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I would like to thank Holly and Alex for somehow acquiring the flu which led to a bonus afternoon of work for me!  Joy!

The May 24 long weekend is a honoured Canadian tradition where the following generally happens:

– Beer is drank
– Sunburns are acquired
– Bare flesh hits the water somewhere (preferably a lake!)

Gone are the days of Matt’s cottage parties of yore, but hey, we have vegetable gardens to plant!

Friday night Vero whipped up some pizzas and Trish came over to watch 10 Cloverfield Lane which was a fantastic film.  Dan Trachtenberg (of Totally Rad Show and the aborted Y: The Last Man film) makes a fantastic directorial debut here!  Check the film out!

Saturday was spent drooling over an amazing tool that Mike lent me: the Stihl Kombisystem.  It’s basically a motor on the top, and an interchangeable set of tools on the bottom.  For example, he has a whipper snipper, a mini chainsaw and the piece de resistance…the root-tiller.

The morning started off with hearing the neighbourhood having good laughs while I toiled away in the vegetable garden pulling out weeds that had grown over the spring.  I also got to chat with neighbour Brian and his son Sebastian who live across the Palmer River.  It’s hard to meet neighbours on that side as I have to crawl through the woods, but I managed to chat with him and he is a pretty cool guy and I’m sure beers will be shared in the future.

Then it was time to go to town…I let the roto-tiller rip.  Now, last year Vero and I rented a roto-tiller from Home Depot and that thing was a beast.  Her and I had to hold it back or else it would have just gone off on its own!  This Stihl tiller was the cats meow and much easier to manage.  It took a good 30 minutes but it was the easiest 30 minutes I’ve ever had in the garden.  Honestly, there is something to be said for tools that just make backbreaking work easier.  Sure, it leads to a less fit society, but hey, it’s a smarter use of my time to not have to till the soil by shovel!  I give this tool two thumbs up and I am going to be keeping my eyes open for one myself.

The rest of Saturday was spent running around town picking up mulch (on sale at Home Depot for $3.50, sweet!).  For future reference, ten bags in the front would be perfect.  I found a couple of extra bags that the previous owners had left in behind the dog house.  I wouldn’t have noticed these bags if I didn’t chat with the neighbour so I tip my hat to you good sir.  We managed to find a decent crop of veggies this year, but no zucchini or cucumbers were to be found at Ritchies due to the frost a few weeks back.  Vero managed to find them at the Navan garden place the next day so we’re good on that front.  We’re going to try corn again this year but the racoons got it last year which really pissed me off.

My favourite part of having a baby soon is the fact that the car is always packed with luggage that we will need for the hospital.  But as soon as I need to go for a trip for some mulch, I have to unpack the entire car, then repack when it again.  Welcome to fatherhood?

We’re also having some major problems in the front yard near the ditch where a lot of the grass has gone dead.  I tilled that grass up and spread some grass seed/fertilizer with Mike’s spreader (I need to pick up that guy some beer for all the things he lent me!) so we’ll see how that works out after I water it for three weeks.  I have zero knowledge of lawn maintenance and I have to say that every year that the Weed Man calls us, I get very tempted to spend whatever they are asking.  But we made a pact to forget about professional lawn maintenance until the mortgage is paid for.  We will see how we fare on our own!

Martin and me

Sunday we planted the veggies in the garden and then got ready to head to Vero and Martin’s wedding celebration.  They had got married last fall at City Hall, then went and got married down in Cuba, and now they were holding a celebration in their backyard for the people who couldn’t make it to those other events.  It was a great afternoon with plenty of sunshine.  I had a good laugh when I realized that I had worn the exact same outfit as the groom.  I got his permission to keep my hat on!  I have to think that they were probably pretty burn out since they were starting strong at 11am and the party was winding down at 9pm!  That’s a wild day.  But there were good laughs, great munchies and all around a good celebration.  Congrats Vero and Martin!

