How Watching Jonah Play Basketball Made Me Lose Weight

One thing I swore I'd never do was count calories.  I always thought that it was no way to live to limit yourself on food.  Besides, I thought, it doesn't matter how much I eat, I just need to exercise enough to maintain a healthy weight.  When I said this, I probably weighed about 215 lbs, which is not terribly pudgy for someone of my size.  Fast forward to 2012, and I'm hovering around the 250 mark.  That is terribly pudgy. 

Jonah's started playing basketball at the Boys and Girls Club.  It's just a skills camp of sorts, but I can already tell that I'm going to annoy the hell out of him with my suggestions and comments.  It's like a constant struggle with me not to jump onto the court and start giving him extra instruction.  I can already tell we're going to have more than a few shouting matches which end with him saying "I got it Dad!" and storming off.  The other issue with this is that basketball is probably the sport I know the most about, and at times I feel like I know more than his coaches.  Not surprising, given that his coaches are a bunch of college kids that are probably doing this for credits or something.  I wasn't that interested in passing my knowledge onto the next generation at that point either.  This led me to an obvious conclusion:  At some point, I'm going to start coaching my son's teams. 

I'm going to have to, because I'm going to want to make sure he learns to play the way I think he should.  If I let someone else coach him, what if they waste too much practice time scrimmaging instead of teaching, or don't teach the kids how to read a defender on a screen?  If that happens, then I'm going to want to take Jonah to the park or something later on and practice with him some more, and then he's going to get burnt out on basketball, blame me, and start hanging out with skateboarders who wear skinny jeans and huff paint from aerosol cans.  Better to just coach him.  It's more efficient. 

While going down this thought path, I had a terrible vision of myself trying to teach a team about a fast break, but having to stop halfway down the court to catch my breath because I was so pudgy and out of shape.  It was this vision that made me decide to count calories for the first time in my life.  I realized that I just didn't have the time to exercise as much or as often as I'd like to.  There's no point in my day where I can justify playing basketball for two hours.  If Jocelyn isn't up at 5:30 when my alarm clock goes off, there's no way I'm going to hop on the elliptical and risk waking her up.  Plus, even if she didn't wake up, I'd still have to workout, shower, make lunch, get both the kids up, change a diaper, get them dressed, make Jonah the chocolate milk he can't start his day without, load up the car and get them to daycare by 7:30 in order to make it to work on time.  It's just not really feasible to me to work out in the mornings.  Evenings are out too.  Pick the kids up after work, play with them, Rachel gets home at 7:15, eat dinner, get the kids to bed and now it's 8:30 or 9 pm.  Then I get to spend about half an hour with my wife before she goes to sleep and I'm not going to start working out then.  And I'm not sure how other people with young children do it, but I don't particularly feel good about saying "I'm going to the gym for a few hours to play ball honey, have fun with the kids!"  I need to save my "bye honey, have fun with the kids" times for the really big things, like a weekend trip to a Beaver football game in Seattle.  Also, weekends are virtually the only time that all four of us get to spend any extended time together, and I don't want to mess with that any more than I have to. 

Which leads me to my dilemma.  Spending time with my family is the most important thing to me right now.  However, if I don't start taking better care of my body, does that decrease the quality of our time together, or perhaps cut short the time I get to spend with my grandchildren 30 years down the road because I'm dead?  It sounds a little ridiculous I know, but there's only one thing that really, truly scares me, and that's dying before I'm ready to go, and I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about it.

All of this was a long way of getting around to saying "I've started counting calories."  I've been doing it for two weeks now, and I'm down 5.3 lbs, so it works.  The last time I seriously tried to lose weight, it took me 40 days to get down 5 lbs, which tells you how "serious" I was about losing it.  I downloaded the MyFitnessPal app for my iPod, which is great in that it gives you a calorie goal for the day, then keeps track of how many you take in and how many you burn through exercise.  The hardest part about this is that I spend most of every day in some level of hunger, but I'm managing.  I'm learning to treat my body like my gas tank - I don't have to top it off every time it's not completely full.  My stomach isn't used to this way of thinking yet, but it's learning.  I've always been an instant gratification kind of guy:  I'm hungry now, therefore I will eat a maple bar and deal with the consequences later.  Conversely, weight loss is a slow, difficult process that you're not going to see a payoff on for months or years.  It's not really how I'm wired.  But, having a daily calorie goal is something that I can sort of relate to.  I don't need to weigh myself every day and watch tenths of a pound drop off.  Instead, I can say "I want to eat pizza tonight, and I want to eat a lot of it.  In order to make my calorie goal, I need to burn X amount of calories working out today.  Now I've got a tangible thing that I can achieve right now.  Someone asked my wife the other day why she exercises so much.  She said "because I like to eat."  I couldn't agree more.  So far, the results have been promising. It goes to show you that you really shouldn't knock anything until you've tried it at least once.

If anyone else has used the MyFitnessPal app, I'd be interested to hear what your experience was like with it. 

Dr. Seuss Made me Cry

Look at that face!

If there's one thing I hate about being a parent, it's that it has made hyper-emotional.  Maybe it's the fact that our daughter likes to grunt until someone pulls her out of her crib at two-thirty in the morning, then proceeds to crawl all around our bed and make fun sounds with her mouth until four on a semi-regularly basis.  Maybe it's the fact that I realize that I am (along with my wife) solely responsible for the well-being of two humans, despite barely being responsible for myself.  As Rachel said to me in grocery store on Saturday "we're both smart, but we're smart in different ways.  Making decisions just happens to be one of those area's that you're not very smart in."  She's right.  I'm a horrible decision maker. 

