Recently I had the opportunity to celebrate my forty-fourth birthday, which seemed appropriate, since I am, in fact, forty-four. As is my custom whenever it falls on a weekday, I took the day off from work.

The day I turned seventeen, I was working at the local Holiday Inn as a bell-boy, where I had served for more than two years. Mostly, I performed the duties of a front desk clerk, but the crafty management paid me $3.25/hour as a bell-boy since I was so young (and looked even younger). At about 9:00 in the evening of my birthday, I found myself dissatisfied with the prospect of working on such a momentous day, and I resolved, forthwith, to resign. Half an hour later, I was unemployed, with more than $2000 in savings and my evenings suddenly free. Four months later, I was penniless, and forced to seek work as a fishmonger’s assistant. But that is another story.

My actual former workplace, no longer a Holiday Inn.

Since then, whenever I enjoy my job, I’m careful to take my birthday off, for fear that history may repeat itself. It would be a shame if I impulsively decided to quit, as a result of being forced to work on my birthday. And so, I found myself home on a Thursday, with the whole day stretching before me, full of promise and opportunity.

In July, we took up geocaching as a hobby, and continue to derive much enjoyment from this pastime. As a family, we’ve located more than 50 caches, and find ourselves ranging further and further afield for new challenges. On my birthday, while Kathy drove Joshua to his JNROTC class, I mobilized the rest of the kids to pack lunches. We piled into the van and got an early (11 am) start, once they returned.

The kids enjoy taking (and leaving) trinkets in some of the larger caches.

I loaded a chain of geocache coordinates into our GPS receiver, each 10-20 minutes apart, with the furthest about 90 minutes from our home, among the foothills of Mount Rainier. Bypassing the first one (there was no easy place to stop on the highway as we hurtled past), we came to the vicinity of the second cache, which we eventually located. It was concealed in a narrow crevice between an electrical utility box and the pole to which it was attached.

“Careful, kids, that’s 220 volts,” I cautioned, standing well back.

Geocaching is not a particularly dangerous sport, but it does take you into some strange places. Joshua found the cache (a micro, about the size of a dry-erase marker) and noted the additional hazard of a bee’s nest, just above the cache.

No bees were harmed in the filming of this adventure.

After signing the log, I graciously allowed Joshua to replace it (usually a much-sought-after privilege), but for some reason he was less-than-excited:

“Thanks, Dad,” he sourly grumbled. “How great that I get to be the one stung by high-voltage bees.”

There’s just no pleasing some people.

Sarah found this particularly-difficult cache hidden among the trestles of the bridge.

Eventually we found seven caches and discovered many scenic locales, including:

• a geocache container disguised as an electrical transformer
• an elaborate porta-potty enclosure
• a railroad bridge with a bunch of dead salmon
• a deep river gorge, spanned by a one-lane bridge
• a monument for miners, killed in a series of mine disasters
• an abandoned stone building, nearly overrun by forest growth

Sarah and Rachel didn’t seem to appreciate the odor or lack of toilet paper.

This bridge shook especially hard when a logging truck passed by …

It was a delightful day; warm, sunny, and almost cloudless. I spent it just the way I wanted, with the people I love best, laughing and exploring and enjoying each other. With a birthday like that, I can hardly wait to turn 45!

David sure does love his Mama.

Kathy and I have been married for 17.5 years, now, happier every year.

– Tim

Today I weighed, to see what progress I’ve made on my new calorie-counting (and supposedly weight-loss) plan.

In the past, we’ve owned bathroom scales that were a bit mercurial — you could experience significant weight loss (or gain) in the matter of minutes, as the scale readings varied wildly. In fact, several years ago Kathy and I were dieting, and the scale told us both we gained. Being mature, financially responsible adults, we tossed that scale in the garbage and rushed out to find a more ‘reliable’ device.

This morning, after at least four attempts, I could only squeeze a 0.2 pound loss out of that cursed scale! Maybe there’s something wrong with the batteries?

It could be worse, they could be throwing me in the trash like these tomato plants.

I was pretty disappointed, since I’ve been counting my calories like a miser, these past two weeks. I estimate I’m eating at least a thousand calories a day less than I was eating before, and so I hoped for a 2-pound loss. No such luck.

