Beautiful sunsets in Carlsbad

Mellow needed another walk so we went west at sunset for a round trip of a little less than 1.5 miles. The fog rolling into a valley below is really beautiful at sunset. Some people see fog as eerie, but to me it looks amazing filling a valley with light up above. The sunset was quite colorful as it nearly always is.

I actually had the thought as I was walking and watching the sunset that you should visit San Diego County if you haven't before. Yes, we have earthquakes and wildfires and mudslides, but it's still worth it. I say that as someone who has experienced some extreme conditions here. I'm used to the earthquakes and have never had a serious problem personally because of one. The last one I remember I woke up and then rolled over and went to sleep after greeting God in passing.

Back in the early 80's my family almost lost part of our house because of flooding in Valley Center and a girl I knew in high school did drown in a flood. Recently, a friend of my wife's had his home burn to the ground. [Matt Lauer took him and his wife out to dinner for their anniversary and bought them some nice clothes, but that's another story.] While we don't have tornados or lava, I guess you can say that nature is not perfectly safe here. But, yes, it's still worth it to live here. On the other hand, if the natural phenomena of this area scare you from living here, that's ok, because we do have a lot of people here. You can still visit and then go home if you like. There are lots of great places to walk. [With a pedometer.]

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If you've seen my entries at Lime.com, you've probably noticed that I mentioned Nonviolent Communication and Marshall Rosenberg. I truly think this method helps us understand in a practical way the underpinnings of our communication better than anything I've encountered before. Click on the title of this post to watch/listen to Marshall Rosenberg on YouTube.

Keep walking even a little

Here it is Saturday, but there has been so much going on that I haven't quite walked a mile and it's almost noon. My honey is going to Florida tomorrow early and we spent a little time in one of our couple rituals this morning and I have assignments still to do to help her on her way. She just took our son to get his ankle checked after last night's soccer game and I'm about to take his two buddies to the movies because this outing was put in motion before he and his mother decided that he should get the ankle checked today rather than Monday.

But the dog really needed a walk, so I did get a little one in. I look forward to Monday when Christine will start "forcing" me to come in a couple times a week. When I was at Toastmasters yesterday I shared about walking and found out that at least a couple more people are walking in earnest in the new year. When you tell other people about what you're doing you can find those who are willing to support you in your goals. Conversely, if you don't share they don't know. So...walk. And tell somebody.

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Click on the title of this post to visit my Toastmasters Club blog - Expressions-Unlimited.blogspot.com.

Oh yeah...walking helps you feel good

I was feeling a little out of it earlier this evening at my sons's soccer game. I had some dental pain and decided to watch the game while walking outside the perimeter fence. In just a little while my mind was off the pain and my son's team was seven and one.

Last year I wrote an article about the negative mood swing possible when you put certain substances in your body.
Click to view my mood article.

Christine Burke on goals

If you've been reading Big Man Walking, you might remember that my two goals are to lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle by December 31, 2008. My first strategy is walking. An expert promised to help me. At my Toastmasters club today two members covered areas I'm really interested in. One spoke on Nonviolence and I will contact her for a future post. Christine Burke, the other speaker, is owner or part owner of two fitness clubs called Fitness Together. Christine spoke about goals and her example had to do with losing weight. I was definitely paying attention. She has a style of goal setting called S.M.A.R.T. goals and I promise to share more about it after talking with her further. I Googled S.M.A.R.T. goals and what I found sounds very close to what Christine shared earlier today. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely. Do you have goals? Are they S.M.A.R.T.?

Whether or not you have goals, you can still walk starting right now.

Whether or not you have a pedometer, you can still walk starting right now.

Whether or not you have the perfect gear, you can still walk starting right now.

If you're already walking, congratulations! If you're not walking yet, what are you waiting for?


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Click on the title of this post to see Christine and her Program Director, Mike Deibler, in one of her Fitness Together locations. You can also click here - FTNorthCounty.com to visit the site of the Fitness Together where I will see Christine on a regular basis starting Monday. I copied the following information about Christine Burke, Fitness Together owner, from one of her websites.

Christine hates exercise, and feels if she can keep up her fitness program, so can you. Christine weighed around 170 pounds at her heaviest, and her cholesterol level was at 240. Unlike her co-workers, Christine prefers to sit still while reading books, watching movies, and playing with digital photos. Despite this, she now maintains her weight under 135, her blood pressure is 110/70, and her last cholesterol reading was 160. Her athletic achievements include being the Slowest Kid on the Swim Team and accumulating many bruises while competing for the UCLA Fencing Team. Christine has a BSEE and MBA from UCLA, and she actually does enjoy roller blading and boogie boarding. She motivates herself to work out by hanging out with the best personal trainers in San Diego.

