I write about a lot of different things here – but for years, I wrote about my weight loss journey where I lost 175 pounds in 3 years. It culminated with me doing a triathlon, where I finished halfway through the pack, and ran a ton of 5ks over a few years. I am a runner at heart, but sadly – my body says I should still be a heavyweight wrestler from HS days. Since I did that tri – over 4.5 years later I put back about half of that on.

What is also tough about things like that is you hear the whispers – “oh, he got fat again”. As someone who has moved up and down the scale my entire life, this is on the top of charting comments you get. It can be cruel, it can be unintentionally cruel – but it can also come from a place of love and caring. People can be concerned for your health. But internally, you also know that people haven’t walked in your shoes and do not know the daily struggles that people go through. You don’t know their life stressors, situations, time restrictions – or even health issues. I’ll catch you up quick on the big things that led to weight re-gain

  • Around my lowest at 197, I had just taken off a ton of muscle through running and biking super long distances. My mom was in end stages of pancreatic cancer, and to go bike 45 miles and then run 8 miles was about the only thing I could do to keep myself from going nuts. I did a lot of fasting around this time. I was/am a big proponent of fasting for health, as you learn about the benefits of autophagy. The mistake was doing this in combination of super long distance cardio. I was probably burning 5000-6000 calories most days. I’d disappear hiking for 3-4 hours. I was/am a fitness junkie in my head. At one point previous to this denouement – I was benching 225 3 times at 225. A few months later, at 197, I could not bench 95 pounds once. This was clearly a loss of muscle. I destroyed my fat loss machine for short term weight loss.
  • At this time in my life, I had interviewed with US Cybercom for a direct commission as an officer. Out of thousands of applicants, I was one of 11 interviewed. Sadly, I did not pass this – but they have weight/waist limits. I was in a lot of cut mode to ensure if I made it, I could pass MEPS. Once the door closed on me on this, about 3 years of pushing myself hard stopped in its tracks. I had a lifelong dream of being in the military, but weight had derailed this when younger. When I had learned they changed age requirements – I had this goal as the goal of all goals. This drove me more than most can comprehend. You do not know how people like me are built. I am hard wired for success at any and all costs, and obsess about goal achievement. This was removed in October 2019.
  • The last few weeks of my mother’s life untangled a lot of emotion I had buttoned up, and I was maybe sleeping a few hours a night driving from her house in Boyertown to work in Aberdeen in the middle of the night back home here in York, to her house in Boyertown, etc. While nurses/doctors do some crazy shit with shifts and see this daily, no one can prepare you for the mental taxing that occurs at end of life. I remember clearly stopping at a gas station at 3:00AM on my way to Aberdeen and it snowing, and I bought some non-low carb stuff because I hadn’t eaten in as long as I could remember and needed a pick me up so I didn’t die driving there another 2 hours or so away. 2 weeks after her death, I weighed in at 218, 21 pounds more than just a month earlier. And I really didn’t eat much of anything different. You start to then learn of the hormonal effect of things like cortisol on your body – and how calorie math doesn’t quite work how you think it works in times of stress.
  • At the time, my wife was pregnant with my second child (and her first). She told me that I could not disappear for 3 hour bike rides anymore. Completely understandable. I had tried to keep up with the running, and suddenly I was dealing with severe back pain. Likewise, I had shoulder issues where I needed to go to physical therapy. This was right before COVID. So with the shoulder injury and my back jacked up, and it being Jan/Feb and can’t bike, I sat on the couch. By Feb I went to a ski trip vacation with some friends and my oldest, and I weighed myself at 228 for this trip. I was 31 pounds heavier. And no, I hadn’t changed what I ate, at all.
  • Come March, the world ended with COVID. My wife was 6 months pregnant and I was running an organization of 70-80 people 90 mins away under great daily stresses. Daily, the struggles of trying to staff the contract, and appease every little thing – was a lot.
  • Come June, I’m now at 248. I weighed myself at this time because it was during COVID. None of us were allowed out to even do things like biking, but now my son was born DURING the greatest pandemic in 100 years and he was in the NICU for 10 days. You don’t know at this point if he is going to live. You do not know if COVID would run through the hospital and kill infants. It was a stressful time.
  • Maybe 5-6 times since then, I have tried to run and hurt my back 2 weeks in – to a point where I can barely walk for weeks on end. The pain is ungodly. My family has a history of back problems, but mine usually came about with running.
  • In 4 years since my son was born, I put on about 35 pounds. At times it was 45. At other times it was 25. My weight tends to move. Let’s do calorie math here. 4 years and 35 pounds gained…
    • 35 pounds at 3500 calories = 122,500 excess calories
    • That is 30,625 calories per year, over.
    • That is 588 calories extra per week
    • That is 84 calories extra, per day

