Week #6 of My Liquid Diet: Saying "No!" to My Brain
Over and over and over and ...
The skinny, to date:
Beginning weight (July 14): 230 lbs.
Weight at start of Week #2: 222
Weight at start of Week #3: 218.4
Weight at start of Week #4: 215.3
Weight at start of Week #5: 215.1
Weight at start of Week #6: 211.2
Weight at start of Week #7 (current week): 208.1
Total weight loss so far: 21.9 lbs.
My current go-to looking-ahead fantasy features a target weight and an activity.
The weight: 165. I can’t remember the last time I weighed that little. Maybe around sixth grade? I recall surpassing 190 sometime during high school — though since it was the Bronx High School of Science, that may have included the weight of the slide rule, protractor, and numerous No. 2 pencils (with pocket protector, natch) that I carried around in those days. I tried several diets while I was in high school — culminating in a juice fast that lasted several weeks. After each one, my weight bounced right back up.
I don’t recall any serious attempts to increase my exercise regimen at that time. At lunch at Bronx Science, we did play a lot of Ultimate Frisbee — but since I was the quarterback, my exertions were limited to standing in one spot and then wildly flinging the frisbee ahead, hoping someone would happen to catch it. Amazingly, someone almost always did (usually it was Andy Pugh, who was tall and athletic) — and I developed a reputation as kind of an idiot savant of frisbee-quarterbacking. I mean, people would gather to watch us! (To be clear, this was just with my friends at lunchtime — not some official Ultimate Frisbee school team or anything.) It was the lone athletic highlight of my life — until, in my 50s, I began long-distance cycling.
My wife, Sara, had gotten me a nice, “hybrid,” get-around-town bike for my birthday — and I was terrified that I’d never end up riding it, thus wasting this extravagant gift. So I decided to try Team In Training (TNT), a fundraising arm of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. After a surprisingly doable introductory ride with the Bay Area team, I joined up — and spent the next several months training for a “century ride” — the Solvang Century, 100 hilly miles that ended in Solvang, Calif., kind of a Disney-fied version of a Danish village. Under the expert supervision of our fabulous head coach, K.Sue, we spent several months building up to the big event, adding a few miles — and more than a few hills — in each week’s training session. Wow, did I get buff! In fact, at some point I felt comfortable enough with my body that I finally acceded to K.Sue’s oft-repeated suggestion that I’d be far more comfortable if I ditched my baggy shorts for those stretchy ones (the kind that the late Robin Williams noted could allow others to guess your religion).
One of my first big lessons as I began to do endurance training is that you can say “No!” to your brain. (Note: I mean this in the context of being under the expert supervision of trustworthy people.) I remember this first happening during a long climb on an early training ride in Half Moon Bay. Each training season (I ended up doing five events with TNT, culminating in a majestic, two-day, 200-mile ride from Seattle to Vancouver, BC), the Half Moon Bay ride was where, so to speak, shizz got real — everything became way more difficult: more miles, way more climbing. It was very hot that day, and it was a loooooong climb, and the wind was in our faces. (It’s an amazing thing on these rides: the wind is almost always in your face — even after you totally change direction. I’m not a religious man, but it’s hard not to see Satan at work here.) My legs were aching — a lot — and my brain let me know, in no uncertain terms, that it was time for me to get off my bike. But I didn’t. I just kept going. I got into the mindset of, Just turn those pedals around one more time. Then repeat. And repeat again. There were a number of things motivating me: not wanting to let down K.Sue; the constant encouragements of Susie Bump (aka “Coach Bumpster”), my beloved speed-group coach (I was in the slowest of the many groups); knowing that my teammates were going through the same thing as I was, and were persisting; the loved ones whom my teammates had lost to blood cancers, or who were then battling those diseases (this was before my mom told me that my Grandma Dora, who’d passed away when I was nine years old, had died of lymphoma); my teammates who themselves had survived leukemia; and the many friends, family members, and folks on my e-list who’d pledged their support for my century ride. But at some point on that ascent, and on the many many many climbs afterwards, my refusal to stop developed its own momentum — so that to give up became almost unthinkable. Stop? Me? The slow but determined guy in the stretchy shorts??? And eventually my brain got the message. But only after I’d repeatedly told it, “No!”
Well, this liquid diet I’m on is causing me to have some similarly tough conversations with my brain — which (based, no doubt, on the constant entreaties it’s been hearing from my tummy) keeps telling me that a big, heaping bowl of pasta with meat sauce would be just the ticket right now. Again, I just have to tell it, “No!” As with Team In Training, I have tremendous support from the diet program’s facilitators, as well as from the other members of my cohort, who are going through all the same challenges and hunger pangs. And as with TNT, I have an end goal — and a vision to motivate me.
Throughout my first Solvang Century, I visualized a post-ride treat: a Danish delicacy called aebelskivers. After I’d completed my 100 miles, as the sun was setting over Solvang, my wife and son and I managed to find a still-open eatery that served these pastries; they turned out to taste like over-fried lumps of vaguely apple-tasting dough smothered in cough syrup — which didn’t stop me from wolfing them down!
Well, when it comes to this diet I’m on, the activity I’m envisioning when it’s over is riding my bike up to Inspiration Point.
In those years when I was cycling with TNT, I’d want to stay in shape between training seasons. At first I tried going on some rides with a local bicycling club called Grizzly Peak Cyclists — but they were just too darn badass for me. (I got used to wiry eighty-somethings zoom past me without even bothering to yell out, “On your left!”) So I started going on solo rides up into the Berkeley Hills. And Inspiration Point became my favorite destination. It was magical! Not just the spectacular view, but also my certain knowledge that the ride back would be all downhill: a slalom of smugness. Getting there from where we lived in Berkeley’s flatlands was hard, but not — after the exertions of Team In Training — that hard. And I was able to get yet another message through to my brain: I can do this on my own — at least to a point (Inspiration).
It’s been several years since I’ve done any endurance cycling — either with TNT or on my own. I do go on lots of biking-and-birding rides with my wife — my current favorite activity — but not on those loooooong climbs, when your legs start barking to your brain and your brain starts yelling at you to Stop already! and you have to say, “No!”
Currently, my “No!”s are directed at food. But the day will come (Feb. 9, 2024, to be exact) when I’ve completed the 30 weeks of this diet — and on that day, or soon thereafter, I plan to try biking back to Inspiration Point. Perhaps, going up into those hills at that new, lighter weight, it won’t even feel like climbing. And maybe, at the peak, angels will descend from Heaven to present me with a golden bowl of non-starchy vegetables while singing my celestial praises. Or it is just possible that I will feel like a somewhat out-of-breath nearly-65-year-old who has made it, with lots of support, through a difficult transformation to a somewhat healthier mode of being — and who may, with some luck, now get a bit more time on this planet to experience the blessings that have miraculously come his way.
Yes.
Just keep going.
Go Josh GO!!!
Fab. On December 11th, the consequences of cheating on my diet manifested in a stroke, and I was 190.
Down to 155. You can do this. Good on you!