Dear Fellow Citizens/Teammates,

(and maybe some of you just think of yourselves as “employees” .. oh well, your loss … unless you are new, in which case it is fair to wait awhile and check us out)

I may not get time to get on the computer later today, so let me provide a flash report.

Started the day with just 45 minutes of work or so.  And also sent my first MTM note then. 

Then did a 66 minute bike ride, including shaving 2.5 minutes off of my personal best up the back hill, that is the 2131 feet of ascent over 6 miles.  Did 40 push-ups and some good stretching (including some in a steam room), so a total of 108 minutes of very good exercise – then Denise and I hiked an hour to the nearby village for lunch, I will count that as an extra 30 minutes only, since it was a lot of downhill.

I had my shredded wheat breakfast, and one serving of black beans (the healthy ones) plus a good salad as part of lunch.  This was not easy as that was pretty much the only healthy stuff available at that restaurant, so I will record 1.5 healthy servings at lunch, 2.5 on the day leading up to dinner – which will be in a restaurant so I hope they have side servings of veggies.  If I get hungry between now and the late dinner, I intend to eat an apple.  We will see.

Now I will do about an hour and a half of work, before settling down to some reading and family stuff before dinner.

It is a beautiful summer day here – hope the same for all of you, and hope you are sticking to your health goals today!  Dinner and the evening are always my toughest challenges.

All the best

KT

Yo DaVitans!

It is a beautiful Saturday morning, I slept for 10 hours so I guess I needed a little catch-up after the week. 

One of the highlights of the week was I got to go to an Academy, I love doing that.  I got to talk about our Vision, Mission & Values in the context of the real world and stressful lives.  And how each person must decide if DaVita plays an important part in their life’s purpose.

Anyway, back to Match the Mayor.  Yesterday I did 61 minutes on the bike and 35 push-ups, and a 60 minute hike with some altitude gain with Denise, my wife.  So a total of 123 minutes.  I had the high fiber breakfast both yesterday and today.  Yesterday at lunch I only get credit for a half-serving, because the vegetable was corn, which does not have much nutritional value.  I had it with chicken, so that was pretty healthy.  I had an arugula salad, lightly dressed, at dinner, which I will count as a half – arugula supposedly has more nutritional value than iceberg lettuce, and there were some tomatoes with it.  In addition my dinner had half a tomato, so I will give myself credit for one veggie serving at dinner.

I did not have any dessert, breaking a terrible streak of having late night ice cream for about 6 nights in a row – as I said I had fallen into the rut of saying to myself that after 12-13 hours of work I deserved to have it.  How foolish to hurt my body and call it a deserved reward!

So as part of my new weight loss goal I will limit myself to one dessert a week.  Yesterday was day one, and it was a zero.

Back to yesterday, I remind you I was up in the mountains, because that is where the Board meeting was this week.  So I was working in our cabin.  I started the day with my bike ride, then did conference calls until noon.  At lunch time I got a very painful deep tissue massage, to try to loosen up a bunch of tight spots in my legs, to prepare for hopefully intense exercise this weekend.  After lunch I did conference calls until 5:30 pm, at which point my wife arrived and we headed out for our hike.

 I will head out for my Saturday am bike ride as soon as I am done typing this.

 I would not have set the 187 weight goal if it had not been for what you all are doing.  So I am most grateful for your examples and support.  While I am confident I will hit my exercise goal because it is a part of my multi-year normal routine and I schedule my life around it, not the other way around … I am not confident about the weight loss since I have been at this too high level for a few years.

 I hope you are all doing something different compared to before MTM  that is better for your life – remember there are 1950 others standing on the side of the road or kitchen applauding your daily efforts.  I love that picture in my head, the 2131 feet of vertical over 6.1 miles I will ride right now is pretty cool when I picture each side of the road having 950 DaVita citizens cheering me on!

One for All & All for One

KT

(Fear knocked at the door.  Faith answered.  No one was there.)

Dear DaVitans,

Yikes!

Sorry for the break in the blogs, but the Board of Directors was in town and we go from breakfast to bedtime each day, so I have done virtually zero emails since they arrived.