So – in 4 years, I have eaten 84 extra calories per day. With not being able to really exercise, like I did. I played a bit of college tennis – and tried to play with my older son. Seems like while I can still serve 100mph, that also rips my back apart. Took my oldest to the driving range. That also rips my back apart.

During the 175 pound loss, I also fell in love with walking in parks and hiking at Rocky Ridge. Below, I’m at about 220 and ready to wreck shit on a 5 mile hard run. I was down to a 34 waist, and when I did hiking, I loved wearing jeans and bundling up.

How about hiking?

I tried to hike in summer – but the bugs were overwhelming. So what is there to do? I walk my dog a decent amount around here, but that doesn’t move the needle for me.

Yard work?
My wife would get on me a lot about the yard. Perhaps rightfully so. She would endlessly talk about how nice the neighbors’ yards looked, and how ours looked like shit. Why?

It boiled down to “opportunity cost”. What do I mean?

  • Would I rather do grad school work to make more money at my job or push that all aside for 5 hours of yard work per week?
  • Would I rather write about stuff to get complex thoughts out of my head and on to paper to make sense of the world and perhaps try and find my next career, or mow the grass?
  • Did I want to study for another cert and make more money, or weed whack?
  • Did I want to fix up a house to make more rents, or mow the grass?
  • Did I want to spend time with my boy snuggled on a couch or blow the grass?
  • Did I want to plan my next career path or mow the grass?
  • Did I want to go bike for 3 hours, or mow the grass?
  • Did I want to spend hours researching investments to make more money or mow the grass

All of this was trying to advance my life in a positive direction – while avoiding maintenance of the most mundane tasks. My wife couldn’t understand why I just couldn’t drop everything to make our yard look nice. Truthfully, I could have a patch of dirt here and not care what anyone ever thought. I’m not wired to care what you think of me. I do. I lead. I make the right decisions for the LONG TERM and with this sacrifice the short term. I make hard decisions for my greatest long term good – at the expense of short term comfort.

I had tried to hire someone years ago to mow, but it wasn’t good enough.

Overall, my life has been a LOT of planning to get where I am now. I was always a student of philosophy – and Kant’s greatest happiness theory was a big one I learned in college at the end. It is part of the Utilitarian school of thought with Bentham and those guys. How it essentially goes is – if you have choices in front of you, the right choice is the one that creates the greatest good LONG term. For instance, if you want to sleep in, you risk being late for your job. With that, it is better to sacrifice extra sleep in order to go to work.

Where my life has gone sideways with the Greatest Good has been diet. What most also don’t realize is that a lot of that is hormonal and rational thought is very difficult to overcome the hormonal triggers. For example, the hunger hormone Ghrelin hits you – you have to fight urges to eat. But this can also be triggered if you are thirsty. Your body might know that if you eat pasta, you get a lot of water – so a hunger hormone is triggered. Often – my weight loss was mostly explained by drinking a lot of water.

