Back in June 2010, my wife bought a Tanita Iron Girl
bathroom scale. It’s a magnificent piece of equipment, though at the time my view of it was anything but magnificent. It told me things about my body that, in retrospect, I was not prepared to hear. Things that flew in the face of what I thought of my health, my fitness levels and myself in general. (You can read the full story in a rambling excessively wordy version here.) But what probably made it the linchpin of change in how I’m choosing to go about “fixing” myself had more to do with timing than anything else.
bathroom scale. It’s a magnificent piece of equipment, though at the time my view of it was anything but magnificent. It told me things about my body that, in retrospect, I was not prepared to hear. Things that flew in the face of what I thought of my health, my fitness levels and myself in general. (You can read the full story in a rambling excessively wordy version here.) But what probably made it the linchpin of change in how I’m choosing to go about “fixing” myself had more to do with timing than anything else.My wife and I were in the midst of a significant change in our lives, a cross-country move that was to take us from the golden hills of sunny California to the warm waters of the Gulf Coast. Thus when the Iron Girl came along, we were already in a well-worn groove of making major life decisions, trying to decide, among other things, what was truly important to us, and what we were ready to let go of with regards to the trappings of life. It was while in that mode of thinking then that the Iron Girl entered into mine; a period of open-mindedness to new imperatives that probably saved the fancy new scale from a long fall out our second story bathroom window. And a willingness to set to work on a plan to bring my body back into the kind of shape it only vaguely remembered, and then, if I were so lucky, perhaps even to some place beyond.
It boggles the mind to think that if we'd bought the Iron Girl only a month or two earlier, or sometime after we had settled into a new routine at a different home, the epiphany I had had might never have been born. I needed the chaos of change brought about by our move to disrupt the routine of acceptance, stagnation, and apathy that had hounded me into inaction for so long. It caused something inside of me to snap and say enough's enough. We’re tired of feeling lethargic and unmotivated all the time. There’s got to be a better way to do it out there.
Thus, the Iron Girl became my linchpin, the piece that I weighed (no pun intended) my progress against. It would tell me my weight, sure, but more importantly it would provide me my hydration levels, body fat percentages, estimations on what my true biological age is, and even the abstracts of obesity levels, bone densities and more. In short, it would be me, Mike, against The Iron Girl in a race to get my body into a range of numbers that science tells us are where a healthy person should be. The Iron Girl would be my objective observer, laying out the blunt truth for me, good or bad, about my progression or regression.
It was to become, and now is: Mike versus The Iron Girl.
So, why the blog? Well, motivation, for one. Let’s face it. If there’s an audience interested in my progress and demanding posted updates about it, then there’s an imperative for me to keep moving along. But I think the real reason is a desire to share with others who may be coming from a similar state of mind what I discover along my journey on a path to a healthier and fitter mind and body, and perhaps in the process I can motivate them into doing the same.
In that vein, I’m going to be doing a lot of research on the subject and asking many questions to boot. As a bonus to you, the reader, I’m also going to become your living guinea pig, a lab rat trapped in the maze of information out there, trying to find my way to the cheese. I'll tell you what works for me and what doesn’t. I’ll share my triumphs and my setbacks. My mental wins, and the inevitable woes, which I’ll hopefully find ways to overcome. And ways around the injuries that I’ve already sustained. (I’ve actually already begun the work…more on that to come.) The things I learn I shall pass on to you.
Throughout the process I’ve chosen two books that will act as my mainstay and go-to texts outside of the other research sources I seek out in hope that they will light the way as my journey begins. One I read some time ago, but the material within is still quite relevant and extremely readable. It’s called Fit or Fat
, by a physiologist named Covert Bailey, and its merits lie in its ability to transform complex biological and physiological principles into laymen's terms. The other is a newer and thicker book, but just as readable. It is called The Athlete’s Way
, and was written by an elite athlete named Christopher Bergland. I’m in the middle of reading that one now.
, by a physiologist named Covert Bailey, and its merits lie in its ability to transform complex biological and physiological principles into laymen's terms. The other is a newer and thicker book, but just as readable. It is called The Athlete’s Way, and was written by an elite athlete named Christopher Bergland. I’m in the middle of reading that one now.What the two authors have in common is an extreme disgust for the fad-diets and exercise snake oil salesmen out on the market today. They preach the basics: eat a well-balanced diet and exercise smart. Nothing tricky and all very straight forward stuff with solid science to back them up.
So there it is. Mike versus The Iron Girl in a nutshell. The initial goal is to maintain this blog with weekly updates (at a minimum) over the course of one year. That’s twelve months. Fifty-two weeks worth of entries.
