Man

Its been soooo freakin hectic lately. I was sick, and ever since then its been getting ready for Christmas. Finally got my last present today. Tomorrow we're driving down to southern Oregon to pick up my brother and bring him up here for his winter break from college. Havent seen him for over 2 years. Nor have I seen my Mom, or grandparents (the people bringing him up to us) for the same amount of time. We've basically spent the last week just getting ready for the trip. I'm hoping that things will calm down a little bit once he gets here, but I'm not sure how realistic that is.

I have the next 5 days off work, so I'm HOPING to be able to workout a couple times. As it stands right now, I havent worked out for like.... at least two weeks. Not good, not good at all. Like I said, its been really hectic, and to be perfectly honest, I've been incredibly stressed out for the past few weeks. What with every thing going on, and trying to come up with the money to do everything. And yeah, I dont react too well when I'm stressed out. Thats one thing I havent figured out how to do yet. I tend to get sorta paralyzed and end up not doing anything. Thats a lot of whats helped me gain weight and kept me from losing it. I get all kinda like "OH MY GOD, I HAVE TO WORKOUT RIGHT THIS SECOND OR I'M GONNA DIE, GOTTA GO GOTTA GO GOTTA GO!!!!!" And then it freaks me out and I end up sitting on my ass. The same thing has happened for the last few days. I've been freaking out about trying to get the house nice and clean for when my brother gets here, and thankfully my girlfriend did a lot of the work and helped me get over that and we got it all tidied up tonight and looking pretty good. If she hadnt done stepped up to help I dont know what would have happened.

I need someone or something to help me out to get of the fitness rut I've been in. Or a way to make some extra money so I could get the "I have to hurry up and get in shape so I can get a good paying fitness job" idea out of my head and take that stress off....... I dont know, I suppose I'll figure something out.

And hey, just in case I dont get back on here soon enough..... MERRY CHRISTMAS to everyone.

Noticed my absence???

Sorry about that.

I've been sick, still am in fact. Got hit with a really nasty cold about Thursday, and I still havent gotten over it.

It pretty much feels like I'm being punched in the face repeatedly by Mike Tyson, "LaGarret Blounted" if you will, little bit of college football humor there. Player (Blount) for the University of Oregon, sucker punched, and knocked out, a player for Boise State earlier in the year.........

Anywhoo...... Havent had the energy, nor the clarity of mind, to do anything close to a workout. I've been feeling a little bit better today, hopefully I'll be better enough to do some stuff in the next few days. That would be nice....

We've been enjoying the Wii quite a bit. Once I feel better, I think I'm gonna start doing the Wii Age thingy, its their fitness thing. And the boxing training and other stuff. All in all, its a really fun game system, and a pretty good way to break a sweat.

Oh and Chris, I still have the original XBOX too, except for that it doesnt work anymore, hasnt for a couple years. One of these days I might even get off my ass and see if I cant make a few bucks trading it in. That'd be nice, lol.

LMFAO

Apparently, Wii boxing is a pretty good workout.

My EXTREMELY impatient girlfriend gave me my christmas present today, a Wii. So i'm sure we'll be having all kinds of fun with that. When I get money again I'll have to get some games. I'm thinking that Active might be a good one, and if I end up with a bit of extra money I might get the Wii Fit, but of course thats like 100 bucks with the balance board and everything, where as as far as I can tell Active doest require the board. Anyone have any Wii related advice??

Hope you're having a good week.

Weigh-In 12-1-09

Stupid Google, I've been trying to get on here for like.... 6 hours. Anyways.

232.4 lbs-- down .4 lbs

Not a big loss by any means, but I'll take it for now.

I've decided to try a once a month weigh-in. So, my next one with be New Years day, or as close as I can get. I'll see how it works this month, if it works well I'll keep it, if not, I'll probably try every two weeks, just because a month is just such a long time that I dont want to spend 2 or 3 months waiting to see if it works.

In response to comments on my last post;

Emmett- Portland Oregon, I live in a *cough* suburb, Vancouver, Washington.

Chris- I like the sound of that whole trainer thing, I suppose I should start getting used to it, lol. And uhm, a vertical push-up is when you're doing a hand stand, you go down until your head or face is just off the ground, similar to a regular push up, then press back up. Obviously I'll have to be able to do a handstand first, lol.

Oh and also, I'm gonna go for a run in just a little while, should be fun, its sunny but about 48 degrees. Yay, I LOOOOOOOOOOVVVEEEEEE cold weather haha.

Doin the Turkey Trot

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my truly awesome blogging counterparts.

I hope you all had an awesome day with family and friends, with all the turkey related trappings as well, unless of course you're abstaining from that for weight loss, or other reasons.

I for one enjoyed me a good turkey leg.

As a nice little side note on this particular T-day, I saw on the news that some military folks stationed in Kabul Afghanistan participated in their very own Turkey Trot, you know that awesome little Thanksgiving day 5k or similar fun run type event. I thought that was pretty danged awesome.

One of these days I'm gonna have to do my own Trot, it would be really fun.

Add that to my mental list of events or athletic type things I want to do. That list includes a variety of things like: Turkey Trot, Twilight Parade run (whatever the name of the run that happens before the Rose Festival Twilight Parde, here in Portland), Portland Marathon, a major marathon, Kona Iron Man, back flip, vertical push-up. Theres probably more on there than that, but the trick of a mental list is that some times I forget some of it. Maybe I oughta think about writing that down somewhere.

Wow

Its been a busy few days for sure.

I spent all day Wednesday doing house work and grocery shopping.

Thursday brought me a busy day of work followed by several hours of Christmas shopping, by which I mean following my girlfriend around the mall as she shopped. I did get some good chicken terriyaki out of it, so I guess its all good.

Today, another busy day of work, and now I'm not feeling good at all. In fact, it kinda feels like I might throw up. Lets hope that doesnt happen. Anyways, it looks to be a busy weekend of work as well, but I should have some extra time with which to work out.

Wow, hiccups are now making my push button....... I think they're trying to tell me its bed time lol.

Yummmmmm Cardio Sandwich

Worked out for about an hour and twenty minutes today. Got in some good weight lifting, sandwiched between 25 minutes of bicycle riding, and 20 minutes of treadmill running. Add it all together, and according to my heart rate watch thingamajigger I burned about 530 calories.

I wanted to comment on a few things tonight.

A) Can we all agree to ban anyone wearing a bandana from entering a gym??? Of course other than people who need them, you know like cancer patients, and people with other hair loss causing diseases. But other than that, its extremely douchy.

B) I love stability balls, they're fun, they can provide a challenging workout, but some people just completely misuse them. This guy, actually the same guy from item A), was doing lat pull downs, on the machine, and apparently the seat wasn't good enough for him, so he was sitting on a stability ball doing lat pulldowns. And I was left scratching my head thinking WTF?? Maybe I'm off base and someone can explain that one to me???? I'd actually appreciate that greatly.

C) YAYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!! Haha, as it turns out, I won. The wonderful author of BECAUSE I TRI (once again, I'm not good at the whole linking thing, maybe I'll figure it out and link it tomorrow) did a photo caption contest, and I won, so apparently I'll be getting some power gels, stuff that super athletes use to make them super. So, thats pretty damn cool. Yay.

D) In case you didnt notice the lack of my normal Monday post (shame on you), I didn't weight myself today. I decided to take a week off of the scale. I've been putting too much pressure on what the scale says, letting it upset me and dictate what I do. So, I took a week off. I'll probably weigh myself next week, but then again, maybe I won't. It all depends on how I do this week, and whether or not the idea of not worrying about weighing in at the end of the week helps me.

Anyways, I hope all is going well with everyone else. Heres to having another good day, and therefore post, tomorrow.

Yummmmmm Cardio Sandwich

Welp

Last night, I burned about 250 calories riding the bike for 35 minutes. Tonight, I ate a turkey burger for dinner, have to say it was pretty good, especially considering that I cooked it, lol.

I didnt get a workout in tonight, I'm hecka tired considering that I only got like 3 hours of sleep last night, then I had a good day at work, not overly busy, but comfortably active. Well........... "comfortable" is used pretty loosely, considering it topped out at about 45 degrees..... In case you can't tell, I'm REALLY not a fan of cold weather.

Anyways, I'm gonna get a workout in tomorrow night.

P.S. All I want for Christmas is to be able to break dance as cool as those funky fresh kids in The Gap commercial, with all their street cred and whatnot, lol.

Weigh-in 11-9-09

232.8 lbs--- gained 2 pounds

Been thinking about it all day, and all I can even say is FUCCCCKKKKK.

I gotta get this shit under control before I lose everything and end up being a fat fuck for the rest of my life.

Tomorrow is a new day, thankfully.

Splish Splash I Was Takin a Bath..

...and was at work at the same time.......

Okay well not literally, but it felt like it today. It was pouring, completely pouring. I was drenched. I kind of..... forgot what I was gonna say. Alls I know is I hope that it dries up tomorrow, otherwise I might have to swim home from work.

Jack, since you generally have an idea of what I talk about, I sort of figured you at least skimmed for major points. Sorry if I underestimated your psychic abilities, lol. And by the way, congratulations on the success you've been having.

Chris, sometimes its hard to not let my crazy hardcore awesomeness seep through my seemingly humble exterior. Its like how the military, and lizards, use camouflage to blend in to their environments, except roughly 2,000 times cooler. I'm actually cooler than The Fonz, Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, Chuck Norris, and an entire warehouse full of ice literally put together. I'm glad that you fell for my act though, it'll give my third Ego a little bit of a boost, the other two are full............ In all seriousness, thank you very much for the kind comments. Truthfully, you are the one that is crazy hardcore awesome.

Acceptance Speech

Six Things You Don't Know About Me.

1. I CANNOT climb anything. I've never been able to climb fences, and when I was little, like 8 or 10 or something like that, I was climbing a tree and my foot got stuck between two branches and I was stuck up there for several hours. I haven't climbed a tree since, lol.

2. During my time as a high school "athlete", I shared the field with two current professional athletes. a) My senior year, we lost our opening round football playoff game to Jonathon Stewart, who went on to start at the University of Oregon, and is currently playing for the Carolina Panthers. After the game one of my teammates happened have a magazine that Stewart was on the cover of, and he got him to autograph it, good times. b) When I was on the track team, one of the teams in our league, Skyview high school, happened to have a Javelin thrower by the name of Kara Patterson. Obviously I didnt compete directly against her, since she's a girl and all, but my team competed against her. She has won back to back U.S. championships in the Javelin, competed in the 2008 Beijing olympics, and recently signed a sponsorship deal with Asics. I sucked as an athlete, but at least I can say I shared the fields of play with some good ones.

3. I'm actually a fairly boring person, meaning that I'm finding it difficult to come up with 6 interesting facts about me.

4. In my "academic career" I've done research papers on a wide variety of topics. Ranging from the "effects of youth participation in sports" for my junior paper in high school, and Creatine, and Nitric Oxide (NO2) in college, to fuel efficient, hybrid, and other alternative vehicles for my senior paper in high school. Like I've mentioned a few times on here, I've always considered myself to be a pretty good writer, as have a lot of the teachers I've had. I enjoy writing, and I've always thought that I write better when it just comes out, without a lot of planning or anything.

5. I love sports, football, basketball, track, they're all awesome. Sports are the reason that I wanted to get into fitness in the first place, not because I thought it'd make me into a super athlete or anything, but because I thought it could lead to a future career of coaching. Whether it be coaching a sport, or an event, or a position, or if its just being a strength coach, that is a major goal of mine. The main thing I want to do is to work with primarily high school athletes and students. However, I'd also like to open up a athletic/sports training facility, and possibly use that to create a program for students as well. However with that said, right at this point, I really have no clue how I'm going to be able to afford to go back to school to get the rest the education I'll need to be able to accomplish all of that. And that scares me and makes me think I wont be able to do any of the things I want to do in life.

6. Being as how I only have 7 people whom I absolutely know read my blog, the next step of this award is fairly simple.



The 7 people I pass this on to are::::::: Chris, even though thats probably against the rules, Jack, although I'm pretty sure that you've been given this already, Emmett, FitGal, Stephanie, Lisa, and BVar.

Bowling for..... cereal.

Remember Count Chocula?? Well my dad found it, and bought it. It is awesome, lol.

Bowling was all kinds of fun. 6 games, we each one 3, and I ended up winning the cumulative score by like 3 points. Bowled my last two games without bumpers, big mistake lol (but she had to catch up) bowled an 85 the first w/o bumpers game, and a 40-something the second. My high score was like 135, hers was 104..... Anyways, as it turns out, 2 hours of bowling is slightly tiring, haha my arm was pretty tired for a while.

Today was good. Did a stability ball workout, I need to do that more often, those things are tough. Spent a butt load of money grocery shopping, haha its amazing how much cash you can fit in them little carts. Purchased a Weight Watchers cookbook, so now I get to go through it and get some healthy food ideas. Speaking of, I've been eating a lot of apples, I like apples. Anyways, I've been wondering about Weight Watchers. Maybe any of you who are or have done the program can help me. Do you have to pay for the program to find out the point values of foods, and how many points you are supposed to eat in a day??? I have the day off of work tomorrow so I'll have to read the book and see if it covers any of that stuff. Its the cookbook for the "new Momentum program", I don't know if that really makes a difference or anything, lol.

