My New Permanent Profession

I, James, am happy to announce that I am now an athlete.

F.A.Q.: "James, what do you do?"
A: Excellent question. I'm an athlete.

For the rest of my life, that's what I vow to be. You see, I don't want gastric bypass surgery. I don't want my disability to return. I don't want to not enjoy everything that life has to offer a healthy human being. I don't want to live out my life stuck in quicksand.

To me, keeping fit means putting my chronic disease (obesity) into remission. Thank God I don't have to take pills or undergo invasive treatments for my debilitating disease.

All I have to do is have fun.

Even if I were a naturally thin person, this is what I should be doing with my life. One's health or quality of life isn't necessarily dependent on the size of one's waistline. I believe the older we get, the more important fitness is for our quality of life no matter what size we are.

On the weekend I headed out to a nature preserve that is an hour out of town by bike. My eight year-old son and I traveled on gravel roads to get there. It took about an hour each way. Unlike on roads, I had trouble keeping up with my boy "off road" on my less-efficient mountain bike.

He was so proud of what he accomplished and so proud of his dad, who did almost nothing with him up until last summer.

When I got back from that exhausting trip (it wouldn't have been so exhausting if my son took it easy) I had had my fill of cycling. It was even something of a letdown to be done that goal and not to have anything else on my list of things to try.

But a day or two later, the feeling started to burn inside of me. I want to tear up something with my bike. I want to get out there, to make my heart beat fast, and to push my body to it's full, ever-increasing potential.

I hope that fire never goes away. It's my choice to keep it going.

Judge Ruling if Obese Man Too Fat to Be a Father

In a family court case to be ruled on soon, a judge will, in part, decide whether a 38-year-old Ottawa man is too fat to be a dad. 

In court filings by child-welfare authorities, a doctor at the family court clinic wrote:

“Finally, (father) has struggled with obesity for years, which impacts significantly on most aspects of his life including (his) functioning as a parent. He was short of breath or winded in simply walking short distances about the clinic and he lacks both the mobility and stamina required to keep up with young and active children.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Judge+rule+whether+obesity+factor+fitness+fatherhood/6794649/story.html#ixzz1yGDYDeBg

Just Like That, Something New Realized

Sometimes I forget he's only eight.

Tonight I did something I've never done before.

I've said that a lot in the last year, haven't I? You know how many times I've said that in the fifteen years before that? Probably not at all.

Since I re-took up cycling almost a year ago,--Jesus, it's hard to type that, remembering that person who first got back on his bike on July 1st and the limitations he had and/or felt he had...

Let me start again.

When I got back on my bike a year ago I was reacquainting myself with fond memories of my younger years riding a road bike on streets, paved pathways and the occasional highway. I've never owned a mountain bike, didn't like them. I grew up watching my brother fine tune his racing bike for the lightest and fastest it could be...on the road. Mountain bikes were inefficient and pointless to me. I never understood them.

Until now, anyway.

During the last year of cycling with my eight year old, he's often asked me to go off road with him. I never did because I was afraid of breaking my wheels. I even avoid unsmooth streets because the wheels on my road bike are too thin and delicate for a 300 pound man. I bent a wheel once last year and had to get it fixed. Fortunately, perhaps due to a lower weight than last year, I've not had that problem again. But I stay off the gravel paths that my boy wants me to go on.

The only mountain bikes I've tried have been my wife's. They've never felt good. I dismissed mountain bikes altogether after several failed rides.

But recently I started getting curious about mountain bikes. I've often felt that I should ride one until I'm lighter because the wheels are wider and stronger on mountain bikes and they have bigger tires to absorb shock.

Then I started thinking it'd be fun to cycle through provincial parks on a mountain bike. And then I started researching trails. The Trans Canada Trail will one day go from coast to coast to coast in Canada. I started to think it'd be fun to ride on parts of it.

Call it a dream. Call it a notion to try something new. Nevertheless, I'm still a very large man who has a long way to go in reclaiming his body. I'm also getting long in the tooth, so the idea of trying new physical things still makes me hesitant.

About a week ago, my friend Brian offered me his old mountain bike which he stored outside due to lack of room. It was old and well-worn but it was a decent bike when it was new so it had potential. I quickly overhauled it and even painted some of it. For not too much money, a little bit of elbow grease, and a few trips to the bike shop, I got myself a spanky "new" ride.

Tonight, as the sun set, my son and I went for a spin to test her out. After a few gravel trails through neighbourhood parks, and some zipping up and down sidewalks onto the streets, we brazenly headed out onto a trail created by an SUV or two that circled around the edge of our neighbourhood, through a farmer's field and onto railroad property.

It was exhilarating, mostly because it was scary. The terrain got worse and worse but I felt that stopping would be a bad thing, especially because it was getting hard to see in the fading light. We dodged large rocks, minor cliffs and pools of water with mud, not to mention tall grass and weeds with thorns poking into our ankles.

It had me on edge, and my son too. But we made it and it was fun. And different. Different is good.

My son told me he was proud of himself and proud of me too.

The sedentary rarely do anything that raises the hair on their back. Sometimes living--really living-- means taking chances or trying new things that aren't easy or there's no sure outcome to them.

I hit a rut tonight, stopped suddenly and banged my belly into the handlebars (while the bars twisted downward out of place.) Was I phased? No. I'll be back again tomorrow.

Me, of one year ago, the fat guy who was two weeks from his first bike ride in fifteen years, wouldn't have had tonight's events cross his mind in his wildest imagination. What we accomplished tonight was completely unimaginable to me a year ago.

I'm almost afraid to think what else might be out there for me.

In Defense of Going Hard

People ask me all the time--from sedentary friends and acquaintances to the medical professionals who assist me in my quest--why I go so hard in my fitness quest.

