Tag: exercise

My daughters will extend my life by almost three years

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Okay: recent study suggests dads with daughters have tendency to live longer, with each daughter adding on average 74 weeks of lifespan

When this story was fed to me, I couldn’t help but smirk as I often do whenever I read anything related to girldads or being a girldad.  The notion that by virtue of them being daughters instead of sons, my two girls will be responsible for keeping my ass alive for 148 weeks longer than my life expectancy should suggest, nearly three entire years, is amusing to me.  Even more so, that it’s pointed out that sons, add no extra life to their dads, comparatively.

The thing is, the story could have ended with that, and kept it vague, yet still sweet, but in this day and age, where everyone is expected to show their work, when they dive a little deeper, it’s mostly attributed to the notion that when said girls become women, they’re way more apt to nag their dads about health and preventative care, which is the primary reason why they tend to live longer.

I mean it makes sense, since harping on their dad to go see doctors and get checkups and critical milestone tests probably is more useful in the long game versus daring dad to see how long they can go without farting, how fast they can go in the rental car, or can they take a spinning power bomb off the top of the couch.  But it does take some of the sticker sentimentality away from the general headline, but not enough to where I can’t make a brog post about it.

What’s interesting to me though, is that I wonder how much truth this will hold in my particular case.  A lot of the longevity is attributed to what seems like a bunch of out-of-shape dads who view their children as a sudden reason to get into better health and pick up better habits, which would naturally be beneficial to their life expectancy.

I’m no Zac Efron, but I’ve always been consistent and routinely with exercise, and mythical wife has already gotten a handle on egging me to go to the doctor at least for annuals, so the things that my daughters would’ve been expected to drive me to do in order to give me 148 weeks more of living, I’m already doing.  Of course, I want to be around when they graduate schools, maybe get married, or any other life’s milestones.  Maybe there’s another level of physical improvement to reach, probably when they’re not little brats who are sometimes shits about their food, and I end up eating a ton of shitty leftovers on account of not wanting to waste food.

Conversely, there’s always the easy joke about how my kids, regardless of their gender, are solely responsible for taking years off of my life on account of the sheer amounts of stress they put me through with their childish insubordination, stubbornness and constant power struggles.  Maybe that’s something that the study doesn’t account for is that daughters might each give me 74 weeks of extra life at the tail end of my life, but they’re sure as fuck siphoning a lot more of it on the front end.

Either way, let’s choose to ignore all the background noise of this study, and choose to believe that my two little girls are going to be the reason why I live three years longer than I really should be, solely by existing. ❤️

Check it out, the lamer version of me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Inevitably when the new year begins, all gyms generally experience an influx of new goers, no matter how small a gym is, like my small but serviceable work gym.  There’s this one guy that I’ve noticed being new to the gym in my building, primarily because he’s Asian, and there are maybe like 3-4 of us in this entire building that I’ve bothered to know exist.  He’s probably around my age, give or take five years, and it seems like that he must have been casually active prior to coming to my gym, since it’s not like he’s a fat blob or anything.

But what has caused this guy to become the subject of a brog post is typically what lots of things elicit from my head do that ultimately end up as brog post fodder: questionable annoyance.

Basically by virtue of being Asian, going to the same gym I do, doing a few exercises that I do, having a similarly intended hairstyle as I do, and even wearing Jordans to the office, I’ve decided that this guy is basically a lamer version of me, ripe for criticism and immortalization in my brog that nobody reads.

Hear me out though, he’s not a lamer version of me just because he’s not actually me, it’s just that he falls overwhelmingly short in the world of standards that he isn’t aware of that I’ve set for him, making him, the lamer version.

For starters, the guy seems to barely works out for more than a half hour whenever I’ve seen him.  He does one set of a variety of things, and if there’s one thing that’s been engrained into me from exercise is that sets and repetition is where growth is, and the fact that lame me is doing one set of a few things, and then wraps it up, to me, seems like a tremendous waste of time and effort.  Like today, he did some dumbbell curls, walked on the treadmill for like five minutes, did some assisted pullups, and used the rower machine which is always a surprise because I was convinced for the longest time nobody but me used it in my building, which adds to his list of commonalities with me.

But when I hit the lockers after wrapping up my workout, he came in to start dressing out, which perplexed me considering how deep into my workout I was in when he even showed up in the first place.  Lame me couldn’t have spent more than like 20-25 minutes out on the floor, to which has me thinking, why even bother coming to the gym for such a short and inadequate workout?  Could it even be called a workout?