40 miles in ten days

Forty miles is a good start to the year. Here is just a little bit of trivia because I have played a fair amount of poker in my four and a half decades on this earth. Forty miles is short for the phrase "forty miles of railroad track" which means you have four tens. You hear the phrase "thirty miles" much more often because you make three tens much more often than four tens, which is a very nice hand. So when it's time to show your hand, you turn it over and say, "Forty miles," and the vast majority of the time you hear "very nice hand" in return. Once in a while when you have "forty miles of railroad track" you might hear, "Nice hand, but it's not a winner," because someone has a hand so "big" that it beats four tens.

When you have walked 40 miles in your first ten days of a resolution or on track to a goal, you have a "very nice hand". Now I'm in the middle of my forties and I have 40 miles, a very nice hand, and I would like 40 more and then maybe, 40 more again. Do you have a very nice hand? Would you like 40 more miles? Get a pedometer from wherever you like and get started. Whether it costs $20 delivered or $200 is up to you. Or you can go down to Target or your favorite sports oriented store and get one there. Just do it or something like that. Now. Today. Join me. Join us. OK?

You might have missed it

Sometimes I'm walking and I'm really intent on the exercise. I'm not a speed walker exactly, but my honey sometimes falls behind. You can miss the scenery if you're just walking/exercising, so sometimes I walk slower. If you do "serious" walking part of the time and at other times walk at a more leisurely pace, you can see things you might otherwise miss AND get some serious exercise.

This morning I might have missed the intent of the group walking in my neighborhood. We exchanged hellos and a couple of them laughed at my comment. When I saw my honey and told her of the exchange, she let me know they weren't real estate people, but home owners association inspectors and I made sure to not let Mellow off his leash!

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In the midst of all those running for president and the ever-increasing pace, we might have missed something great. I know I missed his amusing "bored interviewer" commercials. I just found out about these funny Bill Richardson commercials today. You may or may not agree that we've missed something politically, but I believe you'll agree that we missed out on a couple smiles. Click on this post's title to watch Bill Richardson humor on YouTube.

I hope he's walking now

He's stopped running. He's a good guy and he's got a lot of experience, probably like all of you. Now that Bill Richardson is no longer running for president, I hope he's walking. He needs it as much as me. Click here or on the title of this post to read Politico.com about Bill Richardson. I hope whoever wins uses him in our government. Does New Mexico have term limits?

Walking the neighborhood

Another great reason for walking is to slow down a little and notice the world around you. Mellow and I walked a mile or so before breakfast and we noticed a part of the neighborhood we hadn't walked before.

Those of you who walk your dog probably have a lot of the same experiences that we do. We got about half a mile from our home and in the process walked down a hill that was not as easy coming back. Fortunately I remembered to bring our doggie "baggie" because what Mellow was not ready to do when we were 50 feet or so from the nearest convenient receptacle, he was more than happy to do at the bottom of that hill.

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Click on the title of this post to see my new favorite dentist at Azmodent.com in North San Diego County. Michael Tarighati went to Tufts, which I find pretty impressive and my experience so far is that he really, really knows what he's doing. He's even corrected problems from work by previous dentists who will remain nameless and his office is a warm, family friendly place.

The scale and the hospital

This morning I stepped on the scale and it read 123.9. Not pounds - kilos.

One challenge that you might face in being more active is eating more if you're not paying attention. I think that's what I did this week, because last week I weighed 123.2, so i gained .7 kilos. To convert to pounds, multiply by 2.2, so my .7 gain converts to 1.54 pounds. Is it possible that I have built one and a half pounds of extra muscle that I didn't have last week? That's probably not it, though I did walk over 25 miles. So be forewarned, don't eat extra food when you add more exercise.

My health goals/resolutions are to lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 10 pounds of muscle by December 31, 2008. I still have 51 weeks, but now I need to lose 51.54 pounds. Still, that's just a smidgen over 1 pound a week and totally doable.

I'm grateful I can get out and walk. I urge you to reflect on your ability to walk and get out and walk now. Today I found out that my brother went back to the hospital Saturday for 11 hours and then was sent home. He saw a doctor this week who told him to get back in the hospital and Marianne and I visited him there this afternoon. They are not 100% sure what's going on, though they suspect his pancreas is infected in addition to the pancreatitis. He seems in better spirits, but the pain is still there. I have the sense that if the CIA harnessed pancreatitis, they could use it as an "enhanced interrogation" technique. This is not fun stuff and we all make choices that could help us avoid this outcome. You can do what it takes to get healthier. We can do it together. We must.

