Football Epilogue

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay I'm now sitting in the airport in San Jose, ready to return to the chilly weather in Minnesota. I have a little time to kill, so I thought I'd do some reflecting on how the trip went in terms of Nooming and such.  The program is big into logging your food, water, weight, exercise, etc. One aspect I think it could place a little emphasis on though is the reflection. What went well? What could have went better? Where do I really need to up my game? Along with this might be coming up with a couple things to be grateful for that happened through out the day. Ultimately, the scale and weight graph and "end your day" food logs speak for the progress, but it is in the reflection that we learn and grow. If things go bad, it's important to keep shame and doubt off of the table. This can be hard to do. However, the goal is to get better moving forward so an objective and constructive analysis is what is required. This self-coac...

Do you know the way to San Jose? Many people often talk about "keys to success". Sports announcers often bring these things up before the start of a game/match. Coaches, I'm thinking football in particular, make these "keys" the theme for the week. What are the things that need to be emphasized and done well, the sine qua non (I'll let you look that one up), for success. The keys to success on Noom have centered around one concept: consistency. Most of the time the already existing routine helps to foster consistency. During most weeks I get out of the same bed at roughly the same time, use the same toilet, weigh myself on the same scale, grab the same two fruits and two proteins for breakfast and snacks, get the same cup of coffee, take the same mile-ish lunch walk, heat up the same-ish lunch, head home at the same-ish time, coach/work out/run at the same-ish time, unwind at similar times in similar ways, hit the proverbial hay around the same time and re...

Image by Laura Lauer from Pixabay The 45. The typical heavy weightlifting plate in most gyms. That is how much weight I have lost so far with the help of using the Noom app . I have been working with the app for just over twenty-one weeks, so the steady, persistent progress has me dropping a little over two pounds a week on average. This includes the initial weight drop. If I look at just the more recent data, I have been losing roughly 1.24 pounds per week.  Multiplying that 1.24 pounds per month by four (for loss per month) and that's very close to the five pounds per month rule of thumb for healthy weight loss. While I would love to still be on that initial plunge, I'm working to lose in a healthy/sustainable manner. It's important to remind myself that what I'm going for is lifelong change. That's not always the easiest "pill to swallow", especially when passing all the baked and fried goodies in stores and restaurants, but it has gotte...

This Year's squad: "The Blizzard" I missed it more than I thought. After a year away, I'm back out on the field coaching youth football. Two years ago, when my son finished his season as an eighth grader, I figured that would be the end of my coaching at least until he was done with high school. I had squared with that reality, but I also left that experience feeling as though I had maybe missed a calling. Perhaps if I was coaching full-time I wouldn't feel that way. Perhaps I was getting just enough of a good thing to keep it awesome for me. Perhaps I just liked coaching my kid. I was content to leave coaching behind for a time with the satisfaction of knowing I had success with the kids I coached and that it came with much enjoyment and personal satisfaction. As fate may have it, however, an opportunity came around for me to help with a new batch of eighth graders. One of the parents also has a son my son's age and remembered the good time and success that ...

Not that forty. I turned that a little over three years ago. It's the forty pounds I've lost over the last few months! This is much more exciting than turning forty. Turning forty dawns the realization that you're truly an "adult" adult. By my estimation, this decade of life is the current peak of having to be responsible for stuff. For a lot of us, you need to finish up getting your kids out the door and on with their own lives. You also start turning an eye to your folks. The career is in full swing and you're starting to give the 401K and getting the mortgage paid off some more serious looks. You start knowing more people in your age group who are battling illness, or having life catch up with them in other ways. At times everything hurts and you just want to take a sabbatical from it all, but the majority of us can't. As harshly real as life looks, it's really made this getting in shape journey more important and maybe even feel like a little mo...

It feels like a fluke, a mirage, but I've just blown past losing 30 pounds! As of this morning I'm down nearly 35 lbs since starting this whole Noom thing. That is over 11 percent of my initial bodyweight in two and a half months. Okay, maybe not my initial bodyweight (7lbs, 6oz if I recall), but my initial weight since starting on the app. To put that in perspective I have removed roughly the equivalent of eight - 2 liters of soda/pop/Coke from my person. Part of me wonders where a lot of it all came off of me from. I'm getting the impression that it's little bits from here and there: a little thinner in the face, definitely got some good leg tone going :), and just slimming gradually everywhere in between. More than just the weight, I'm now fitting comfortably into some of the clothes I had put away for "when I thin down again". Shirts don't ride up my tummy or feel quite so short at my waist. I'm even thinking of mothballing some of my larger...

Image by Cheryl Holt from Pixabay The reset, Ctrl+Alt+Delete for those Windows and Linux users out there, Open Apple+Ctrl+Reset for the Apple Macintosh afficionados (well what it used to be, I haven't used a Mac in well over a decade). The circle-y arrow inside a circle for most everything else. It's what you do when your system becomes frozen or experiences some other form of discombobulation. Often it fixes whatever problem the device was having, although it's not really an ideal solution if you have to do it multiple times a day; or a week for that matter. I spent some time this weekend thinking about hitting reset in a different context: human behavior and response. My pondering came about while watching my daughter's team play fastpitch softball. Sports tend to have a preponderance of "reset" activities. In the case of fastpitch you have the at-bat, the pitch, the play, the base running, the call, the start of the game, the start of the inning. That...