Monday was a more relaxing day which involved mowing the grass and catching up with some reading.  Mike and Melanie dropped by with Max who looks to be teething right now.  It’s cool to see him up and about and I would say 50% of the time I drop by, he’s managed to hide himself from me.  But hey, that’s life of a 6 month old.  Just laughter, pooping and sleeping.

All in all, a great long weekend.  It’s an interesting time in our lives right now…every day that passes just makes us realize that it’s nearing the end of a chapter of being two adults who just do what they want, when they want.  We’re nearing the end of that adventure and entering a new one!

When you get a phone call at work from your wife and she says that the doctor said that you’re 3 cm dilated, the only thing that shouldn’t be going through your mind at this point is “Huh, I wonder what that means?”

Turns out it just means that even though you’ve been staring at this baby growing inside your wife for the past nine months and not really coming to terms with it…you better get ready boy because they are popping out any day now!

Luckily, I think we are pretty well prepared.  Of course, I’m putting a lot of faith in the nursing and doctors on hand, but that’s what they are there for.  Plus, I have the almighty YouTube in case I need to deliver the baby myself!

Perhaps it’s a little premature to get excited about obtaining my weight goal considering someone may have tampered with the weight scale this morning, but whatever.  It says I achieved it so I’m thinking I achieved it!

This is a personal account of what was going through my head for the past five months while losing weight so that in the future, if I somehow gain that weight back, I can peer into what was going through my head at the time.

The Past – The Grueling Gates of Hell (Jogging)

In the past, I noticed over the years that the amount of weight being pulled by gravity was increasing slowly.  A few pounds here, a few pounds there.  It just crept up.  I was conscious of this creeping up factor and sometimes would get on spurts of diet/physical activity/whatever to curb the gain, but it really never really stood the test of time.

Of course, thoughts of jogging at lunch went through my head and I was actually quite diligent about it.  When I went to Australia a few years back, I made it a point to get out and jog every day at lunch because I knew I needed to build endurance to climb up hills and walk around town all day long.  That was a successful training regimen but two factors were creeping in the back of my head:

• I didn’t lose weight, but I did build endurance.
• I HATE jogging.

The next year I continued the trend of jogging around the Ottawa river during the summer months but according to my fitness tracker, you can definitely see how I would just start off with one giant spurt of ten days, then it descended from there.  The classic fitness regimen for millions of people across the planet…you get an idea in your head, you go for it, then you lose motivation.  This wasn’t helping.  I had also set up the bicycle in the basement during the winter months which was decent but I wasn’t entirely diligent with it as well.  Plus, I never really saw any weight loss.

Now, let me tell you of my ultimate fitness goal – to have a strong heart.  Heart disease runs in the family bloodline so I have always maintained that I could care less about my weight, but I do care about my heart so weight loss is a secondary goal to me, and I will always stand by that.

I do feel I have met that goal consistently over the past years, however, it was time to take the next step.  Secondary goal engage!

The Present – Thoughts from a slightly slimmer, yet even funnier man

Last year, Véro was nice enough to pick me up a Fitbit Charge HR wristband which would keep track of my heartrate.  I thought it would be a useful tool when I was on the bicycle in the basement as I didn’t have a speedometer on it so I had no real sense of how much of a workout my heart was getting while on the bicycle.

I have to say that this Fitbit was the beginning of what has changed my life.  Forget about the money spent on a gym.  Just buy one of these things.  When I first started using it, I was looking into trying to maintain a ‘step’ goal of 10,000 steps a day.  This started me on the right track of getting some consistent fitness into my life.

It wasn’t until Véro and I were expecting our first child that I really started thinking about what kind of father I wanted to be.  Part of the thinking was that I wanted to be a father that could be an example of what this kid may want to be.  Hence, I wanted to show this kid that an active lifestyle isn’t a bad one.

The Present – My thoughts that went into this whole ordeal

I started toying around with the calorie counter on the Fitbit and this opened up a whole new world to me.  I have to say that I am quite stubborn when it comes to advice from any source…sometimes I blatantly disregard it searching for an easier solution.  But sometimes it just takes years for me to really listen and understand concepts.

