236.8 (To the future, and beyond!)

Well, I found a few helpful resources for crunching numbers, with the primary one being HealthStatus.  Trying to figure out how many calories are burned doing various activities, Basil Metabolic Rate, true BMI, average weigh by body-type, etc.  Very helpful.  Anyway, one of the things I was able to do was make a projection with regards to potential weight-loss if I stick to my plan and caloric deficit goals.  It is as follows:

---

Current Weight	Goal Weight	Weight Loss	Daily Calorie Deficit	Time to Reach Goal Weight
236.8 lb	160 lb	76.8 lb	1000	8 mo 29 dy
236.8 lb	180 lb	56.8 lb	1000	6 mo 19 dy
236.8 lb	200 lb	36.8 lb	1000	4 mo 9 dy

---

Now, as pie-in-the-sky as these numbers and projections may be, I am at least encouraged by the fact that a) no matter what my final target weight goal may be, I'm closer than I've ever been, b) my next "goal" is less than 40lbs and about 4 months away, if I can keep this up, and c) this actually looks possible for me.  And yes, I'm well aware that this may be optimistic time-wise, but even if I add 50% more time on, it's still achievable within about a year or so.  I'll take it.

A bit additional:

I have an acquaintance that I follow on a web community who just underwent gastric surgery (sleeve, I believe).  This web community allows for uncensored images to be put up, and I've been seeing rather candid images of her as she loses weight.  I do observe that I feel a tinge of jealousy seeing the pounds fly off her body.  She was a very large woman (admittedly, she's about 6' tall to boot) but even with that, she easily weighed upwards of 300lb.

Now this has nothing to do with attractiveness, per se.  I always considered her rather pretty, and yes, the weight-loss improves upon that (as I'm sure it does in my case as well).  But for some reason, the whole weight-loss surgery just... really puts me off.

I've thought about weight-loss surgery.  A lot.  Over and over.  The last time I truly considered it, it was bypass.  Roux en-Y (proximal) or something similar.  In reading her reasons for chosing the sleeve, she states that she didn't want something so invasive, extreme or potentially fatal, so no fault there.  One thing she mentioned was that it she considers her sleeve "forced evolution because we don't need large stomachs anymore".

Wow, do I not buy that concept.  For a number of reasons, this is just not a good way to look at this.  First, while it is true that the only way to reduce the size of the human stomach after adulthood is via surgery, in my eyes, the human stomach is designed to be very flexible and adaptable to change.  One of the main reasons for this is not holding varying amounts of food, but for gas.  Eat something that interacts with the stomach acids in a certain way, and gas is produced.  With a restricted stomach, that gas has no place to go, and will cause great pain, discomfort, and illness/vomiting.

Secondly, the large stomach was caused by something, and that something is over-indulging and over-eating.  It didn't happen by itself.  It happened because the stomach owner in question had an underlying issue that caused it, and that is a hunger of a different type.  Mind hunger, heart hunger, eye hunger.  None of those hungers will be reduced by reducing or restricting the physical stomach.  So, bariatric surgery is a surgical procedure to correct an emotional or mental condition?  Nope.  Doesn't work that way.  If you don't address the emotional, mental or spiritual issues that underlay the behavior, what actually changes?  Sure, you'll drop weight rapidly, and may even keep it off, but what really changes?  Interestingly, one of the major issues with GBP is one most doctors and surgeons  don't talk about, and that's depression.

[From Wikipedia:] "Gastric bypass surgery has an emotional, as well as a physiological, impact on the individual. Many who have undergone the surgery suffer from depression in the following months.^[13] This is a result of a change in the role food plays in their emotional well-being. Strict limitations on the diet can place great emotional strain on the patient. Energy levels in the period following the surgery will be low. This is due again to the restriction of food intake, but the negative change in emotional state will also have an impact here.^[14] It may take as long as three months for emotional levels to rebound."

Wow. Talk about a grave solution!  Being depressed about your weight is bad enough.  Now you get to be depressed over food for the rest of your life?  Not being able to truly enjoy your food?  I'll pass.

