Refresh…

I can’t believe it’s been over 6 months since I’ve posted here. I suck.

The good:

I’m back here and giving this health effort a refresh and want to get back to documenting this stuff. Maybe round 2 here (and round 20 something over the past decade) will work this time.

The bad:

Over the spring in a game of softball I thought I had bruised my heel but it turns out I incurred an annoying case of plantar fasciitis which causes even walking around to be a tad painful. Between that and traveling quite a bit it was hard to get into a routine let alone even be motivated to get up and move around.

The ugly:

I am about 19lbs up from where I was 6 months ago. Feb 1st I was at 325.6 and a couple days ago I was at 344.7.

New Tools:

I decided to cut the lame excuses and just get after it.

• I started tracking my daily exercise & food intake over at DailyBurn (they have a great website and solid iPhone app to accompany it)
• Early this week started the “Couch to 5K” program.

Here I am, back at it. Enough excuses, it’s time to execute.

Weigh in week 3

Starting (01/11/10)	336.0lbs
Last Time (01/25/10)	327.0lbs
Today’s Weight (02/01/10)	325.6lbs
Total Weight lost	10.4lbs

While I didn’t lose my goal of another 2lbs I did continue to lose weight. I know exactly why I didn’t keep on the pace of losing 4+lbs though.

1. Wednesday night – I had a sweet tooth so I drove around the corner to the Hy-vee and bought some ice cream which I took down between wednesday and sunday.

2. Thursday night – I came home to find out my furnace had broken down so while I waited for a repair man I ended up at a bar, had a couple beers, some wings and a burger.

3. Friday & Saturday night – Some family came in to town so of course we go out to eat at burger joints 2 nights in a row which equalled beer & burgers 3 nights in a row.

I’m glad to still see that I’m making progress but in order to make sure I get back to the 2-4lbs a week range I am completely cutting myself off from sweets this week. While I stayed under my calorie goals last week I think the extra sugar and carbs were responsible for that at least .6lbs I didn’t lose.

I walked my dog around the neighborhood 4 of the 7 nights and I’m hoping to improve that as well.

Weigh in week 2

Starting (01/11/10)	336lbs
Last Time (01/18/10)	331.8lbs
Today’s Weight (01/25/10)	327lbs
Total Weight lost	9lbs

From 4.2 up to 4.8 lbs this week. I definitely did much better with my caloric intake. After seeing these results I’m tempted to want to ramp it up even more with cutting more calories etc but I need to balance myself and keep the diet going (maybe with a little more fruit and a little less crackers/cookies) while picking up my activity.

My plan for this week is to walk the dog around the neighborhood (about 3/4 miles) every night (usually she gets that twice a week) and see what difference that makes.

Some potential stumbling points I see is having some family come in to town this weekend and I’m sure we’ll be out to eat for every meal and thursday or friday we have a “welcome” lunch for me and the other new guy at a bbq place down the street from our offices. I should be just fine as long as I balance out my calories elsewhere.

The other trick will be once I start to meet some people down here and make friends the booze calories can quickly get out of control.

So… 2 things to focus on this week

1. Replace snacky foods (chips/crackers/cookies) with fruit & nuts

2. Get out and be more active

With those 2 things I’ll hopefully reach the goal of losing at least another 2lbs by next Monday morning.

Weigh in week 1

Starting (01/11/10)	336lbs
Last Time (01/11/10)	336lbs
Today’s Weight (01/18/10)	331.8lbs
Total Weight lost	4.2lbs

Since it’s a new year and a fresh start I’m counting this as the beginning…

I got so wrapped up in setting up my new office/music room/guest room yesterday that I totally spaced on posting this week’s weigh in and good news.

I stuck to my calorie counts for being on track to lose 2lbs a week through last week until the weekend. Over the weekend I went way over and ended up being 2500 calories over for the week (about .7lbs) so I was just hoping to have lost the other 1.3lbs. I guess I must have been moving around a lot more last week as I am down 4.2lbs even with the slip up.

This is good news because even though I’ll continue to not have those breakdowns where I’m over by hundreds or thousands of calories per day/week it’s good to know that I can eat well during the week and still see results with some “slip ups”

Consider the wagon train officially back on track.

2010 Goals

During the month of December while I was preparing for my big move I knew that I’d have a chance at a fresh start so for the first time in a long time I decided to make some new goals for the new year. Though I came up with about 10 I’ll list a few of the most important ones here… These 3 are very big goals but also very realistic in my eyes.

• Lose 100 lbs – This is for obvious reasons but with 52 weeks in a year I know it’s more than realistic to lose 2 lbs per week if I stick to a half way decent diet and move around a bit.
• Read through the entire bible – Over the years I’ve read a lot of the bible but over the past couple years I’ve really not invested as much time into God’s word as I probably should have so I’m on a plan to chronologically go through the entire bible in a year.
• Pay off 2 different loans – These 2 loans are already scheduled to be paid off this year anyways but paying off these 2 loans set me up to use Dave Ramsey’s snowball strategy to get completely out of the debt I built up from college.

