Recently, on the Lighten Up Facebook page, there was some serious talk and some jokes about wearing swimsuits to the weigh-in.   I admit to joining in the fun.  My personal favorites are the "Speedo" jokes.  With summer approaching and all the improvements we are accomplishing fitness-wise, this new fashion of exposing some skin may not be too unrealistic.

This week, I was finally able to reap the fruits of my labor from all the hard work invested in Lighten Up.

Due to a bit of good fortune, once a year, I have access to a condominium in the Cayman Islands, free for a week.  For the cost of airfare and food, it is truly a Great Escape in Paradise.  The condo has a full kitchen so we eat most meals in.  In the Cayman Islands, if you don't have access to a way to cook for yourself, restaurant meals are VERY expensive, especially if you plan to eat three times a day.  There are many fine dining options that we reserve for only a few meals out during the week, so we rob a bank the week before we leave Ohio.  Limiting meals eaten out helps us keep some of that cash for luxuries back home like the mortgage, food, and electricity.

Consequently, we make healthy meals every day in the condo.  Cereal or oatmeal for breakfast, yogurt and fruit for a mid-morning snack, and for lunch, wraps using veggies and leftover fish or chicken from previous dinners.  The poolside has a few really nice grills available, so we cook out often for dinner.  Our favorite dinner is fresh-caught red snapper purchased from a fish market in Georgetown (the downtown area) and grilling the fish topped with a mango/habanero glaze.  If timed right, dinner can be eaten with a breathtaking view of the sunset over the Caribbean Sea.

Enough about the food.

Seven Mile Beach on the west coast of Grand Cayman is what is really fantastic.  I ran a lot on that beach.  I went out first thing in the morning, around 7 am, when it was cooler, if you consider 80 degrees and 85% humidity to be "cooler".  My runs were about five miles, and they were a lot tougher on sand than back home on grass or pavement.  After my run and a short coffee break, I would go for a leisurely five mile walk on the beach with my dear girlfriend.  Almost 20,000 steps before 10 am!  My dear girlfriend did ridiculously long open-water swims instead of the laps she would normally do at the Y, so her day was pretty physically active, too.

Overall a great time.  With the exceptions of too many rum punches, getting the pedometer water-logged twice because of the the rum punches, one visit to a frozen yogurt place across the street (just like Menchies), and one all-you-can-eat BBQ buffet, it was a great vacation.

See you all at the weigh-in on Saturday.  I'll be wearing a Speedo.

No, I am not a "druggie".  The title of this blog could not be further from the truth in that respect.

Now that I am running regularly, I am fondly re-living past experiences that were forever etched in my mind.  One of them is the concept of "LSD" that I learned in high school.

The "LSD" that I mention does not stand for the drug's technical name, Lysergic acid diethylamide.  It much more innocently refers to the concept of "Long, Slow Distance", as in running workouts.

Compared to having a mean track coach with a stopwatch hanging from his neck making you do quarter or half mile intervals for hours, going out for a Long, Slow Distance run is favored by high school runners.  Probably runners of all ages for that matter.  Sending his team out on a long, slow distance run is probably preferred by mean track coaches, too, so they get a chance to have a few smokes and call their bookie.

But enough about the wonderful people that positively influenced my young adult life.

One huge benefit of long, slow distance workouts is getting into a comfortable rhythm, and eventually feeling the endorphins kick in.  This achieves the "runner's high" you may have heard about.  

When properly trained, long runs become a part of your day, like brushing your teeth.  Every day.  Missing a day just doesn't feel right somehow.

I haven't felt this way for almost 30 years and I'm really liking it.  And no mean track coaches to deal with, either.

Recently, I read another of many interesting Facebook posts from Ron Graham.   I associated that information to the struggles we all have with weight loss.   To summarize, the post stated that it is a lot easier to add weight than it is to take it off.  Funny thing, because we all wonder why the weight doesn't come off as fast as we may expect, if it comes off at all.  But almost by magic, it goes on quick.

After some reflection on his post, I realized diet is a lot like a round of golf.  Particularly "pro" golf.

Why is that?  A pro golfer is expected to shoot par on any individual hole.  That is the very definition of par.  Nothing great.  Nothing bad.  Hit the green in regulation and two-putt.  Ho hum.

Should a pro golfer hit an errant shot and take an 8 on a hole, it may derail his chances of any kind of respectable finish in the tournament.  One mistake takes a lot of birdies to erase.

Isn't a diet just like this?  "Par" is a day where we eat what we burn.  No weight gain.  No weight loss.  Nothing particularly good.  Nothing particularly bad.  Perfect balance, yet easily unbalanced.