Back when I was 17 or so, I actually had a gastric balloon inserted into my stomach.  I lost about 20lbs, expressly because I didn't change my behavior.  Even with that failure, as I said, I recently thought about GBP and bariatric surgery again.  A lot.  But the thing that I always came back to is a knowledge that food didn't get me here.  Hunger did, and not physical hunger.  I got myself here, and the only way to truly fix this problem in my life--the only way to deal with this issue long-term--is to address it head-on.  To see that I am the problem.  That's not blaming myself.  That's owning it and taking responsibility.  This constant emotional hunger that I allowed to ride roughshod over me is what did this.

In Buddhism and Zen--as I said--we have this tenant to "seek its source".  Over the past two or so years, I've really decided to seek the source of that damaging hunger.  As I have, I've gotten closer to understanding where it lives, what it wants, and how to properly deal with it.  Is it still hard work?  Hell yes.  But it's not anything that a doctor can deal with or treat.  It's only something that can be managed with a great and abiding faith in the Three Treasures, the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-Fold Path.

Everything I need to be healthy and happy I already have.  I have always had it.  And I need not pay someone thousands to short-cut the sanctity and sacredness of my body in order to change the outside of me, when the inside is where the issue truly lies.  Every time I've ever tried to short-cut things in my life, bad things have resulted.  Every time I've stuck it out--I mean really stuck with it, be it meditation, sesshin, work, or what-have-you--I've always felt better as a result.

I fault no one for having GBP or other bariatric surgery, but I know it's not for me.  My illness is inside, and only truth, openness, metta and a radical acceptance of the moment as it is serves to heal me.

239.8 - 236.4 (The numbers add up, or down...)

So I've started tracking my calories and exercise on the site MyFittnessPal.  Damn handy site.  Very robust database of foods and ingredients, and very easy to use and configure to my own tastes and food habits.

I'll admit that I've resisted tracking/journaling my food and calorie counting.  I always knew why.  I never really wanted to know the truth of how I eat.  I knew it would illustrate my own shortcomings and weaknesses.  I was right.  But I have accepted it now, and I clearly see the utility and wisdom of it.

It also shows me what binging and over-indulging does.  I've promised myself that I'd even log those times, too, and for the most part, I have.

I'm still having trouble with night eating and binging/"treating" myself, but it is getting better.  The use of the site allows me to see into the future a bit as far as what I can expect to lose if I stick to it, and knowing that I won't see those projections on the scale just serves as a reminder to me to stay mindful and in control.  Weather or not I do is a different issue all together, but again, it's better.

The other thing the site is really good at is helping you get your head around what exercise/activity does for weight-loss.  Here the site isn't quite as comprehensive as the food side of things, but you have the ability to modify/customize that as well.  For example: walking as an exercise is primarily what I do.  "Walking" alone burns X amount of calories.  But I live on a rather major hill.  Add to that the fact that I generally walk to the grocery store every day, and lug between 10-20 pounds of stuff back at a time in my backpack.  Walking uphill with 20lbs on your back burns more calories than walking on the flat unencumbered.  Hunting around the web finds a number of useful kCal burning calculators for figuring out the burn of a given exercise, so I set up custom data in MFP for the exercise I do regularly.  And yes, that includes things like laundry, and, of course, sex!  I want credit for it all!

Good food day.  500 kCal under my daily goal, and had this completely epic bacon cheeseburger for dinner...

This is a 1/3lb 90/10 organic free-range ground chuck burger patty with onion soup mix and tamari in it, with mayo, brown mustard, Muir Glen organic ketchup, Maui onion, heirloom tomato, Tillamook CoJack cheese, thick-cut organic pepper bacon and romaine lettuce on a toasted onion bun. Srsly.  At the last gastrorgasmic bite, I nearly passed out.

Oh, and tots...

[added rant]

Seriously, though, it's times like these that make me ashamed of how many nasty-assed, nitrate- and filler-stuffed craptastic McCrap burgers I ate when I was younger.  Good lord, do you know what this tastes like?!  Why oh why on earth would anyone ever want to eat something passed to them through a window when this tastes like this?!  It took me all of 30min to make it, was made perfectly, and to my exact tastes and preferences, is mostly organic and ethically produced, costs a total of about $6 (including the tots), and reminds me of sitting in the back-yard grilling and drinking MGD with my old man and our dog.

