Day 30 – Fighting Back

Today’s weight-in brought me to 207 pounds. Finally some downward progress. With this one pound loss my daily average goes up to .27 pounds. I am hoping to get my daily average up to .30 pounds a day.

I am trying to keep everything in perspective. I can get distress about losing a measly one pound or I can see that I am only two pounds from my lowest point. I like the look ahead. I see that there is real potential to reach or even beat my lowest mark to-date. That is exciting! If I can break through my lowest point, I can make it through the 200 pound barrier. And if I can do that, then my goal of 185 pounds is totally possible! I am an optimistic person and I know I can make it even if there are bumps along the way, like last week.

At the end of my last post I mentioned that I was going to push myself harder on the treadmill. Well I did it! Yesterday during my mid-day workout break I set up my usual run for 35 minutes with the speed set at “5.0”. Then, with three minutes left, I increased the speed to 6.0 for one minute. And for the last two minutes I pushed the speed to 7.0 to the finish. It felt good (and hard). It was very strenuous and really tested me. I will be on the treadmill again today and hope to push the last three minutes up to 7.0 to finish.

I have not been able to get a mid-day workout break in today but I’m hoping to go right after work. My struggle with an “after work” workout today is that I have an appointment at 7 p.m. tonight. That’s going to be tight!

Day 29 – Still Struggling

I had a bit of a lack-luster week end. I gained another pound that put me at 210 pounds. Saturday I did go on a long walk again because I really enjoy my long walks. However, I sacrificed the gym to take the walk. Clearly, I should have sacrificed the walk for the gym!

Sunday morning I was off to the gym at the crack of dawn. The problem is that I slept a little too long and got to the gym later than I needed in order to get the full workout. I need to get to the gym at 7 a.m. (when they open) so I have enough time to get the treadmill and the weight machines done before I must leave. If I don’t leave by 8:30 I will be late for church, which is a priority for me.

So there you have it. I had two days of opportunity I let slip by. I did get some exercise but not enough. Saturday & Sunday are critical days for me. There is no reason I should not find the time to get a full workout on those days. So in that since, I failed. As a result I weighed in on both days at 210 pounds. A winner doesn’t let the opportunities go by.

Today, however, I weighed in at 208 pounds. This was probably a result of the workouts on Saturday & Sunday but I know I could have done better. At 208 pounds I am below last week’s ending weight. Also, with 208 pounds my average daily weight loss is taking a dive. Currently, with 29 days and only a 7 pound weight loss, I am averaging .24 pounds a day. I would like the daily average to get to about .30 pounds a day. To attain that number it will take real dedication to the workout routing.

I have to say that I surprised myself on Sunday when I was on the treadmill. I did a little experiment, normally Iset the speed of the treadmill to 5.0. The five really means nothing other than it is faster than 4.9. However, on Sunday, when I had one more minute left to run at 5.0, I pushed the speed up to 6.0 and it felt really smooth. That felt so good I pushed it up to 7.0 for the last 45 seconds and that felt great! So today I will see if I can sustain 7.0 for the last 2 minutes and see what happens.

I added a new feature today. Look to the right just below I put a chart of my weight loss progress. The green line is my weight every day. The blue dashed line is the trend.

Day 26 - I’m Not Quitting!

Well I guess I have to live with it! I am the same weight as yesterday, 209 pounds. It’s Friday afternoon and I just returned from the gym for my mid-day workout. I wasn’t going to workout today because I generally don’t have time on Fridays. But I felt that I had to put the time in today because I didn’t get a workout yesterday, plus I had two poor weigh-ins in a row. I guess I can’t call today’s weigh-in bad because I didn't gain anything but I didn’t lose either.

Tonight is our date night and my wife wants pizza. Well, actually, so do I, but I also want cookies, prime rib, and a cheeseburger with fries. I will buy the smallest pizza I can get and I will only eat two slices. Once she has the portion she wants I am going to throw the rest out! I don’t need to eat the rest as leftovers just because we paid for it. If I do eat the rest I will “pay for it” by gaining more weight. That’s too high a price. I haven’t spent 50 hours in the gym giggling. It has been very hard work to lose the measly 6 pounds to date!

So far I have been on this journey for 26 days. And as of this morning, I have lost 6 pounds. My average weight loss for 26 days is .23 pounds a day. I have to find a solution to my weight loss or someday I will die on the treadmill!

Here is my weekly status so far:
Week 1 I lost 5 pounds.
Week 2 I lost 4 pounds.
Week 3 I gained 1 pound.
Week 4 I gained 2 pounds. (This week.)
Net weight loss is 6 pounds. At least my losses were bigger than my gains.

I am trying to keep things in perspective and not give up thinking I will never hit my target of 185 pounds. So looking at the progress I have made I can only conclude one thing: I have lost 6 pounds. That is progress. I never thought I would get to 185 pounds in a month anyway. But I have made progress.

I can see I have a couple of new targets:

1. Lose weight by the end of the next week;
2. Lose more than 6 pounds by the end of the next four weeks.

Day 25 – So Much Gain In One Day?

