I was playing around with some numbers for other projects I’m working on, and decided to see how only one small change could affect my weight (in theory).

For example, a 12 oz. can of Coke is 140 calories. Now, let’s say I have only one can a day. If I’m not doing enough activity to burn that 140 calories, and I wind up with a 140 calorie surplus a day, everyday (either by drinking a Coke, eating a second helping of apple pie, or something else), then in one month, I’ll have a surplus of 4200 calories.

A pound is roughly 3500 calories, so I’m gaining 1.2 lbs. a month. Not really noticeable, right? My weight typically fluctuates within a few pounds during the week anyway. But, by the end of the year, I will have stored 50,400 calories or, to put it another way, a very noticeable 14.4 lbs….and now multiply that for any given number of years, and I’ve got trouble.

At that rate, over 3 years, I will have put on 43.2 lbs.

I’m using 3 years as an example because I weigh the same now as I did 3 years ago.

When all you see are diet and exercise plans for losing 10 lbs. in 10 days, 20 lbs. in a month, 50 lbs. in 90 days, and the like, it never really occurs to you that maybe — just maybe — losing 1.2 lbs. a month really can make a difference.

There’s no doubt that I’d be happy to be 43.2 lbs. lighter today.

I’m doing way more than just not drinking one can of soda, so I’m hoping that I’ll lose more than 1.2 lbs. a month (1.5 would be awesome!). But looking at the big picture one small piece at a time reminds me that it’s okay to slow down, and not feel disappointed in small victories simply because I think I could have or should have done better.

Celebrate victories, even the small ones. They add up.

Well, this is the beginning of Week 3 of my Back to the Gym adventures, and today was rough.

Last week, my knees (specifically, the area just below my knees) started feeling really achy and sore, and I thought I might have damaged them by overdoing “the running”. I have to use quotation marks with “the running” because I’m not entirely convinced that what I was doing was actual running. More like lurching maybe?

Anyway, I’ve dialed back “the running” portion of my workout to a half-mile, and won’t be adding more distance to my “running” until I can do the half-mile fairly easily.

Today, I stretched, did a nice 5-minute warm-up walk, and launched into my half-mile. It was painful. My muscles felt stiff, and my knees were not letting me do what I wanted to do. I thought “uh-oh”. I probably shouldn’t be doing this.

But I did.

Afterwards, I did I a 5-minute cool-down walk, stretched some more, and cursed more than a little. (I would have cursed more but I was winded.)

Then I tried running the short length of the gym. Back and forth I went. On the third round, I tried to sprint, which I more or less pulled off. I did some weights and, feeling light-headed, I decided I was done for the day.

On the way out to the car, I noticed my legs didn’t hurt.

They stiffened up again on the drive back home, but doing some Monty Python style walking around the house for a few minutes seemed to help.

So, I thought maybe it’s just a matter of conditioning, getting my body used to this. But while rubbing some sore muscle balm (it’s to relieve the pain of sore muscles; not to cause sore muscles) into my legs, Cindy noticed I have tight tendons, which probably accounts for much of my soreness. I don’t want this to become a major problem (or more of a problem), so I’ll take a little more time to stretch, and do more strength and flexibility training. And rest.

Taking the load off my legs and knees by about 50 lbs. would probably help, too. (But that comes later.)

Last month, after Cindy and I finished the juice fast, I wrote “I got to where I am by making lots of small negative changes over an extended period of time that felt good in the short-term but resulted in negative long-terms consequences. I’m not talking about just my weight here, either. So, the only way to undo it without ‘falling off the wagon’, to my mind, is to make lots of small positive changes over an extended period of time that may feel uncomfortable in the short-term but will result in positive long-terms gains.” And when I said “small positive changes over an extended period of time” I meant it  because I’ve now put myself on one of the most gradual running programs I’ve ever seen. It’s almost ridiculous, but since I’ve never been a runner — that is, I’ve never been able to run very far or for very long, even when I wasn’t overweight — I feel pretty good about this plan.

On Monday, after doing 30 minutes of cardio on the elliptical machine, and lifting some weights, I ran 0.20 miles on the treadmill. That’s one-fifth of a mile. That’s it, and that’s all. And it was plenty. I spent the next 20 minutes walking around trying to get my burning calves to loosen up. I could barely walk.

