The NIH Budget, Postdoctoral Positions, and Me: A Story of Frustration.

I was getting dressed this morning, having taken the dog for his constitutional around the neighborhood and cooking breakfast for everybody, and I looked up and saw the sagging remains of the balloon Jen purchased for me after graduation. It’s still plenty shiny, mind you, and it’s still floating up to the ceiling, but it’s starting to deflate. The helium is leaking out, slowly but surely. It droops. The shiny aluminum sides sag inward, no longer promising the excitement of the future so much as reminding me of how abysmally slow things have been crawling along in the present. “Congratulations, Grad,” declared brightly across the front, reminded me that it’s been almost two months since I graduated and I still don’t have a job.

For those who haven’t made the mistake of asking me yet and getting the whole spiel, this is kind of a crappy time to be a scientist. Nothing’s really changed about the job, mind you. On those rare opportunities when I get the opportunity to dig into a new subject, diving down another Pubmed rabbit hole as I explore an angle or topic that has I hadn't previously considered, I still get excited and remember what got me into this mess in the first place. The discovery, the real “Science!” parts of the job are all still there. It’s the money part that sucks, and is progressively sucking more and more as time goes on.

The topic of funding, when brought up to a university professor, is highly likely to elicit a grumble and a sad shake of the head, followed by a mumbled “Yeah, it’s really bad right now.” None of the professors in my building (sans the superstar who helped found the Morrison Center in the first place) are comfortable with their grant situation. I know personally of a professor who is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (a big deal, for the uninitiated,) who recently had a grant proposal rejected for the first time in memory, leaving new professors trying to establish themselves wondering what chance they could really have in this environment. I've heard the study section meetings to select which NIH grants will receive the nod described thusly: We basically go through, cut out the bottom 70% which can’t get funded, then stamp the top group of superstars that automatically deserve money because they're doing mind-blowingly original work with heretofore inconceivable implications and immediate translational value, and finally sit down and debate which of the rest get a golden ticket. The problem is that, according to the NIH, the success rate for RO1 grants (sort of the standard goal that most labs I know of shoot for) has dropped from 30% in 2003 to around 17% today, a reduction of about $260,000,000. This makes that final step essentially boil down to the committee pulling ping-pong balls from a tumbler, or if you want to be less hyperbolic about it, nit-picking the remaining grants to try and find any means by which they can separate them and decide who gets money and who doesn't. To put the implications of that in perspective, a couple of years ago the keynote speaker at our department retreat told us that, despite being one of the most prominent names in his field, his most recent grant application had received the highest score any of his grants had ever had, but still didn't get funded.

That situation is bad enough, but then it compounds itself because one of the go-to criteria is your perceived ability to actually complete the goals set about in the proposal, much of which tends to be based on what your lab has previously accomplished. Of course, if you don't have any funding, it's pretty tough to accomplish anything, so we end up in a nasty Catch-22 where the top labs are sitting with three or four RO1s while the newer faculty underneath stagnate and falter, despite having equally valid ideas and possibly a greater degree of motivation since many of these are still in the hunt for the all-important tenure.

And all this was before the sequester cut the NIH's budget by $1.7 billion.

So yeah, not a lot of money for government funded research right now. What this means for me is that professors don't have a lot of funding for post-doc positions, which creates a two-fold problem of there not being as many openings as in previous years and the higher-than-average number of PhD's graduating right now all competing for this smaller pool of jobs. And, thus, I am now several months and somewhere over 50 job applications later still unemployed with little in the way of prospects waiting for me other than a few phone conversations and "we'll get back to you"s. I'm starting to look seriously at janitorial and other temporary jobs just as a means of keeping a roof over my head. I've essentially given up on any of the naive qualities I was looking for previously, whether they be wanting to move below the snow-line or wanting to stay in acadamia rather than move into industry. I'm getting desperate. There's not much I won't consider at this point. I only half-jokingly posted to Facebook that my new career options might include standing by the side of the road with a cardboard sign that says "Will Science for Food."