I came downstairs and loudly bemoaned my lot to anyone who would listen. Kathy was walking out the door, but tried to console me:

“I’ve got to go to my meeting, but when I come back, I’ll encourage you,” she promised, sweetly.

Petulantly, I whined, “I don’t need to be encouraged, I’m quitting!”

There was much giggling among my children, especially Joshua. I guess they know that I’m more bark than bite — sometimes a fella just likes to complain. They used to say this when I was in the Army: “If soldiers aren’t complaining, they’re not happy.” Joshua rushed off to add that quote to his Tome of Ridiculous Sayings, in which I figure prominently.

“Let me just write that down, Daddy.”

It seems that, before I started this plan, my metabolism was going all-out, like a roaring furnace. I picture sweaty, soot-begrimed workmen in a gloomy factory, shouting over the sound of the flames and conveyor belts:

“Hey, Joe! I just got word from Corporate that there’s another load of high-calorie junk food coming down! Doesn’t this guy ever stop eating?”

“I dunno, Frank — he must think he’s an Olympic Athlete or something. Maybe the boys down in Waste Products could pick up the slack?”

“Those weenies? They’ll start whining about bowel obstruction or something — they don’t care about us, here, and they don’t care about the Company. I guess we better run three shifts again — do you think Sam can take the night shift?”

“I dunno Joe, those guys on the third shift are pretty rough. Hey, Bob, fire up furnace 14, will ya, and tell the lads everyone works an extra two hours, unpaid overtime!”

Now that I’m moderating my caloric consumption, the metabolic workers have apparently unionized, laid off a third of the work force, or taken some of the furnaces off-line for long-needed maintenance. I’m eating so many less calories, but not losing weight — it is enough to make a guy discouraged.

In the face of this lack of weight loss, I decided to revisit the calorie calculations. Sure enough, it seems the calories that a man of my size and lifestyle would burn is quite a bit below the 3000 I had originally estimated. I tweaked a few formulas and ended up with a more conservative ‘maintenance’ calorie allotment of around 2550, not 3000. This suggests that I need to eat no more than 2050 calories a day to lose a pound a week.

No wonder I haven’t seen any weight loss!

Ooof. Goodbye ice cream, goodbye cheese sticks, goodbye to that extra tortilla. Hello, hunger.

Happily, Kathy has developed several foods that enjoy a high calorie-to-satisfaction return on investment:

• The fruity-oat bran pancake — 618 calories
  Yes, that’s a lot of calories, but this hearty 1.2 pound cake with complex grains keeps me going from 6 am ’til noon, with nary a hunger pang.
• Tomato-barley stew with sausage — 476 calories
  Two cups of stew, with tasty sausage morsels — sweet and filling (and made with home-grown tomatoes!)
• The hunger-panic vegetable pancake — 200 calories
  Never before has pureed cauliflower or broccoli tasted so good. Held together with an egg and some fresh Parmesan cheese, and broiled on Kathy’s cool grill, this pancake has enough substance to take the edge off any hunger.
• The metabolic — 165 calories of frozen blueberry goodness

David is fond of nearly all those recipes.

Maybe I’ll post the recipes for these if I get a chance. I find all four to be very satisfying, and if I stick to these, they take care of breakfast and lunch entirely and leave a lot of room for other foods for supper, totaling 1459 calories.

I am reminded that at least 10 people promised to pray for me, many on the assurance that I would pray for them. Well, I have been — I’ve prayed every day for each of you (except, as advertised, for one ‘off’ day a week). Please pray that I would have the courage to reduce my calorie consumption further, and that I would see some success in weight loss.

If the metabolic foremen lay off another round of workers, I’m going to have to take drastic action.

Tim

For most of my life, I’ve had ‘issues’ with my weight and body shape. When I was 10 or 11, I could (and did) eat as much as I liked, and never gained a pound. It probably helped that I ran, jumped, skipped or bounded wherever I needed to go. Some time around my twelfth birthday, this golden age came to an end, and I began to accrue fat and pounds.

When I joined the Army as a flabby 198-pound twenty-year-old, the kindly folks at Fort Leonard Wood helped me to embark on a crash diet (they called it ‘Basic Training’). Burning upwards of 6000 calories a day while eating whatever morsels I could snatch in 60-second meals, helped me to a loss of 35 pounds in a matter of twelve weeks.

