My friend Robin is going to be *PISSED*

It's time to strip away every conceivable facade of who I am.

I stand before you naked (sorry for the visual) and alone, stripped of all pretense.

I am willing to expose every raw nerve on my body. Some of you (hopefully) will find a grain of inspiration in this post; others will be disgusted, others will read this, continue on with their day and forget it 5 minutes afterwards.

I've decided that it's time to let go of every category I've created for myself: husband, employee, American, father, son, boss, blogger - et. al. Every single one. If any of you hear me refer to myself in the context of a category again, you have my explicit permission to beat the crap out of me.

Belonging to a category (consciously or unconsciously) might give you comfort, but if your life isn't working, then they don't mean shit.

And let's face it - wars, violence, oppression - all can be directly attributed to people unwilling to accept values and ideas that don't fit in with one (or more) of their categories. Most people are so willing to fight for their categories, they never stop to think if their categories even make sense. Only the bravest of public souls ask us to question if we even need categories at all.

For a *long* time, what was the category driving most wars and human misery? Religion. It's sad but true. Guys like Christopher Hitchens have devoted their lives to pointing out this fact (while I agree with much of what he says, his hatred of people like Mother Theresa turns my stomach). Even now, what would most people consider the world's hot spot? The Middle East, with it's millenium-old conflicts of religious identity, which, let's face it, with all of the "accords" and "peace summits" and "peace treaties" will NEVER be resolved.

Here are some public figures who actively encouraged us to re-think and/or let go of our categories. Ask yourself what they all have in common:

Martin Luther King

Robert Kennedy

John Lennon (google the lyrics to "Imagine")

Ghandi

Jesus Christ (and I don't give a shit if you're an atheist)

Common trait? People were so threatened by them, bullets (or nails) were the only answer.

Why the focus today on categories?

I've tried to strip away all of the bullshit stories I've told myself over the past 30 years and see every aspect of my life for what it is - not better than what it is and not worse that what it is. So many of the stories I've told myself (some people might call them "reasons") revolve around the categories of my life.

For too long, I've treated the symptom (the stories) and not the disease (the category).

Here's the cure:

I'm a human being - that's it.

I'm not a father, I'm not a husband, I'm not a son - I am a human being who is consciously choosing to direct his mind and actions towards improving the quality of his life and those people in his immediate sphere of influence.

That's it.

Anything else, and I mean *ANYTHING* is nothing more than a bullshit story you're telling yourself because one of your categories is being threatened. That's it (stepping off soapbox)....

Here's the truth: I'm fat (an observation - not a category).

I know this - my friends are nice enough to dance around the issue, but I know I'm not really fooling anyone.

The worst part is that I've actually been fooling myself. I've lost about 18 pounds since 1/1 - not setting the world on fire, but not bad. But here's one way (of many) I've fooled myself - when I look at myself in the mirror, it's easy to very subtly shift the view of yourself (whether it's straight-on or profile) to accentuate the good points and minimize the bad points. I've done this over the past 6 weeks unconsciously and started to actually think I was something special - what a complete crock of shit.

You know where you can't subconsciously alter the image of yourself? In a picture (Photoshop is cheating). I looked at myself in a couple of recent pictures and was brought right back to reality - I've lost some weight, but I am still, quite clearly, a soft, doughy tub of goo.

All of this is not a statement of pity. I'm not particularly sad or depressed about it - it's more of a observation of my current situation. I've evaluated the variables regarding this and drawn a logical conclusion:

I'm fat

I'm not overweight, I'm not husky, I'm not rotund, I'm not weight-challenged - I'm fat. Every measure of health points to this. The not-so-pleasant facts:

Age: 44

Height: 6'0"

Weight: 234

Waist Size: 42

BMI: 31.7 (>30 = obese)

LDL (bad cholesterol) = 58 (should be less than 100 - Yay!)

Total cholesterol = 136 (should be less than 200 - Awesome!)

BUT:

Triglycerides: 262 (should be less than 150)

and *here's* the one that absolutely scares the living shit out of me:

Triglycerides/HDL ratio *should* be 3 or less.

Mine?

9.7 - holy shit!

My friend Robin is going to be pissed at me. Big time. Beyond my immediate family, I love and respect Robin more than just about any other person on the planet.

Why is she going to be so pissed at me? I'm going to try to lose 30 pounds in 30 days.

"Don't do it; it's unhealthy - THERE IS NO WAY YOU SHOULD DO THIS", I can hear her say (Robin does not suffer fools gladly) - but as my friend Brad Brown likes to say, we all need a BHAG (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal).

At first glance, it seems totally impossible (although people *have* done it), but let's take a closer look and break down the math:

To lose 1 pound, you need a calorie deficit of 3500. Let's stick with round numbers to make things easy: if I ate 1500 calories a day, I would need to burn 5000 calories:

5000 - 1500 = 3500

Can you live on 1500 calories/day for 30 days?
Can you burn 5000 calories/day for 30 days?

Can Chris do it?

