Battle of the Bulge, Part Two: Maintaing

I was attending my family's gathering at my sister's home in Charleston last Christmastime.  It was a grand time with lots of interaction with the family; both close and extended.  

As we ate dinner for New Year's Eve, the talk around the table was of the coming year, what we'd be doing with it, and our resolutions.  When my turn to share came up, I made a fairly generic comment about wanting to be more healthy in my approach to eating and exercise.

Dinner finished and dessert arrived, and I noted that the brother of my brother-in-law, a guy older than me but in very good shape, turned down my sister's homemade dessert.  "I don't eat sweets," he claimed, "I just don't."

Ah, sweets.  My love/hate relationship.  When in the mode of eating them, I found them to be absolutely addictive.  Every night I'd need to have some kind of sweet.  And I truly mean NEED.  However, over the past 20 years or so, I usually gave up sweets for lent.  And I found after a week or so after I gave them up, I did not crave them.  After another week or so, I didn't miss them at all.

I thought back to the comment of my dinner partner: "I don't eat sweets."  And then I thought about myself, forever struggling with my weight, and losing the battle.  I should be the last guy in the world to accept any kind of dessert.  How stupid am I?

So I made up my mind then and there that I'd be that guy that said, "I don't eat sweets."  I had no set goal other than that - no expectations, no time horizon, just doing it day to day.  And I've eaten no sweets since my sister's dessert that night.

No cake, doughnuts, candy, jam, pies, dessert.  And basically no fruit, honey, or sweeteners.  Not one damn bite.

And what have I found?  Three things: 1) I don't miss it.  I just don't.  People can eat the stuff in front of me, and I couldn't care less.  I don't crave it, don't want it, and don't miss it.  2) I like saying "I don't eat sweets," and being that guy. 3) My weight maintained.  I mean, constant.  For most of the year, I was in about a 5 pound range.  No more yo-yo; just steady Eddie.  Finally.

I know I can maintain.  It is powerful knowledge.  Now, what to do with it?

The Biggest Football Play Ever?

Likely not.  But given the stakes and the ripple effect, it is far from insignificant.

Grab the Kleenex...

Must Read Blog Post!

While working out this morning, I spied a commercial for the movie Last Vegas which came on the TV, and a headline taken from a recent review for the movie screamed, "MUST SEE!"

Really? A move for and about aging baby boomers is a MUST SEE?  

I don't think so.  Actually it sounds boring as hell.

And that brings me to the subject of this post.  It quickly appears that the use of MUST in any kind of headline is out of control.  Blogs, articles, and even social media posts are way too liberal in their consideration of what is a MUST do, own, see, experience, etc.

Personally, I think it is insulting.  The older I get the more outside of the mainstream I find myself; hence whatever is the most popular meme of the day tends not to intrigue me, it tends instead to just irk me.  Plus, and more insulting, defining something as "MUST SEE" has the implied subject of "you" - "You MUST SEE."  Such a sentence is rude, authoritarian, presumptuous, and ignorant.  

Personally, I "MUST" not do anything, really, even though others leveraging a rude, overused headline technique demand it.

Tommy's Trials

Check out the attached news article, featuring a buddy of mine from college and his son:


Pretty amazing all that they've been through.  As we approach the Thanksgiving period, this sure provides lots to think about.

The Vikings Just Plain Suck

I have tried to stay positive, but the record is the record.  And the record indicates the following: the Vikings suck.

Count me in the wrong on Ponder.  I felt with another season under his belt that he'd mature, and with the new weapons of Patterson and Jennings, we'd be able to move away from being a one dimensional offense.  Alas, that was not the case, as Ponder has consistently been the laughingstock of the coaches' clicker set, as he continues to miss wide open receiver after wide open receiver.

As such, the offense has stalled.  And those guys have to be seeing the same things in their own internal film sessions.  How long would you be willing to bust your tail and risk your body for someone that simply cannot execute what is required of his position?  

And on the defensive side of the ball, the losses in the secondary have stung, with the loss of leader Harrison Smith looming largest.  Couple that with the fact that the defense is on the field for a majority of the game, every game, and is just damned exhausted, and you can expect bad things to happen.

Is all lost?  Hell, no.  This team was a playoff team last year, with worse talent.  They lost three games on the final drive; two on the final plays.  It still has the reigning MVP, who showed sparks of his award-winning season in yesterday's game.  It will land a great draft pick.  And say what you want about Ziggy Wilf, but the guy is willing to spend on players.  Stadiums?  Not so much, but absolutely Ziggy will spend on players.

But in order to get back to being a playoff team the Vikings absolutely, positively must get a quarterback.  Not a retread like Matt Cassel, but a legitimate player.  Those guys are tough to find, even tougher to draft, and they don't make immediate impacts, but in this case they are absolutely imperative to this team's future. 

In the meantime, as loathe as I am to say it, the Vikings suck.

Arcade Fire Covers Uncontrollable Urge

With the release of the latest effort, Arcade Fire has been equally praised and pilloried.  Personally, I downloaded the entire album, and love it.  However, and band's effort was massively over-hyped, and the arrows they're taking likely stem more from a rejection of their commercial formula than they do over purely musical merits.

Folks, there's not a ton of great music out there that has been released in the past 6 months, and stacked against that, Arcade Fire's Reflektor is fabulous.

One thing I've admired about the band has been their hat tips to bands that came before them, and here is the latest.  In a recent concert in L.A, the band covered one of Devo's more obscure hits, and covered it extremely well:



Good stuff, indeed.

Battle of the Bulge, Part One. Where it All Began...

For nearly all of my life, I have battled with my weight.  While I've never been morbidly obese, by BMI definitions, I am indeed obese, and have been that way thorough most of my 20s, and all of my 30s and 40s.  

But it started well before then.  As a kid, while I wouldn't define myself as a fat kid per se, I was always on the larger side.  It was made manifest in 6th grade football, where I was deemed too heavy to carry the football as a fullback, and the coach at the time suggested I go on a diet.

So I did.  A diet for an 11 year old.  And the conversations over my spartan brown-bag lunch by my peers, just starting their cruel adolescent years, injured me with scars I carry to this day.

And it also initiated what has become a lifetime of fits and starts as it comes to dieting.

Diets through high school, college, adulthood.  Famines and fads like Cambridge, Vegetarian, Cave Man, Nutra-System, Atkins, and at least a half-dozen others.  Each successful, but none sustainable.  Hence, the net results were always fleeting.

Ah, yes, the inevitable failure.  And with it comes the loathing; for cameras, mirrors, my clothes, and myself.  Always for myself.

I title this segment the Battle of the Bulge, but given how long it has raged, and the costs associated, the title is understated.  This is a war, and one in which I've been losing far more than winning.

But the war rages, unabated.  And I continue to try and put up a fight.

Healthcare Mash Video

Just when you thought that infernal song would finally leave your head for the year comes this parody.

But it's really, really good.  Trust me:


As one that has launched about a dozen websites in my career (with hundreds of releases), I cannot understand what the hell our government did.  Amazing.