Calories in, calories out – Case in point, the key to weight loss is creating a calorie deficit.  The calorie counter on the Fitbit is what changed my life.  Once I realized that it was tracking how many calories I was burning in a day (based on my heart rate), I then realized that if I kept track of the food I ate against that, it would show if I was gaining or losing calories in a day.

That unlocked an amazing revelation which has been talked about for ages.  It doesn’t matter what you eat, as long as you create a calorie deficit.  I’m not here to listen to fitness freaks tell me that this is a really bad attitude considering you can’t just eat bacon and beer and be healthy.  I’m here to say that as long as you make sure that you have burned more calories in a day compared to the amount you ingested…it doesn’t matter when it comes to weight loss.  Calories are calories.

That was the key to unlocking my secondary goal – weight loss.  I could still drink beer.  I could still eat chicken wings.  I could still have pizza.  I could still eat all the things I love, as long as I held strong onto the rule that I shouldn’t go over a certain limit during the day.

The food that was affected the most by this was chicken wings.  Freaking chicken wings.  I love those things.  Every time Véro would be away for the evening, I would eat chicken wings.  I ate some chicken wings and that resulted in 1,000 calories put into my body.  Out of a 1,500 a day intake, I was screwed.  So I had to adjust my thinking on chicken wings and the next time I had wings, I had something like a half pound with some rice or something like that.  The last time I ate a pound or two, I had to basically go exercise for another hour to burn that off.  But I started looking to other foods I loved that had a lower calorie count.  Or when I ate pizza, I would have some salad with the pizza and take one less slice.  Do I like it?  Nah…I have to say when it comes to chicken wings and pizza, I like to gorge.  But so be it…some of this can’t be easy.

Find an exercise that you love – Easier said than done, right?  I hate jogging…HATE IT.  I did it for years.  I thought I would turn a corner in my life and start to love it.  That never happened.  You know what I do love though?  Walking!  I walked everywhere when I was a kid.  So enough was enough, I decided to start walking.  It was a liberating experience.  I started taking walks at lunch.  It was great to get outside and move around instead of just sit in another area and play board games (granted, I love my board games!).  Once I got that cadence started, I started taking walks on breaks.  That’s my go-to…squeeze in a fifteen minute walk on a break and a longer one at lunch, and bingo bango, you’re getting some good physical activity which isn’t hard to do.

One of Véro’s requests when becoming pregnant was to buy an elliptical as she wanted to stay in shape but didn’t know how to since she couldn’t jog anymore.  Lo and behold, a $100 later brought the elliptical into our house and we both love it.  I put a 45 minute show on, I start up the elliptical and boom, I’m on my way.  Sure, it’s a struggle some days.  Some days it’s not.  The Fitbit is neat how it knows that I’m on an elliptical vs. walking regularly vs. doing some skydiving.  So after the elliptical, I can see that I burned 300+ calories.  Boom, that was easy.  Some days it isn’t easy.  It’s a struggle.  Some days I get home and I enter all the food I’ve eaten during the day into Fitbit and kind of determine if I need to get on the elliptical today, or if I can let it slide.  Lately I have been letting it slide, but I also notice that I walk to and from a parking spot now since Véro is on maternity leave.  This kills a few more calories.

Weekends are hard to get exercise – Unless I hit the elliptical when I wake up in the morning, there are some tough days where I can’t even squeeze 10,000 steps in which means it’s hard to have some fun on the weekend and down a few brewskies.  So I just suck it up and hit that elliptical up in the morning, unless I predict a day of a lot of walking or working around the house.  But if it’s just a ‘stay in and do nothing much weekend’, I better hit up that elliptical since I’m losing out on those walks at work!

1,500 Calories – At first I was trying to eat a lot less, as well as get a lot of calories burned during the day.  I stumbled up articles that said that a man my age should aim to have 1,500 calories in his body in a given day because that’s what your body needs to eat in order to work efficiently.  What does this really mean?  Well, without 1,500 calories, your body theoretically might think something is wrong and then start working differently and maybe not burn fat as much, or shut down some systems.  I’m sure there is a scientific explanation from some fitness pro that will swoop in on the comments section, but the main point of my realization was to make sure I had a minimum of 1,500 calories in a day.  Some days I wasn’t hitting that so I would make sure I had some crackers at an evening snack.  It’s super weird to think that I was EATING food to lose weight, but I have to say that I did notice a difference once I started consistently having a minimum of 1,500 calories a day.  Pro-tip: a beer throws 200 calories towards that goal if you’re missing it near the end of the night!  Hey, in my head, a calorie is a calorie.