Additionally, lame me didn’t even shower.  I get that he had what could barely be construed as a workout, but he still went through some physical activity, and I know myself, it takes next to nothing in order for me to get a sweat broken, especially if I’m mentally prepared to workout.  And if I sweat, I want to shower, and the shower is almost as important and critical to the whole ritual of hitting the gym, to the point where if showering is not available, then the workout as a whole, can be in question on if it will even happen.

But lame me goes straight to the locker, and starts pulling out his clothes and gets right back into his office slave garb, content to be potentially sweaty and potentially stinky from exercise.

And this is where I notice his choice of sneakers, which are a two-tone navy and white Air Jordan 1’s, the best shoes there are.  Now I typically save my J’s for special occasions, but I do rock my Pandas as my daily shoes, to which Dunks are basically J1 clones, so lame me also shares a similar aesthetic when it comes to sneakers, annoyingly adding to the correlations that make him, a lamer version of me.

So to summarize, man is Asian, goes to my gym, does a few similar exercises that I do, tries to wear his hair similarly to how I do, seems to like the same shoes that I do; but works out significantly less than me, doesn’t shower, and based on his conversations in the locker room with company that I wouldn’t keep, seems to kind of be an Uncle Tong right-leaning Republican.

In conclusion, a lamer version of myself.  And to anyone who understands the gif above, I wouldn’t really lose any sleep if a similar fate happened to my lamer version as what happens to Harold and Kumar’s.

Things White People Like: Not showering after working out

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In all my years that I’ve been going to gyms, this is something that I can’t say that I’ve really paid attention to until more recently.  Maybe it’s because my current gym is very small and has a very small sample size to analyze, but it’s through this observational process do patterns begin to emerge, and lead to me being able to spout off bullshit brog posts like this one.

But as the title of this post reads, I have observed a disturbing trend that has occurred enough for me to widely brush stroke the statement that white people don’t shower after working out.

Once or twice, sure, maybe we’re short on time, maybe something has come up.  A meeting you’re cutting too close to, or the workout had been underestimated and time is no longer on our side.  But I’m witnessing the same people with regularity, who work out, and vanish into the locker room only to emerge just minutes later, with not nearly enough time to make believable that any sort of bathing had occurred.

Look, I’m not a complete psycho who’s following every white guy into the locker room after their workout, but I know from my own experience with expedient showers, that even when trying to be quick and timely as possible, I still need like 10-15 minutes in the locker room to shower, dress, groom before I’m ready to go back to the office.

These Ben Afflecks are in and out of the locker room in under 5-7 minutes in most cases, and the laws of physics are saying that these motherfuckers ain’t showering, full stop.

And it’s always white guys.  Much like myself, all the black men who also work out at my gym, they always shower after working out.  It doesn’t matter if they’re doing weights, or spending any amount of time on a cardio machine, if they exercise, they’re showering.  It’s only the white guys where it’s more of a surprise to see one actually taking time to bathe and clean themselves after a workout than not.

The thing is too, a lot of these guys I’m witnessing on a regular basis who don’t shower, it’s not like they’re doing some wimpy pussy workouts where they don’t build up a sweat or put themselves into situations where they should probably consider cleaning themselves up for the courtesy of the people they’ll spend the next half of the working day in close proximity to.  Lots of these guys are doing cardio and building up a considerable amount of sweat and perspiration, the chief ingredient when it comes to generating BO.

And then they finish their workouts, get back into their white guy uniforms and hop on the elevator to get straight back to the office.  This kind of lack of regard for the olfactory comfort of others is equal parts selfish, arrogant, disgusting and just plain dickish.

My brain can’t wrap itself around the idea of not showering after a workout.  The shower is practically the best part of the workout, the reward for taxing the body and now we can cleanse ourselves of all the sweat and strain of exercise.  I love the feeling of being clean, and especially in the workplace where feelings of positivity and physical pleasure are often being worked against, why would I deny myself something that I could realistically indulge in?

White people, man.  I just don’t understand these motherfuckers sometimes.  For as much as they think they own the entire planet, they sure conduct themselves in some truly mind-boggling, third-world manners.  I feel very fortunate that of all the white guys that I’ve seen not showering after sweaty workouts, that I don’t have to conduct any business with them; I just know that if I saw them in the actual office, I would just know that they probably reeked of varying degrees of BO, and I wouldn’t be able to hide the displeasure on my face, and nobody wins when unpleasant interactions occur.