So with the guy saying I got fat again – you want to be a better person. But, those types of things then might have you in a state of mind where you start disliking yourself for your choices. You wish that perhaps you didn’t gain the weight back. Maybe if I just skipped more meals. A flood of things like this hit you at once. And, in my case – it may then wish for me to numb the senses. When you wake up the next day, perhaps you are then re-dedicated to the cause, but what runs through your head for a guy like me short term is a lot of things flood you at once. I don’t presume to know how others are hard wired, but for people like me it can be overwhelming internally for a bit.

Which then leads me to my strategy. Most of you know here by now that in my teens, I played in the World Open of chess. I did well! But the point of that game isn’t the horsey and the castle lol. It’s about evaluating strategy, then using tactics to execute.

About a year ago – I started looking for land. Long story short, I eventually found a house 3 hours north of me that needed some work. But it was 8 acres – which has a lot of hiking possibilities. It has a pool, which I did a ton of swimming with for my tri and isn’t terrible with my back. But it’s also in the heart of hiking USA with Watkins Glen 40 mins north and the PA grand Canyon 25 mins south. The house needed work, which is why I got it for so cheap – but I’ve been through a complete rehab with one of my properties, so had experience with the task at hand. Cost overruns suck – but the project was there for the taking.

Big picture is I have known for quite some time that running is probably out for me, forever. But hiking is something I wanted to really re-dedicate myself to, and a big part of getting land was to have something I can hike on and around. So the strategy here seemed to pay off.

With working 8-15 hour days up there, I started to get a bit more fit. Not in the waist so much as in with moving heavy things, walking around a lot, and fixing up stuff. I had spent nearly 4 months this past year with a respiratory issue, and this really took away my cardio levels. So the house was a good fit for me with getting back to fixing up things, but also the leisure portion of it I wanted for a lot of hiking.

Which brings me to yard work.

Most of my life has been about reaching for the next cub scout badge. At this point in my life – there’s no more mountains I need to climb. I got an email a few months back about a Doctorate of Business Administration at Temple. I pondered it for an hour. Is having 2 master’s degrees enough? Do I need anything else? I’m at the apex of my career now, and spending another $150k on education isn’t changing my salary, at all. Do I need more rentals? Do I need….enter whatever you want.

My needs have mostly been met, with a few exceptions. I’m now, at 48, at the stage of my life of filling in some holes – but mostly maintaining that which I have. My homes, my family, my possessions.

I feel that rather than pushing yard work aside for running for 2 hours, that it now seems to make sense to use that yardwork AS the exercise for 2 hours. This past week I was at the bomb shelter (my nickname for the second home) and was working crazy hours. Before I left to go up there, I wanted to mow the grass here, but it was raining for 3 straight days. When I came back, it was super high!! The wife tore into me. Again – perhaps rightfully so. But I wasn’t going to avoid a weekend up there to fix it up to generate rents to just sit around and mow. So I had to make it right.

I mowed – and clumps of grass were everywhere. I then spent roughly 5 hours in the evenings bagging up all of this, using a rake to manually get all of these clippings up. I bagged them, and found a place a half mile I could drop them off. Two hours straight of raking one night, I was feeling an elevated heart rate the entire time. And – when done – for the first time I think ever with yard work, I felt a great sense of accomplishment and pride in it.

Two hours of exercise. Back was a little tight, but not the disc issue. Lawn started to look good. It was at this moment, I felt – “I have enough”. I do not want to seek a job to make 5x more. I love my job. I want to be with them until retirement. I don’t need a bigger house – the one I have is big enough. The other house I have satisfies my doomsday stuff, and will pay for itself with rents. My rentals should be enough. I had considered buying one in Florida, but no. I buy 3 year old pickup trucks now. I wear whatever is in my closet and don’t care about designer shit. My doomsday place has a pool – no need to spend $100k for one here. All of the hiking I ever want is up there.

