BPs Bits and Pieces

Physical (and Emotional and Mental) Therapy

2020-01-16T17:11:00.000-06:00

So today I finished physical therapy for my rotator cuff surgery. It really has been a long, hard road. I had just started to get back into an exercise routine when I had the surgery. Originally, the X-Rays showed a bone spur in the upper shoulder joint. An easy surgery that involved about a 4 week recovery. With the doctor’s blessing, I put the surgery off for a while, until I was ready to go through that. I had some things I wanted to do with my summer. I had some triathlons I wanted to get back into, although I only ended up racing in one. I had weight I wanted to lose. I had endurance I wanted to build up.

As we got closer to the surgery, I was asked to get an MRI. I had never done this before and thought this wouldn’t be a big deal. I walked in on Monday morning, ready to get this over with. As I laid down on the table, and the whirring started from the slow, mechanical movement into the table into the now seemingly caverns machine. I began to worry, “would I actually be one of those people who has trouble with small spaces?” I’ve never been one of those people and never really had an issue with stuff like that. “Just breathe through it,” I thought.

About three minutes into it, I tapped out. I had a itch on my head and knowing I couldn’t scratch it just sent all the panic shivers through my body. They were pretty cool about it. Happens all the time I guess. The tech even told me I lasted longer than he thought I would. I was referred to a location that had an open side MRI and that also did sedation. A sedative and a couple of Xanax later, I had an MRI that showed….A torn rotator cuff!

My recovery now went from 4 weeks to 4 months and the surgery got a lot more major. Fast forward to the surgery, which went well, though I was more than a little irritable through the whole thing. I guess that’s only really before and after. Once I got home and the nerve block wore off, everything pretty much sucked from there. I was in pain. I was frustrated because I was now relatively immobile, sleeping along, and dependent on others. It sucked. It was frustrating. And even though my expectations were set properly, I felt like I wasn’t healing as quickly as I should be. I guess I felt like I was going to be the guy that recovered in record time and it was going to be no big deal. And now, dammit, I was pissed off because I wasn’t.

Eventually I got strong enough to start physical therapy. That was more of the same. I was eager to get healed. I was ready to be back to my life. I was over all of this. However, as things often do, things got better and I got more patient. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, other than do the work and have some compassion for myself. I began to get stronger and both I and my physical therapist were encouraged by my process. And today, I’ve been given the declaration that my strength and range of motion were what they needed to be and it’s “cap and gown” day. Which involves getting a t-shirt and signing the wall.

The whole ordeal has been a lesson in patience and dealing with things as they come. I had a painful, long, hard lesson about staying present in the moment, dealing with what comes at me and only that, exercising A LOT of self compassion, and going with the flow. It’s been a lesson for other parts of my life. It didn’t happen to me, it happened for me.

Anyway, here’s a video of me signing the board and not realizing I’m against the water fountain.

Happy Bobblehead Day

2020-01-07T17:29:00.000-06:00

In celebration of National Bobblehead Day (it exists, look it up), I've dusted off a couple of older pictures that showcase a small portion of the collection. Most of it's still in storage (moving/settling in is an ongoing process). Perhaps I'll keep adding to it at some point. We all need a hobby, I guess.

New Year, New Start!

2020-01-03T17:01:00.000-06:00

BP and The Lioness at New Years 2020

Well, here we are... 2020. I guess it has been 4 years since I last posted, and that was a recap of the previous year. Quite a lot has happened since then. More on that in a bit. As part of one of my (many) New Year's resolutions, I'm intending to keep with posting here. Not expecting that anyone will actually be reading this. Nonetheless, I'll use this as an outlet to write, think out loud (in the published-on-the-internet-for-eternity-unless-I-decide-to-delete-it sort of way), and along the way maybe stumble upon something that's useful to me, or useful to someone, or entertaining, or at least comical to someone else in a schadenfreude kind of way. Who knows? At least it'll be something.

What exactly? Good question. We'll see. Maybe it'll include some poetry (a relatively new endeavor for me) along with my opinions, observations, chronicles, and whatever else comes to mind. I'll try not to overshare.