Yesterday, I ran 0.30 miles, and while I was huffing after just a few minutes, my legs felt fine afterwards.

My plan is to add one-tenth of a mile each day until I can run one whole mile without stopping. It’s something almost everyone I know can already do, but I have never been able to. Never. After that, I’ll keep going until I can do a 5K.

Today, I had planned on adding one-tenth of a mile to my run, bringing it up to 0.40 miles without stopping. Instead, I did 0.60 miles, which is damn good for me. My legs were getting a little tight near the end, but I felt okay. An hour later, I was feeling better than okay. I felt great.

Maybe there’s something to this running thing after all.

UPDATED: 09.22.2011 - Based on the advice in the comments from Scott, I’m making some changes to this plan. Now that I’ve reached the 1-mile milestone, I won’t be adding any distance to my runs for at least a week. Instead, I’ll be running the same distance (1 mile) every day for least a week to try to build up my cardio strength. When running 1 mile becomes easy, I’ll re-evaluate what my next milestone should be.  

Yesterday, Cindy and I finished our 10-day juice fast, and now we’re heading back into eating solid foods. We broke the fast with what started out as a simple cabbage and broth but morphed into a full-blown (and extremely satisfying) vegetable soup. Tonight, we had veggie pizza.

Losing 10 lbs. as a result of being on the juice fast is nice, but I expect it to be temporary. In fact, I weighed myself before writing this entry and I’m already up more than a pound from yesterday. I had been losing about a pound a day during the juice fast. I’m okay with that. Any real change is going to have to come from making…well, real change. It’s that simple. And this gets to the heart of why I did the juice fast.

It’s easy to set my mind at starting something…but hard for me to finish it. I have a long history of stopping projects. I thought the reboot might help me figure out more than how I really think or feel about food. I thought it would show me how I manage to talk myself into quitting projects. It’s easy to quit something when you see it as insignificant, unimportant. The problem with doing that is that eventually you start seeing more and more things as insignificant, or something you can put off until tomorrow. But eating? Now, that’s a challenge! Because it’s something I do everyday, several times a day.

What I needed was to set my mind to something I knew was way outside of my comfort zone, and then do it. When your comfort zone includes comfort foods, not eating is seriously outside the comfort zone, folks. The juice fast couldn’t be something so short-term that I could do it without much effort, but not something too long that I would be setting myself up for failure. 5 days, I could do easily. 7 days is harder because weekends are our time to explore and enjoy the foods this town has to offer. I really missed having brunch at You Say Tomato on Sunday, let me tell you! For me, getting through Saturday and Sunday was more difficult than getting through Monday to Friday. I needed more than a nutritional reboot. I needed a mental reboot. And because I can’t resist wanting to go just a little further, I chose the 10-day fast instead of the 7-day (which I think would be plenty for most people).

What I learned from my juice fast was something obvious: my body and my mind are not on the same page. That’s nothing new to me. The fact that I’m overweight is a pretty good indicator that my life is not balanced, and hasn’t been for some time now. But by drinking juice for 10 days straight, I became very aware just how often my mind lies to me. When I think I’m hungry, I might just be thirsty. When I’m hungry, I might just be bored, whether I consciously think I’m bored or not. For example, I would get hunger pangs late at night, and I would usually just fix myself something to eat, watch some more TV, and then go to bed maybe an hour or 2 later. Not so easy to do on a juice fast. Instead, I would drink water, turn off the TV, and read a book. 15 minutes later, I would notice that I wasn’t feeling hungry. It’s one of those things you know you do, but you don’t realize to what extent you’re doing it until you have to not do it, night after night.

Another very obvious thing: I do not drink enough water.

Now that the fast is over, I’ll be adding in more salads, fresh fruits and vegetables. I’ll also make fresh juice more often when I want a snack, and add more fish and seafood to meals. I’m also seriously considering making 2 days a week meatless (Geez, did I just hear someone hit the floor after reading that?) Last night’s cabbage/potato/onion/garlic/celery/carrot soup was pretty damn tasty. I definitely feel like I have a better appreciation for vegetables when done right. (I’m still going to always choose fried okra over boiled any day of the week though.)

