The Radical Life

Radically Organic

2010-04-19T12:41:00.006-04:00

Yes, I know I've been slacking recently with the updates, but not with the action. Life, it seems, just gets too distracting to remember to actually document it.

Last month, I reluctantly watched the movie Food, Inc. and proceeded to be absolutely disgusted by the food industry. Be forewarned, once you see horror of such magnitude, it can never be unseen. After watching this movie, there's no going back to haphazardly eating just any food available. I had already been a staunch consumer of organic milk, and a frequenter of organic meats. This month, however, I decided to test practical implications of an all (ok, mostly) organic diet.

This is neither cheap, nor simple, but the increased price of organic groceries is all but cancelled out by eating out (and ordering in) dramatically less. Thus far this month I've spent about $500 at FreshDirect.com, and about $50 at the Union Square Farmer's Market (quite possibly the most amazing one I've ever seen). I would guestimate that at least 90% of what I've eaten this month has been certified organic, and that 90% of that I've made myself.

I'd have to say that, historically, I've found cooking to be such a chore. That is, though, only because I've known that paying a premium to have a restaurant to cook my food for me is always an option. Now that it's not (or not as much), I've discovered a real satisfaction in cooking my own meals using fresh, wholesome, and often local ingredients, some of which we've grown right in the window sills of my Brooklyn apartment, which is currently host to tomatoes, basil, dill, and chives. We even scored an incredibly scarce plot in one of the incredibly scarce NYC urban community gardens, and have grand designs on doing grand things in that 4'x4' piece of soil. Cucumbers? Bok choy? Green beans? We'll see this week.

I do, however, live in New York City, and eating out is just a way of life here. To date, I've managed to find few purely organic restaurants (lots of restaurants have organic this or that, but not entirely organic dishes).

I first tried Egg, a Williamsburg restaurant, last month, and I'd have to say it's absolutely worth the hour and a half wait and suffering the scene of walking through the heart of the known universe's Hipster stronghold. High-top sneakers, colorful oversized sunglasses, and stockings with intentional precision runs abound. To be honest, I can't be too sure exactly how organic the menu is at Egg. I remember reading something about it somewhere, but can't seem to find it online anywhere anymore. The food, which is as local as they can get (they even have their own farm) completely and profoundly rocked my world. Honestly, We got on the ridiculous wait list for breakfast, and one Eggs Rothko (see the menu), a "hashbrown ball," bacon AND (for the sake of experiencing such a thing) candied bacon, and three mimosas (each) later, I was about to slip into the food coma to make all other food comas look like cat naps. Egg was as closed to food bliss as I have ever been.

Gust Organics is, apparently, the first USDA certified organic bar. They are 100% organic, and even have a focus on sustainability. All of their water is UV-sanitized, filtered NYC tap. So far, I've tried their selection of uncommon empanadas (caramelized onions and mozzarella?), their "Risotto Buenas Aires," and their baked mozzarella and tomato appetizer. All were rather underwhelming. Perhaps they never heard of organic spices? A big let-down was their paltry offering of organic beers, which consisted totally of the three varieties brewed by Peak Organics, none of which I particularly care for (not that they aren't good beers, but they just aren't styles of beer--Pale Ale, Nut Brown, and Amber--that I care most for).

Counter is also all organic, though they don't claim any certification of such. Nonetheless, a quick look at their bar will show absolutely no brands of which you or I have ever heard, all labeled "organic." I must be honest, I didn't even know organic liquor existed before I went there. As an unapologetic, carnivorous-leaning omnivore, I was noticeably disappointed when I realized Counter was strictly vegetarian. Then, I tried their Farmhouse Panini a couple weekends ago, and became absolutely crackhead-hooked (I've been back twice for it already). Their "Chickpea Popcorn" was bland as bland can be, but having had deep-fried chickpeas at a few other places before and being equally unimpressed, I didn't expect much from them and would wager that fried chickpeas just suck in general. I find french fries to be rather black and white: either they're good or they're bad, and their "Pommes Frites" were good. However, the harissa mayo they came with was fully delicious. Most importantly, as an avid beer drinker, I was blown away by their selection of organic brews, and appreciated washing down my grub with an ever-perfect Samuel Smith Organic Lager.

