Austin's Thoughts

4 Week Weigh In

The new offi­cial weight is now 224 lbs.  Actu­al­ly, I have hit 224 lbs in week 3 and have plateaued in week 4.  The rea­son­ing why I think that I have plateaued is because of the head cold that had stopped me from from work­ing out for two weeks.  Since I have start­ed back in the gym, the recov­ery from my “cheat” day has been a lot quick­er.  My wife, Audrey, see­ing the results has also decid­ed to join the diet also.  Her first week, she lost 3 pounds.  (Editor’s Note:  My wife’s weight will not be men­tioned in this blog out of respect and com­mon sense.)  My goal for the month of Feb­ru­ary is to hit 220 lbs. This gives me 11 days to com­plete my goal.  I look for­ward to the challenge.

Start­ed Weight: 236 lbs.
Last Weigh In Weight: 230 lbs.
New Weigh In Weight: 224 lbs.

February 19, 2013  Leave a comment

Next Step

The thing that I am focus­ing on now is the phys­i­cal con­di­tion­ing of the body.  I am try­ing to tack­le this in two steps.  For the diet­ing por­tion, I am doing Tim Fer­riss’ “Slow Carb Diet”.  The jest of the diet con­sists of just eat­ing meat and veg­eta­bles with­out bread, rice, pota­toes, dairy, and fruit.  Half the food that I like is now lim­it­ed down to one day a week which is clas­si­fied as my cheat day.  This is a major test of dis­ci­pline because all the good­ies that my son has in the house is now off limit.

To match the diet­ing prac­tice, I had to do an inspi­ra­tional work­out pro­gram based on Joe Rogan’s phi­los­o­phy of doing some­thing tough to make your­self feel like a man.  I looked at the options around me and decid­ed to learn box­ing.  I learned quick­ly that I am out of stan­dard.  I have not left one time with­out hav­ing that puk­ing feel­ing but it is good to have the sore feel­ing in the body again.

Update — So after one week of imple­ment­ing the diet­ing and work­out pro­gram, I have lost six pounds and feel great.  I was look­ing to start the next week like I did the week before, but I have a hel­la­cious head cold that is slow­ing me down.  I have stopped going to the gym but con­tin­ued with the diet.  I hope I feel bet­ter again so I can get back into the gym next week.

Start­ing Weight: 236 lbs.
Weigh In Weight: 230 lbs.

February 7, 2013  Leave a comment

Need to try harder.

I think that every­body hits a plateau in their life and they become com­pla­cent on what life has to offer to them.  In the past three years, with the bless­ing of my son, I have had to restack the pri­or­i­ties in my life.  I have been work­ing for a income instead of enjoy­ing what I do, I have stopped work­ing out and put on extra weight because I did not have time to PT (mil­i­tary term for phys­i­cal train­ing), worked an obscene amount of hours because of over­ly com­mit­ting myself to the wrong pri­or­i­ties, and neglect­ed the rela­tion­ships that are impor­tant to me.

Why am I mak­ing excus­es for myself?

I have this arti­cle filed away in Ever­note called “From Vet to Vic­tim — and Back Again” that I have been read­ing and reread­ing late­ly.  The crux of the arti­cle is about a Marine that gets put through the meat grinder and after the meat grinder, devel­ops a men­tal­i­ty of vic­tim hood and that his life sucks.  What made it worse, he knew that his life sucked so he did things to make it worse.  Until one day, he fig­ured out his life was steadi­ly going in the wrong direc­tion and with the prop­er moti­va­tion, he stopped being the vic­tim of the sit­u­a­tion and slow­ly over­came it.  This includ­ed the fail­ures and progress.

By no means am I com­par­ing my sit­u­a­tion with the Marine.  I would not insult the Marine.  What it does do is gives me a gut check on what am I going to do.

The plan.

I want to com­bine the philo­soph­i­cal mind of Joe Rogan (if you have not lis­tened to his pod­cast, do it), the work smarter not hard­er men­tal­i­ty of Tim Fer­riss (one of my dad’s favorite say­ings), and the over­all gen­er­al awe­some­ness of the  “Art of Man­li­ness” blog.