Srsly.

240.4 (And Inconvenient Truths...)

Well, I imagine this is going to piss some people off.  It sort of pisses me off, for what it's worth.

So...

I did the low-carb thing.  It worked to a degree.  I lost a significant amount of weight rather rapidly.  But honestly, do I want to eat this way the rest of my life?  No.  I don't.  I don't think it's sustainable in the long-run, and frankly, I'm interested in the long-run.

I need to look at the weight-loss as something secondary to my life; a by-product.  What I really need to do is look at this as a whole paradigm, including things like mindfulness, compulsion control, a practice of noticing the difference between want and need, and a myriad of other things.

So, carbs are back in my life.  I'm happier for it.  Much.  It did put on a few pounds when I started including them, but I'm really surprised at how quickly they've come off.  I thought for sure I'd be back up to 250 or so, and that it would be a stubborn 250 at that.  But that's not the case.

I've been following Shawn Tyler Weeks' blog 344 Pounds.  He gets it exactly right.  And gawd, do I see myself in him and his experiences.  I've also started following Josh Bancroft at TinyScreenfuls.com.  Both are inspiring and insightful.  Both are, at times, hard to read as well.  It's like the Zen practice we have of sitting naked in front of a mirror and being a compassionate witness to yourself.  It's harder than it sounds even when you're a normal weight.  And that brings me to one of my first points, and the first I.T., or "inconvenient truth".


I.T. #1: Being obese is not normal.

That is a simple statement of fact.  It's merely a statistical observation.  It is not an observation rooted in analysis of the current state of humanity, society and culture.  If we were to be analyzing that (especially here in McAmerica), while it would be more close to normal, being obese is still puts you in a statistical minority.  The simple fact is, most people aren't obese.  But more to the point, being obese is not a normal way to live, physiologically-speaking.  Fact is, the human body does not want to be obese.  It is not designed to be obese, and it suffers all sorts of unhealthy things when forced to be obese.  And make no mistake: it is always forced into being obese.  That's the simple truth of it.  Obesity is a survival mechanism built into our physiology, true, but it's only there for extreme situations, and quite frankly, 99.999% of us will never, ever see a situation wherein that emergency mechanism becomes necessary.  Yet we live--and eat--like we do.  Which leads me to the next one...


I.T. #2: Being obese is about self-control.

At some point in the 80's, we decided to take the blame off individuals (and I'm speaking here of adults making their own choices, not kids with stupid parents) when it came to what they ate, how much they ate, and how much they wind up weighing as a result.  While it is very right not to measure the worth of a person by their body-size, this went too far, in my opinion.  Should everyone be perfect and have a BMI of 2?  No, of course not. Are obese people less human, less valuable, or less worthy of happiness, dignity or respect than other, thinner people?  Again, of course the answer is "no".  But at the same time, there is a niggling little bit of truth here that we don't like to accept: you don't get to be 340lbs like I did living a life of self-responsibility, self-respect and control.  On the contrary: you only get that way (baring serious and rather rare medical exceptions) by being out of control, refusing to accept reality, and not being willing to do what's right for yourself.  Again, somewhere in the 80's, we took the onus off of those who chose to be obese, letting them (and ME) say things like "I should be loved/accepted/measured for who I am inside, not just my body size".  While that may be philosophically true, it's a cop-out!  What we're doing with this meme is insisting that it's only about weight.  It's not, because if all of us obese people actually took that statement to its fullest extent, we'd have to accept that it also means that people can judge you by your weight, because your weight is a direct physical manifestation of how you look at and value yourself.  That's right.  If you want to be measured by "what's on the inside", the hard truth is, inside an obese person is a person out of control, refusing to accept reality, and not being willing to do what's right for themselves.  It is that simple.  Self-control and its related skill--moderation--is the key to health and weight-loss, which brings us to our next ugly point...


I.T. #3: Diet + Exercise = Weight Loss.