 Stay true to the goal – With the Fitbit, I can see when my calorie intake is higher than the calories I’ve burned through the day.  So it keeps me in check.  There have been a few days where after supper, I realize that I need to get onto the elliptical to bring me back into the ‘green zone’ which means that I’m on track for the goal I’ve set out for the day.  I believe the goal was to have around 500 calories less in a day so I was aiming for that, or to be under that each day.  I have to say that there were a few nights that I go over because of the nature of what I’m doing (read: Meeting Rick at the Pub Italia), but hey, if that only happens once in awhile, don’t knock yourself!  Plus, if the goal is just weight loss with no time limit, then who cares if it slips a little?

Time Limit – I set a time limit of meeting my weight goal by the time the baby was born.  The baby isn’t born yet and here I am, sitting proud.  Achievement!  I’m not sure if I necessarily needed a time limit goal, but I can’t say it hurt.

Treat yourself – One interesting thing that I found kept me motivated is that I started buying lunches at work.  I felt that was a daily treat to myself and was a reward for a job well done each day.  Mentally, it kept me motivated because each day I would go on my walk and think “Oooh…what am I treating myself to lunch today?”

A Pound a week – As my friend Trish put it, it’s not safe to lose more than a pound a week.  I scoffed at that comment, but on the other hand, it was hard to lose more than a pound a week!  So you really need to look at what your goal is and plan out a pound a week.  You want to lose 20 pounds?  That’s going to take you 20 weeks my friend.  Twenty weeks!  Get that through your head.  I did find it gratifying to measure my weight every day and see it go down by a pound around the same time each week.  It’s also neat to see it on a graph over the long run on my Fitbit app.  Some weeks I felt that I wasn’t losing weight as fast as I used to, but statistics don’t lie and there was only one week where I maintained the same amount of weight as the one before.  Once again, I blame that on Cousin Rick visiting and hitting up the Pub Italia!

Rock and Roll is weight reduction – Rock concerts are a crazy exercise.  This explains how I could pound back so many beers at Bluesfest and not really gain any weight after two weeks!

The Future – What the heck am I going to do now?

I have been chatting with Véro about this for the past week since I was approaching my goal.  Now what do I do?

I have been reading about other people who don’t really know what to do when they hit their goal because it’s not like I should just go back to eating chicken wings whenever I feel like it.

So, off the top of my head, here are some things that are roaming through my brain:

• I’ll keep walking at breaks and lunch.
• I might keep working towards getting my body mass index down into ‘the green zone’ considering I’m still in the yellow zone. In order to do that, I still need to work towards some more weight loss.  I might just do it in smaller goals instead of my five month long goal.
• I feel I’ve crossed a goal line and I’m not sure if I should continue onwards, or just take it easy for awhile. With the baby coming, maybe that will introduce a factor of “it’s pretty freaking hard to get enough exercise during the day when you have zero sleep and are stuck at home instead of walking around on lunch hours.”  So perhaps my goal should just be to maintain the weight level while these new things are happening.
• I’ll keep eating the way I do and maybe in the future I’ll start looking into eating healthier. But for the time being, I’ll be keeping an eye on calories more than sodium content.  (Sacrilege, I know!)

This is my historical record of an interesting time in my life and I could care less what fitness experts come in and say about my methods.  At the end of the day, I have a strong heart and I lost some weight.  Those were my goals and I achieved them the way I wanted to do them.

Woo…long post!  Maybe it’s time I just start this blog up full time and make shorter posts!

update:  Yeah, eating chicken wings is not a good form of celebration!  I somehow bounced back four pounds!  Ha ha, ah well, back to the grind!

