Great Big Fat Guy, Day 846

Left home at 11:52:30 AM.

Walked directly 2.7 miles to a hospital scale, arrived at 12:43 (3.2 MPH).

Weight: 298.1 lbs. But wait! That was after I removed my glasses, wristwatch, wallet, coin purse, notebook, pen, smart phone, keys, shoes and T-shirt. Then I put all that stuff back on again, so that I was wearing everything I'd been wearing in the middle of an approximately 5-mile walk 5 days ago, when I weighed 300.5 pounds, and again 3 days ago, in the middle of a 5.4 mile walk, when I weighed 300.5 pounds again. Today, wearing all that stuff, I weighed 301.9 lbs in the middle of a 5.4 mile walk.

I've been taking a 5-mile walk every other day, and gaining weight.

Arrived home at 1:55, walking very slowly.

When I got home, I googled can an obese person lose weight by walking. The results were encouraging.

In the past 12 days, I've walked 1.6 miles 4 times, approximately 5 miles once and 5.4 miles twice. That all adds up to 22.2 miles, 4 miles short of 1 marathon.

Today is exactly 6 weeks after my operation, which means that I can (officially) lift more than 10 lbs, which means that I have no more honest excuse to make my brother come over to my house and do my laundry. I can also (officially) do all sorts of exercises now. (Unofficially, I didn't wait the entire 6 weeks. Don't tell anyone.)

I want to continue to increase the distance I walk. Over 30 miles a week would be good. At some point, I may add running to the walking. And I will be doing other exercises. Excuse me for just a moment.

I'm back. I just did my first 30 crunches in 6 weeks. As I expected, it felt like I hadn't done crunches in a while. But I didn't expect to be able to do 30.

And now I'm going to eat something. I know, I know, the reason I'm gaining weight is because I'm taking in more calories than I'm burning off. I know. I'll try to control myself.

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 841

300.5 lbs.

That's what the scales said today, when I weighed myself for the first time in about a month. In the past week I've gone for 4 walks of 1.6 miles each, and then today I went about 5 miles, and during that walk I weighed myself at the hospital, because I can't weigh myself at home because my house tilts and that makes scales unusable, and I'm still on the ugly side of 300. But just barely. I didn't walk all the way home. I took the bus for the last 1.3 miles because my feet were killing me.

I was so hoping I was going to break 300 today. I was so sure I was going to do it. Well, if I walk to that scale and back home 5 or 6 times a week, I'll break 300 at some point, surely.

I don't know exactly how far I walked because I got lost on the way to the hospital and for an unknown distance I was walking in circles. Straight to the hospital scale I used and straight back home would've been 5.4 miles.

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 835

As faithful followers of this blog know, exactly one month ago, August 1, 2018, Great Big Fat Guy underwent surgery during which his right kidney and a huge cancerous tumor were removed from his body. Today, Great Big Fat Guy went for a walk which lasted exactly 30 minutes and covered 1.6 miles.

I (also known as Great Big Fat Guy, also know as The Wrong Monkey, also known as Steven Bollinger) was planning to take a route which covers 2.1 miles, but a little past the 1 mile mark, I was feeling exhausted and decided to take a short cut home. There was one steep hill on the route, by Ann Arbor standards. (By Knoxville, Tennessee standards, there were no steep hills on the route.) (The distances were calculated with Google Maps.)

I tend to write these Great Big Fat Guy posts right after doing some cardio, so maybe they're 100% written under the euphoric influence of endorphins. However, right now, there's one big buzzkill that's cutting right through the euphoria: before the surgery, I weighed 320 pounds. That's too much for me. There may be some guys who stand 6'3" and are actually so full of muscles that they weigh 320 pounds and are not fat, but I can't kid myself into thinking that I'm one of those guys. 220 pounds would be much more like it, and 180 would probably be better than 220.