And there you have it.  It's that simple.  If you want to lose weight, you need to do a few very simple things.

1. Consume fewer calories than you burn in a day.
2. Exercise regularly, for at least 30min at a stretch, focusing on cardio.
3. Stick with it.

That's pretty much it.  No special diet.  No trying to undo 40-some years of bad eating and resulting fat in a few weeks.  No "never eat this, but eat all you want of that".  It can't be effortless.  It can't be easy-peasy.  You didn't get here overnight, and you shouldn't expect to get out of here faster than you got here.  No magic bullet.  No Fat-Burning Formula.  No surgery to derail the natural system your body needs.  You count your calories.  You are mindful of everything you eat.  You get off your ass and sweat.  And you keep at it.

Period.


I've started using My Fitness Pal to food-track and log what I eat and how I exercise.  Very helpful.  Tons of nutrition info on the ingredients I use and the products I buy.  They even have an Android app that connects with your profile so you can track things on the go.  You can follow my stuff on my page.


This is a long-haul thing.


All good things are.

BTW, this is what I had for dinner Wednesday night.
And I lost weight.  Knowing what you consume is key.

240.0 (The return of da Fat Man...)

Well, how the hell are ya?!  Long time, eh?  Actually, 5 months to be nearly exact.  And in that 5-month period, I appear to have lost... two whole pounds!  Lolz.  Actually, I'm pretty damn proud of those two pounds.  The why will be part of this "brief" five-month catch-up.

Back when we last looked in on the Fat Man, he was getting ready for a week-long silent zen monastic retreat, or "sesshin".  I was looking forward to a week of very simple zen monastic cooking, and hoping it would help me drop a few more.  It didn't.  Actually, I put on about three to five pounds, if I remember rightly.  A week of bread, hot cereal, rice, bread, cookies and, um, bread combined with sitting near-absolutely still for about twelve hours a day did what you'd expect it would.  Now, don't get me wrong: I could have done it better, and been more mindful of how much I was consuming, but the sesshin's theme was generosity, and I felt that to be nit-picky about food during this experience was counter to the intentions of it, so I simply let go.  Not all the way, but I just decided to relax.  This was my first week-long retreat, and make no mistake about it, these things are on the low-end of "hard-core" so I decided that being gentle with myself was the best thing to do.  I'm glad I did. For a number of reasons, I had a lot on my mind going into this.

One of those things was regarding a date I'd had just a few days before I left.  It was with a very lovely and, um... very young woman--JLS.  We'd met about a week before, introduced to each-other (remotely) through a mutual friend.  We'd been out to coffee once initially, came back to my place, hung out a bit, then had another dinner date a week later here again.  I wound up with a crashing headache and had to fade early, and we left with a weird and sort of awkward vibe/feeling between the two of us.  I took this weirdness with me to the monastery and sat with it, thinking "well, that's the end of that." I was wrong.

When I got back into cell-phone range, I received a barrage of texts from her (built-up through the week, I assume) letting me know that I was missed, and she was, in fact, interested in me.  This alone made me feel good, because I typically don't read women wrongly, and the way we'd left it, it seemed that I had.

To cut it short, we near-instantly fell in love, and got engaged on Christmas Eve Day.

I did another sesshin in January.  Put on a few more pounds.

Happily in love, making vegan specialties of mine for her (she is veg, and often vegan), sweets, etc.

HELLO, 252!

Now, where the pride comes in.

First off, I caught myself in a manner and at a place that kept me feeling in control.  I didn't flip out, didn't throw in the towel, didn't get too discouraged.  I simply got back at it.  Most importantly, I didn't beat myself up over it.  I just saw that it was time to get back to work.

I knew in my mind that I was likely to put on a few pounds over the winter.  I live in the Pacific North-Wet.  Walking in the cold, damp winter rains is not something my disabled body really does well at--let alone enjoys--so I knew the lack of exercise alone would ding me.  But I also was eating a bit from stress, and some from boredom.  But I caught myself.  I caught myself at a place I'd so often tripped over before.  This time I didn't screw it up.  Again, that alone is encouraging to me.

