Foggy Morning in Halifax

a photo by notme2000 on Flickr.

Snapped this on my way to work with my iPhone. Impressed with my phone camera!

Health & Narcissism

Fair warning, this entire entry is about fitness and health, nothing else.

About a year and a half ago I’d been in Edmonton for about a year, working at BioWare.  I had just uploaded this picture to Facebook:

Kristina pointed out I’d put on some weight.  She’s good for giving you her honest opinion and I truly appreciated it, because until that moment I somehow hadn’t realized it.  I must have been in major denial, somehow I hadn’t realized when I bought pants they were size 34 now, not 32 like they used to be.  When I compared newer pictures with older ones like the one below, it became clear I’d put on weight…  And become less emo.

I weighed myself at 176.  I don’t know how much I weighed in Winnipeg, but I think I remember it being like 140 (I was thin but scrawny, no muscle).  So in the year and a bit since I’d moved to Edmonton and started working at BioWare I’d put on almost 40 pounds!  I’d heard others talk of the “BioWare 40”…  And it was all fat, definitely not muscle.  If anything I may have lost some muscle.  I thought about it: In Winnipeg I worked fulltime at Rogers Video, a job that required you to be on your feet all day, for 8 hours, running around helping customers etc.  My feet and legs were always tired at the end of a shift.  On top of that I went on long walks all the time in Winnipeg, sometimes 2 hours long around the city with my headphones on.

In Edmonton I worked at BioWare, a desk job.  I went for lunch with my friends every day, and it was rarely healthy.  Then I drove home, never going on any walks, or really any kind of activity.  In fact I’d gotten into the habit of picking up fast food every day on the way home…  It was clear I’d need to make a major lifestyle change if I wanted to break this trend.  And it wasn’t as simple as returning to how I lived in Winnipeg, since working at a desk made it kind of hard to get in the 8 hours of standing and walking I did at Rogers Video.  This would need to be a conscious effort with some real sacrifice.

At first I didn’t really know what I was doing.  I started the P90x cardio program, but my diet was still pretty bad.  I was also impatient.  I thought I must be doing it wrong when I didn’t lost more than a pound after my first week.  When Chad moved to Edmonton he decided he wanted to get in better shape too, so we both got free memberships at the gym in the hotel BioWare shared the building with. 

Chad was all about strength training.  That had been how he lost all the weight the first time, so why not do it again?  I trusted his judgement and went along, but I was really self conscious about how weak I was, and I also knew it was going to be a while before I saw results.  In the end I decided I wanted to focus on cardio and diet to lose weight faster, and figured maybe some day down the road I’d get into weight training.

Once I focussed on cardio and went all out with it I began seeing results fast.  I was losing 2-4 pounds a week.  I was doing an hour of cardio 6 days a week, up to 1100 calories at a time.  My diet had changed and was much healthier.  I was definitely still doing some things wrong though.  I was starving myself a bit more than was healthy, especially combined with cardio.  But the results were motivating.

By the time things at BioWare were coming to an end and I was prepping for the move to Halifax I was down to 160.  I’d lost 14 pounds in 2 months.  Not bad!

Once I got to Halifax I was stressed out, and my lifestyle started to slip.  No more gym, my diet got worse, etc.  But when I finally found a scale to weigh myself I found I was 155.  I’d continued to lose weight, despite it all.  That meant even with a bit of a slip, my lifestyle was still better than in Edmonton, so my weight was still slowly adjusting to a better lifestyle.

I eventually got a membership at a gym down the road from Longtail, but with the long hours I was working, the fact that I was bussing home instead of driving, and the dark winter nights, I didn’t end up going very often.  But I was making more money than I ever had, so I decided to just go buy my own elliptical.  Once I got that I started doing cardio at least 4 times a week, and improved my diet once again.  But after almost 2 months I’d only lost 3 pounds, down to 152.  After losing 24 pounds through cardio and diet, it was beginning to feel like I’d plateaued.

And that brings us to present day.  I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since Winnipeg, I can fit back into all the clothes from those days, but still not quite to the form I had.  I still have a gut when I sit, though substantially smaller than at my worst.  When I stand it’s easy enough to suck it in.  But I want better.  I want even better than I looked in Winnipeg!  The success of losing 24 pounds has made me realize the body is a machine, and with some willpower, if you put in the work, you’ll get the results.  Period.

That being said, I’ve lost all the weight I’m going to on my current lifestyle.  My moderately healthier diet and cardio isn’t giving me results anymore.  At this rate I’d lose maybe 4-5 pounds a year, probably less.  So unless I want to increase my cardio to take up every free moment it’s time to take a new approach.  Like I said in Edmonton, when the time came I’d do strength training.