I hadn't been weighed in 2 years (which is a very convenient sort of thing if you'd rather be in denial about what kind of physical shape you're in), because I hadn't been to see a doctor in 2 years, and my house is tilted so a scale isn't accurate inside it. I used to walk to the hospital just to weigh myself, which is about 2.5 miles each way, 5 miles round trip, and when I did that, I weighed a lot less than 320 pounds, and it wasn't a coincidence. When I weighed 180 or less, I often walked more than 30 miles in a day -- are you starting to see the pattern here?

Time for Great Big Fat Guy to spend a lot of time being Great Big Sweaty Guy. I want to start a new series of blog posts replacing the Great Big Fat Guy posts, with titles like Big Tall Guy, Not Particularly Fat, Day 45, or Slender Guy Breaks 20 Minute Barrier in 5K.

PS, 2 September 2018: One day later. Same 1.6-mile course. 30 seconds faster: 29 min 30 sec. Just like yesterday, I left home intending to walking the entire 2.1-mile course. Just like yesterday, I chickened out and took the shortcut home. Unlike yesterday, today it was cloudy for much of the walk, making it much cooler and easier. I thought I was going to beat yesterday's time by more than 30 seconds. Oh well. At least I actually got out and walked two whole days in a row.

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 723

I look a lot more like Harvey Weinstein than I used to. Maybe more in the face than all-over. I'm still doing crunches and push-ups and stretching and cardio. Does Harvey work out? I have no idea. Maybe he does. Just a second [...] Okay, I could only find 1 photo on Google that gives you any idea of what shape he's in, and in that photo he doesn't look like someone who does crunches and pushups and stretching and cardio. Then again, it's only one photo. He's 65 years old, I'm 56.

I just don't want to go around reminding people of Harvey Weinstein because of my appearance. I guess seeing all of those pictures of him and noticing the resemblance has given me a bit of a kick in the pants about exercise.

I was going to get a haircut today, but I've changed my mind. For the past few years my hair has mainly been between short and extremely short. Lately I've been thinking about letting my hair grow longer. Today would've been about time for my normally-scheduled haircut, either a fade or a buzz-cut every 2 or 3 months, but then I decided to let it grow. I thought about an incident in the mid-90's, when I was working in the house crew at an Off-Broadway theatre, and I got my hair cut from rather long -- over the collar, at least -- to pretty short. Most of the comments I got about the haircut were positive -- in fact, maybe every reaction was positive except one: a woman who also worked in the house crew, and who was usually fairly reserved and quiet around me, shouted "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!" the instant she saw me with the short haircut. So yeah, remembering that was what tipped the scales in favor of letting my hair grow today. Her reaction was the only negative one voiced to me about the haircut, but it also seemed like the only one which couldn't possibly have been insincere or pro-forma and basically indifferent. It seems that she had liked my hair when it was long.

Maybe that woman's taste in haircuts has changed over the past 21 years and now she prefers it high and tight. Who knows.

I don't look like I did 21 years ago, and my hair looks different too, a lot of it is grey now, but I'm 56 and I've got a lot of hair left, probably more than most guys my age, and I don't know how long I'll still have a lot of hair.

One reason for the short hair lately is that since 2008, I have a bathtub where I live, but no shower. It would be much easier to wash longer hair in a shower. In 2008 my brother and his girlfriend brought the materials needed to add a shower to my bathtub and said they'd helped me install it, but they didn't get around to it. The stuff is still here. I'm not what you'd call handy. On the other hand, I've read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I don't see how I could afford to hire someone to do the conversion for me. I wonder what my brother would do if I asked him for help with this. Maybe point out that he's not significantly more handy than I am. Well, a journey of a thousand mustard seeds begins with but a single step of sand.

I don't know whether I'll install a shower today. I doubt it. I mean, if I do that today I will totally surprise and impress myself. But it couldn't hurt to keep thinking about being able to shower in my home. Thinking, as you may know if you've thought about it, can lead to all sorts of things: ideas, plans, insights, blog posts, marriage to wealthy women who have showers in their bathrooms at home, healthier choices about diet and exercise, what have you.

Okay, Katy, get us out of here!

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 606

I've been sick lately. The last few days. I think I'm better now, but I'm still early enough in the recovery that I don't want to say for sure that the flu, or whatever it was, is past. I feel good, but I'm still a little wobbly.

