My steadfast readers will recall that I've been eating differently, starting back in November 2010.
I've stuck to it and have seen the pounds drop off - 46 lb lost, at my last weigh-in.
In addition to the new eating plan, I've recently added some exercise to my life (yes - every pound I've lost, except for the very last measurement, is due strictly to the change in my diet). Now that summer's finally here I've also decided not to buy bus passes for the next few months, until the weather turns cool. Instead I'll be taking my bicycle to work. Credit goes to our local Bike To Work Day, back on June 24, to get me kick-started in this. So far it's been great - it actually takes me less time than the bus ride takes, and I really enjoy not being bound by schedules, surrounded by smelly people, or stuck in traffic.
I'll also save the $76 monthly bus pass cost (although I do get about $11 of that back at income tax time), over what I expect will be the next three months.
Knowing that I've accomplished so much is a huge boost to my confidence too. .
If you've noticed, on the side of my blog is my Twitter feed. I trust you're all monitoring it ceaselessly and are enjoying the hilarity ensuing therein.
Ahem.
One of the things I've come to love about Twitter is how I can connect with people that I never would have connected with before. Some may argue that a connection of 140 characters is of dubious worth, and indeed many Twitter experiences lack value. But some do, and the ones that do, really do. And I'm not just talking about opportunities for business growth here. At the other end of each tweet is a real person, and many of them are very interesting.
Over the past year, I've built digital friendships with a number of other Winnipegers who are using Twitter for work, like I do. These people are usually representing the face of their company or employer on the various social media channels, also like I do. One of them, Matthew Shepherd, organized a tweetup for March 9. A tweetup is basically a chance for Twitter users to meetup with each other in real life. I wanted to go and have a chance to meet some of these interesting people face to face.
The only problem is, I'm an introvert, and being in a crowd really drains me - especially when it's all strangers. My wife, in God's idea of irony, is a roaring extrovert. This disparity really caused a lot of difficulty early in our relationship ("I want to go out." "I want to stay in!" and back and forth like that), although we've reached a healthier balance now. Now when we go out together, I consider myself lucky just to be able to be out with her (having five kids will do that). Not only do I enjoy her company more than I ever have, but she grounds me when an environment is outside of my comfort zone. She is my rock.
So here's the transforming moment: I went out to a venue I've never been to before (Tavern United), I didn't know a soul there, and my sole source of social strength - my wife - wasn't with me. Talk about taking the forceps to one's comfort zone.
Only twice before in my life have I voluntarily and without a driving reason put myself in a completely foreign situation like that. The first was when I toured with The Challenge Team in the late 1990's, and the second was when I joined Toastmasters. Both of those choices have resulted in amazing life experiences for me, and so I'm confident that good things will come out of this tweetup and the ones to come in the future. .
I'm officially going ahead with it. The results of my poll came back with about 2/3 of votes for the moustache.
By the way, what's up with the weird American spelling of moustache? They spell it m-u-s-t-a-c-h-e, without the "o". We Canadians spell it the proper way, just like harbour, neighbour, colour, and splendour. But on those words, the Yankees dropped the "u." Why the "o" this time? Just trying to mix it up a little?
The Movember initiative is designed to help awareness of prostate cancer, as well as funds for research.
From what I've seen & read though, the need for more research is minimal, as existing studies are very clear. All cancers thrive on sugar, especially refined sugars present in processed foods and drinks. Remove the sugar from your diet, and your risk of cancer plummets. Additionally, your body can start to heal any cancerous growths already present.
The typical Western diet is full of sugar. It's no coincidence that cancer rates have skyrocketed as our diets have changed over the decades. So instead of raising funds for research, I'll be trying to promote awareness in a different way. I'm removing sugar from my diet. And before anyone thinks I'm insensitive towards cancer victims, know that I, like most people, have lost dear friends and family members to this disease. My hope and prayer is that society can grasp the hard lessons out there and end this disease once and for all. I firmly believe that the long term solution to cancer will not be found in drug or chemical treatments, but in lifestyle choices.
I should note, in all fairness, that this change in my diet was my wife's idea and her one condition of me growing the moustache. She also has a vested interest in seeing me lose a few pounds.
It's amazing how many items have sugar in them. If you didn't know, any of the additives on an ingredient list that end in "ose" are refined sugar - dextrose, sucrose, glucose - and it's hidden under other names too. I've really got to have a keen eye to catch them all. It's much easier just to eat nuts, sauce-less meats, lots of vegetables, and hunks of cheese.
