Category: portfolio

This is a portfolio of my work in many forms. It should give you some insight as to the products I might help you to create.

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On meditation: walking meditation one.

Jedediah Higgins House, Princeton, NJ, Interior, Buddha and lotus wall piece, cc-by lemasney
Jedediah Higgins House, Princeton, NJ, Interior, Buddha and lotus wall piece, cc-by lemasney
Jedediah Higgins House, Princeton, NJ, Interior, Buddha and lotus wall piece, cc-by lemasney
Jedediah Higgins House, Princeton, NJ, Interior, Buddha and lotus wall piece, cc-by lemasney

So, this blog is about nothing if not health. One of my healthiest new practices has become meditation. As I’ve said on these pages before, I am a scientist, a practitioner, a realist, a humanist, and a naturalist. I respect, but do not follow, any organized religion, but I consider myself a scholar of many, as they have much to offer in the way of morality, guidance, and inner peace. Also, I like to think that I am open to what works, and meditation works for me. Much written about Buddha, Jesus Christ, Abraham, Allah, and others makes a lot of sense to me. They’re all pretty nice peeps, most of the time, and it seems like they all knew something about meditation.

So here I wanted to talk a bit about what I am trying to do with meditation, my recent practice, some techniques and methods I’ve learned about, and ones I’m excited to try in the future.

So, what is meditation, what is it for, how do you do it, and why bother?

Meditation is practicing focus. Meditation is clearing away chaos. Meditation is centering. Meditation is exercise for the mind. Meditation helps you gain patience. Meditation helps you work through issues methodically. Meditation helps you become more you, and less else. Meditation creates a calm place for you to see the world without distractions. Meditation is the opposite of chaos. Meditation reveals delusion. Meditation differs for all who do it, even within schools where there is a framework. The meditation I describe below differs for you and me, and differs for others. The results will differ too, but it is more likely, if practiced regularly, that we will end up in the same place: more relaxed, more focused, more calm, more happy with what is. Does it make me perfect? Absolutely not. I struggle with guilt, pain, distractions, and temptations every day. Meditation makes it easier for me to deal with these and dismiss them, though. There are claims that it helps to improve your senses, immune system, and self-image. I have no idea about these. The only evidence I have, personally, is of more mental clarity, calmness, and focus.

My most recent meditation technique is simple.

My method is to go on a walk of about an hour’s length. As I walk, I breathe. I count my breaths on my fingers, one inhale and one exhale is one breath. I count on my four fingers and then start over again, as I breathe, physically counting to four, over and over, without noting the numbers, just the fingers. I also, in my mind, say the word breathing. As I inhale, I say breathe- and as I exhale, I say -ing. I sometimes become distracted as I walk, by cars, birds, interesting pieces of metal and trash. I note these, saying ‘distraction’, or ‘concern’, or ‘listening’, and then quickly return to my mantra of ‘breathing’. I usually look down at the ground as I walk, my eyes resting on the ever-changing pattern and chaos of the asphalt or concrete or dirt path. I try to ignore this visual information, as I can, and use it only not to walk into the path of others, cars, or other dangers; to stay on the path. The only other practice is to gather a rhythm. I usually walk four steps to a breath. This is it.

Many variations exist on this meditation, some where you might use the rhythm or counting or path as the main focus, as opposed to the breathing. I believe these would be equally beneficial. During the hour of this practice, I have often spontaneously smiled wide, at least once, by no conscious thought, but by the freeing act of mindlessness. I did this today.

Some other techniques and methods I’m looking forward to trying

Other techniques need no movement at all, but rather a quiet space and closed eyes. Some require conscious, concentrated focus on a particular problem or issue, focusing on the facts and feelings of the issue, back and forth and back, again and again, always returning to the issue until one resolves all facts and feelings, or at least comprehends them. Some methods focus on literally nothingness, no mental activity, visualisation, mantra, or activity. This is, maybe, the most common stereotypical technique that many think of when they hear the word meditation, and perhaps the one that causes most to dismiss meditation as potentially valuable, but difficult to practice. this is my opinion, but this does not mean I will not try it, when my mind is ready. Anyone who has ever actively tried to think of nothing and nothingness discovers how very out of keeping with the style of our contemporary world it is.  This is maybe the best reason for it.

