Day Eleven – Noticing Changes

Today brings me more good news as I stepped on the scale and see another three pounds has melted away! So far that is my largest loss in a single day. It seems I have a nice downward trend going. By the end of my first full week I had lost six pounds. By tomorrow I can report the results of my second full week. But for now, I am down three pounds from last week’s loss.

The first week was nothing but a pleasant down hill slide with every day bringing weight loss. This week has had a few surprises:

• Saturday lost 1 pound
• Sunday lost 1 pound
• Monday gained 2 pounds
• Tuesday gained 2 pounds
• Wednesday lost 2 pounds
• Thursday (today) lost 3 pounds

Net loss for the Week to Date = 3 pounds. I can live with the occasional gain as long as there is a loss for the week!

As a result of losing a total of nine pounds since the beginning, I have noticed a few changes. It seems my pants don’t fit as well. To be honest, when you are overweight, nothing fits well anyway, except coveralls! Even though I have only lost a few pounds, I find it increasingly difficult to keep my shirt tucked in. I wasn’t sure what was causing the problem, maybe my pants or shirts were showing some age, I couldn’t figure it out. Then it dawned on me this morning after I realized I had lost a total of nine pounds! I have read that you will notice the loss of ten pounds so I guess this is what was meant. So, for the first time in recent memory, I cinched up my belt one more notch! I consider that to be a milestone. I had never thought of each whole in my belt that way before but the truth is each time I move to the next “notch” it is reinforcing evidence of progress! I guess I better start a savings account for a new wardrobe.

Looking at my weekly calendar, I have a few days where I will not be able to get a workout. Sunday I plan on getting to the gym when the doors open at 7 a.m. Monday and Tuesday I will schedule my mid-day workout breaks. Then on Wednesday my wife and I attend a Small Group from the church which will make it hard to find time for a workout. But Thursday I can schedule a mid-day workout break again. Friday is our Date Night so I will not be working out that day. And finally I will have plenty of time for a workout on Saturday. So in total, I will be able to schedule workouts on five days of the week. Not bad!

Today’s plan: It is Thursday so I am able to schedule a mid-day workout at 11 a.m. I have to keep the timeframe flexible right up to 11 o’clock. The boss can have a last minute “alteration” to my plans. If that does happen, hopefully I can reschedule it. Once I make it out the door, I am gone until the workout is done.

Day Nine - You Are What You Eat

Every morning when I get on the scale it is natural for me to believe that my weight will continue to drop. However, today I gained two pounds. Plus, I gained two pounds the day before. I am trying hard not to let this get to me and start to feel like this isn’t working. I am trying to look at this positively; I’m sure there will be fluctuation in weight.

The thought occurred to me that maybe weighing myself on a daily basis is not such a good idea. Take the stock market for example: Monday its up; Tuesday it’s down; Wednesday it’s up again; Thursday it goes way down; then Friday it shoots up. A person with lots of money in the market can seem bipolar; happy one day and crying the next. But if we just took a look at the market every Friday and only Friday we might see that for the week described the market actually went up since the last Friday! All the excitement every day is wasted energy. So if I were you, I would only weigh myself once a week. For the purposes of this blog, however, I will continue to share the detail of my daily weigh-ins.

I know that I am doing as least most of the right things. I generally eat well. I really mean that! I am like any guy; I love the fatty foods and snacks, but I don’t eat them. I would love to eat a cheeseburger and fries but don’t. My diet basically consists of the same thing everyday. Breakfast is a bowl of bite size frosted shredded wheat with low fat milk. Sometimes I have a banana too. Lunch is usually a wrap made of ham and pepper jack cheese with no condiments. I also have about ten baby carrots, a half of a cucumber (sliced), an apple and sometimes another banana. See, all good stuff!

It’s all a matter of degrees; I am still eating processed deli sliced ham. I could be eating bean sprouts and tofu with pine nuts but then I know I would be looking for a cheeseburger for dinner! I do allow myself a snack of five peanut M and Ms after lunch. My wife can’t believe I can keep from eating the whole bag but it is all I need. For dinner I generally grill a chicken breast on my George Forman grill and then I have two pieces of cinnamon raisin toast. So that is my general diet. Other than that, I find myself drinking about two cans of caffeine free diet coke a day and an ice tea for dinner. I suppose I could drink more water though…

One more note about today: I made it to the gym again for the second day in a row. However, I was only able to complete my run on the treadmill, but at least I got the full time in for that exercise. Yesterday I was able to get the treadmill and all the assigned weight machines finished within my scheduled workout “break”. As a result of taking my mid-day workout break I will need to stay an hour and ten minutes longer at work. The bottom line is: I got my workout in before I was too tired, and I can go straight home after work! This might work for me!