The transformative part of this experience for me is the self control it takes to avoid the chocolate bars and chips - especially in a house crammed full of Halloween candy. Right now I'm snacking on almonds as I write this. My wife made me a blueberry smoothie for an after-supper snack, including yogurt, coconut milk, and avocado. Delicious, and without a molecule of refined sugar. The body, I'm told, takes about a week to restructure its digestive processes to burn fats instead of sugar. So far I've doing this for five days (I got a head start with the moustache). I can feel my body craving the other stuff I used to eat, and I'm amazed how easy it has been so far to resist.
Stick around - I'll post more Movember pics, and will give updates from time to time on how the sugar purge is going.
Nov 30 UPDATE: I compiled a video of the photos I took throughout the month:
The sugarless diet is going really well. My wife is incredibly supportive and has kept me well fed with lots of healthy food, and I'm definitely noticing an increase in my energy level. I want to keep eating like this; it tastes better and I don't feel guilty about what I eat. It's more difficult, yes, but ultimately it's more rewarding.
During my time in the adoration chapel last night, the Lord drew me to the Luke 5:36-39.
He told them this parable: "No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, 'The old is better.' "
He challenged me to answer this question: Has my heart grown old? Am I stuck on the old wine?
I run into this concept at work all the time, as I try to explain the concepts of Twitter & blogging to some of my older colleagues who are nearing retirement. Many of them are quite open to this type of change in the world of business, but a handful are the stereotypical crotchety old men who can't see why anybody has to do anything different. It's ironic: when the fax machine first came out, these men were at the forefront of the new technology. Same thing when early computer-based word processing software came out - they jumped right on the technology bandwagon and left their previous generation in the dust in terms of squeezing more hours out of their workday. But an amazing thing happened: they got used to the new things, and before long they weren't new anymore. Suddenly the fax machine is archaic, and being able to increase your font size in MS Word doesn't leave your coworkers gawking in astonishment.
But I see this same trait in myself. When I first learned my MS Excel skills, it was on Excel 97. I have Excel 2007 at home, and it's chock full of new features that weren't around when I cut my teeth on it. Like that new Office Clipboard that lets you copy multiple chunks of data into memory simultaneously and paste them individually at your leisure - it annoys me and I've disabled the feature, because I am used to the copy-and-paste-one-at-a-time method. So I find myself stuck in an old rut when there is a new and more efficient method. I just don't have the desire to learn to use it. Just like a crotchety old man who doesn't give two cents about Twitter.
Similarly, my decision to surrender my life to Christ is not, chronologically speaking, a new thing any more. Naturally, at the moment of my rebirth I was made new, as I Cor. 6:17 says, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" This is what the Lord challenged me with last night. The theme of this entire blog - Be Transformed - is derived from Romans 12:2: "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." Renewing is an active, current verb and implies continuity.
I'm also reminded of Lamentations 3:22-23, which says of the Lord, "His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." If the Lord gives me new mercies every day, then I should be renewed every day. I am learning that my rebirth in Christ was not a single event, but is a lifelong journey. If I stop moving, stop growing, stop receiving his mercies, stop being transformed, then I am stagnant and dying. G.K. Chesterton said, "A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it."
Lord, show me your new mercies tomorrow morning; help me to swim upstream.
And starting tomorrow, I'm going to figure out that multiple clipboard thing in MS Office. .
In the past few months, as I mentioned before, I've been reading a lot of Star Wars novels. Eighteen of them, to be precise. I've got two left in the series I'm currently in, but I've decided to put them on hold for the time being and read a book I just had delivered.
Give God Permission: The Memoirs of Fr. Bob Bedard was published this year, based on the handwritten notes this venerable old priest (my former spiritual director, and the Church's official witness of my marriage vows) had been compiling for the last few years. About a year ago he ran into some health issues, most of which have settled down, but a sad curtain of dementia has remained, shrouding this once bright mind.
Fr. Scott McCraig wrote in the book's introduction, "The signature dry humour and compelling directness of Fr. Bob suffuse the book from beginning to end. More than a few people have found themselves laughing aloud at times. But it also deals with serious matters.... It is a very personal reflection on his life." Buy it here.
I'm wrenching myself away from my fiction obsession to take in the truths and lessons contained in this book, and to reminisce on the life of a dear old friend who shall enrich Heaven with his worship there when the Lord finally calls him home. .
My initial concept of these 100 Transformations posts was to do three per week. Lately this hasn't been happening. I started this initiative at the beginning of summer, when the Lord was granting me a season of rest. Now that the chaos of the school year has resumed, my free time has diminished.