I think I topped out at 253-4.  That was about two months or so ago.  I've been back to low-cal-ish low-carb, hovering around "induction"-level carbs since then.  In that time, I've dropped about fourteen pounds.  Pretty good.  I feel in control again, and am feeling more energized about really getting back at it each day.  Still fighting off the winter apathy about exercise, but that's just as it goes.  As the sun becomes more present in my life, that too will get easier to get past.  I have my exercise stationary bike back in my flat, so I have that beast as a back-up.

At one point last year, I hit 229.8lbs.  It was fleeting, lasting only a few hours.  That's okay.  I'm pretty confident that I'll see it for real before too long.  I still have a picture of the number between my feet on my scale to remind me.

But I also have another picture.  It's of JLS and me, naked, standing in front of my bathroom mirror together.  She is so gorgeous; voluptuous, soft, yet a healthy weight.  This here is the part where I'd say something self-depreciating like "But me?  Well..."  But there is none of that when I look at that image.  I actually look good.  I have collar-bones showing, and a chin, and strong shoulders, and my toned arms about her bare waist.

And I am proud of that.  I am proud that I've stuck with it.  And I'm proud of who I am, no matter my weight.  But being more in control of this issue is so empowering, I can't see going back.  I don't want to go back.  I want to keep walking.  As hard as it is at times for me to do, I want to simply keep marching on.  I have so much to live for.  I did before I started, and I most certainly do now.

Two pounds. 

Right. @#$%ing. On!

242-ish (and off we go...)

Headed into sesshin (silent zen retreat) for a week.  Nothing to say but this.  Interested to see how a week of oryoki works the numbers.

Be well, folks, and remember to be generous.

238.6 (Boo-Ya!)

After having been stuck at 245-ish for a month and some, this is beyond awesome.  I am near exactly one large dog-food bag away from 200lbs! (Nice tan-lines on the feets, eh?  Those should be called "PDX Southern tan-lines" [read: "from wearing Keens all summer"]).

To make this even better, I had a doctor's appointment today for a prescription reissue.  I haven't seen him in like 9 months.  I walked in, and I kid you not, he stopped, double-taked, exclaimed "You look great!" then without missing a beat, added "Everything okay?"

Lolz.

He asked how I was doing it.  I told him carbohydrate restriction, mindful eating and walking.  He was all smiles.

A bonus aside from that visit: it did calibrate my home scale pretty well.  I was 239.x this morning before I left.  I got on their uber-accurate scale fully clothed with shoes (I figured I was +6lbs or so there) and weighed in at 245, so that about jibes exactly.  After I left the doctor's office, I wound up getting off at the wrong bus stop and had to walk a good 1.5 miles to get to my next destination, so I got my walkies in fo sure.  I weighed myself just now after getting home, just to make sure I got the lowest number.  I may drop further today because I rushed out of the house this morning and forgot to take my diuretic, so I have some fluid in me.  I just took it, so I'll be peeing like a race-horse in about 30min.  Weeeeeee!  (<--hehehe.  See what I just did there?)

Last night at my sangha Communication's team meeting, I decided to have pita bread and hummus with the crew.  I had my regular Mediterranean chicken salad, but after having the bread at the monastery over the weekend and not essploding, I decided that I should, if only as a practice of moderation, not to say anything of a reward.  I'm glad I did.  It was wonderful.  Yet more people (at that meeting) ask me "how are you doing this?"  I tell them the same answer.  They all sorta shake their heads in mild disbelief, as if to say "Well sonofabiatch.  That diet and exercise stuff actually works, hu?"  My friend Bansho was there, and attested to the same.  He's really focusing on portion control and exercise, but whatever works.

Something kinda weird struck me on the bus today.  I am actually sorta looking forward to sesshin.  Why?  Because after a solid week of ōryōki, I may conceivably be down to 230!  We'll see, though.  I'm really enjoying not thinking so much about this stuff anymore, and focusing on "goals".  My only goal is this moment.  Now.  Now.  NOW!

But I'll admit that I'm liking that there's slightly less "body" in the "body/mind" that is sensing/experiencing this "now" now ;)

241.2 (On "Mindful Eating"...)

