Weight of the World 7: Oh gooder griefer

Absolutely static. 127.7kiloes

Exercising lots.

Obviously eating too much good food.

Obviously the wife's fault for being such a good cook.

Nothing to do with a total lack of impulse control or moral fibre on my part. Couldn't be.

Weight of the World 6: Oh good grief

Good thing I am actually changing shape, or I'd be extremely fed up.

Am continuing to shift lard from belly etc, to the point where folks are commenting. Am I shifting it off the scales? Am I heck. 127.7, as of Friday 13th.

It's enough to make a man comfort eat...

Weight of the World 5: Ups and downs

Spent last week on the stepper and then undoing it the following morning with a cooked breakfast.

Anyhow, got on the Scales of Justice on Monday and had gone all the way back up to 129.7. i.e had managed to lose 0.7 of a kilo in a month. Except, except... people were commenting on shape change and beer gut loss, and I too felt better.

So today, same scales, four days later, 127.4. Go figure.

Off to gym for two hour stepper stint, and another tomorrow.

Blind persistence is one of my talents, sometimes.

Weight of the World 4: One stepper forwards?

and two steps back...

128.7 bastard kilos.

That would be UP 0.8 of a kilo or whatever since last Friday

But, as I shall tell myself for the next few days, this is because muscle weighs more than fat blah blah blah and other blah blah self-deluding tosh.

Have been wellying it on the stepper, and it's true, my legs feel stronger and I can certainly go longer on the max setting. So, fitter, but pounds that I've gluttonously acquired over years won't be shed in weeks...

Weight of the World 3: Still Early Days

127.9 kilos this morning. So, down 2.5 kilos in total over two weeks, which isn't bad going, I suppose, even if that figure (ho ho) disguises the fact that most of the weight was lost in the first week. But we're dealing with such piddling amounts per week that you just have to plod on for MONTHS. So be it.

Feel a lot better, stronger. May have even put some muscle bulk on quads and hams and glutes. Have been laying off the upper body workouts for just such a reason.

Ta to Pete for being shocked and appalled at my post-stepper pizza plan. It dissuaded me, perhaps for good...

Hard to see when I am going to get some proper sessions in next week, unless first thing in morning (only 60 mins), since every night is sort of booked with meetings and stuff...

Weight of the World 2: Early days

Jan 9th
There's always low hanging fruit, not that I get my five portions a day.

The first week has gone well- down from 130.4 to 128.6 kilos. Weighed on the same (zeroed and accurate) scales at same time of day in same clothes blah blah.

To what do I ascribe my fantastic weight loss? Starvation since Wednesday? Cutting out all pizza etc?

No, I ascribe it to having gone to the gym and done a minimum of an hour (sometimes closer to two) on the stepper literally every day.

That's unsustainable in the long term (but great for getting through copies of the Financial Times and Capitalism Nature Socialism, Monthly Review etc.)

Oh, and I hadn't been doing any upper-body, which I've just now done, so some of that loss may have been from atrophy of pecs and deltoids etc.

So, an uniequivocal success so far.

Western Buddhism and the menage-a-moi

"The problem of the uncritical acceptance of acontextual enlightenment should not be underestimated. As Slavoj Zizek often points out, what he calls “Western Buddhism” can function as the highest form of adaptation to late capitalism, allowing members of the most privileged sectors of the global system of domination to go about their work on behalf of that system while minimizing their level of guilt and stress and assuring themselves of their deeply compassionate qualities and the absolute perfection of their underlying Buddha-Natures. We may add that many of them also take comfort in the likelihood of a spectacular rebirth in their next lives: the ultimate upward mobility. What such “Western Buddhism” misses, or course, is that Buddhism is not about complacency but rather about the awakened mind."

This is from page 26 of the latest edition of Capitalism Nature Socialism, in an article that was slow to start, but really got going towards the end. It's called “Nagarjuna and the Ecology of Emptiness," by John Clark.
Zizek I can sort of take or leave. I did like his concept of the vanishing mediator, however...

Aida Hurtado said all that needed to be said on this.

"It doesn't matter how good you are, as a person, if the institutions of the society provide privilege to you based on their group oppression of others. Individuals belonging to dominant groups can be infinitely good, because they are never required to be personally bad."

She's quoted by the very interesting anti-racist activist Time Wise (blog, website). Check out this on Hilary supporters who were saying they'd vote McCain/stay home- ouch!

See also
New Age Capitalism by Kimberley J. Lau
Ones who walk away from Omelas, a short story by Ursula Le Guin