Bob Space

As I close the third week of my exercise plan, it has fallen to pieces. Upon reflection:

One, using the work gym really is too inconvenient to my schedule. Treating it like taking medicine is one thing; having it completely demolish my personal rhythms and schedules is another. It may even be interfering with some of the topical prescription drugs I take.

Two, my glee with the goals and benchmarks was misplaced. The only goal I should be attending at the moment is: do exercise engaging the large muscles of the legs and back at least 30 minutes daily to an intensity that elevates my heart rate to 65-80% of maximum. Walking is swell for that, I have plenty of sidewalks in my neighborhood, I have a watch and a heart rate monitor, and a dog who needs exercise for protection. I’m equipped. (And, all credit to my treadmill time, I know now I actually can do that sort of walk.)

So, the revised plan is:

Mornings: Walk daily, with 30-45 minutes in conditioning zone. Do this before shower.

Evenings: Alternate between WiiFit and fundamental strength-building exercises and stretches.

Work proceeds on my calculus refresher/primer. I’ve (re-)discovered MS Word’s “equation editor” function, which should let me make things somewhat cleaner. But I’m going to have to work out how to do a few things with it. Either that or start learning MathML… ouch. That was the Geek Compulsion Bug biting me. And it’s pointing me to the Amaya Web Editor/Browser. I may be about to rewrite this and my logic primer as web documents. (And then my website…) Back later!

My second polysomnograph was last night. I won’t hear the results ’til next week. The process itself went smoothly enough. Got to enjoy watching Good Eats — I only get to watch that once or twice a week, usually. (No, it’s not important enough for me to put on the DVR.)

Polysomnograph? Oh, sorry. Sleep study. I went to the doctor’s office, they wired me up 30-some different ways, connected me to a computer and a CPAP (I brought my own mask, yay), and put me to bed. It was, apart from being entangled in more listening devices than Nixon ever dreamed of, a more or less normal night. Except for the leg-hair-ripping sensor removal in the morning.

Home again, hastily, to wash the glue out of my hair and get back on the rhythm for a regular morning.

I just heard (on Sirius Satellite Radio via Dish Network) a recording of Jerry Goldsmith’s “Main Title” suite from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. There are some very unfamiliar things done in this arrangement, including a very unexpected dynamic shift on a key phrase and a slower tempo for the Ilia’s Theme bridge.

You can find this track on “The Film Music of Jerry Goldsmith, recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by the composer himself (2001). And I am left yet again with the questions about how this piece gets arranged and rearranged. If you know where to listen, it’s very easy to tell apart the original (1979) from the Cincinnati Pops performance on the classic Star Tracks recording (of 1984, VERY hard to differentiate!) , the NextGen theme (1987), the opening to Star Trek VI (1991) … and now this. Which one, do you suppose, is how Goldsmith really wanted it? Or did he just continue to tinker with it to keep it interesting to himself? There may in fact be no “definitive” performance.

So naturally, with my personal primer on logic completed (and I went back and incorporated the syllogism stuff from the philosophy book, too, so I’m VERY happy with my handle on matters), I’ve started doing a personal primer for basic calculus. I didn’t do too badly in calculus in college — first and third quarters I was lazy and rushed, but second quarter I worked hard on and nailed. It’s very nice to go back, hit the fundamental concepts, look at the problems and know/understand how they’re done — without the pressure of having to actually solve the problems.

Of course, I could have just bought a laminated study guide, but what’s the fun in that? Okay, I’ll probably still buy a laminated study guide (and one for physics too) ’cause I love laminated study guides.

Besides, this is what I’ve always done for best comprehension: read, reread, distill, and summarize. And not just for study things — my first comprehensive rewriting job was on my first copy of Star Fleet Battle Manual. (Most recent version of that job over on the Games page.)

My primary refresher text for the calculus project is the Wikibook of Calculus. Which is cute and mostly reliable, if occasionally subject to awful grammar and strange digressions.