The problem is that we can all consume an extra few thousand calories in a week or a weekend, perhaps in just one sitting.  This could be a holiday, a vacation, a special event, or an "all you can eat" buffet.  Can we possibly squeeze in a three thousand calorie workout on the day after a binge?  Probably not.  That's six or eight hours on a treadmill!

What does all this blubbering mean?  It is probably far better to cheat a little, and make it up than it is to try to make up for a huge diet sin.  A bogey on one hole (like having a slice of pie) is better than closing the late night buffet every night while on a week-long cruise.  A binge is like shooting a 12 or 15 on a hole.  (And the extra weight would give the electric golf cart a flat tire while we're at it.)

We can only shoot so many birdies with our workouts, so we need to keep the ball in play.  The diet fairway is best.  The diet rough is manageable.  But, whatever we do, don't hit in the diet woods.  We may never get out.  Hit too far over the trees, out-of-bounds, and you come to a McDonald's or a Pizza Hut.

Today on the Lighten Up Facebook page, I mentioned that there is no "D" in Lighten Up.  If I hit all of my goals, I can only hope everyone else hits theirs.  Fitness is not a zero-sum game.

To be perfectly honest, I have already reached just about all of my goals.  If the contest ended today, this experience has already been incredible enough to rank up there with the birth of my two sons, completion of two marathons in 1978 and 1982, and a 300 game in bowling.  I now only need a hole-in-one to complete my "Bucket List".

Forget winning a chicken wing eating contest.  I erased that from my "Bucket List" when I entered this contest.

And, although way more fun, these last few weeks have still required a lot of hard work.

While out of town on business, I was able to not only survive, but also thrive through it all.

A good breakfast was a priority every day and I took healthy snacks to keep my metabolism on fire.  I ate enough bananas to make a gorilla proud.

My improved physical condition allowed me to hit the hotel fitness center just about every evening, even though I put in a full eight hours or more on the job.  Four months ago, I would have said "The heck with this.  Where's the nearest Hooters?  Isn't it 20 cent wing night?". 

Instead, dinner was typically a salad, grilled fish and whatever veggies the restaurant offered.

I'm a changed man.  And another item "Reached Fitness Target" is almost ready to be crossed off the "Bucket List", thanks to "Lighten Up".

The weight loss graph I set up in Vitabot at the start of the contest is looking a little flat lately,  Not like the first three months which resembled the stock market in 2008 - dropping like a rock.  In a weight loss contest, that is a good thing, but not for my 401k.

If that current graph were an EKG, I would be dead.

Although I never stop watching my diet, even for a day, how I handle what I eat is a lot less strict now.  I need lots of calories to fuel my workouts.  So I consume chicken wings, french fries, and beer.  No, no, and definitely no.  But a person can wish.

What I mean is that I still eat healthy, but just more of the good things.  Especially after a long workout, I treat myself to a lot more protein (READ: skinless, boneless chicken, steaks, eggs, and dairy).  A little less attention is paid to portion control.  (Emphasis on the words "little less").

I try to follow the 40-30-30 rule for everything including snacks.  That is 40% protein, 30% carbohydrates, and 30% fat.  Healthy fats, if at all possible.  Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO in Rachael Ray terminology), avocados, Omega 3's, and all-natural peanut butter, to name a few.

This probably explains why my weight loss has been flat over the past two weeks, but I am not complaining.  I run an hour every day, with enough energy left to do all my mundane daily chores, like changing the TV channel and writing these blogs.  And I really do look forward to my daily runs.  It must be the old runner in me, rusty wheels and all.

I like what I see in the mirror and often punch new notches in my belts.  And the holes are punched moving in the right direction now.  I am also wearing clothes from the very back of the closet, just this side of the Cleveland Indians 1948 World Series Champs T-shirts and the leisure suits.

With that thought, maybe I don't want to lose any more weight after all.  My Dockers fit fine, thank you.

See you all at the Y!

No, this blog is not about multi-vitamins... It's all about exercise.

Thanks to the wonderful opportunity to work out at the Y with our free membership, plus the nicer spring weather and longer days, I have made a change to my workout schedule effective today.  This decision was based on a chat I had with Ron Graham after my last health assessment.

The topic of discussion was the best time to exercise - morning versus evening.  Ron made the point that HGH levels are higher in  the morning, so taking advantage of that has some benefits.

