russiantuba wrote:...share your successes, share your struggles, etc...
Congratulations on the weight loss. Don't for a moment think you can't be large again, though, so don't think of it as a weight-loss diet, but a good-health diet that you'll enjoy for the rest of your life.
Ask me how I know.
In college, I raced bicycles. Nevermind that I was so slow I might as well have been screwed to the pavement, I still put 200-300 miles a week on the bike for several years. I weighed about 200 pounds throughout that time, though I confess I NEVER weighed myself and didn't even own scales. (200 pounds for me is NOT "heavy".) During high-school and several college summers, I stocked groceries--that was my weight-lifting regimen--and I was the one who would be asked to throw around the 90-pound bales of barrel bags (in the days before plastic grocery bags), or moved the 300-pound bales of compressed cardboard boxes out onto the loading dock. I was also the one who could be counted on to buff the entire store every Saturday morning, using a high-horsepower floor buffer of the type that requires strength and skill to avoid breaking things. But I lacked cardiovascular fitness, and this was quite apparent in the Texas A&M PE class for freshmen. So, I started riding the bike and got into it.
Upon graduation, I moved to Austin--a great bike-riding town for those who don't mind a lot of danger. It had the hills, but the roads were not well-designed for mixed traffic and I lost a couple of friends there during those years. So, I stopped riding nearly as much, and soon enough stopped riding at all. I went back to grad school at night, and when that was over, started playing the tuba again. And I steadily inflated. By 1986, I was at 235. After living in San Antonio for a couple of years, I was at 255. I moved to Dallas and started eating expense-account food and traveling all the time, and ended up at 280. In 1994, I had an attainment of knowledge, and the switch flipped in my head. I stopped eating fat, joined a gym and worked out four days a week. That was in October of 1994--my January I was at 240, and by May I was at 210. Somehow, the endurance sport bug bit me and I started riding the bike long miles again, and still was working out in the gym. I got down to about 195, and then started training for an Ironman triathlon, in which I "competed" in 2000. I had moved to Virginia in 1998, and was riding in much bigger and steeper hills, and that plus 12,000 yards of swimming every week pushed me up to 203 at the starting line. (197 by the finish line, but that's what doing an Ironman is like.) But that was too big a goal, and reaching it required unsustainable intensity. I married my wife two months later and struggled after that to maintain my training, with no clear goal left (except that I knew I didn't want to do another Ironman). I was training for the Richmond Marathon the following year, and during my buildup, I was struggling with motivation. The switch turned off during my 20-mile run in the buildup--a month before the marathon. Over the next couple of years, my training regiment dwindled and stopped.
I was 225 in 2004, 235 in 2010 when I took this job, and 272 by 2018, when I had my next attainment of knowledge. That diet wasn't just a low-fat diet, but rather it was a supervised ketogenic diet that I promised to follow for three months of 50 pounds of loss, whichever came first. Both came at the same time, and by June 15 I was at 220. In July, I discovered I could move again, so I started moving. Except for several months that fall when I was recovering from cancer surgery, I started training again and rebuilt several of my bikes from the 90's (I have nearly every bike I've ever owned--11 at the moment). Last year, I was up to 30-mile weeks running, dumbell workouts 3-4 times a week, and bike rides on the weekends. Right before the Christmas food-fest, I was right at 200, and gained 5 eating a lot of childhood-memory food while visiting family in Texas over the holiday. Also, I had pushed the running too hard and had injured myself, and needed to back off a bit. This year, I've been running more like 10-15 miles a week, doing some dumbell workouts and lot of outdoor hard work, and eating well (no travel). I would be working out with weights more consistently if I was traveling--the workout room at a hotel is an easy alternative to sitting in a hotel room. And I would be running more consistently if the weather wasn't so hot and unsettled around here as it has been this year. But despite not being as consistent as I would like, I'm right around 194.
The trick is sustaining the lifestyle in perpetuity. Don't put all your eggs in the running basket, and don't think the running means you don't have to be careful about what you eat. And don't think the weights will keep you from having a heart attack in your later years. The formula is cardio plus weights plus healthy eating. I think about this a lot. I'm 62--I have to keep it off this time. If my motivation reappears only every 20 years, I'll be too old next time.
All that said: I have NOT found any particular correlation between fitness and tuba playing. Obviously, being frail is not the path to successful tuba playing. But lots of people are neither frail nor super-fit. If a person is reasonably fit and healthy, then they may be faced with choosing between instrument face time and workout time. My tuba playing suffered when I was training for the Ironman, simply because too much of my discretionary time was spent training and not enough practicing the tuba. But my discretionary time is perhaps more limited than yours--I have a demanding day job that isn't related to the tuba or to fitness. Everyone has to find the balance.
Rick "struggling with workout consistency these days because of being at home" Denney
