{"id":4702,"date":"2019-06-03T09:54:21","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T07:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4702"},"modified":"2019-06-03T09:54:27","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T07:54:27","slug":"the-return-of-jethroe-the-fitbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=4702","title":{"rendered":"The Return of Jethroe the Fitbit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Welcome back, Jethroe! <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s getting hotter by the minute in old Praha and this means casting aside jeans for some light khakis or linen pants. And so I dug around a drawer that hasn\u2019t been touched since I moved into my new place, and I found a pair. After a trip-up with the cat that almost certainly had to be purposeful, I pulled them on. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, mostly. See, they were tight. Really tight. Oh I could\nbutton them, but children and midgets walking against me would possess the very\nreal danger of being plugged in the eye with my button, which could spring out\nlike artillery. Plus the visual result of the pants on me was something akin to\nan overpacked sausage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My God. I\u2019d gained weight! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like any real man, I ran to my mirror in tears. I removed the infracting pants and turned to the left and the right, admiring (uh, I mean, analyzing) my rear end and my belly. There wasn\u2019t a hugely noticeable difference, maybe a little on the belly and it seemed it was business as usual for my butt, on which some naught kids could land a drone helicopter. Otherwise, it wasn\u2019t terrible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hate scales. Hate. From what I gather, scales are devices that collect dust under a bed or bathroom sink until its owner either feels there is a good or a bad reason to employ it. They pull it out from its sleeping place like it\u2019s the Kraken, step on it, and then, I can only guess, the majority of humanity lets out a curse word so loud that the scale bitterly weeps. It is a device whose sole purpose is to put its owner into a bad mood. And, no less, it is a thing they paid for. Who exactly talked us into actually spending money on this? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why I mostly use pants to gauge my weight losses and gains. If pants are loose and sitting down doesn\u2019t result in the loss of feeling below my waist, then things are OK. If they\u2019re tight and a month ago they weren\u2019t, well then, pants do not lie. And it’s time to act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

And act, I did. I cancelled my day\u2019s appointments, put on a\nmuumuu, laid on the couch, fell into a deep depression, and wept. And then I fell\nasleep. But when I awoke, I was filled with questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I work out five days a week and a good deal of my diet consists\nof vegetables and fruit. I walk up and down steps and a recent doctor\u2019s visit\nhas suggested that my health is quite good. So in an attempt to explain, I\npulled out some oldies but goodies. Winter weight. Too many carbs recently. And\n(my personal favorite) the pants had been sitting in a drawer for a year and\nhad shrunk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For almost three months I have lived in a new wonderful flat\nin Prague 6. If you are a sometimes reader of this blog, then you no doubt have\nnoticed that probably 50% of the last three months\u2019 blogs have been dedicated\nto extolling the joys of new found convenience. My last place was atop one hill\nand at the bottom of another one. It was a 10-15 minute walk to any grocery\nstore. And it was 15 minutes to the metro. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My new place is situated the proverbial stone\u2019s throw to a\ngrocery store. And if I stood at that grocery store and threw another stone, I\u2019d\nhit a supermarket. In my last place, getting a bottle of ketchup involved 30\nminutes of walking, now I stumble across the street in my pajamas and if I\u2019m\ncooking, I leave my stove on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, I can see the entrance to the metro from my\nbedroom window. It\u2019s about a 3 minute walk at most. The tram is about a 5\nminute walk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After I moved flats, a lot of the everyday walking I had\ndone for the last 13 years was cut out of my life. Whether I liked it or not, every\nworkday started with a 15 minute walk, about 2\/3 of a mile. And then there was\nwalking through the train station and a park to connect to the tram. By the\ntime I got to my office in the morning I had already walked almost a mile and a\nhalf. But now I walk about 5 minutes to a tram that brings me directly to the university.\nSometimes I take the metro because that involves a connection and I feel too\nfidgety to spend 45 minutes sitting still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In all other ways I am thrilled with my new living situation.\nBut it\u2019s undoubtedly a partial culprit in the expansion of my ass. I know\nothers who have faced similar problems. A friend who\u2019s a biologist used to work\nin the field most days. He\u2019d have to bundle up in the winter, sweat his ass off\nin the summer, and deal with poison ivy and sore feet. When he got moved from the\nfield to an office, he traded all of that in for a huge beer belly and much\nlarger belts. Same goes for my brother, who has worked in a warehouse for 20\nyears where for many of them he spent most days walking and being active,\nlifting and carrying things. When he got promoted to an office job a few years\nago he was elated, until the thirty-five pound weight gain. He has since moved\nback to the warehouse floor and those thirty-five pounds have disappeared. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though I continuously work out, my incidental walking has\nbeen cut out. Action had to be taken. I dug around boxes and bags from the move\nuntil I found an old friend. My Fitbit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was a heroic aspect to finding old Jethroe. He\u2019s quite\nbeat up. He doesn\u2019t have legs anymore and he\u2019s a bit scratched up. But when I plugged\nhim in and he started charging, I was overcome with the feeling that I was being\njoined by a comrade in a fight in which I was getting my chubby ass handed to\nme.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of Jethroe, I decided that I would reach between 12,500-15,000\nsteps a day. I developed a walking plan which forced steps into my everyday\nlife rather than heading to a park. And so everyday to attain my step goal, instead\nof stepping out of my office and getting on a tram, I will walk for thirty minutes\n(about four tram stops away) before getting on the tram. If I don\u2019t reach my goal\nthen, I will do an hour walk at a park local to my house. On top of four\nworkouts a week, I have added two days of intermittent run-walks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh and if none of that works, I\u2019ll just get another muumuu\nand let those kids land their helicopters on my butt. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back, Jethroe! It\u2019s getting hotter by the minute in old Praha and this means casting aside jeans for some light khakis or linen pants. And so I dug around a drawer that hasn\u2019t been touched since I moved into my new place, and I found a pair. After a trip-up with the cat that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/damiengaleone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/61694073_608145019666736_1473271875286073344_n.jpg?fit=720%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-1dQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4702"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4704,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4702\/revisions\/4704"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}