I am now a full convert. I can't go back. The idea of eating not just fast food, but what we would normally consider to be good food while turning out to be just a prettier poison, makes me feel as dirty as a street hooker and a little sick. Even my 15-year old daughter, who has single-handedly kept the fast food french fry industry in business for years, is espousing organic eating and has become a huge fan of Jamie Oliver's show, Food Revolution. She even wants to start a movement in her school to get teens to demand more nutritious, wholesome, and responsible choices from school lunch, and maybe even refusing to accept things link this monstrosity as viable diet options.

Reset, Reduce, Reclaim: Status Update

2010-03-24T10:53:00.007-04:00

The Google Nexus One continues to rock my effin' socks off. It's smaller than an iPhone and a workhorse. Not to mention the 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, which enabled me to rid myself of my 5 megapixel Sony Webbie, sans flash.

The new Alienware M11X laptop is working out fantastically. After using the Dell Mini 9, it is the perfect size, giving me just enough more room to not feel like the screen and keyboard are cramped, yet still conveniently small, light, and most of all, powerful (the Dell Mini is a netbook and has NO power, but it was never meant to). It can effortlessly handle the most processing-intensive tasks. I've even played a game or two :)) My Dell Mini and my old Dell Inspiron 6000 sold on eBay for $350 combined, which wasn't great (I really expected more for the Mini), but it was money for unneeded stuff.

Mint.com is so much better than any bank's website ever. Just being able to see all of my accounts in one place is brilliant. And the ability to create a budget, and then have it automatically match up items from the "debit" column of my bank account to individual budget items is priceless. The only draw back is not being able to itemize cash withdrawals from my accounts.

Completed since last update:

In the effort to eliminate excess material clutter and to consolidate as much media as possible, I purchased and downloaded DVD Ripping Software by Pavtube (to "rip" a DVD means make a digital copy that can be played on a computer without the actual disc). After ripping my DVDs, I'll organize them into lots based on genre and sell the lots on eBay (rather than the excruciating task of selling them one at a time).
I've purchased the Iomega Prestige 2 TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive 34484, in preparation for ripping all of my DVDs.
I've purchased software for my Google Nexus One that allows me to catalog my book library by scanning their barcodes. I've scanned the entire lot in preparation to sell them via Amazon.com (I'm still researching the best way to sell used books). I've carefully analyzed the collection and researched which ones I'd like to (and could be) replaced with digital versions (either Adobe PDF, Adobe eBook, or other Nook-compatible format).
I've automated the payments for my utilities, rent, and Dell credit card (my only credit card). I still need to get direct deposit setup so that child support is paid directly, from my paycheck, to my youngest daughter's mom.

To do:

Using the software mentioned above, I need to "rip," one by one (painful), each of my DVDs into a high definition format and store the files on my shiny new Iomega drive.
Create eBay auctions for my lots of DVDs.
Figure out a better solution for selling my used books than one-by-one on Amazon.com. Cash4Books.net? An eBay store?
Find a reliable house cleaner or house-cleaning service to use bi-weekly to deep clean, and maybe once per week to do floors and surfaces.
Research prices for laundry pickup service.
Create a shopping list of staples on FreshDirect and have it automatically submitted once or twice a month.
I send my father a couple hundred dollars every month. I'd might as well treat that as a bill and automate that as well.

Reset, Reduce, Reclaim

2010-03-08T19:23:00.005-05:00

Radicalism is, in itself, radical commitment, and those not used to such an endeavor can easily "fall off" and get back to their usual mundane ways. I'm no exception. The trials and trappings of life are mind numbingly distracting.

Here I sit, a little over a month after my one month/15 lb victory, having regained 5 lbs. A four day professional summit last week--in which we were continually pumped with gourmet eats and cold booze--all of which was free--was partially the culprit, but I've been less-than-radical since January ended.