Also, considering I spent the last 10 days not grazing and not eating anything after 8 PM, I’m definitely more mindful of late night eating, and the need to curb that impulse.

But I’m still down for the chili bacon cheeseburger with fries, and fried chicken, and ice cream sandwiches. And I’d still be up for some good Mexican food, if there was a place to get it here in Kansas City. I’m not eliminating “bad” things I like to eat. I’m adding in more “good” things, more micro-nutrient foods that I also like to eat but have neglected, and I’m giving them the same level of consideration as I would to all those comfort foods. Before this fast, if you had told me I would love eating a bowl of vegetable soup, I would have thought you were crazy.

The 60-Day juice fast that Joe Cross and Phil Staples did in Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead was remarkable. And radical.

But I’m not doing that. I got to where I am by making lots of small negative changes over an extended period of time that felt good in the short-term but resulted in negative long-terms consequences. I’m not talking about just my weight here, either. So, the only way to undo it without “falling off the wagon”, to my mind, is to make lots of small positive changes over an extended period of time that may feel uncomfortable in the short-term but will result in positive long-terms gains.

I think, having done this juice fast, and coming out of it feeling like I’m in control of things that would have typically gotten the better of me, it’s going to be a much easier road to travel.

Today is Day 5 of 10 of our juice fast, and it seems to be going much smoother for me than some of the other detox/cleansing/reboot diets we’ve tried.

Everything I’ve seen or read from other people doing a juice fast, they’ve all said that the first few days are the worst, and I’d say that’s true for me. Even on Day 4, I was feeling a little bit low on energy. This morning, Day 5, I woke up and I could tell immediately that I was feeling better, my energy levels were higher, and I felt good.

Day 1 was the worst. I said I wasn’t giving up coffee on this thing, but I tried to avoid it anyway, so for most of the day I had a massive headache. By late afternoon, I gave in and had a cup, which took the edge off the headache. I had another cup at night, and was feeling mostly normal.

Day 2 was a little better. I didn’t even try to avoid coffee. I had some juice for breakfast, and then about 20 minutes had some coffee. And then a few more cups throughout the day, and one at night.

Day 3 was a mixed bag. I felt groggy, sluggish, tired. Didn’t have a caffeine headache, even though I only had two cups the entire day. One in the morning, and one in the evening, after dinner.

On Day 4, I could tell I was on the upswing. I felt better. For some reason, I was more aware of the muscles in my arms. Don’t ask me why, but it was like “Oh hey, I remember you guys”. I meant to make some coffee at some point during the day, but I forgot, and didn’t have any. But I didn’t miss it either. (This does not mean I’m giving up coffee.)

Today is Day 5. This was the first morning where I woke up feeling normal, the way I felt before starting the fast. I don’t have a headache (but will still have coffee), don’t feel sluggish, or anything usual. The first 3 nights were kind of restless (which probably contributed to my feeling groggy), but last night was a solid night’s rest. I’m not sure if that’s because of the juice, or the lack of coffee in the evening or at night, or a combination of the two. So, tonight, I’m going to make sure to have a coffee about the time I usually would, and see how that works out.

Now, here’s something I noticed by Day 2. I’ve always had this pain on the top of left foot. I’ve had it for years. It’s achy and feels tight in the morning until I’ve walked around on it a bit. The day after we started this, and every day since, that ache is still there, but greatly reduced. I can still tell it’s there, but it doesn’t hurt to walk on it first thing in the morning.

And, now for some coffee!

A couple of weeks ago, Cindy and I watched a documentary on Netflix called Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead. It’s about an Australian guy bloke named Joe Cross who is overweight, and suffers from an  autoimmune disorder called chronic urticaria. Sick and tired of being in such lousy shape, he comes to the United States to do a 60-day juice fast so he can lose some weight and get off the steroids he has to take for his hives. He spends the first 30 days in and around New York City, and the next 30 travelling across America, meeting people and talking about what he’s doing. Along the way, he meets truck driver Phil Staples, who weighs more than 400 lbs. and also suffers from chronic urticaria.

This is their story. Well, it’s mostly their story. Joe also meets a woman named Siong who suffers from debilitating migraine headaches. She takes on the challenge of a 10-day juice fast to see what effect it has on her life.