So earlier this week I bought a small weight kit and some other equipment for 70$,  I’ve improved my diet even further, and I also changed how I do my cardio, combining cardio with a decent leg workout.

My new plan:

• Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are my work out days.  I alternate muscles to allow them time to heal.  In between days are for resting and healing.
• Tuesdays are shoulders and biceps.  Thursdays are triceps, back and chest.  Sundays are core (abdominal area) workouts.
• After about 30-40 minutes of the weight training I then do my new, more extreme cardio on the elliptical. 
• New cardio:  Instead of just running on lowest settings for an hour, I go the complete other way.  I increase the incline to full and alter between 3/4 and full resistance for 45 minutes.  I burn calories much faster this way, and I’m giving my leg muscles a more legit workout then just low-intensity jogging.  I’m dripping in sweat and my legs are burning by the time I’m done.
• After the cardio I immediately do one last set of weight training exercises to muscle failure and then shower!
• Much better diet (details later in this post).

I’ve really taken it to a new level.  This is much more extreme than the old plan.  Before I just ran until my body had to burn fat.  I’m still doing that, but also adding muscle all over my body.  Muscle burns more calories, meaning I’ll raise my natural metabolism and burn fat while I’m sitting at my desk at work.

I’ve also begun to make another big diet change, the biggest since my first one back in Edmonton.  No more starving myself all day only to gorge on snacks in the evening.  I’m eating 3-4 smaller meals a day, and healthy meals.  For example, lunch today was a medium sized chicken pita on whole wheat with very light mayo, spinach, bean sprouts, tomatoes and cucumbers!  Next time I go grocery shopping I’m buying 80% fresh.  WAY too much of what I eat has predominantly come out of a box or bag.  No more!  So from now on it’ll be largely lean chicken breast, sliced deli turkey, salmon, brown rice, etc..  I’ll thaw and cook it myself.  My cheat day of the week will be Saturdays, if I’m really craving some junk food with my videogames, or a pizza, etc.

Losing 24 pounds in under a year took a lot of hard work, but it felt great.  Recently I tried on my old Edmonton pants, and that really made me realize what I’d accomplished.  Success breeds confidence, and I’m confident this is exactly what I needed to break through this plateau and begin another year long success story.  And so far I’m enjoying this next level of healthier living.  It will be weird to watch the scale go up now though, since I’ll be putting on muscle, which weighs more than fat.  Hopefully by this time next year though I’ll look the best I ever have!  Wish my luck!

Entanglement

“The world is given to me only once, not one existing and one perceived.” - Erwin Schrödinger

Taking a chance is often an intimidating task.  All possible outcomes race through your mind.  Each play out simultaneously, indefinite until measured.  It’s easy to leave it to theory, to chalk it up to superposition and move on with your life.  Giving something that matters a definitive state can be a scary thing.  But they say the only things you live to regret are the risks you didn’t take.

Over the past few years I’ve learned betting on myself pays off more often than it doesn’t.  As success bred confidence I found it easier and easier to take a chance on myself.  And my life is so much better for it.  But this lesson was learned so late!  I can't help but reflect on all the chances I never took.  My life is filled with regret.  So many parallel lives playing out simultaneously in my mind, lives that could have been, should have been.

So many chances to shine were spent hiding in the dark.  So many ambitions silenced under my own guard.  Too many dreams of my youth never made their way to my waking life.  I've loved, but never took the chance they might love me back. Most of them never even knew.  I imagine a life where I told every girl, took every chance, and risked for every reward.  A world where every possibility was sparked into existence through my observation.  I’d have gained more than I lost.  I’d have taken 2 steps forward for every step back.  I’d ride the wave of probability.  Who knows how far I’d be if I hadn’t waited so long to open the box.

I’m still young, despite being the oldest I’ve ever been.  I can go forward with this knowledge, and try not to repeat the mistakes that haunt me still.  But they will haunt me forever.  I may never forgive myself.  Regret is the most diabolical of mechanisms.

Growing up, it seems, is the collapse of possibility into the reality.  Better late than never.  If we don’t take risks, life ends up being nothing more than a thought experiment.  So many dualities denied any kind of fate, left for eternity in limbo.  Parallel lives, both living and dead.  And neither.

KD Halifax

Well Kristina’s visit has come and gone.  It was a great week!  Work has been getting pretty intense and I was in desperate need of some chill time with a good friend.  I booked the days off months ago, but things at work had gotten pretty urgent so I was worried taking the time off would be a problem, but fortunately it wasn’t.  Really cool of everyone at Longtail to make it work.