Anyways, I'll have a good day tomorrow. Looking to get in a run if the weather isnt terrible, and be pretty active otherwise with cleaning and whatnot. Oh, and Chris, I'll get the whole award thing figured out and posted tomorrow. So everyone can look forward to a few interesting tidbits in that.

Have a nice night, and a terrific tomorrow.


P.S. That was corny, lol.

Weigh-In 11-2-09

Who woulda ever saw this coming????

230.8 lbs--- up 1.6 lbs

That whole control thing I mentioned last post, it was sort of a desperate "I know I'm messing up big time" type of thing. I need to actually follow it though, might keep me from coughing up the goals that I achieve when I finally get them done. I have to say, even though I pretty much knew I'd gain weight, before I weighed in that is, I was desperately hoping that I wouldnt gain THAT MUCH, and when I saw that I was back over 230, it was extremely disappointing. Even more disappointing then it was to be waiting week after week after week for so long for that number to finally fall. Its definitely not a feeling I ever want to go through again.

I guess on the plus side, Halloween is over, and almost all the candy is over I'm not really a big candy person, all I really like is the chocolate stuff, and I've definitely eaten more of that than I should have. So that will probably help to not have all that candy around any more. But on a side note, this halloween was disappointing. Disappointing because I couldn't find Count Chocula. For those who don't know, Count Chocula is part of a special line of Kelloggs cereals, along with Franken Berry and Boo Berry, that only comes out around halloween. And for years it has been my favorite part of the whole Halloween thing, I know its not healthy food or anything, but still. So when I couldn't find it, it sorta ruined it for me this year, hopefully it'll be back next year.

Tommorrow is the anniversary I mentioned a few weeks ago. We're going bowling, its gonna be fun. And we should even be home in time to watch the Biggest Loser peoples go to the White House, that should be interesting as well. I'm gonna fit in a run early in the day.

And as a special message to Miss Chris..... Thank you for the award, can't remember when the last time someone called me Beautiful, but I'm fairly certain that it had nothing to do with an award. As this is my first blog award thingy, I don't know how to copy it or whatever I'm supposed to do with it, haha how pathetic does that sound?? Anyways, if someone could enlighten me as to how to do it, I'd be more than happy to fill out 7 things you don't know about me, and all that stuff...... Also, thank you, I've always thought, and been told by teachers, etc, that I am a pretty good writer, I think I've just kind of struggled to get it to show through on this blog. And I've always wondered if 7 Habits would be worth the read, now I'm leaning toward yes, might have to go get it. As I've said many times before, thank you very much for your support.

The same goes for everyone else that reads this thing I like to call a blog, thank you all for your support.

Tommorrow will be better, it has to.

Time to take control for good.

Deep Thoughts

Obviously, its been a few days since I posted, although that post WAS awesome, I've been doing that a lot lately, posting only like 2 or 3 times a week. Not necessarily a bad thing, just a fact, although I would like to get back to posting every day. Just lately I've been drawing a blank, haven't been able to think of much interesting stuff to talk about.

Anyways, I was looking through blogs, and came across one that Jack Sh*t did a couple days ago, about regrets, and it really hit home. Heres a little piece of it:

English writer and clergyman Sydney Smith once said “Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.”

Being young, I haven't lived enough to have many regrets, and for the most part I enjoy my life, other than the being over weight thing which is being worked on. But on those times that I do find myself thinking "what if it had happened differently?" its always things I didn't do. Not to get into too much personal, and entertaining detail, but like the time I surprised this incredibly beautiful girl with flowers (somehow she knew they were from me, even though I didnt leave my name) then chickened out and didnt even make an attempt to ask her to Prom. There are many examples of funny stories like that. Years down the road, when I'm reflecting on my life, what will I end up regretting, and will I look back at myself right at this very moment in time, and regret that I couldnt wake myself up and make my life healthier now.

I definitely do not want to look back on my "glory days" only to find out that I didn't have any. Its for that reason that I need to get ahold of the situation, improve it, and take control of my life. Take control and steer it in the direction I want.

Take Control..... I think thats my new motto.

P.S. I love how sometimes I don't even have a goal in mind, and then the words just start coming out.

WOW (weigh-in 10-26)

Its been a while, hasnt it? Sorry I havent posted in almost a week, I think sense Tuesday. I've had an absolutely ridiculous week at work. The guy I work with was sick all week, so I had to do basically twice as much work as I usually do, all physical of course, and I ended up sleeping less than usual too. And as a result, by the time I got home, I was too exhausted to workout or blog. Since I didn't workout at all, I was pretty much expecting to gain alittle weight this week. But I suppose that I was active enough, and did a decent enough job of eating, because...........

WEIGH-IN 10-26-09

229.2 lbs -- 1.2 lbs lost.

YAYYYYYYYYY errrrrrrrr FFFFFIIIIIIIINNNNNNAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!

In case you cant read multiple letters, and believe me, its messing with my eyes at the moment, lol, that said F I N A L L Y. It took me forever and a week, but I finally broke 230. Sitting here today, I am currently two tenths of a pound (.2) heavier than I was in the first couple week of 2008. I'm really not sure I can describe how happy I am at this very moment. I'm also determined.

Determined to kick some butt this week. And to not mess up and let myself get back over 230. Not this week, or next month, or ever.

Now I suppose to hard work begins, not just working out, but catching up on a weeks worth of blogs from all the awesome people who inspire me. Heres hoping that tomorrows post is as happy as todays.

Tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I'm running.

Remember? I said that last night. And......................

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to fit in a run this afternoon, and I knew I'd be watching Biggest Loser tonight, so I was worried about being to do it. But then something happened, I ran out the door slightly after 10am. It was cold and ugly outside, thankfully it didnt rain today, but I did it, I was cold, the air was really cold, it was in like the low 50's. It was kinda odd, at least to me, sweating in the cold, it was different. I'm not used to doing stuff outside when its cold, I am NOT a winter person, not in the least, I'm only really accustomed to sweating in the warmth of sunshine.

But regardless of weather, I got my run in. It felt pretty good. I was actually a little surprised because my legs felt terrific, I didn't really do much stretching, but I didn't have any calf or shin tightness. It was pretty damn cool. Did just under 2.5 miles, 40 minutes, burned 425 calories.

If you watch The Biggest Loser, you may have noticed at the end of tonights show, when they were showing how much progress Dina has made, they mentioned that she had completed her first half-marathon, and was training for a full marathon. On that show, they seem to always be doing marathons and stuff. I want to do at least a half marathon this coming summer. But I don't know exactly how to go about ramping up my mileage. When I go on my runs, I run some and I walk some, but the ratio doesn't really seem to be improving all that much. I'm not sure if I should go for longer distances, or shorter ones.