The idea of juice fasting for 60 days is just incredible to me. I was fascinated by it, but at no time during the movie was I  tempted to try it, you know. However, when we got to the part about Siong and her struggle to deal with a mere 10-day challenge, I asked Cindy if she wanted to try it…together. 10 days. I could try 10 days.

So, yesterday I ordered a Breville juicer, much like the one in the movie, and it arrived today. After dinner, we made an impromptu juice (didn’t follow a recipe, but it’s close to things I’ve seen people juice) of 1 lemon, 4 celery stalks, 1 cucumber, a handful of spinach, 2 granny smith apples, 2 carrots, and 1 kiwi fruit. It was not bad at all. Next time, I think I’ll sprinkle in a little  black or Cheyenne pepper.

So, while Cindy is away this weekend at BlogHer in San Diego, I’ll be making a solo trip to the farmer’s market to buy (I’m guessing) 5 times more fruits and vegetables than we’d normally consume in a week. She’ll be back on Sunday, and on Monday, we’ll start our own 10-day juice fast challenge.

Cindy thinks we should keep a video journal of how we feel from day to day, so I’ll dig up the Flip camera before she gets back.

We’ll both talk about this again later — how it’s going, what we hope to get out of it, what we plan on doing after it’s over, etc. — when we actually start the fast next week. (I’ll tell you something right now though: I’m not giving up coffee or tea.)

In the meantime, if you want to see the movie yourself, it’s available for streaming on Netflix.

If you haven’t got an idea, start a story anyway. You can always throw it away, and maybe by the time you get to the fourth page you will have an idea, and you’ll only have to throw away the first three pages. - William Campbell Gault

I start new writing projects with the ease of a toothless man eating a candied apple.

For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been avoiding starting a new story because this time, thanks to The Jens, I can’t quit working on it once I start writing. No matter how lousy it is, no matter how ridiculous the plot,  how shallow the characters, or how cheesy the dialogue, I have to finish it. And when I get stuck or frustrated or unsure about myself and/or the story, and start coming up with fresh, new, exciting story ideas to work on instead, I have to back-burner that upstart bastard, no matter how cool I think it is.

Typically, the “fresh, new, exciting story idea” is just a way of distracting me from having to figure out what happens next when I get stuck. It’s really just a form of procrastination, manifested insecurity, I know. Aside from being unsure about which story to work on, whether or not I’ll chose the “right” one, my mind keeps coming back to one of the most unformed ideas I’ve ever had, which just makes my job harder.

It’s not even an idea really, but more like a vague notion of something you think you remember dreaming. But that’s the one that keeps demanding my attention. Either I go with it, or just keep waiting for something better to come to mind. Who knows when that could be?

Considering I’ve already put this off 2 weeks, I’d rather not wait another 2 weeks (or longer) for inspiration to hit, so I’ll just start. Today. I’ve had so much anxiety about taking this on, about committing to it (which seems silly and idiotic) but I think I’ve reached my anxiety threshold. If my choices are between having anxiety about not writing, or having anxiety while writing, I might as well get a book out of it.

You can track my progress on The Shitty First Draft Meter in the sidebar. It’ll be there until this project ends.

Today, I’m moving a few blogs to a new host, consolidating them into one place. I’ve been meaning to do this for about a year now, but I kept putting it off because something almost always goes wrong, and it winds up taking me 10 times longer than it should.

And this project, now that I’ve started, doesn’t seem to be much different from any of the other times I’ve had to do this. There have been server database connection errors, slow internet connections, DNS service problems, and a general grrr-ness to it all.

But, I’m getting there.

And, best of all, this move will save us about $300 this year (which should pay for most of one of the plane tickets for next year’s trip to New York.)

Trips for us take some serious budget planning. I’m not even kidding. In 1997, when we decided to get married in Las Vegas, we booked our vacation package a year in advance because it was going to take us a year to pay for it.

In 2007, we had decided that each year we would visit a city where we would like to live someday, so we started with Seattle. Then, in September of 2008, Cindy and I, with a couple of friends, took a six-day trip to Portland.