Can I afford the calories today, for a cup of Caramel Caribou?

During my three-year enlistment, I managed to stay on the right side of the weight and fitness limits, so (in spite of a knee injury) I was still reasonably fit and under 190 lbs. when I returned to college. By the time I graduated from college, I had bulked up to about 215 pounds, some of it muscle from a regimen of weight lifting and occasional jogging. Life as a programmer doesn’t sustain much muscle; even so, I’ve somehow managed to stay in the 225-245 range for the past 16 years.

As long as I can remember, I’ve believed I was ‘pudgy’. Oh, I knew in my head that this was a delusion, but I still believed it. I carefully suck in my stomach and flex whenever I stand in front of a mirror, raising my eyebrows to make my face look thinner. I avoid looking at my profile as reflected in store windows or bathroom mirrors. I wear tall, baggy shirts so they don’t become un-tucked and reveal my belly.

Even so, I know that pretty much any nutritionist or physician would consult the charts for a man of my age and height and weight and conclude, “Dude, your body-mass index is 33 — you’re past ‘overweight‘ — you’re obese!”

I don’t talk to those kind of nutritionists or physicians, especially not those who would call me ‘Dude’. They’re usually young and skinny, anyway.

Not my actual body mass index chart. I’m 5′ 11″, and, um, weigh quite a bit more than 157 pounds.

Last Monday evening, I ate a big supper, and followed it up with a slice of cherry pie, a huge chocolate-chip cookie, about a half-pound of pistachios, and several large handfuls of M&M’s. As I lay reading, on my side in bed, I felt sick and bloated. Suddenly, I noticed something large, pushing down on the bed. It was as though one of my children had sat on the bed beside me.

In a sickening rush of comprehension, I realized: it was my belly.

Even now, six days later, it is unpleasant to talk about this subject. All these years, I had convinced myself that I was merely ‘plump’ or ‘pudgy’, but now I could no longer avoid the ugly truth: I am fat.

Not my actual belly. Sorry for those of you now requiring therapy.

I mulled it over in my mind all day on Tuesday, while Kathy and I drove back from Oregon. I skipped breakfast that day to alleviate the immediate feeling of being over-stuffed, but I wasn’t able to shake the memory of my belly, almost pregnant in its shape. By Tuesday night, a determination to make a change crystallized in my head, forged in the fires of self-revulsion and (as I later discovered), Kathy’s prayers. It turns out that Kathy has been praying for the last couple of weeks (years?), for me to take seriously my responsibility to look after my physical health.

As it happens, I have an in-house expert consultant, well-experienced in self-discipline and nutrition. Kathy helped me to resurrect my profile on Fit Day and lent me her considerable expertise in low-calorie and low-fat food selection and measurement. I spent the first day eating ‘normally’, but recording each calorie, to see if FitDay.com’s estimate of my caloric consumption was accurate. It was a bit chilling to realize that I routinely consume between 3500 and 4000 calories a day, when eating without restraint or accountability.

Kathy has kept her 60+ pound weight loss off for almost four years, now.

On Thursday I set my goal: I’m seeking to lose a pound a week, and to get down to my late-college weight of 210 pounds, from my current weight of 238 pounds. To accomplish this by late May, I’ll need to ensure that my caloric consumption is at least 500 calories less, each day, than what I burn. So far, so good; the nice folks at Fit Day can help with all that.

My average consumption vs. what they think I burn

The main problem is this: how will I keep recording and limiting my caloric consumption each day, over the long haul? This is certainly not the first time I have dieted, and yet for more than 16 years I’ve made no significant change to my weight, except for a briefly successful flirtation with Kathy’s Maniacal Eating Plan (the KMEP), or the time I dropped 20 pounds on the Bronchitis Diet.

I really don’t want to add another chapter to my self-deprecating autobiography, The Many Failures of Tim the Quitter, 1965 - 20??; already my publisher is hinting that a work of this size should best be broken up into a trilogy. What will make this effort different? Where can I, as a lifelong follower of Jesus Christ, get the kind of power I would need to resist temptation of the flesh and to succeed at a pursuit involving one of the fruit (fruits?) of the Spirit, self-control?