You see, in my fitness history, I've done a lot of weight lifting. Thats fairly simply, lift this much weight enough times, and you'll be able to lift more. But over that time, even when I was a high school athlete, I never paid much attention to cardio. I've always hated running, done what I could to avoid it. So, as a result, I really don't know anything about running, and I don't really know how to get better at it. Hmmmm maybe I'll get a book or something. Has anyone read, or done, ChiRunning??? I was reading about it today and it sounds interesting.

Anywho, I hope you all are doing well on your journeys.

Weigh-In 10-19-09

230.4 lbs-- up .2 lbs.

I thought I was gonna gain more than a pound, so I guess I'm not overly disappointed with a tiny gain, although its still a gain. With the whole car thing, and the sick thing, I didnt really workout all week. Luckily I had a super active weekend at work, making up for missing Friday sick, so I probably made up for a bit of the lack of exercise.

Tomorrow, I'm running. No excuses, no getting out of it. Tomorrow, I'm running.

Wanna talk about stress. Two weeks and one day from today is our (meaning mine and my girlfriend) 4th anniversary, and I don't know what I'm doing. Well, WE don't know what WE'RE doing, but still. She wants to go to the movies and dinner, but I cant see what movies are coming out, lol............... Now she is asking for your advice? Personally, I've never celebrated a 4th anniversary before, nor has she, so we're in kind of unknown territory (or as she calls it "in a pickle"). Haha. So if any of you married folk, or those in long term relationships, would like to chime in with a suggestion, or any tips, tricks, hints, etc, it would be deeply appreciated, by the both of us.

Anyways yeah, I'm running tomorrow.

Well well

Thanks for the concern Mrs Chris. It seems that I may have a bit of a "prematurity" problem, I thnk I might've gotten a little ahead of myself last night. Seeing as how I woke up today feeling fine, absolutely fine, even the chest feels like nothing is wrong. I'm gonna kinda keep an eye on it for the next few days and if anything feels off then I'll make my way to a doctor. But like I said, thank you very much for the concern, it means a lot that someone who wouldn't even be at risk of me contaminating them would care enough to urge me to the doctor, thank you.

Like I said last night, if I felt better I'd get a workout in. I didn't make it up to the gym, but I did get in a nice little strength workout right here in front of the Angels/Yankees game, which by the way is currently in the bottom of the 13th tied at 3, awesome game, HOLY CRAP wildish throw, Yankees win, BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, I hate the Yankees......... ANYWAYS, I got in a bit of a workout at home, nothing complex, some legs and a lot of abs.

I wanna quickly mention two exercises.

1) Single-leg squat--- I'm pretty sure I've mentioned on here that I like single leg squats, and other similar exercises, but this is a new variation, one that I'm not sure if I've done before. So you get into position to do a one legged squat, all your weight on (ta daaa) 1 leg, it helps to go slowly to maintain balance, take the leg that you arent standing on, and very slowly cross it over your thigh, like you're sitting in a chair. Obviously this takes a lot of flexibility, and it actually a pretty good stretch in and of itself, so if you arent flexible enough, work on it and do normal S-L squats in the meantime. Squat as deep as you can, while maintaining good form and balance, and do as many as you can manage, tonight I only managed about 3 or 4 on each leg, and my legs are feeling it. Stop once you can't maintain form. Going slowly helps balance, but innevitably, you will get wobbly and need to stop, thats fine, its not like you're trying to impress anyone right? Stop, take a few deep breaths, and try again.

2) Uhmm, I dont know what to call it. Its a really simple ab exercise, if you can even call it an exercise, just do it, you'll see what I mean. Lie on your back, legs an arms both fully extended, if you want you can even stretch first, just try to reach your arms and legs as far as you possibly can, it feels really good. Now relax your body, take breath, and suck your bellybutton in. Dont try to flex your abs, instead, try to visualize that theres a string tied to your bellybutton (BB from now on) and you're trying to pull it down to your spine. Pull your BB down as far as you can, hold it for 5 seconds, relax and breath. In all honesty, this is a very difficult exercise to do while breathing, so breath between reps, and by all means, don't suffocate yourself. This isn't a particularly strenuous exercise, it focuses mainly on your secondary/interiour ab muscles, ones that you arent going to see externally, but that can help to make your core tighter. This is the type of exercise that you can do whenever, I know I've spent a lot of time bored at work or watching tv or whatever doing it, it can be a way to pass time lol. Just have some fun with it, and see if you can feel it.


Am I overly "descriptive"? Because I've noticed that what I mean to be short instructions tend to end up pretty long. Hmmmm......... I guess if it bugs you then let me know and I'll work on it.

I've been thinking about maybe changing up the blog a little, maybe doing like....... regular features? Like "flat ab friday" where I'd give several good ab exercises, or "tone-up tuesday" where I'd give a full body workout. Something along those lines, just something to spice it up a bit. Any ideas or suggestions??? Pitch me on what you'd like to see on here.

blek

First let me say, apparently I was a little, or a lot, premature. The challenge is still on.

Okay, so last night I laid down to bed at about 10:50 pm. At 11:30 I woke up coughing, and promptly kept coughing, and coughing, and coughing. The coughing was hurting my throat, it was even making me nausious (sp?). So I wake up this morning, at 4 am for work, still feeling kinda sick to my stomach, and I decide to stay home. Ended up sleeping until about 8am which was nice. I'm definitely feeling better than I was, but my chest is like......tight. It sorta reminds me of back in June when I got that flare up of asthma, except I'm not really wheezing. But it does feel sorta like theres a weight on my chest. Swine Flu? I don't think so. But it was really weird how I went to bed feeling fine, and woke up 40 minutes later feeling like shit.

Anywhoo, hopefully I'm feeling better tomorrow, I cant really afford to miss another day of work. And if I am feeling better, I thnk I'll do a little time on the recumbant bike, that or maybe a light strength workout, something that will give me a decent workout, but not require me to breath particularly hard. It sucks, but no running when my chest hurts.

Hmmmmm, now that I think of it, I've been hot pretty much all day long. I dont know if its just a coincidence because its a few degrees warmer today then it has been recently lately. But either way, I've been opening windows or doors all day. Okay, now I'm freaking myself out a little, lol............ I'm actually not sure how serious I'm being about that. Basically, I'm just hoping that I wake up in the morning feeling way better than I do today and I can put everything behind me and get back up and running. Lets see how it goes, mmmmk?

YIN and YANG

Thats mystical speak for, good news and bad news.

Bad News- Sitting and stressing all day trying to figure out how to get the car back. And I didnt get a workout in.

Good News- We got the car tonight, so hopefully it'll be back to normal tomorrow. And even better, my girlfriend said she wants to go with me to the gym tomorrow night, hopefully she'll help me not come up with some lame ass excuse.

