- Backend straddle whip: missed the catch.
- Uprise shoot: my belly is red and blue.
- Swinging: The timing is still wrong and my heels are sinking after theforce out.
In other words, I have reached a plateau.
But at the same time, I have started losing weight again, and I really don't know why (why would I care?), because I have been absolutely careless about eating. Maybe DDR is already doing its magic? I ordered a pad, it doesn't seem to be enough to justify losing three pounds.
event though the dessert chef at work is not the best in the world -- creating such horrors as a cinnamon flan -- there is still dessert everyday for lunch and it has the effect of a siren song.
So, the plan is now this: do a lot of aerobic exercise. And the one and only one way to do that is: get a Dance Dance Revolution at home. That's D.'s advice, and I trust him.
Stepmania is a free clone of DDR that runs on PC. I can simply buy a dance pad and use the PC. However, I tried with the keyboard and I am not sure it is responsive enough. If there is any delay in the transmission between the input and the processing, then all is lost, as one of the side effects of this plan should be to learn rhythm.
I am just back from a dinner with Skinny Hare Bunny. I don't remember if she mentioned it, but in any case, from her menus, it is fairly easy to infer that she is a vegetarian. It is not absolutely obvious, however, that she is one by birth and has never tasted meat.
We shared:
1. Buffalo Wings
2. Chicken Satay
3. Chicken salad
4. Something else
Only proteins, no carbs. All soy, in various in-carnations.
Skinny Bunny recently posted some numbers. Time to post mine.
I stopped taking Wellbutrin around September 23rd. In other words, whatever I called 'my will to lose weight' was amounting for naught. Well, I decided to stop being so careful after my trapeze show, and I had numerous desserts. That "decision', too, is suspect. It was simply too hard to resist dessert. Before the 23rd, I could watch the dessert table (very consequential at the cafeteria at work -- and it's free) without a second thought. Wellbutrin was acting directly on my desire to eat. Time to eat some horribly bitter pill after each dessert.
The kind souls will notice that my body fat has not gone back up to it's starting 18.5%. The less kind soul will look at (unpublished) data and point to the average body fat over the past six months: oscillating between 17.5% and 18%. In other words, my attempt to lose weight has failed miserably, and once again I must turn to Skinny Bunny, whose trend is down without chemicals and hence with only the force of her will. I don't believe I have free will, but it doesn't mean she doesn't either. She probably does. How could she be so opinionated otherwise?
When one talks about diet, it is only natural that the subject of transubstantiation come to the table: if all steaks and food could be replaced by a wafer each, so many pounds would melt!
And this brings me to the question of the belief in life after death. "It provides comfort," people say. No no no: This is not enough to explain the widespread belief in life after death. There is no reason why we should innately fear death. The fear of losing a limb would do as well for providing the extra zing that will make you run faster than the tiger. Losing a limb is much worse than death, from the prospective of the tri-limbed. Anything is worse than a quick death, even the feeling of dissatisfaction that comes after eating your third wafer.
If you ever lost a loved one, you will notice how easy it is to mistakenly recognize him in the street, to feel that he is behind you as you are working on your algebra homework. We are trained to recognized our loved ones from minute clues, and we generate false positives all the time, even when we know well that the person's body is no more. And thus, while the loved one is dead and well dead, he still seems to be around. A ghost. See Pascal Boyer, "Religion Explained."
All Darwinian explanations of the origins of religion are fine and well -- Dawkins, in "The God Delusion," promotes the idea that it is a side-effect of other well-adapted features of our brain, as opposed to something that is or ever was useful. OK, fine and well, but there is only one way to measure how reasonable a theory is concerning the origin of religious feelings: it is by devising a cure. And don't mention reason: it is too complex a treatment to vindicate any one theory.
All this killed my appetite. No more wafer tonight.
I recently purchased a Roomba, a vacuum cleaning robot that goes around the apartment and swallows all the dust it can find. There is a light called 'dust detector' that lights up when it detects some particularly crunchy and deliciously dirty spot. I have seen the same mechanism in people's eyes, it's called a 'sugar detector' in that case.
Alas, Roomba often stops in the middle of its meal with another light blinking: 'Dieting'.
My father (A) and step-mother (M) were visiting for ten days, until this evening. I survived. I brought them to the intensive trapeze workshop this weekend. I was not the only one who encouraged them to try, but they remained screwed to the grass, although enjoying every minute of the weekend at 'Club Getaway'. Club Getaway is exactly like a Club Med, but the latter has a bad name in France. A & M refused to accept any similarity. Not that they have ever been to Club Med, as far as I know.
A & M were wondering about why Skinny Bunny's was so cool towards them. M, with her usual depth of analysis, suggested that Skinny Bunny had constructed a fantasmatic scenario construing them (A & M) as some kind of... there was no elaboration, but the conclusion was: they don't hold anything against her.
Little did they know that it had nothing to do with them. Little did I know that it had so much to do with me and my unbearable pride. In nay case, who wants to bother spending time seeking the answer to such a question? Not me. I'll remain proud and unbearable in any case.
A crepe filled with caramelized banana and melted chocolate. That was my dessert at lunch.
Skinny Bunny sent me an email today: "Add a task in your task list to update your blog." There it is.
My first subtask was to read Skinny Bunny's blog. She has made progress not only in trapeze but also in writing. Her blog is funnier, lighter. It was a pleasure to read one month worth (I had indeed stopped reading).
First, weight. Here are the graphs. Weight is:
And body fat is:
And Excel doesn't want to remove the furnerary border, but let it be known that horizontal lines appear every half point, and that it starts at 16. The average line is at 17.5.
Notice how the weight went down until my first trapeze show (I did two of them, the second one was attended by Skinny Bunny, my girlfriend, and about twenty other fans), then shot up. Crisis of will? Job done? Anxiety provoked by visiting father and stepmother (with whom I have very little contact otherwise)? Having stopped Wellbutrin, the miracle antidepressant that makes you lose weight?
Am I asking a why question?
Let's review the facts: the body fat hasn't really gone back up. I gained a lot of strength in the past few weeks. I can now do six pull ups in a row for the first time in my life. Delighted with this result, I got a pull up bar today (the 'Door Gym' kind, that you install and remove at will, the one that doesn't damage the door frame), and set up a task to be able to do ten in a row by Dec 4th. Skinny Bunny will have one too soon, I'm sure.
Skinny Bunny complains about her mental block regarding the pull over shoot. I was impressed about how hard she worked on it, how she wouldn't let go. I suspect that something else happened that she didn't talk about: The first few times, the guy on the line helped her by pulling as she did her pull over. The third time she tried on Saturday morning, the first time she was not able to complete her pull over, the guy on the line had stopped giving the little extra help, and I believe that he never did it again. So, in summary, and I may be wrong, I believe that Skinny Bunny did not regress, but is just struggling with a difficult move.
I tried the pull over shoot twice a few months ago. I was able to pull over without any problem. Most likely the line guy helped me too at the time.
Did I mention that my static trapeze show went very well? It was only 2 minutes and 46 seconds, as the remastered Pink Panther theme on which I was performing Clouzeaux-in-the-air can attest, but I loved it, and can't wait for a the next show in March. Maybe a spy story this time?
I started the diet and hence the blog in order to get ready for the show. I could say: mission accomplished. I got under 150 lbs for a few fleeting days. However, I feel compelled to continue, to get back to this far gone 150, to reduce my body fat to under 16%. Why do I feel this compulsion? Don't you ever learn? Never ask why because you can ask why forever.