I am therefore changing the rules. I will still aim to do 100 posts on the theme, but I will take my sweet time to do it. My blog, my rules, my prerogative. I refuse to feel bad about it.
That permission to change my own rules is almost worthy of a Transformations post itself... .
At Mass this past Sunday, I had a moment of reflection thrust upon me while watching the faithful gather. As the worship leader for our service, I stand up front, and thus have a great view of the people filing in.
I saw one couple enter, good friends of ours, who this last week have been dealing with the anxiety of a sudden ectopic pregnancy. They're scared, and torn over the moral dilemma of how to resolve the danger to the mother's life without overtly taking the life of the little one. As they took their seats I could see evidence in their faces of a morning full of tears already, and their reservoir of sorrow was still brimming. He wrapped his arm around her, and she held close to him. They were for each other a pillar of strength, yet themselves broken and leaning on the other and the Lord for support.
My heart breaks as I ponder them even now.
A moment later, another couple, also good friends, entered the church. This last week he had proposed marriage to her, setting up the evening with a repeat of their very first date, followed by some time praying together in the Perpetual Adoration chapel, and topped off with a romantic proposal in the courtyard of the church with the moon and stars gazing at them through the trees. She said yes. Theirs will be a good marriage.
They were positively glowing with the aura that only newly deepened chaste love can emit.
These two couples sat not far from each other, a stark contrast in extreme emotions. Yet both had faithfully come before the Lord to share with him their deepest longings; to open to him their hearts. After Mass as I was putting away my sound equipment I noticed these two couples talking to each other. I wondered who was empathizing with whom in that exchange. It also got me thinking: a mere two years ago, the first couple was engaged; swimming in the delight of new love full of unimagined possibilities. The second couple wasn't even a going concern two years ago, as the man had just gone through an unpleasant breakup and was quite despondent, wondering if he would ever find love.
I saw demonstrated here the power of the vows of marriage in their fullness, covering as wide a spectrum of the human heart as is possible. Through both spine-tingling joy and soul-crushing sorrow, the promise of each other, through the model of Christ and his Church, was the ideal to which both couples clung.
It was humbling to observe, and left me with a stern reminder not to take my wife and children for granted. .
Yesterday during supper I put on a bit of a show for my kids. We've been watching a lot of Jerry Lewis films as a family lately, and one of Lewis' shticks revolves around having difficulty eating. So I hammed it up a bit, demonstrating difficulty getting one particular piece of roasted zucchini into my mouth.
Even little Benny, at 18 months, found it hilarious and was positively enthralled - just check out the look on his face. On many levels I don't fully comprehend just how much my kids look up to me. Although it started out as an attempt at being funny for my family, this turned into an eye-opener for me.
I did it! The project that I've had in my head for the past seven years is finally done.
It's a drawer for the computer desk I made seven years ago. It doesn't slide too well but I think once the nuts grind against the wood long enough to carve grooves for themselves after repeated openings and closings, it will be much better.
Yes, yes, I know, it's far from perfect and I could get one that slides like butter off a bald monkey at any store, but there's a certain satisfaction that comes from having made something with my own two hands. .
This morning I somehow cobbled together enough self-discipline to drag myself out of bed early and do my first ever bout of burst training. It's a long road ahead, I can tell you that for sure, but at least I've put a foot on it.
My wife, as most of my readers will know by now, iswas pregnant with our sixth child (see that link before offering your congratulations).
She doesn't relish being countercultural with quite the same passion as I do, and dreading the reaction of those around us who don't understand our lifestyle choice and the priority we put on following the Church's teaching on life issues, she has asked me to keep this news quiet for a bit. Even with five children, we often draw stares or comments like:
"It's called a CONDOM."
"Time to tie those tubes!"
"Are you done?"
"Was it planned?"
I can't even begin to convey how offensive I find such remarks. They a complete invasion of our privacy and quite rude. No stranger in the supermarket would ever dare say to a family with no children, "Are you infertile, or just selfish?" So where do they get off making such comments about families with lots of kids?
At any rate, my wife and I had a bit of a dispute over how appropriate it was to hide our news from the people in our lives who don't 'get' us, and I agreed to postpone our formal announcement until a time of her choosing. This was a difficult decision for me, and I made it by sheer act of will for the benefit of our marital harmony. That act of will is the growth moment which I could not share before. .
At my work, the owners have set up a lending library. The original idea, which unfortunately has lost some steam lately, was that employees would be required to read one book per year which would help them find deeper wells of inner motivation. It's a great concept, but in my two+ years there, I've only been assigned one book - The Fred Factor. I thoroughly enjoyed it and there are a lot of great gems inside it.