I’m not sure what happened in 2009, but we didn’t visit a potential dream city that year. The best we managed to do was a long weekend to visit friends in Lake Charles, LA. In 2010, we spent a weekend in Center, TX visiting friends; in August, Cindy went to New York, and I managed a couple of days in Orlando, FL.

Our big trip this year was our moving to Kansas City, MO. But Cindy’s also going to BlogHer again, which is in San Diego this year.

This evening, we were sitting on the couch watching TV, and Cindy informs me that she’s going to skip BlogHer next year (she says this now, but I’m waiting to see where it’ll be held before I believe her). Instead, she wants to do #91 on her Life List: Be at the Statue of Liberty on the 4th of July. This, of course, means we’ll have to go to New York.

The reason we have to decide this now is because if we waited until just a few months before July 2012, we’d be scrambling to fund it, and more than likely we’d come up short, and have to postpone it for another year.

As much as we love to travel, we don’t get to do it often. But we’re doing much better than we used to. We used to spend years thinking about taking trips — small ones even, like Portland — but we’d never have the money. It would cost too much, we thought.

But, in reality, maybe not.

When we went to Seattle, we had friends there, and we could stay with them, saving us hundreds of dollars for a motel for the week. With round-trip airfare, some meals out, and walking-around money, we made the trip for $650. Six days in Portland cost us $1200 for round-trip airfare for 2, motel (split four ways), rental car (split four ways), meals (lots of meals), and some activities (walking tour, aquarium, etc. ). That’s almost a week in Portland for $600 each.

If we had each started saving $1.00 a day (the price of a cup of coffee) after we got back from Portland, we could go back this year, with a few hundred dollars more in our pockets.

Just for fun, I looked up a couple of other trips I would have liked to have taken during these past few years. I found several 7-day all-inclusive resort deals in Mexico for $1200 (sometimes less) per person, and an air+hotel deal for a week in Amsterdam for $2100 per person.

If I put aside $1.65 a day for 2 years, I could go to Mexico every other year. If I put aside $1.92 a day for 3 years, I would have the money for the Amsterdam trip.

I know it seems like a long commitment, but those 2 or 3 years are going to happen anyway, no matter how little or how much we save for another trip. I think it’s natural for us to be overwhelmed with the idea of saving significant chunks of money in a short amount of time, which is why we don’t do it. But what about setting aside insignificant amounts of money over a long period of time?

I mean, most of us leak money almost every day because we think $2.00 (or less) doesn’t make that much of difference in our lives: a 12 oz. can of soda and a candy bar, a coffee, a 20 oz. bottle of Coke, using a few stamps when I could be using my bank’s Bill Pay service that I’m already paying for, etc. You get the idea.

But, it does make a difference.

I haven’t been to New York. And, I remember telling a friend two years ago at Christmas that, yes, we would go to New York “soon” to visit her, because we could stay with her, and all we would have to worry about is our plane tickets, and whatever money we needed for food, and getting around. Well, we never made it. Cindy went a year later for BlogHer, but we didn’t go to New York together.

There was no real reason for that trip not to have happened when you consider that $1.00 a day for a year would have flown my ass to New York and back. In fact, for $1.00 a day, I could probably fly round-trip almost anywhere in the United States every year.

What do you think? Does it make a difference, thinking about saving small amounts of money over a few years? Given everything else going on, is it even possible to scrounge $2.00 a day for 3 years. And, if so, is that enough to get you where you want to go?

This is a fact, one that I know to be true without having to look it up, or prove it: more people start writing novels than finish them.

And nobody (at least nobody I know) buys a half-written novel for their Kindle, Nook, iPad, or any other e-reader.

As someone who’s started several novels, and not yet finished a single one, I’m thrilled silly when anyone I know completes one…and more impressed when he or she puts it out there for the world to see.

Our friend, Lyndie Strawbridge, has published her first ebook, Torched, which is available for $3.00 on

Amazon for the Kindle
Barnes and Noble for the Nook

It became available for the Nook just today, and I’ve already downloaded my copy. So, obviously, I’m going to recommend that you all do the same.

I’m surrounded by people who ship, dammit, and I’m thoroughly excited, impressed, and inspired by that. Lyndie has an ebook on the market, another friend of ours will have her book released later this year, and yet another friend is “this close” from finishing her first novel.

This one is for you three: