noon: 63

It's supposed to get hot in a few days so we can all start whining about the heat soon. :-)