To be blunt, I just don't care any more what opportunities come along. They're all the same to me, and the shine is most definitely off the apple of the career in science. If I can find something interesting to do that isn't going to end up an albatross hanging around the neck of my CV for the rest of my career, I have to at least consider it. It's not just me I'm trying to support, now. I have a family. Our placement office put in an application to work as a lab manager for a Medical and Diagnostics Tools company just to see what happens, which of course led to the conversation about starting pay that really made me laugh.

"How much are you looking for, salary wise?"

"Well, NIH standard scale for postdocs is about 40,000 a year. So I guess something like that."

"Well, um, this will pay more than that."

This was the sort of thing that always made me chuckle and shake my head, when people would try to reassure me that "Well, eventually, you'll be a big time scientist and you'll be doing fine for money." Which, of course, could be classified mostly as "Amusing fiction." The reality is that, even if I do get a postdoc, it won't  pay as much as this position which is available to someone with a bachelor's degree in biology.

"Congratulations, Grad" indeed.

References: NIH Sequester Fact Sheet
                NIH RO1 Grant Success Rate

Fit Update

This afternoon (Author's Edit: yesterday afternoon. It took me more than a day to finish this, if you can believe that.) I ran my first 5K since hurting my hip/back last year (God, I think it was during the summer. It doesn't feel like it was that long.) It doesn't quite count, since I did it on the treadmill rather than out on the streets, but I'm not particularly concerned over that fine point. I know I could handle the pavement at this point, it's just too damn cold and I'm too much of an old weenie to take it on anymore. Outside of the occasional morning where I get a wild hair to throw on the thermals and go out for a 5 Fahrenheit morning run, I just don't have the drive to test myself against the elements like that anymore. Plus, I can distinctly recall a time last year when I did that exact thing and ended up making myself sick because of it. So, yeah, screw winter running.

I seem to have wandered off topic.

I was working the Couch to 5k program after my graduation from physical therapy in the fall, which I really can't recommend enough to anyone who has even an inkling that they may enjoy running. Anyone can do it. I repeat, ANYONE can do it. You don't have to shoot for a half marathon like I am. I weigh 284 pounds. I have a hip that feels sore basically every time I finish a run. Most of my youth/adolescence/young adulthood I spent on a couch getting fat. I've got flat feet with pigeon toes, and I've only barely ever run a sub 10 minute mile. I have run 2 half marathons. If I can do it, you can do it too.

Sigh, I wonder when the time comes to realize you're not actually that interested in the topic you started out with and just abort.

ANYWAYS. Now that I've finished this up, we're on to training for the Lincoln Half in May. This, of course, is when the running outside is going to have to come back, since running on a treadmill for much more than 3 miles makes me want to eat a gun just to introduce some variety to the workout. The plan I built is set-up through the runner's world Smart Coach application, which lets you build something around what you've done and the amount of mileage you've been used to per week. The first long run will be a 4 miler starting next Sunday, which I'm looking forward to. I know that my best weight loss to date has come when I was doing this kind of training, as it takes quite a few calories to push this bulk for that many miles.

I've also started to notice some increases in strength, especially upper body where I've had issues building in the past. I can bench with a pair of 45 pound plates on the bar, so I feel slightly less weenie-ish than I used to where I had my puny little 25s strapped to the sides. I can get through sets of five with those without feeling like I'm moments from dropping the bar on my chest. This is a good thing. I can do my inverted body weight rows with one click lower on the trainer (difficult to visualize. It's the machine where you can do squats, but the bar stays on a rail and you can just rotate it forward to lock it. I leave the bar locked and pull my chest up to it from an incline.) This has me doing my sets now at somewhere about 45-50 degrees from horizontal. Soooo, getting closer to that pull-up goal.

Of course, the biggest thing for me is weight. I'm now 34 pounds from the first fitness goal. I did IF for a week and discovered that the scheduling of it is somewhat difficult for my purposes. I work out in the morning, and as such my metabolism is in high gear from about 8 AM to noon, aka right in the middle of fasting time. As such, I spend the time in between with my stomach attempting to claw its way out through my torso in protest, which is extremely unpleasant. Thus, I decided to give it a week off after having done one week on and compare results. I'll admit, this isn't exactly the most scientific of methods, but this is meant to be scatter-shot. The IF week saw me losing 3 pounds. I haven't done my weigh-in for this week yet, (that'll be tomorrow) but I was down one and a half over the weekend. So, I may end up deciding to go back to it and just cart a bigger meal with me to work for lunch, at least.