Happiness to you, in whatever forms it comes.

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insights photography

If I was to make you a simple, 5 step, low-cost, nutritional lifestyle starter kit, it would be this.

Wholefoods hot bar by lemasney
Wholefoods hot bar by lemasney

I really want to help people. I want to help people to lose weight or gain weight, or manage their weight and health and life to get to their goals, but people’s history, culture, and experience with weight management and the rest often gets in the way of their progress. I want to say “It’s so easy!” but in reality, getting started is kind of not-easy. People tell me that the 10 steps I proposed make sense, but are perhaps a little too complicated for their nutritional lifestyle.

I hear you.

You have to learn a few things about yourself. You will likely have to read. Be vigilant about what you put allow in your mouth and mind, and you have to know what’s best to put allow there. Perhaps most importantly, you have to be honest with yourself, which may also mean forgetting what you ‘know‘ about weight, eating, and nutrition. None of this is easy, and it’s really hard to not do those things and be successful. It gets easier as you go though.

The rest is a lot simpler than I’ve proposed it here. I’ve written a few posts that go into fine, glorious (some have said ‘too much‘, whatever that means) detail of what to do to get started, but in this post I want to try to simplify what you need to do.

A simple 5-step starter kit to managing your weight, health, and life (with suggested solutions).

1. Use your existing scale, or get a good scale and weigh yourself, at least once a week. Write it down, every time. Then, use weight x 10 to find your generalized metabolic rate.

My scale is amazing. It tells me my weight and body fat content, and wirelessly reports it to a chart on a website, but you don’t need my scale to lose weight. [EDIT: I use the Fitbit Aria Wi-fi Smart Scale, Black]

Let’s say you discover you are 200 pounds with your scale. With some disregard for height and other factors, an easy rule of thumb is that to stay at that weight, you have to eat about 10 times your numeric weight (pounds) in calories. So 200 x 10 = 2000 calories a day will keep you at about 200 pounds, if you don’t go out of your way to exercise, but rather just go about your day. There are far more exact numbers, but this is the simple, generalized  version of your metabolic rate. I’d suggest this scale for $30.

Ozeri Precision Pro II Digital Bathroom Scale, 440 LB Capacity Tempered Glass Platform with Step-on Activation

2. Use the formula (weight x 10) – 500 to find your calorie deficit and lose a pound a week.

Use the metabolic rate you determined above (in our example, it’s 200 x 10 or 2000 calories) and subtract 500 from it (a result of 1500 calories). In our example above, the 200 pound person should eat about 1500 calories to lose about a pound a week. There are better, more accurate options for determining this, but this should still work for most. When this imaginary person gets to 1500 calories in a 24 hour period, they should stop eating. One warning: unless you are especially short, like 4 feet tall, don’t eat less than 1200 calories, please. Also, if you exercise, you’ll likely lose more per week.

3. Get a very portable notepad, and write what you eat, every little thing. everyday.

I record all my calories on a web site, but you don;t need to do that. But you must know what you are eating to assess whether it is too much, too little, or just right for your goals. Your notepad will tell you how much energy you still get to eat for the day, and how much you have already consumed. Here is a ledger style pad, which speaks to my calories as money analogy, for about $4.

Wilson Jones Line Memo Book, Dollar and Cents Format, 144 Pages (WS50A)

4. Get a good calorie count book to discover the calories in the food that you are eating. Write those calories down next to the foods you eat.

I use a web site for my calories, but you don’t have to. There are many, but I would get a more recent one, after some of the calorie posting laws have gone into effect for chains, many more calories are now available. This one is for 2012, and has just about everything you need to know now for about $9.

The CalorieKing Calorie, Fat, & Carbohydrate Counter 2012

5. Find out how much you should weigh for your height, weight, age, and gender.

I use a web site to manage my weight monitoring, but you need not do this. Here’s a chart from the generous friends at http://www.disabled-world.com/ that tells you what you should weigh.

http://www.disabled-world.com/
Simplified male and female height to weight ratios for adults, copyright with implied permission to share and re-use with attribution. ©disabled-world.com

6. That’s it. There is no 6.

Go get your $30 scale, $9 book, and $4 notepad, and start losing a pound a week. It could not be simpler than this.