Yep.  241.2.  That feels really good.  Yeah, that bit is a bit obvious.  Of course it does.  I was stuck at 245-ish for so long that admittedly I was getting rather discouraged.  I'll talk about discouragement in a bit.  But I wanted to start with progress.

I've taken a step-back from blogging here for a few reasons.  Firstly, it was beginning to feel a bit, I dunno... stale?  Not much progress to report on, so "keep on keepin' on" was the mantra, and the practice, so what's there to say on it?  Secondly though, it was starting to feel a bit obsessive, especially in light of the above.  It was making itself feel like "You must talk about food. You must talk about food. You must talk about food..." and frankly, it was getting a bit tiring.  One of the things I've liked about switching to a low-carb diet was that food making was becoming simpler, and as a result, I didn't have to think about food as much.  I was really liking that.  And I still do.  What follows is an amalgamation of cut-n-pastes from recent SOTW posts, and some other thoughts.

This past weekend, I attended my teacher, Chozen Bays-roshi's Mindful Eating retreat at Great Vow Zen Monastery.  The retreat was a gift to me by my friend Bansho, but it was a bit extra significant for a few reasons.  I've dropped over fifty pounds this year, and I really wanted to attend this retreat.  He's been following my progress, and had purchased this retreat with the intent of making it a scholarship.  I suddenly couldn't come up with the finances to attend, and it all fell neatly into place.  Also, it is the beginning of our observance of ango.  More on that, and its relation to teh foodz in a bit.

The retreat was wonderful, powerful, fun, challenging, helpful, painful, funny, healthful, healing, humbling and paradigm-changing, to say the least.  I had quite a bit of apprehension during the run-up, mostly over carbs.  There are plenty of carbohydrates at the monastery.  Don't get me wrong: it's a totally reasonable amount of balanced, mostly-complex carbs.  I mean, my monastic friends living there work very hard, and typically eat one meal a day in a very simple fashion, and need to power themselves with something.  They're not on a diet to lose excess weight or body fat in some more expedient fashion like I am, so any weight-loss is a byproduct of a truly healthy life-style.

But me?  I am very carb-restricted.  I have been eating mostly protein, and animal-derived protein at that.  Seeing that the monastery is critter non grata, what was going to happen to me and my diet while there?  I'd actually had my first carbo-phobo dream a few nights before.  I dreamed that I was sitting down to a dinner of unknown providence, and it wound up being a hamburger.  That in and of itself wasn't so bad.  The issue was that it was served three-slab-of-bun "Big Mac" style.  I dreamed I removed the bun(s) and scraped off the toppings.  Then when I awoke, I found myself looking back at the dream, and being upset that in eating the mere toppings, I'd consumed ketchup. -sigh-  Yeah, no anxiety there.  I knew immediately that this was a psychic manifestation of my anxiety over the whole issue, and sort-of laughed it off.

I rode up to the retreat with my close friend SS.  She's been tinkering with low-carb as well, and we both decided even before leaving that we were simply going to have to roll with it.  Being freaked out by carbs while there was going to do nothing good for the experience, and frankly, would be dishonoring the entire intent and purpose of the retreat.  On the good side of things, though, was the experience of doing this together.  We're old friends who've gotten to grow close again after a number of years orbiting in different and distant circles.  Now that she practices with our sangha, we get to see each-other near weekly, which is awesomesauce.  That we're both major foodies with life-long weight issues just made it all the more poignant.  It was a great ride up to the monastery on a stunningly lovely early autumn afternoon.  This was starting off well.

We got to the monastery and checked in.  My sensei, Hogen, heard my voice and popped out to check.  "Andy, that is you. Good, good..."  He never smiles all that demonstratively, but his face belied him, and it warmed me.  After the general necessities were taken care of, we settled into our dorm spaces.