For some time I've been petitioning the president to add Lior Arussy's Excellence Every Day to the library. This book was a great help to me as I tried to recover the part of my soul that I lost as I began to succumb to the pressures of mediocrity before I resigned from my last job. It would fit in quite well with some of the other well known titles and authors on those shelves right now, including John C. Maxwell's Developing the Leader Within You and Max Lucado's Facing Your Giants. I've just finished the former and have just started the latter.
Most inspiring was this bit from chapter three. Lucado is describing how Israel's King David, before he became King, was fleeing for his life from King Saul and found strength by praising God. Lucado extrapolates on this effect:
Wander freely and daily through the gallery of God's goodness. Catalog his kindnesses. Everything from sunsets to salvation - look at what you have. Your Saul took much, but Christ gave you more!
This message resounds with me very profoundly. Lately my prayers have been along the lines of complaining how busy I am. With my recent time in our adoration chapel, I made more of an effort to offer up prayers of praise. I was led to Psalm 94, and God put it into song in my heart, which I hope to introduce to the 12:00 noon Sunday Mass in a few weeks. This experience of praise was much more enriching than a simple gripe session, and I consider it a lesson learned. .
I admit, I'm a little behind in my announced thrice-weekly schedule of these Transformations posts. I don't feel bad about it, however, and I don't intend to play the make-it-up-later game. I'm just taking one day at a time.
That being said, I know that my subconscious has reason to delay posting this particular item. It knows that if nobody knows about this next step I'm taking, nobody will be the wiser if I give up on it. So here goes: I've finally decided to tackle the fitness dragon with a little more vigour. The other day I was doing up the button on my shorts after using the washroom when it popped off, pinballed around the room, and I'm pretty sure landed in the cyclone of swirling waste which was on its way out of my home (i.e. in the toilet).
I liked those shorts. It's no big deal to sew on a new button, but there's a reason it came off in the first place.
I've asked for a friend who has some experience with exercise to help me design a workout program. Once I've got a better understanding of it, I'll post again with some more details. .
I surprised myself when I found out that this will be my 501st post on this blog. I don't know where the self-doubt I have about my ability to write a book comes from, but it's clearly ridiculous. All I have to do is write a book where every chapter is about something different and the publisher lets me take five years to write it.
Anyway, on to today's transformation event. I bit the bullet and tackled the workbench in my garage. It was a huge chaotic mess. Considering that I have about 30 labeled drawers in the garage for my various tools and hobby supplies, I've been feeling rather bad about how cluttered the workbench itself had become, especially because I consider myself to be an organized individual. To those women out there who would shriek in dread at such a tidying project, you must understand that for a man, time alone in the garage is energizing and relaxing. It's almost a "nothing box" activity.
With all the responsibilities and duties that stream my way each day, I often find it difficult to take some truly relaxing time for myself. This statement may surprise my wife, but it's true. So when I made the decision to tackle the mess and informed my wife I'd be in the garage, it marked something new and different for me. I've observed that the "fun" label I'm assigning to this post is the least used of my transformation labels, especially when it's about something that I'm doing in happy solitude.
Now I have a nice, clean workbench, and part of my soul feels more rested.
To celebrate our 11th anniversary this past weekend, my wife and I secured overnight babysitting and shot off to St. Malo Provincial Park for a 20 hour vacation. We set up a tent, swam in the lake, cooked our food over an open fire (note to self: bacon grease combusts easily on open fire), and cycled to the nearby Farmer's Market to peruse their wares.
We woke to rain at 5:00 AM on Saturday, but after ensuring the tent was not leaking, fell asleep until the summer heat woke us up again at 9:00. Campsites are so much easier to set up and tear down when you're not wondering where your three year old is!
Overall, we had a positively splendid time and have pledged to do this once a year. .
This week I did something that I never thought I would do.
My 11th wedding anniversary is tomorrow (woot!). I couldn't think of anything steel to give to my wife, and I had no other leads. I wandered into Michael's the other day, looking for inspiration, and suddenly it hit me.
A scrapbook!
My wife is an avid scrapbooker, and she has always tried to get me involved in it, saying that it's not just a thing for women. I've always told her that because I'm so gifted in the arts and crafts area that if I started scrapbooking I would soon intimidate her, and it's for this very reason that I don't intend to keep scrapbooking (heh). But I wanted to do it this one time, out of pure love. I picked up a medium sized book with 10 pages in it and a few supplies.