So how am I going to do that?  I do not know yet but I am plan­ning to write it down in this blog and use this blog to track my progress and my fail­ures.  Why in the hell would I do that?  The prin­ci­pal actu­al­ly comes from Tim Ferriss’s book “The 4‑Hour Chef”.  If you write it down and share it, it cre­ates account­abil­i­ty.  Sec­ond­ly, the fear of God of me pub­licly fail­ing.  That in itself should be moti­va­tion itself but when my son get’s old­er, I want him to be able to read this blog and under­stand that you have to own your life.

January 26, 2013  Leave a comment

Reflection by our society.

Update: The sto­ry got cred­it­ed to Gen­er­al Petraeus instead to Mr. Nick Palmis­ciano.  Regard­less, very good points.

His sta­tis­tics are accu­rate and revealing…….as well as his insight on the effects on those who have borne and are bear­ing the sacrifices…….

Nick Palmis­ciano, CEO of Ranger Up, for­mer Army Cap­tain, 1998 grad­u­ate of West Point, and Duke MBA  Gen­er­al Petraeus’s remarks require much reflec­tion by our society.

Thanks to my fel­low veterans:

I remem­ber the day I found out I got into West Point. My mom actu­al­ly showed up in the hall­way of my high school and wait­ed for me to get out of class. She was bawl­ing her eyes out and apol­o­giz­ing that she had opened up my admis­sion let­ter. She was­n’t cry­ing because it had been her dream for me to go there. She was cry­ing because she knew how hard I’d worked to get in, how much I want­ed to attend, and how much I want­ed to be an infantry offi­cer. I was going to get that oppor­tu­ni­ty. That same day two of my teach­ers took me aside and essen­tial­ly told me The following:

“David, you’re a smart guy. You don’t have to join the mil­i­tary. You should go to col­lege, instead.”

I could eas­i­ly write a theme defend­ing West­Point and the mil­i­tary as I did that day, explain­ing that USMA is an elite insti­tu­tion, that sep­a­rate from that it is actu­al­ly sta­tis­ti­cal­ly much hard­er to enlist in the mil­i­tary than it is to get admit­ted to col­lege, that serv­ing the nation is a chal­lenge that all able-bod­ied men should at least con­sid­er for a host of rea­sons, but I won’t.

What I will say is that when a 16 year-old kid is being told that attend­ing West Point is going to be bad for his future then there is a dan­ger­ous dis­con­nect in Amer­i­ca, and entire­ly too many Amer­i­cans have no idea what kind of bur­dens our mil­i­tary is bearing.

In World War II, 11.2% of the nation served in four (4) years. Dur­ing the Viet­nam era, 4.3% served in twelve (12) years. Since 2001, only 0.45% of our pop­u­la­tion has served in the Glob­al War on Ter­ror. These are unbe­liev­able sta­tis­tics. Over­time, few­er and few­er peo­ple have shoul­dered more and more of the bur­den and it is only get­ting worse. Our troops were sent to war in Iraq by a Con­gress con­sist­ing of 10% vet­er­ans with only one per­son hav­ing a child in the mil­i­tary. Tax­es did not increase to pay for the war. War bonds were not sold. Gas was not reg­u­lat­ed. In fact, the aver­age cit­i­zen was asked to sac­ri­fice noth­ing, and has sac­ri­ficed noth­ing unless they have cho­sen to out of the good­ness of their hearts. The only peo­ple who have sac­ri­ficed are the vet­er­ans and their fam­i­lies. The vol­un­teers. The peo­ple who swore an oath to defend this nation.

You stand there, deploy­ment after deploy­ment and fight on. You’ve lost rela­tion­ships, spent years of your lives in extreme con­di­tions, years apart from kids you’ll nev­er get back, and beat­en your body in a way that even pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes don’t under­stand. Then you come home to a nation that does­n’t under­stand. They don’t under­stand suffering.

They don’t under­stand sac­ri­fice. They don’t under­stand why we fight for them. They don’t under­stand that bad peo­ple exist. They look at you like you’re a machine — like some­thing is wrong with you. You are the mis­guid­ed one — not them.

