Memorial Day 2017

I've never been too into Memorial Day and visiting cemeteries and such, but this year, for whatever reason, I suddenly had a desire to visit the graves of my ancestors back to four generations (back to my great-great grandparents). For those who lose track of what this means, for me this group is comprised of 27 deceased individuals (my maternal grandmother, Doris Nalder, is still living). I have three deceased grandparents, eight deceased great-grandparents, and 16 deceased great-great-grandparents.

I spent some time Sunday morning researching on FamilySearch just to find out where all of these ancestors were buried. The breakdown was as follows:

Spanish Fork Cemetery: 2 grandparents, 2 great-grandparents, 4 great-great -grandparents
Bountiful: 2 great-grandparents, 4 great-great-grandparents
Kaysville: 2 great-grandparents, 2 great-great-grandparents
Lindquist Memorial Park (Layton): 1 grandparent
Aultorest Memorial Park (Ogden): 2 great-great-grandparents
Bennington Cemetery: 2 great-grandparents, 4 great-great-grandparents

I realized Bennington might be somewhat of a stretch, but thought we could make it to the rest so at about 10 AM Memorial Day morning, we headed to Spanish Fork, where several from my dad's family had congregated.

Oran Lewis is my paternal grandmother's maternal grandfather and several of my ancestors are buried in this section of the Spanish Fork cemetery. While reading up on him, I learned that before he married my great-great-grandmother, he had married a woman named Ellen Gillespie. Less than three weeks after they were married, she was leaving for choir practice and was somehow mistaken for a fugitive that law enforcement was looking for and was shot and killed. Another account had the details a little different, but the result was the same. Four years later, Oran married my great-great-grandmother, Laura Larsen.

Marker for Oran Lewis and posterity section of Spanish Fork Cemetery

Headstones for my paternal grandmother's maternal grandparents, Oran Lewis and Laura Larsen Lewis

Headstone for my paternal grandmother's parents, Joseph Archibald "Archie" Brockbank and Fern Lewis Brockbank

Headstone of my Grandpa and Grandma Mouritsen, Glendale Mouritsen and Jean Brockbank Mouritsen

Headstone of my dad's sister, Aunt Maureen, who was killed in a small plane crash in 1990

From my research, I knew that my paternal grandmother's paternal grandparents were also buried in Spanish Fork, but neither my dad nor his brothers that were there seemed to know where their headstones were. We looked around for them a little bit and as we headed back to our car I stumbled on them, along with a marker for my great-great-great-grandfather, Isaac Brockbank.

I have since learned that Isaac was converted to the gospel in Liverpool by Parley P. Pratt and that his wife at the time, Elizabeth Mainwaring, was a devout Methodist, who very much opposed his joining the Church. See ultimately agreed to accompany the rest of the family to America, on account of their children, but became separated from the company near Fort Laramie and was never seen again. He married my great-great-great-grandmother, Sarah Brown, a few months later.

Marker for my great-great-great-grandfather, Isaac Brockbank, and his two wives, Elizabeth Mainwaring and Sarah Brown

Headstones of my paternal grandmother's paternal grandparents, Joseph Brockbank and Emma Jane McKell Brockbank

Having seen the graves for all my ancestors in Spanish Fork, we next headed to Bountiful where my mom's maternal grandparents and great-grandparents are buried.

Headstones of my maternal grandmother's paternal grandparents, Edward Mitchell and Mary Emery Mitchell

Headstones of my maternal grandmother's maternal grandparents, Parley Willey and Sarah Jane Pace Willey

Headstones of my maternal grandmother's parents, Edward Mitchell and Luella Willey Mitchell

Headstone of my maternal grandmother's brother, Uncle Roy.

 

 While in Bountiful, I stopped at the grave of my niece, Margot, who was born with the genetic defect, Trisomy-18 and died a week after she was born.

Headstone of my niece, Margot

 From there it was on to the Kaysville Cemetery where my maternal grandfather's parents and paternal grandparents were buried.

Headstones of my maternal grandfather's paternal grandparents, Stephen Nalder and Catherine Forbes Nalder

Headstone of my maternal grandfather's parents, Hacel Nalder and Catherine Kenley Nalder

 From there, it was on to Lindquist Memorial Park in Layton where my Grandpa Nalder is buried.

Headstone of my Grandpa, Wallace Kenley Nalder

From there, I went to Aultorest Memorial Park where my maternal grandfather's maternal grandparents, William Kenley and Catherine Garden Kenley are buried, but I was unable to find their headstones.

But I did find this:

All in all, a fairly productive Memorial Day trip.

What Do You Do?

I've had a few people ask what I do as far as exercise/nutrition. This will be an attempt to answer that question.