And for F's sake, please no one blame losing weight too fast or any of the usual bull. It was simply laziness. That's right... laziness. For most of us, it's an addiction, and like an addict we have a bajillion ways to justify, rationalize, and otherwise validate it.

So I restart this experiment with 3 months of Radical Fitness (a little more, actually) and recommit to my goal of achieving washboard abs by the first day of Summer. And accordingly, I'll safeguard my future efforts by adding to that a theme for the month of March: Radical Streamlining.

It's hard to stay focused when we're hit with so much distraction, both from others and by our own design. So my objectives for March will be efficiency through:

minimalization - removing what is unnecessary.
consolidation - combining what is redundant.
batching - doing a lot of the same task at one time.
automation - setting applicable tasks to be done automatically.
outsourcing - having others complete certain tasks (usually menial and/or time consuming).

I hated to admit this for a long time, but an excellent primer for the last three of those is The 4-Hour Workweek, Expanded and Updated, by Tim Ferriss.

Imagine if you applied these to your life the amount of time you might reclaim.

Here are some steps I've already taken thus far this month:

I sold my phone and camera on eBay to mitigate the cost of consolidating them into one device that's better at both tasks (technically, I did this toward the end of last month).
I'm in the process of putting all of my books on Amazon.com and am replacing my library with a Barnes and Noble Nook.
I'm cataloging my DVD collection to prepare for selling them on Amazon.com or eBay after "ripping" them to a digital format and using Media Library Management software such as Boxee.
I've replaced my development laptop and my netbook with the Alienware M11x, which is powerful enough to develop software and web applications on, while being netbook-level portable (not to mention I can play some hardware intensive games on it). I've created eBay auctions for both: Dell Inspiron 6000 NO RESERVE! and Dell Mini 9 Netbook - BLACK - Perfect Condition, to offset the cost.
I signed up for Mint.com to centrally manage all of my income accounts (Chase, Paypal, etc) and manage my overall budget.

Other plans for the month involve automating ALL of my monthly bill payments, outsourcing all of my time wasting tasks (for instance, hiring a housekeeper once a week to do the "deep" cleaning), and selling, donating, or recycling all possessions that I don't regularly use, except for the most sentimental of items (like cute, crafty necklaces made by my kids).

If you have any suggestions concerning what else I might do to streamline my life, I'd love to read them.

A Month of Radical Fitness... or 15 lbs.

2010-02-02T14:13:00.004-05:00

15 lbs. To drop that in a month is uncommon, if not unheard of, but here I am a month after starting this experiment, that much lighter.

My starting stats, January 1:

Weight: 183.2 lbs.
Body Fat: 31% (about 57 lbs)
BMI: 30.2

My final stats, February 1:

Weight: 168.3 lbs.
Body Fat: 27%
BMI: 28.8

And onward toward my goal of losing a total of 30 lbs by my 35th birthday come March 15th.

But I got to thinking... why stop there?

Every single January since I was about 23 I made a promise to myself that by the end of "this" year I'd be back in shape, and at the end of every one of those years I've been either heavier or around the same weight. Since I was the age of 21 I've gained an average of 3 lbs per year, for a total of 42 lbs. After this smashing success of a single radical month, I've decided that I'm going to lose them all--all 42 lbs. In fact, I'll round it up to a solid 50-pound loss by June 1 making my goal weight 133 lbs.

That's 24 weeks, so about 2.1 lbs. per week average, or from today and taking into account January's weight loss, about 1.75 lbs. per week. Child's play.

four-one-five-five

2010-01-23T22:53:00.000-05:00

How do you burn 4,155 calories in day? Step 1: Get going on the elliptical trainer. Step 2: Don't quit. Just take it a stride at a time and don't quit.

First workout of the day. 99 minutes. 15.28 miles. 2,064 calories.

Second workout of the day. 99 minutes. 15.51 miles. 2,091 calories.

The haul for the day: 198 minutes, 30.79 miles, and 4,155 calories.

Better is Easy.

