Kaizen Taekwondo
More than just Martial Arts
Finito
Aug 2nd
Alright, enough of this experiment. It’s been enlightening, but it’s stressin’ me out. Final tally, after one month; I’ve lost about 5 pounds, and almost 2″ off my waist, and things fit better. I also stopped randomly snacking on everything in sight, so overall I’ll call it a success. I didn’t do as well at adding variety as I had hoped, but with less crap and more working out I think I’ll survive. I’m still tracking what I eat on my own, so there will hopefully be more progress from here out.
I will still be around, posting when I feel like I have something to add to the world, instead of every night. Every night leads to boring posts about my day, and it’s not fun for any of us. I will also try to get back to doing my form occasionally, although with kickboxing keeping me in shape I’m feeling less pressed to practice for health’s sake and more to make sure I don’t forget it. That approach is kind of lazy and needs much less practice time, but I’ll try. Until next time, stay well amigos.
Moscow Mules
Aug 1st
Ah, hello. I got home last night about midnightish and somehow the blog didn’t make it on my radar. Not much to report, though, for yesterday or today. Tomorrow (technically today, I guess) is my arbitrary end, because I’m all out of interesting things to say every day. I’m very sleepy right now, which I have no right to be since I slept in and then did nothing all day, but somehow that sort of day always ends up leaving me sleepy. When I’m busy, I wish for boring weekends, and when I have boring weekends, I wish to be busy. What can you do.
Whelp, let’s get to it.
Food:
Breakfast: Do I even have to say it at this point? PB&J
Lunch: Taco/burrito/whatevers
Other: Supper was a special dish I call a Peanut Buster. Provided by my friend Dairy Queen. She’s very nice.
Yesterday started out identical, and then I went to a housewarming party and that would be too complicated to try to document. Various party-type foods, and a Moscow Mule. If you’re not familiar, and a surprising number of people at the party were not, the Moscow Mule is an alcoholic beverage best known for being served in a copper mug, and for the fact that bars make you give them a credit card and a drivers license before they’ll serve you one – so you don’t make off with the mug. The copper is important for its reaction with the ginger beer, or so they say. Anyway, it was interesting, and pretty good, but I don’t know if I need that much ginger in my life. Half of one would do me fine.
Current Weight: Yesterday 161, Today 159
A Day
Jul 29th
Have I told you that I like kickboxing? Just kidding, I think I tell you that every day. But I do, in case you were wondering. My shoulder doesn’t think so today, too many push ups this week, but it will survive. It’s so close to being better, but I’m only a little bit good at keeping it rested. I rest it when I’m at home, right? That should count for something.
No workout tomorrow, though, I have places to go and my shoulder needs a break. Saturday, maybe, if I’m feeling motivated. As miserable as the last time was, I’m not feeling too keen, but I don’t like going the whole weekend without a workout either. One of the things that sucks about working out is how fast you can lose conditioning. Even just missing a couple days last week, I felt it when I got back to class on Tuesday. So anyway, we’ll see what happens over the weekend.
Food:
I could summarize this part by saying ‘yesterday, again’
Breakfast: PB&J
Lunch: Tacos. Although I added some beans, so maybe they’re burritos now. I was never really sure where that line is.
Other: Milk, 1/2 a can of Dr. Pepper (the other half went all over my coffee table and almost got my laptop…good times)
Mexican food is delicious, but the difference between most of the dishes is nuanced at best.
Current Weight: 161
Productivity is in the eye of the beholder
Jul 28th
Um. Yeah. Today? Stuff: happened. Laundry: done. Kickboxing: done. Procrastination: also done. Motivation: gone. Not much to update you on. I think my life is not exciting enough to withstand daily updates, amigos…4 more days and I’ll probably go back to blogging oblivion. I’ve never been able to find a happy medium between daily posts and almost nonexistent ones, but I will try.
Food:
Breakfast: PB&J
Lunch: Tacos
Supper: Taco stuff, minus the tortilla
Other: Milk, soda
Yep.
Current Weight: 161
Meaningful
Jul 28th
Oh hai! Sorry about that. I disappeared a little. I apologize.
The wedding weekend was great, I saw so many old family friends that it was like going to a reunion. I also got the opportunity to hang out with two kids who I knew very well, both through my church and from babysitting them for around 10 years. I haven’t seen them in 5 years (they were 12 and 7 then, they’re 17 and 12 now) so it felt like being put through a time machine. I always had high expectations for them, but I was completely blown away. They have become the most beautiful, smart, and incredibly personable young people…I feel grateful to have had even a small part in their lives.