When you get out, you sit in the col­lege class­rooms with polit­i­cal sci­ence teach­ers that dis­count your opin­ions on Iraq and Afghanistan because YOU WERE THERE and can’t under­stand the macro issues they gath­ered from books, because of your bias. You watch TV shows where every vet has PTSD and the vio­lent strain at that. Your Con­gress is debat­ing your ben­e­fits, your retire­ment, and your pay, while they ask you to do more. But the amaz­ing thing about you is that you all know this. You know your coun­try will nev­er pay back what you’ve giv­en up.

You know that the pop­u­lace at large will nev­er tru­ly under­stand or appre­ci­ate what you have done for them. Hell, you know that in some cir­cles, you will be thought as less than nor­mal for hav­ing worn the uniform

Just that deci­sion alone makes you part of an elite group. “Nev­er in the field of human con­flict has so much been owed by so many to so few.” ‑Win­ston Churchill- Thank you to the 11.2% and 4.3% who have served and thanks to the 0.45% who con­tin­ue to serve our Nation.

August 8, 2012  Leave a comment

The Dover Port Mortuary Independent Review

This is a con­tin­u­um of a sto­ry that broke cou­ple months ago about how Dover Air Force Base has severe­ly mis­han­dled the funer­al process that lead to ser­vice mem­ber remains being deposit­ed into a land­fill.  Based on Army Gen­er­al (Retired) John Abizaid’s “The Dover Port Mor­tu­ary (DPM) Inde­pen­dent Review Sub­com­mit­tee”; it is now doc­u­ment­ed that the first doc­u­ment­ed inci­dent occurred Sep­tem­ber 2005.

Part of the report

Ref: The Dover Port Mor­tu­ary Inde­pen­dent Review Sub­com­mit­tee Report

Some of the oth­er inci­dents that are high­light­ed in the report that spans across the past eight years include:

• - Sep­tem­ber 11 vic­tims buried in the same land­fill as the ser­vice members.
• - Mis­han­dling of a Army Mas­ter Sergeant remains
• - Mis­han­dling of a Marine remains (result­ed in $25,000 settlement)
• - Ser­vice mem­bers being dis­posed as med­ical waste
• - Mis­han­dling of fetal remains of mil­i­tary spous­es miscarriages

If this has been doc­u­ment­ed for the past eight years, why has this not been han­dled eight years ago?  The com­man­ders should be dis­charged with a  dis­hon­or­able because as a tax­pay­er, I should not have to pay for indi­vid­u­als that could not do their job right.  As a mil­i­tary vet­er­an, I am deeply sad­dened that my broth­ers and sis­ters were han­dled this way.

Bot­tom line:  If you are going to do a job, do it right.

Update:

The NY Times has done a fol­low to The Dover Port Mor­tu­ary Inde­pen­dent Review Comit­tee and the Chief of the Air Force response.

Link: NY Times Report

The Air Force needs to fol­low Office of Spe­cial Coun­sel guid­ance of remov­ing the DPM offi­cials instead of giv­ing out LORs and demot­ing the civilians.

February 29, 2012  1 Comment

Boston Lifestyle

After our trip to Boston, Audrey and I thought what a great city.  With a well built tran­sit sys­tem, side­walks, and bike paths; we said that we love to live in a city that offers the same.  Hills­bor­ough Coun­ty offers the same thing on a much small­er scale.  So I start­ed to take the bus to work and walk to where need­ed to at work.  In the morn­ing and after­noon, Audrey dri­ves me to the bus stop and picks me up in the after­noon.  Great process if you think about it if the car bat­tery does not die.

Audrey and I in Boston

So I take this time to incor­po­rate oth­er parts of the Boston lifestyle like walk­ing home (great way to break in new boots) and bik­ing to the bus stop when it is 45 degrees out­side.  If you can not tell, there is a bit of sar­casm in that last sen­tence.  We joked how healthy peo­ple in Boston looked.  I think that it is not by choice.

February 14, 2012  1 Comment