A year ago, I had pretty much given up on my lifelong struggle with food and weight. I felt like a hopeless cause and that I should just accept that this is what I was going to be like forever. However, when my hip began to ache terribly and when parts of my leg and foot began falling asleep while I was shopping around the store, I knew I had to try again. Then my wife, Dixie, and I saw a book at Costco last spring—60 Hikes within 60 Miles: Salt Lake City by Greg Witt—and I said something like, “What if we bought this book and did all 60 of these hikes?” So far we’ve completed 37 of them.
I am still what a doctor would diagnose as “morbidly obese.” (Ack! How those two words make me cringe.) But, there is a significant difference between me now and me one year ago. I am over 50 pounds lighter, and my hip/leg problems have disappeared. The most important difference is that a year ago I felt hopeless and now I feel like I can’t be defeated.
Part of this change was a major shift in attitude. All my life I’d been looking for an easy way to lose the weight, but I came to realize and embrace the fact that there is absolutely no easy way to make such a significant change in my life. My health had to become my first priority. It was going to be hard work, and a lot of it. I saw hiking as a way I could both get moving and garner a sense of accomplishment (visiting all those peaks, passes, waterfalls, and alpine meadows makes you feel great—especially in retrospect, because sometimes its just hard work in the moment). To help with my motivation, I decided to photograph and blog about the journey, creating the sort of mass accountability some fitness gurus recommend.
As summer changed to fall and Dixie went back to teaching, I began to look around for another activity that I could continue with until we could pick up the hiking again the next spring. I thought about dance classes, martial arts training, snow shoeing, bike riding, and running. In truth, when you’ve got a lot of weight to lose, what matters most is moving, and so picking an activity you’re interested in is a key to staying motivated. When the opportunity to write about my experience for Classical Singer arose (I was ecstatic to create more mass accountability), I decided to tackle a cross-training routine with biking and Pilates as the core of my workout.
Why Pilates?
I feel grateful that I chose to attend the early morning workshops on Alexander Technique [AT] at the 2007 Classical Singer Convention at the Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco. The instructor immediately found and corrected a postural issue that none of my voice teachers had ever noticed or commented on. I have benefited from those 10 minutes of personal instruction ever since. My interest in AT and posture was piqued, but there are no certified AT instructors in my immediate neck of the woods (I checked on amsatonline.org). When I recently began to research exercise regimens, however, I noticed a loose connection between AT and Pilates.
I am not the first to notice a connection between contemporaries F.M. Alexander and Josef Pilates (see pilatesandalexander.com). Both men sought to give their pupils access to increased strength, coordination, and efficient movement, but they approached those ends from a different set of means. Where Alexander sought to change his students’ movement and muscle use by changing their thinking, Pilates developed a system of exercises intended to help students become aware of their bodies—inward out vs. outward in. Yet, as physical therapist John Macy, an AT teacher and certified Pilates instructor, points out, “ . . . these methods of retraining [are] excellent compliments to one another and . . . the utilization of them together results in synergistic improvements that greatly increase the results of each technique alone.”
I have had limited exposure to basic Pilates-like moves like “The Hundred” and “The Plank” through various strength-training books and DVDs. These were mostly targeted to women, however (Pilates resources specifically for women abound). So, I was glad to find a well reviewed book on Amazon geared toward men to help get me started: The Complete Book of Pilates for Men: The Lifetime Plan for Strength, Power, and Peak Performance by Daniel Lyon.
The book describes 100 Pilates exercises (not including variations to make the exercises easier for the beginner), dividing them into beginning, intermediate, and advanced workouts. I plan to stick with the eight exercises in the beginner workout for a month before starting to add in the intermediate exercises. The author suggests doing these exercises three times a week, alone or in conjunction with almost any other activity. Lyon feels Pilates is a perfect activity for cross-training and that it compliments and enhances anything from weight-lifting to running, swimming, team sports, and biking—the other activity I’ve chosen in my cross-training regimen.
Why Biking?
I came across a book entitled The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer by David A. Whitsett, Forrest Dolgener, and Tanjala Kole, and I was extremely tempted to give it a go—but the more I thought of all my weight pounding down on my knees and ankles (I weighed in around 370 this morning), the more I worried about the effect that would have on my joints (which have just started feeling better). Then I thought about my resources, and they include both a stationary recumbent bike (which I used to prep myself cardiovascularly for my hiking in the spring) as well as a cruiser-style bike I bought a year ago (that hasn’t seen much use). Biking provides a similar cardiovascular workout to running without any pounding on the joints—a big issue in my weight-class.
To give me some guidance, I bought a copy of Ride Your Way Lean: The Ultimate Plan for Burning Fat and Getting Fit on a Bike by Selene Yeager and the editors of Bicycling Magazine, another well reviewed tome I found on Amazon. The author admits that you can slim down just by getting out there and biking a lot, but the book offers helpful information on interval training and varying your workout for maximum results in performance improvement and weight loss. There are various biking plans for weight loss, the last few stubborn pounds, maintenance, indoor cycling, and more.
Yeager suggests biking six days a week, which is what I plan on doing. At first it will be enough just to get out there every day. I’ll incorporate her biking plans as I progress. I’ll be taking my camera around my city and photo blogging my journey for that extra measure of mass accountability and purpose.
One of the nice things about Ride Your Way Lean is the information on nutrition and eating. I found it very similar to the plan I am following:
Eat real, recognizable food (grass-fed meats, healthy fats, organic vegetables, fruits, and grains) when you are hungry, but just enough to take away your hunger and last for three to four hours.
Avoid processed foods by shopping the perimeter of the grocery store first.
Yeager also discusses at length the food you should be eating before and after your workout and how to time your meals and exercise to get the most out of them.
Seriously?
Currently, I feel relegated to playing a certain type of father, villain, or fool onstage, and if I feel that way about myself, why should I expect others to feel differently? I’ve been blessed as a composer to see two of my operas produced. As a singer, I was grateful to be able to play a role in each of those productions. One was a father figure and the other an outright villain. Those types of roles can be fun, but I would like the opportunity to sing some heroes’ parts as well.
That brings me to what I see as the biggest problem an overweight performing artist has: sometimes it seems as though people do not take you seriously. Does that make me feel bitter? Not really. I have a hard enough time taking myself seriously at my weight, without expecting other people to do it for me. I wouldn’t want to see me as Don Giovanni—why should anyone else?
Freedom to play a more varied kind of role is just one of the benefits I’d like to garner from becoming more fit and trim. There are so many others. Some are performance related: I’d like to be able to sprint across the stage and still have breath left to sing a da capo aria. Others are not: I want to feel good and have enough energy to tackle anything that comes my way, in work or play. Already my stamina and freedom have increased dramatically with my efforts over the summer, but I have a long way to go (nearly half my current weight).
What about the Time?
I’m a husband, a composer, a church volunteer, a performer, a children’s choir director, a non-profit chairman, a blogger, an artist, a producer of albums and shows, a cook, a person really interested in keeping my family ties strong . . . I never feel like I’ll get everything done that I want to. However, by putting my well-being first through exercise and healthy eating, I’m making an investment that is going to benefit all these other areas of my life. It is not unlike the advice given in an airplane just before you are about to take off, “First put the oxygen mask on yourself, and then help those around you.” You can’t help anyone if you’re unconscious.
I hope you’ll enjoy, and find useful, reading about my journey over the coming months.