Background

First of all, the before/after pictures above were taken about six and a half years apart (July 2010 - December 2016). It has not been a straight gradual path from point A to point B. Those of you who have been friends with me (on Facebook) since 2011 might have read about the early part of my fitness journey as well as a later surge when I incorporated P90X (as well as a short follow-up).

So to continue from that point, I felt really good for most of 2013, but I was doing more running than usual and toward the end of the year (just before moving back to Grantsville), I began to suffer from IT Band Syndrome (Derrick Favors, I feel your pain). That put a damper on my ability to run and some of my motivation to work out. I put some weight back on and was basically forced to rest until I healed well enough to run again (I did do elliptical some during this time, which didn't bother my IT band as much).

For Christmas that year, I received the Beachbody Body Beast workout and started doing that at the beginning of 2014. It is a 12-week program, so during 2014, I basically alternated between Body Beast and P90X (a 13-week program). During 2014 and 2015 I essentially did Body Beast from January - March, P90X from April - June, Body Beast from July - September, and P90X from October to December.

That seemed to be going pretty well, but I typically run one half-marathon and one full marathon each year and I noticed that when I did Body Beast, I tended to put on weight. This was particularly true during that time when I wasn't really doing anything as far as nutrition and would justify eating too much because I was "bulking". Toward the end of 2015, I decided I would just change when I did the workouts and kind of target a bigger, more muscular winter body (when I usually don't run any races) and a leaner summer body for when I run my races. My workout schedule changed to Body Beast from January - March, P90X (2 rounds) from April - September, and another round of Body Beast from October - December.

So I started 2016 with a round of Body Beast, but was again eating too much. I got back up to 220. I will say that I was still in fairly good shape, I still ran 20-30 miles per week. But I was definitely heavier than I wanted to be. At around that time, I changed my life insurance policy and because of my weight, I did not qualify for the super preferred rate that I had previously. I decided that I needed to do something differently. That's when I discovered Lose It!

Exercise

I've pretty well described the programs I do and when I do them. In addition to the weight programs I do, I also run six days a week, for 48 weeks out of the year. I take 4 weeks off from running, spread throughout the year. If you're interested, I've made my exercise calendar and a Google Spreadsheet I use to track my Body Beast workouts available. The time of day I exercise has varied based on my work schedule, but generally I prefer mornings. Currently, I go the gym at about 5 AM.

I do my lifting and running back to back, mostly out of convenience. I researched a little bit about whether it was better to do cardio first or last. I think the overall conclusion was that it doesn't really matter, but there was something that said that if you lift first your protein and glycogen levels are down so that your cardio will primarily burn fat. I don't know if that's true, but that's what I do. There was a time that I ran first and then did weights and I definitely feel that running afterward is more effective, but the ideal might be to separate them by a few hours. I just don't have the time to do that.

Nutrition

I feel this has been the biggest game-changer for me personally, but at the same time, I don't feel I do anything too crazy. I don't have any "prohibited foods". I still eat sugar, butter, ice cream, cake, etc. I do count calories and that is where the Lose It! app has come in. I'm sure there are other apps (My Fitness Pal, for example) that do something similar, but basically I am able to put in my height, weight, and age, and then what I want to lose and Lose It! gives me a target calorie intake for the day. Then I just have to enter everything that I eat, as well as the exercise that I do and keep my net calories under the target.

I don't claim that it's easy or particularly fun, but I do feel it is effective. At the end of the day, you have to be aware of how much you should be eating. At that point, you can either pre-plan all your meals to make sure you stay under that number or you can track everything as you eat to make sure you stay under that number. I've chosen the latter and that has worked for me. I don't feel that any weight-loss or weight-maintenance can be effective unless you're aware of how many calories you should be consuming and taking steps to make sure you are consuming around that number of calories.

The only other thing I do is during my Body Beast cycles, I will do a protein/creatine post-workout shake. I just use Six Star Vanilla Whey Protein and Six Star Creatine X3 that I get at Wal-Mart. One scoop of each in 20 oz of water is what I do. During the Beast phase of Body Beast (the last four weeks), I drop to half a scoop of creatine. Nothing fancy.

Consistency

Like anything else at which you want to be successful, consistency is the key. I've come to the realization that this isn't something that I can "finish". If I want to be fit and healthy, it is something that I will have to work at for the rest of my life. (Shout-out to my dad, who is 67 and goes to the gym six days a week). You can lose weight, but once it's lost, you immediately move into maintaining that weight loss, which is just as and can be even more difficult.

Conclusion

I don't claim to be any kind of expert on exercise and nutrition. I see people at the gym every day who are more fit than I am or probably ever will be. I just had some people ask about my routine and how I made the changes that I have so I thought I would share what I could. If there's anything else you want to know, don't hesitate to reach out and I will answer the best I can.