Three Games of Malifaux

Game 1.
Jacob Lynch v. Som'er Teeth

Scenario: 30ss Reconoiter

My Crew: Lynch
Hungering Darkness
Tuco
Beckoner
2x Stitched Together
Brutal Effigy

Schemes: Spread the Light, Bodyguard

His Crew: Som'er
Rami
Raphael
2xSkeeters
Some Bayou Gremlins (3 or 4ish, don't recall for sure)

Initially, my crew deployed together behind some terrain on my side of the central board, with Tuco hiding up field. The gremlins were in one main central group with a good-sight line for wannabe Nino to shoot down the center line, and one smaller group on my left with wannabe Santiago and a gremlin to hit him and make him mad.

Turn 1:
Hungering Darkness rockets up board at top speed, hiding inside a building so as to avoid being sniped. The brutal effigy runs through buildings to head towards my right, for reasons I can no longer remember. Lynch, the stitched, and the Beckoner move up towards the middle, hoping that target saturation will help keep them alive. Tuco helps this out by dancing out in front of them, popping his shotgun off at wannabe Nino to poison him, then continuing on back behind more cover. Wannabe Nino shoots at Huggy through a door frame. Wannabe Santiago gets punched in the face by his friend, making him angry enough to run up my left flank and be in position to cause mischief next turn. The gremlins don't immediately start splitting into more gremlins (as I expected). At the end of the turn, Huggy noms a wound out of the Beckoner, as she is the only Brillaint model nearby.

Turn 2-3ish

Huggy introduces himself to the gremlins, springing from his building and horrifically mauling wannabe Nino. He obeys another gremlin in close to him with his casting expert, then drains more wounds out of him. I was told later that my opponent was unaware of Huggy's speed. Skeeters run up the board and fart on my main contingent of dudes. Tuco runs up and probably shoots at Som'er, I think. Wannabe Santiago comes out and makes me nervous by shooting at the crew, but unfortunately chooses poorly and shoots at a stitched rather than Lynch. The stitched gets reactivate. Som'er wanders up and farts all over Huggy, killing him along with some other wounds (probably more farts from the other skeeter. Not sure now.)

Turn 4-5

Beckoner skirts around the skeeter to go use honeyed words on wannabe Santiago. Stitched Togethers + Lynch kill off Santiago, whereupon I drop a pair of nines and Huggy returns. He celebrates by mauling a Skeeter. Gremlins kill Tuco, but not before he takes one of them down with him. Lynch dances up field and does some shooting shenanigans. Huggy mauls a skeeter then runs up field to hit Som'er in the face and kill him as well. Opponent points out I've now lost my only brilliant models. I nod and decide to settle for tabling him. 

Turn 6

Surviving stitched fans out to hold a quarter while Lynch goes for another, Beckoner and Brutal effigy, etc. Huggy chases more gremlins and eats them. Tasty gremlins is tasty.

Win 6-0

Things I learned: 

1) I still don't know what to do with Lynch. He doesn't shoot well enough to be a shooter (I'm spoiled, though, having started out with the Guild). His card drawing isn't quite good enough to reliably have a huge hand. Not sure if there's something I didn't see. Maybe I should watch some other people play him to get a better idea.

2) Respect Som'er's farts. The damage piles up a lot quicker than you think it does. Still, gremlins are squishy and small, and Huggy thinks they are tasty, so not extraordinarily worried about them going forward.

3) Tuco should cost, like, 9 stones. That said, stop deploying him so far forward when opponents have kill protege on him.

Game The Second

Kirai Ankoku v. Mei Feng (am I playing Bushido?) 

