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 - Endorsed - Indifferent - Contested
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| The Nashville Statement
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Name:Daniel
Home: Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
About Me: I used to believe that evolution was reasonable, that homosexuality was genetic, and that people became Christians because they couldn't deal with the 'reality' that this life was all there was. I used to believe, that if there was a heaven - I could get there by being good - and I used to think I was more or less a good person. I was wrong on all counts. One day I finally had my eyes opened and I saw that I was not going to go to heaven, but that I was certainly going to suffer the wrath of God for all my sin. I saw myself as a treasonous rebel at heart - I hated God for creating me just to send me to Hell - and I was wretched beyond my own comprehension. Into this spiritual vacuum Jesus Christ came and he opened my understanding - delivering me from God's wrath into God's grace. I was "saved" as an adult, and now my life is hid in Christ. I am by no means sinless, but by God's grace I am a repenting believer - a born again Christian.
My complete profile...
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Daniel's posts are almost always pastoral and God centered. I appreciate and am challenged by them frequently. He has a great sense of humor as well.
- Marc Heinrich
His posts are either funny or challenging. He is very friendly and nice.
- Rose Cole
[He has] good posts, both the serious like this one, and the humorous like yesterday. [He is] the reason that I have restrained myself from making Canadian jokes in my posts.
- C-Train
This post contains nothing that is of any use to me. What were you thinking? Anyway, it's probably the best I've read all day.
- David Kjos
Daniel, nicely done and much more original than Frank the Turk.
- Jonathan Moorhead
There are some people who are smart, deep, or funny. There are not very many people that are all 3. Daniel is one of those people. His opinion, insight and humor have kept me coming back to his blog since I first visited earlier this year.
- Carla Rolfe
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| The Taming of the Few... |
As a computer programmer, I sit on my bottom for hours on end pushing little tiny buttons all day. On especially frantic days, I may actually burn an additional 20 or 30 calories through my vigorous typing... but the reality is that my job is very sedentary.
Now on the winter solstice in Winnipeg, where I live, we have 8 hours (and five minutes) of daylight, and 16 hours of darkness (less five minutes), which, if you work, means that most of the time when the sun is shining in the winter - I am squirreled away in some windowless place in a big building - and I don't get to see sunlight except on the morning bus ride.
The temperature falls as low as -49°F (without the "wind chill") in Winnipeg in the winter - which is just another way of saying that, for the working man at least - the only outdoor activity in the winter ends up being "frozen star gazing".
Which is all my way of justifying the fact (I suppose), that on average I put on about twenty pounds each winter.
I know, I know... I bought a big old nautilus gym set, put it together in my basement with the intention to start doing something about my exercise deficit - that is, not so much as a year round pursuit - but something to stave off the winter flab. I have been less than motivated in this department. Not that I don't like pumping iron in my basement... well... okay, that's not true - I find it tiresome and boring, and it feels like I am trying to be vain and not simply healthy... yet, as I say, this never seems to pan out for me. My good intentions haven't met up with productive desire yet...
Notwithstanding, in the summer I tend to lose as much from cycling and starving changing my dietary habits, as I gain in the winter. Were it not for this I expect I would be a very squat, plumb fellow.
So it is that I embark upon another season of weight loss. I have decided to do away with the scale altogether, and concentrate on waist measurement at the navel. For men, the measurement at the navel ought to be less than half one's height - that is, for someone who is six foot (72 inches), their waist at the navel should be 36 inches or less (less is better) - anything higher is heart attack country. For myself (a measly 68 inches), my target is something under 34 inches.
Now here is the hard part - an honest measurement. It is easy to take a tape line, and squeeze it around my plumpness so that the number is more pleasing, but that is not going to be a true measure of where I need to be. So about ten days ago I did a baseline measure. Forty two inches.
I have done this the last few years. Last year I started at forty six, and the year before that at forty eight - so forty two isn't as bad as I have been - but let me tell you, it is still an embarrassingly high number. When I graduated high school my waist at the navel was twenty eight inches. I don't expect to see that again until I begin (Lord willing), the "shrivel of the aged"
So I measured again this morning - and I am at forty inches now. I hope to lose an inch a week - so that by July I am down to 31 or 32. I will try to keep up with blogging it, just in case there are others who have similar struggles - perhaps we can encourage one another.Labels: cycling, exercise, weight |
posted by Daniel @
9:17 AM
5 comment(s)
 
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| Monday Weigh In III |
One hundred and eighty four and a half pounds.