Before our excellent baby shower put on by Melissa and Jeff, we had a photo shoot with photographer extraordinaire Melissa and her helpful assistant Mike!  Here are some snaps from that shoot.

An oldie but a goodie had to be added!

Back in August, I acquired a Fitbit Charge HR from my lovely wife.  On one hand, I tried my best to stay fairly active knowing that heart disease runs in the family, but on the other hand, I wondered if I was doing enough.

I have to say that I have officially jumped aboard the fitness train in the past six months and it’s all because of this little gadget strapped around my wrist.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about these devices but for the kids of the future reading this blog, it’s basically an overpowered pedometer which also tracks your heart rate.

Lately, my obsessions have been:

• How can I get to my 10,000 steps today?
• Oooh, they added a new feature called ‘Active Minutes’.  What do you mean 10,000 steps isn’t considered active?  Oh, it’s because it defines an active minute by the level of your heart rate.
• Now I’m all about getting active minutes.  I walk fast to and from my office.  I hop on the elliptical every night now.  Anything to get into the active minute zone.
• This past week I’ve been thinking about John and how he has lost weight on a diet.  How can I leverage that thinking into making me more fit?
• Fitbit also asks for you to set a goal for your ideal weight.  I never bothered doing that because I was more concerned about having a healthy heart.  So I started thinking about it and entered that I wanted to lose 20 pounds.  What harm could come of that?
• Now I’m starting to log the food I eat each day and it’s comparing how many calories I have coming in vs. how many are going out.

I have to say that as a device, I know it’s not the most accurate thing in the world (I mean, how does it REALLY know how many calories I’m burning based on my height/weight/gender…it can only be estimates), but I have to say that it’s really interesting how my mind gets shifted into another realm when I start seeing that I’m not maximizing the amount I can be doing.  For example, on Sunday, I wasn’t doing all that much around the house which meant that my ‘calories out’ bar on the bar graph was slowly being taken over by the ‘calories in’ bar graph of food that I was eating during the day.  So what did I do at the end of the day?  Got on the elliptical so I could skyrocket that ‘calorie out’ bar way above the ‘calories in’.  If I wasn’t paying attention to this Fitbit, I probably would have just been on my merry way to sitting down at the tv.

That’s another interesting point to consider…I used to bring my bicycle downstairs in the winter and watch tv while biking.  However, there is the ass factor to consider and that is if you don’t bike all that much, you’re going to be quite sore all the time.  I asked Uncle Gerry how to overcome this and I’m pretty sure he said something nice but underneath it was saying “Suck it up and power through!”  🙂

But the elliptical has become a favourite machine of mine in the house.  I don’t find it too intense but at the same time, if I want it to be intense, I can do so by pedaling backwards, using my arms to push/pull instead of using my feet…it’s neat!  I place it in front of the tv and get to catch up on some shows.  (P.S., I just finished Jessica Jones and I have to say…meh).

So…all this to say that it’s been interesting to see how much I have changed since August past to this point.  Who knows if I will stick with it?  I am notorious for just bailing on fitness after awhile.  But I feel that technology has finally figured out how to make fitness fun for the people who don’t find fitness all that fun.

Vero and I are pretty stoked that Pearl Jam is coming to town in the middle of May.  It’s a few weeks before the due date so I would be taking a chance trying to go to the Quebec City and Toronto show…imagine missing the birth of my own child!

However, we are also wondering if Vero will go into labour during the show due to sheer awesomeness which the kid will be exposed to.  Secretly I hope this is the case…imagine the story to tell that kid!  We’re totally calling the kid Boom if that happens! (named after Pearl Jam keyboardist Boom Gaspar for all those following along!)

In other news, we managed to acquire a crib from Chantal and John which is super appreciated.  We assembled in the living room and lo and behold, it’s too big to go through a doorway into the baby’s room!  Ah well, the room needs to be cleared out to be painted anyhow!

