Author: Andy

“I could lose like 40 pounds easily?”

“No, it’s going to be really, really hard.”

That was the exchange between Penn Jillette (Magician, actor, interesting dude) and Ray Cronise (Scientist dude working to innovate weight loss). The exchange was detailed by Penn as he was interviewed on “The Tim Ferriss Podcast.”

As Penn continued, “No one had ever said that to me before.”

I Want to Exercise?

I know we don’t want to hear it, but finally it was said, changing the way we eat is hard. Me, I believe changing the way we eat is freakin’ hard. Go ahead and insert any other exclamatory word you want in place of “freakin’.”

I mention this because while the past few months have been, for me, about getting in an exercise groove, a groove I am happy to say is getting deeper and deeper as I shift from “I should exercise” to “I want to exercise,” I’m now beginning to take a harder look at the food side of things. Why? Because that is really where the weight loss magic happens.

Sure, I’ve incorporated a few, healthy changes into my eating repertoire, at least they seem healthy so far. I started a fasting-mimicking regimen that has seemingly helped an auto-immune issue I suffered with, my caffeine intake has plummeted from six-plus espresso shots coupled with three cups of coffee every morning down to just three espressos, and I’m eating more almonds and less chips. Yay, me!

My Three Amigos

My current downfalls, though? Ice cream, donuts, and beer. Oh heck, just food, just about all food.

And crap, I really, really like ice cream, donuts, and beer. Oh heck, I really, really like just about all food.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m mainlining ice cream while eating donuts and washing them down with beer, but whereas the biggest challenge for adding exercise to my life was, some mornings, getting my ass out of bed so that I could get said ass on the Peloton bike, this food thing is mostly about taking away. Who wants to have stuff they love taken away?

The other thing that I think that makes weight loss so difficult is that you can look at most any “diet” plan and one of the selling points is how easy it is.

Weight Watchers is out there with a “program proven to make weight loss easier.” Something called “Noom” has multiple people in its commercial saying, “It was super easy.” Even the South Beach Diet, which has seemingly been around forever, on its website touts, “It’s easy and it works.”

I’ve tried some of these weight loss things as well as others, and sure, they seem easy at the beginning, but there has always come a point where I have drifted back into eating too much ice cream, having that extra donut, and suddenly they aren’t easy any longer.

Honesty is the Best Policy?

Maybe these plans should be honest and, like Ray Cronise explained to Penn Jillette, tell you that losing weight is going to be really, really hard. I don’t know if that can be inspirational or awesome for you, but it most likely is the truth. You know why? It is hard. That’s right, it’s really, really hard to change your diet in order to lose weight.

Maybe, just maybe, you are one of the lucky ones and have found that “easy” weight loss program, one that you have stuck with for at least five years. If so, I would love to know what that is, just use the comments area below. Me, I’m going with a new thought that any change to my diet that is supposed to be healthier is going to be really, really hard. In fact, it’s probably going to be really, really, freakin’ hard.

I can’t wait to see how my new “The It’s Really, Really Freakin’ Hard Diet Plan” works!

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!

“What?”

This was blurted out in tandem, by me and my wife, as she was fast-forwarding whatever we were watching and somehow landed on a graphic showing, “Kobe Bryant, 1978 – 2020.” 

“Kobe Bryant died?”

The rewind button was quickly pressed and there it was, the “breaking story” that Kobe Bryant had died in a helicopter crash.

The initial shock came to me, a seeming pause in time, as is normal when you hear of the sudden death of someone, whether they be a person close to you or even a celebrity.

I headed to Twitter where my feed instantly changed from blurbs about the impeachment, computer programming, and utter nonsense, to about 20 straight tweets of disbelief and hope the news was incorrect.

I found myself stunned but not really sad. I felt bad for his family and the families of the other people who died in the crash. I kept checking if there was more news, maybe a reason for the crash, and then I caught the stories of visibly grieving people, folks who most likely never met the man but only experienced him as a basketball player. I have to say that my first reaction seeing them was to wonder how they could find themselves so emotional about a person with whom they had no direct connection except maybe through basketball.

Then I remembered my reaction upon hearing of the death of Clarence Clemons back in June, 2011. 

Yup, some tears came to my eyes back then, and I remembered him with a Facebook post, “RIP Clarence Clemons. Thank you for your saxophone playing, and for being one of The Three Most Important People in the World.” Some of my friends caught the reference to his roll in “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

It was one of the few times I actually acknowledged the passing of someone I didn’t really know.

The odd thing was that in the world of my life Clarence wasn’t that much of an influence, at least I never thought he was, until he died. Up until then he was always just a member of the E-Street band, and I liked him in the few movies he was a part of. For whatever reason, and maybe it just hit me at a time when I didn’t want to think about my own mortality, his death had an emotional effect on me. I grieved, if ever so briefly.

In reflecting back on my experience I re-understood how the people could get emotional over Kobe Bryant, someone they didn’t personally know. For me Kobe was a great basketball player, but to others he was much more. I’ve also realized those people needed their time to grieve, it wasn’t my place to wonder about it, and better they grieve at the moment, for, from The Daily Stoic and a quote from Seneca, “It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it. For if it has withdrawn, being merely beguiled by pleasures and preoccupations, it starts up again and from its very respite gains force to savage us.”

Me, I’m hoping to try to be less judgmental the next time I see stories of people grieving over a celebrity, because, heck, I have to remember that I did it, too. In the end it is never our place to understand why someone might grieve but to support them, and if that grief begins to, as Seneca put it, “savage” them, our responsibility is to urge them to seek out others who can help them conquer that grief.

Thanks for stopping by! Keep being awesome and inspired!