Oh Cooper! Irreplaceable.
She’s mine! I found her!
No, she’s her own, and though I miss her I am proud of her for following her lifelong dream. If anyone can make it in Nashville she can. Hopefully I’ll catch some overspray!
Here is a video of our li’l reunion show with Fractal at the Laurelthirst Public House.
Thanks to Fractal and Billy for letting me have that time. It’s most precious to me.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
— Louise Erdrich (The Painted Drum)
In July of 2010 I turned 40 years old and ate a whole cake and 2 pints of ice cream by myself. 3 days later I played a 35th wedding anniversary for a friend’s parents who are beef ranchers. After that gig, stocked heavily with barbeque beef, I started my new lifestyle.
When I started, on Monday July 25th I weighed in at 225 lbs, down from 245 at the height of my drunkenness circa 2003 and up from a brief period at 205 in 2006. I had been holding 225 for close to 5 years. During the entire time I was an exercise junky, teaching 3 burly / sweaty kungfu classes per week, commuting by bike every day, and working physical job. More on that later.
In my 20’s I was a vegan for a couple three years. In that time I lost weight, partially because I didn’t know what to eat at first, and I was just starting my martial arts career. I was quite slender.
I decided I wanted to lose 26lbs and weigh 199lbs by the end of 2010. I achieved my goal in less than one month, and in less than 2 months I had coined the phrase “187 bitchess!!” in my doctor’s office.
I have now leveled out at 170 lbs plus or minus 3 to 4 lbs on any given day.
HOW DID I DO IT?
I was an obese child in an obese family. Everyone in my family is massively obese and I was too. My father, and therefore I, tried EVERY SINGLE fad diet this, Atkins that, low carb whatever. In order to lose weight you simply MUST disabuse yourself of this notion.
There is only one way and it is portion control. Sorry… But wait, it’s not that bad and it’s quite simple. Stick with me.
I noticed that when I cooked, I ate while I cooked and I was rarely hungry when I served a meal. Keep in mind that I rarely was ever “full” in my life. I could ALWAYS eat another slice, helping, etc.
So I decided to see JUST HOW LITTLE I COULD EAT WITHOUT BEING MISERABLE OR PATHOLOGICAL. You don’t need that much, and being a LITTLE hungry is not that bad.
I work a physically demanding job. I cannot afford to be low blood sugar dragging ass. That said, a LITTLE bit hungry between breakfast and lunch is not the end of the world.
So see how little you can eat and not be miserable. If you get too hungry EAT JUST A LITTLE. Eat just enough to not be hungry anymore. I suggest having an apple, and or a small bag of raisins and nuts about.
Feeling a little hungry is feeling alive. Most of the time you’ll forget about it in a few minutes and the next time you think of it, it will be lunch time, and time to eat. You should be hungry at lunchtime.
And let’s be honest about being hungry. There are times when we all eat and it’s clearly boredom or other emotional eating. But true hunger is hard to achieve. In fact, when you start losing weight, you’ll start to feel hunger as “the medicine working”. You will start to have positive associations with mild hunger.
Here is some unpleasant science. Calories in calories out…PERIOD. As far as weight gain and loss is concerned nothing else matters. The kinds of calories you eat (Twinkies vs. spinach salad) have other nutritional implications, but are only mildly related to weight loss. Eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables is second only to being a non-smoker when it comes to reducing your risk of most cancers. If you drink a 2000-calorie soda diet, you’ll get your calories, even potentially gain weight but be hungry, and need to eat more calories resulting in weight gain. These are both examples of the kinds of calories having a health effect, but not for weight loss.
Here is an unpleasant assertion. Exercise plays a very small role in weight loss. There is epidemiological research that supports this assertion and my own experience in which I was massively overweight while being a super active exercise junky.
When I quit drinking in 2003 I was 245 lbs. During that time I was “methadoning” with 2 liter bottles of sugared soda and giant chocolate bars, 2 per day at least on top of my normal eating. With no change in exercise 25lbs FELL OFF my body and I didn’t even know it until I weighed in at the doctor’s office. Restricting the thousands of beer calories I was consuming resulted in the weight loss. Even the soda and candy was not enough to “sustain” my obesity.
Restricting calories makes the biggest and I would say only difference.
If you take in 2000 calories and expend 2000 calories your weight will stabilize.
If you take in 2500 calories and expend 2000 you will gain weight quickly.
If you take in 1800 and expend 2000 you will lose weight.
If you eat one piece of cake over your balanced calorie in calorie out situation, you will have to exercise your ASS OFF above and beyond your normal exercise output just to equal the cake, never mind lose weight beyond it.
We all should have the luxury of being able to work out MANY HOURS a day so that we can overeat but it’s neither realistic nor sustainable for most people.
What I am saying is that exercise has many scientific medical benefits, and it’s a great thing to do to take your mind off of eating, and it will burn some calories.
But exercise must NOT BE YOUR WEIGHT LOSS PLAN. YOU WILL NOT LOSE WEIGHT BY SIMPLY ADDING EXERCISE. YOU MUST RESTRICT CALORIES.
Try it for one month. You are not banishing large portions of fun fatty foods from the planet. You can always go back. But, if you simply eat only when you are hungry, you can still eat anything you want just small amounts. Not only will you lose weight but your need for more food will diminish, and you will start to get much fuller much faster.
The important thing is to be honest about your hunger.
Are you really hungry?
Thanks to everyone who supported me in this endeavor.
Oh the comfort of feeling safe
with a person;
having neither to weigh thoughts,
nor measure words,
but to pour them all out
just as chaff and grain together,
knowing that a faithful hand
will take and sift them,
keeping what is worth keeping
and with a breath of kindness,
blow the rest away.
A Manifesto on Practicing Slowly and Safely.
As a veteran instructor of martial arts there is absolutely nothing more important to me than practicing slowly and safely in a safe, kind, encouraging environment.
More on that shortly.
If you want to practice martial arts realistically, go to a bar and pick fights. It is ridiculous, dangerous, and criminal. There is no realistic way to practice martial arts. Respect the cross trained mixed martial artist, but cage fighters are professional athletes. They train night and day. We should all be so lucky as to have free time and energy to engage in martial arts.
Professional athetics are high impact. Pro fighters suffer painful and lasting injuries. Everyone who studied a day of martial arts has heard “there is always someone better.” and UFC and other leagues make the point clear. There is high turnover in the championshiop position. Like runners shaving hundredths of a second off a race to win, someone a hundredth of a second quicker is queued up to fight the old champ.
It does not matter the style, it is the person. There is a person out there sitting on a barstool who drinks all day, chain smokes cigarettes, and has never exercised a day in his drunken life who is a natural killer with genetically inherited super strength and whose jaw does not break. And furthermore, even a 12 year old can wield a pistol.
So what is the point? Fighting is dangerous. Someone gets hurt. An eye gets poked, a finger broken, a pretty face scarred. So unless you are training for competition or combat, think long term strategy. You don’t have to be a master builder or fine finish carpenter to have some tools about the house and do some basic home repairs. In order to to defend yourself, you don’t have to win, you just have to survive.
Any martial art and many contact sports will provide valuable self defense tools. Kungfu is an art form, much the same as salsa dancing, acting, water coloring. There are scientific components, such as the science of combining colors, the mechanics of the brush strokes. There are many scientific components of martial arts such as the geomtery of the human anatomy and physiology that creates the physics that generate the force for a kick, strike, or throw. Beyond the science is the artistic compenent of the martial arts. It is an art form like any other. It is personal, and there is plenty of room for artistic expression and personal interpretation.
Great claims have been made about the healt benefits of martial arts, in particular the softer styles (tai chi, aikido etc). Whether or not the specific claims of any particular style are supported by the evidence or not, one thing we do know medically is that more movement equals better health. That movement can be walking up stairs, riding the eliptical exercise bike, or salsa dancing. Continuous accumulated movement is important.
When choosing an exercise lifestyle, one must consider inspiration. For me, peronally, I do not care for the gym and its many trinkets and toys. There is no love for me in it. Kungfu inspires me to continue, and teaching obligates me to show up and perform, rather than lay about watching TV and eating bon bons. Kungfu is full body, low impact, requires minimal to no equipment, little space, can be practiced solo, or in a group. The artistic “blank canvas” of kungfu offers activities that are limited largely to one’s imagination. One can practice forms (choreographed routines), shadow boxing, drills, breathing, stretching, or spar with a partner etc. Kungfu can be practiced hard and fast with explosive energy or softly and slowly for balance and technique depending on one’s physical and mental state. The words “kung fu” from the Chinese “gongfu” means “skill” and could mean you have great skill as a lawyer or athlete, but everyone knows gongfu means martial arts.
Implicit in the term is a long term strategy of continuous progress. The word for “exercise” in Chinese is “duan lian shenti” which means “to forge the body”. In my years of studying and teaching martial arts I have managed to avoid violence. And violence is to be avoided if at all possible. You are LEGALLY obligated to try and escape. So since I am not training for competition, nor for a revolution I think long term. The years fly by. Continuous practice, with small “digestion periods” adds up to expertise very quickly. Before you know it, a year has past and people who couldn’t touch their toes when they started are now kicking over their heads, without ever having to fight for survival.
I’m back! It’s nice to go to tropical paradise, but I do love to come home too. I love Portland. I’m back looking forward to playing some gigs for the loving home crowd. I’m looking for some painting gigs as well, and have some openings for some bass students, so spread the word!
Yep. It is a beautiful morning. Just perfect. No clouds. Gorgeous ocean. Got in for the last time. Super warm, sunny hot! See you soon Portland. I haven’t stopped loving you. I’ll never stop loving you.
Up early for morning laps then Tracy and I went for a little trek to a less crowded beach. We found a cool place. Not the best for swimming (though there was a cool pool) but lots of local surfers were showing up and heading out. Spent some good time in the water today.
cool out of the way beach
Played our last street gig. We found a nice spot and the local vendors all tipped us out, which was reassuring.
Ok, streets of Waikiki! You won’t have us to kick around any more!
The street didn’t love us last night, it kind of liked us but wasn’t sure. That’s the street.
sean in the cove
I take away my old post, with a much better update.
After morning laps in the rain, we rallied out of town and went to many wonderful places and had many a laugh. We went the scenic route and stopped in a cool cove (cove?). We found some warm calm breeze and some larger waves and oh by the way, what is that strange light in the sky? Oh yeah, I remember now. It’s the sun. I may have turned from stark white to off white. It promises to be dry this evening. A street performance would really tie this whole day together. I’ll keep you posted.
wild hawaiian chicken
These li’l chickens are all over the place! I just like knowing they’re out there doing their thing, flappin’ their wings, scratchin’ their feet, peckin’ wit dey beaks!