Let me quickly cover yesterday, and I will subsequently go back and fill the gap – but I have to go fast so I can get in a 60 minute exercise session right now before my meetings start.

 efore I do that, however, I am excited to announce there are now over 1950 of us who have joined hands and locked arms in a nationwide life improvement campaign!  Let’s do it fellow teammates and citizens of DaVita-land !!!!

And also before I do that, it is time for me to stop shying away from a weight loss goal.  I want to lose 5 pounds by the end of MTM IV.  I weigh myself first thing in the morning, on the same scale, so I have a good sense of accuracy.  I am currently 192.4.  I have been having way too many desserts, too often telling myself I “deserved” that reward after a 13 or 14 hour day – but it is not a reward, it is raising my tryglicerides, my HB1ac, and my weight.  Enough is enough.  I have been at this weight level for 2-3 years, and it is time to make a break.  MTM LIVES!

Now, on to yesterday, which is a funny phrase.  The Board stuff started at 8 am, and went until 4 pm.  Then we had a break of a couple hours, so I scooted out with Mike Staffieri and we did a 70 minute bike ride.  55 of those minutes was uphill, a total of 2131 feet of ascent over 6.1 miles.  So it is a good workout.  He is training for a tough, high altitude 100 mile mountain biking race and has lost 30 pounds in training for it – so he literally rode a mountain bike while I rode a road-bike, which is much easier.   Amazing.  I also did 2 minutes of stretching.

On the healthy eating front, I did not eat my healthy breakfast.  I did have salmon at lunch, with one serving of veggies.  And I had a serving of green beans at dinner.  So only a 2 score on the healthy eating front.

I am glad to be back in contact with the Team of 1800, and will send out some responses to your team messages tomorrow, on Saturday. DAVITA NATION, LET’S DO IT TOGETHER.

 KT

Good Morning DaVita Nation!

I hope you all have some momentum as we charge into the second week of MTM IV, and the first week of the rest of our life!

On Sunday I did a 3 hour hike with my wife, my 21 year old daughter, and her boyfriend.  It was in the mountains so it included about 800 feet of vertical, and we went off-trail in the woods for about an hour of it so it burned a few calories.  It did some modest incremental damage to my Achilles that I strained with my prior couple of runs, so I need to get that healed as I have a big exercise weekend coming up.  After the hike I had a couple hours of DaVita conference calls.

Sunday was a bad eating day, I had my high fiber shredded wheat for breakfast, one serving of zucchini at lunch, and then we went out for Mexican for dinner, which did include one serving of the healthy black beans.

On Monday I got up at 6 and was out on my bike at 6:30.  I was still in the mountains about 2 hours outside of Denver, so I coasted to the bottom of the hill, and then rode the 54 minutes it took to get to the top.  This is 1900 feet of vertical, so it is a seriously efficient workout.  I saw 11 deer on the ride, including 3 bucks with 8 point antlers, still fuzzy in their adolescence.  7 of them I saw at close range, as I was so quiet that I would come upon them without scaring them.  Beautiful!  I also saw a bear, about 60 yards from the road I was on.  Beautiful in its own way, but a tad uncomfortable since I was on a steep grade going about 3 miles an hour.  He/she took little/no notice of me, however, and I accelerated my little pedaling!

I had my normal shredded wheat bkfast, and drove the 2 hours to work, doing conference calls the entire ride.  Once in the Casa Nueva I had back to back to back meetings all day, like all days.  My lunch was one of my normal ones – salmon and 1.5 servings of broccoli, and 1 serving of fruit.  At 7:15 I left the Casa for a business dinner with the CEO of a company we are buying.  The dinner went late and I got home a little after 11 pm, after doing voicemails during the drive home.  Then I did a few emails before going to bed.  For dinner I had a pork chop which came with one serving of vegetable.  Let’s only count it as a half serving, it was disappointingly small.

Sorry I have not had time to respond to messages the last couple of days – getting a weekend with my daughter is pretty precious, and yesterday was booked solid from 8 am until 11 pm.  I will try to do it over the next few days, but they are also all booked from breakfast thru dinner, as the Board of Directors is in town until Thursday night.  This will be a strong MTM challenge for me, wish me luck! 