Yesterday is one of the days in the week that I do not workout. I have five days every week that are available to me to schedule a workout and there are two days that have such time constraints that a workout is out of the question. So yesterday was one of the “time constraint” days with no workout. I would think that in one day I could “hold the line” and at least maintain the weight loss achieved to date, but no. I got on the scale and was surprised that I had gained 3 pounds! After a gain of one pound the day before I am looking down the barrel of a four pound gain in just two days! Plus tomorrow I will be posting my gain/loss for the week and it’s not looking good at this point. Just to break even for the week, I will need a 3 pound loss by the morning. Maybe if I cut my left arm off I can squeak by…but do I need the whole arm or just the hand?

So what went wrong? I already bought a new scale and I even bought a new battery for it. But is the scale just messin’ with me? After all, we don’t have the best relationship… I step on its face every day and it lies to me so maybe the scale can’t be trusted...hum.

Look what this weight loss struggle has done to me! I am beginning to see inanimate objects as evil creatures!

Let’s take a look at what might have happened to me. I can accept the one pound gain on day 24. After all, a little fluctuation is understandable. So looking at yesterday’s diet I know there was a change from my “normal” fare. Breakfast was the same: Mini-Wheat cereal with low-fat milk and a small banana. Lunch was different though. I had an appointment to meet with a friend for lunch. We went to Panda Express and I had Chow Mien, Black Pepper Chicken, and String Bean Chicken. So yummy! Now I am looking at the Panda Express web site to see the nutritional info for the items I selected, so let’s take a deep look at what I ate.

Chow Mien: 440 calories with 14 g of fat; 1,050 mg of sodium.
Black Pepper Chicken: 215 calories with 13 g of fat; 880 mg of sodium.
String Bean Chicken: 190 calories with 9.5 g of fat; 650 mg of sodium.

Totals: 845 calories with 36.5 grams of fat and 2,580 milligrams of sodium.
These are huge numbers! And this is perceived as a healthy fast-food restaurant. I took another look at the menu and nutrition information to see if I could find better choices for the next time I go to Panda Express. It turns out that I don’t eat the worst stuff but I could do much better. So the next time I go to Panda Express I will ask for the following menu items.

Steamed Rice: 430 calories with 3 g of fat; 35 mg of sodium.
Mixed Veggies: 140 calories with 11 g of fat; 165 mg of sodium.
Broccoli Beef: 170 calories with 8 g of fat; 570 mg of sodium.
Totaling: 740 calories with 22 g of fat; 770 mg of sodium.

By making some simple selection changes I could have reduced the calories, fat, and sodium by the following numbers.

Reduced calories by 105
Reduced fat by 14.5 grams.
Reduced sodium by 1,810 milligrams.

However, story about my food choices is not over. Last night we went to a friend’s house for dinner and had tacos. But of course, I was hungry when we got there and I totally lost count of the number of chips I ate before the tacos were ready! I did manage to limit my self to two tacos made on the smallest tortillas. Then to finish my gluttony for the day I had three cookies.

OK. Maybe no real surprise how I gained three pounds. Back to the normal diet and definitely back to the gym today!

Day 24 - The Gym Rat

This morning I stepped on the scale to see that I gained one pound making my current weight 206 pounds. I am not concerned about just one pound because I like the overall downward trend I am experiencing. After 24 days I am losing .375 pounds each day, on average. That is just over 1/3rd of a pound daily. I can live with any weight loss. That also means I am trending towards losing 2.625 pounds a week! It is a slow weight loss and hard work but I have decided to make this new “way of life”, my actual way of life.

Yesterday I made it to the gym for my mid-day workout break and I saw something that strikes me as strange. I see it almost everyday. So today I want to talk about it. I get on the treadmill and I work at the pace required to get to the proper pace for my heart rate. In order for me to achieve the proper rate for my heart, I have to work rather hard. I find myself breathing heavy, so heavy I could not possibly hold a conversation with the person next to me. The most I could say to someone is, “Hi”.

Please don’t get me wrong, but there were two women next to me, on treadmills, that talked to each other constantly through my workout. All I know is that if I am able to hold a conversation, I am not getting the workout that I need. It is easy for me, then, to assume that they cannot be getting a “workout” at that pace. So why do they do it? I’m sure there is some benefit to walking on the treadmill for an hour but why not stroll through a park instead of in a gym?

My point is this, if you have determined to lose weight, exercise is a must. But to go further, you must work at it. Be dedicated and work hard. Walk in the park with your friends and have fun while you get some exercise but don’t forget to find some dedicated time for a workout that seems hard.

I want to lose weight, so I work hard. If you are overweight, I want you to lose weight too. Get committed and work hard when you need to and have fun when you can.

I close today with some fun quotes I found, hope you like them!

“I have to exercise in the morning before my brain figures out what I'm doing.” ~Marsha Doble

“If your dog is fat, you're not getting enough exercise.” ~Author Unknown

"Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork. ~English Proverb

"A diet is the penalty we pay for exceeding the feed limit." ~Author Unknown

"More die in the United States of too much food than of too little." ~John Kenneth Galbraith

"The cardiologist's diet: If it tastes good, spit it out." ~Author Unknown

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 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 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!