Updates. So, I've gotten remarried to a woman I'm madly in love with (The Lioness), become a stepfather to two great teenage boys (BA and The Kid), and moved to the suburbs. It's been quite an adjustment and I'll say my life has taken a very different form and direction. The suburbs has been an adjustment. I still cringe at the thought of being labeled a "suburbanite". I have to admit though, it's pretty comfortable and quiet here, not to mention much less crowded. That might mean I'm trending toward old and boring. I've gotten completely out of shape from my triathlon racing days. I struggled through a "super sprint" (read, the shortest distance triathlon) this past year, but in no way do I feel like "I'm back". I'm working on it. Sidelined by rotator cuff surgery (yes, it sucks as much as you might imagine, probably a bit more) and a newer (and scary) development of high blood pressure. Fortunately I caught it and am able to work on treating it. I'm just getting to the end of my recovery from the surgery as well. I'll get back there. Better diet, better mental health, better physical health, and exercise. I'm working on it.

For the first time in a really long time, I'm extremely optimistic about this new year. Sure, the last two have been great. In 2017 I was looking forward to and planning our wedding. Last New Year we were celebrating in the new house. However, there was still a lot of uncertainty, stress, anxiety, and just really a whole lot of shit to deal with. I'm in a much better place now and feel like I'm at key point in my "transformation". That sounds really pretentious and ethereal, I know. Not to get too flowery and New-Agey, or (for lack of a better term that's not made up) "bullshitty", I do feel like I have and am still reinventing myself. A lot of changes, a lot of new experiences and adventures, and revisiting and rediscovering some things that were in my past. Case in point, I went on my first acting audition in a number of years and am now preparing to do my first stage performance in 15 years. I'm excited and nervous all at the same time. Getting into some new hobbies as well.

So that's it. That's briefly where I've been and where I'm going. That's the journey I'm embarking on this year. I'm excited for what all is to come.

2015 In Review, One Second At A Time

2016-01-17T22:32:00.000-06:00

I've been using One Second Everyday to take a one second snippet each day to visually document my life. Here's the entirety of my year that was 2015, one second at a time.

December 2015

2016-01-17T22:18:00.000-06:00

November 2015

2015-12-19T22:25:00.000-06:00

October 2015

2015-11-15T22:24:00.000-06:00

September 2015

2015-10-12T22:23:00.000-05:00

August 2015

2015-09-09T22:21:00.000-05:00

July 2015

2015-08-02T22:20:00.000-05:00

June 2015

2015-07-02T22:19:00.000-05:00

May 2015

2015-06-02T22:18:00.000-05:00

April 2015

2015-05-12T16:13:00.000-05:00

March 2015

2015-04-10T16:10:00.000-05:00

February 2015

2015-03-07T16:09:00.000-06:00

January 2015

2015-02-09T16:05:00.000-06:00

My experience as one of the Fastest Men Alive

2012-11-29T10:51:00.000-06:00

This is my experience as one of the fastest men alive. I'm not an Olympic sprinter, but I am very active. I'm not a race car driver, but I am very driven. I don't really do anything all that fast, but I do a lot of things very differently now. I did a 14 day juice fast. That means that for 14 days, I didn't eat anything. I only drank fresh fruit and vegetable juice that I made and it has completely changed my life. I didn't do this alone. I did it with a group of friends and we call ourselves, Fastest Men Alive.

We were inspired by the film "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead", a documentary released about a year ago that you may have seen it or heard of it. It's going viral and exploding in popularity
about an Australian who is about 320 pounds overweight. He was also sick for 9 years with an auto-immune disease that causes him to have a rash whenever he touches anything. His health is deteriorating and so, he decides to go on 60 day juice fast. He does nothing but drink fresh fruit and vegetable juice for 60 days. I won't spoil it by telling you the rest. You should definitely watch this amazing film. It was very moving and inspiring, inspired all of us.

We all had different reasons all had different reasons for doing our own juice fast, weight loss, detoxification, long term health benefits, complete system reboot, adoption of a more healthful lifestyle, address or even potentially cure some sickness and ailments. It all came down to the fact that we all wanted to live better, more healthy, improve the quality of our lives, and extend our life. My specific reasons for doing this was that I had suffered from severe acid reflux for over 15 years. I tried every over the counter medication, including the ones for "severe" cases; those experiencing symptoms 2-3 times a week. If that's "severe" than what did I have suffering from it 2-3 times a day? I hadn't seen a doctor about it and had many reasons for not. However, it had gotten to that point. I was like the frog boiling in water. Over the years, I had "learned to live with it". My quality of life had drastically deteriorated and I was not honest with myself. I'll spare you the details of just how bad it and how miserable I was. In short, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. In addition to this, I was overweight, unhealthy, inactive, and unhappy.

