I’m as active as the next guy on social media, but no one has ever accused me of oversharing. So going public with this project has me feeling a little exposed. Why do it, then? For starters, I think the story of pickup soccer in New York City is a good one, and I’m excited to tell it. I also hope my “second half” challenge will inspire others to take on a challenge of their own.

My biggest reason for sharing, though, is accountability. It’s a bit of buzzword at the moment, with accountability clubs cropping up for everything from writing to personal finance to career management. Fitness is probably the most common accountability category, which stems from the fact that it’s long been an effective weight-loss strategy.

“More than four decades ago, researchers learned that making a contract with another person, be it a friend, family member, or doctor, was key to successful weight loss,” says Donato Vaccaro, Ph.D., a research psychologist and former colleague at Consumer Reports, where he conducted surveys around people’s eating, dieting, and exercise habits.

Social media is a way to take behavioral contracting to scale. Instead of being accountable to one friend, there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of them. Vaccaro agrees, though ever the scientist, he adds that “research is warranted to evaluate the success of the participation in social media sites for weight loss.” Maybe my case study will inspire just such an undertaking.

If you know me well, you know I like a drink. One of my favorites is an ice-cold beer after a hard-played soccer match. It slakes the thirst like nothing else and there’s a quick little hit as the booze enters the depleted bloodstream.

I remember one of my high school coaches talking about the positive effects of beer after exercise—this was the early 90s, remember. Though he was clear about it being “a” beer, singular. My tendency has always been to tack on a few more, at least.

The harmful effects of excessive drinking on the body are well documented—cirrhosis, high blood pressure, risk of mouth and throat cancers, and on and on. Those are major health concerns for sure. But if I’m being honest, they haven’t slowed my drinking much over the years.

What then are the immediate impacts of alcohol on the body in training? Obviously, playing soccer, or any other sport, while intoxicated is next to impossible. But even if I’ve only had a few drinks the night before, my game is much reduced. If it’s a full-blown hangover, I might as well be drunk out there.

And yet lot of the literature on the issue is surprisingly inconclusive. For example, a 2010 study by two doctors in Australia titled “Alcohol, Athletic Performance, and Recovery” found a range of deleterious effects of alcohol on the body, from dehydration to muscle cramping to sleep loss. But when it comes to actual impact on performance, both aerobic and anaerobic, the hard evidence wasn’t there. To quote the study: “the notion that alcohol consumption affects performance has not received enough consistent validation to advance beyond being anecdotal.”

Be that as it may, there’s no way booze hasn’t taken away from my soccer game, along with my general physical and mental wellbeing.

For starters, there’s the weight gain. On this point, the science is clear. Alcohol has a lot of calories, about 7 per gram, and the high sugar content means the calories are converted to fat by the body, as opposed to energy.

Not only does alcohol pack on the pounds, it keeps the body from absorbing performance-enhancing nutrients from food, including thiamine, folic acid, and zinc. I really feel the drop in endurance that comes with this nutrient loss.     

Beyond the physical effects, booze messes with my mind. Even if I’ve only had a couple drinks the night before, my confidence on the field takes a hit. It’s that voice inside my head telling me to stay away from the ball. Conversely, when there’s no alcohol in my system, my head is clear, my spirit is light, and I’m hungry for the goal.

I’ve always been a streaky player, scoring goals in bunches and then going games without so much as a shot on net. I wonder to what extent alcohol is a factor. Hitting the wagon for 134 days, the full duration of The Second Half, should help answer that question. I think it will teach me a lot of other things about my mind and body as well.

One of  the biggest seeds for The Second Half was planted about a year ago, when, for the first time ever, I stepped on a scale at work and my weight started with the number two. I’ve always been stocky, and even chubby at times. But at 5’ 10”, passing the 200-pound mark put me in a new league of portliness.  

That explains the steady decline in play on the pitch, I thought to myself.    

I vowed to shed a few pounds, but life kept getting in the way, with a new job and home renovation being the most formidable obstacles. Both are in the rearview mirror, so it’s time to double down on the health and wellness wager, starting with weight loss, while still juggling the demands of family, work, and life in general.

Stepping on the scale on day one of The Second Half, I weighed in at 203.8 pounds. (Note: I invested in a smart scale for this project, the Nokia Body Cardio, which will let me track weight, body fat, hydration, and more on my smart phone). I was coming off a 10-day beach vacation, where I didn’t hold back on the food and drink, knowing my years of indulgence were about to come to a screeching halt. But still, almost 205 pounds!