I’m trying pretty hard to stick to my daily caloric intake but for whatever reason I’ve really been in a snacking mood every since I got down to Kansas. I need to curb that asap. At least I’m keeping healthier snacks (fruit, nuts, etc) close by.

A month later and a new year: Back at it

I’ve referred to the wagon train before. When you don’t exercise for awhile or eat terribly you call that “falling off the wagon train”. Well, in the process of moving myself from Minneapolis to Kansas for a new job I not only fell off the wagon train, I left my wagon train in a burning pile of ashes along the mississippi river.

About a week after my last post I pretty much made a conscious decision to put this project on hold and focus on getting myself moved down and say goodbye to my friends and family in style. I had more happy hours, drank more beer and ate more wings and bbq in a 1 month period than I probably had in the rest of 2009 (and I drank and ate a fair amount this past year).

After getting settled in and starting my new job today I started over. Holy crap I did some damage. I’m up 16lbs from my last weigh in to 336lbs. Ugghhh… With that in mind, I have some new goals for 2010. The main goal concerning this blog is to lose 100lbs during this calendar year.

To accomplish this goal I’m getting back to tracking my caloric intake via the iPhone app LoseIt and joining the YMCA down here because of the amazing discount my new employer offers as part of my benefit package.

I’m back to the weekly weigh-ins and need to average 2lbs to beat my goal for the year. Here’s to yours and my success in this new decade!

Rebuilding the wagon train

After gaining a pound a couple weeks ago and then completely derailing over thanksgiving it’s been a process of getting back to good eating habits and reminding myself why I’m doing this.

My motivation isn’t hard to remember, all I have to do is look in the mirror.

That said, as I mentioned in previous posts life is changing for me. I’ve accepted a job as a web designer at a major technology company in Kansas City and am moving early January. While I’m really excited for this new challenge and change of scene I am a bit distracted at best. It’s hard to think through healthy meals and tracking all of that when I need to figure out what I’m doing with my house, where I’m going to live down there and how to wrap up my life here in the next month.

I have a lot of celebrating/farewells coming up and that usually means alcohol and unhealthy food so I’ll need to keep on myself to make good decisions while in those situations. We’ll see where I’m at come January’s 1st weigh in.

I have a post coming up about making money/keeping a uncluttered house over the weekend.

Weigh In – Week 3

Starting (11/2/09)	330lbs
Last Time (11/13/09)	319.6lbs
Today’s Weight (11/23/09)	320.6lbs
Total Weight lost	9.4lbs

That’s right. After 10 days without an official weigh-in I gained a pound. 6 of those 10 days I was out of town and 3 other days I ate and/or drank more than I should have. Though it could have been a lot worse I am still disappointed in myself.

Weeks like these really make me question why I’m doing this. If I’m doing this just for myself I’d probably give up. Eating or drinking more than a healthy amount usually sounds good to me (beer, bourbon, buffalo wings, burritos, etc) but I’m not doing this for just myself. I’m doing this for my future and for those who currently and/or will rely on me in the future.

This is no time to jump off the wagon train. Thanksgiving is this week, which of course is America’s most gluttonous holiday, so I need to really step up my game if I want to be happy about the number my scale shows me when I weigh in next Monday.

Foods to avoid…

• Pizza
• Beer
• Redundant carbs in meals

Here’s to fresh starts…

Ok… I cheated

Well, not really cheated… I just weighed myself early (yesterday morning) and I can’t say I’m happy with the results (I gained 1lb from my early week 2 weigh in). I’ll still wait to do the official “week 3″ posting on Monday and let the chips fall where they may that morning.

What I have found is that even though I stuck pretty close to my maximum calorie intake while I was away, the food was definitely less than healthy at times (Pizza, Wings, Whiskey, etc) and that can really make a difference. If I let all of my calories be ice cream every day that’s not going to help anything (in fact that would probably make me sick).

As I mentioned I am doing some celebrating this weekend and while I don’t want to blow my weigh in monday morning this thing is definitely worth celebrating. I will share it here when the time is right but lets just say my world is being turned upside down for the most part. Let’s see how I react with my diet and exercise with all this. I know I can control my food intake but those liquid calories (aka whiskey & beer) add up real quick for me!

Assessing the damage

Useful definitions for this and future posts:

Wagon Train = being on track, being smart, being healthy… with your diet, spending habits, use of time, etc

Usually I come back from a trip thinking to myself “ok, time to get back on the wagon train” but coming back from almost a week gone I feel pretty good about what I ate & what I spent. Though I went over one day on calories I’m under for the rest of the week so it more than balances out. I also only had one night of “spending” happen when we were out on the town in Austin and I may have had a little too much whiskey.

I will admit that the last couple days of my trip were definitely more difficult with my diet since we had to eat out for almost every meal, meaning I had to very quickly assess the menu and find a tasty, satisfying and calorie conscious option.

Another plus is that even though I just got back in town I was still set up for success by having breakfast ready for me to make at work (oatmeal) and even though I forgot a lunch I just ran up to subway for a 6″ sandwich so I’m still way ahead for the day.

I still have a weekend of some possible celebrating (more on that later) ahead that I need to remain good for…