Hands (er, Pants) Down, the Best Christmas Ever

The grinder that nearly did me in

The Christmas that is just now in our rear-view mirror (or simply “rear view” as it will probably become in family legend) turned out to be one of our best, with gifts a-plenty, great food, the joy of two grandchildren, and the warm and laughter-filled company of young and old alike. We are particularly blessed to have in-law relationships that are not stereotypical slug fests of tempers, tantrums, or awkward silences and teary attitudes.

We are one nuclear family even though we are spread out across the country and around the globe — from Erie, PA, to Alexandria, VA, to Raleigh, NC, to Bungendore, NSW Australia. For my part, I was a very happy camper, thoroughly enjoying my status as the elder of the clan — not a stodgy, grump of a grandpa, but an exuberant advocate for a full-on Joyeux Noël celebration as most of us (absent the Aussies, with whom we stayed in touch via video phone calls) gathered at our youngest daughter’s house just outside Raleigh.

I have to admit that one reason I was my right jolly old self was the weight loss I’ve been working on for the past three months. This Christmas, I was more than 40 lbs. lighter than I’d been the year before, and with that decrease in mass came an increase in participation in family activities leading up to Christmas Eve, including a spirited attempt to learn pickleball! It is a fun sport even septuagenarians like me can enjoy, and the leaner me was having a ball (a pickleball, to be precise) smashing away with my pickleball paddle. My son-in-law is a pickleball whiz, and he was a patient teacher as I flailed and swooped in the general direction of the bright yellow pickleballs he sent my way.

I was also enjoying the discovery that as my weight declined, my belt needed to be notched almost to the very last hole — proof of the nearly five-inch reduction in girth! Even with that belt-tightening, my jeans were now prone to slipping down my hips, causing me to hitch them up from time-to-time lest I accidentally expose myself in public. I’d had a few almost-total pants-droops before my wife and I drove down to Raleigh, so I was acutely aware of the potential for a humiliating disaster.

There is an important backstory to this particular Christmas, a dastardly delicious secret-gift-giving plan that involved a new woodworking lathe too large to fit under the tree, and an extremely heavy bench grinder purchased the day after Christmas. It was the grinder, coupled with my weight loss, that became key factors in shifting the happiness of the holiday to a hilarious moment in family lore.

Given the welcome warm and clear weather in North Carolina, we set up the lathe and the bench grinder just outside the garage. My daughter — to whom the lather/grinder combination had been gifted — was working until the last minute of available December daylight to unlock the secrets of successfully sharpening her new woodworking tools, having worn down several of the tools while learning to turn wood with the lathe. I was standing by as she worked, excited for her entry into what I’m sure will become a very enjoyable hobby, and important component to the other crafts in which she excels.

As the evening’s darkness loomed, I suggested we call it a day and put the lathe, tools, and grinder back in the work shed next to the driveway — about 20’ from where the machines had been set up. My son-in-law (the pickleball champ), had warned me off lifting either the lathe (77 lbs.), or the grinder (34.2 lbs. plus accessories and mount, for a total of nearly 40 lbs.) alone, cautioning me against over-exerting myself.

While I appreciated his concern, I was confident that my new, lighter, buffer, self — now under the tutelage of a personal trainer who was getting me in shape as the pounds melted away — could handle at least the grinder with no strain. On that count, I was absolutely right…but what I did not include in the new equation of me was the effect lifting a 40 lb. grinder would have on my hip muscles, which tightened as I began walking the grinder over to the shed. And as my hips tightened, my jeans loosened.

I made it about halfway to the shed when my jeans began their indecent decent — as my daughter watched helplessly — incredulously — behind me. You know, sometimes we have come-to-God moments when we realize how totally wonky a situation has become, and how we are going to be completely humiliated no matter what we do? I had arrived at one of those moments and situations. Time slowed down as the jeans slipped down. I prayed they would somehow hold off their perilous (for me) gravity-assisted journey at least until I got inside the shed. Talk about unanswered prayers!

By the time I reached the shed door, and took one step up to cross the threshold, my pants were halfway down my thighs. Knowing that there was no way I could make that final step up into the shed with my pants around my knees, I let go of the grinder with my left hand, and reached for my pants before they fell beyond my grasp. Man, I have to tell you that nothing in my new exercise regimen prepared me to cling to a bulky 40 lb. mass of iron, motor, grinding wheels, and accessories with one hand while attempting to arrest the fall of a pair of elusive jeans with the other hand AND while struggling to complete my journey into the shed to place the teeter-tottering grinder on the shed’s bench. That I managed to do so is a Christmas miracle.

