6/27/2010
1/27/2010
Me is hungry
It's been a while since I did any blogging.
Last year was an interesting year for me, what with the root canal, wisdom tooth pulling, and cataract surgery and all.
But last year I also saw myself beginning to rebound in weight.
There were plenty of excuses I gave for this; I was too busy, Jon was no longer my neighbor, I wasn't THAT much heavier etc. etc. Well, like most things, there's some truth to all this, and some things that are just me ignoring the elephant in the corner.
Addressing the first of these, I really WAS busy. The combination of the wisdom teeth and the cataract surgery sandwiching my preparations for midyear seminar is what really did it. During that short 2.5 month period, due to a pressing need to catch up on work, I left work more times after 6 than my previous YEARS combined. Needless to say, my diet rapidly degenerated into whatever I felt like eating at Mini-stop, or even worse, grabbing myself a double quarter-pounder at Micky Dee's.
Jon, who wrapped up his last year on JET, moved away from the apartment. While still living in Fukuma, the idea of biking to his new place after work, working out, then biking back to my place, didn't really seem to jive. So gone were my days of going to the gym 4 times a week.
Well, the time after mid-year and before I went back home for the holidays was a party-filled affair, with more than it's fair share of beer and other liquors. And going home for the holidays was of course a treat, but I also fell into the vacation mentality, indulging my every fast-food whim.
Thus the result of about 8 months of neglect, in which probably 80-90% of the damage occuring in the last 3 months of that time, was an increase in weight from my all-time best of 85 kgs to 96 kgs this January, or about a 24 pound increase for those of you who are metric-phobic.
I knew I had gained weight. Any of my recent Facebook pictures proves that. Returning to the limelight were the all-stars, my gut and my double chin. Like I do every year, I made a resolution to lose weight.
I made this same resolution last year, but I pretty much didn't go through with it. After all, I was still working out. In a very real sense, I didn't need to watch what I ate as much.
But by August, with Jon gone from the apartment, my motivation to go to the gym dropped like a stone. I was still eating like shit, and so the inevitable creeping back of that band of fat around my torso and legs became evident. Shirts were tighter around my chest again. I went up a belt hole. My airsoft gear needed to be readjusted.
Fucking hell.
Well, I'm back in the saddle again, as it were, and dieting pretty hard. Though the gym hasn't made a return to my life, I now walk to school and back every day. I've also limited myself to a 1700 kcal diet (or as close as I can get to that), with, again, a cheat day on one of the weekend days.
Recording what I eat has also returned. But rather than a notebook I carry with me, as I did during 2008, I now track my progress on www.livestrong.com. Yes, this is the Lance Armstrong website.
Well, I'm happy with the results. Again, motivation is a huge factor, and this is one area where, for me at least, using the website is of real benefit. My morning routine involves me weighing myself first thing. I then head over to the computer and input that data into the website.
Well, what can I say. This is working! Not only that, but seeing a measurable amount of progress helps me out when that Big Mac looks REALLY good.
The initial loss is probably the most recently acquired fat, and the shock of going from a 2700 - 3500 calorie a day diet to a 1700 calorie one. I theorize that this is my "Canada" fat. I'm now chipping away at the, September to December fat, and on average going down about 200g a day.
My immediate goal is to get my weight down to 85 kgs, my personal best, a goal I'm hoping to hit before the end of February. My mid-range goal is to get to 80 kgs, hopefully by the time summer rolls around. Ultimately, my end goal is to get my BMI to under 25, and take myself out of the obese category.
Let's see what happens...
Last year was an interesting year for me, what with the root canal, wisdom tooth pulling, and cataract surgery and all.
But last year I also saw myself beginning to rebound in weight.
There were plenty of excuses I gave for this; I was too busy, Jon was no longer my neighbor, I wasn't THAT much heavier etc. etc. Well, like most things, there's some truth to all this, and some things that are just me ignoring the elephant in the corner.
Addressing the first of these, I really WAS busy. The combination of the wisdom teeth and the cataract surgery sandwiching my preparations for midyear seminar is what really did it. During that short 2.5 month period, due to a pressing need to catch up on work, I left work more times after 6 than my previous YEARS combined. Needless to say, my diet rapidly degenerated into whatever I felt like eating at Mini-stop, or even worse, grabbing myself a double quarter-pounder at Micky Dee's.
Jon, who wrapped up his last year on JET, moved away from the apartment. While still living in Fukuma, the idea of biking to his new place after work, working out, then biking back to my place, didn't really seem to jive. So gone were my days of going to the gym 4 times a week.
Well, the time after mid-year and before I went back home for the holidays was a party-filled affair, with more than it's fair share of beer and other liquors. And going home for the holidays was of course a treat, but I also fell into the vacation mentality, indulging my every fast-food whim.
Thus the result of about 8 months of neglect, in which probably 80-90% of the damage occuring in the last 3 months of that time, was an increase in weight from my all-time best of 85 kgs to 96 kgs this January, or about a 24 pound increase for those of you who are metric-phobic.