And I'd like to take this opportunity to say a word to one Mr. Jack Sh*t. It seems that you may be, at least, in the neighborhood of your goal. That is completely awesome and I'd like to congratulate you. If it is indeed the case that you've met your goal, then I will officially cede our challenge and award you the victory. Maybe one of these days I'll be in your neck of the woods, and maybe I'll challenge you to a race, if I win, you can take me to a basketball game, if you win........ you can take me to a basketball game. In any case, good job on everything you've done, and everything you will do. And don't forget, my friend, that you are awesome. Keep up the awesomeness, no matter how little you happen to be.

Late Weigh-In

Well, not so much a late weigh-in, seeing as how I did it yesterday morning, as much as a late post, but oh well, same difference.

230.6 lbs-- no change from last week.

This was an odd sensation. I was hoping to get a good weigh-in and break 230, but I'm not really disappointed. The weird thing is, I'm pretty amused. I've had this scale for almost 2 years, and I've never been the exact same weight twice in a row before. And like I said, I find it pretty amusing. But enough with the funny stuff, I gotta get back on track this week.

I haven't had a good last week or so, with the whole car being messed up thing, I've been super stressed. And for me, stress does not equal exercise. Today was actually a pretty shitty day, and not in the good, Jack Sh*tty, way. First, I'm totally broke, so we won't be able to get the car back from the mechanic until Thursday, which might make it kind of difficult to get to work on Thursday, although I'm not completely sure about that yet. And secondly, my girlfriend found out that C-Tran, the local public trasnit authority type thing, doesn't have the phone that, she thinks, she left on the bus last night, so she's going to have to come up with money to get a new phone, probably won't be able to until she gets her next pay check. Not a good day at all.

And now to make it even better, actually its not even imporant, at the moment I can barely keep my eyes open. So in other words, I'll wrap it up quick.

Hey Chris, I hope that you liked the ab workout. I believe towel was the word I was looking for, but it ended up coming out as "rolled up sock", I dont even know where that came from, hahaha. I was thinking that p90x looks kinda fun, as does the one I mentioned the other night, and if I could find it for a decent price I'd even look into buying it. I like "athletic" type training, and alternative stuff, more than I like just running on a treadmill. Theres actually a Mixed Martial Arts training place like a block from my house, I really wanna go to it, but I'm also broke, lol. Hope you are doing well.

Hello, and thank you, to the new commentors, and I'm glad you liked the exercises as well.

Now, I'm gonna go lay down and let myself drift soundly into a nice deep sleep.

INSANITY

No, my week hasn't been insane, just my average busy week of work that led me to not workout too much. Although it didnt help that a lack of vehicle led me to depend on other people for a ride and kinda messed up my schedule. I will say though, that I totally love getting to work at 6 instead of 5. I've never really went to do detail about my job, quite honestly because I'm somewhat ashamed of myself that I have the job I do instead of a fitness job, but that will come in due time. But my schedule is weird, I work at a truck company, the same one my dad works at, I detail/clean semi trucks, and on weekends I clean the office as well. My dad starts work at 5 am, so we leave at like 4:20 every morning, since I dont have a car or anything, but since I work outside (in trucks) I can't really get anything accomplished before the sun comes up, so when we get there I sleep from 5 until normally around 7 or 7:30 then I start work. Its a really odd sleep schedule that really messes me up, the last few days, since we've got there at 6, and I've got about another hour of sleep before we left, I haven't really slept, maybe just dozed off for a few minutes here and there, and I have to say, I like it WAYYYYYY better. Unfortunately, I'll be paying a few hundred dollars to get my dad's car fixed in the next couple days, I'll be back to my normal schedule. Can't you detect my enthusiasm??? lol

Anyways, I digress. The reason I titled this post INSANITY, is not because I am insane, that is debatable. I am currently watching a new informercial, or at least one I've never seen before, for a fitness program called INSANITY. I figured it would be kind of like p90x, and I suppose it sort of looks like that, tons of pics of people who were already in pretty good shape getting completely ripped in 60 days after this "fitness expert" 's boot camp thing. It looks pretty fun: athletic, lots of activity, plyometrics, all that kind of stuff. This one guy giving a testimonial mentioned how, on his first day, he was really "feeling the burn", sweating up a storm, when about 10 minutes into the workout the trainer said "okay thats the end of the warm up" and he was already exhausted, but after a few weeks it was actually a warm-up for him, i.e. it didnt exhaust him anymore.

This reminded me of the S.A.Q. (speed, agility, quickness) class I took when I was in school, it was one of my favorite classes of the entire fitness trainer program I did. As the name implies, the class is designed for athletes, by the teacher who has been a strength and conditioning coach for major colleges and pro teams, to increase their explosiveness, speed, agility, etc. I'll be honest, when I first started the class I wasn't in overly great shape, way better than I am now, but definitely by no means an athlete. And when we first started I was exhausted after the warm up, but like the guy in the video after a few weeks I could do it with no problem. That class was so fun, we did all kinds of, what I consider to be, unconventional stuff. The teacher had a big thing for rhythym, we'd do stuff like we'd all line up across the basketball court, and we'd have to skip across the court, in a straight line, with our feet hitting the ground at the exact same time, when we could actually do it, it sounded pretty cool. We did, or tried to do, a can-can line, you know like the Rockettes do, that was funny because a lot of people couldnt do it. And we also did a lot of jump roping, we'd do regular jump roping, we'd have to hop side to side and front to back while jumping, skip, run all kinds of stuff. He'd make us run around the basketball while skipping rope frontwards, then we'd have to try to run forward while skipping the rope backwards, incase that doesnt sound crazy, its extremely hard, I don't think I ever managed to do it. Anyways, I'm rambling now. But I guess the point is, I had a shit load of fun in that class, I took it twice. Once in the fall quarter, at my school we had quarters not semesters, and then again in the spring. It was cool because in the spring the teacher, who also taught several other fitness trainer classes, was like "wow Sean (uhm thats my name) you'r alot better at this than you were before", compliments always make a person feel good lol. Oh and the other point is, follow my line of thought here, seeing the informercial INSANITY, made me think of SAQ class, which for some reason led me to go digging in my bedroom and I dug up my jump rope, an "athletic" type one, not the ones with the little plastic things on them, and I think I'm gonna start playing around with it tomorrow. Although it does hurt like a muggle fuggle when I hit myself in the neck/back of the head/shins/calves with jump ropes, it can still be fun, lol.

OHHHHHHHHHHH and as promised, Chris (I would've used that before, but I actually didn't know your name haha) here are a few ab exercises. You mentioned some back problems, these should be okay, but let me know if you have any problems and I should be able to figure out some others, and trust me I know a few good core exercises. This particular set, when I first starting doing it, literally within like two weeks I noticed my waist was a little tighter, and I had a little bit of a "v" going, that actually surprised me lol.