What should my target weight look like? I first took a very unscientific approach in answering that question by scanning the roster of the United States Men’s National Team for a player with a similar body type.

Standing 5’ 11”, Jordan Morris (above), who also plays forward for the MLS’s Seattle Sounders FC, has an inch on me, but I feel like we have the same basic build—save for the fact that he is twenty years younger and in perfect game shape. (As long as I’m in fantasy mode here, imagining my ideal soccer self, I also like Jordan’s hard-charging, explosive style of play.)

Morris weighs 185 pound. Between his extra inch of height and muscle mass that I simply won’t be able to muster at my age, no matter how assiduous my training, I decided to shave five pounds and make my target weight 180 pounds.

Like I said, an unscientific method. So I decided to run it by my nutritionist and family doctor.

“When was the last time you weighed 180 pounds?” my nutritionist Liz asked. I’ve never been a habitual weight watcher, so I couldn’t say for sure. But I recall stepping on a scale now and then during my grad school years in London, where weight is measured in stones, with one stone equaling 14 pounds. I can remember being between 12.5 and 13 stones, or 175 and 182 pounds. That was the late 1990s.   

Liz and my doctor also ran me through a couple body weight calculators. First was the Ideal Body Weight (IBW) formula, which for men, equals 106 pounds plus 6 pounds for every inch in height over 5 feet. At 5’ 10”, my IBW is 166 pounds. Men with a large frame can add 10 percent to the total, so if I give myself that allowance, my target weight goes up to 182.6 pounds.

The other metric we looked at was Body Mass Index, or BMI. With a BMI of 29, I’m technically on the border of overweight and obese. My doctor did admit that BMI is an imperfect weight management tool. Nonetheless, if I do want to get into the normal health range, I’ll need a BMI of 25, which works out to around 175 pounds.

And so, after all the number crunching and second opinions, my original target weight of 180 pounds feels like the right target, though an ambitious one, since it will mean shedding more than ten percent of my body weight. All I can say if I do hit the mark, Jordan Morris better send me one of his team jerseys to run a victory lap in.

“When you’re in fear, you’re not in your body.”

My meditation coach, Danika Hendrickson, was explaining the concept of body-based mediation, also known as “somatic” or “yin” meditation. She’d talked about active muscle engagement and connective tissue and something called “comfortable discomfort.” But this business about fear and body is what really caught my attention.

Fear, you see, has been a part of my life, especially my life on the soccer field, from the beginning.

A memory: freshman year in high school, night of the county finals against our arch rivals, the Scotch Plains Raiders. Both teams are warming up, doing stretches, knocking practice balls back and forth, furtively sizing one another up from our respective sides of the field.

I was scared shitless and it showed. As the coaches called their teams in for a final huddle, one of my teammates jogged over to me. He was a freshman like me, so he should have also been experiencing some measure of dread. Instead, he looked me square in the eye and said, “Danny, don’t be scared out there. These guys are pussies.”

It wasn’t just a pep talk. This guy really believed the other team was a bunch of pussies. And that’s how he played every game, riding the confidence to one of the most decorated athletic careers in school history. He obviously had tons of natural talent to go along. But his state of fearless is what always amazed me the most, because it was something I could never muster.

I’m hoping meditation will change that. 

Mindfulness and the Modern Athlete
Mental preparation has always been a part of sports. Think of pro athletes using visualization to hit a curve ball or a crosscourt winner on the tennis court. Data-based proof showing the connection between meditation and athletic performance is still early-days, but it is starting to build. For example, psychologists at the University of Miami published a recent study that established a clear link between mindfulness and mental resilience.

Mental toughness is all well and good. But fear has always been my biggest hurdle. After hearing my story, Danika said that somatic meditation was the way to go. The discipline is often described as a yin-based "bottom-up" process, whereby you engage actively in the presence of bodily sensations, rather than tuning them out, as with yong-based "top-down" meditation. 

“It's about engaging those physical sensations in a way that is useful to coming back into the body,” Danika explained. She talked about how fear and anxiety often get trapped in the body’s fascia, or connective tissue. Sitting still, palms to the sky in a traditional meditation pose, might scratch the surface of the problem, but it won’t get to its root. 

After chatting for a few more minutes, Danika took me through a short meditation lasting a few minutes. We engaged the ears through deliberate listening, and the space between the nose and lips through conscious breathing, and the muscles in the legs through tactile awareness.

The first go around was a challenge, with plenty of skepticism and wandering thoughts on my part. But with the second meditation, I felt myself coming into my body on a deeper level. 