Think, think, think (I do my Winnie-the-Pooh impression). A light bulb goes on: the Holy Spirit indwells me for just this kind of purpose!

Um … wait just a minute. The Holy Spirit has been indwelling me for all these years, and yet I have repeatedly failed. There must be something else, some way to activate the work of the Holy Spirit in my life, some way to ensure that I attempt things not in my own strength, but in the strength of the Holy Spirit.

Think, think, think.

Another light bulb goes on: Prayer!

And so we come to the reason for this blog, apart from sickening self-revelation: I need some of you to pray for me on a regular, ongoing, long-term basis. Please pray that I will be faithful and disciplined in decreasing my caloric intake and increasing my activity. Pray that I will not grow weary of exercising self-control, and that I can establish some habits in this area that will translate to a long-term maintenance of a lower weight. Pray that I will not become discouraged, and find some reason to quit.

I have a group of people for whom I pray every* day, using 4×6 cards to remind me of specific concerns. If you will commit to praying for me at least 4 times a week, I’ll add you to my deck o’ prayer cards, and I’ll pray for you at least six times a week. And if you’re already on one of my cards, then perhaps you owe me.

As Kathy and I do with our budgeting, I’ll be reporting on my progress from time to time on this blog. You can also track my caloric intake and weight loss (assuming there is some) on my public FitDay profile.

I was able to lose 4 pounds right away, by the happy expedient of weighing with my clothes off and before breakfast.

Comments are welcome, but prayer, interceding on my behalf, is very welcome. I already know much more about weight loss and healthy living than I am putting to use; that said, please feel free to share your wisdom on this topic.

Tim

*every = at least six days a week

My mother-in-law is a baker extraordinaire. She worked for several years as a caterer’s assistant and is talented and creative. Her cakes are stunning confectionery creations.

I am not that baker.

One of Tim’s favorite desserts is his mom’s Black Forest cake. I’m not particularly fond of cherries myself so it isn’t a recipe I have ever tried. This, however, not being my birthday I decided to make Tim a special treat. I began an extensive search online and ended up at the Taste of Home website. My goodness, pages of delicious recipes, most complete with gorgeous pictures. As a faithful subscriber (I’ve gotten Taste of Home and Simple & Delicious for years and years) I have access to the website’s collection of recipes.

I spent almost as long looking at pictures and recipes as I did in making the actual cake. Of course, looking at the pictures of my creation and the Taste of Home’s original, one might suggest I spend a little more time working and less dreaming.

Here’s the cake I was striving for:

Not my actual cake.

Really, how hard could it be to make a ‘little’ chocolate cake?

Here’s a shot of my work in progress:

Yes, the cake slid, slipped and took some sort of a nose dive during the chilling portion. True, I tweaked the recipe along the way, but I didn’t see any warnings about potential cake earthquakes.

Ah, it reminds me once again that I will never be a truly excellent chef. I’m afraid I don’t have patience for the details. I used a cake mix rather than making the cake from scratch. I relied on canned cherry pie filling instead of mixing my own. While I was cutting the cake into layers I had a child help me hold it. Sadly, the knife didn’t cut evenly and we ended up with a nice, jagged tear in the top half. The recipe called for cherry filling only in the bottom layer (look closely at the Taste of Home picture and you’ll see what I mean), but I put the filling on two of the four layers.

I’m just a rebel that way.

I tried to follow the directions for the cream and chocolate fillings; here are the ingredients and assembly instructions:

CREAM FILLING:
6 tablespoons butter (no substitutes), softened
4 cups confectioners’ sugar
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 to 5 tablespoons half-and-half cream

CHOCOLATE FILLING:
1 cup whipping cream
1/4 cup chocolate syrup
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a mixing bowl, beat cream filling ingredients; cover and refrigerate. In a mixing bowl, beat cream, syrup and vanilla until soft peaks form. Cover and refrigerate.

To assemble, split each cake into two horizontal layers. Place bottom layer on a serving plate; top with 1/2 cup cream filling. Place 1 cup cream filling in a heavy-duty resealable plastic bag; cut a 1/2-in. triangle in one corner of bag. Make a rim of filling 3/4 in. high around outer edge of cake.