 

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insights photography

A friend asked me for help losing weight, this is my response.

A bowl of noodles - lemasney.com
A bowl of noodles - lemasney.com
A bowl of noodles by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #food #illustration
A bowl of noodles by John LeMasney via 365sketches.org #Inkscape #food #illustration

A very good friend who reached out for help losing weight asked me where to start. I asked her if she had read my recent post on my nutritional methods, and she said she had not. I asked her to start there.

In the mean time, I asked her some questions about her body, and she was brave enough to share the answers. With the answers, I was able to give her a plan. The plan looks like this:

She is 31, 5’2″, sedentary, and 192 pounds, which means that:

Her BMI is 35. BMI of 30 and above indicates a higher frequency of heart disease and other ailments, and is commonly called obesity. I am obese as well, and it means that we should both weigh less than we do for health.

Her Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is 1614 calories and her Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) is 1631 calories. This means that if she were in a coma, her body would still burn over 1600 calories.

Her Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) is 1957 calories. This means that this is what she burns in an average day, with all of her walking, driving, and living.

A reasonable deficit to lose weight, about a pound a week, is 500 calories per day below TDEE, so 1957-500 = 1457 calories. If she eats only 1457 calories a day, she will lose about a pound a week. With exercise, it will be more, but exercise is not necessary, just recommended.

So, using the analogy of money I refer to in my post above, she is walking around with $1450 in calories to spend each day.

Here are some common fast food items that will use most of this allowance.

The 7-layer Taco Bell burrito she ate the other day is about a third of her daily calories. is worth about $500 in calories.

Alternatively, she can get a lot more for her money by eating vegetables and fruits. Most servings of a cup are less than 100 calories each. She could either eat one large fast food sandwich, 3 burritos,  or 14 cups of vegetables in a day, and no matter which of these she chooses, she would be under her calorie goal, though there are great mental and energy benefits to the latter. http://www.healthalternatives2000.com/fruit-nutrition-chart.html

The key is to know how many calories she is eating, and how many she should eat. If she stays below her goal, she will lose. It’s that simple.

If you’d like me to help you with your nutritional profile, contact me at lemasney@gmail.com. I’d love to help you get healthy.

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insights photography

Lunch on July 22nd, 2012

 

Hey, so I’ve gotten some feedback that people like the mental heath posts I’ve been putting up, and asked me to keep doing that, but that they really miss my food photos and calorie information, which makes sense, given the name of this blog. I agree. I’ll try harder to keep it balanced, just like my bodily and mental health, k? Love you all, by the way.

Here’s lunch today. Calorie and other info below.

I visited a local farm outlet yesterday, and got all of this food, enough for this meal every day, and a lot more for about 10 bucks. Anyone who argues that eating whole foods is impossible on a small budget is not shopping at a farmer’s market. It was delicious, rich food, whole, raw in most cases, and incredibly nutritious. Let’s look at the numbers.

lunch on July 22nd, 2012
lunch on July 22nd, 2012

I’ll just say here, I satisfied my hunger, though not uncomfortably so. I could eat more, because I have over 1300 calories left for the day, but I wouldn’t want to. Satiation is key, as I’ve written here before. And fresh, raw foods are the key to satiation with a low-calorie count. I would have trouble finding this amazing meal at any restaurant anywhere, at certainly not at a low price. It took 15 minutes to make, and I was able to sit and enjoy it, savoring each bit with reflection and intent.

This here is one of the things that I love about my nutritional lifestyle. I am able to have delicious nutritious meals, that are unique and which relate to me and my personal needs. Also, cooking asparagus in a pan is an easy thing to know how to do. You should learn how.

Trim off the woody ends by snapping off one and cutting at that snapline for the rest. Spray the bunch with a little oil, add salt and pepper and turn it in a hot pan for 5 minutes. To say that you’ll enjoy it is an understatement. You’ll love it, like candy.

 

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insights photography

On the ideas of eternal life and reincarnation.

John at 239 lbs

In the interest of mental health to match my bodily health, I have been meditating. In talking to others about meditation, which need not be religious, many of my conversations have turned to religion, and in particular, the Buddhist idea of reincarnation, and inevitably, my formerly Catholic training in eternal life.