As I stood in the shadows of the shed rebelting my jeans — illuminated only by the light coming through the doorway — a sound lifted out of the evening’s gloom and filled the surrounding neighborhood. It was the sound of my daughter’s understandably uncontrollable laughter. Having seen a sight no father wishes any child of any age to see, she turned and made her way into the house, stumbling in mirth, doubled over in hilarity.

“Well,” I thought, as the heated blush of embarrassment spread across my face, “at least I’ve made this the most merry of Christmases.”

Welcome, Winter Solstice!

I began to write this six hours before the season-tipping moment of the winter solstice, here in the Washington, DC, suburb of Alexandria, Virginia. The sun slipped below the barely warm southwestern horizon at 4:49 p.m. Saturday evening, December 21st, and it won’t rouse itself to climb above the night-chilled southeastern horizon until 7:23 a.m. Sunday morning, the 22nd, after leaving us in the dark for 14 long hours. Oh, the ruthlessness of winter’s blackest trickery!

This morning’s Washington Post featured an informative account of the solstice, written by Justin Grieser, with all the important details about how and why the Earth-Sun mechanics work the way they do to bathe us in long stretches of sunlight in the summer, and plunge us into what seems like eternal darkness in winter. As a creature of earth and space sciences…well, as an aficionado at least…I appreciated every detail of Grieser’s article. How can you not appreciate the accuracy of this almost palpable paragraph that expresses so perfectly the solstice’s curious impact:

“Perhaps it’s the stark contrast between daylight and darkness that we experience when the winter sun is shining and not hiding behind a thick blanket of clouds. Or maybe it’s the fact that the sun hangs so low in the sky all day at this time of year that it almost feels as if our nearest star is within tangible reach, despite being 91 million miles away.”

For me, the solstice is the tipping point between madness and sanity, a moment in time when the bleak forecasts of three more months of ice, snow, and gloomy skies give way to the knowledge that even though the weather outside is frightful, the thought of longer days is delightful. Incremental as those increasing minutes of dawn and dusk may be, the solstice assures me that everything will be fine…just be patient.

Articles like the one in the Post usually mention seasonal affective disorder (SAD), as a possible psychological component of winter for the approximately half-a-million people living in the United States. The science behind SAD is still a bit unclear. Theories of imbalances in neurotransmitters (serotonin, for example), or melatonin (related to sleep), or out-of-sync internal clocks, made unstable by the lack of sunlight, or life in northern climes vs. life nearer to the equator, all seem to have varying degrees of validity in diagnosing SAD. It is also suspected that SAD loses its impact on older adults (of which I am one, at 70).

When I read that, I nodded my head in agreement; as someone who was diagnosed with clinical depression in my late 30s, and who fought the effects of it well into my 60s. Winter was always the worst, and it hammered ruthlessly at my psyche. Over the years, I’ve discussed this with my family doctor and my several therapists, and I’ve questioned if some portion of my depression was triggered by seasonal changes, or actual SAD. To a person they said, “maybe so.” Now as I begin my eighth decade under the sun (or lack of it), I have overcome the deepest effects of my depression, and only suffer an echo of it when fall temperatures drop, and the sunlight begins to fade away.

The winter solstice is my beam of light at the end of winter’s tunnel. I know it’s the train of the sun coming my way, and despite the reality of winter snows to come, that illuminated and warm carriage will arrive at my station right on time.

In three minutes, the solstice will occur, and I will stand outside in the cold night and welcome it with open arms and a silent thanks to orbital mechanics.

A Reason to Lose Weight is Better Than a Resolution to Diet

This is my belt. The punched hole (far right) accommodated my bulging waist 3 months ago.  Now smaller

Early but Overlooked Signs

It was last February when it hit me. I was becoming very uncomfortable in my own skin. Although the signs had been in place for several years, it was in February 2019 when I began noticing them. My attention to the warning notices began when we were celebrating our granddaughter’s first birthday. More signs flashed into view in May, when my son and three-year-old grandson flew all the way from Australia to surprise me on my 70th birthday, and again, later in May, when I was attending a major audiobook publishers’ convention. The final message board lit up in front of me in October, when I was holding forth as a workshop presenter at a literary festival. I was uncomfortable because my skin was stretched taut like the surface of a helium-filled blimp, and every item of clothing I was trying not to look uncomfortable in, was spilling out my blimp-ness to everyone who chanced to see me — and that was a lot of people. Brontosaurus, or thunder lizard, comes immediately to mind.
Morbidly Obese

