Glad you did

Folks, I'm busy with last minute revisions to Monday's Pierini Fitness blogflection so that is all I have to say today.

Visit Pierini Fitness on Monday and you'll be glad you did.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

A free lunch

Yesterday, Democratic leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives released new proposed healthcare legislation that includes a government-run insurance plan and imposes a tax on the wealthiest Americans to help pay for it. This proposal will only cost $894 billion over 10 years according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

“Is that all?” you say.

In reading the details of where the new money will come from to pay for this, you’ll learn that the proposed legislation includes a 5.4 percent surtax on individuals making more than $500,00 and couples making more than $1 million which, supposedly, would generate about $460 billion of new federal government tax receipts.

Before you and me, and other ordinary average citizens, echo sighs of relief that it will be those rich business executives, Hollywood actors and rock stars who will be paying this massive price tag, ask yourself what if it ends of costing more and who will our government tax next when they discover that their proposed wealth tax is not enough.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

The Pierini DIET

Early next week, I will be introducing you to the Pierini DIET - Decrease In Eating Time – a structured approach to eating that focuses on the time you devote to eating, rather than the foods you eat - to help you eat less and fight middle-age fatness. It’s nothing revolutionary because it borrows a fitness endurance training technique called “coaxing” to help you eat less food.

The Pierini DIET Plan works solely on reducing the time you eat rather than what you eat since the time you spend eating determines the amount of food you eat which contributes to excessive eating rather than the foods you choose to eat.

Face it folks, if you are carrying unwanted pounds on your body, it’s because you’re eating too much food, plain and simple. I’ll acknowledge that there are some people suffering from hormonal problems or taking prescription medicines, who gain unwanted bodyweight despite not eating very much food. I’ll be the first to show my empathy for this one percent of the population but for the rest of the world fatsos, who are carrying excessive bodyweight and claiming they hardly eat, I have a message for you: “Liar, liar, pants on fire!!”

The Pierini DIET will help you conquer holiday gluttony during this upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, but you’ll have to want it and be willing to do the hard work.

The Pierini DIET is not intermittent fasting that I’ve written about this past year sharing my experiences with that eating lifestyle. It is, however, a beginning approach to eating less than will prepare you for intermittent fasting success if and when you want to experiment with that eating lifestyle. The research I’ve read, and my own personal experiences, are convincing that eating less food translates to a healthier lifestyle.

Stay tuned for the details as soon I will be introducing the Pierini DIET.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Spending my small change inheritance

The small change tray sitting on top of my filing cabinet at home was getting full so yesterday morning I grabbed a handful from it on my way to work. En route to work, I stopped at the grocery store for a petty purchase, and reached into my pocket and pulled out this handful of change at the grocery checkout counter. While dumping this weighted collection of quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies on the checkout counter, I chuckled and told the grocery checker that I was spending my small change inheritance. She replied she had done the same a day earlier because she was low on funds, and struck gold with a financial windfall of over six dollars from her effort, and that it made her day.

This reminded me of a teenager episode I shared with her about the time I wanted to go bowling with friends and asked my Mom for money to do that. When she said no, I then began a hunt for loose change sitting idle in our home and, a short while later, had enough money to go bowling with my friends and buy a snack afterwards. “Where are you going?” my Mom asked as I exited our home front door to which I replied that I was going bowling with my friends.

The grocery store checker, about my age but perhaps a few years younger, laughed and then began telling me about her youthful experiences doing the same and her similar successes in finding pots of change gold at the end of her change hunting rainbows. Her methods were similar to mine. Her favorite was looking under the cushions of the coach where her Dad sat in the evening watching television. The key to success, she shared, was patience, persistence and regularity of change hunting. I enjoyed sharing my change hunting memory with her and listening to her memories.

It was great early morning chit chat and better than the “good morning, how you doing?” small talk that doesn’t require much social interaction effort. It gave me a free early morning chuckle to start off my day so I’ve decided I’ll be regularly spending my small change inheritance.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

I miss my Gangee

Yesterday was the birthday of my paternal grandmother who was born on October 26, 1900. I was so close to her that, as an Army soldier stationed in the Republic of Korea, my sergeant approved a 30-day emergency leave request in March 1975 for me to fly home and be with her when she was critically ill.

I vividly remember the long 14-hour flight home to California wondering the whole trip how she was doing and whether she was still alive. I also remember the first words I uttered upon arriving of “how is she?” and the answer from my uncle that “she passed away.” I immediately broke into tears and, later that night, cried my guts out in a torrential storm of tears as I tossed and turned in bed all night wanting to believe that it was all a bad dream.

Without a doubt, I was her favorite grandchild; there's always one who has that honor and, with her, it was me. I spent a lot of time visiting her and together we watched her favorite television shows on her black and white television set. Shows like Bonanza, Gunsmoke and other western television series that were very popular at that time along with the Perry Como Show, Ed Sullivan Show and Lawrence Welk Show.

All her grandchildren knew her as “Gangee”, a name I gave her according to my Dad as that was my infant attempt to call her grandma. It was a name that stuck with her and how I knew and called her until the day she died.