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Click on the title of this post to see a device we started using at home to stop paying phone bills. We use OOMA to get phone service that actually sounds like a normal phone through the internet. We paid for the main hub, which looks like an answering machine, and a scout device which allows us to have two lines with one phone number. In my opinion, that's a lot better than just having call waiting. We got our last phone bill for December and now we call in the U.S. for free. What a great deal if you still use a non-mobile phone.

Pushing four miles before dinner

This is day seven of my walking new year. Nearly four miles walked and the sun hasn't gone down yet. Tomorrow I look at the scale and no matter the result, I still have 51 more weeks to go in 2008. How did I get started down this path?

I just decided that I really need to make health more of a priority and walking is something 99% of us can do. So, if I can do it, you can do it, too. I sit a lot and I can feel a huge difference because I'm getting up and walking at least a few times a day. Maybe that's my metabolism getting in gear...

I also know that I'm about 90 lbs. heavier than I was when I met my honey, Marianne, in the 80's. I thought of myself as "husky" from a fairly young age. I don't think you could call me slender after about second grade, but that husky label was a disservice. Even wrestling my freshman year in high school I thought of myself that way, but really, that wasn't close to where I'm at now and many people probably thought I was in fine shape. I kept thinking of myself as heavy until I made it really come true.

Our son, Stuart, will be in college in August or September of 2009 and it will be great to be in much better shape by the time he graduates from high school. We've talked about him being an old man and me being an old, old man in our rocking chairs someday and I would like to be there when that happens.

While I was thinking about New Year's resolutions, my brother was going to the hospital late New Year's Eve with pancreatitis and he was there for days. He's only 51, but he was in incredible pain. I know he can do better, but he'll have to restrict his diet and at least walk on a regular basis. No beer for a long time, if ever, if he wants to make sure that pain doesn't come back. I'm almost 45 and I want to be in a lot better shape when I get to 46, let alone 51.

My honey wants me to be around for a long time, too. And, as someone who enjoys public speaking, this journey will give me more to talk about. Last but not least, I do care about people having better lives, so if I can write about this and some of you find it encouraging enough to make positive changes in your lives, I'm doing more of what I'm supposed to do while I'm here.

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Starting with this post, I'll include a link that I find important or interesting "underneath" the title of the post. Take a peek or ignore it - your choice. Click today to find one of the most important designers in the world. William McDonough is helping us design a more living, livable and lasting world. He's also involved with the Make It Right Foundation, which is helping New Orleans build houses the right way for a healthier planet.

Walking with Mellow, talking with Denny

I was out with my dog, Mellow, a few minutes ago and my neighbor, Denny, and I started talking. I urged him as I urge all of you to walk more in 2008 and beyond. He related that he had just committed to a gym and it occurred to him that we all need to walk more. I agree.

I encourage you to walk 40 minutes more each day than you are currently walking. If you believe you can't walk that much, what about 30 minutes? Stretch yourself. I absolutely do not believe that you can't find 20 or 30 or 40 minutes to walk. If you have to, you can do it 10 minutes three or four times a day until you figure out how to schedule in the time to walk. Do it now. Get up and walk outside, or if you must, walk inside. Walk!

You can record how much you walk by visiting Lime.com and registering with them. Visit my walking log by clicking on the title of this post. You'll probably want a pedometer. I bought one last summer and I'm sure you can find one between five and 20 dollars. Mine records my steps and I went out to Palomar college to find out how big my steps are. Actually, I found out that 575 of my steps equals one quarter mile so 2300 is one mile. You can do it. Go!

Feeling good

If you're like me, you may not realize that you aren't feeling as good as you could because you have gotten used to living life with less exercise and that feels normal. I am feeling better than I've felt in a while and I didn't feel bad before. I think I can actually feel circulation improving. I expect I'll sleep better, too. Today is my biggest day of the 2008 and I'm pushing 5 miles.

Some of you may be thinking that 5 miles is a lot, but if you are wearing a pedometer you will probably walk somewhere between one and a half and three miles simply as you move through your day WITHOUT any special time dedicated solely to walking. By the way, if you are walking less than three quarters of a mile a day, you REALLY need to get more exercise.

Now I don't feel bad for sitting through the Charger playoff game in the recliner. I did walk during halftime. Thank you, Tivo, and similar devices! Again, you can click on the title of this post and visit my Lime.com walking update page.