I refer to myself as a naturalist. I believe and trust, spiritually speaking, in what I find in nature. Morality, life, death, recovery, and spiritual inspiration all come from nature for me, and nature provides answers to my questions through observation, experiment, and evidence. My church is a park, and my sabbath is daily, and my prayers are small, kind acts for improvement of natural, observable life. But that is another post.

I only know what I can sense, and I can not now sense reincarnation in the same way that I can sense a tree, aside from the literal reincarnation through the reuse of elements, like carbon, iron, calcium, when they change from making up one object to making up another.

In this, reincarnation exists. But I disperse, in my everyday life, the literal electricity of my thought, which is recordable evidence of my mental activity. Thoughts exist only in the brain’s bio-electrical function of storage, retrieval, and experiential record. When the brain ceases to exist, I believe I will not exist as a thinking, acting entity.

The same way that carbon in my former body is the same carbon in a tree, but not a functioning part of ‘me’ any longer, the electricity and impulse of thought that was formerly a part of ‘me’ and is now electricity in the air, water, and so on is no longer me, but simply air, water and so on.

My skin dies off, as will my brain, and so my thoughts, and I will no longer exist but in the memories of others and evidence of products. Hence, I choose to focus on what I can do to create good products and memories of me in others now, such as my boys, and perhaps you. I can live on in the minds and thoughts and inspired acts of others.

In this, one’s life exists posthumously. I wonder what your thoughts are on these ideas? I’m open to discussion, as none of us knows what we all know separately.

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insights photography

My nutritional progress and weight loss

Losing Weight: John LeMasney before picture
John LeMasney before picture
Losing Weight: John LeMasney after picture
Losing Weight: John LeMasney before picture
Losing Weight: John LeMasney before picture
Losing Weight: John LeMasney before picture
Losing Weight: John LeMasney after picture
Losing Weight: John LeMasney after picture
Losing Weight: John LeMasney before picture
Losing Weight: Eat Real Food cc-by lemasney

I’ve sparked considerable interest in my weight loss journey after shedding about 50 pounds in 11 weeks, transitioning from obesity to being slightly overweight and now heading towards a healthy weight range. As of July 2012, I stand at 6’2″, weighing 239 lbs, with a 40-inch waist and 25% body fat, down from 290 lbs and a 50+ inch waist. My goal is a weight of 200 pounds, a waist of 36 inches or less, and a body fat percentage around 15%. I’m on track to achieve this in the next three months if my progress continues.

People often ask if my rapid weight loss is safe, if I’m using supplements, if I’m unwell, or if it’s a difficult process. So, I’ve decided to outline my method here, though I recommend consulting with a healthcare provider to ensure any weight loss plan is medically sound.

Here’s a concise summary of my approach:

  1. I understand my caloric needs by knowing my Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) and Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). I consume 1600 calories daily, less than my TDEE, ensuring at least a 2-pound loss weekly, further augmented by exercise.
  2. I monitor my weight, Body Mass Index (BMI), and Body Fat Percentage (BFP), using scales and calculators to focus on objective metrics rather than subjective self-image.
  3. I count every calorie like a financial budget, recording it diligently to avoid ‘caloric debt,’ which equates to fat.
  4. I don’t exclude any foods based on ideology but prioritize real, unprocessed, and preferably organic foods for their low-calorie and high-nutrient profiles.
  5. Happiness is crucial to my plan. Emotional instability often leads to erratic eating patterns, so I seek positive company and professional help when necessary and use exercise as a mood enhancer.
  6. I exercise by walking daily without straining myself, and I don’t consume the extra calories I burn.
  7. I use reliable, free tools like MyFitnessPal and Fitbit to track my progress, which offers community support and syncs with my exercise devices.
  8. I’ve confronted personal obstacles, like alcohol, which previously derailed my weight management efforts.
  9. I prepare my own meals to control what I eat or choose dining options where the content and calorie count are clear.
  10. I drink plenty of water throughout the day to stay hydrated and support my weight loss.

To sum up my method: I’m aware of my current and target weight, I know my caloric needs, I track my food intake rigorously, I choose nutritious foods, and I stay hydrated. That’s how I’m successfully losing weight.