2010-01-22T15:38:00.006-05:00

My first workout since all but vanquishing the stomach flu was a doozy this morning. 1 hour, 10.11 miles, and 1,384 calories. Call me the Comeback Kid. I've been using Wii Fit Plus to track my progress over the month, with which I set a rather conservative goal to lose 10 lbs in a month's time. I weighed in this morning and the cute, excitably animated Wii Fit Balance Board delightfully alerted me that I had achieved my goal early to the sound of digital trumpets and the sight of sparkling flowers. Yeah, I didn't understand the flowers' relevance either. That's over 10 lbs. in 21 days.

Am I too extreme? The first entry in Random House's dictionary defines extreme as "of a character or kind farthest removed from the ordinary or average." In that sense, I certainly have been, but effort above what's ordinary seems extraordinary to those who are... yup... ordinary.

The thing is, making extraordinarily positive changes in one's life doesn't require extremism. In fact, most people fail at bettering themselves because while our effort tends to be ordinary, our expectations tend to be what is extreme. People are easily disheartened when they don't progress toward a goal at the pace they had hoped (and usually these "hopes" were never realistic or grounded in any kind of rational planning).

Becoming better is easy. The tiniest change is the right direction is a degree of improvement. The problem is that quitting is easier, and never trying to begin with is effortless. Quitting immediately relieves the discomfort of exertion, and never starting avoids it all together.

A popular ancient Chinese proverb usually attributed to either Lao Tzu or Confucius, states that "a journey of 1000 miles begins with the first step." Every journey is merely a series of steps, and even if your stride is short and your pace is slow, with each step you're that much closer to your destination than you were before it, that much better off than you were before it.

All you have to do to be a better you is just start, and all you have to do to keep improving is just not quit. It's as easy as that. It's all about forward progress. ANY forward progress is significantly better than none. You don't have to lose 10 lbs. in 3 weeks, or stop smoking cigarettes cold turkey, or be absolutely assertive immediately. Just take a step, and another, and deal with them one at a time. One pound at a time. One cigarette at a time. One interaction at a time.

Whenever you feel ready to give up, just hold on a little longer. And when you have, just hold on a little longer. Win, a little at a time.

Don't stop. Get it. Get it.

2010-01-21T11:02:00.004-05:00

I've almost recovered from a bout with some miscellaneous (albeit, brutal) stomach flu, which sidelined my efforts for quite a few days. The last time I stepped away from the elliptical trainer was on Saturday, after a 99-minute, 15.73-mile, 2,156-calorie masochism session. It is undeniable: those are all very, very sexy numbers. It's odd how when you do the weight-loss thing enough times you'll notice that each time you'll start losing fat from different areas first. Brushing my teeth today, looking into my own big brown eyes in the mirror, I thought: "Is my face shrinking?"

It's been suggested that I'm pushing myself too hard. The amount of effort I'm putting in is only severe to those accustomed to putting forth a typical amount of effort. Typical performers. Top performers, like athletes or members of elite military units might insist that the human body has a much higher performance threshold than we tend to believe it can endure.

It's not that our friends tell us that we need to take it easy--quoting all kinds of junk science jargon and statistics they read "somewhere"--because they don't want us to be stronger, better people. Perhaps it's merely that they don't want to be left behind. Or maybe it's just that everyone wants to be a know-it-all when we're truly mostly know-a-littles.

Everyone has advice to give (whether they're in any way qualified to give it or not). For what it's worth, here's mine: never take advice about how far you should push yourself... about what your limits are or should be. People perceive their limits to be the approximate limits of the world. They project their limits onto you, insisting that you must be bound in all of the ways they are bound. People will try to hold you back, especially those who know you, especially family and friends. Your achievement only makes their lack thereof more apparent. Your pursuit of a vivid life makes theirs feel all the more monotone.

Discouragement is poison, no matter how sweetly it's flavored. Ignore it... refute it... defy it... despite good intentions, and keep moving in the right direction no matter what. NO MATTER WHAT! It's all about movement. Setting yourself in motion and maintaining your forward momentum is the key to everything. Let nothing stop you. Let nothing discourage you.