But now the one thing I think I need to focus on is the plan for weight loss to get back to my 200 pound range. The plan was hiking, but I am now augmenting it with yard work, of all things. I told my wife I plan to spend 30-60 mins a day outside to improve the yard. But think of that workout? Digging, hauling, pushing a mower. I did the 5ks and got the T shirts. I did the Tri. I won titles with tennis. I did the golf leagues. The softball leagues. The chess tournaments. The grad degrees. I have nothing left to prove to anyone – but myself.

Life punched me hard in 2019-2020, and I continued to fight back. Now it’s time to get up. And rake until my heart is content. No music. Just me telling me to continue on. Relentlessly.

Can I get down to 200 again? I don’t know. Honestly. But am I going to eat mostly well for longevity, do some fasting, and try and live the best version of myself? Yes. How am I going to do that? I need to take care of things. My family. My properties. My health. My yard. My career.

We now enter a phase of my life I have never been good at, but need to embrace. Maintaining things. Stop looking ahead to the next mountain. I’m sitting on the peak of the last one, and am now embracing what I see in the valleys below. Victory everywhere – but now I need to stick around for the next 40-50 years and take care of it. It doesn’t mean I cannot have fun once in awhile, but I need to harden up on maintenance. Routine. Discipline. That which I sought with the military – I must be mentally tough to do for myself. I need to embrace this change. I will still write here from time to time – but I think in retirement I want to write books. I want to sit by the fireplace at the other house and read the classics – and take my laptop to the deck and write another chapter.

Books on family, career, education, and investment are now complete. I need to now go back and edit, revise, maintain, and curate them.

It all starts now with a shovel, a mower, a weed whacker, and power tools. I plan on getting my chainsaw going this weekend and have a ton of wood to start splitting.

So what am I looking to do here?

  • For career – I used to love wearing suits out of college. With my current work from home job, I work weird hours, but want to don the suits when traveling and meeting folks. While I bring a lot to the table with my job – my job also has image as part of it, and I’d like to sharpen this up and maintain
  • Family – we spent a lot of time at home during COVID, and with this other house, I want to take my boys up there a lot and do hiking, fishing, playing outside in the woods, and spending a lot of time by camp fires with them
  • Yard – I am never going to have the best yard in the neighborhood, but I’m starting to look at it with a critical eye. It’s a matter of preserving what I have with the home.
  • Houses – I’m starting to see things where they are worn down and could use improvements. Maintain and improve property values. Upgrade where I can afford to, but do not do it with debt.
  • Friendships – I saw a lot this past weekend, and with COVID I became a recluse. I like the idea of getting together more with the guys.
  • Cleanliness – I was always the guy at work with the messy desk. I knew where everything was. I never made my bed. I did bare minimum. I now see this stuff as an opportunity for small gradual improvements. Rome was not built in a day, but the journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Since I’m goal oriented – let’s try for a few of these for 2024.

  • Get second home operating by mid May. Get rents up there and a routine down for maintaining the property. Get pool done by end of May.
  • Spend 30-60 mins a day outside with York home, when here.
  • Walk the dog every day – she loves it, and it may help me burn 100 calories 🙂
  • Continue my path of 2-3 weeks of eating well (low carb, low inflammatory) with a weekend to do what I want in between sprints.
  • Learn the chainsaw and split a few cords of wood by July. Spend significant time in October/November splitting wood up there to build a pile for 2025 and beyond.
  • Get the fence moved back to where it should be – need to do this before do more with that side of the yard.
  • Get the 40 bags of mulch spread to improve the look of the house this week
  • Get a weekly ride of my bike in. Take it with me to the bomb shelter so I can get a trail ride in up there when I visit
  • Start looking into all of the hiking trails on the app. Get my tunes in order so I can veg out for a few hours on a hike
  • Get my sons involved in fishing and try to make outdoors fun for them so they fall in love with it like I did as a kid camping
  • Get some dates with friends at the second home to enjoy nature and relax.