The good news is I get to share with the Board the many many wonderful things most of you have done and are doing – and that is an honor, a privilege, and great fun.

One for All

 KT

Dear Teammates!

It is a GLORIOUS summer day up in the Colorado mountains.  And I honored the day, and my body, by doing 5, count’em 5 hours of biking.  I know the exact amount because I bought one of those Garmin’s you connect to your bike – it only counts the time when the bike is moving, it stops during all stops.  70 miles.  Quite flat, a total of about 6,500 vertical feet.  Many beautiful views.  Also a sore rear end.  In addition I strained my Achilles tendon running on both Thursday and Friday, and so that activity will not be possible for a few days. 

As of 4:20 pm today, I have had 2 servings of fruit. 

WE ARE NOW OVER 1500 TEAMMATES, just picture that, 0ver 1500 human beings locking arms in a shared effort to improve our health.  Feel free to grab a partner for more timely and interactive partnering in our shared quest.  I wish you all well, and will check in later tonight or tomorrow am.  My wife was not so happy with me getting on email at 11:30 or so, even after I explained our nationwide MTM campaign.

Life’s Rich Pageant!

KT, Your Mayor

Yo Teammates and Fellow Citizens of the DaVita Village!

It is almost midnight here in Colorado, and I need to get up at 6 am for a 68 mile road bike race/ride.  That is, if I make it all 68 miles.  Time will tell.I woke up in Wisconsin this morning, unfortunately starting the last vacation day with a 7:30 am call that went until 9 am. But before that I had my high fiber cereal breakfast.   Shortly thereafter we had to take off for the airport.  I got some good calls done during the part of the drive that had reception, then had a healthy lunch with fish & chicken and 2 servings of broccoli.  Then I pretty much did email the entire 2 hour 40 minute flight.  Once I landed I did conference calls in the car as I drove to our cabin, and once at the cabin I did calls until 7:50 pm.  Since my wife and daughter had not yet arrived, I went out for a 30 minute run, then did 42 push-ups. 

I had one serving of veggies with my late dinner, and now I am going to bed. 

I learned we are up to 1558 teammates bonded together in our Health Improvement Campaign!!!!!!!!!!  This is awesome.  I hope you each achieved your goal today – if not, let’s do it tomorrow!

KT

 (A ship in the harbor is safe.  But that is not what ships were built for)

Yo DaVitans!

So yesterday (Wednesday) I left vacation at 11 am to fly to DC.  I got great voicemail done on the way to the airport, great work done on the plane, and had a strong couple of conference calls in the car from the airport to downtown DC.  The fact that I had a solid 70 minute bike ride before starting the trip was a big help.

We had a very productive meeting with Senator Conrad at 4.  This was followed by a series of 4 phone calls between 5 and 7.   Then I headed to dinner with 3 Senators – Burr, Coburn, and Chambliss.  We had some serious conversations about the federal deficit negotiations, and spent some time on kidney care of course, but not too much on that.

I had one serving of vegetables at dinner.  Overall the day was not good from an eating point of view, because as I flew back between 11 pm and 1 am I ate a couple chocolate chip cookies.  I rationalized this by saying I needed a boost to stay awake so I could keep doing email, which I was in fact able to do.

Did not get to bed until 2 am, and had to get up for an 8 am conference call on a time sensitive DaVita issue.  Then I went out for a 37 minute run, and missed my personal best time by only 6 seconds!  It was a beautiful day, and a beautiful run in the woods, and the combination of all this provoked me to do 50 push-ups, 5 more than I had been able to do for some time.  I wonder if I was somehow not doing them the normal way or something.  Then I did some crunches and headed back.

So the Thursday tally is 1 serving high fiber, ZERO veggies/produce at lunch (we had lunch in a neighborhood tavern because we were out and about), and only one at dinner. 

So a rock solid day for exercise, a bad day for vegetables/fruit, and a bad 2 days with lots of work interruptions of the vacation.  Life’s rich pageant …

I hope many of you had GREAT days, and look forward to catching up on some messages.

KT

(It is easy to be mindful.  It is hard to remember to be mindful.  Especially when it is most important.)

