Okay, so what’s changed? I wish I could say a lot. I wish I could say the re-commitment thing was proceeding flawlessly. I wish…I wish…Iwish. Last weeks goals were to begin jounaling again on Weight Watchers and get back to drinking more water throughout the day. The water I did pretty good on but as soon as I set the Weight Watchers goal it completely left my brain I failed to do it. I keep excusing myself with my busy schedule. The problem with that is I will always have busy periods in my life. That can’t be an excuse to slack off. This is a change that is supposed to fit into my life no matter what is going on. I simply need to work harder at achieving my goals.
I still went to the gym twice last week. I even lost a pound. But I had plateaued for two weeks so it has been frustrating. I know I need to start journaling again so I can make sure I am sticking to the plan. I haven’t really strayed from it too much. I feel like I am still keeping the eating in check. I am doing well keeping veggies and fruit in my diet and controlling the portions. I realize I need to be realistic about this whole thing. The pounds aren’t going to disappear over night. I’ve already lost 11 pounds and in 7 weeks that’s pretty darn good. I have to remember there is a bigger goal at the end of the year and not be so focused on just this 10 week program. I am feeling healthier and that was the main objective from the start.
Last week was rough. My show, Uncle Vanya, opened on Thursday night and I was in the theater all week and through that weekend. It’s hard to keep track of everything when you are constantly on the go. I have slipped a little. Not a bunch but my weight loss has plateaued a bit. I’ll get some days off from my show soon and that will help.
In talking to my nutritionist I am so thankful for this program right now. This is the time I definitely would have quit had I not had the program to help me re-focus. The program is making me re-focus my energy. It’s keeping me from sliding all the way. I know many of us won’t ever get the opportunity to participate in a program like this. I know that without it I would have fallen into the same old rhythms and habits. I hope the folks who are reading this blog can at least receive some of the benefits of this opportunity given to me. This is the hard part. This is when it’s time to re-commit and not let past failures color this experience. There are so many reasons to continue this regimen and lifestyle choice I can’t list them all. Hopefully those reasons will be what pulls me through this tough part.
“Lawdy Miss Claudy, the American system instills a psycho-sexual love of discipline in all of us. No sex in the park bushes, no marijuana for Americans, but rather debt slavery and airport cavity searches by direct orders from the Christian police court Yaweh, whose face is now the Department of Homeland Security.”
Oh boy am I tired. My schedule right now is tough. I am at work from 8:30am to 5pm. I rush home for some dinner and a half hour with my wife and son and than I rush out the door for rehearsals. Last weekend I was at the theater all day. Needless to say getting up to work out in the mornings hasbecome more difficult. I am persevering however. Once my schedule levels off I would actually like to add another gym day.
This was the week that the inevitable happened. I’ve lost around 10 pounds. I’m feeling confident in my abilities. So what happens every time? I start to slack off. I stop paying as much attention to what I am eating. Somewhere in my subconscious I want to stop and get off. This time I fought through it. I slipped some. Didn’t really keep up with my points on Weight Watchers, ate less fruits and veggies than I had been. The important thing was that I recognized what was happening and dealt with it. I am getting back on track this week. My schedule doesn’t let up but I will continue to do the best I can given the circumstances.
Thank goodness for big 1/2 pound hamburgers and french fries. Yes I splurged on Friday of week 4. I felt I deserved it and it was just as good as I had hoped. I felt a twinge of guilt afterwards but didn’t let it hang around. That’s part of the process. In order to really change my relationship to food I need to, not only, be more aware of what I eat but also to allow myself to have moments where I enjoy it for it’s own sake. I love good food and that is never going to change. Coming to terms with the fact that I can still occasionally enjoy the “too big” meal has freed me from the guilt cycle. Enjoying a high caloric, yummy burger once in awhile does not mean I have failed in this process. The guilt cycle would normally make me continue the trend of eating poorly. It would tell me I had failed and it didn’t matter anymore what I ate because I wasn’t going to stick with the plan anyway. It was a nice realization.
With the help of my nutritionist I set goals for the week. One of the goals last week was to avoid birthday cake at my son’s second birthday party in as many weeks. (One was for the adults and one for kids. Spoiled, I know.) Well, I ate a piece anyway. Guess what, my nutritionist was happy I ate the cake. Said she never should have let me set that goal in the first place. When we deny our pleasure urges we wind up being miserable and binge eat later. It’s okay to have cake or a hamburger just not all the time or in large quantities.
The workout designed by my trainer, Heather, is also working well. I enjoy it and it keeps me on my toes. She is always adding a new wrinkle to the routine so it never gets stale. Heather is great. I really look forward to our sessions together. Her encouragement is a great help and her sense of humor keeps it light. The real test will be when this is over and I have to motivate myself to get up and go to the gym.
On Tuesday Feb. 10th I climbed back on the scale to find I had lost 10 pounds. I can already feel the difference. My confidence and energy are up and I feel better. My goal was 20 pounds in 10 weeks so I am on track.
So far this has been an invaluable experience and I am proud of my own efforts.
Next week my show opens and things will calm down a little bit. I hope to add a workout to my week once that happens.
“Now, I just want to say this — I value the constructive criticism and the healthy debate that’s taking place around this package, because that’s the essence, the foundation of American democracy. That’s how the founders set it up. They set it up to make big change hard. It wasn’t supposed to be easy. That’s part of the reason why we’ve got such a stable government, is because no one party, no one individual can simply dictate the terms of the debate. I don’t think any of us have cornered the market on wisdom, or that do I believe that good ideas are the province of any party.
But we’re going to have to do it by not thinking about ourselves, not thinking about how does this position me, how am I looking. We’re going to have to just think about how are we delivering for them.”