Four days ago, on Thursday -- here come four words I hadn't pictured myself saying -- I quit drinking coffee. I expected that to be a lot harder than it was. On the other hand, maybe the withdrawl was severe, but it just blended in with the overall sickness so that I didn't notice it as a separate thing. My coffe-drinking tastes had been getting fancier and fancier. I have an elaborate coffee-maker made by Cuisinart. I was drinking a blend imported from Itay -- and then, boom, gone, that's history. I feel a little sad about that. Is this permanent? We'll see.

9 days ago, I turned 56. Jesus, I sure got old fast. 56?! When did THAT happen? Anyway, I haven't felt like exercising as much, and I don't know how much is laziness, how much is health issues which can be addressed -- by, for instance, no longer ingesting something which was delicious and comforting and every morning like a big brown steamy hug -- and how much may be things like depression, and how much is just natural, because it's just me getting old. I know, I know, there are inspiring stories of people who are running Iron Man triathlons and being fashion runway models at age 95, and they always say: if THEY can do it, YOU can do it! But lately I've been wondering whether it's just bullshit to think that anybody can do anything that anybody else ever did. I mean, hey, good for those 95-year-old supermodels, bless their hearts, really. But maybe the chances most of us have of doing what they do are about the same as their chances of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

I would like to win the Nobel and also be super-buff at age 95. But realistically, I may only be capable of doing one.

Something to think about.

Hit it, Katy!

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 484

I had another of those dreams last night in which I ran really fast for very long distances. Those dreams of running are so powerful and vivid. They're they only dreams I can recall which are so lifelike that later, I've become confused about whether I was remembering dreams or actual waking experiences. Last night's dream got me fired up and wanting to make those experiences real, to actually run long and fast.

If I'm going to do that, I've got a ways to go. Lately I've been having some problems, and it's been difficult just to keep up to my usual amount of exercise, let alone the great increase which any significant amount of running would represent. A while back I stopped doing push-ups, because they were giving me an intense pain in my lower abdomen. Instead of push-ups, what I've been doing is: I stand a little less then 2 feet away from a doorway, get up on the balls of my feet, fall toward the doorway, catch myself on the frame of the doorway with one hand, let myself keep falling until my arm is in the position it would be if I were doing a push-up and my chest were all the way down to the floor, then I push myself back to a standing position with one arm. Then I repeat with the other arm, and back and forth, one arm and then the other. Not as difficult as one-armed pushups, but it feels like I'm getting a good workout. It feels like maybe my arms have gotten bigger. I was doing pushups every day. I'm doing this exercise once every 48 hours, giving my muscles time to recover. Maybe I would've gotten bigger arms if I'd only done push-ups every second day, I don't know.

Whatever the pain in my lower abdomen was, it never interfered with my daily crunches.

I still have not done a bridge --

-- during the current Great Big Fat Guy era. I am still attempting a bridge every day, right after the crunches. My lifetime record for bridges in 1 set is around 12. It'd be nice to break that record. It'd be nice to win some 5k races. It'd be nice to lose a lot of weight.

There are injuries which are aggravated by exercise, and pains which are relieved by exercise. Recently I was having some severe pain in both knees, especially severe first thing in the morning, and I was worried that those pains might be a serious injury or some other incapacitation, but exercise has relieved the pain to a great degree.

Losing weight would result in reduced stress to my knees and some other joints. It would improve my sexual performance, as well as increasing the general amount of interest in my sexual performance on the part of potential sexual partners. It would improve my circulation (which would be part of the reason for improved sexual function) and my body's ability to fight off infection. There's really no downside, as far as I can see, to ceasing to be fat by means of proper exercise and healthy diet.

There are dangerous and unhealthy ways to lose weight. I'm not going there.