My girth, or bulk, at 306 lbs. (well into the clinical definition of “morbidly obese”) for a 5’10” man did not just appear overnight; it was the result of an accretion of fat and other junk that accumulated on me over the years like barnacles on a tramp steamer (By the way, I realize I’m mixing metaphors here — blimps, tramp steamers, and large dinosaurs — but when you are so overweight that you are light-headed after going up a single flight of stairs, when you plod down the sidewalk like a brontosaurus, and when you pop buttons off your XXL jeans, you are not constrained to being just one example of enormousness — you can be a barnacle-covered, blimpish, aging steamer carrying a herd of thunder lizards).

Insidious Gain and Caloric Overload

In all fairness to the year just ending — a crappy year by almost any measure, including a tape measure — I did not just find myself at 306 lb. at the beginning of 2019. For the six prior years, as an audiobook narrator, I’d been ensconced in my home studio (the Dungeon), sitting on my slowly inflating ass for hours a day, so focused on narrating that I ignored the insidious signs of weight gain that were whispering, then yelling at me. Couldn’t hear those shouts through my headphones. The facts that I was consuming about 3,500 calories a day and downing well over 10 ounces of wine every evening were indicators of my depression and frustration.

Eating out of Embarrassment

Also working on me in May was my 70th birthday and a surprise party in North Carolina thrown by my family and friends. While I was delighted to see so many wonderful faces, including the happy expressions of my son and grandson who flew in from Australia, I was struck by my excessive weight and commensurate balloon-like appearance — to be in front of so many kind people but feeling so burdened by my bulk was almost more than I could bear.

Almost an Addiction

By October, with a commitment to run a literary festival workshop in Maryland, I found myself at a men’s clothier, having a pair of trousers let out by inches, and a jacket re-tailored to accommodate my swelling hugeness. A new belt — much longer than any other belt in my closet — was required, and even at that, I had to punch one more hole in it near the end to get it to fit properly (see picture above). Like a drunk who needs to hit bottom before recovery can be started, the fat me had descended emotionally about as far as I’d ever been.

Family Intervention: The Reason to Address the Problem

Throughout the spring and summer leading to October, I visited my daughters and my granddaughter in Raleigh, North Carolina, and found myself huffing and chuffing through the smallest of exertions — like lifting my 20-month-old granddaughter over my head in grandfatherly play, or getting up off the floor after watching her color with markers and play with her doll house. My wife and daughters commented with serious concern about my breathlessness, struggle to stand up from sitting on the floor, and my lumbering gait, and they each expressed worry about my health.

My youngest daughter — our granddaughter’s mom — was quite clear in her vision that I should be looking ahead to my granddaughter’s and our Aussie grandson’s high school graduations in 17 or so years. In my current state, she opined, I might not make it to those celebrations. My two daughters’, son’s, and wife’s expressions of worry turned into urgings for me to address the problem professionally, and so, by the end of the summer, I forged ahead and made appointments with several members of my health care team.
Having a Supportive Health Team is Crucial

My first stop was with my cardiologist, who ordered a nuclear heart scan (the one where you get a radio isotope injection, get scanned, run on a treadmill until your heart rate is well-elevated, then get scanned again). The results of that test were promising: my heart is fine, and there are no issues with my arteries — yay. However, he put me on atorvastatin because my blood work indicated a trend toward cholesterol problems.

Next stop, my pulmonologist who addressed my breathlessness. He put me through some diagnostic exams — X-rays, blood work, and a session with the spirometer — an advanced form of breathalyzer tests, minus the state trooper — and confirmed that, among other issues, I was not exhaling enough CO2 and was probably in the early stages of COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). He prescribed a twice-a-day inhaler and agreed that my weight was a significant — but reduceable — factor in my problem.

Then it was off to see my internist, one of the best and nicest doctors you’ll ever meet or need. He reviewed my lab work and pulmonary and cardiac tests and listened to me describe my latest symptoms and my family’s concerns. Knowing I am a terrible self-starter, he recommended two courses of action: hire a dietitian and hire a personal trainer. He reckoned, correctly, that only by investing in help — putting hard cash in the hands of professionals — would I stick to good eating and physical improvement routines.