Kid-free weekend musings

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Despite the fact that I haven’t had to wake up before the sun rises to prepare and have breakfast ready for when my kids awake, I’ve still been getting up early.  The first morning, I had forgotten to disable my alarms that ensure that I’m up for the morning routine, and the second morning, the dog whined and woke me up because I had disabled my alarms but that meant she was stuck in the bedroom at the time in which her feeder would go off.

All the same, the idea of going back to sleep didn’t really cross my mind because I’m a neurotic doer who unfortunately often times sees sleep as a means to an end, and as much as I’d like to get more sleep in my life, as long as I feel like there’s an endless queue of things that need to be done instead, those will often times keep me out of bed despite knowing what pleasure sleeping without an alarm clock can bring.

So instead of sleeping more, or preparing a breakfast for the kids, I’ve actually had some calm mornings where I could actually feel a little bit like an old iteration of me for a little bit.  I went on a leisurely morning walk, alternatively to the virtual Peachtree Road Race I ran the morning prior.  I came back drenched in sweat because it’s humid as balls, but then I came home, changed clothes, logged into work, and unsurprisingly had a very slow remote day, where I was able to accomplish all sorts of side quests throughout the day.

Like hanging some picture frames that needed the 22 ft. ladder that I never get a chance to do when the kids are around, got an emissions test on my third car, went to the DMV to renew the tags and got out in two minutes because I used the self-serve kiosk that nobody else uses which left me feeling really good.  I did some kid laundry which felt good to not have to try to do it in a window in which they’re not sleeping so the noises don’t distract them, and I even got a new shelf for my garage to tidy up the shoe tornado that living in a home with nothing but females often results in.

Needless to say, I had a productive day which always puts me in a positive frame of mind, and I decided to reward myself by finally watching Fast X; a completely dumb movie which is about as surprising as white people liking Rivians, but also unsurprisingly enjoyable for me, even if I didn’t know that it was going to be a two-parter.

I won’t give anything away, but I have to say that casting Jason Momoa for the role he’s in seems like a whiff of colossal proportions.  I feel like the number one priority for the role was “look like he could be South American” but they didn’t take into account any of the character’s mannerisms, personality traits or general perceived look.  And as hunky as Momoa is, the reality is that he’s not a very talented actor, and it really says something when a Fast & Furious installment has pushed his acting chops beyond his capabilities.

All the same, can’t wait for the next one, which I feel like has to be the actual finale to the series.  Vin Diesel’s not getting any younger and it’s looking as such, the character development is heading in a direction that I’d say should be irreversible, but they seem to throw caution to the wind when it comes to those kind of rules, and the only thing I will give away is that Paul Walker’s character is still fucking alive despite the fact that the actor has been dead since Fast 7; they just can’t keep this ruse up forever!

Anyway, this morning, after the dog woke me up at 7:26am which might as well be 10am for me, I thought about possibly going back to sleep after taking her out to pee; but after we came back inside, the bowl was empty, because the feeder was empty because the dog eats like a horse, but then the tub of extra food was empty, which meant that I had to open up the new 40 lb. bag of dog food to fill the tub and feeder and bowl, and at that point I was just like fuck it, I’m staying up.

So, I got back on the horse and went for a run.  I’ve been coming to the grips that at this juncture in my life, my running speed isn’t what it used to be, and short of making some actual adjustments to my way of life, I don’t think it will get back there.  I’d been struggling to keep my pace under the 10 minute/mile as of late, and I chalked it up to poor diet, habits and complacency, and I was able to get it back down under ten, but that also was the result of several consecutive days of running while I was at my sister’s place in Richmond without having to be a parent.

My Virtual Peachtree was completed in 1:04:36, which I’m pretty sure the slowest timed 10K I’ve done since I started doing organized runs back in 2007 which was a little disappointing, but as I said, unless I really make some changes to a lot of things in my life, like taking stat points away from weight lifting and eating and putting them into running, things aren’t going to get any better as I age.

It’s a little inevitable since Father Time is undefeated, and the sooner I accept it, the less angst I’ll have about running as a whole.

So, I ran while trying to keep that mindset in place, and ran in a manner which didn’t have me gasping for air when I inevitably failed to complete a sub-30 minute 5K, which was the case, and just took solace in the fact that I was up and doing something, and when it comes to exercising, I’m fortunate to have always had the mindset that it is always a good use of time.

I’m not the fastest runner or strongest lifter, but I can confidently say that I’m probably the most consistent and dedicated exerciser that I know.  It’s never been a fad, it’s never been something I’ve done to attain a physical goal.  I made the choice to start hitting the gym and exercising back in 2006, and short of a few exceptions like coronavirus lockdowns, have I ever taken an extended period of time off from it.

