Advertisement

Bonus: Dad Bods And Guppies

12:10
Download Audio
Resume
"Delete Facebook, hit the gym, lawyer up" digital, 10"x11" r/suicide-by-thug http://beauchemincreations.com/ www.instagram.com/cbeauchemin
"Delete Facebook, hit the gym, lawyer up" digital, 10"x11" r/suicide-by-thug http://beauchemincreations.com/ www.instagram.com/cbeauchemin

TL;DL (Too Long; Didn’t Listen)

Remember in January when we talked about New Year's resolutions in our Get Motivated episode? Well, 2019 is half over, so Ben and Amory give an update on how their progress.

Full Transcript:

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads up that some elements (i.e. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text. 

Ben Brock Johnson: Heyyyy, remember in January when we talked about New Year's resolutions?

Amory Sivertson: Oh, you don’t? Shocker. We’d barely remember either, but we made a whole episode about it!

Ben: And we told you we’d update you. It’s Endless Thread Bonus Update Time!

Amory: So Ben, as you may remember when we did our Get Motivated episode back in January, we each made a resolution for ourselves.

Ben: Yeah.

Amory: And we asked some listeners about their resolutions, just a couple weeks ago, because we were six months in. We're halfway through now, if you haven't started trying to accomplish your resolution you still--

Ben: Time’s a ticking.

Amory: Times a ticking, but you still have half the year so maybe don't throw them out just yet. So we got a wide range of responses.

Ben: Yep we did.

Amory: Someone said they wanted to get engaged, so keep us posted on that. Eating less meat, that's good, avoiding fast fashion, exfoliating more, I like that one. Quitting smoking, very noble, stretching more, getting better at budgeting, journaling every day, sending more cards, like birthday cards and thank you cards.

Ben: I saw one that was like “I want to be, I want to be good enough to be a lead climber,” like a rock climbing person, and also like get in better shape and I think get my finances together and find a suitable… I was going to say find a suitable mate, but that's so weird. Find you know, find a person to spend my days with.

Amory: Yeah.

Ben: And that person, I think accomplished most of those but hadn't quite found a soulmate yet. So.

Amory: Well, that's a big item.

Ben: That's tough.

Amory: That's not accomplished easily. Well, so a listener from Dallas named Kyle sent us a voice memo about one of her resolutions.

Ben: OK.

Amory: And it was to lead a song in her church choir.

Kyle: So, I am leading my song of worship this Sunday. I'm nervous because I'm an introvert. And while I do worship with them every Sunday, it's completely different when you are singing by yourself. Ug gah!

Amory: So she did that.

Ben: Gah.

Amory: I know I know.

Ben: Kyle you got this!

Amory: She's got this, she did have it. She did it just last Sunday actually. And she sent me a video of it.

Ben: Oh amazing.

Amory: Yeah. And so when she first starts out she sounds lovely all throughout, but when she first starts out you can tell that she's feeling tentative at least.

Ben: Yeah, finding her feet. All right.

Amory: So here's Kyle in the beginning ….

(Kyle sings)

Amory: But by the end of the song Kyle was frickin owning it. People in the audience start standing up. She had kind of like transported the whole room. Check it out....

(Kyle sings, and frickin' owns it!)

Ben: She's feeling the Holy Spirit, well done

Amory: That's right. So Kyle congratulations on crossing one of your resolutions off. You crushed it. And thanks for sharing it with us.

Ben: Totally.

Amory: OK now, maybe less triumphant, our resolutions.

Ben: Ughhhhh.

Amory: You want to go first? You want me to go first?

Ben: Yeah, I can tell you mine. So I actually posted to the r/loseit community. It's basically a community for people who are looking to, you know shed some weight shed some pounds, get into shape, get a kind of positive routine going. And, the title of this post is “I may not like it but this is what my peak 38 year old dad bod looks like. I have a plan, but I'm not sure it's the right plan, advice?” And I got 55 comments on this thread, some of them obviously are me, but I got a lot of feedback.

Ben: Diet, I had “get a fitness app that will help me count calories.” Yes I started to do that, and then I stopped.

Amory: That's a lot of work, I’ve done that before too.

Ben: It’s a lot of work man, it's like hard enough for me to like get the food on my table, let alone try to count the calories of each meal. It's tough.

Amory: There's no joy in that.

Ben: But it is actually really good sort of self surveillance of how you're doing. "Cut out all refined sugar, cold turkey." Well... there's been a lot of donuts between then and now. "Carbs only one meal a day and have and have to be whole grain or whole wheat carbs." I've actually been pretty good at fully switching to whole wheat. Every once in a while I eat some white bread but, I've been pretty good in general about, like, really making the move to whole wheat only. And I have actually slimmed the carbs in my consumption. "Lose the beer, swap out for spirits and wine."

Amory: No way.