The movie Central Intelligence, in which Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays a formerly fat person, may have played a role in my recent increase in exercise, and in last night night's dream about running. It's not an overwhelming masterpiece of a movie, but it's not bad. It has a positive anti-bullying message. It's good enough that it's entertaining for me to think about how it could've been made into a masterpiece. Like for instance, how's this? Change the back story with Aaron Paul, Johnson's former partner, so that Johnson, but no-one else, knows from the beginning of the movie that Paul was the Black Badger, and knows that Paul also set him up to make everyone else think he was the Black Badger. Then Johnson could suppress the pain of knowing that the partner he thought was his best friend had betrayed him, along with suppressing other things, such as the trauma of having been bullied in high school. Make more of the movie about Johnson coming to grips with his issues, and give Kevin Hart more opportunity to help someone who he sees is in great pain. Yes, it would make the movie darker, but a comedy can be dark and a masterpiece, look at The Fisher King. Just spitballin' here. Like I said, it's not a bad movie as is.

Great Big Fat Guy Voted Today (Great Big Fat Guy, Day 374)

The polls opened in Michigan at 7AM. (Michigan has no early voting, and heavy restrictions on absentee voting.) A few minutes before 7AM, I set off on foot for my polling place, which is about a half-mile away. I walked because it was still dark and I don't like to drive at night anymore.

At the polling place, I got into the longest line I've ever seen up close and personal at a polling place. I went early thinking I might beat the rush, and then on the way I thought, But what about the people showing up to vote before they go to work? That might account for some of it. But I'm also pretty sure I heard an election official saying on the phone that he'd never seen lines like these.

I stood in line for about an hour, voted a straight Democratic ticket, and walked home. Michigan has a Republican governor who signed a bill into law abolishing the straight party ticket option on Michigan's ballots, but a Federal judge overturned that law. Now if we Michiganders could just get into the habit of voting more often than every 4 years, and vote these Republicans bums out of office, and vote in a majority of some people in the state and local offices -- Democrats, that is -- who actually want to encourage voting instead of making it more difficult!

I did not see any Trump thugs attempting to intimidate voters. I've still only seen one Trump sign in town, in my next-door neighbor's front lawn. This, and the voting history of our town through the decades, made me hope that maybe the big turnout meant a nice result for Hillary. It seemed that most of the people in line were women.

I saw only one clear indication of someone's political sympathies: a women in line ahead of me was wearing a Hillary button.

If you've read all of my Great Big Fat Guy posts you might think I go out walking every day, which would lead to my not being so huge anymore. And it very likely would. The thing is that I don't go out walking every day. It seems that after I've come back home from a long walk I feel like writing a Great Big Fat Guy post. Probably because I know that walking is a very healthy thing for me to do.

I haven't written a Great Big Fat Guy post every single time I've taken a walk. But close enough, unfortunately.

Still doing the push-ups and crunches every day, and attempting a bridge (see photo) every day.

I'm continuing to have the same result with the bridge every day: every day, starting from lying on my back with my legs bent and my hands on the floor under my head, I get everything but my hands and feet off of the ground, and keep it off of the ground for a while, but fail to straighten out my arms and extend the bridge fully.

Your turn, Katy:

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 140

Yesterday I had another big arugula salad, but I think I put too much proteins and fat into it.

And then late last night I ate an entire box of TGIF frozen mozarella sticks at one sitting. I didn't feel so great after that. And I said to myself: "I think I just ate a pound of cheese." This morning I went and looked at the information on the box, and, yes: net weight over 17 ounces and almost all of that was cheese, so, yeah, either a pound of cheese, or close to it.

If you want to lose weight you shouldn't go around eating a pound of cheese at one sitting.

And the mozzarella sticks weren't even very good. I think it's past time for me to stop trying to figure out what the whole excitement is about mozzarella sticks, and accept that I'm just one of those people who doesn't love them. I'm not crazy about chili cheese fries either, which makes me wonder whether I'm one of those people -- one of those rare people, to judge from what some say -- who wouldn't like poutine. [PS, 22. Oct 2020: Since writing this post I've had poutine and liked it very much -- but I had it at Zingerman's Roadhouse in Ann Arbor, and they're geniuses, so I'm still not at all sure whether I'd like just ANY old poutine.] And of course, none of this is bad news for someone who wants to lose weight.