I was talking to a friend about this and telling him that I had to do something. At his suggestion, I was going to do a 10 day fast. In addition to helping your body heal itself, you could lose weight, reset and boost your system, and jumpstart you no a healthy lifestyle. The idea is that you drink only fresh fruit and vegetable juice that you make yourself, not store bought or processed juice. It's going to detoxify your body, completely flush out your system, and essentially be a full system reboot.

One of us floated the idea that we should keep a blog to hold ourselves publicly accountable. That then morphed into a web site, and the formation of our group, the Fastest Men Alive. While doing research before we started, we couldn't find anyone documenting their experiences. We found numerous people recording progress and outcomes. I wanted to know what the experience was like. What were people feeling? What were they experiencing, thinking, etc.? This is what we resolved to do - good or bad, pretty or not, we were going to document everything. Unfiltered and authentic, our experiences would be out there for everyone to see.

This is exactly what we did. Everyone was very transparent and authentic in documenting and sharing their experiences. Many of us, myself included, admitted things we hadn't admitted before - especially to ourselves. It wasn't easy. It wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, and all of our blog posts reflected that. Our goal was to go 10 days. Everyone made it. I and another guy extended our fast to 14 days. Each of us had an overall positive experience and saw significant results: weight loss, feeling better overall, improved mood, and everyone experienced a paradigm shift to a healthy lifestyle in some form or another. As for my specific results, my pallet has definitely changed. Where before I didn't like a lot of vegetables, now that’s mostly what I crave. My diet has consisted mainly of whole vegetables, fruits, grains, and nuts. I'm about 90-95% vegetarian. For me, it’s all about how I feel. That’s what I gage what I eat and if I’m going in the right direction. I am sleeping great. I sleep through the night, have lots of dreams, and wake up refreshed and energized. This was something that was quite foreign to me before.

My acid reflux is completely gone. Not one single, symptom since I started the juice fast. My body had healed itself. I now have a very strong resolve that I will never go back to the lifestyle ever again. I'll never feel like that again!

By the end of the 14 days fast, I had lost 11 lbs and was down to 25% body fat. I continued to lose after I came off the fast as well. I'm now down to about 5 lbs over my ideal and 21% body fat. I've lost 25 pounds since I started the fast. I've lost nearly 40 since the beginning of the year. More than just the weight loss, I feel incredible. I have a new lifestyle, a new outlook, really a new life. I also committed myself to becoming more active. During the fast I was going to spin classes and trained for the MS 150, a bike ride from Houston to Austin. I continued to work hard, be active, and push myself. I continued training and competed in my first triathlon. I completed a Tough Mudder, a 12 mile military style obstacle course. In two weeks, I will run my first marathon. I'm setting my sights on loftier goals.

As for our group, we continue to grow. We've inspired others to do a 10 day fast. We're continually promoting our healthy lifestyle and encourage others to do the same. We got to meet and interview Joe Cross, the maker of "Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead". Our group and story are featured on their web site. We continue to live our newfound lives and share our experiences. We've each made a lot of changes. Leo Tolstoy said "True life is lived when tiny changes occur." I am living. And that's my experience as one of the Fastest Men Alive.

Harbour Town - Hilton Head

2012-05-23T14:36:00.000-05:00

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 23, 2012 at 12:36pm PDT

2012-05-22T06:48:00.000-05:00

Though not the best picture, here's one of my companions on this morning's run. A lot of dolphins out this morning.

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 22, 2012 at 4:48am PDT

South Beach - Sea Pines, Hilton Head

2012-05-22T05:37:00.000-05:00

Sunrise

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 22, 2012 at 3:37am PDT

Piggly Wiggly Hilton Head

2012-05-21T18:14:00.000-05:00

Big on the pig!

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 21, 2012 at 4:14pm PDT

2012-05-20T14:02:00.000-05:00

Marisa, Kiwi, Cherokee, & Captain

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 20, 2012 at 12:02pm PDT

Talking Macaw's Tree - Hilton Head

2012-05-20T13:55:00.000-05:00

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 20, 2012 at 11:55am PDT

2012-05-20T06:26:00.000-05:00

The backdrop to my run this morning.

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 20, 2012 at 4:26am PDT

2012-05-12T05:53:00.000-05:00

The cheering section for my run this morning.

A photo posted by Bryan Peterson (@rbryanpeterson) on May 12, 2012 at 5:53am PDT