Ben: I think I've been doing all of the above so uh... "No eating after 10 p.m," I am actually better about that, but every once in a while if I haven't eaten enough for dinner or something like that, you know I'll sneak something after 10:00. But usually I'm I've been pretty good about that. "Eat butt ton loads of veggies, drink butt ton loads of water." I've been pretty good on those fronts, probably not as much water as I should. "Generally cut back on dairy. Chill with the cheddar cheese. Swap whole milk for scammer soy." It's a little tough, it's been a little tough to do that because I live in a house with two small children who like basically drink gallons upon gallons of whole milk all the time so it's like, it's kind of weird.

Amory: Blame it on the children.

Ben: Yeah it's my children's fault. But no, it is kind of weird like go to the grocery store and buy two different kinds of milk. I don't know that's been kind of a thing. But I actually have been cutting down on dairy. "Four hours per week of exercise." I'm actually kind of doing that.

Amory: Yeah you come in talking about your workout in the morning.

Ben: Bragging about my workout. No I have been, I've been pretty good about that. I feel like if I had to fight somebody to the death now, as opposed to back in January, I might live slightly longer in that fight now.

Amory: Okay.

Ben: "Get more sleep." I've been doing pretty good on that front too.

Amory: Okay

Ben: So I just really need to I think get back to my commitments on the food front, especially though like cutting out sugar, cutting out beer. You know this stuff is tough.

Amory: Yeah it is, and that's what I was going to ask, six months in, halfway through, are you feeling like you want to crack down on what you called operation dad bod to rad bod? Or are you feeling like, did you not remember that you called it that?

Ben: I forgot that I call it that.

Amory: Oh, I remembered.

Ben: Oh man.

Amory: Are you feeling like you want to crack down and keep pushing forward? Or are you feeling like, “ya know I've made some improvements and I'm happy with these and try again next year.”

Ben: This is a good question. I think I feel good. I think I feel like I've made some positive improvements. I'm not in the rad bod zone, as we all know.

Amory: Our listeners don’t know, they’ve probably never seen you.

Ben: You guys, I have a radical bod.

Amory: You could say you had made it rad bod.

Ben: They've seen my pictures in the plates episode. That's not a good look. But yeah, I feel like you know recommitting to some of the diet stuff would help me move farther and a lot of people in the r/loseit community actually sort of talked to me about this and said, like look this is a journey. It's not something that you're going to do immediately. It's something that you're just going to have to keep working on and make slow improvements over time and I feel like I'm on that track so I feel pretty good about it.

Amory: Well speaking of slow improvement.

Ben: Yeah man, you've been making these swimming appointments for what feels like six months.

Amory: Well, I'm going to tell you about my resolution in a minute.

[Sponsor Break]

Amory: All right, so my resolution as you may remember, was to learn how to swim because I'm a good treader of water; I can stay alive.

Ben: I think we called it operation guppy to operation minnow.

Amory: Great white? Yeah, but my swimming technique is, it's just nonexistent. And I wanted to change that so that I feel more confident in the water. So I found a swim coach for myself on Reddit.

Leah: Hi, I'm Leah, I'm actually a nurse out of MGH. I swam since I was six, swam collegially for Butler, did masters, did Canada and a couple other countries. And we're here to do a swim lesson!

Amory: So Leah is clearly legit.

Ben: And clearly in the pool, like at the pool at least.

Amory: Yes. Exactly. So I met Leah for the first time at the beginning of June, which means it took me about five months to take my first swim lesson. But I met up with her at the gym that I go to and here's proof that I got in the water.

(Splash!)

Amory: And here's a little bit of me mid swim lesson.

(Some splashing and Amory saying "I did it")

Ben: Yeah it sounds a sounds a little bit like you went under there. Or at the very least it doesn't sound like you're moving quick.

Amory: I probably did. You know what? It was so frickin hard. I'm a runner and so I just thought like this won't be that bad, I just need a little bit of technique but I have all the strength. So wrong, so wrong and the technique is, for anyone who actually is a swimmer knows, that the technique is not just like arms, legs, good to go!

Ben: It's head and breathing.

Amory: Yes, she was calling me out constantly on like cheating on my breathing and doing that wrong. And like you're supposed to, as you drag your arm out of the water, you're supposed to make a nice shark fin position with your elbow.

Ben: Yep.

Amory: And keeping all of that in my head while just trying to literally stay alive in the water was very stressful. So, I told her at the time that I would swim once a week and I have not gotten back in the pool since that last time.

Ben: You know I feel like this is like unfair because I feel like you are so good with eating food and I'm so good with swimming. We should we should just trade. We should just trade new years resolutions

Amory: And then we'll will be crushing it. Yeah, but it's not because of Leah. Leah was amazing she really gave me like a nice progression of things to try.

Ben: Nice

Amory: Yes and I'm a little bit injured right now, but I am determined. She really did motivate me to get back in the pool so I will, I promise.

Ben: Get in the pool man.

Amory: OK. And to all of you out there who made resolutions.

Ben: You get in the pool too.

Amory: You get to the pool too, good luck.

Ben: Everybody in the pool right. No running! No running!

Amory: And just know we are right there with you.

Ben: We really are. I'm Ben Brock Johnson.

Amory: I'm Amory Sivertson.

Ben: And we'll talk to you on Friday.

Advertisement

More from Endless Thread

Listen Live
Close