And when toeing lines drawn in the sand, or when your body is so exhausted you cannot possibly move any further, or when you’re absolutely sure that you’ve gone too far, consider it a moral imperative to take one more step.

Weight Loss is a Simple(ish) Formula

2010-01-11T11:41:00.008-05:00

Step 1:

Calculate your daily Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), or how many calories you would burn doing absolutely nothing all day:

Women
BMR = 655 + ( 4.35 x weight in pounds ) + ( 4.7 x height in inches ) - ( 4.7 x age in years )

Men
BMR = 66 + ( 6.23 x weight in pounds ) + ( 12.7 x height in inches ) - ( 6.8 x age in year )

Step 2:

Calculate how many calories you burned in total during the day while both sedentary (BMR) and through exertion (exercise), subtracting a minute's worth of BMR for every minute spent exercising (so those minutes aren't counted twice):

Total Calories Burned = BMR - ((BMR/1440) * minutes spent exercising) + calories burned exercising.

We adjust the daily BMR by subtracting a minute's worth of BMR calories for every minute spent exercising, so that those minutes aren't double counted. To do this we divide the BMR by 1440 (the number of minutes in a day) to figure out what our BMR per minute is, and then multiply it by the number of minutes spent exercising. Then, we subtract this number from the daily BMR, and finally add the number of calories burned during exercise to get our total calories burned for the day.

Step 3:

We subtract Total Calories Burned from the number of calories you've taken in during the day via food and drink.

Calories In - Calories Burned = Net Calories

If your Net Calories figure isn't negative, you won't lose weight. If it is, you will. It's as simple as that. The more negative it is, the faster you'll lose weight. The more positive it is, the faster you'll gain weight.

Radical Challenge #2: A Pound in a Day

2010-01-09T10:01:00.009-05:00

A pound of fat breaks the bank at 3,500 calories. This Challenge is to see if I can burn that in one day through exercise (and not taking into account my basal metabolic rate, or BMR). Truly, I've always wanted to try it. Turning the resistance all the way up on my elliptical trainer and moving at an ambitious pace, I've managed as high as 2200 calories in a 99 minute workout (that's as high as it goes), but I am absolutely burnt afterwards. Honestly though, my usual 99 minute score is a burn of around 1800 calories, and I'm left exhausted and rather sore in the knees, so this is going to suck. But quoting The Governator once again...

"The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That's what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they'll go through the pain no matter what happens."

Mid Day Update:
I just finished my first 99 minute session on the elliptical trainer, and came in at exactly 2,000 calories. 1,500 to go.

End of Day Update:
My second workout, 77 minutes, netted 1,558 calories. That brings my day's total to 3,558, which means that today's challenge was a win.

Man... I need a shower.

Radical Challenge #1: 500 Push Ups in a Day

2010-01-08T08:22:00.004-05:00

This Challenge is to see if I can successfully execute 500 push ups in one day, to military standards (all the way down, all the way up, straight back the entire time). Every hour I'll drop and attempt to bang out 50 push ups... or whatever I can push out.

End of Day Update:

I managed to only reach 275 push ups. I went strong and knocked out 75 before I left for work this morning. Then over the next two hours I squeezed out 2 more sets of 50. At that point, I was feeling not just the burn, but complete loss of upper body strength. The following hour when I hit the carpet for my next set, I could barely hit 20. From that point on I was lucky to manage 15 each hour before hitting absolute muscle failure (not that point at which you feel like you can't do anymore, but the point at which your muscles quite literally stop working).

Right now my chest is a tight wad of burning rubber. I maxed out at exactly 260 repetitions for the day. While I didn't come close to my actual goal--which to be honest was entirely arbitrary and picked because it 'sounds like a nice, round number'--but I absolutely pushed my muscles as hard as I could, to the point at which they simply could not function. I call that a solid win.

I'm so pleased, in fact, that I'm going to do this twice a week, perhaps with the goal of being able to complete the 500 push ups in a day target by my 35th birthday, come this March 15th.