Scenario: 30ss Line in the Sand (from the new Gaining Grounds OP document (ha ha i'm a henchman so I have it))

Me: Kirai

Seishins (I think 3)

Night Terrors (I know 3)

Lost Love

Izamu the Armor

Him: Mei

Emberling

2 Rail Workers

Ototottoototototototo

K(W)ang

My Schemes

Grudge (A rail worker)

Bodyguard (Kirai)

His Schemes

Kill Protege (Izamu)

Holdout

We realize very quickly that one of the benefits of the new colored bases from Wyrd Miniatures is to throw all black bases across the board as the dynamite markers and then, as we flip them towards our respective sides, replace them with a color-coded base for our side. He deploys with his main crew in the middle and Kang with emberling on my right flank. I deploy with Kirai, Izamu, LL, and company behind a building mid-board. 

Turn 1

Night terrors flock up their side of the board, fanning out at the end so that one of them can flip the outermost dynamite marker and the other two can handle the one next to it. Kang and Emberling tromp their way up field on the right. Mei does some rail-worker hoppiness silliness to move forward. This proves to be a problem, as Lost Love turns Izamu into a spirit, a seishin boosts him while another floats forward, and Kirais swirls him into charge range of Mei. He chops her up for 6. Opponent looks alarmed.

Turn 2-3

My opponent, however, fails to factor in that I am a tard. Spirit+object 2 basically means Mei can only do 1 point of damage to me a turn. However, I forget the part where I can throw a mask at Mei's attacks to block her trigger that lets her continue attacking and that, if I do so, even if I'm cheating down to a lower card it will be better for me in the long run. As such, I believe I take about 6-8 damage from pummeling, and have like 6 burning tokens on me (not that that really matters.) Kang trots upfield some more, maybe flips the outer dynamite marker. Night terrors flip the outer two dynamite markers, and I realize just how good they are. Kirai swirls herself up board as, one way or another, I think things are going to get bloody soon and I want to take advantage. She soothes some of the damage off of Izamu and plops Ikiryo to the third marker, flipping it on turn 2 for the good guys. Izamu walks up and smooshes the rail worker I grudged. We hold onto the center marker through turn 3, but Izamu gets dropped. Ikiryo probably dies and has to be resummoned. Night Terrors start to flock around the back of the central melee. Lost Love passes (this will be important later.) Kang in the meantime trots over towards dynamite marker 2 and flips. Ototo(tototototo) probably is the one to smash Izamu, as he is essentially a spirit Izamu smashing fiend.

End of turn 3 score is 4-2 (2 for strat, 2 for grudge v. 2 for kill prot.)

Turn 4-5

Ototo(totototo) is killed by a combination of Ikiryo and a Night Terror poking him through a wall (amusing mental image). I lose a Night Terror in here somewhere to probably Ototo or a rail worker, not sure. I'm running out of dudes on the central objective, due in large part to my extraordinarily rancid hand draws (my opponent helpfully points out that I'm tabling him, and I should stfo. Can't argue with him on that one.) Kang gets up into the fight along with the Emberling and manages to push enough of my spirits off the central marker to clear us out and let him flip it to neutral, denying me a VP. I throw a Shikome and some Gaki silliness at the middle of the board to kill Mei, but not before she gets the middle dynamite marker switched to his side. The clutch performer of the match comes into play somewhere in here, as I notice that 1) my opponent has left the outside dynamite marker unguarded and 2) the Lost Love is significant so 3) he can walk over and flip it back to our team. Thus, he hoofs it over to the dynamite marker over the course of two turns and flips it to neutral just as the central one goes to yellow, denying him a vp. Go LL go. 

We don't play turn 6, as LL is going to flip the third marker to me and Shikome is going to book it into the opponent's deployment zone to deny Holdout. Kang is essentially all the opponent has left, tying up two Night Terrors in what has "Stalemate" written all over it. Final score 8-2.

Things I learned:

1) I am not good with Kirai, and she is good enough to make up for this. No model even threatened her in this game. I can't overstate how bad my fate hand was all game long, and it just...didn't...matter. Ikiryo gets knocked down, and I just pop it back out. Shikome's go flying around. Gaki's pop to...Gaki you...I guess. She's really good, and maybe if I practice hard, some day I can be good with her too.

2) Night Terrors are the bomb. The thing that I think impressed me more than anything was that they did all this moving, effectively won me the game, and Kirai did essentially nothing to help them out. It was all them. They're good, and in this kind of a game they really shine. 