I'll chalk up mozzarella sticks to experience, maybe spend a little more time looking at nutritional information before I eat something. Also, I'll keep in mind that the day before yesterday, after I ate that salad which was really a salad and not a big pile of fattening stuff mixed with arugula, I felt good. Then yesterday when I mixed too much fattening stuff into the arugula salad, afterwards I didn't feel great. And even less so after the 1300-calorie pound of cheese.

Also today I lost my temper and screamed at somebody on the phone who totally didn't deserve that. I don't know exactly how that's related to the rest of this post, except that I often hear people talk about a link between obesity and unresolved issues. I've often heard the phrase "eating your feelings." In any case, I can't go around screaming at people. I'm 54 years old, I should grow up.

The other day somebody on TV, I think it was an LA rapper on the Vice TV program "Noisey," said that getting rich and famous doesn't change you, it just makes you more like you are. Is he right? I plan on being a rich and famous writer very soon. Will that make me weigh 500 pounds? Or will it increase the part of me that exercises?

You know what, I don't really believe that. I think getting rich and famous will change a lot of things about me, for the better. I don't think it will destroy me. I think I'm going to lose weight and scream less at people who don't deserve it, because those are changes that I want which are within my control, and I want them enough that they'll happen, and I think those things will be unaffected by my financial circumstances and popularity. I think getting rich and famous will greatly improve my social life, because I'll be popular. I don't think I'll let a lot of fake friends ruin things for me or blow a fortune on Faberge eggs or make a drunken spectacle of myself. As far as making a spectacle of myself at all, that ship may have sailed when I was born autistic, but learning about my condition helps.

I don't think I use being autistic as an excuse for being an asshole. 2 different people have accused me of that. Those 2 people may know each other, but as far as I know, they don't, and they came up with that assessment of me independently. Unless it's some sort of slogan... *googling* Hm, yes, it does seem to be sort of a slogan, which makes it less of a coincidence that 2 different people accused me of it. Anyway, I don't think I do it. I'm aware that I'm an asshole sometimes -- that alone, of course, puts me ahead of some assholes -- and I'm not proud of it, and I'm not trying to get away with it, I'm trying to improve. Being autistic was no excuse for screaming on the phone today. There was no excuse for that.

Saying that i think those 2 people were wrong with their criticism doesn't mean that I ignore criticism. Before coming to the conclusion that those people were wrong about me using autism as an excuse, I thought about it quite a lot.

What if that rapper is exactly right, and the part of me that fame and fortune magnifies is the part that constantly wants to improve? That'd be pretty cool, as long as I watch out about getting a swelled head.

Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow. That's the title of Funkadelic's 2nd album, and maybe some fairly good advice as well.

Time for Katy:

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 138

In order to make a salad which Great Big Fat Guy would really like, rather than just eating it to be good, we took the bus to Flavor Town.

Instead of lettuce, arugula. If you're wondering what arugula is: if you're like me, arugula is something which will make you ask: why does anybody ever eat lettuce?! It's a leafy green vegetable with a strong, spicy flavor. So, the salad was mainly arugula. A big bowl full of arugula. This was a big salad. A medium-sized tomato and a small white onion were chopped up and added.

Then, the salad was topped with: 3 pieces of Wasa Crisp n Light 7 Grain Crackerbread, crushed up to make croutons; a sprinkle of parmesan cheese (the good stuff: the cheap Kroger's store brand from the clear plastic container with the green plastic lid, grated, not shredded, and not the gourmet stuff that costs 4 times as much), blue cheese dressing, and -- a tin of anchovies. All the olive oil from the tin went into the salad, then the anchovies were chopped up and added.

THAT, my friends, was a FLAvorful SAlad! I enjoyed eating it rather than wishing I was having a sandwich or pasta instead. I don't know whether I've ever said something like that about a lettuce-based salad. Also, anchovies are almost never a mistake to me. (I realize that not everyone feels that way about anchovies.)

Katy, you know what to do:



Thanks, Katy. That was weird! But the visuals were nice.