Breaking the Habit

2010-01-06T19:41:00.003-05:00

I've been living off of egg whites and brown rice as my main staples for a week now. When dressed up with the proper accessories--caramelized onions, tomatoes, spinach, scorching quantities of cayenne pepper--the blandly blah becomes unexpectedly awesome.

I like to eat. Delicious things. Crispy, fried things. Triple-bypass-instigating things. I am absolutely shocked that not only am I not missing any of those things, but I'm looking forward to my lunch of brown rice pilaf (cooked with nonfat beef stock instead of water), refried beans, and of course enough cayenne to scorch the face of the Earth.

You might think you could never let bad food go. Day 1 is a challenge. Day 2 is easier. By day 3, you've adapted. All the usual temptations are still there, but we can fight temptation. It's habit that whoops us. Initially, it's changing your high-level habits around eating that is most important. This is absolutely key.

We all have beaten the shit out of our own self esteems at various (and for some, numerous) points in life, because we had succumb to some temptation or another. Our standard temptations challenge us because of our habits around those temptations. If I decide to indulge and have bacon and whole eggs one morning, it's so much easier to indulge the next morning. At that point, I'm establishing a habit. It's not about the food, but about the entire experience of the food. Walking down the hallway to the work cafeteria. Interacting with people there. Smelling the food wafting from the cardboard tray during the trip back to my cubicle. The experience of reading through my emails or checking out Facebook and relaxing into the start of the day while enjoying the tastes and textures and aromas of crispy bacon and savory egg yoke and drinking my coffee. All the specific activities and specific experiences around eating make it hard to break bad eating habits. There is comfort in continuity.

We are such suckers for routine. We habitually scarf down the same foods for comfort and even just their sheer entertainment value (popcorn at the movies, anyone?). This has to do with the entire experience around eating those foods.

Sometimes, radical action is required to rewire a habit in order to take out temptation. As an example, the most cliché dietary downfall is eating in front of the TV. Rather than fucking around struggling with the temptation around grabbing an unnecessary sandwich or bag of chips (that you'll eat not until you're satisfied, but until you reach a point that you're sick of them), just cancel your cable service. Don't fight the temptation; simply remove the habit. Cable is gone: you can't watch TV, you won't take in those extra calories consistently and habitually every time you flop down on the couch.

Do you buy a Snickers bar from the same store everyday, as part of your routine? Try this... next time you're there, buy one. Unwrap it outside of the store. Look at it. Now throw it as far as you can. You can have it as long as you're willing to walk over to it and it eat it off of the ground. Do this every time you find yourself at that store. You'll effectively go from habitually being tested to habitually testing yourself.

I used to be a "frequent flyer" with these 25 cent candy machines that are in the pantries on every floor here at the office. It wasn't just the fact that Peanut M&Ms are crazy delicious, but the experience of taking the walk to the pantry around the same time everyday. Breaking a food habit is less difficult when we replace it with another, better one. Now rather than walking to get some M&Ms, I'll pull out a snack more aligned with my fitness goals--like salted peanuts, dried mango strips, beef jerky (an amazingly healthy food), or even one of those nutrition type bars (I prefer crunchy peanut ones)--and take a stroll around the floor while leisurely enjoying it.

Swap out brown rice for other starches, and cook it using nonfat chicken or beef stock or onion soup instead of water, and for perhaps the first time ever you'll feel that brown rice legitimately fucking whoops white rice's ass.

Rather than getting bacon and a couple of whole eggs every morning, go through you're normal breakfast routine, but get a 3 or 4-egg white omelette with a little ham and a few veggies. I go with onion, spinach, and tomato. Eat it on top of a slice of salted multigrain toast (yeah that's right... the salt does a good job of replacing butter) and you still won't break 300 calories. And good luck being hungry for lunch.

And a slice of multigrain toast with peanut butter (obviously being a fan of peanuts, I prefer chunky) is a much more productive and more filling indulgence than a cookie or other waistline-busting bit o' junk food. I even add a few dashes of salt to accentuate the sweet/salty effect.