I knew I had gained weight. Any of my recent Facebook pictures proves that. Returning to the limelight were the all-stars, my gut and my double chin. Like I do every year, I made a resolution to lose weight.
I made this same resolution last year, but I pretty much didn't go through with it. After all, I was still working out. In a very real sense, I didn't need to watch what I ate as much.
But by August, with Jon gone from the apartment, my motivation to go to the gym dropped like a stone. I was still eating like shit, and so the inevitable creeping back of that band of fat around my torso and legs became evident. Shirts were tighter around my chest again. I went up a belt hole. My airsoft gear needed to be readjusted.
Fucking hell.
Well, I'm back in the saddle again, as it were, and dieting pretty hard. Though the gym hasn't made a return to my life, I now walk to school and back every day. I've also limited myself to a 1700 kcal diet (or as close as I can get to that), with, again, a cheat day on one of the weekend days.
Recording what I eat has also returned. But rather than a notebook I carry with me, as I did during 2008, I now track my progress on www.livestrong.com. Yes, this is the Lance Armstrong website.
Well, I'm happy with the results. Again, motivation is a huge factor, and this is one area where, for me at least, using the website is of real benefit. My morning routine involves me weighing myself first thing. I then head over to the computer and input that data into the website.
Well, what can I say. This is working! Not only that, but seeing a measurable amount of progress helps me out when that Big Mac looks REALLY good.
The initial loss is probably the most recently acquired fat, and the shock of going from a 2700 - 3500 calorie a day diet to a 1700 calorie one. I theorize that this is my "Canada" fat. I'm now chipping away at the, September to December fat, and on average going down about 200g a day.
My immediate goal is to get my weight down to 85 kgs, my personal best, a goal I'm hoping to hit before the end of February. My mid-range goal is to get to 80 kgs, hopefully by the time summer rolls around. Ultimately, my end goal is to get my BMI to under 25, and take myself out of the obese category.
Let's see what happens...
8/17/2009
Wisdom Tooth the First
My Odyssey begins about a year ago, when I first started to get a pain in my lower left tooth area. Chalking it up to sensitive teeth, it turns out that slowly, over the course of months (perhaps years) my rear left wisdom tooth was grinding into my number 7 rear left molar (or the one right in front of the wisdom tooth), causing a cavity to form.
In about March of this year, things came to a head and I either bit down on something hard or otherwise widened the cavity, exposing the nerves there to the air and whatever food was going into my mouth.
Now, I think I've got a pretty high pain threshold. At least enough to be a wuss. But this HURT. It was first a dull pain, but rapidly degenerated into SHARP INTENSE MIND DESTROYING PAIN. Of course, geek that I am, my loyalties were to gaming, so I actually waited a day to play D&D before heading to the nearest dentist I could find using Google Maps.
(In my defense, I'd been pretty desperate to get a real live 4E game going, and this was the first group I had found in almost 3 years of looking.)
But those few nights, I was popping 4 advils every 2 hours, and STILL I couldn't really sleep. The pain was so bad that I was literally moaning in pain, pacing my room, eyes strained shut. During that time I tried every shitty home remedy to no avail.
A trip to the dentist, a few x-rays, and all was revealed. In the end, I had to get a root canal done.
I've heard some say that the old saying "I'd rather get a root canal" isn't really relevant anymore, because getting a root canal isn't supposed to be all that bad.
FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
Getting a root canal was awful. OK, the pain itself wasn't all that bad, but the sheer uncomfortableness of it, while the dentist roots around AFTER drilling out your tooth to SCRAPE out the rest of the nerve endings with a barbed wire, periodically checking with some sort of electric contact to see in there are any nerves left, is downright unpleasant.
Anyway, this has all lead to this moment (and one more in about 2 weeks time when I get my OTHER lower wisdom tooth removed).
All told, it wasn't too bad. I laud the dentist, who despite the problems she was having, didn't one mutter the Japanese equivalent of "goddamn mother-fucking tooth". As I write this, my jaw is no longer paralyze, though I've got noticeable swelling in my jaw and cheek. It's starting to ache pretty badly, so I'll soon make some soup and take my painkillers and antibiotics.
Here are some pics of said tooth.
In about March of this year, things came to a head and I either bit down on something hard or otherwise widened the cavity, exposing the nerves there to the air and whatever food was going into my mouth.
Now, I think I've got a pretty high pain threshold. At least enough to be a wuss. But this HURT. It was first a dull pain, but rapidly degenerated into SHARP INTENSE MIND DESTROYING PAIN. Of course, geek that I am, my loyalties were to gaming, so I actually waited a day to play D&D before heading to the nearest dentist I could find using Google Maps.
(In my defense, I'd been pretty desperate to get a real live 4E game going, and this was the first group I had found in almost 3 years of looking.)
But those few nights, I was popping 4 advils every 2 hours, and STILL I couldn't really sleep. The pain was so bad that I was literally moaning in pain, pacing my room, eyes strained shut. During that time I tried every shitty home remedy to no avail.
