Day 22 - A Week Out of the Ordinary

Once again I am apologizing for missing my daily posting. It is truly my quest to post everyday but I just can’t pull it off consistently. So if you are tracking my progress daily I hope you didn’t wander off to some other weight loss blogging dude.

As I push forward to the slimmer me I notice an occasional detour in my journey. This last week I found myself in a training situation for my day job that monopolized my time. Due to the nature of the class, I found myself spending time preparing my homework for each day, as well as acting as the host for the class. On top of those duties, I also played host to the consultant (instructor) and a big-wig from our corporate offices during the off-hours.

The challenges for my weight loss were huge. First, the hours required to pull the event together coupled with entertaining, and homework, I was unable to exercise at all for five days. The week before I began to feel like my workout was part of my routine and I didn’t want to do without it. Now after five days without the workout, I feel like I need a kick in the pants to get going again. Secondly, I couldn’t control my diet very well. The “student body” of this class is from all over the country we thought it would be fun to have dinner together as a class. I chose the best meal possible for me but I’m sure I ate more than I should have, and I didn’t eat it all. Also, every day of the class, lunch was provided so I did not have my usual diet for lunch either.

But that’s not all! My wife and I had made plans long ago to attend a marriage seminar in our city, which just happened to fall on the week-end after the previously mentioned training week. So, Friday night we started the marriage seminar that ran through Sunday afternoon. Plus, we threw in a romantic dinner Saturday evening.

I did manage to make it home Sunday afternoon to make it to my volleyball game. So after five days of no meaningful exercise I got in an hour of volleyball.

Then this morning I took my shower and stepped on the scale, (a new one by the way), and it read 207 pounds. That is a net loss of two pounds for the days I could NOT exercise, plus a five pound loss over last week.

With that weight loss, I find it much easier to get back to the gym today. I am not able to have the mid-day workout but I am dedicated to go home, eat dinner, and head out to the gym for the evening.

Tomorrow I have a guest posting of sorts, which you won’t want to miss. I have a very close friend who lost a significant amount of weight years ago and KEPT it off! Lots of people lose weight but few keep it off. She is going to share her personal dieting tips. Don’t miss it!

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 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.