After work I walked to the hotel next door and caught a shuttle to the airport.  It was great to see Kristina again!  One of the bonuses of making more money than I did at BioWare is getting to see the people back home more often.  I visited Winnipeg when I moved, then again for my Dad’s wedding, and helped pay for Kristina’s trip.  Any time a friend visits I’ll pay half way, figure it’s only fair!  (Next summer I want to visit Edmonton, and/or Vancouver too, depending on whether or not I still have friends living in Vancouver by then).

It was a great week!  We saw Transformers 3, watched a lot of Community, explored downtown and the waterfront, had a LOT of candy, went out for dinner, caught the gay pride parade with Heidi and then had beers, went to Dartmouth to do some shopping, rented a car and drove to Peggy’s Cove and caught the sunset then ate lobster, and more general silliness.  Like I said, it was a great week!

Got a lot of great pics over the week.  Including some great photography, especially at Peggy’s Cove.  I uploaded all the pics to Flickr, and they can be checked out there!  I’ll edit and upload the video to Vimeo soon too, and when I do I’ll post a link here.

Having Kristina here made me realize some things though.  Mainly that I’ve been out here for almost a year now, and yet I still act like I’m only visiting.  Having a friend here to explore the city with made it feel like a whole new city.  I didn’t feel like an outsider in it.  After living a year in Edmonton my social life was really starting to flourish, but I also thought I’d live in Edmonton for a long time, maybe forever if I got the fulltime job at BioWare.  After the second move I’m a bit more cynical about how long I’ll live anywhere, just the nature of the industry I work in.  But that doesn’t mean I should always be an outsider.  So I’ve decided to make a more conscious effort to build a life here.

When I dropped Kristina off at the airport we were both sad the trip was over.  But it was a great time, and she had to get back to her life in Winnipeg and I had to get working on mine here!

The Catalyst

Spent this morning reading through the old blog I kept during my road-trip back in 2008.  I can’t even fathom how much I’ve changed since then, as a result of that trip.

For years I’d felt the need to do something drastic, I felt trapped in my own life.  At first it was a North American month pass for VIA Rails, and eventually it evolved in to a road trip.  I invited my friends to come, and they agreed, but backed out at the last second.  Although at the time it hurt, I decided to go anyway and it ended up being better that way.  I needed to redefine myself, and you can’t do that with anyone watching.

During the weeks leading up to it, everyone including my closest friends and family tried to talk me out of it.  The Dale they knew could not handle something like this, especially alone!  They were just concerned, because it was so unlike me.  It was a big thing to do alone, it was intimidating and risky.  Not what I was known for.  And even though I had my own doubts as well, I stayed determined, and when the time came I got in my car and drove headlong into those doubts.

It’s no exaggeration to say that none of my major accomplishments could have happened without those 2 weeks alone on the road.  During those 2 weeks a seed was planted.  I started to suspect I was capable of much more than I’d originally thought.  During those 2 weeks I saw things I never thought I’d see, did so many things I never could have imagined myself doing, it made me realize all those limitations I’d placed on myself were illusions.

Suddenly I felt restless in my old life.  I knew I wanted more.  I decided to move to Edmonton for a change of pace and to get out of debt.  I never would have seen that as a possibility before the road-trip, but now it was something I had no doubt I was capable of.  Then working in the videogame industry watered that seed, and that suspicion grew into a conviction.  I was capable of so much more than I’d given myself credit for, and life had so much more to offer than I’d let myself see when I lived in doubt.

Reading that blog was a revelation.  In one of the entries before I hit the road, I wrote that I’d wanted this road-trip to be one of the most important things I ever did, a “spiritual odyssey, an existential exodus.”  And that’s exactly what it was.  Now I live in Halifax, I’m in a career I love and I’m climbing it fast, I welcome every new adventure presented to me with excitement.

I had no idea the places that road-trip would lead me, years after I thought it was over.  I end this entry with a quotation from that old blog:

“Well, even though I have enough money to make it to the East Coast, it wouldn’t leave enough time to properly enjoy the cities remaining on my trip, especially Montreal and Toronto.  So it looks like this is as far East as I make it for now.  But I’m sure I’ll make it out there some day!”

Introspection

Introspection, a photo by notme2000 on Flickr.

Wedding Photos

As you can imagine, many photos were taken at my Dad’s wedding.  My brother recently bought a nice digital SLR camera, but given my history with photography I was given that camera for a lot of the night.  I’m no wedding photographer, and it’s been almost 3 years since I really did anything with a camera, but none the less, some of them turned out pretty nice! 

