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.

Some motivation for the next few months

Well it’s been a little over 2 weeks since I packed up and moved down to Kansas and the mixture of having a decent paying job and not knowing anyone could honestly create a lot of trouble for me if I let it. I’m prone to overeat out of boredom and, in moments of weakness, can be prone to impulse purchases. When you mix those two things with the fact that I live catercorner from one of my favorite bbq places and can get to Chipotle without even having to get on a main road it spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.

The good news is I have some motivation for not over indulging too much on the good eats. Besides the fact that I just want to be healthy and a normal weight there are 2 big things that are driving me right now…

1. Back home – besides a few family members and possibly my best friend coming to visit there’s a good chance I won’t be seeing anyone from back home until the last weekend of May. By my calculations that’s a little over 4 months away. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to go back up north knowing that I’ve lost enough weight for everyone with seeing eyes to notice?
2. Clothes – a friend of mine gave me a nice flannel shirt. She originally intended it for her brother but it was the wrong size (XL instead of the L she wanted) so she gave it to me (even though I wear a XXL and sometimes don’t even fit into those). That shirt a long with about another half dozen shirts in the closet in my office, along with a pair of jeans, don’t fit me. They’re in the closet that is right next to the mirror and scale, just sitting there and taunting me.

So even though there are larger factors for getting healthy (wanting to live a full life, taking care of the body God gave me and wanting to know my weight isn’t getting in my way (personally or professionally)) those are a couple minor things that are majorly driving me right now.

How cool would it be to be able to wear that shirt comfortably when I go home next?

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!

Weigh in Week 5

Starting (11/2/09)	330lbs
Last Time (11/23/09)	324.8lbs
Today’s Weight (11/30/09)	320.8lbs
Total Weight lost	9.2lbs

Back on track for week 5. While I still need to get back to keeping a better eye on my diet I was able to do pretty well for the most part considering there was a good amount of celebrating going on which meant food and alcohol intake was up and will continue to be tough to manage. Here’s  snap shot of the past week…

Monday – dropped the bomb at work that I’m moving to Kansas for another job so I went out to lunch with a coworker to celebrate.

Tuesday – had to introduce another friend to one of the few great bbq places here in minneapolis so we did that for lunch. Then, that night, we went out to a great italian restaurant to celebrate my mother and sister’s birthdays.

Wednesday – went out to lunch with a couple coworkers continuing the celebration of the new job (got the call that day that I for sure got the place I wanted down in Kansas) and that night was leftovers of the amazing but terrible carrot cake from the night before.

Thursday – my only low key day of the week and I was able to keep it mildly healthy this day (sans lunch at Dairy Queen)

Friday – we had an all night celebration of my and friends new jobs which involved booze and a late night trip to Perkins.

Saturday – I had driven home my friend the night before because she was a tad impaired so I picked her up to bring her to her car and she bought me lunch at a bbq place I’d never been before (which was delicious) for the favor. I also gave in to Taco Bell and a craving for Soda for the first time in quite awhile.

Sunday – My sister stopped by my house late Saturday on her way home from Wisconsin where she had spent the day with her friends family baking goodies. She dropped off a pan of pumpkin cream cheese bars which of course I had to partake in.

Given all of that I’m pretty surprised I’m back down another 4 pounds. Since I’m in full “moving” mode it was probably the increased running around I’m doing as well as consciously trying to make up for all of the “celebrating” by being extra good at other parts during my week. I’m hoping for increased focus this week and am still committed to reaching my goal of being under 300lbs by my January 4th weigh in (4 weeks away from today!)

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 4

Starting (11/2/09)	330lbs
Last Time (11/13/09)	320.6lbs
Today’s Weight (11/23/09)	324.8lbs
Total Weight lost	5.2lbs

Agghhh, I suck. I knew it would be a tough weekend but not only did I fall off the wagon train, the wagon train derailed and was left a burning mess. I gained 4.2 lbs. I’m still committed to my goal of being under 300 by my 1st weigh in of the new year I’ve just set myself up for a bigger challenge. The biggest thing I’m committed too is sticking with this blog and updating on the good and the bad.

Here’s to a better week…