After my grandfather passed away on Wednesday, I took Thursday and Friday off, and though my thoughts were on pretty much everything else but what the scale might say on Monday, yet I didn't give into that "what does it matter" mentality that is so characteristic of the flesh. I didn't get much riding in, and I more or less coasted through the last four days, but the number is lower than the last, and that is encouraging.
I mentioned it in the meta of the last Post, but my Opa's funeral is tomorrow afternoon. He has already been cremated, but during the time that we have a service at one of the local funeral homes, some people from the funeral home will be sprinkling his ashes somewhere else. It was timed this way to avoid having to pay the ridiculous rates for renting an urn ($800!)
I thank everyone who prayed for me and my family. Don't think that such prayers are without answer, for God was gracious to me and my family during this time in some unusual ways.Labels: exercise, Monday weigh in |
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posted by Daniel @
6:14 AM
2 comment(s)
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| I Am Not Discouraged. |
The weigh in this morning didn't give me the number I was shooting for, I was hoping for at least 185, but found the scale unwilling to surrender said number. Instead it spat with a smirk, a tentative 186. I say "tentative" because I have one of those electronic scales that takes 20 seconds to determine your weight, and if you step on it immediately after getting off it, you could gain or lose two pounds on the reading. I usually try and take the highest of three separate readings for this reason - to be fairly certain that the number, if exaggerated, is at least exaggerated in the other direction (so as not to give me a false sense of accomplishment).
I suppose I didn't do that last week, and to be fair, its been a while since I played the scale stomping game. So it was with some disappointment this morning that I found myself at 186, 186.5, and 187. The numbers remind me that I can't expect much of a shift on Monday if I have all you can eat pasta on Friday, and make a rich, homemade pudding (using the "caloric nightmare" 35% cream in it (that's 15 50 calories per tablespoon!), and expect to see great numbers on the scale on Monday. Nevertheless, even though I would normally take the higher reading (170), I opted to take the lowest reading today because it's my party and I will take the lowest reading this week if I want to. ;-)
Well, lesson learned, and my resolve has been strengthened. Cycling is great, but it is only going to account for about 1/3 the loss. I just have to say no to my lunch time buddies (they are like secular drinking buddies, except they go out and eat rich foods at lunch instead of drinking) consistently, and guard myself like fort Knox on the weekend.
Either way, my poor showing this week gives our friend Neil some breathing room.Labels: cycling, exercise |
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posted by Daniel @
6:12 AM
3 comment(s)
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| Starting at 189. |
 You may have noticed recently that my cycling widget is back in the top right side hand side bar. I stepped on the scale today to see how much damage the winter did to my midsection, and found myself to be 189 lbs. That would be an ideal weight if I were say, 6' 2" - but being 5' 8" I am about 25 or 30 lbs beyond where I need to be. In 2005 I dropped 37 pounds in the summer, and last summer I dropped around twenty - but these cold winters leave little room for exercise, and I put it all back on as soon as the snow starts to fly. I am hoping to hit that magic 165 this year, but really, it is going to be a fair bit of work. I am aiming for my fifteenth anniversary in August. We shall see if it happens or not. I will keep a running tab of the scale in the cycling widget, not unlike Marc's scale over at Purgatorio.
 I shaved a path in my beard yesterday just because I thought, if I am going to do before and after pics, I should try at least use the before pic for my avatar - and being something of a comic book fan and a patriot, I wanted something decisively Canadian looking - and nothing says Canadian like a weird, "wolverine" beard. The beard itself was short lived however, since my wife is no fan of weird beards and would never suffer me in public with it - so I shaved it off immediately following the "photo-op".
The pics were taken with my palm pilot, so they are not exactly high quality, but they served the purpose. These are my before shots, at 189 pounds. We shall see what a summer of eating less and exercising regularly will do for me. I will take a couple of after shots in August.Labels: avatar, cycling, exercise |
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posted by Daniel @
8:05 AM
13 comment(s)
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