Finally!

A couple weeks ago I was looking for something in shelf crammed full of packets of printer paper,  old sketchbooks, old note books, old folders, old everything, when I found a note book containing records of weight loss attempts from my past. I noted that in late 2002, I was 199 lbs. I managed to lose 14 pounds in three months and made it to 185. About a year later I was over 200 again. That's been the cycle of my life. Gain and lose, gain and lose.
In my efforts to break the cycle, I hit an old milestone for the second time in over a decade: I broke 200.
That puts  me at over 35 lbs lost in the last two years. Not of it is Earth shattering or anything but I'm pretty happy with myself.

In terms of life, I'm just going to make note of the fact that I'm getting married in 9 days and we're trying to buy a home too. I'm supposed to feel like an adult I guess but really I just want to watch cartoons instead of going to work.

That's normal isn't it?

... it might be yawgging. It might be a soft J...

According to my last post, I had jogged twice and was pretty happy with myself for beginning this totally normal yet easily avoidable method of exercise. What I didn't post was the effects of the aforementioned "yawgging".
The day after the 3rd jogging experience I was feeling some knee pain. I rested an entire day and then went back for the 4th time. I had some pretty good pain and thought. "well, this must be the growing pains" and I kept going. In the end, I couldn't keep up the pace for the rest of the route. I walked half of the way home in pain. I was in a little to a LOT of pain for about a week before I went to the doctor. Turns out I gave myself "ancerine bersitis" http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00335. She gave me a cortisone shot and said to ice it and rest it more. After a couple of days I felt back to normal but I was very wary of going back to jogging.
It just figured that I had put this off my whole life and then I hurt myself in 4 tries. Even the male nurse was like "you know, jogging may not be your sport." Just what I wanted to hear. I didn't even like it in the first place and then I had someone telling me I shouldn't bother with it. I was pretty ok with that.
My problem, however, was this nagging feeling that I should try again. I was working really hard at having a runner's stride and then progressing on duration and stamina. I thought maybe the "runner's stride" was a bad idea. Maybe I needed to just have a smaller, gentler stride and then continue working on the stamina portion.

So that's what I've been doing. Based on the testimony of my friend Luke, I downloaded an app for my phone called "Couch 2 5k". It does the same thing I tried on my own but it times the intervals for you. Armed with my new app and a new approach to jogging, I set out to be better than I was. I'm happy to announce that 4 weeks and 12 runs later, I'm doing great. My knees don't hurt, my stamina is improving and I actually look forward to each run to see how I do.

In addition to the jogging, I started a new gym routine. In the past, I would lift in a standard 3 sets of 10 reps with about 70-80% of a 1 rep max. I started my new routine with 3 sets of 20 (or failure) with about 45-50% of a 1 rep max. It's pretty tiring and I'm sweating my ass off so I think that's good.

The best evidence of the jogging and effect of my new routine and the regular dieting, is obviously going to be what the scale says. Much to my excitement, the effects have been quite positive. In the last 3 weeks, I've lost about 8 pounds! I was so pumped to break 210 but this morning when I stepped on the scale and hit 206.6, I was astonished. In theory, I could break 200 by the wedding. Go me.

Stay tuned for further updates.

As a token of my excitement and pride, here's some star wars humor.

Anyone notice the ground being extra cold?

You certainly must have noticed it too. That weird temperature drop in the earth beneath your feet?

The only reason I mention it is because hell has most certainly frozen over. You see, today, I went running.

AGAIN.

I went on Saturday and again today. It's amazing. truly. You see, I always make the same joke when people talk about their running habits: "I don't run unless something is chasing me." It gets a few giggles and chortles out of people but surely it evokes a little more judgement inside my audience than I would like to admit. (And right now you're thinking "of course it does, and don't call me Shirley.") The, not so hidden, irony of my self deprecating humor is that if something were to actually chase me, I'd be mugged in no time. Or a mountain lion meal, or vampire vittle, or pit bull pot pie, or zombie... um... just a zombie I guess. Actually, it was always the gag from the hit movie Zombieland that made me think about it the most. Rule #1: Cardio. It's funny for the sake of the movie but the funniest jokes always hit home somewhere.

ANYWAY, I figured for the sake of my own survival in the event of any kind of high speed attack, I should get on it.