A trip to the dentist, a few x-rays, and all was revealed. In the end, I had to get a root canal done.
I've heard some say that the old saying "I'd rather get a root canal" isn't really relevant anymore, because getting a root canal isn't supposed to be all that bad.
FUCK. THAT. SHIT.
Getting a root canal was awful. OK, the pain itself wasn't all that bad, but the sheer uncomfortableness of it, while the dentist roots around AFTER drilling out your tooth to SCRAPE out the rest of the nerve endings with a barbed wire, periodically checking with some sort of electric contact to see in there are any nerves left, is downright unpleasant.
Anyway, this has all lead to this moment (and one more in about 2 weeks time when I get my OTHER lower wisdom tooth removed).
All told, it wasn't too bad. I laud the dentist, who despite the problems she was having, didn't one mutter the Japanese equivalent of "goddamn mother-fucking tooth". As I write this, my jaw is no longer paralyze, though I've got noticeable swelling in my jaw and cheek. It's starting to ache pretty badly, so I'll soon make some soup and take my painkillers and antibiotics.
Here are some pics of said tooth.
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| From Drop Box |
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| From Drop Box |
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| From Drop Box |
7/14/2009
Vacation is here, 3 days early.
OK, it's not vacation. I have been ordered to remain at home and under quarantine because I came into contact with a person testing positive for the H1N1 Influenza virus.
So here I am, 9:40 in the morning, writing my blog and thinking about going back to bed. After all, what else will I do other than sleep while I wait for WoW to come back online.
All kidding aside, there are some rather uncomfortable realities at work here that make this whole affair rather unwelcome.
First is that my laptop is at work. While this isn't in and of itself a problem, there are some files on there that I need to continue work on a powerpoint presentation I'm to give at this years JET orientation.
Next is the fact that my friend Fran is coming on Saturday. I don't suspect there will be any difficulties, but I'm knocking on wood and taking my temperature every few hours just to be sure.
After that is the fact that I have asthma. In the US, I've read that 1 in 3 patients diagnosed with the swine flu has asthma, and that this is a veritable risk factor whose ultimate symptom could be death! YIKES!!
Thankfully, no symptoms yet, and if my asthma starts to get twitchy, my awesome doctor, with ingenious foresight, prescribed me a couple of days worth of Prednisone.
The last thing of course is the possible parallels with the 1918 Spanish Flu. According to Wikipedia, "[i]t was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1" and there were two waves. The first wave started in March, and "the epidemic resembled typical flu epidemics." But there was a second, deadlier wave that occurred in August of that year, where "the virus had mutated to a much more deadly form." This is what infected 500 million people and killed some 50-100 million of them.
Our pandemic started in April, and so if the pattern follows, we'd see a second wave in September. With news of a new Tamiflu-resistant strain, coupled with the fact that September is notorious around the world for being a month in which more people suffer asthma attacks, this whole pandemic thing has gotten me just a little bit worried.
So here I am, 9:40 in the morning, writing my blog and thinking about going back to bed. After all, what else will I do other than sleep while I wait for WoW to come back online.
All kidding aside, there are some rather uncomfortable realities at work here that make this whole affair rather unwelcome.
First is that my laptop is at work. While this isn't in and of itself a problem, there are some files on there that I need to continue work on a powerpoint presentation I'm to give at this years JET orientation.
Next is the fact that my friend Fran is coming on Saturday. I don't suspect there will be any difficulties, but I'm knocking on wood and taking my temperature every few hours just to be sure.
After that is the fact that I have asthma. In the US, I've read that 1 in 3 patients diagnosed with the swine flu has asthma, and that this is a veritable risk factor whose ultimate symptom could be death! YIKES!!
Thankfully, no symptoms yet, and if my asthma starts to get twitchy, my awesome doctor, with ingenious foresight, prescribed me a couple of days worth of Prednisone.
The last thing of course is the possible parallels with the 1918 Spanish Flu. According to Wikipedia, "[i]t was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1" and there were two waves. The first wave started in March, and "the epidemic resembled typical flu epidemics." But there was a second, deadlier wave that occurred in August of that year, where "the virus had mutated to a much more deadly form." This is what infected 500 million people and killed some 50-100 million of them.
Our pandemic started in April, and so if the pattern follows, we'd see a second wave in September. With news of a new Tamiflu-resistant strain, coupled with the fact that September is notorious around the world for being a month in which more people suffer asthma attacks, this whole pandemic thing has gotten me just a little bit worried.
7/06/2009
Strange Food
Been a while since I last posted. Mostly this comes from me being very busy at work, and very tired. I just can't surf the way I used to, and as a result I don't feel I have any new to contribute.
However, my photographing of Engrish and strange Japanese food products continue unabated. For your viewing pleasure, I bring you these oddities (in no particular order).
However, my photographing of Engrish and strange Japanese food products continue unabated. For your viewing pleasure, I bring you these oddities (in no particular order).
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| From Food |
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| From Food |
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| From Food |
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| From Food |
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| From Food |
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| From Food |
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| From Food |
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