We are also scoping out daycare options as the City of Ottawa suggest we put our names on the waiting list during the second trimester.  I have to say I wasn’t prepared for that to happen so soon so it’s been an interesting few weeks of research.  Special thanks to Carol who helped us understand the nuances of daycare centers vs. home daycare and how licensing works through all of that.  It’s a lot to think about when you try and figure out who should be taking care of your child throughout the day.  At least we managed to figure out that it doesn’t make much sense for one of us to stay home full time until we have three kids (not that we are having three kids, I’m just saying that’s where the break even point breaks).  At one point during my calculations we were freaking out because it showed that we couldn’t even really afford where we lived right now!  Vero pointed out that I had somehow managed to copy and paste our mortgage payment TWICE into the document.  Whew!

It’s a girl, at least according to the old wives tales available to mankind to use to determine what gender their baby will be.

Last night Vero and I looked up a ton of old wives tales in relation to pregnancy and here is how they all fared.

Carrying high vs. carrying low – Boy

Is the heart rate above 140 bpm – girl

Does Vero have a sweet tooth right now?  – Girl

Chinese Birth Chart (which claims 90% accuracy, wow!) – Boy

Picking up a house key from my hand – Boy

Acne – Girl

Ring over stomach – Boy

Morning Sickness – Girl

Smooth Skin – Girl

Nice hair – Boy

Weight distribution – Boy

Warm feet – Girl

Left breast vs. right breast…which is bigger – Girl

Mood – Boy

Dream – Boy

Preference of sleep position – Girl

No headaches – Girl

Baby names – Girl

Verdict:

Girl: 10

Boy: 8

I’m not going to describe the details of all these tests since they are out in the wild if anyone wants to look it up.  Needless to say, they are fun things to try, but come on…the girl vote squeaked by and I’m sure if we just found more tests we could have made the boy vote squeak by!

Later this night, Vero said the baby was kicking again and I got to feel it for the first time in my life.  What can I say about the experience?  It was very freaky.  When I first saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound monitor, I realized there was something growing inside Vero.  But this hit an entirely different level and I must admit it freaked me out a little knowing that there is now physical contact between Vero, the baby and myself.  It’s a cool feeling at the same time.  But now I feel bad for the kid being stuck in that cramped space for another five months (let alone the feeling Vero must be having during all this time as well!)

Continuing the story of the ultrasound after I declared ‘Je suis bander!”, we arrived for the appointment and went into the ultrasound technician’s room.

Not only did our technician live in Vars, but she was also from Smooth Rock Falls!  Small world!

An ultrasound is quite an interesting view of the world…let me tell you, I have a hard time telling what is what.  At one point they were telling us to look at the face and I was pretty sure I saw the face of Skeletor on the screen!  Then I realized I was looking at it completely wrong.

We have decided not to find out the gender of the baby (which has prompted interesting reactions from friends and family ranging from “Good for you!” to “WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!”

So even if there was a penis on the screen, I don’t even think I would be able to tell what it is.  I will tell you that I did see something that looked like those space slugs from Star Trek – The Next Generation where Reginald Barclay is stuck in the transporter, but hey, who am I to know what that space slug actually is supposed to be on an ultrasound?

Our baby was known as the yoga master in that ultrasound appointment because it had their feet up near their ears.  Unfortunately, that meant that the technician couldn’t get some scans that she needed.  She asked that we take a break and move around a bit.

Vero attemped la danse des canard to shake things up and then sang ‘Shake it up baby now’ to get that baby moving.  Alas, that didn’t do much so we were asked to take twenty minutes, drink some juice and move around the hospital for twenty minutes.

Vero went into overdrive and realized that if we wanted to avoid coming back from another appointment, it was time to pull out the ‘Eye of the Tiger’!  She pulled out her best boxing moves and did some shadow boxing in the hallways of Montfort hospital.  Where is the security footage when you need it?

I also convinced her to step outside the hospital for a few minutes so that the shock of -30 degrees might get the baby moving.

Luckily, something worked out right and the baby went into a better position so we could take a better shot!  From what we could tell, everything looked fine, but hey, we aren’t experts.  I suppose we’ll hear from the doctor if anything peculiar has popped up.