1. regular crunch- feet on the floor, knees bent about 90 degrees. The trick is to cross your arms on your chest, do lock your hands behind your head because that leads to pulling on your neck, which is how people strain their neck doing crunches. If you need help you can try putting like a tennis ball, or a rolled up sock, or anything like that, between your chin and chest to keep yourself from straining your neck. Flat on the floor, feet like I said, hands across your chest, crunch up with your abs, try to suck your bellybutton in as far as you can, don't pull with your arms, go up until your shoulder blades come off the ground, hold for 2 seconds, go back down until just before your neck hits the ground, and repeat.

2. cross crunch- Like before, flat on your back, knees at 90 degrees. But this time, cross your right leg over the left, it helps to try to keep your ankle bone on your thigh right up by your knee. Position your left hand lightly under your head, remember no pulling with your arms or neck. Let your right arm lay flat on the ground out to the side to help stabiliize your body. While keep your leg still, do a crunch. Try to think that you're trying to touch your shoulder to the opposite knee, that helps to avoid just reaching across with your elbow. Like before, crunch until your shoulder blade comes off the ground, hold for 2 seconds, and you know the drill.

3. cross crunch- Exact same thing, except cross your left leg, and use your right arm.

Just those three exercise are pretty challenging. The cross crunches do a good job of hitting your obliques. Aim for 7-10 of each exercise, make sure that you for sure do the same number of each cross crunch. Thats a pretty good core series, you'll definitely feel it the next day.

Those ones are pretty simple, not easy but simple. Let me know if you'd like some more complex exercises and I can give you some more.

Wow, its insane how I tend to ramble off long posts, pure INSANITY!!!!!!!

Quick Post + ab exercises

I just wanted to say thank you to CMCoursler (I hope I spelled that right) and one Mr. Jack Sh*t for all of the support and advice. It is all appreciated very much and provides a good boost to know that I do have supporters our there.

This weight loss thing, its difficult. More so mentally than physically. I mean of course working out consistently can be tough, but in my experience its all about momentum. It can be kinda hard to get the ball rolling, but once you get it going it does get easier. That is, until it starts to slow down. Lately I havent been working out nearly as often as I'd like to be, or as I need to for that matter. And that leads to the really tough part about weight loss, the mental.

Obviously I can only speak from my experience, but being overweight zaps your confidence. Ever since I started gaining weight its been a tough thing for me. Especially seeing as how it happened after I got my fitness degree (I graduated at about 215 and over the next year and a half inched up to almost 250), it has pushed me farther and farther from my goal of being a personal trainer. In doing so, it has also made me feel bad about myself, which makes it even harder to lose weight when you feel like shit. Even after I started turning things around, about the same time I started this blog, I still struggle with it. I'll go for a few days, or weeks, or even a month or two, feeling good about myself and working out regularly, then I'll start feeling apathetic, miss a workout or two and next thing I know its been a week and I can't get going again. Anyone got any advice as to how to get myself going again??

And Jack, thanks for the advice about getting more involved in the blogoworld. Thats something I am definitely going to try to do. Maybe on nights where I can't think of anything to write about, I'll just focus on reading other's blogs and commenting. I never seem to do quite as good a job at keeping up with blogs as I'd like to, I need to work on that for sure. And I also need to start commenting more, I barely ever do that. I sort of don't like commenting, because most of the time I just end up talking about myself (i.e. oh yeah I do that too, or I know what you mean, blah blah) and I think I'd get annoyed if people were always doing that on my blog. So, I definitely need to work on that too.

Also, Instead of worrying about gimmicky titles (although I did find that pretty amusing for a while), I need to work on developing my message, and delivering concisely. I might as well use this blog as an opportunity to prepare and practice for that day, no matter who far away it is, when I can actually start training people..................

Sorry about misleading title, that really was my intention to keep it short and give CM some ab exercises, I'll do that next time, I promise. For now, I'm going to bed. Hope you all had a nice day, and have an even better tomorrow.

Don't know how much longer I can take this t*ts thing

Seriously, I can't come up with anything else, lol.

Okay, workout tonight: 45 minutes, 20 elliptical/25 bike, approx 350 total calories.

Pretty good workout, broke a damn good sweat, but honestly it wasn't particularly challenging, other than the fact that I was kinda queezy throughout, which I guess means I'm getting in better shape.

I spent the last hour or so trying to look at the comment on my last post, but it didnt work, so I'll have to do it tomorrow.

I was looking through the blogs I typically read tonight, and came across one that I really relate to. 105 in 365 was talking about how she had to confess about something she had been "not telling the truth" about. Thats probably a pretty bad job of paraphrasing, but thats not really the point. I have a very bad habit of trying to hide when I dont do what I should be doing. For instance, the last few weeks, I havent been working out much and I havent been posting much because I feel kind of embarassed and ashamed saying that I didnt workout. And then it gets compounded because it seems pathetic that I can't be honest on a blog that is, for the most part, annonomous. I'm probably not the only person that does this, but still it completely defeats the purpose of doing the weight loss blog. I suppose that the easiest way to get around this would be to just do the right thing and get a solid workout every day. But in the absense of perfection, I think I need to develop the confidence to admit when I mess up and improve on the mistakes I make every day. That would be a nice start.

Slowly disappearing man-tits (10-5-09)

New title for weigh-in posts? You be the judge?

230.6 lbs-- Down 1.8 lbs

Another good week on the scale, mostly due to food. I love it for sure. If I can keep this up, and add in some extra exercise, I'll definitely kick some butt. Not to mention, I think I'm actually gonna get past 230 this week, I have a good feeling about it at least.

Unfortunately, today ended up going down the crapper. Dropped my girlfriend off at the train station, then spent the entire rest of the day screwing with trying to switch out the car battery. Spent about 2 hours parked in front of the parts store using their loaner tools trying to get one of the damn post things off of the old battery, finally gave up and came home to look through our parts. Then it got worse, I broke a friggin socket, dont even ask me how it happened, but I pulled on the wrench, and the socket actually broke, lol, oh then I dropped one of the wrenches I just paid like 4 dollars for and now its stuck on something under the engine and won't come out. Then we go to another parts store, buy a (uhmm pair of pliers that has a tension locking thing) and finally the freaking bolt broke. It was so coroded that it actually broke off inside the battery. So, we get a new post/bolt and FINALLY get the new battery in, and the problem may not even be fixed. GRRRR We probably spent about a hundred bucks on it and it might not be fixed.

Wow, didnt really mean to turn this into an auto blog lol. Gotta get it back on track: Exercise, exercise, exercise, lost 1.8 lbs woooooooooo, exercise, exercise. There, now I'm back on my game.

Anyone ever taken EAS MYOPLEX??? I keep seeing commercials for it, and I think I might try it. I mean come on they have Adrian Peterson and Brady Quinn advertising it, AP is an absolute beast, and Quinn was a starter for like what? 5 games or so? Lol.