Day Eight – My Work Out

I wrote my last post Sunday morning before church. I usually wake up at about 6:30 a.m. without an alarm so that gives me time to eat something and drive to the gym by 7:00 a.m. But I ended up sleeping until 7 so I didn’t have time to get to the gym and still have enough time to get ready for church. Gotta keep the spirit healthy too!

However, all is not lost! Sunday is also the day for Volleyball! I am on two teams in our church league: one with the standard six players, called the “fun league” and the other team is a four player team of highly competitive players. Both teams play a set of three games so I got in a full two hours of six games. Volleyball is such a fun way to get some exercise! And it is a good work out for a 53 year old overweight guy…

I have had a great run of weight loss for the past seven days by losing about a pound everyday! That’s even better than some of the Biggest Loser contestants do on some weeks. However, even after the volleyball, I gained two pounds today. I am at 209 pounds as of this morning. But I am not discouraged.

In my last post, (Day Seven - Finding Time To Workout), I explained the difficulty I am having trying to schedule my workout time at the gym. Before work was too early; after work I was too tired. But today I tried my new plan of scheduling time during my day on my Outlook calendar. When I got to work I looked at my email to see if any new meeting requests were pending. Then I look for reasonable time slot where I could schedule the workout. I had no meetings scheduled in the afternoon at all so I scheduled the workout at 1:00 p.m.

That was a great plan but it didn’t work too well. By 10:00 a.m. my boss had an urgent assignment for me that had to be completed ASAP. I could see my scheduled workout was in jeopardy. I did manage to get a 30 minute lunch and then I was back at the task. By the time 1:00 p.m. rolled around I was not ready so I slid the workout to 2:00 p.m. Two o’clock came and went before I finished the task and my boss was very pleased. So at 2:55 p.m. I rolled out for an hour and a half workout, which includes changing clothes and travel. So I now only have to make up 30 minutes and I am good for the day! I feel good physically and I have the rest of the evening free. This “mid day plan” just might work.

Day Seven - Finding Time To Workout

Finding the time to go to the gym seems to be a struggle. I have been told that I need to schedule the time into each day which seems easier said than done.

At the barest minimum I have posted a time slot on my Outlook Calendar at work. I set the time for 5:00 p.m. which is the end of day for me. My hope is that I will see it on the calendar and it will prompt me to move the time slot into any available time during the day.

I tried to get up early and head to the gym for an early morning workout. The problem is I need to add time for a shower which means I will be getting out of bed very early in the morning and that proved to be really difficult. It was very easy to turn on the snooze alarm and then lose the time to workout.

Then I tried to go to the gym after work. The problem is that I often felt tired after a full day on my feet I totally lost interest! I just wanted to go home for the evening.

So I'm now trying to find a time slot during the day (I have a pretty flexible schedule) and use it to break up the day. This is my plan: I have it on my calendar every day at work. First thing in the morning I will move the "workout" into an available time slot indicating I am unavailable for me to be booked for another meeting during that time. I'll take the workout break and get back to work.

The good news is that I have lost weight every day so far. Not much weight but losing any is fine with me!

Day Four - Just Beginning

This morning I got up, took my shower, dried off and stepped on the scale before putting any clothing on. To my total surprise I lost 2 pounds! It's only two pounds but I will take it!

I had a couple of days off since my last posting so by the looks of the scale I did some things right.

My wife was working so I had plenty of time for myself. I did four important things during the two days:

1. I love walking. First thing I did was to take a very long walk. In this case I walked to a neighboring city it's about 6 miles away. I stopped there for lunch at Subway and returned home for about a 13 mile round trip. I was pretty tired but I really enjoyed it.
2. Later that same day I needed to go to the local drug store. I went into the garage and got into the car. As I sat there, I realized I felt pretty good, even after my earlier walk, so I decided to walk to the drug store instead. This was about 2 miles round trip.
3. The next day I joined a fitness club. I didn't have time to actually do a work out but I will.
4. Also, in the evening I played Volleyball on our church league for 2 hours. It's amazing how much work that is! It is great to have such fun exercising too so I highly recommend joining your local park’s league.

Quite a bit of exercise during my time off resulting in a 2 pound weight loss. I'll call it a success.