Dinner was the first major challenge.  Salad, beet soup and bread.  BEET SOUP?  BREAD?  I could feel the anxiety surge up inside me.  I was aware of it.  I acknowledged it.  I worked on letting it go.  But there was a practical issue that needed to be answered: that beet soup--due to its carb content--may very well give me a major glycemic whammy, and after my health issues at my last retreat two years or so ago, I really didn't want to start suffering from major blood-sugar issues.  That, and not having eaten bread for literally months, and I felt that the wisest thing to do was make a conscientious choice about things.  So I decided to forgo the soup in favor of the consumption of bread.  The soup was likely to be a faster and more powerful carb blast being that it was essentially a carb-loaded liquid; at least the bread was a multi-grain whole-wheat, so it would be slower in to my system.  I made sure to take extra salad.

And yeah, the bread was pretty damned orgasmic.  I took my first bite, and chewed for what seemed like forever, not in a Road to Wellville/Fletcherization type way, but in a deep relishing of something so insanely wonderful.  Made by hand by friends, this bread was quite possibly the best bite of bread I've had since I first started baking bread by hand myself.  It honestly ranked up there with my first true and proper French baguette.  It was for all the world like a massive Wheat-Thin, but better.  I decide right then and there to toss the anxiety for good for the weekend, and just see what would happen.  I was pretty sure that if I did, in fact, put on a pound or two, I wouldn't breach 250.  It was a worthwhile experiment in allowing carbs back in, and there was no more perfect a place to run this experiment than in this vessel of safety that is the SS GVZM.  Right then and there, I decided to just let it go, and be down with the full experience.  Yeah, and have two more pieces of bread.

I slept like shat that night, though.  Always hard the first night.  I was a late arrival, which had the benefit of me being in the second men's dorm, so I was able to pick a bed in an area of the Equanimity dorm that had no other people in it, but I picked a bed against the exterior wall, and froze my ass off all night.  I might have managed two hours' sleep total, but seeing as the day was going to be light on effort, I knew I'd be okay.

We sat zazen, did morning service, then had our first ōryōki meal that morning.  It's one of my favorite breakfasts there: 10-grain hot cereal from Bob's Red Mill with brown sugar and peanut butter.  I just went with it, and felt renewed.

The rest of the retreat was group work with my other teacher, Jan Chozen Bays roshi.  I'm not really going to prattle on about that part of it, because she did it all here.  There was a lot of pain and emotion dealt with, and it was all very insightful.  I slept like I was dead Saturday night.  Sunday, I woke up at about 4:30am very well rested.  I got up and dressed in the dark so as not to disturb my dorm-mates, then went to sit outside in the crisp, cold darkness of the early morning.  The rain had stopped, and it was beautifully clear with a crescent moon dancing in and out of UV-blue clouds.  I sat zazen out in the cold, and thought for a moment about what commitment to make for this ango.

An ango (安居), for those who don't know, is a period of more intensive practice in a zen sangha or monastery.  My sangha observes one every autumn.  For us, it's traditional to make an ango vow or commitment; some extra practice like bowing, chanting, memorizing a sutra, daily- or extra zazen, etc. This year, I was having a hard time coming up with something that resonated with me.  Last year I committed to sit every time my sangha was at the dharma center (of 32 opportunities, I missed four.  Jes' sayin'...).  This year, I was thinking of trying to memorize the Shosai Myokichijo Dharani, which always renders me dumb and mum.  I may still.  I'll be chanting it daily for six days in about two weeks.  Regardless, I mulled, I sat, I went inside to the zendo and sat alone until the morning wake-up bell at 5:50am rang through the monastery.

At the main Sunday service, we had a sagaki ceremony to invite all the hungry ghosts here to be with us, take what they needed, and leave peacefully.  It was lovely, fun, and signifigant.  I'll post more on that later.  SS and I drove home after lunch, and swung into Fubonn market to see if we couldn't come up with some cheap ōryōki rigs.  I found some all-plastic bowls that nested into each-other nicely.  She dropped me off, and I chilled at home.

Then, when making dinner for myself Monday night and setting out my new bowls, I knew what my ango practice would be.  Mindful eating.  Duh!  I will eat at least one formal ōryōki meal a day this way throughout all of ango.  I'll be interested to see what that does for the weight-loss.

More later, my hungry little gakis...