Once I’d collected photos from as many cameras as I could, I adjusted the levels, cropped, bordered, etc, the good ones and made an album online for them.  Anyone interested in seeing wedding photos from my Dad’s wedding in Winnipeg can find 284 of them here!

To view them, click HERE and then just keep tapping the right arrow to scroll through the photos.  It starts with the good photos from the nice camera, and by the end it’s cellphone pics.  Enjoy!

Dad's Wedding

My trip in Winnipeg has been a lot of fun, and I will write a proper entry about it soon. But the main reason I took the time off work, bought the plane tickets and an expensive three-piece suit, and then flew down was for my Dad's wedding!

During my last visit for Xmas my Dad announced to the family that he'd proposed to Andrea, his girlfriend of about 10 years! I can't believe it's been 10 years! I still remember when he first started telling my brother and I he was seeing a new woman. A girl at work had introduced them, that girl was my now-step-sister, Ashley.

Neither of them are religious, and they weren't looking for a major ordeal, so they had their wedding at a very nice restaurant named Bailey's. It was a beautiful wedding, friends and family, and it was a great time. My Dad was beaming all night, I'm so happy for him!

I had a decent role in the wedding, which I wasn't expecting. As the first born son I was at the head table. It was my Dad and Andrea, with me at my Dad's side and Andrea's best friend at hers. I held on to the ring, was part of a small procession including the 4 head table members led by Andrea's Dad on bagpipes. I even signed as a witness! Derek brought his new Digital SLR camera so I took some photos. Using it made me realize I miss photography, though just as a hobby. The photos are on my USB but I won't be able to upload them until I get home in Halifax.

It was a great night, everyone had a blast, and everything went perfectly. We took a limo to and from the wedding. My Dad gave a great speech that blew everyone away, with some great jokes. The food was amazing, I had a steak, and much alcohol was consumed. Family came in from all over the place including my uncle Keith and aunt Sandra and their kids Jordan and Abby.

The next day I went for lunch with my Dad and Andrea before they left for their Honeymoon road trip together. The previous night they'd stayed at one of the nicest hotels in the city, and they'd gotten a complimentary room upgrade to the biggest nicest room in the hotel, with candles and rose pedals spread all over the room. So happy for them. Andrea is great, and I'm glad to have her as a member of the family. Her son Andrew is cool, and now my step-brother. We're going to try to go for drinks before my trip is over.

Toronto Airport

, a photo by notme2000 on Flickr.

I'm on my way! Still have a pit stop in thunder bay then it's off to Winnipeg!

Tattoos

Tattoos, a photo by notme2000 on Flickr.

My tattoos so far... Thinking of getting a new one soon!

Stars

, a photo by notme2000 on Flickr.

A building downtown, pretty neat!

Halifax Instagram Walk

It was +20 today, so I decided to go for a walk.  Once I was walking in the sun, with my headphones in, taking in the beautiful Halifax Sunday afternoon I decided to take some photography using only my iPhone and the popular app Instagram.  It was a great afternoon, and reminded me how beautiful Halifax is.  I moved here right before winter, so this will be my first summer in Halifax, and I’m beginning to realize that’s when it really shines!

Self Portrait

Took a self portrait the other day and think it turned out really well.  Makes me miss photography.  I still need to get new gear, sold my old stuff about a year ago.

An Amazing Adventure

I’ve heard the cathedral bells ring in Old Montreal.  I’ve walked the busy streets of downtown Chicago.  I’ve overlooked Toronto from the CN Tower, felt the mist off the Niagara Falls.  I’ve seen the mountains of BC and the winding hills of Northern Ontario.  I’ve driven the flat plains in between.  I’ve felt the warmth of Canada’s Centennial Flame at the Parliament Building and seen the flames of the Alberta oil fields. I’ve been to Fringe Fest in Edmonton and Busker Fest in Halifax.  I’ve walked the crowded corner of Yonge and Dundas, and stood alone on the rocks of Peggy’s Cove.  I’ve watched the sun rise over the Atlantic and set on the Pacific.

I’ve had a pretty interesting life.  Many people have seen more and done more.  But I appreciate every moment of it, because I never thought I’d have the courage to do any of it.  10 years ago I was borderline agoraphobic, and never expected to leave my hometown of Winnipeg, rarely even my home.  Since then I’ve been all across the continent, mostly on my own.  I’ve led an amazing life and met some amazing people along the way.  And I’m thankful for it.

 

 

  

 

 

 

I’ve seen so much beauty in my life, and I never expected to.  My life has been an amazing adventure and I can’t wait to see what comes next!