When You’re Not Good at Sticking to Exercise

I must admit that I don’t do gyms well at all, at least not commercial sweat-lodge-like gyms lined with stationary bikes, treadmills, stair-steppers, and rowing machines, along with towering and intimidating weight contraptions spread around the hangar-like floors. No matter how slick those back-beat-driven commercials touting the benefits and like-minded camaraderie of fellow exercisers, at 70 I just don’t picture myself chugging along at tortoise-speed in amongst a line of 20- or 30-something workout impalas. Even as I write this, two days into the New Year, our local NBC affiliate broadcast a report on what to look for when signing up for a gym membership. The background in the video is very dissuasive for folks like me who want to avoid the crush and body-shame of a multi-plex gym.

I’m one of those older, stuck-in-my-ways guys who needs the privacy of a small gym and the one-on-one attention of a coach who won’t make me feel like a hopeless case. Fortunately for me, it turned out that the swim club I’ve belonged to for 50 years (and rarely used), has a nicely-equipped gym that is often inhabited by men and women my age or older who are totally non-judgmental and discreet when it comes to sharing floor space with their fellow members. It was equally fortuitous that I was able to track down and hire a personal trainer who is affiliated with the club and trains several other club members in the club’s gym and pool.

Find a Trainer Who Knows What You Need

My trainer works with men and women my age and older — of all shapes, sizes, and conditions. She’s building an exercise routine for me that is do-able and scale-able, that is, I can build on it over time, and increase the repetitions of each routine safely. From treadmill to upper and lower body exercises, to free weights and weight machines, my trainer’s careful prescription of just the amount of exercise I can handle is working. I can also do many of the routines at home, with only minor investment in equipment such as resistance bands and light weights.

Don’t Forget to Walk

The foundation to all her advice was the strength of my desire to take up walking daily. In college in Colorado I was a good skier and a pretty good technical rock climber and avid hiker; as a photojournalist, I was humping 40 lbs. of camera gear all over the place; but by the time I hit my 60s, I was a chair-bound writer, down to a slow walk around the neighborhood. In the past two months (November-December), I’ve upped my walking game to 3+ miles per day, on terrain that rises and falls enough to get me into a cardio zone for at least half the time. Running is out — knees are shot. I track my walks on my Fitbit and with the Samsung health app on my Galaxy S9+. Slowly but surely my distance and times are improving.

It’s not impressive, but it’s an encouraging sign of building health for a 70-year-old.

When You Know What’s Right to Eat, but Don’t Know How to Organize Meals

Build a healthy diet skillset for long-term success

With respect to following the advice of a dietitian, the initial trick is in finding the right professional, someone who not only gets you and understands your specific eating problems, but someone who is capable of helping you set and manage reasonable expectations for what a good diet is, and what it can do in the long run.

What you should be looking for is a professional who can help you develop a healthy eating skillset for the long run, not for a short-term goal that will be — and statistics bear this out — illusory and disappointing. In the words of Whitney Stuart of Whitness Nutrition, during an interview with Business Insider:

“Most fad diets have strict, specific rules. ‘Ultimately,’ Stuart said, ‘these diets tend to be unsustainable for long periods of time, let alone the rest of your life.’
The idea of deprivation, ingrained in many diets, ‘gives us control over a situation’ in the short term,’ Stuart said, perhaps leading people to think, ‘I haven’t eaten any cookies, I’m so good.’”

‘This short-term diet doesn’t become a habit,’ she said, ‘and 10 days — maybe two weeks — later, we see that deprivation rebound when self-control finally dwindles. Because that is limited.’”

“Goal” is a Trip-Wire Word

After my first meeting with the registered dietitian my doctor recommended, I felt like I’d hit the winning lottery ticket not only for weight management but also for a long-term healthful eating plan. In our first meeting, my dietitian listened to my health story as it related to my current lifestyle — older, relatively sedentary, arthritic, hit-and-miss eating habits with too many carbs and not a thoughtful selection of proteins, etc. — and then she asked what my goal was.

I told her my goal was to be lighter by at least 80 lbs. by July 2020, when the family (including those from out of the country, and our in-laws) would all be gathering to celebrate the 4th of July at Williamsburg, Virginia. As measured from the time of that initial consultation, I’d have a little over nine months to hit that goal. She cautioned me not to overreach reality, and suggested I start with a 40 lb. reduction.