3) Ten Thunders is good, but Mei isn't special. The biggest effect Mei had on this game was me forgetting to shut down her chain of attacks with Izamu. She can wreck face, but she doesn't have a ton of defensive abilities to protect her if you actually get into melee with her from what I could see. Stacking up burning tokens doesn't really do a lot when you can just choose to be slowed to shut it down. Ototo, on the other hand, is a single-minded smasher that just obliterates Izamu, whether he's a spirit or not. 

Game 3

Kirai vs. Misaki (why don't the ten thunders like me?)

25ss Deliver the Message

Me: Kirai

4 Seishin (ish)

LL

3 Night Terrors

1 Insidious Madness (who was supposed to be a drowned but I forgot the model at home)

Him: Misaki

Archer

2Torekage

Firefox

My Schemes: Breakthrough, Stake a Claim 

Him: Kill Protege (Insidious Madness, mostly for comedy) something else he didn't get

Turn 1: I use absorb spirits to eat the Insidious Madness and deny my opponent 2 vps...oh wait, that's what I would have done if I was a GOOD Kirai player. Instead, I look at the board and am a bit confused as to what exactly I'm going to do. My opponent moves one of his Torekages and Shang up on my left flank to engage me and block off my Stake a Claim. I move the Night Terrors up en masse to go fight with them, for some reason. One of them claws the totem and the other fails to put a wound on the Torekage. The archer and the other Torekage go around the other side of the Stake to end up roughly center board. Misaki cautiously advances to keep me from delivering the message straight off. He need not have worried, however, as I have no masks and thus can't Into the Spirit world forward. Instead, I eat some Seishin to make an Onryo, mostly because I've never used one and I want to try and have some anti-range for the Archer. The Insidious Madness does the worst thing possible and sprints upfield to the Claim, hiding from the archer and preparing to go deliver to Misaki. 

Turn 2: My opponent gets initiative every turn this game before turn 5ish, so he is going first. The archer trots around the log and gleefully focus fires my Insidious Madness to death, scoring 2 points for him. I grumble.  I get a mask, pop up to the Night Terror/Torekage/Shang fight so I can get Seishin out of it, and drop Ikiryo on them. The Torekago senses his pending demise and buries himself. I probably kill the totem with Ikiryo's melee expert and send it to go fight the other Torekage. Unfortunately, it is still alive at the end of turn 2, which gives the other Torekage something to springboard off of and land within 2" of Kirai. I make an undignified noise. Onryo floats upfield and doesn't significantly contribute. This will be a recurring theme.

Turn 3: He flips an 11 for initiative. I flip a 7, burn a stone, get another 7. Message is delivered, 4 points for the bad guys (total of 6.) Misaki runs away from me, presumably giggling girlishly at how I just got served. Ikiryo mauls the bejezus out of the Torekage he's fighting. I eat Ikiryo with Kirai then resummon him to maul the one who delivered the message. I feel vindicated, but am still losing quite a lot. Night Terrors haul ass across the board to chase Misaki, dropping one within 2" of her, so if I can win initiative I can at least salvage some vps for my side from the strat. The archer pops some blasts off of the night terrors, but can only drop them two wounds a piece, which means he still needs two more hits to kill them. We both pause to marvel at the magnificence of these 3 point minions. The turn ends and I curse at him to stop flipping so high on init.

Turn 4: He flips high for initiative again, and I still can't beat him. Misaki kicks the Night Terror in the face twice then runs away to resume giggling in an anime-schoolgirl-like-fashion (where is a black tentacle monster when you need one? Oh yeah, I let the archer shoot it to death on turn 2...) The two remaining Night Terrors flock over to go pincer her in so she at least can't run away from them next turn. I float the Onryo onto the claim and drop her ranged spell on the archer a couple of times, to no great effect. The archer kills her, taking a wound back for immediate revenge (oo, she contributed.) Ikiryo rewards the archer by casually floating around the claim and mauling him to death. I get a Gaki out of soul food from something Ikiryo killed. I don't remember what. 

