Healthy Monday: Humorist Jeff Kramer gets serious about his health, grapples with The Blob

The Blob is a quavering hillock of belly fat that made its first appearance when I did, on April 23 1962. It clings to my midsection like a subcutaneous succubus. My lifeʼs ambition following a health scare last May is to destroy it. For help in this matter I turned to Upstateʼs Institute for Human Performance and Carol Sames, director of the “Vitality!” fitness program there.
I gave Carol a quick rundown on my health history, and she was impressed. Iʼve lost 62 pounds since June, achieved through a revolutionary new tandem of wellness tools called diet and exercise -- in my case mainly cycling.
And yet The Blob remains, shrunken but unbowed.
Carolʼs first order line of attack was to call for a quick, painless test -- bio-electrical impedance -- that involves measuring the time it takes a small electrical charge to
travel through the body. (The faster the signal, the higher the percentage of lean body mass.) The test showed that the current version of me is 19.5 percent fat. Even by the strictest interpretations, anything under 20 percent body fat in 49-year-old man is considered “excellent,” Again, the word she used was “excellent.”
It gets even better. According to the test results, my BMR -- basal metabolic rate -- is 2,699 calories, meaning I can essentially exist on a sofa watching Fantasy Island re-runs and eating Funyuns, and as long as I donʼt eat more than 2, 699 calories per day, I wonʼt gain weight, at least not until Tattoo gets fired.
Carol explained to me that dieters often start out fixating on the number on the scale but get frustrated as the rate of weight loss slows -- perfectly describing my experience
the past few months. “It can make you nutty,” she said.
Ultimately, she said, the focus needs to turn to building lean muscle because thatʼs what gets you fit and keeps you fit. “Your BMR goes up as lean body mass goes up because
lean body mass is metabolically active,” Carol said.
So, what does all that mean in terms of defeating The Blob?
Alas, even at the Institute for Human Performance, humans seem incapable of losing weight in targeted areas. Carol suggested strengthening my core anyway. The theory is that my six-pack abs, or four-pack abs, or at least a lone Mickeyʼs Big Mouth -- are in there
somewhere. One day, like ribbons of basalt peeking from beneath a melting glacier, they will reveal themselves as my overall fat percentage drops further.
“At least youʼll see them when you get there,” Carol said.
In that cheerful, uplifting way of fitness professionals, she eagerly provided me with a pair of deeply unpleasant core-strengthening routines -- one involving an eightpound
medicine ball, the other a stabilization ball. The medball program is the same one used by the North Carolina Tar Heels menʼs basketball team.
And so I enter an exciting new phase in my journey. Gone is the obsession with pounds lost. Instead, Mr. Jeff will be in his basement, clutching a weighed fitness orb similar to
the one used by the Ancient Persians and later Hippocrates, rolling around on the floor in a climactic, agonizing death struggle against the Blob.
May the best mass win.
Previous columns:
Why he decided to get healthy.
After 4 months.
Turning to hypnosis for help.
Hear Jeff Kramer's radio interview on Health Link on Air.