I’ve spent so much time working on ‘real job’ kind of things for the last few years, but I look back on it and it doesn’t mean anything to me. Those two kids mean everything, and every other kid that I’ve taught or mentored in the last few years…Some pixels on a screen pale in comparison to that. It’s why I’ve always loved teaching Taekwondo, and why I miss teaching it now. It’s not so much what’s being taught as the impact that it has on kid’s lives.
So anyway…after that. I went to my final ballet class last night – it was almost a relief. As much as I would love to have the abilities of a dancer, I don’t connect with the experience of training the same way I do to martial arts. I enjoyed it while I was there, but I didn’t find myself practicing in my off days, or really wanting to go back to class the way I do with Taekwondo. It was a fun and worthwhile experience, but I’m glad I don’t have to rely on it as my new hobby. Maybe I was wrong, and what’s being taught does matter…passion matters. It took me one whole paragraph to change my mind on that subject.
Tonight I had kickboxing, and even though it is much more brutal and exhausting physically, I would much rather be there. The fact that I have friends who take class with me is a factor as well, but it’s where I want to be. I’m glad that everything came together to get me into that class – it was a hard decision at the time, but it’s been the right choice by far. I’m wired to kick things, or something.
Food:
Yes, food. We’re still doing this?
Breakfast: PB&J
Lunch: BBQ Pork sandwich (wedding leftovers…win.)
Other: Chocolate Milk, and I think I ate some other things but I forgot. Sorry.
Seriously drawing a blank on the rest. Ah, well, there was food there somewhere. The wedding weekend didn’t derail me as badly as I thought it might, although I certainly ate too much. But I think (knock on wood) that I’m done with crazy holidays, weddings, graduations, baby showers (did I mention the baby shower the day after the wedding? Same family, different couple ;), and the like, so I can go back to eating like a normal person for more than a week at a time.
Current Weight: 161
Love via Food
Jul 21st
Tonight featured the Return of the Killer Leg Workout from last week. I have no idea why they chose to torture me this way. I could have gone another month or ten without doing that many lunges again, but they seemed to think it was a good idea. I liked busting out some high kicks yesterday much better.
I’m headed out tomorrow for a wedding, back in my old stomping grounds. An old family friend is getting married, and lots of old friends are coming, so it’s becoming a reunion of sorts. I won’t attempt to blog while I’m home, so I’ll have to leave you until Sunday or Monday, when I get back.
While I’m home I’ll try to fight the good fight and not eat until I die. Seriously. My family speaks the language of food. We love with food, Holidays revolve around meals, we celebrate with food, we mourn with food…you get the idea. It took me a long time to be able to say ‘no’ to my grandparents pushing second and third helpings of everything, and I think they’ve learned not to take it personally. Regardless, it’s hard – when my family’s around the food is amazing. A-ma-zing. And I don’t have to cook it all by myself, which makes everything taste better.
Food:
Breakfast: PB&J
Lunch: More leftover enchiladas
Supper: (look Ma, three meals!) Pizza
Other: Cookies, Milk, Soda
Well hello there appetite, I wondered where you’d gone. I missed you…sort of.
Current Weight: 162
Have a fantastical rest of the week and a magnificent weekend, and I’ll be back Sunday!
Habits
Jul 20th
I’m not quite sure what to write about – my days just aren’t that interesting. Eat, work, work out, eat, repeat.
I’ve been slowly working my way through Psychology – The Briefer Course, by William James. Now, since this book’s original publication was in 1892, I take it with a grain of salt, but it’s still being published (this edition was printed in 2001) so somebody obviously thinks it still has value.
Habits: either helpful or nasty little things, depending on what they are. Basic premise of the first chapter: habits are a mental process – but mental processes are, at their core, physical processes. Therefore, a habit is made up of a series of electrical signals traveling between the neurons in your brain in the same path over and over – like they’re digging an electrical trench in your brain. This makes it hard to break habits, since you have to convince this current to travel a different path than the one it’s used to. Fortunately, that process can work for good as well as bad.
Habits can be complex – driving the same path to work every day, for example, or complex emotional responses – so the most important part of a habit is the beginning, the first action that triggers the chain reaction. It’s like when you start tying your shoes. Once you start, your unconscious takes over and you probably couldn’t stop in the middle and then go on without thinking about it. To change a habit, you need to head off the first spark. To start a habit, you need to define a spark.
A habit will have a better chance of taking hold in your brain if you set a trigger point; some consistent thing that you do that your brain can associate with the entire chain of actions that make up the habit. Then when it encounters the trigger, it can bypass the conscious part of your brain. Instead of you having to fight a battle with yourself: ‘I should really go to the gym some time today,’ your brain recognizes the trigger – getting home from work, getting up in the morning, whatever point you set that’s consistent – and sets in motion the habit. If you can set and keep to a specific trigger, the habit will take hold more quickly, and be easier to stick to.