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 133

In a few weeks I'll have a medical checkup and I'll know whether I've been losing weight or gaining or whatever. Feels like I've been being good, but it's often felt like that in the past, and then I weigh myself and see that I'm still between 290 and 300 pounds. It's been a long, long time since I've stepped on a scale and got a reading under 290.

In addition to daily moving around (aka aerobics) and stretching and push-ups and crunches, for a while (I don't know how long), every day after my crunches I've attempted to do an upward dog. Okay, I did an image search so I could show you a picture of what I'm talking about, and apparently, what I've been calling an upward dog is not an upward dog at all. Every day after my crunches, while still lying on my back with my legs bent, I've put my palms flat on the floor and attempted to rise up into this position:

Whatever that position is actually called [PS, 11 July 2022: It's called a bridge.], I used to be able to do that. It used to be no big deal for me to do that. One time I saw how many reps I could do: flat on my back to fully extended and back was one rep. Sort of like a push-up, but face-up. I did a set of 12 reps. Whatever you call it, it's also been years since I've done one of those. So now, for a while, every day at the end of my crunches, I've attempted to do that. Typically I get off of the ground and hold myself off of the floor for a while with no problem, but I can't get anywhere near fully extended, as in the photo. I hope someday I'll be doing those again. Maybe even try to break my personal best of 12 reps. I don't know whether my current inability to do even one full arch (I guess they're called back arches or something like that) is due to weak arms or an inflexible back or both or something else altogether. I know that it's aggravating not to be able to do it. Feels like I'm not really me at the moment.

Sing us out, Katy:

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 12

So, have I lost any weight yet in these 12 days? That's a good question. The place where I live tilts. This means that if you put a lacrosse ball on the floor or an orange on a counter, it will roll east. It also means that scales are useless.

I did another one of the 3-miles walks just now. I feel good. I feel fat, but I feel good.

To that person who, 30 years ago, said, as I was entering the room: "He sort of LOOKS like a bowling pin," and then there was an awkward silence as people wondered whether I'd heard, and put it together with my name -- different Bollingers from different parts of the world pronounce the name in quite a variety of different ways. My family employs the German-Swiss pronunciation, with the first 2 syllables sounding like "bowling," the g swalled, the e an unaccented schwa and the r pronounced -- if you're reading along, yes I did hear you, yes I did put it together, and I've completely forgotten everything about you except that one thing you said, and that I never thought you were as funny as you did.

As far as I know, I am related to no Bollingers involved in the invention of Bollinger Bands or the creation of the swanky champagne.

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 7

In my last Great Big Fat Guy post I mentioned that I've never been much of a runner. But last night I dreamed about running and enjoying it a lot more than I usually do, running really fast and for quite a while, and I remembered that recently, I have enjoyed some long and fast spontaneous spur-of-the-moment runs while I've been out for a walk.

But when I was awake this morning I thought: wait a minute: have I actually run like that a few times recently (over the course of the past year or so), or have I only dreamed about it a few times recently?

And the strange thing is: I honestly don't know whether I've done that for real or only in dreams. I mean: I know I've had a few short bursts of running of up to maybe 50 yards or so. But I was thinking that recently I'd run a lot farther than that at a stretch. And I don't know whether I really did, or if I just dreamed it. Isn't that weird?

My lower legs are fine. No shin splints or other serious injuries. It was just some muscles waking up and yelling, "Hey! What are you DOING to us?!" They're with the program now.

I have some aches and pains, but they're all okay. Some fitness enthusiasts who are young and lucky enough never to have faced serious injury or illness yet like to say,

"Pain is just weakness leaving the body."

But that's not always true. Sometimes pain is a broken bone or a kidney stone, to give just 2 examples with which I am personally familiar.

But the aches and pains I'm having now are just weakness leaving my body.

Always remember to stretch. A lot. How much should you stretch? If you can, go and watch a high-level track team stretching, see how long it goes on and on. Stretch a lot, do it carefully, stop when it hurts.

In conclusion: Katy Perry remains very, very, very pretty. To be painfully honest about it, I don't know if I like any of her songs besides "Firework." But there's never been any law against watching a music video with the sound off. Thnk yu verr mutch pleez! Ah still thinkz that Katy iz sooper awesumz!!! (I'm a tiny little kitten!!!)