Tonight (2/17/Thursday), we're going to Texas De Brazil for a last blowout (if you have a Texas De Brazil anywhere near you, I really encourage you to try it) and I'm going to spend most of tomorrow crapping out the excess protein I'll consume tonight. Can I lose 30 pounds in between 2/19/11 and 3/20/11?

Stay tuned.....

Apparently, my iPod Nano is an "Ass Man"

36 workouts since 1/1/11.

369 songs in my "Workout" playlist.

Top "plays" in shuffle mode:

"Shake Your Rump" - Beastie Boys - 9

"Crocodiles" - Echo & the Bunnymen - 7

"Geek Stink Breath" - Green Day - 7

"Beat It" - Michael Jackson - 7

"The Breakup Song" - Greg Kihn Band - 7

"I Got Everything I Need (Almost)" - Blues Brothers - 6

"Cry Me A River" - Joe Cocker - 6

"The Letter" - Joe Cocker - 6

"Here In My Bedroom" - Goldfinger - 6

"Undercover of the Night" - Rolling Stones - 6

The bottom:

"El Matador" - Los Fabulosos Cadillacs - 1

"Detroit Rock City" - Kiss - 1

"Tick Tick Boom" - The Hives - 1

"Life During Wartime" - Talking Heads - 1

"Whip It" - Devo - 0

"Use Somebody" - Kings of Leon - 0

"Break It Down Again" - Tears for Fears - 0

"Shock The Monkey" - Peter Gabriel - 0

"Pick Up The Knife" - Dan Baird - 0

"Back In Black" - AC/DC - 0

Unexpected effects of diet and exercise

Everybody talks about the benefits of improved diet and exercise: more energy, greater self-confidence, better health, better anxiety management - the list goes on and on. 6 weeks into my regimen, I've been fortunate enough to experience all of those benefits so far.

However.....

There are other things happening to my body, mind and experience of life in general that I most definitely did not anticipate.....

1. Time management

I started the year by trying to commit to a manageable goal: work out every day for two months. I would start on 1/1/11 and continue every day through 2/28/11 and re-assess things then. The goal, of course, would be that it would have become such a habit by the end of February, I wouldn't have to re-assess, and I can tell you that it's very much become a habit and when I don't exercise, I just don't feel "right". But something I didn't consider was the actual time to exercise. I've been trying to do at least 60 minutes on the treadmill each day, so right there, that's 1/16th of my waking hours. Add to that the times I'm feeling good enough to go beyond 60 minutes, plus the warmup/cool down time, plus the time to shower afterwards and it becomes a significant amount of time. I've had to really focus my time in order to keep my life in balance. I experienced some incredible moments of clarity just by taking the time to think about how I want to schedule my day/week/month.

2. Dreams

I never remember my dreams - never. But lately, I've not only been able to remember them, I can recall incredible amounts of detail. Not sure if there's a medical/scientific reason behind this, but it's only been happening for a few weeks.

3. Taste Buds

I would have never believed this if someone else told me, but I swear it is 100% true: once you get processed food out of your diet, your taste buds "reset" (for lack of a better word). Healthier foods suddenly explode with flavor while the processed stuff tastes - what's the word I'm looking for - inauthentic. I was going to say artificial, but that's redundant, isn't it?

4. Ear wax

I suddenly have none - I am at a loss to explain this.

5. "Found" music

Putting the iPod on shuffle has let me find so many great songs I've either forgotten about or never heard because I purchased an album and never listened to it all of the way through. A couple of songs I've "discovered":

Up In The Sky - Oasis

High Time We Went - Joe Cocker

Mr. Sea - Johnny Nash

Comfort You - Van Morrison

I Want to Know - The Mavericks

You'll Be Comin' Down - Bruce Springsteen

Watermelon In Easter Hay - Frank Zappa

High 5 (Rock The Catskills) - Beck

6. Body temperature

I've always been hot. My mother says that even as a baby, she wold pick me up out of the crib and I'd be soaked. I haven't hit the 10% weight loss mark yet but even now my body regulates itself much more "normally" - I'm actually cold at night whereas before I would sleep on top of the covers even in the dead of winter.

7. Amount of sleep

I exercise in the morning and there's been a couple of nights where, for whatever reason, I would toss and turn and get less than 8 hours sleep. Not just a little less, but sometimes only 5 or 6 hours. Normally, I'd be "dead" the day following a night like that, but even with that little amount, I've been able to hop out of bed and do my morning routine *and* be productive at work without resorting to caffeine.

8. Shin splints

I got 'em - no fun.

9. Loss of regularity

Before this I was as regular as an atomic clock. Do *not* schedule me for a 930am meeting, if you know what I mean. Since 1/1, I'm all over the place (whoops - bad metaphor).

10. Focus

My job requires focus for not only long periods of time, but the ability to regain focus once it's been taken away from me. My "focus stamina" seems to be the same, but my ability to re-focus has been sharpened to an incredible degree.

My Doppelgänger Speaks!

I was going to write about weird things happening to my body through 6 weeks of exercise (I'll do that tomorrow), but I just had to post this. My Doppelgänger (right down to the hockey jersey) talks about being fat and the crap we have to put up with.

See the 5 minute video here