Turn 5: I finally manage to win initiative and Deliver the Message to Misaki prior to her kicking them both in the face until they died. Oh well, I got 1 vp from it, so there. I drop another Gaki on the claim jump while Ikiryo and the 1st Gaki float towards the enemy deployment zone. Kirai sees a potential screw me scenario where Misaki drops into my deployment zone and gets one of the enemy's schemes, so she swirls herself back into the deployment zone. We both look at the board and realize the game will end a 5-6 loss for me regardless of what happens, so we shake hands. 

What I learned:

I'm bad with Kirai, so it's a good thing she is so awesome: Seriously. An onryo? Sending the Insidious Madness up to get shot? Not eating the IM on turn one to deny VPs...just move along. I'm getting better. Quit judging me.

Ten Thunders is fast, yo: I had remembered the Mistaken Identity ability, which I believe the Torekage's used to flip places on me. I had remembered the run and shoot and the smoke bombs. I forgot about the damn unbury, and left Kirai exposed to basically get her pants pulled down by them mid-fight for 4 vps. That was very bad of me to do. Ten Thunders are deceptively fast, which I suppose is what one would expect from a pack of ninjas.

Plan your turn with Kirai from your control hand, not from what might come from the deck: This sort of goes with 1, but deserves special mention. I was particularly mask starved but crow rich this game. A couple of times I tried to force into the Spirit world with stones to catch the mask from the deck. It didn't work once. I need to just accept that if it's not there it's not there. Don't plan on it, and do something else. It didn't make a huge difference past turn 1, but it could be important later, particularly if I'm facing an opponent who can legitimately threaten Kirai (hasn't happened yet, but I know they're out there.) 

Peace out. Probably lots more good game experience coming from this Saturday for Dead of Winter. 

On writing and intermittent fasting.

Writing something else today to try and keep a regular roll going. I find that my dissertation writing goes much easier if I'm writing as often as I can. I sort of describe it as needing to flex a muscle on a regular basis. A few months back, when I first sat down and started typing up the dissertation in earnest, the words "writer's block" became much more literal for me, given the fact that it felt like, as I reached into my mind for the pieces that are typically required for composing the English language through intricate patterns of finger-tapping on a keyboard, the synapses felt like they were clogged up like a drain. A part of me could feel where those things were supposed to be, where I remembered them being long ago when I wrote all the time, but it was literally like when you walk up to a door you expect to be open and find it to be locked, complete with the embarrassing "running nose-first into it because I can't stop my momentum" moment. This was particularly confounding, given that I really needed to be completing this task to finish up and get out of grad school, and yet found myself discouraged to the point of just searching for something else to do to try and loosen things up or, realistically, just to procrastinate and quit feeling like I was failing.

The big change came from a group that I started attending last year that basically consists of grad students getting together once a week to gripe about the various nuisances that plague our profession. One of the lessons learned from this was just to sit down and write 15 minutes a day about whatever comes to mind. The recommendation is that it be in some way related to the dissertation, but the main deal is simply to get back into the habit of writing and thinking critically on a regular basis. The more I did it, the less trouble it was to unlock that door and let the "writer's voice" (for lack of a less preposterous sounding term) get out the way it used to and give that muscle a good work-out. As time went on, I could then point that muscle towards the topics at hand, to the point that now, if I sit down and really get into the groove, I can bang along for a couple of hours straight without even really paying attention to the passing of time. I realize now that, at earlier times in graduate school, a silly web-based game where you essentially role-played a character who was a professional wrestler by writing their weekly vignettes and promotional videos trashing your opponents, resulting in a winner determined by subjective judging and then writing up the matches in long form by the fed runner, was probably my way of keeping it fresh back in the proverbial day without really knowing what I was doing. Now, things come a bit more naturally, which is probably a necessity given that the dissertation is maybe about 1/2 to 2/3 the way done/in draft form and, if I had needed to push through the block every day to do it, I may have gone quite mad by this point.

Assuming, of course, that I haven't already.