Great Big Fat Guy, Day 3

The story so far: day before yesterday I walked 5-10 miles, farther than I'd walked in -- I don't know, a while. Yesterday I felt really tired and sore, but went for a 3-mile walk anyway, and got a second wind mid-way through the walk, and finished it feeling great.

I included the video to Katy Perry's "Firework" on my previous Great Big Fat Guy blog post, because I like the song, and because I want to spread that sort of positivity. Also because I had happened to surf onto the end of the documentary How to Dance in Ohio, about a group of autistic teenagers in Columbus, Ohio, having a dance, and Katy sang an acoustic version of "Firework" over the closing credits. And it was super-awesome.

Here's Katy crushing it live:



And today I read in the Hollywood Reporter's review of the documentary that "Firework" is

"the unofficial anthem of the disability rights movement."

And I suppose that if there's a disability rights movement, I ought to be supporting it. Especially if we've got such a cool unofficial anthem.

This morning, as most mornings, I did a bit of exercise and stretching as soon as I got out of bed. My shins and calves hurt. In 2008, I was having a very difficult time exercising, and I got shin-splints from walking not very much at all, and I eventually found out that I had a malfunctioning parathyroid gland which resulted in, among other things, too little calcium getting to my bones. The malfunctioning gland had to be surgically removed. (There are several parathyroid glands in the human body. They are not related to the thyroid except for being located near it.) I felt much better as soon as the malfunctioning gland was removed. I'm hoping that the minor pain I'm feeling today is not indicative of some other chemical imbalance of deficiency, and that it'll get better as I get thinner. I'll continue with the exercise as planned (gradually increasing walking distance, then maybe eventually adding running or cycling or basketball or something like that) unless the pain in my lower legs becomes severe.

I've never been much of a runner, I don't know why. 2 examples: in the 9th grade we had gym 3 times a week, and in every gym class we had to run 1/2 mile. That is, we had to run 5 laps around the gym and we were told that 5 laps was 1/2 mile. (It probably was.) Once during the year we raced the 1/2 in groups of a half-dozen or so and were timed. I thought I was going to to pretty well in the race. I remember looking at a little pudgy kid in my group as I waiting for the starting whistle, feeling a little sorry for him, assuming that he couldn't keep up with me. Then the whistle sounded, and it honestly seemed to me that the little pudgy kid and the rest of our group were somehow 5 to 10 yards ahead of me before I'd finished my first stride. I was amazed by the pace they were setting, and they didn't let up for the entire 1/2 mile. I literally ran as fast as I could in an unsuccessful attempt to catch most of them. If I recall correctly, I and one other boy (not the short pudgy one) were in a very close race not to finish dead last. I don't remember whether I finished last or next to last. I remember that my time was 2:52.

In 11th grade gym class will still were doing the 1/2 mile 3 times a week, and we went outside once during the year for a 1 1/2 cross country race. This time the whole class raced together at once. I remember that I and a few other walked part of the way. I remember that at the end, once again I and another boy were running for all we were worth in our own private duel. I don't remember whether or not the 2 of us were dead-last in the whole class. If not, we were definitely toward the back. Many other boys, who'd finished, were crowded around the finish line, and I knew they were no longer winded, because they were loudly shouting encouragement to both of us. I don't remember which of the 2 of us won our private race. I remember that my time was either 13:13 or 13:31.

In 8th-grade football, I was timed at 7.4 seconds over 40 yards. In full pads and helmet, but still.

So I don't know whether there's something physically wrong with me which hampers my running. The thing is, I don't think I was really unathletic altogether. Among other strenuous activities I did a lot of bicycle riding, and played basketball rather well, played baseball rather well after blossoming as a hatter in the 10th grade.

And I played ping-pong so well that I did not lose a single game for a period of years. My unbeaten streak would have been even longer except that between 2 unbeaten streaks, I happened to play the only player I've ever faced who played ping-pong better than I: my high-school guidance counselor, a grim-faced wiry 6-foot-5-inch monster of a man, a former Indiana state champion. Whether he'd been a high school champion, or won some sort of professional Indiana open, or what exactly, I don't know. The two of us played one day when I was 15, he won every game, and those were the only games of ping-pong I lost from the age of 13 to the age of 20.