Greetings to the Good Citizens of DaVitaland!

Sorry I did not write yesterday, I had a late dinner with my dad – and forgot to go back to the computer, or more accurately refused to go near it for fear I would get sucked into doing emails, and since I stayed away I did not see the MTM reminder.  Sorry!

On Tuesday I rousted my 23 year old son from bed once more, and we went for a 70 minute solid intensity bike ride.  In fact we did set a new personal best for the route to Potawatomi State Park and back to the cottage.  On the servings front, I had a strong day – 1 high fiber serving at breakfast, 1 fruit serving at lunch, 1 apple before dinner, and then 2 veggie servings at dinner, along with awesome Wisconsin lake perch.

Today Wednesday I had to do a 7:30 am phone call for work, as I have had to do each day of this vacation unfortunately.  But once that was done I got in a 25 minute bike ride with my wife Denise, and then a 40 minute solid intensity ride by myself, followed by 35 push-ups so a total of 70 minutes of cardio and stretching.  I had one helping of fiber at breakfast, 2 servings of fruit at lunch, and dinner is yet to be had.  I had to leave vacation to fly to DC today, to meet with an important Senator late this afternoon.  And right now I have to zoom out to a restaurant to have dinner with 4 more Senators, and see if I can be a good ambassador for each of you and our patients.

I hope you are all doing well – I hope to answer some of your messages when I am flying back to Wisconsin very late tonight!

One for All

KT

Yo DaVitans!

 Day One of MTM IV! 

 I hope you each took a moment when you were doing whatever healthy thing you had pledged to do, and pictured THAT YOU WERE DOING IT WITH 1100 TEAMMATES.   That’s right, picture them with you at the table, on the bike, whatever.  I know that can lead to a pretty crowded kitchen table, but you get the point.  We are in this together.

I got off to a strong start on exercise, and a mediocre start on fruit & veggies.

On the exercise front I did 2 hours and 15 minutes with my 23 year old son.  We are on vacation in northern Wisconsin, at the same cottage I have been every summer in my life for at least several days.  We rode bikes to a nearby state park, which took about 40 minutes.  Then we went for a trail run for 30 minutes.  Then we biked around the park and headed back home.  Given we ran hard yesterday, his and my legs are totally fried as of tonight, we are both walking like old men (oops, maybe I am one).

On the produce side I had 2 servings of vegetables at lunch and one serving of fiber at breakfast (shredded wheat).  For dinner the kids chose a pizza place, and I don’t think I can claim the tomato sauce as a vegetable, nor the pepperoni and sausage as anything virtuous.  Oh well ….

I hope many of you got off to a solid start.  One day at a time …

Let’s do it!

Your Mayor, KT

Yo Teammates!

 Welcome to Match the Mayor IV …

 I was told we already had 800 teammates signed up as of a few days ago – 800 teammates deciding to join hands across the country and encourage each other to taking or maintaining  some solid steps towards living healthier lives.  So often we are able to do more special things when we form a team than we can when we operate by ourselves.  Funny thing …

For many of us, we will focus on number of minutes of exercise each day and servings of fruit and produce.  But we want to make clear you can set any life goal you want – from reading a book for a 30 minutes each day, to losing weight, to being outside – anything that would represent a significant positive step towards a healthier life for you.

I am on my annual vacation in Wisconsin, where I was raised.  The good news is I will get good exercise.  The bad news is we will be eating at a lot of rural restaurants which do not have much in the way of fruit and vegetables. 

But enough of the excuses – I am psyched for working hard to be a good partner to the rest of you, and for having you help me get exercise 6 days a week, for a total of 240 minutes or more, plus averaging 3 servings of healthy fiber, fruit and veggies once I am away from our cottage up here.

Remember the Buddhist quote I love … “One cannot pour from an empty cup.”  One cannot give what you do not have.  So we need our Village Vitality programs and ethic, so we are coming from a healthy spot in order to give gifts to others – whether that is our family, our friends, our teammates or our patients.   Not to mention the gift we deserve to get ourselves, when we give ourselves the gift of a healthier life.

One for All & All for One  (not just a slogan to some of us).   Let’s do it.

 KT