Today also marks the first day of my experiment with a dietary plan called "intermittent fasting." Now, this name is, in my opinion, maybe the worst example of inadvertent negative connotation I've ever seen, particularly given the prevailing wisdom of dieticians everywhere for constant, small meals rather than anything that even resembles starvation. HOWEVER. The reason I'm giving it a chance is, despite the name, the "fasting" essentially boils down to not eating a breakfast meal. That's it. And, more importantly, the idea is to get the three meals a day worth of caloric intake within the eight hour(ish) window between lunch and dinner. It's more a matter of getting your body to utilize the insulin hormone more appropriately to tap your fat reserves and get them starting to break down between meals, something that is reduced when eating the three squares or even the six to eight small meals that other diets/trainers recommend. If you think about it, it's also more akin to the way our metabolisms originally developed while hunting/gathering, where you would have longer stretches between feedings.

Now.

I am not a fool. I had my doubts about this before I started, and I still have concerns. I did my homework and background research before starting out. I'm going to keep my eyes on my physical condition. If it feels like this is doing harm, I will immediately quit. Trust me, it won't take a lot for me to say "gosh, I guess I'll go back to eating tasty breakfast foods." This is something that I'm trying out, something that seems to have some decent academic research backing it up, and it's not something I'm going to wear myself out for.

The bottom line is that I need to cut some weight down to be able to do all the things I want to do. My friend Mike went skydiving last year, and we discovered after he made the plans that I wasn't going to be able to do it because I was too heavy for the tandem dive (we later found this not to be the case, but the ego smash was there regardless.) As the previous post mentioned, I have a number of fitness goals for this coming year, all of which will require losing weight. I'm not obsessed about it, I just want it to happen and am willing to take the steps to make it happen. I'm motivated, I like getting up on the scale and watching the smaller numbers pop up, and that's all there is to it.

My Plan To Get Fit: Adam's 2013 Fitness Goals

So it’s a New Year, and with the New Year tends to come people using the arbitrary trip around the sun as a means of marking out a time for making new goals. Far be it for me to be contrary, so I felt I could join in on the frivolity. It’s not exactly as if I need to do this for the upcoming year, mind you, as 2013 has a pretty high likelihood of being one of, if not the, most eventful years of my life to this point. I’m getting married in May. I’m finishing my dissertation. I’m going to be finding a job somewhere and in all probability preparing to depart from Nebraska.

So yeah, I’m gonna be kind of busy.

What this leaves for actual territory for the aforementioned “resolutions” is somewhat limited, and I've found that the majority of these tend to come in the form of physical fitness objectives. Since my divorce, this has been an important part of my life, so it should come as not a huge surprise that this is something I’m putting a lot of thought into. For one, it was my poor-man’s psychologist during the most stressful parts of the transition from married back to single life and then, within a couple of years, back to coupledom with the new experience of step-fatherdom piled on top of it.  I can literally feel “the itch” settle in within a few days if I don’t find my way to a gym, and my mood definitely suffers.

Additionally, my physical shape is not really where I want it to be. There are excuses for why this has occurred, but they are still just excuses. I’ve known for a while that I am capable of losing a lot of weight, as I dropped about 30 pounds on the always popular “post-divorce diet.” This weight, plus some more, unfortunately have now found their way back over the intervening years. At the end of 2012 I had already managed to lose 17 pounds (five of which I then proceeded to find hidden inside Christmas dinners of various shapes and sizes) so I’m well on my way, but my biggest goal is to get back to 250 pounds, which is a weight loss of 38 at this point in time. I’d like to have the lion’s share of this done by the wedding, as I want to cut as sharp of a figure in my tux as I possibly can (with the bow tie making this much more possible since, of course, we all know that bow ties are cool.)

In the past, I've approached this goal mainly through a process of progressively running longer over more and more days. I am a large man, to put it bluntly. It takes a lot of calories for me to move myself a mile. It takes many more for me to move 8 miles. You can see where this is headed. On average, it takes roughly a half-hour of aerobic activity to exhaust the stores of carbs in your body at any given time (subject to your diet, of course. More on this later.) As such, going on an hour run for me was a great target to go after my body’s fat stores. There are, however, issues with this plan of attack. First of all, I live in Nebraska, and it is cold as expletive outside right now. There was a point in time when this wasn’t a big deal, but for some reason there appears to be an inverse correlation between my age and my weenie-ness when it comes to dealing with cold. As such, right now my running is confined to a treadmill at the gym and, unfortunately, is somewhat limited as the hip injury I've been rehabbing (one of the big reasons my weight went back up) has me currently working my way back through the couch-to-5k program. At this moment, I’m up to being allowed to run a whole mile (woo) before I’m supposed to drop it back down. And, of course, running on treadmills doesn't really factor your weight into your calorie burn at all, so that takes the size advantage away from me.