“I almost feel asleep there,” I said afterward.

“That’s a good sign,” said Danika.

Later, by email, I asked her what she meant.

“The fact that you almost fell asleep showed me that you were relaxed enough in the body to be able to let go," she wrote. "You were leaning in the direction of surrender, even if it was leaning toward sleep. Through practice, you’ll be able to relax physically and mentally while remaining alert and present to what is unfolding. Meditation is a balance between focus (mind) and relaxation (body). This is the state you want to be able to access in life—and on the soccer field.”

Devising a Plan
I’m excited to give it a go. Danika and I live a couple hours apart, so we can’t get together every day, or every week even, for guided meditation sessions. Fortunately, there are plenty of apps and online resources. I downloaded the Headspace and Insider Timer apps and have been trying out different tracks, including a bunch of somatic-based practices that are rooted in the body. (Here’s an example of one that’s also posted to YouTube.)  

The plan is to play around with them on my own and check in periodically with Danika, doing one-on-one sessions, by phone or in-person, when possible. Just as with soccer, yoga, and other components of The Second Half, solo practice is an important part of the process, but the guidance of an experienced teacher will be critical to success.                              

My first assignment from my personal nutritionist, Liz, was to keep track of everything I ate and drank for one full week. “Don’t change anything about your habits,” she said. “Just write it down.”

Study after study confirms the benefits of food logging. People who do it tend to have healthier, well-balanced diets, simply because they’re more aware of the nutritional value of what’s on their plate. Plus writing everything down is a pain, so they tend to do less mindless snacking, leading to more effective weight control. And they’re better at practicing portion control, which also keeps the weight in check. “It’s about putting a value on the food we eat,” Liz said. “If there’s a beautiful homemade pie in front of me, I might decide it’s worth a slice. But some junky dessert cake in cellophane wrap? Forget about it.”

I kept a food log for the seven days leading up to the start of The Second Half challenge. I took Liz at her word and didn’t alter my eating and drinking habits in any way. The log included the first couple days of a week-long summer vacation, which were particularly hedonistic. Here are the five new rules I came away with.

Rule #1: Vary the ingredients. Like most people, I fall into ruts and end up eating the same few ingredients over and over, and a lot of them are meat. That’s not only bad for the waste line, it’s probably also a factor in my elevated cholesterol.     

Strategy: Liz shared this technique: at meal time, draw an imaginary line down the middle of the plate and another line through one of the halves. The full half is for vegetables and fruit, one quadrant is for a grain, and the other is for protein, whether meat, fish, or beans.

Rule #2: Pack in the plants. Plant-based eating is really catching on at the moment, and for good reason. Studies show it can promote weight loss, lower cholesterol levels, and even prevent certain types of cancer. Then there’s the huge environmental upside.

Strategy: Take in more plant-based protein sources that will keep me energized, including ones I know and use, like lentils, beans, and quinoa, and others that will take some getting used to, such as millet, wheat berries, and rainbow chard.                    

Rule #3: Have a better breakfast. I had a buttered bagel and fried eggs three times throughout my log week. Part of the problem is I play early morning soccer without eating first. By the time I get home I’m starving, plus I’m feeling virtuous since I just worked out, so I eat whatever I want.     

Strategy: Eat before playing, even if it’s only an apple or a slice of whole wheat toast with peanut butter and banana. Eggs are fine in moderation, but balance them out with smashed avocado, which is high in vitamins and potassium.         

Rule #4: Eat more room fruit. “Do you realize you didn’t have a single serving of fruit the entire week?” Liz asked. It was hard to believe, since we belong to a CSA and do buy a lot of supplemental fresh fruit throughout the week. But apparently my kids vacuum it all up.

Strategy: The banana breakfast sandwich will help get me to the recommended 2-3 fruit servings a day. I’ll also keep a private stash of fruit in the fridge. And I’ll bust out the blender a couple times a week for fruit-and-vegetable smoothies. “Just watch the calories because smoothies can become very caloric if you drink a lot and use fruit juices and only fruit,” says Liz. “Include lots of vegetables, water, and ice, and you’ll be fine.”

Rule #5: Cut back on the alcohol. My weekly intake at least doubled the 14 drinks recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Besides all the long-term health risks of heavy drinking, “that’s just a lot of empty calories,” says Liz.

Strategy: I’m already committed to cutting out booze completely for the duration of the project. After that I’ll reassess and consider strategies for sticking to the two-drinks-per-day maximum.