Okay, speaking of supplement and stuff of that sort. I've been hearing commercials on the radio for some kind of weight loss thing, I think its actually suppose to be like a weight loss clinic. It talks about using Dr (something or other)'s HCG Protocol, and how it makes people lose lots of weight. "I stepped on the scale after 4 days and had already lost 8 pounds" is one of the testimonials on the ad. The thing is, the commercial absolutely pisses me off every time I hear it, which is like a couple times a day while listening to the radio at work. The main advantage of using doctor whomever's whatever weight loss thingy??? "It only takes 25 days, you don't have to change your lifestyle." 25 may not be the exact number, but you get the point. Now, being that you all are doing what you doing, you obviously see the fault in this logic. But this type of thing, miracle drugs, "cleanses", and I'm sure you could easily add a few to that list, they make me angry. Personally, I'm kind of torn as far as weight loss surgeries go as well, I mean they serve a purpose, but people who have them done very often (I don't have statistics) gain a lot of weight back, because they still do the same things that made them gain it in the first place, I guess it depends on if its used as a beginning or as a treatment in and of itself.

I suppose that this is the type of thing that makes me realize the passion I actually do have for fitness. And believe you me, I've spent a lot of time over the course of gaining like 30 pounds since I got my degree in fitness questioning whether or not I had the passion I'd need to actually have a career in the field, let alone just lose the weight myself. But it is definitely there, just needs to be refueled every once in a while.

I guess I might as well get all of the tangents out in one night. On the subject of EAS, a supplement company if you didn't know, I have a deep interest and fascination in nutrition and supplements. Creatine, ephedrine, nitric oxide, steroids, HGH, it all fascinates me. I think that if I had unlimited time and money, I'd get a Bachelors degree in exercise physiology, a Masters in nutrition and a PHD in sports nutrition/supplements, and since I didn't have to worry about a could hundred thousand dollars of student loans (due to my unlimited money), I'd spend my life teaching teenagers how to live active, healthy, fit lives and help them to achieve their fitness and athletic goals. And it would be completely awesome.

Tits, Tats, and Tots

Taking the advice of my greatest blogging helper the lady CM, I figure I'll figure out a way to use tits is every title, just as long as I can come up with creative ways to do it.

Just making sure, it appears that the wonderful Jack Sh*t has accepted my challenge???

Yesterday I was surfing on the internetz, and being inspired by news that Rio will be hosting the 2016 Olympics, found myself closely examining the USA Triathlon website. See, I figure that of all the Olympic sports, I can actually do the triathlon. I'm about a foot too short for basketball, no where near fast enough for track, don't have the coordination for gymnastics, and I'm not even close to being skilled enough of the water to compete against junior high swimmers. But the way I see it, if I bust my ass and completely dedicate myself, I can do the triathlon. I'll admitedly probably never get close to being in the Olympics, but in all honesty thats not the goal, its just a cool thing to day dream about. Oh and also, the IronMan thing is completely intriguing, I'd love to be able to do that.

I guess that gives me some extra goals, on top of beating Jack to 200 in the race of the century.

Hows about a challenge

Okay, first of all, I almost did it. Ran my mile today, in a blazingly fast, Prefontainesque, 10:44. Not quite there today, I felt it about a lap in. I think I didn't warm up enough, maybe it has something to do with the cold weather, its like 55 out there tonight, or maybe I didn't stretch out enough, but however it happened, my calves were tighter than last time, and it seemed like I didnt quite have the push I did either. Finished 1/2 a mile in just over 5 minute, right on pace, then about half way through lap 3 I had to walk a little more, then I had to walk a little bit at the end of the lap. Last lap, just like last time, I went all out, for about 2/3 then had to walk a little bit, but then I sprinted at top speed for the last like 75 meters or so. I'm definitely happy that I took almost a minute off of my time, but I'm also a little disappointed that I didn't hit my goal, especially because I was so close last time. But here is the plan, I'm going to re-up my training, give it another shot in 2 weeks, and hopefully I'll obliterate 10 minutes. My new goal, well as far as breaking my current goal, is to take another minute off my time, that means I'm shooting for a sub 9:45 mile, woohoo, I like that kind of goal. And I like how I said, sub, makes me sound like a legit runner, lol.

Anyways, now to the meat of this post. Last post I did, I received a challenged, haha like all two of you reading don't already know that. Heres why I dont like that particular challenge: Being that its Wednesday night, probably Thursday by the time you read this, Jack has probably already lost his 1 pound and change, so I've probably already lost. I need a little time to make up the difference. So heres what I'm gonna do, I'm going to lay down my own challenge.

Mr. Jack Sh*t, I'm challenging you to a race to 200 lbs.

YOU SHOULD HAVE SEEN THE T*ts on.that Weigh-In

Just taking a little advice on spicing up my boring titles. Haha, I thought that was pretty damn funny, thanks for the tip Ms CM. Good Stuff, good stuff indeed.

232.4 lbs--- Down .4 lbs

I suppose that this proves that nutrition probably has more impact on my weight loss (at this point) than does exercise. I think I've mentioned on here before that my job is pretty active and I burn a good deal of calories doing it. Just in case you haven't figured it out yet, I managed to follow up my "triumphant" workout Friday with nothing at all over the weekend. Its kind of funny how a couple extra hours can soon disappear completely. Saturday, after I got home from work, I spent a couple hours impatiently waiting for the mail to arrive to see if my paycheck was in it. Lately my mail hasn't been showing up until like 4 or so, but I figured I'd give it some extra time just in case. This may sound loserish, but I really wanted that check, I had big plans for it, lol. So anyways, after it still hadn't come by 5:30, I went to pick up my girlfriend from work, then we went for a late (well late compared to my normal routine) dinner. By the time I got home at like 7:30 or 8 I had no energy left to workout. Similar type of thing happened Sunday and I ended up not working out this weekend.

HOWEVER, The good part was my food intake. I normally end up, in the course of my 4 day work week, eating 4 breakfasts and 4 lunches (I leave for work at 4am and get off at 5) all from various fast food places, with an occasional Subway or similar sandwich mixed in. This week, I managed to eat only 1 breakfast and 1 1/2 lunches from fast food (1 lunch wasn't technically fast food, being from a food cart at my work, although it definitely wasn't healthy). Replacing my normal variations on a sausage egg and cheese croisant with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for three days, and subbing home made tuna sandwiches on wheat, and hot dogs (still not healthy, but less calories) with my normal choices, typically some type of burger, or fried chicken, or something else full of a million calories.

So I think the point is, somewhat better food, some exercise, and a lot of MIPHA (moderately intense phyiscal activity) lead to a good result on the scale. Nothing especially exciting or flashy, but it works. And if I could just do that every week, at roughly a half pound loss, after a year I'd be down like 20 lbs. Not too bad eh?