To break a habit, you have to somehow divert the trigger point – give it some other path to follow. This is my own inference, but the easiest way to break an old habit may be to set a new one up to take its place that uses the same trigger. So you’re not just trying to stop the habit when it hits, you’re diverting it into some other, more desirable action.
I’m not doing the whole chapter justice here, but I picked out a bit that I thought might be more interesting and practical…and I tried to write it in English. It’s an interesting book, but it requires plowing through a lot of very dense material; you can definitely tell it was written in academia, in another era.
Food:
Lunch: Enchiladas
Other: Cookies, milk, chocolate milk
My stomach is getting better, but not there yet.
Current Weight: 160
Dancin’ my dance
Jul 19th
…and my dance is awkward. But it’s getting better.
Hello, and happy Monday! Not a very eventful day, but nice, not insanely hot, and I felt reasonably productive. A slow day for work, but things are looking up. Dance class is funny, I’m basically the only person in the class – only once has anyone else been there. So it’s like private lessons, but for a group class price…I feel almost guilty. Actually it would be nice if it were a bigger class, more people would make it a little more energetic, but this way I get to learn on my own pace.
I’m no dancer yet, never fear. My one advantage is that Taekwondo muscles (and balance) come in handy for kicks and arabesques and all the other french words that I have to learn. It’s much better than starting from scratch.
Food:
…Brunch? PB&J
Supper: Enchilada skillet, although I bastardized the recipe to fit what I had on hand.
Other: Soda, Cookies, Milk
Mmmm bastardized recipes. It was actually pretty tasty. I swear I’m not trying to skip meals, I’ve been feeling somewhere between queasy and just not hungry, so I don’t eat. I grabbed some meds today (I have a history with this, sadly) so I should be back to normal soon.
Current Weight: 162. Ah, that beefy, cheesy enchilada thing. ‘Twas the death of me. Also, eating at 8:30pm.
Quiet on Sunday
Jul 18th
Sunday: Slept in, ran errands, grilled a steak. Watched a movie, picked up my guitar for the first time in a long time and played blisters into my fingers. Found some sweet new music, got some new and much-needed workout clothes, read for a while, watched pointless tv, browsed pointless internet, stayed out of the heat.
Hope your weekend was excellent – see you Monday.
Saturday
Jul 17th
Last night, I went to bed early so I could get up at 7 to go to kickboxing (early being 11:30). That was a great theory, but at 1:30 I was still awake, and I didn’t fall asleep for a while after that. I never really felt like I was getting sleep at all, actually. BUT. I got up, I got out the door, and I got to class on time. Then I remembered why I don’t work out in the mornings.
First thing after getting up, I realized I was out of bread. This was bad, because I usually eat PB&J in the morning, and because bread is about all my stomach will handle when I’ve gotten up early. I have a very acidic stomach and I knew I was going to be in trouble. But I didn’t have many options, so I had a tiny bit of milk and some straight peanut butter, popped an antacid and hoped for the best.
I drove to class only to find out that my friend, who had said he would be there, hadn’t shown. I hadn’t told him I was coming, so he didn’t ditch me, but class is more fun with company.
Bad sign number three: only one other guy there. Small classes never have much energy, and usually seem slower than big ones.
Bad sign number four: A different instructor than I’ve had before, who doesn’t usually teach kickboxing.
Actually, if you take all of that into account, it wasn’t a bad class. It wasn’t fun, though. It didn’t take long for me to get nauseous, which confirmed that I almost always do when I work out early. The instructor wasn’t bad, she just switched things up and threw me off a bit, and she added a couple drills that I chose not to attempt due to my shoulder. Let’s just say it was a long hour. If I hadn’t felt like I was going to puke most of the time it would have been better (sorry, but it’s true). And then I’ve been crazy sleepy all day to round it all out.
So, I think I’ll be skipping morning classes from now on, or at least finding a better breakfast solution before I try another. Being tired is bad enough without feeling sick to boot.
Food:
Breakfast: You already know about breakfast – PB & milk
Lunch: BisonWitches!! 1/2 Club, chips & queso. Mmmmmmmmmm.
Other: Chocolate Milk….did I really forget to eat anything else? I guess I was full from Bison.
I honestly didn’t realize until just now that I haven’t eaten anything since about 1. I had a lot of water, but no food…hmm. I can’t decide if this is a good trend or not. I’m a little hungry, but not starving by any means, so it’s not like I’m trying to torture myself. Actually all told I feel amazing. I feel like I have muscles again, injured or not.
Current Weight: 160 (booyeah! 5lbs, 1 week – What a difference a little kickboxing makes.)