Sicko.

When I saw this one come down the pipe from A Word a Day, I thought, “cool, there’s a word for that.”

resipiscent

[From Latin resipiscere (to recover one's senses), from re- (again) + sapere (to taste, to know). Ultimately from Indo-European root sep- (to taste or perceive) that is also the source of sage, savant, savvy, savor, sapid, sapient, and insipid.]
Having returned to a saner mind.

resipiscence

[L. resipiscentia, from resipiscere to recover one's senses: cf. F. résipiscence.]
Wisdom derived from severe experience; hence, repentance.

So there’s a single word to sum up the experience of hard-won wisdom, the kind that we don’t necessarily seek but that always reveals itself as a valuable blessing…those Romans thought of everything. It seems that the human condition really hasn’t changed that much despite having been given several thousand years to evolve.

This is my new favorite commercial:

When that Four Non Blondes song came on the jukebox last night, it reminded me of this video…a modern classic:

When I stepped on the scale this Monday, I was at 166 lbs and 22.4% body fat. Because it uses biolelectric impedance, the scale’s body fat assessment probably isn’t accurate, but I’m using it only for relative comparisons over time.

Ever since I started the pushup program in May I’ve been taking these measurements once per week. Today I finally put them into a spreadsheet and confirmed what my growing “spare tire” had suggested: my lean (muscle) mass has stayed the same, and over the last 2 months I’ve put on 3 or 4 pounds — all of it fat.

I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve gone months without practicing kung fu, and that’s obviously what had been keeping my body composition in check. I didn’t change my diet and I dropped the exercise, so I’ve just been adding blubber to my gut since then.

I remember when I first got that scale in 2004, when I was going gung-ho with kung fu before any of the theatre-induced hiatuses. I weighed about 150 and was at about 16% body fat. Since then I’ve put on about 3 pounds of muscle and about 12 pounds of fat. Sheesh.

Since I’m pretty sure I’ll be doing theatre on a regular basis, I need to find a way to keep up my fitness during the 2-month stretches when I don’t have time for kung fu. This slow transition into becoming a tub of goo isn’t going to cut it.

I’m going to continue on with bodyweight exercises at home, which seem to be the only thing to which I can commit. Along with the pushups I’ve been doing bilateral (2-legged) free-standing bodyweight squats at the same count, but I can tell from the relative effort of each exericse that the squats aren’t doing much for me. I’m going to give one-legged squats — “pistols” — a try in order to build some functional strength and hopefully turn my body composition around a bit.