The truth is, I could go a lot harder. Some people do. They spend hours per day exercising until they go from super-obese to the societal norm we call thin.

I could just go for walks every night and I'd benefit enormously from that activity. I'd lose weight and regain energy while toning the largest muscles in my body, those in the lower half that hold us up.

Part of it is that I do nothing half-assed. I either commit to something 100% or I don't do it. This comes from a fear of failure and an obsessive personality.

Another part of it is the psychological high I get from being in the zone.

But what really drives me is a mix of anger and appreciation. I know that sounds like an odd mix so I'll just jump to the point.

If you did not have the use of your legs and were confined to a wheel chair say, since you were a kid, what would you do if you suddenly had the permanent full use of your legs? Would you live a "normal life" sitting in front of a TV or computer screen all day, or would you run a marathon? You'd probably run ten marathons. You'd probably do everything you could possibly fit into a day.

I wasn't completely physically restricted when I was at my worst but I was increasingly disabled. There's a lot I couldn't do that healthy people take for granted. Much of what life has to offer was off the table for me. I was resigned to always having only the smallest taste of the joys the world has available to the able-bodied person.

So should it be a surprise that I strive to be all I can be? Too make my heart the opposite of what it was when I hit rock bottom? To improve every day? To seek out more and more out of life?

It's as simple as this: You don't know what you have until it's gone.

I go hard because of all that I had lost.

A Rare Connection with Nature.

I'm old. There's not much that makes me pause anymore. I've seen everything. Nothing is new. Time flies by fast because the world has lost its wonder. I wish I was twelve again. I'd like to look at the world for a while again with young eyes.

It's rare when my frantic world comes to a stop and I look at something with wonder. I saw the sun setting tonight, not on TV as I sat on my couch, not on my computer, not through my window, and not from the isolation of my car.

I saw it while riding my bike on a street on the edge of the city. There was nothing between me and it other than a serene wheat field. It's the kind of connection that makes everything pause. You sense that you can hear the event taking place because you're that close, even though there's no real sound. It's musical, maybe. Something evoking magic or heaven.

Moments like that should fill our days but they don't. We sit on couches, in front of TV sets and computers, or stuck in traffic jams anticipating what's next in our day. Suddenly we're old.

I'm glad I've unstuck myself. I'm going to go looking for more.

Four Sizes Down and a Flashback to 1 Year Ago

Today, I bought a new pair of shorts and they were three sizes smaller than my last, and four sizes smaller than my largest size (of about a year and a half ago.) Today was a good day. Maybe a good day to reflect, too.

Saturdays are my in between gym jogs. I jog at a slow, comfortable rate. My heart rate doesn't rise beyond a moderate level, and my breathing is full and steady, but nowhere near laboured or heavy. I jog for a couple minutes less than the gym, all just to keep those muscles strong, and to burn a few extra calories than walking.

Two days a week, I'll jog at the gym, bringing my heart rate up to the top end of 'aerobic' and spend a minute or two, or several, doing a wind sprint up to just under 90% of max HR to improve my fitness (it really, really works, kids.)

So tonight was a warm, humid night, very quiet and still. No people around and a full moon shone through the clouds. I was able to go out in shorts and a t-shirt for the first time this year at night and it brought me back to a moment one year ago.

I was getting more fit, having gone for longer walks the previous month or two, and decided I would slowly test out jogging. I'd do my half hour walks, but every second night I'd jog as slow as I could for 20 seconds. That's about all I could handle. My heart was nearly maxed out by the end.

Of course I was still uncomfortable exercising in public. Most very large people are self-conscious of how they look when exercising, especially when they're pushing their limits. Well, at the end of 20 seconds I happened to be in front of a group of people standing in front of their house. I decided to keep going for another 10 seconds (utill I got past them) to save face.

My heart probably reached 100% of it's capable rate. My chest tightened and I got worried that I had gone too far. I was gasping for breath. It's never happened again. Nothing even close. But I could have thrown in the towel and got discouraged that night, thinking it would take way too long to improve my body.

I asked my doctor about it and he confirmed my theory. My heart probably had reached its maximum rate or close to it. He then got me to buy a $50 heart rate monitor for my fitness quest and keep my heart below 85% most of the time.

Your maximum heart rate is generally considered 220 minus your age. I'm 45, so 220-45=175.  A good exercise (aerobic) zone is 70-85% (for those losing weight, although there are different opinions.) So 149 is generally the pulse rate that I try to keep below most of the time. And I like to do things like walking that keep it above 120, but it's hard these days without a raised incline on a treadmill (some people carry weights with them when they walk to get their heart working.)

Lately I sometimes have trouble getting my heart going fast enough, which is a big difference from that night one year ago when I went a bit too far in just thirty seconds. I'm not even sure there's anything I can possibly do now in thirty seconds to max out my heart, short of jumping out of an airplane naked.

Of all the things that have changed for me--my self-image, the profound energy increase, my ease at exercising in public, all the new things I can do with my kids, the reduction in size, the new waistline, THE FUN!--the most remarkable is the very measurable changes in my heart. Doing one activity that used to be, say, 150 beats per minute may now be only 120. It's the difference between gasping for oxygen and breathing normally.

Tonight my legs felt like strong pillars, more than capable of carrying me as I jogged through the night.

This night, this year, cycling is not a dream, as it was a year ago. It's a fitness pursuit I am fully immersed in. The jogging's a side-hobby. I can't get enough of cycling. Already, this early, I'm dreading winter.

Two different activities cross-training the body--one group of muscles aids the other on their day off.

The James of a year ago is gone. It's important to try to remember him, but may he rest in peace and not be seen again.