All my life, I have hated one thing about evening workouts - getting pumped up so much that sleeping is troublesome.  Lately, I can't fall asleep quickly, even if I watch American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.  Not even Piers Morgan's show on CNN causes drowsiness, as one would expect.

Now, I have decided to heed Ron's advice and then some.  Do a little of both.

Since she is already a member there, while my dear girlfriend puts in her crazy Diana Nyad-like number of laps in the Y pool, I put in my laps at the Y track and mix in a few weights.  All this starts before 6 am.  During this time, I used to just sit around drinking coffee at home while she swam.  Now, off I go with her.

With an official workout completed by 7:30 am, I can now do whatever I want after work.  This can be yard work or another workout, short of course.  This is where the "2 a Day" comes in.

I can even take an afternoon off, if I want, since my morning workout got the exercise out of the way early.

We will see how this goes.  I expect to sleep like a baby, unless I die of exhaustion first.  All this without the use of a sedative, like watching Piers Morgan on CNN.

What a great perk the YMCA membership is!

This morning, I went to the Painesville branch with my girlfriend, since she is already a member there.  She swam her crazy amount of laps while I used the track and explored the facilities.  I am not a swimmer like she is.  I can swim enough to save myself if I fell off of a boat, at least until the Coast Guard got there.

Now that the weather is nice, I see myself going to the Y most mornings - early, before work.  This will allow me to get some strength training and some cardio out of the way, freeing up the rest of my day.  If the lawn isn't screaming "Cut me!", I will make time for an evening run of an hour or so.  The Y will also be my "go to" place when the weather does not cooperate.

With all the nice spring weather comes a lot of interesting road races.  I am considering doing several.  The nice thing is that last week proved I can run an hour straight, so any race of 10K (6.2 miles) or less is do-able right now.  My sadistic track coach keeps putting a bug in my ear about a half-marathon, but that will take some training first.

For now, let's see how fast we can get these rusty 55 year-old wheels to move.

As far as diet, last week was the closest to normal I have been since the contest started.  Since my energy level needs to be high, I am eating many more carbs.  But, I still think "healthy" all the time.  For example, in my travels last week to Virginia, I went to the most convenient restaurant which happened to be a steakhouse.  I started with a side salad - no croutons or cheese, oil and vinegar on the side.   Then I ordered the smallest filet, 6 ounce, with a double order of steamed broccoli instead of potato, and asked that they not serve me any rolls.  If that is a tough lifestyle change, bring on more.

This contest started when I was of the ripe-old age of 20,138 days.  Although the metabolism slowed and bad habits peaked at the age of 9,131 days, I think I took a turn for the worst at 10,957 days of age.  Coincidentally, Miller Brewing stock was at an all-time high on that day.  And the turn for the worst may have included bratwurst.

Why all of these silly references to "days" when we usually use years as a unit of time?  Easy.

My entry into this contest was based on the premise of spending just 190 days, the length of time that this contest lasts, to turn myself around - big time.  Erase all those years of sins in a relatively few days, no matter what it takes.  I was finally sick and tired of being sick and tired.  Whatever I gotta do, count me in.

At 100 days into this contest, I reached a point that is unfathomable.  I lost almost 43 pounds - over 20% of my total body weight.  My blood pressure is 105/65.  My rest pulse is under 50.

How did I do all this?

I made a deal with the devil, or a bet for that matter.  Sticking to a strict diet and logging over 600 miles on the treadmill, sidewalks of Mentor, and the concourses of the Great Lakes Mall, I was off to a good start.

Those two simple, but strict things, diet and exercise, resulted in reaching a milestone Tuesday that I haven't done for at least 9,131 days.  I ran for an hour straight.  A 6.5 mile run, more than a 10K race, without stopping or changing pace.  No area of my T-shirt, not even as large as a postage stamp was dry.  Could have been faster, but I'll take it.  The speed will come with time, training and a few more pounds shed.  I have three months left to get faster (or as Leah calls it in her blog, "tone up").

Who wouldn't make a bet like this, even with the devil, when the results are potentially so remarkable?  By my calculations, dividing up the days I invested in myself compared to the days I got in the bad shape I was in made this a bet of 100 to 1 odds in the favor of bettering myself.

With hard work on my side, the devil didn't stand a chance.

Credit needs to go to Laura for organizing everything, Jaime's book and Boot Camps, Cabanas' push toward healthy food choices, Cori's nutritional help, Ron Graham's health tips and answers to my never-ending questions, and a good pair of running shoes, professionally fitted from Second Sole, of course.

On a closing note, thank you to all who called me"skinny" at the weigh-in on Saturday.  Your kind words are truly appreciated.