Unless you're completely disinterested by now, you must be wondering how it went. Well, it was ok. The first day was alright except I felt like my throat was bleeding afterwards and I coughed a lot. That didn't happen today but I did get a side cramp which, according to that big phony Lance Armstrong's website, happens when you're dehydrated. I definitely didn't drink enough water today so I'll make sure to take care of that in the future. Anyway, it wasn't so much running as it was jogging with walking mixed in. Okay, okay. Maybe it was more like walking with jogging mixed in. I don't know what you call that. Walgging? Jolking? Whatever it is, I did that. Running just sounds better. Cooler. Jogging doesn't sound very serious. Almost like skipping. Like its a leisurely jaunt around the lake. I always imagine jogging comes with an English accent and a box of feminine hygiene products.

So I guess this is the start of something new. I even downloaded the Nike running app for my phone. Sara is very proud of me. Hell, I'm proud of me. I haven't started anything this challenging since I decided to start flossing.

As a fun little anecdote for you: my cat just fell asleep on my lap while I was eating jerky out of the bag. He knew I wasn't going to give him any but he just had to at least touch the bag itself. So now he's asleep, with one paw stretched out touching the bag of jerky. What a rascal.

Since I don't have a photo of that, here's kittens recreating titanic.

DROP AND GIVE ME... 42?

So it's been a very long time since I've even visited the blog-o-sphere but I havent had much to say about in terms of my physcial fitness journey.

BUT GUYS! GUESS WHAT?!

I have something to write about.

Sara showed me this website where you train to do 100 pushups. It's actually kind of cool.

http://hundredpushups.com/index.html

Basically, you figure out how many push ups you can do, and then follow the chart on how many push ups and how many sets you have to do. You workout 3 days a week, they suggest monday, wednesday, and friday.

For my initial test and I did 25 solid push-ups. Because of that I started on week 3 instead of week 1. No big deal.

After two weeks of following the routine, I did another test and completed 40!  Today was my second day fo the week and the last set (as always) is a max set. My minimum to complete was 40 but they want you to do as many solid push ups as you can. I did 42. Pretty happy about that.

I can't imagine doing 100 in a row, but with enough training, I guess I could.

Anyway, I haven't lost any weight in a long time. I ride my bike to the gym every other day. I workout for an hour and ride home. I still eat pretty well; low carb and low fat. I really want to get below 200 and I haven't managed to break 210. I'm thining about changing my routines a bit. I've been doing some reading and it's given me some ideas.

I'll let you know if it works out. Ha, get it?

My engagement story...

So it's been a long time since I posted, way longer than I realized. I know I'd been putting it off because I was losing some steam with my weight loss efforts and I was kind of bummed about it. The good news is that by today, I've hit a new low... barely. 210.8 lbs. Hey it's somewhere. Anyway, I'm still plugging along.

But the biggest news in the last month is far more exciting and life altering than any weight loss program: I'm getting married.

I guess I'll start at the beginning.

I met Sara (in person) on April 25, 2010. We had drinks and eventually dinner at The Hopyard in Pleasanton. We shut the place down. I liked her so much I had to see her immediately so I asked her if she wanted to get a drink the next night. We did and it was awesome.

Fast forward almost two years and I decide I'm going to ask Sara to marry me. So I sorta plan it out for April which ends up being Spring Break and when we go to Alaska. In February I made one trip to my friend in the diamond business and all I had to do was wait.

So we plan Alaska and I think I'm going to propose on the first night under the Northern Lights in Fairbanks. Turns out that was a bust. So we head to Anchorage and stay there for a couple nights. I still want to propose under the lights but unfortunately, no lights. We make a last minute decision to bail on Anchorage and stay in Talkeetna for our last night as well as make a last ditch effort at seeing the lights.

When we arrive in Talkeetna, we sign in to the Talkeetna Roadhouse (awesome establishment) and then take in the sights of the town. All 6 of the ten "sights" that were in town, that is. The best sight was the Denali Brewery where we have some great beer and food. It was such good beer that we decided to get a growler of scotch ale to drink while we watch the northern lights later.