Make a second rim 2 in. from edge. Spoon cherry filling between rings. Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Spread chocolate filling over second cake layer; place over cherry filling. Spread remaining cream filling over third layer; place over chocolate filling. Top with fourth layer. Spread frosting over top and sides of cake. Garnish with chocolate curls, cherries and mint. Store in the refrigerator.

It’s okay. My family ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ over the cake. Tim was touched that I would take the time and effort to make one of his birthday favorites. I may never win any culinary awards, but I have a solid fan-base here at home.

If you are a Taste of Home subscriber, I heartily recommend popping over to their website and browsing through their recipes. Yum and double yum.

For other Works for Me Wednesday posts, stop by Rocks in My Dryer.

Kathy

When I was a little boy, my Dad used to amuse me and my siblings with stories of a relative who wasn’t very appreciative of gifts. Part of the problem was that nobody seemed to know what he wanted, and so (as a grown man) he received a lot of neckties. As the story went, he opened the box (already guessing what it was by its shape) and, in a sneering, nasally, flatly-disappointed voice, declared: “Oh. Another tie.”

My Dad never did tell us which hapless relative it was, but I’ll bet his luck never changed.

I can imagine poor Uncle Elmer enduring flat, elongated packages for the rest of his life. “Well, dear,” Aunt Eunice would say, as they sat together in a nursing home, “here are your presents from the family: hey, look, a long rectangular package about the shape of … a tie! And another one! How exciting!” My imaginary Aunt Eunice always did have a sarcastic tongue.

Rachel is very skilled at having something gracious to say.

Gift variety hasn’t been much of problem for me, ever since Amazon created their Wish List. Now, if I’m shopping on Amazon for someone else, and I see something I would like, I just pop it into my wish list. Patiently, I wait for my birthday or Christmas to arrive, watching hopefully (but discreetly) for the UPS truck outside. I try to keep my wish list well-populated so there is still the opportunity for surprise, and, of course, many have their own ideas of what would be the best gift. I try not to discourage such folks — it is, after all, a free country.

Well, sort of. For some values of ‘free’, anyway.

I don’t get many ties, either. This is a good thing, since I only wear them to funerals.

I remember my poor Dad’s birthdays, when I was a kid. He was lucky to get a can of cashews to celebrate the day of his birth. He would often pull out all the stops when remembering my Mom’s birthday, but there never seemed to be many presents on the breakfast table when February 3rd rolled around. Maybe everyone was gifted-out from Groundhog Day; but it happened at Christmas, too. Dad used to re-wrap puzzles and model train cars he had received in prior years just to make it look more festive – this was particularly embarrassing when it turned out that he had purchased the original gift himself.

The kids made me a great birthday sign.

As a forty-mumble-something Dad, I didn’t really have my hopes very high. Dads are supposed to be stoically selfless, deferring their own gratification for the good of the family, soldiering on across a barren and gift-less landscape. As our budget continues to rage, I know exactly how much has been set aside for my birthday (including decorations and any special meal ingredients). It doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle-room for Kathy, if she wanted to inundate me with presents.

Imagine my surprise to find a whole laundry basket full of gifts from various family members. I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity and kindness – I felt very well-loved and cared for, from all sides.

Joshua cared for me so well, he ate cake in my honor.

It was a very good day. I had to work some in the morning, but was nearly done by the time my parents came by to shower me with presents and eat lunch with us. Then Kathy and I went on a ‘hot date’ to Cash & Carry, a low-cost bulk food store in our area which we recently ‘discovered’.

Coming home, we spent some time experimenting with our rendition of Panida’s Thai Curry, with some considerable success and enjoyment. Dropping the kids off at church for AWANA and youth group, we had a little time to go for a quick walk and for me to play a computer game.

Kathy made a Black Forest Cake for me (my favorite kind of cake) and, although it slipped and oozed, it was very tasty. We ended the day with family devotions.

Sarah graciously agreed to eat cake with us.

There were lots of things I wanted to do, including playing a board game, reading aloud a story from one of my new books, and working on a secret project for Joshua’s birthday. I often find there is usually more fun than time available in my plans. Still, it was a great and celebratory day; I am indeed blessed.

Nobody seemed to mind the oozing.

Tim