I told her that I was working on her gift and that she couldn't bother me in the basement for the past few nights. The first night - Tuesday - I spent scanning through old photos from when we met, our courtship, our wedding, the children we've brought into the world, and life in general. I picked out 34 photos which touched on a little bit of everything and mapped out which ones would go on which pages.
The next day - Wednesday - I took the original photo prints and a USB stick with some digital pictures on it and had them reprinted during my lunch break. On the way home on the bus, I wrote a couple of poems to put in the book on the first and last pages. Once the kids were in bed I sequestered myself in the basement again and cropped photos, stuck them on the pages, and added a few thematic flourishes.
Too anxious to wait for our formal anniversary (it's not like sex, where you have to wait for the wedding date), I presented it to her last night - Thursday - and was shocked to discover that she had no idea that I was working on a scrapbook. She thought I had been doing something with steel. But she loved it.
It was a profound experience for me, as I was amazed at how my love and affection for her grew as I immersed myself into our memories. .
This weekend my parents and my nephew visited us. They picked a brutally hot and humid weekend to come, but overall we had a great time.
You idiot! You shot my hand off!
My nephew Dustin is a neat kid. His dad - my brother Ben - and I aren't cut from the same cloth, but in many ways Dustin's acorn fell closer to my tree than to Ben's. One of our common interests is a passion for setting up forts from scrap blocks of wood, filling them with little plastic army men, and shooting them with Nerf dart guns. OK, this may be more of a thing I'm into, but Dustin certainly enjoyed it while he was here. Even if he couldn't beat me.
Dustin lives on a farm and hasn't a chance lately to resupply his stock of army men (there are many reasons why a boy's supply of them can dwindle). We had some time on Saturday, so I took him to Toys R Us to see what they had in stock.
Dustin was my very first nephew; the trailblazer. I remember when he was just a wee babe, and I'm amazed at how he's grown up so fast. I rarely get the chance to see him nowadays - once a year, at most. So it was a neat opportunity to spend some time shopping with him, and to get to know each other just a little bit better. It's a reminder that there's more to my family than just my family. .
This may shock some of you, and I'd wager that the split is 50/50 between shocked that I've never had a beer, and shock that I had a beer.
It was a Moosehead Light Lime (check out that website; it's very creative!), at a friend's house for a Canada Day / birthday get-together. The temperature was in the mid 30's, it was smotheringly humid, and there was no wind.
This news may sound unusual for a transformations moment, as typically a man trying to improve himself would be moving away from alcohol. But mine is a special case. Raised as a tea-totaling Protestant, my first sip of alcohol was a glass of champagne at a wedding reception I attended shortly after deciding to become Catholic. I was 23. I believe I had a bit of wine at Christmas that same year. Then someone introduced me to Bailey's and the other creamy liqueurs. I would occasionally try some beer, but could never quite develop a taste for it. This may stem from my taxi-driving days, when I grew to identify the smell of beer with... less pleasant odours.
So today, finishing my first ever bottle of beer, marks a milestone for me.
But don't worry Mom - I won't make a habit of it. .
Tonight I had the honour of presenting some of the awards at our school's Grade 8 Awards Night. As the board chair I'm somewhat expected to attend, and it's my pleasure to be there. It's delightful to see how far the kids at Holy Cross School are progressing, and the deep friendships they've made over the past 9 years in the school. The board role is necessarily a hands-off one, and the rare moments like this when I get a glimpse of the camaraderie between the staff and students make the nitty gritty behind the scenes work very much worthwhile.
Watching these early teens walk stiffly up to the stage to receive their awards, arms pressed to their sides, and wearing fancy clothes that don't always fit their growing bodies properly, made me wonder if I was the same kind of awkward little 14 year old.
Looking back through my yearbook from then... apparently I was.
But my Grade 8 year was an unpleasant one. My social awkwardness began to reach a crescendo and even my classmates who had never had an issue with me before that year began to pick on me. I had no friends; none at all. My best friend had moved away after Grade 6. At recess I would sit under a tree and read my Bible, which evoked further teasing. It was after that year that my parents pulled the plug on public education and sent me to a private Christian school where I made friends again.
This is difficult to write about, and me facing this in this way is my transforming moment for today. Seeing all those kids at the school today made me realize what I had missed. I found myself scanning the class groups for the lonely kid - the one nobody acknowledged - and couldn't spot any. I thank God that in Holy Cross School, the friendship seems to have penetrated all levels, and I hope and pray that as these kids move on, they will continue to know true friendship and true Divine intimacy. .