Whatever it is, my emotions are very unstable, like the unstable nitroglycerin MacGyver always used to find on his adventures.  Last night we decided to go see the 7:00 showing of The Lorax at the Albany Cinemas.  We decided this at 6:50 pm, with both the kids in their pajamas already.  Jonah was super excited to go see a movie in his Spiderman jams.  We crammed into the car and dashed across town like Steve McQueen.  On the way, I cautioned Jonah that he needed to be quiet and stay in his seat or we wouldn't be taking him to see The Avengers in a few months.  We had a rough go at our last two movies with Jonah (Cars 2 and Arthur Christmas, respectively.)  I could've been because those movies just weren't that good, or maybe he was just at that age where sitting still isn't an option.  In any event, he was sufficiently warned that this was his last chance to prove to us that he was mature enough to handle going to a "big kid" movie.  And he passed with flying colors.

I should also mention that The Lorax is a fantastic movie.  I was very impressed with it.  I haven't been a big fan of children's books turned into movies (I'm looking at you, Where the Wild Things Are), but I liked the way this one was done.  Jonah must have too, because he sat bolt upright the entire movie, taking it all in.  At one point, he got thirsty, so we had a mad sprint to the drinking fountain in the lobby and back because he didn't want to miss too much.  At the end, when (and I hope I'm not spoiling this for anyone) the trees are saved from extinction and the credits rolled, they started playing a song, and Jonah begins to nod his head and dance along with the song.  However, he wasn't content to be dancing by himself, so he exhorted Rachel and myself to join in with him dancing.  So there we were, dancing in the theater to the credits of The Lorax, and I just lost it.  Seeing Jonah so happy...I just started crying.  I was a mess.  I couldn't (and still can't) figure out what I did to deserve such an amazing family. 

Like Rachel said, I'm terrible at making decisions, but someway, somehow, I made a couple right ones along the way to end up with Rachel, Jonah, and Jocelyn.

I dunno, whatever you want

A quick comment on parenting, then and then a funny story from last night:

Do other parents have a problem with their kids not making decisions?  Jonah is the worst.  He'll say "hey dad, do you want to play something with me?"  I'll say "sure, what do you want to play?"  His response is ALWAYS "I dunno, whatever you want to play."

EVERY TIME.

Remember, he's the one that wants to play.  I'm more than happy to play, but invariably when I suggest something, he shoots it down.  "Want to play basketball?"  "No, pick something else."  "Monopoly?"  "No DaDa, something where you have to move your whole body!"  "That's why I suggested basketball."  "NOT BASKETBALL!  Let's have superhero battles!"

Ah ha!  He's known what he's wanted to do this whole time!  "Ok, superhero battles it is.....I'm going to be Thor, who are you going to be?"

"I dunno, who do you want me to be?"

Really?  Do we have to  do this with everything?  I'll suggest like six or seven superheroes and there's always something wrong with them.  Can't be Spiderman, he doesn't have any webs.  Can't be Superman, he doesn't have a cape on.  Can't be Hulk, his skin isn't green.  He'll then settle on Wolverine, and of course he has no problem pretending that he has 15 inch metal claws shooting out of his knuckles.  Selective imagination....who knew?

We do this with everything.  He'll ask to watch TV, then I have to choose what cartoon we watch.  He'll shoot down everything before demanding to watch Phineas and Ferb.  He'll ask for dinner, then say "I dunno, what do you want to make?"  I'll suggest 97 things, before he finally says "No silly head, you make me chicken nuggets!"  It's maddening.  I've started saying "No, I'm not picking anything.  If you want to play, you pick something and I'll play with you."  He then starts pouting, but eventually chooses something and off we go.  Hopefully we'll be able to break this habit soon, because I'm getting seriously frustrated. 

Now, for the funny story from last night.  At least I thought it was funny.  Jonah and I are playing Wii Fit.  Jonah goes first and that stupid board says "Good evening Jonah!  You know, it's been a long time since I've seen Andy...."  I get it, board.  I don't exercise as much as I should.  It then goes on to ask Jonah how my posture looks, and if I seem to be losing any weight.  I'm sure it's cataloging all this information to use against me in a few weeks.  I'll boot it up and it'll say "Jonah says you're lying about your exercise habits, Andy.  You can't fool me."  Whatever.

Jonah goes through his measurements (he's holding steady at 38 pounds.  He's going to make a great jockey someday)  and takes his daily fitness test.  It gives him a "Wii Fit Age of 5."  He loved that it thought he was older than he was.  So then it's my turn.  I'm holding steady at 255 (well on my way to being this guy).  So then I do my tests....the stillness test and the prediction test.  How these are fitness tests I don't know.  The first one, the goal is to NOT MOVE and the second one you just rock back and forth slowly.  Amazingly, I'm a pro at being stationary.  The Wii gives me a "fit age" of 22, to which I say to Rachel "you hear that honey!  This is the body of a 22 year old!" and then start dancing like I'm Flynt Flossy or something:

Rachel was cooking dinner in the kitchen, so I didn't see the eye roll she most likely gave me, but I definitely heard the sarcastic "how did I get so lucky?" remark.  It's cliche and I say it all the time, but I'm extremely fortunate to have the love of this woman.  I can't say it enough.