Yesterday, on her 109th birthday, I thought of her often and, later than evening, offered my evening prayers for the repose of her soul while reflecting on how much I miss my Gangee.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Another reason to drop the lard

Vanity may be the greatest, yet sublime, reason that many of us choose a life of fitness and health to be lean and mean and capable of fitting in our clothes without looking like a stuffed enchilada. Many heads of former fatsos have swollen with pride upon receiving a compliment about how great they now look after losing a ton of weight.

If vanity is what does it, then so be it because whatever gets the job done is what matters.

A recent news article I stumbled across on the internet late last week provides another motivation to get rid of unwanted pounds and this one has an economic twist. An October 22, 2009 Associated Press news article reported than some ambulance companies will start charging extra for obese patients. It costs ambulance companies more to transport obese patients and they say it’s time for insurance providers, Medicaid and Medicare, or patients themselves to begin paying the added costs which are cutting into their profit margins.

This makes total sense to me. We buy our deli lunch meats, fruits and vegetables, and many other items by the pound and transporting merchandise via truck or rail is also by the pound with 200 pounds costing more than 100 pounds in most cases.

So this proposition gets my vote. I’m all for my 140 lb. friend getting a ride to the hospital at a lower cost than my 180 lb. butt. It’s news that makes sense and for an obese person, it’s another reason to drop the lard.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Another day of rest

Pierini Fitness is closed today so the chief executive blogger can rest his body mind and spirit, but do come back tomorrow for another blogflection about a topic yet to be determined but guaranteed to be creative and original.

No promise just fact, I guarantee it! Today is Sunday and another day of rest.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Busy eating

Last week was hit and misses with my intermittent eating (IF) lifestyle but this week I was back on Monday through Friday. Seems like the colder weather is making me hungrier or at least that’s my official excuse. Maybe it's making me weaker but that I’ll never confess. Today is Saturday so it’s not an IF day as my current plan is to eat this way Monday through Friday.

There’s one change I did make and that is the hours of my IF feeding window – the hours that the kitchen are open for business. My 5-hour feeding window had been from about 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. This had some drawbacks with my late afternoon training causing me to come up short with strength and strength endurance performance because at that training time of day my energy gas tank was near empty and operating on fumes.

So I finally decided to do something about it and, last Monday, changed my IF feeding window start time to 3:00 p.m. I’m still working with a 5-hour window so that means the kitchen is now open for business between 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m.

My mind likes this change and so does my body and gut. While my current training is not centered on chasing heavy weight personal record attempts, I’m sure my body will deliver better performance during the intense and short cardio closer components of my fitness training.

So don’t call me at around 3:00 p.m. on Monday through Friday because I won’t be able to accept your call with a mouth full of food and busy eating.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

The anaerobic conditioning department

Being long overdue for a new fitness toy purchase, I recently invested in a GYMBOSS interval timer and it arrived in the mail on Monday. I’ve known about this fitness gadget for years but never purchased one, preferring instead to rely on my heart rate monitor as my sole cardiovascular training tool. The combination of a recently-discovered dead battery in my heart rate monitor that I resurrected from the bottom of my gym bag last week, plus reading about the GYMBOSS on a couple fitness forum websites I frequent, motivated me to buy one.

I won’t make today’s blogflection long by describing how this interval timer works but instead proceed to share that I put it to immediate use during the cardio closer component of my Monday afternoon gym workout. I set the working interval for 40 seconds and the rest interval for 20 seconds and then proceeded to perform 100 reps of two-handed swings using a 24 kilogram kettlebell. Continuing with my theme of mopping the cardio floor in 5 minutes or less, I completed my 100th rep about 4 minutes and 25 seconds after the first swing. It was hard work, I was breathing hard and my glutes and other members of my posterior chain felt worked.

My next goal is to get a new battery for my heart rate monitor and use it along with my GYMBOSS for some “kick butt” training and to get some updated heart rate readings to see where I am in the anaerobic conditioning department.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

Nonsense is infinite

While talking to a friend the other day about my Pierini Fitness blog, I shared how easy it is for me to compose my daily blogflections. People are amazed when I tell them that my average blogflection takes less than 20 minutes to compose from start to finish. Some take longer such as my recent blogflection about the day I conquered manual labor. Once I get the blogflection topic idea in my head, the composition is relatively easy and swift. I consider my composition swiftness a gift from God.

What I’ve also noticed from over a year of blogging is that my business composition skills have improved. My business correspondence is much more flowing and not as stiff and upright as before, yet just as effective in my humble opinion.

Despite this “it comes easy for me” brag sharing, I do sometimes get momentary panic thoughts of what would happen if one day there were no longer any creative and original blogflection topic ideas floating around in my head; a discovery and realization that my creative writing well has dried up. What would I do and what would all the middle-age men around the world do if their self-appointed ambassador was no longer able to eloquently deliver his daily blogflection homily?

Those momentary panic thoughts always quickly pass with accompanying sighs of relief when I realize that my creativity well will never run dry because, like the road to nowhere, nonsense is infinite.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum