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.