Radical Fitness... or The Fine Arts of Starvation and Exertion, Week 1

2010-01-01T19:30:00.041-05:00

I could complain, but I'd suppose I was lucky. Even with my height maxing out at 5'5", I could enjoy teenage-boy-degrees of gluttony into late adolescence while still sporting the body of a sinewy Adonis. Then came my first metabolic down-shift at the age of 23, and ever since I've been waging constant combat against double chins, bubble bellies, and the threat of man boobs.

Like everyone else, I suffered through plenty of diets and exercise routines, but a half-hearted attitude, half-assed approach, or an apparent lack of resolve led to typical failure after failure. In more recent years, I've had varying levels of success, once dropping as much as 24 lbs., but it seems that at the start of every new year I'm back at square one. So here I am again, at the onset of 2010, about 75 days away from my 35th birthday, and I find myself somehow weighing in at pretty much the exact same disappointing poundage I have starting January of every year for the past handful of years or so.

People have plenty of excuses for why they "can't" lose weight. Slow metabolism. A bad back. I'm just not meant to be one of those skinny bitches. It's all bullshit. The real reason is that people lack resolve. People lack commitment. Exercise and deprivation hurt. Staying fat does not. So we hit our pain tolerance and quit, going back to the comfort of the status quo.

The problem here is not a lack of ability, but a lack of will. So it's time to get radical. This experiment is about Radical Fitness, the goal being to be radically fit by my 35th birthday, come the Ides of March, which involves trimming off 25 lbs of body fat in 10 weeks. This experiment will close with a complete report of the experience and before and after pics.

January marks Phase 1, Radical Weight loss, in which I'll find out how much body fat can be lost in a month through dangerously intensive exercise and caloric restriction. It is said that 1-2 lbs a week is a safe amount of weight loss. My goal is 3-4 lbs a week, but... is 5 lbs even possible? Let's find out.

Here are my initial stats:

Weight: 183.2 lbs.
Body Fat: 31% (about 57 lbs)
BMI: 30.2

Waste Not... (sort of a manifesto, but not really)

2010-01-01T15:50:00.009-05:00

"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience." - Henry David Thoreau

The average life expectancy of the average U.S. resident is just over 78 years. That's about 28,500 days. By your 21st birthday, you've used up 7,670 of them. By your 30th you've used up 10,957. By 40, you've gone through 14,610 days, and have less than half of your original balance left. Most of those days are wasted... minute after minute blown on waiting, wishing, avoiding, and generally exercising as little effort as will either simply maintain the current state of our lives or only allow it to worsen to a tolerable degree.

We suffer from a deficit of will, and equally, resolve. Consequently, we are bored and boring. Disenfranchised and unfulfilled. The conventional life is a streak of settling for mediocrity.

People want to be better individuals and to live better lives, but lack the mental tools necessary to significantly affect either themselves or their lives in a manner that maximizes time and effort. We are median performers. We are grandiose dreamers with no ambition. We set goals we never pursue, or set out to achieve them half-heartedly, or take the first steps with gusto only to buckle at a modicum of adversity. Our tolerance for discomfort: low, our endurance: trivial; so much so that we imagine the most pedestrian of our achievements to be significant and to grant us license to recede in laziness and acquiescence elsewhere.

Perhaps we never truly appreciate our mortality until we're directly confronted with it. I often consider how I will feel looking back upon my life as I'm laying on my death bed, should I have such a chance. I imagine that I'd wish I was truer to myself... to my values and virtues. That I'd eaten more cheesecake and cheeseburgers. That I'd had more adventures, especially sexual. That I'd risked everything more often, because most of what we fear risking is actually without real value. I imagine that I'd regret not pushing myself to the limit, and blatantly establish where the average person stops, and I begin.

This is an experiment in pushing life to its limits... in living a vivid experience through conscious, radical effort.

Let's grow stronger. Let's live fuller. Let's play our cards better, without apology or regret, and let the chips fall where they may. Where others give up, give in, fail, we will develop uncommonly productive lives with exceptional bodies, empowering mentalities, profound personal connections, and demand obscene amounts of bliss from every day. No distractions. No excuses. Play like a champion.

Life is every second. Let's make them count.