The Republicans honestly seem lost. They are falling back on the Us v. Them argument. The are employing tactics while Obama unfolds his larger strategy. If there were any doubts that he was going to speak frankly and change the rhetoric they should now be gone.
Who knows if this will work. Not even the economists can agree but the tone coming from the Republicans is the same as it has always been. It’s funny how all of a sudden they are concerned about our ballooning national debt. Where were they the past eight years? They are employing the same old power play tactics they have become comfortable with. I have my doubts about this bill passing. I don’t think the Dems have the votes. It will now be up to the Republicans to find an alternative. I don’t think they have one. They will turn to the same old tax cut ideas they recycle every year. While I believe targeted tax cuts have a place in this bill they are not the only answer. Let’s hope Obama’s efforts at changing the way Washington works take hold and he changes it before it changes him.
It was a confusing week. I had three different scales tell me three different things. I think I am down to 264 from 273 but the scale at my nutritionist said 269. Arghhhh!!! I am staying off the scale! It’s a bit demoralizing. I know I am eating better and I know I am working out more. That is the important thing. I will try to keep my eyes focused on that.
I splurged a little this weekend. It was my son’s 4th birthday and we had a party on Saturday. I really didn’t think I was doing that much splurging until I recorded my intake on Weight Watchers. I used up all my daily points and almost all of my weekly points. That was a good lesson to learn though. It doesn’t take much to slip back into the old ways of eating. Some homemade mac and cheese, some beer and some birthday cake will quickly eat up your intake for the day.
I am tired as well. I am rehearsing at night for a play I am in, working all day while trying to balance my home life and this new diet and exercise regimen. I will definitely have to push through this week. It was already hard getting up early for the gym this morning but I did it and I feel better. I hope that the scale gives me some encouragement on Thursday…oops…I said I was going to stay off the scale. Well, we’ll see.
Watching the trailer I had a hard time pinning down this movie. Was it a Death Wish rip-off? It certainly looked like it could go that way. Wouldn’t that be a bit of a step back for Eastwood? Although a return to Dirty Harry wouldn’t be impossible to believe given Hollywood’s dearth of good, new ideas. I had come to expect more from Clint though. He was the one who blew up the western genre with Unforgiven. He was the one who gave us a quiet film like Million Dollar Baby. Still, it was entirely plausible that yet another Hollywood star was going to sell out and return to his roots.
This in no way implies that I don’t appreciate the Dirty Harry franchise. Nor do I dislike Clint’s earlier westerns. Even the revenge based Hang em High and High Plains Drifter hold up as entertaining fables of the wild west. However, I had come to expect more from Eastwood in his twilight. Needless to say, I had my doubts about Gran Torino. Then I started to hear the word of mouth. It was mostly positive. Clint had done it again they said. After seeing Gran Torino Saturday night I have to agree.
This is, in no way, a great film in every aspect. The script is somewhat stilted. The exposition in the beginning is heavy handed and the actor playing the priest is a non-entity. That, ultimately, serves a disservice to one of Eastwoods themes in the film. Eastwood has touched on religion and it’s place in society in several of his recent films. The weak performance by Christopher Carley as Father Janovich falls flat. A character that should have served as a foil to Eastwoods Walt Kowalski ends up being of little relevance.
That said Gran Torino is as good as any in the Eastwood canon. As he did with Unforgiven Eastwood turned the Dirty Harry persona on it’s head. The one-liners were there. When Kowalski rolls up on some black teenagers who are harrasing his young Hmong neighbor he doesn’t hesitate to give us this gem:
“You ever notice how you come across somebody once in awhile you shouldn’t have fucked with?”
You get the squinty eyes, the gravelly voice. You even get a tobacco spit straight out of The Outlaw Josey Wales. All that’s missing is a “Do you feel lucky punk?” We all know this Clint, right. Sooner or later someone is going to get theirs. Someone is going to die. Even the poster sold this movie a certain way.
I mean look at it. We all know what’s coming at the end, right? We are going to get the obligatory shot of Clint pulling off in this bad ass ride full of weaponry to some bad ass song and he’s going to kill some fools. Right? I even had a moment in the theater while approaching the end of this movie where I wondered to myself what music they might use.
***Be warned there are spoilers ahead. Stop reading if you don’t want to know the end.***
Well I never got that question answered cause the scene never happened. We get to the end and Clint pulls up for the showdown in…his truck. His beat up white truck. Of course I am still gearing myself for the inevitable. Clint walks up to the house of the gang that has been harrasing his neighbor, pulls out the finger gun again and proceeds to mime shooting them all as they look on in disbelief. Clint then puts a cigarette in his mouth and asks for a light. None is offered, of course. At this point Clint, in full on Dirty Harry voice, says “I have a light”. Do you know what I am thinking? Explosives. Yep, that’s right, I thought he was going to blow them up. How stupid is that? How dumb an ending would that have been? And yet there I was hoping these guys would get theirs somehow. Instead, the gang bangers open fire and kill Eastwood’s Walt Kowalski. Revenge is served by sending these punks to jail? What happened to the visceral pleasure of guns blazing? What happened to the old war vet outsmarting his unworthy opponents? What happened to Dirty Harry Callahan?
Clint Eastwood killed him. With Gran Torino Eastwood once again blew up a genre that made him famous. I felt so dumb. I took the bait and he reeled me in. It says something about me I think. But it also says something about the gratuitous violence Hollywood puts out there. I don’t want to get preachy so I won’t. You can all make your own opinions concerning that topic.
Structural flaws aside Eastwood has, indeed, done it again. He has made a wonderful movie about flawed people and hard choices. I hope, with the time he has left, Eastwood continues to make movies that surprise me. He is a true American cinema auteur.