No matter how down on life I might feel, how envious of the lives, accomplishments and lifestyles of other people, I feel like I always have exercise to fall back onto.  It is never a waste of time, and often times it helps get my head in a better place than which it started, or at least get my brain chugging along, which is what brought us to this point where I’ve been able to blather on so seamlessly this morning, after the run.

Zuck may be a tool, but I respect what he’s doing with his physical life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know where or why I was shown it, but I saw a picture of Zuck without a shirt on at some MMA event, and I had a wtf moment at just how jacked the dorky motherfucker now is.  Whenever his name pops up somewhere, my mind automatically fills in the visual of Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of him in The Social Network, but with his doofy looking head with his buggy-looking eyes instead.

But in reality now, we’ve got a pretty athletic looking guy with budding muscle definition and a growing amount of jiu-jitsu training, because from what I understand it’s pretty much the only thing he does when he’s not being a corporate stooge these days.  Zuck is absolutely becoming a problem in that he’s a rich go-zillionaire, but is also developing the physique and the skillset to be able to fight, and that automatically knocks about 85% of the people who hate him for being who is off their pedestals of wishing they could bully him or intimidate him in a real-life fantasy altercation.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t particularly care much for the guy, but I will freely admit that I respect what he’s doing with his body.  Think about all the billionaires and millionaires out there that are fat, soft and doughy, and all shaped like pears.  Because of their wealth, they’ve simply given up on trying at all when it comes to their bodies, because they can just continuously throw money at things until they get a positive result.

But Zuck, it’s like he revolves his day around his working out and BJJ training, and that running theFacebook or Meta or whatever the fuck company is making him infinite money is basically a nuisance of a day job that is interfering with his ability to train.  When he’s not practicing grappling, he’s most definitely got a nutritionist and personal trainers who ensure that his body becomes sculpted and is in optimal shape, and I have to give props that the man is actually investing a little bit of his wealth into his own physical well-being, because there are so many in similar positions to him that absolutely do not.

I mean, it’s exactly what I would do if I were infinitely rich and didn’t have to work anymore.  I’d have both a personal chef as well as a personal trainer to make sure I got adequate exercise with physical goals in mind, as well as being fed healthy food that doesn’t suck or get exhausted with.

And then I’d get hardcore into wood working or restoring cars, and building my Nissan Sil-Eighty because that is still something that I really would like to do in my life, and when I hit the points of progress where I can humblebrag about the things I’m working on, I won’t look like a fat fucking slob that people would look at and overshadow the quality of my work because they’re too busy laughing at me.  I guarantee, that the more jacked and competent that Zuck gets with his training, the less fuel the troglodytes of the internet have to clown on him whenever his name pops up in the future.

The joys of running on the Silver Comet Trail not

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The above image encapsulates exactly what it’s like to run on the Silver Comet trail, which is a super awesome run/bike trail here in the Metro Atlanta area that basically stretches from the outskirts of the city and supposedly connects all the way west, to almost the Alabama state line.  It’s a great trail for people of all skill and experience levels, because it has so many points of access, people can use it for leisurely walks, lengthy excursions or just to train or casually exercise on.

I’ve always used it as a place to train up for long runs, as well as my preferred location to do any of the longer, numerous virtual runs that I always sign up for in order to add to my running medal collection, and it really is a wonderful trail because it’s fairly flat, completely shaded by trees which helps in even the hottest of summers, and there are multiple break points for people to rest, get water and take bathroom breaks if needed.

However, my only real criticism of the Silver Comet trail, isn’t something that can really be controlled, and is actually something that I’ve gripe-brogged about in the past, which is all the fucking bicyclists on the trail who think they own the entire thing, and go around flying down the path at 30+ mph, screaming ON YOUR LEFT all the time as if they were getting paid a quarter every time they had to wail it out.

Seriously, thanks to the Silver Comet, I fucking hate bicyclists, more than the times when I used to have to traverse around the city and had to share the roads with all the hipsters on their fixed gears clogging up lanes.  And to be more specific it’s not all bicyclists, and it’s not even the mega-tryhards that act like they’re participating in the Tour de France with their matching uniforms and barely existent thin-ass aluminum bicycles.

It’s the weekender bicyclists who think they’re on Lance Armstrong’s level when he was roided up to the gills, who are usually by themselves or with 1-2 other douchebag weekenders, who get on the trail and act like the whole thing belongs to them.  They’re the ones who are incessantly screaming ON YOUR LEFT to everyone as if they’re taxicabs in F-Zero, strategically placed just to ruin their day when they’re the ones in fact ruining everyone else’s day by being entitled assholes, hogging the entire trail for themselves and screaming at everyone.