I took an undergraduate class in number theory in 1988. It was great fun, and the exposure to formalized mathematical logic did fun and nifty things for my computer programming skills and my ability to solve magazine logic puzzles. Still, every now and then I had pangs about the liberal arts educations I skipped out on — and particularly the logic components usually taught in philosophy courses. I tried using a leftover philosophy text for this, but the book emphasized the traditional syllogism over symbolic logic and I couldn’t make head nor tail of it in a systematic way.

Yesterday I had appointments in the evening, so for fun I took the Lady’s last math textbook for recreational reading. The last chapter was an orientation to calculus, which was a welcome companion to my recordings of “The Me�hanical Universe.” The first chapter was on logic. While all the usual operations were present (“and”, “or”, “if-then”…), there was one new little fact that I hadn’t been exposed to that totally clicked for me and locked down how to use symbolic logic to evaluate an argument. YAY!

So naturally I had to rewrite the chapter into a distilled five-page version that I can use for reference.

Why am I revisiting these college freshman topics? Because I’m going into a teaching role as a 4-H leader (We’ll wrap the employee paperwork in a couple weeks), I want to be really on the ball for the math and physics that relate to model rocketry. And deductive reasoning is the beating heart of all math and physics.

Growing up bright, I got a lot of my personal satisfaction out of, well, being bright: Good test scores, decent grades without working hard, answering any question asked, remembering obscuria (which is even rarer and more silly to know than trivia).

I find I don’t have that need any more. I’ve got a nice job working with other bright people (people who are bright in different ways from me, so we reflect off each other in interesting ways). I don’t have to prove anything to my family, or to the people in the 4-H organization.

On the other hand, I’ve found another way to push that “performance” satisfaction button: exercise.

Last week I started a 10-”week” walking program published by Cooper quite a long time back. (It’s 10 weeks if you hit every goal in sequence once a week; if you miss, you just repeat. So there are 10 weekly goals, but the program is likely to take longer than 10 weeks. Hence the quotes. Hence the digression.) I didn’t harbor any dreams or ambitions of hitting that first goal the first week; I was happy just to get the exercise time in.

Monday I was doing my treadmill time and I glanced down … and realized I was only a minute off the first goal! I wanted to see if I could beat it Wednesday … and I would’ve, except I stopped twice to pick up a dropped Walkman. Still, even with two interruptions, I was only 30 seconds off.

Today I didn’t just meet the goal, I thrashed it and (if I remember right) I’m only 40 seconds off the next goal. Best of all I did it without pushing my heart rate above the “moderate exercise” limit. And it felt really good to know that goal, settle down to the work, and get it (and sooner than expected).

The program will continue to shorten the times for the distance for a few more “weeks”; then it’ll drop the pace back slightly but increase the distance; and then the pace will increase a bit more; and then the distance will reach the final target length of 3 miles a day, 4 days a week, at 4 mph or better walking pace. I’m not losing any weight yet — but that’s the subject of another post. Meanwhile, I’m just pleased to find a new venue where I can challenge myself and improve in quantifiable ways.

EZFudge rules for Fantasyland (as described in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones).

Today Bob is 6’2″, 340 lbs, BMI 43.5, and roughly 40% body fat. He eats maybe 2200 to 2400 calories a day, sometimes quite a bit less.

At 40% fat, Bob has about 190 lbs of lean body mass which consumes calories for general activity, breathing, circulating blood, and so on. (The fat pounds don’t consume substantial energy in storage.) This is called the “basal metabolic rate” or BMR. Bob’s BMR (depending on the formula used to calculate it) is 2400 or 2500 calories. Add about 500 for a day of desk-job activities and his total calorie need is 3000.

If the body gets fewer calories in than it needs to keep the basic tissues, it biochemically panics. It’ll draw a little out of fat stores, maybe consume some of the high-value lean tissue, but then any income in excess of BMR goes straight back into the fat reserve.

So, to lose weight Bob needs to eat a) enough to meet the BMR but b) less than the total calorie need. This will satisfy the body that its basic needs are not threatened and that if Bob is using more calories than he takes in, then it’s okay to make up the difference by depleting the fat storage.

I am exercising more now, of course — that drives up the total calorie need some — another couple hundred a day. But the BMR doesn’t change, and I still need to eat at least that much.

