Word Virus » ramblings

It’s been a while seen I talked about this

gabriel — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 18:40:28 +0000

This is more of a response to something I posted on Twitter and Facebook today, but figured I could go into more detail on this site. As any that knows me is already aware of, I lost a lot of weight last year. I went from 232 lbs. to 163 lbs. (for 1 weigh in). I maintained at 165 lbs. for much of the summer. Currently, I am back up to 175 lbs. I mentioned that a shirt I wore last spring was now extremely large on me. Going up 10 lbs. since the summer may seem like I’m slipping, or not watching what I eat. However, nothing is further from the truth.

Throughout the summer, I looked incredibly gaunt. My body fat was very low, but I also had very little muscle mass. Since the summer, I have gained 2 inches on my chest, and an inch on my bi-ceps. I have gone from using “weight machines” when lifting, to using weights for most of my major workout groups. I’m now benching 80 lbs. more than what I did back in November when I started using real weights again. My waist sizes has stayed the same throughout, and the majority of my added “weight” has come from muscle development.

How my diet has changed:

I have changed my diet a bit from when I was trying to lose so much weight. For almost 6 months, I had a daily calorie intake between 1600 and 1800. Plus, I was burning 400-500 calories a day exercising. I’m still burning the same amount of calories, actually a little more, but my daily intake is closer to 2100 calories a day. I eat a lot of food now. I mean a lot. I eat three regular meals a day, and two smaller meals, plus a snack at night. I’m still using a protein/carb/fat ratio that’s about the same, but I removed my daily salad and substituted it a heavier meal (stew, chili, soup, etc.). I eat very little processed food, and my sodium intake is very low. On the weekends, I do stray from this a bit, but this helps my body stay confused about calorie intake.

So, at 175 lbs., I’m pretty happy with where I’m at. Here’s a few measurements to explain why:

Senior in high school (1988, yes I’m old): Weight – 155 lbs. Waist – 32″.

Last year of undergrad (1995): Weight – 165 lbs. Waist – 32″

November 2009: Weight – 232 lbs. Waist – 40″

August 2010: Weight – 165 lbs. Waist – 33″

February 2011: Weight – 175 lbs. Waist – 33″

For everyone that remembers the long gone days of high school and college, I was a scrawny little thing, no body fat, but also no real muscle definition. Pretty happy that my waist is only an inch larger than what it was in high school and college, at nearly 41 now. Technically, I can wear 32″ jeans, but they just aren’t comfortable.

From the mouths of children

gabriel — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000

Early childhood development is really fascinating, especially in relation to philosophy, and how we understand the world. This morning, Anais, 3 years old, was sitting on the bed with her sister. Both of them had on “footie” jams. She put her legs over her sister’s and said, “We’re the same.” Then she looked at the pajamas, she had on Buzz Lightyear and Ada had on Disney Princesses, and said, “But they’re not the same.” She then gave me this really confused look, and said, “Daddy, our footie jams are the same, but they’re not the same.” In that brief moment, she stumbled upon one of the most fundamental questions that have plagued philosophy since the beginning. Then again, perhaps I’ve just been reading too much Heidegger of late.

Life as Literature

gabriel — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:29:46 +0000

As of late, I’m not reading nearly enough. I’m not even reading that many comics lately, so you know my regular reading is suffering. To this point, I decided last night to come up with the 15-20 books that defined who I am. These are the books that shaped my view of the world or at least have defined how I see and relate to the world on a daily basis. As I started trying to prepare this list, which is really just an easy way for me to see what I want to read again, I realized that I miss how much I use to read. Guess I need to take care of that. So, in no particular order, here’s the list:

William S. Burroughs – Naked Lunch
Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science
Arthur Rimbaud – A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat
William Blake – Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Milan Kundera – Life is Elsewhere
Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer
William Gibson – Neuromancer
Charles Bukowski – The Last Night of the Earth Poems
Martin Heidegger – The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays
Martin Heidegger – Poetry, Language, Thought
Frank Herbert – Dune
Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged
Tom Robbins – Another Roadside Attraction
Samuel Beckett – Waiting for Godot
Jean Genet – Our Lady of the Flowers
Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Robert A. Heinlein – Stranger in a Strange Land
Phillip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spake Zarathustra
William S. Burroughs – The Ticket That Exploded

The funny part about such lists is realizing, afterward, some of the other books you’d put on there. For example, there’s no Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Kant, Marx, Wittgenstein, all of which shaped my life in different ways. I could also list every book by Burroughs and Genet, and all the poetry of Rimbaud, the major works of Joyce, or the non-sense novels of Beckett. Like all lists, this one fails to really capture anything other than what is currently floating through my head, and the way I feel at this particular moment.