Like, real pro-tryhard bicyclists for one, travel in large packs, but also have been doing what they do long enough to understand that all other travelers on the trail are not stupid, blind or deaf, all at the same time, and don’t hardly ever spam ON YOUR LEFT, unless they have a reason, like some dumbass who’s swerving along the trail.  The weekenders scream at everyone as if it’s their problem that they haven’t noticed that the people in front of them 100 yards away have maintained their lines and paces, and need to be reminded to watch out for them, while they travel at speeds, which in a car would definitely kill a pedestrian, but on a bicycle could be pretty lethal too.

For real though, weekender bicyclists are the god damn worst.  Nothing pockmarks a good run session than any time some bicycle douche screams ON YOUR LEFT and whizzes past me way too close to comfort when I’m already running on the edge of the trail, because it’s slightly flatter than the slight slope which is meant to control water on the surface from pooling aboard.  It’s like these cocksuckers all think I actually can pull over to the right any more than I already am at to convenience them, and they’re really lucky I just don’t stick my arm out and start clotheslining from hell every shithead who thinks they’re going to win the Tour de Douchebag.

I’d say as much as I loved being able to get back out onto the Silver Comet for the first time in nearly three years over the Labor Day weekend, that the weekend bicycle douchefucks were the worst thing about my run, it actually turns out that my 10K time crept over the 60-minute mark that I so fervently try to stay underneath.  At 61:14, I’m glad I was able to complete a 10K without any difficult laboring, but I’m pretty dissatisfied that it took me over an hour to accomplish.  I can’t use a lack of training as an excuse this time, considering I’ve been fairly consistent with my maintenance running over the last year, so I guess this is just a sign of age starting to catch up with me, and that I have to make some actual changes if I want to get my speed back up.

My 600 Lb. Diet – fin

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After seven days, I decided to throw in the towel on the Dr. Nowzaradan 1,200 calorie diet.

It’s not so much that I couldn’t handle the diet, as much as it was that I had actually started doing some research on what was and what wasn’t healthy numbers of calories to ingest, and what it really boiled down to was that 1,200 calories a day for someone as active and capable as I am on a daily basis, just was not a good thing.

I actually began to have doubts as soon as day 2, but I compromised with myself and gave myself the rest of the week to make sure that I wasn’t just going through knee-jerk doubt, and to stick it out just one week, to see if it might get easier or if it really was something that was capable of defeating my willpower.

As I said, it’s definitely something that I know I’d be capable of doing for an month, but not without its own series of inconveniences, outside of just hunger and radical energy spikes.  What helped justify the decision to call it after a week was that I was also running out of the healthy food that I had bought to embark on this test, and the thought of having to go to Costco again, just for a whole bunch more meat was about as appealing as the idea of sprinting through a forest naked.  Apathy and laziness trumped Dr. Now in this regard.

Speaking of apathy and laziness, 1,200 calories, in spite of being way below normal for just about anyone, much less an active and capable person, works for rapidly reducing weight for people who inherently live sedentary lifestyles and are already morbidly obese, but for all others, it’s just simply not enough calories to operate without there being some parts of the day in which your body feels sluggish from having no energy to burn, and occasional hangriness, even though we know it’s a thing.

The real kicker though for me was when I looked up general calorie calculators, on how many calories someone like me should be consuming in a day (photo above), and seeing how if I wanted to lose weight at a normal pace, two times of 1,200 is what I’d be allotted to have each day, a little bit less than that, but still significantly more than 1,200, if I wanted to “lose quickly.”

And anyone who’s ever taken any sort of interest in nutrition knows that when your body goes into a deficit, the first place that it goes into is typically muscle, and seeing as how I’ve already shriveled and likely lost a bunch of mass from the last year of pandemic and no-gym, losing even more was the last thing in the world I wanted to happen.

I could have adjusted the diet, and stayed low-carb/high-protein and just consumed 1,800 calories a day, but then it wouldn’t have been the Dr. Nowzaradan 1,200 diet; and that was the point I was trying to make, being able to do.  So after the seventh day, I went to bed knowing that the following morning would be back to normal for me, where I could have cereal, I could have creamer in my coffee, and the world of food options was once again my oyster to where I could eat whatever I wanted. 

Final Number after 7 Days:

Initial weight: 189.4 lbs
Final weight: 185.8 lbs (3.6 lbs lost)
8,310 calories consumed
951.5 grams of protein
$67.56 worth of food for 21 meals and 18 snacks