A few hours later, Sara isn't feeling very well so I sit and watch trailers on my phone and make a huge dent in the beer while she takes a power nap, at midnight. At 2am I wake her up and we walk towards the river so we can see the lights and I can take pictures and finally propose. We sit for 2 hours and watch the lights which are less than spectacular but still pretty cool. By 4 Sara is very cold and tired and insists we go back despite my pleadings of "maybe it'll get better." She's excited enough by what we saw so we go back to our room. When we get inside I know that I have about 60 seconds before she's changed and asleep. So I ramble on about how I wish the lights were better and more special for our trip while I fumble with my bag to get the ring out. She's trying to explain that she loved what we saw and everything was special. I say, "well I wanted it to be more special for this" and I turn around with the box in my hands. She looks at it and says "whats that?! where did you get that?!" I open the box and tell her that I love her and that I want to spend my life with her and will she marry me.

She obviously says yes and we spend the next hour talking about a whole bunch of surreal things that I barely remember because I was a little tipsy and it was super late and it was just a surreal experience in the first place.

So there you have it. We're engaged. It's pretty incredible. We're having a great time celebrating about the whole thing and talking about how we're going to do it. We've been getting tons of love and support from everyone we know. We're very proud and very happy.

Thanks for reading.

What do I know anyway...

In the last two days I've heard 3 different people (all female) talk about diets and by diets I mean ridiculous concepts that will have no real health benefits. There was one that invovled ingesting only yogurt and water for a week. There was one was another that involved overeating for 3 days and then dropping to 500 calories for a week. And then the ever popular Atkins/South Beach/grapefruit/Progresso Soup diets. While these discussions made me feel pretty good about my own healthy eating choices, couple of these discussions happened at school so I naturally felt the need to try and impart some extra dietary knowledge to my impressionable young lady students. I did my best to repeat all the knowledge I've accumulated over the years (which is way more accurate than the yogurt and water diet).
While I feel pretty good about the information I possess and practice, I can't help if I still feel a little uncomfortable about trying to use my own experiences as a basis for comparison. It's nice to know that I've been pretty successful at times but I also know that, overall, no one really has a reason to follow anything I have to say given that I'm not exactly the picture of health. Sure I'm doing better than in the past but do I really have any credit?
I mean I'm also the guy at the gym that looks at people using a machine wrong or some really improper form while lifting and criticize the hell out of them. I want to go tell them that swinging your whole torso while doing bicep curls is really bad form and they're not going to get the most of their exercise. But when I realize that guy has veiny biceps and a six pack, I go back to to whatever I'm doing because clearly he's doing just fine.
Speaking of just fine, I'm sore as all hell right now. On doctors orders, I had a two week rest from leg exercises while a strained tendon healed. As a result I spent two weeks weight lifting my upper body and doing very light cycling. My rest period was over last weekend so on Sunday and Monday I went back to circuit training. I did plenty of lunges and squats and I'm paying for it now. I can barely sit down or get up. Never again am I taking that kind of rest.
Despite being so beat up right now I'm glad to get back to the circuits. They were really helpful in the weight loss effort and I've not been able to really lose much this month. I think my last post was two weeks ago and i was all excited about breaking 213 and I haven't been back to that point until today. I've been marking the months as milestones and I'd like to hit a serious low by April 1. I guess we'll see.

Thanks for sticking with me.

I thought this was funny.


212.9

Surprises

As you may recall, I've been resting my legs this last week per my doctors instructions. The pain is mostly gone but when I squatted down today I noticed it again. I'm going to definitely listen to the doc and take it easy for another week.

The surprises that I'm referring to in the title of this post would be that I'm still losing weight. As I expected, i gained a little last weekend but as this week has gone on, I'm losing with my weight lifting routines. Another exciting tidbit is that my body fat machine shows my percentage is going down too. I'm never really sure how much I should trust the machine because the numbers don't seem to change too much but they did this week so yay me.

Another surprising aspect to this ordeal is that I've actually been eating a little more since I started weightlifting. You need extra calories to build muscle so, on my lifting days, I take in some more protein and carbohydrates. It's nice to not worry about it so much but it's still surprising that I'm losing. If anything I expected to stay the same if not gain weight.

I guess I shouldn't worry anymore.

Unfortunately I can expect this scenario this weekend.


212.6, 24%