Jamie Wakefield

The high temperature in Madrid is a hundred degrees (F) every day this week. Monday I went out running at three p.m., essentially noon here in Madrid, the height of the heat. I ran down our hill, through the park to Principio Pio, down to the river, across the bridge, alongside the river, across the bridge again and up the hill. I wanted to get to the stoplight that ends the park and is halfway up the hill to our apartment. I had to look down at the sidewalk and ignore how far I had to go in order to make it. The entire run the dry heat of Madrid burned my lungs as I sucked in air, thin with oxygen. I'm so extreme aren't I? Um, no. Let me explain. I thrive on such weather. I have always run in the most insane conditions. When I was nineteen and a friend of mine was about to enter the military, I joined him on an extensive program designed to get him ready for basic training. It focused on push-ups and running. He was going to join in early spring so our regiment was in a bitter...

I was going to put some Natalie Imbruglia lyrics here, but they just didn’t fit how I’m feeling. I’m not out of faith, I’m not naked, cold and shamed, lying on the floor (that was Saturday night), nor has my inspiration run dry. Wait, actually, yes, I guess my inspiration has run a little dry… At this point last year I would bound out of bed and have a billion things to work on. I was putting the finishing touches on a book, approaching agents, working on another book, updating my blog and thinking about getting back into Magic. Well, two hundred rejections later, book finished and self published, then another book self published, then twenty-odd mediocre columns later – I’m a little beaten down. Two hundred rejections is a lot. I had some agencies ask for a partial, a few less asked for a full to read but none of the agents I approached wanted to rep me. My return to Magic and Magic writing has been less than stellar. So, now what do I work on? Let’s take them one at a time. I’m very ...

Thanks to the fact that I’m a blogger, I can look back on just about any time in my life and see it in print. I just read about moving to Darktide in AC. I read about my new template. I read a letter to my sister I wrote seven years ago. All in search for my entries about losing weight. I work out pretty hard these days. At least, I like to think so. But looking back on my journal I see that I am fooling myself. Losing weight is hard. It is hard work. No matter what country I am in, I smile at the people who have no idea how to lose weight. They hop on a bike with a book, pedal nonchalantly for thirty minutes and proudly proclaim “I did thirty minutes on the bike.” Really? Why aren’t you sweating then? I run three times a week and I think I’m doing good. Which I am. But if I want to lose the weight that I really want to lose, I need to do more than double that. Twelve years of marriage and ten years of Magic and video games bloated me up to 213 lbs. My brother came home for thanksgivin...

That is what I looked like when I met Wendy. (Click the picture to get a bigger view.) In the post below are pictures of what I look like now. Thank God Wendy remembered I was a nice guy in high school. Why else would such a beautiful, brilliant woman give the old me a chance? Tip - Nice guys finish first.

I’d like to say the metrosexual project continues but for once, this has nothing to do with how I look. In the past five years I have made some amazing transformations. I dropped forty pounds, got a real haircut, grew a goatee, bought more stylish clothes (thanks to Wendy) got and removed braces, had my teeth whitened and am now working out three times a week. I look better now than I did when I was twenty. Monday’s appointment was in the same vein of improvement, but isn’t cosmetic. It annoys me to say that my eyesight is diminishing every year since I turned forty. My eyesight was a gift to me. I considered myself to have super vision and even excellent night vision, seeing movement and just plain better than almost everyone I know. I’ve always been proud of my eyesight. And then at forty it just started to dwindle until now I wear 1.5 and 2.0 reading glasses all the time. Even when not reading. The world just seems out of focus without reading glasses on. Monday we went to an ophth...

Ow. Please stop. No, seriously. That’s my arms' reaction as I try to type this. Despite my snoring all night and keeping her awake (which rarely, but does occasionally happen) the very determined Wendy still wanted to go to the gym. I rode the bike for ten minutes and then went to do free weights. Turned out I timed my caffeine intact perfectly and had a lot of energy. So, I just kept going. I did five sets of bench press, four sets of curls, four sets of shoulder presses, four tricep rope pushdowns, and three sets of lat pulldowns. Just as I was starting to wonder if she left without me, Wendy comes out and smiles at me. “Almost done?” “One more set of these.” “I got done my run and thought I would just walk until you came in to get me. Ten minutes later I had to come out and see what was going on.” Good workout today. I just kept going. And now I can barely lift my arms to type. Go me. So, as I sat here recovering I looked over some web comics and The Ferret’s blog which he updat...

(Forgive the extra periods, blogger, shit program that it is, isn't formating things correctly today.) . My body is asking for carbs this morning. Wendy has been explaining this new way of looking at food she heard about from Lena. Lena is five foot nothing and has lost fifteen pounds in the last year listening to a podcast called “Inside Out Weight Loss.” There's also a website where you can listen and read as well. Essentially, you learn to listen more to what your body needs as opposed to what it wants, and breaking old eating habits and acquiring newer, healthier ones. It makes you think about each bite, eat slower and question if you really need more. For example, you are eating a pizza. It is good pizza and you are eating it while watching a movie. You finish your plate and go back for more, eat some more and continue watching the movie. This new philosophy is all about making sure you are appreciating every bite. Don’t just shovel more in because the first bite was good...

I think I mentioned that Wendy and I have joined a gym. I look forward to going every day. Much like traveling to Europe and seeing the world, I did not know that I needed it, but I do. It feels fantastic to be working out again. After three weeks I am finally to the point where I have to push myself very hard to be sore the next day. I am sore today, but not horribly so. I used to work out with a couple people over the years in college. My last workout partner in college was Doug Shepardson, the man watching my house and dogs in Vermont right now. We are of similar, slender, wiry builds. No matter how much we worked out, we got more cut and the weights went up but we didn’t get bigger. We didn’t bulk up like we wanted. After months of this we approached our friend Lloyd who was an extremely nice, powerful, squat, incredible dancer and also Vermont State Champion in amateur bodybuilding. First thing he asked was: “What do you eat?” “Eggs, fish, steak… lean proteins mostly.” “How much o...