I’ve settled at a 2,600 calorie eating plan. That, plus exercise, equals a calorie deficit that should convert two pounds a week of fat into energy, which is the legendary “best rate” for lasting weight loss.

There’s a rule of thumb that any weight loss will be about 3/4 fat and 1/4 lean mass. If that carries down to my goal weight, then I’ll be right on target with about 185 lbs lean and about 35 lbs fat.

2,600 calories is a LOT more than I’m used to eating! And I need to eat “in balance” with many more vegetables and much less processed grain, simple starches, or fat. And I should eat smaller meals more often, to help the body regulate itself better. But wow, the idea that I really need to eat MORE to LOSE weight … boggling.

Every other month, the Wellness Center at work does a “contest/theme/promotion” on an aspect of health and happiness. The August topic is Reorganization & Rejuvenation. I like reorganization, so I organized the shelf where I keep my wellness and faith books. And I found a hand-written “wish list” of Bible translations I wanted (or had). And of course I got to thinking, since that had been written a couple of years ago.

Some history about me and the Holy Bible. The first one I came in contact with was a King James Version (KJV) in my grandmother’s house. The second was the one my mom kept in her personal library: A battered Gideon bible. When I became a regular church-goer in 1975, she picked up another one (basic KJV) for me — probably embarrassed at the notion of me toting stolen property around as Scripture.

That was about where I stood for almost 20 years. In the 70s and early 80s the “new translation” craze hit the mainstream, stuff like the Living Bible (rewrite of KJV) to all-new translations using the latest research (like the New International Version, NIV). A friend of mine got seriously into amateur bible scholarship with intent to find proof of the folly of the bible. Big “mistake,” as he accepted Christianity as a personal faith within two years. He’d recommended certain translations and study guides to me, but I didn’t heed … I was happy with my KJV, and it wasn’t like I was attending a church anymore.

Skip on to 1992 and a very painful ending to a relationship. Not wanting to go back to my now-feeling-very-empty living space, I toodled around a discount book store and found Zondervan’s NIV Bible. I randomly opened to a passage that had immediate solace for my miserable state. I couldn’t really afford it, but I couldn’t afford to leave it behind. NIV became my preferred translation for quite a while. Yes, the KJV’s Elizabethan-era language will be with us forever, but we’re not Elizabethans any more, and I’m a happier reader when the translation is into my language.

Time, life and scholarship march on, and several interests converged to net me yet another translation. In the early 2000s, I resumed my college education. One of the potential colleges to clear an arts and language requirement was “The Bible as Literature” — its required text was the Oxford Study Bible using the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). I found BeliefNet, took a survey or two, did a bunch of website reading (creeds and mission statements) and settled on the Episcopal Church of the USA as most in synch with our (me and the Lady’s) understanding of God, Jesus, and the role of the church. NRSV seemed to be a favored translation (though the ECUSA approves of many versions as acceptable). So that came into the library.

The power of the Internets converged with Bible scholarship in the development of the NET Bible (New English Translation). Finding that led me into the recent history of the Bible in English, and the pros and cons of assorted versions. That led me to write the list of six translations that I found this morning. Some are reputed to be more “elegant,” others more “literal”, others better at conveying the ideas. All are the Holy Word. And I came to these conclusions:

Two is enough: NET for its accessibility, NRSV for its applicability in a hypothetical future church (ECUSA) context. I had clung to my NIV Student Bible for its emotional link to that troubled time, but it’s not really going to serve me. (And the publisher has an NRSV Student Bible, same additional notes and references, but NSRV scripture. Win-win.)

Last but not least, the tech-geek finally got satisfied: Olive Tree Bible Software gives out the free BibleReader application for many mobile platforms, gives public-domain bible texts, commentaries, and etc. away for it, and sells (at very reasonable prices) bibles and texts which aren’t in the public domain. So I can have both my preferred translations on the Palm, too, for very reasonable prices (about $17 per).

Naturally, the Lady has her own preference. Recently she’s come under the sway of a teacher who prefers the Amplified Bible (basically the 1901 American Standard Version updated in 1965 and 1985 with modern translation notes and alternative translations/interpretations worked into the text flow with a special punctuation/typography method.). So I got her one for her Palm.