I’m moving my Flock entries to another blog for two reasons. One is that most of the people who care enough about me to read this blog don’t really care about all the things I’m going to be writing about Flock in the future. Or to be more precise, they’re interested in Flock in the passing way that one is interested in what an acquaintance or loved-one is doing to earn his living, but they don’t really want — and I can’t blame them — to see three blog posts a day about what’s going on in the Flock community. And as I’ve just switched roles at Flock, leading our community initiative and leaving browser development more or less behind (I hope, as this sort of development was never especially fun for me), there will be a lot more of those posts. The other reason I’m moving those to another blog is that people in the Flock community don’t necessarily want to read about my weight loss (when I last weighed in, I was down 33 pounds from when I started) or my baby. So writing in two places makes pretty good sense. And that’s that.

So today I went to the gym. My plan for now is to cycle my way into the outer regions of fitness and then perhaps to add other things designed specifically to trim pudge here and there. The main focus is to get cardiovascular exercise, and if I can eventually get some muscle-tone, that’ll be an added benefit. So I got to the gym, checked in, and went to the cycling machines, which recommended that a person my age get his heartrate up to 154 and (as far as I could tell) sustain it for about an hour. So I ramped up and kept my heartrate up above 165 for most of the time, but I only cycled for about 25 minutes. I didn’t want to go into cardiac arrest on my first day, after all. I think it’s important to ease into this a little. I stopped way before I felt tired enough that it was imperative that I stop, and I think it was a good limit. I’ll do this for a week or so and then look at increasing to a tougher routine.

Lenny Kravitz’ album 5, it turns out, makes for great cycling music.

Once I had gone for about 25 minutes at a good rate, I slowed down for a couple of minutes to cool down, then wiped up my sweat puddle and headed down to the locker room. They had a scale, of course, and I weighed myself at 229. So I’m apparently down 18 pounds from two weeks ago, though I need to qualify that heavily by acknowledging that the weights were measured on different scales. I was dressed about the same on both days and my weight was measured at about the same time both days, so those variables aren’t a major factor. It’s not really about the pounds so much, though, as I’ve always been much heavier than I’ve looked. It’s gratifying to see progress, though, and I look forward to being able to measure progress (from one angle at least) on a regular basis rather than just every couple of months at the doctor’s office. I suppose I could break down and buy a bathroom scale.

On Tuesday, I go in to have my liver ultrasounded. My last two sets of bloodwork have turned up a high liver enzyme. This could mean anything, including things like Wilson’s disease, fatty tissue invading my liver (a likely candidate, I’d say), hepatitis (but not, as I tested negative for that), and cirrhosis (which isn’t always caused by drinking and which, when it is caused by drinking, takes really heavy long-term drinking but which, given some of my drinking history, is scary nevertheless; I don’t exhibit some of the usual symptons of cirrhosis, though, so I imagine I’m ok). We’ll see how it goes.

I hate the word “diet” as applied to what I’m doing. I’m not going on any sort of crash diet; I’m modifying my lifestyle by changing my eating habits. One thing that has really made this a good process for me has been my finding a great cookbook, entitled Betty Crocker’s Low-Fat, Low-Cholesterol Cooking Today. When I say that the recipes are good, I don’t mean that they’re good in the sort of begrudging way one might say that a flavored rice cake is better than a plain rice cake. I mean that many of the recipes I’ve cooked in the last couple of weeks are excellent, as in I would be happy to have ordered them at a restaurant.

Among my favorites so far are a seared jerk chicken, a seared sirloin au jus, seared pork tenderloin medallions sprinkled with salt and paprika, and sort of a baked breaded chicken nuggets dish. In short, everything’s been a huge hit around here except for the two fish dishes I’ve cooked, and those weren’t exactly bad; they just weren’t up to the standards these other entrees set. The dinners I’ve been cooking have on average 5 - 10 grams of fat apiece (compare to probably 20 or 30 minimum for meals I was previously cooking, 30ish being the recommended allotment of fat for the whole day). For lunch I’ve had scrambled fake eggs (which are actually pretty decent, in spite of my expectations) with toast spread with apricot preserves. Other times I’ve had turkey sandwiches (6 slices of turkey have about a gram of fat). For snacks, I’ll make a thing of pudding or eat some fat-free yogurt (again, not bad at all, especially to me, as I’ve never been a yogurt eater and so don’t have a taste for regular yogurt to compare against). Occasionally I’ll munch on a few baked Ruffles chips (3 have a gram of fat, so I keep these to a minimum), and I’ve been enjoying Fig Newtons (no fat) this week as well. I’ve also become more of a fruit and veggie eater. I’ll slice up a cucumber or a peach now in a heartbeat. These weren’t things I normally would have eaten, but now that I’ve started, I find the freshness very appealing, and in the case of the peach, well, there’s not much of anything that’s naturally sweeter and juicier than a fresh peach.

So this lifestyle change has exposed me to a lot of foods that I used to shun more out of habit than anything, and I’m finding the diet to be not a burden to bear but an opportunity to try new things. The dinner variety has been especially welcome.

And the effects are already beginning to become obvious. I think my face is thinning a little, and the pants I’m accustomed to wearing around the house occasionally just fall off. They were a little loose anyway, but they’ve become more so. There’s been no dramatic change yet or anything, but I think this change of diet is starting to peel away some of the superficial fat.

This morning, I’m calling the gym Mleeka’s a member of to sign on as a member myself. I debated doing this in January when she signed up, but I doubted my motivation and so opted not to blow the money. Now I feel motivated. I hurt my foot jogging a couple of weeks ago and so want a good opportunity to do some low-impact stuff (spin, for example, which why don’t they just call it exercise biking as they did in the 80s?) and not to be affected by the weather. Of course, this isn’t all about thinning down (though that’ll be nice) but is more about getting my heart pumping so that my doctor doesn’t raise his eyebrows at my blood pressure.

This has all been very positive so far, and I’m enjoying the change.