We talked a bit more about the word “goal” in the context of a specific number of pounds to lose, and she gently nudged me in the direction of thinking about the journey toward and then beyond that admittedly arbitrary number. “Goal” is a trip-wire word when it comes to establishing and sustaining healthy eating habits after decades of letting oneself go deep into the obesity range. Setting a goal is all well and good, though fraught with disappointment if all you want to do is hit a number. Having a reason to get into shape will drive you toward that outcome even when disappointment crops up from time to time.

Starting a healthful eating regimen means winding up in a place where you can look back and say you sustained your efforts to eat right, day by day, meal by meal, until you are doing that effortlessly and without fear of failure. It means developing a healthy eating skillset that you can apply without thinking.

Losses are Inevitable: Don’t Obsess Over Them

To reach that healthy state means you must accept some losses along the way. There will be days or weeks where the scale seems to be your opponent, pushing you back. I’m just starting to learn that — much to my chagrin and much to the amusement of my dietitian who has encouraged me not to step on the scale daily, but rather aim for once a week (I had to bargain with her to get to twice a week since I’d already been checking my weight once or twice a day).

The key to making my dietitian's plan work was not making weight loss my end game, but to learn to eat within my caloric needs while eating a balanced blend of vegetables, fruits, proteins, starches, and fats. She created a personal food plan for me that set 1,800 calories per day as a do-able intake (vs the 3,500 I’d been consuming).
But What About My Favorite Foods?

My dietitian was unfazed about my worries that getting into a healthy eating habit based on 1,800 calories daily would mean cutting out foods that taste good. Seriously — I had this wonky vision of a healthful diet as one that either tasted like cardboard or relied on teaspoon-sized servings of bland proteins and watery vegetables. I gotta say, I love this dietitian. She laid out a chart headed by columns of starches, vegetables, fruits, milk/yogurt, protein, and fat/oil.

Under each of those headings were foods I’d always eaten and could continue to eat. In the starch column were sweet potatoes, pastas, oatmeal, English muffins, baked potatoes. Under veggies were carrots, tomatoes, snap peas, red, green, and yellow peppers. In the fruit column were all the good ones — bananas, apples, oranges, berries, kiwi, cherries, raisins. Milk (which is a staple of mine) and yogurt (also a fav) topped another column. The protein column really surprised me: lean beef, chicken, pork tenderloin, eggs, fish, veggie burgers, peanut butter, eggs, and cottage cheese, and more. Even the fat/oil column held out hope, with olive oil, salad dressings, mayonnaise, cream cheese, and bacon!

Above each column, my dietitian wrote her suggested daily serving size or daily calorie count for each category, for example: 5 starches, 4 vegetables, 4 fruits, 1 milk or yogurt, 8 ounces of protein (4 oz at lunch, 4 oz at dinner), and 10 servings (usually measured in teaspoons or tablespoons) of fats/oils. By selecting from each column as I planned my meals, I would get close to the daily 1,800 calorie intake. My dietitian stressed that I should not obsess over any exact number…a bit over 1,800 calories would not ruin my diet (although diving too far below 1,800 would be unhealthy and counterproductive).

Web Resources to Consider

My dietitian also pointed me to several websites with healthy eating recommendations, videos, and meal planning assistance. Her recommendations included The World’s Healthiest Foods, Nutrition Action, The Nutrition Source (from Harvard), and a number of recipe sites, including Cooking Light, Eating Well, Skinny Taste, and Cooksmarts.

The Results So Far

Between the healthy eating plan set up by my dietitian and a reasonable workout and walking regimen outlined by my personal trainer, I’ve managed to lose a bit over 40 lbs. over the past three months — and that includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s holiday feasting temptations. With the support of my family, and regular meetings with my two coaches, I don’t feel any need to cheat on either my diet or my exercise, and even during the crummiest, coldest, rainiest stretches of winter weather, I’m able to maintain a positive attitude and not succumb to the winter blahs and depressions that used to lead me to overeating.

Long-Term Reason Beats Short-Term Resolution Every Time

All the above is a very long way around to say a New Year’s resolution to lose weight is all-to-often apt to fail. However, if you establish a personal reason to lose weight, and eat the right (and flavorful) foods, in the right quantities, and maintain a do-able exercise schedule — no matter your age or initial-state abilities — you will have a better than fighting chance to succeed and be happier, and healthier, for your success.