They called me King Pong. Yes, they really did.

My point is, my remarkably poor performance in running doesn't seem to match up with my athletic performance in general. I have a right bundle-branch block, an abnormality in the construction of my heart's valves. The doctors say it's nothing to worry about, it's just unusual. I wonder if it has something to do with my having been good at basketball and awesome at ping-pong but terrible at high-speed running. (As a kid, I was even a way-above-average base stealer in Little League: my ability to get a good jump more than compensated for my slow running.)

I'm A Great Big Fat Guy, And I'm Not Okay With That!

Not okay with the fat part, that is. For long periods of my life I've been lean and wiry -- the term "like a greyhound" was heard now and then -- and for long periods I've been overweight, and thin is definitely better. I want to get thin again.

And it occurred to me that if I blogged about my exercise program, it might encourage me to do better, because some readers might take an interest, so that if I do well, more people will be fired up about it -- cue Katy Perry singing "Firework"



-- and if I get lazy, more people will be disappointed. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but whatever, I thought of it today.

I'm fat, but I'm not in the worst shape I've ever been in. For years now I've been doing push-ups and crunches every single day. Most days I also do some calisthenics and stretching, but I realized that I have to do more to get my heart rate up and some sweat flowing if I'm going to lose weight. So yesterday I did some walking. I don't know how far I went. More than 5 miles, probably less than 10.

And the way I could tell that I was in better shape than I've been recently is that as I was nearing home at the end of the walk, I wasn't in agony. Fairly recently I've been in bad enough shape that a much shorter walk than that could get me hurting all over and pouring sweat and cramping in my legs and back and feeling like I would much rather lie down flat on my back and not move at all, than continue walking. Sometimes when I got home from a walk, the first thing I would do when I got inside was lay down flat on my back on the floor and stay there motionless for quite a while, breathing very heavily, my heart pounding.

Willie Mays described feeling like he didn't want to move after having collapsed during a game in September 1962. I read about that in the 1972 edition of My Life In & Out of Baseball, by Mays as told to Charles Einstein.



As it's described in that book, Mays passed out on the field, and when he woke up he was lying on his back on the field, and his manager asked him how he felt, and he said that he felt like he didn't want to move -- he could move, but he felt like he'd rather not.

I suppose I was 11 or 12 years old when I first read that. That description of how Willie Mays felt at that moment after having passed out and then come to again -- like he could move but he'd rather not -- made quite an impression on me. At the time, I definitely had never felt that way.

I don't know if I ever felt that tired before I was full-grown. I don't think I did -- and if I did, it would have been near the end of a 50-mile hike, or after having played basketball literally all day, or something like that.

In the past few years, I've felt that way quite a few times, sometimes after having walked a distance as short as 2 miles.

So: what I did yesterday, walking 5 or 10 miles and feeling pretty good at the end of the walk: I realize that that wouldn't be a big deal for a world-class marathoner. But for a big fat slob like me, it was pretty good.

And I want to build on it. Although I felt fine at the end of yesterday's walk, when I woke up this morning I felt sore and tired. I thought it would be good, if I'm going to do this instead of letting hard work make me quit, to take a brisk 3-mile walk -- there's a place which according to Google Maps is 1 1/2 miles from my place. So there and back = 3 miles.

As I started off on today's walk I felt terrible. Long before I reached the 1 1/2 mile mark I felt like I would much rather lay down flat on my back on the sidewalk and not move, than keep on walking.

But then, shortly after I got to the halfway point and turned around to return home, I felt much better. A second wind! Wow! If I ever had a second wind in my life before today, it was long enough ago that the memory has faded away completely.

So. Rinse & repeat a couple hundred times and have some discipline in my diet, and I might be greyhound-like once more.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. One day at a time. One step at time.

Tony Mangan, watch yr back! (Is that endorphins talking?)