The other problem, of course, is learning to control the increased hunger that goes along with the amount of running I like to do. It doesn't do a ton of good to put in that amount of effort just to put the calories back at the dinner table, later. I've already made an effort to eliminate sugars from my diet (having my family discover a new-found joy in baking is not making this easier) and am considering going after carbs as well. I’m not sure I have the commitment or, frankly, availability of resources to switch to an all-out Paleo diet, despite the number of glowing recommendations I've heard for it. There are, however, still areas where these cut-downs can happen. My family likes our pasta, and I’m not about to start complaining about having a fiancée who more often than not has a home-cooked meal waiting when I get home. I eat oatmeal for breakfast which, while carb-heavy, I think has enough positive benefits to outweigh the negative. So, the main area of effect for this is likely going to be my lunch. For financial reason I was already planning on packing it most days, so I just need to learn to make better choices on what to include here.

The newest addition to my fitness regimen came from the fact that I was unable to run for somewhere in the neighborhood of four to six months while I rehabbed: weightlifting. I freaking love weights, which I never would have expected to hear myself say even up to a year ago. While I’m far from impressive in the amounts I’m doing (I bench, like, 125 for 3x5) particularly when it comes to upper-body work, it’s just a lot of fun for reasons I really can’t quite describe. At the moment I’m doing an upper-body day with bench/body-weight rows/one-arm dumbbell row/pull-down and lower body/core day with goblet squats (my back is still dicey enough that I’m not extraordinarily confident attempting the classic barbell squats)/dumbbell lunge/leg press (the one I’m strongest with, probably from running)/ and various lower back/ab exercises. I start out with the treadmill C25K stuff and then move on to the weights side of the gym. And, of course, the real vanity joy of it comes when I flex an arm and realize “Ooh, there’s a little bicep showing there.” Or when I throw a play punch against a wall and feel stronger then I remembered. Or when I go to do a push-up, cruise from top to bottom effortlessly, and pause at the top to realize they have literally, even when I weighed much less than this, never felt anywhere near this easy. Add to that the fact that I use Fitocracy.com to track my work-outs and score fake work-out points (leading to leveling up which, obviously, makes my gamer brain very happy) and my motivation to really go push it with the free weights has never been stronger.

Which leads me to the other big goal for the year: I’m going to do a pull-up. There’s a whole pile of pent-up, middle school fitness challenge shame tagged onto that particular feat of strength. I've never been able to do one. I've never been CLOSE to being able to do one. If I use the assisted pull-up machine at the gym, I have to counter out two-thirds of my weight to realistically do a set of five of them. Before the end of 2013, I will do one unassisted pull-up. I’m doing everything I can to strengthen my back and shoulders, following this plan http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2011/04/25/do-a-pull-up/. I’m currently doing the bodyweight rows (incorrectly, I just realized from re-reading the blog entry. Oh well, they were still hard and I've still gained from them.) As I said, I can already feel a difference from things like push-ups. I can do it, and I will.

Both exercises will help me out with my other fitness goal: to do better in the Lincoln Half Marathon than last year and beat the 2:30 that I ran it in last time. Last year’s Lincoln Half was a real mixed bag for me, due mainly to a misjudging on my part of what was a realistic pace for me to maintain for that distance and my making the exact wrong choice when picking out how much arch support and which type of shoes I needed for running. My feet hurt abysmally by the end. I ended up having to walk one of the miles (feet burning with every step) and shuffle through the last three miles at a pace where some of the walkers were actually passing me. It was not the pleasant experience that I sign up to these things for. This year is going to be different. I’m not going to set any kind of speed records, but I’m going to race strong the whole way through and beat that time.