Wow, after that long and boring disertation, I'll add a little sunshine, figuretively speaking.

Today we went to the beach. In Seaside, we paroused the shops, walked the beach, hunted for shells and sand dollars. At Cannon Beach, we looked at some more shops, found the beach, walked about 3/4 of the way to the waterline, then turned around. By the time we got back to the car, after a stop at a grocery store for drinks, we were drenched, as in completely and totally to the bone, gotta love the Oregon coast, lol. Then in Tillamook, we went to the cheese factory, sampled some cheese, bought some cheese, and some chocolate milk, and some fudge (go figure, fudge at a cheese factory???). After that, and still soaking wet, we got back in the car and commenced the long drive home, well actually its only a few hours. After stopping at Hooters for some dinner we got home. My girlfriend dumped the sand out of her socks (dont really know how it ended up there, I guess its because the socks she wears barely get over her heels, I only had sand in my shoes, not socks) and changed out of her still damp clothes. My clothes has dried by then, but hers were still somewhat damp, this was like 3 or 4 hours after we got back to the car. All of this activity totalled roughly 24,400 steps. And despite getting caught on the beach in a downpour, it ended up being a completely awesome day and it left me with a few good ideas of other things to do at the beach. Not what you may be thinking, far more mature than that.

Now its back to be active tomorrow, lol.

"Use your abilities at this time to stay focused on your goal. You will succeed."

So said my fortune cookie when I ate at a Chinese restaurant several days ago. Well technically it was my girlfriends cookie, but she showed me the fortune and I stole it. I thought it was pretty cool, given my current situation and everything. Apparently some mysterious ancient oriental prophet thinks that I'm going to get myself in shape and go on to have a successful career in fitness. Right on.

Alright, remember how I mentioned last night (at the end of a super long, but good post) that I was going to get in a strength workout? Well.............................

I DID IT! Okay, definitely not trying to sound like a won a war or anything. But its the first time in like 3 weeks that I managed to get in a workout after work. I switched it up a bit too. Did my workout at home. All body-weight stuff, 12 exercises total, probably 140-150 reps all together, given some stuff that I had to do on both sides. Anyways yeah, I'm nice and sore now. Just in case you needed proof that you can get a challenging workout quickly, I was pouring sweat, and I'm sore, and the whole thing, including some stretches afterward, took no more than 20 minutes.

I get off at 3 tomorrow, so I should be able to get in a nice run tomorrow. And I'll be sure to let you know how I feel after my workout tonight. Haha.

I'm With Mike

I'm going to change things up a little bit today, and try to pay a little attention to other things that definitely deserve it.

Here in the Portland, OR area there is a local sports talk radio host named John Canzano, hes also the Associated Press sports writer of the year. Over the summer he help a charity event, it was an eating contest. One of the participants happened to be extremely over weight and unhealthy. After the contest was over, Canzano decided he would like to help him. So, after discussing it with the guy, 3 weeks ago he launched the "I'm With Mike" campaign.

The idea was to use the radio show to assist Mike in his journey to get healthy. It is now a weekly segment on the show, Mike comes on and discusses what he is doing and what progress he is making. After the first segment tons of people called in wanting to help, nutritionists, personal trainers, phyical therapists, health clubs. They made the decision that they wanted to be safe and have medical supervision, so after Canzano asked for a doctor to help them along, Mike announced yesterday that he was about to go to his first doctors appointment in several years, with a doctor who heard the plea on the radio show.

First let me say, that I think it is truly awesome that a radio host would even take the time to show interest in something like a fat guys weight loss. But to me, the most amazing part of the whole thing, is the huge amount of support that they have gotten in such a short time. Not only was their all the interest from health/fitness professionals that I mentioned before, but hundreds of people have called in and emailed just to express their support for Mike. Thus the name "I'm With Mike". In my opinion, its a completely awesome idea, and you can bet I'm going to be listening every Thursday at like 3:30 or so to find out how Mike is doing.

If you're interested in finding out more---
Uhm, I'm aparently not good at this whole linking thing. It looks like they don't have the podcast of the segment today on their website yet, but hopefully they'll get it up soon. It'll be Thursday 9-22, hour 1, and it'll probably be like 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through it. BTW scroll to the bottom of the page for podcast lists.--- http://thebaldfacedtruth.com/#two


Oh, and I made the decision to not workout out tonight, in favor of trying to get some extra sleep so I'll have energy to get in a bit of a strength workout tomorrow, then its on to the weekend, which I should be able to utilize some nice weather to add rack up some miles. BREAKING IDEA---- I SHOULD TOTALLY RECORD MY TOTAL MILAGE WEEK TO WEEK. haha brilliant, good non-weight way to track my progress.

As for now, listening to Smokey Robinson and Joss Stone on Leno, they're awesome. And then going to bed.

FUCK

Okay, I normally try not to use much profanity on here, but this time it is warranted, way warranted.

I've mentioned several times recently that I've been contemplating taking a crack at lowering my mile time, and trying to hit my 10 minute goal. Well today was the day.

So I got in a nice warm up, a good stretch, hopped on the treadmill and got going. First lap in slightly over 2:30. Second one passed at just about the 5 minute mark. I was starting to run out of steam, so I took it a little easy on lap 3: something like 7:45 or 7:50, I really didnt think I had a shot at 10, but it was still a PR shoe in. A little bit into lap 4 I figured what the hell, lets go for it. Up goes the speedometer (I think its called that on treadmills?) past 6 mph, past 7, past 7.5. There I am, sprinting my ass off, over 8 miles per hour, I've gotta be like 50 meters away from the finish line (imaginary of course because I'm on the treadmill), and I'm closing in on 10 minutes. I might not make it, but I'll get damn close. Then................................... BAM.

The treadmill stops. Shuts off, completely dead. The belt freezes, comes to a complete and immediate hault. To be completely honest, I'm probably pretty lucky that I didnt get hurt. But man, I'm so freaking pissed that it did that. Completely killed my workout too. After it happened, I tried to do some elipticalling (thats my new action word for using the eliptical), did the 3 minute fitness test thingy, scored like a 10.5 and it told me I'm Olympic again, lol, but didnt have any motivation to do more, tried to do some pushups and other body weight stuff, couldnt get into it. So, I did a little stretching, told the attendant about the treadmill stopping (she said it does it every once in a while and that I should use the other one, which I'm going to do from now on, even if theres people that are working out over there and watching TV and I dont want to get in their way) and left.

Perhaps the thing that suprises me the most, well other than almost dying on the amazing stopping treadmill, is that I feel pretty good. I'm tired, but thats normal after a tough workout. My body feels good, I figured I'd be really sore after that run. But I felt like I could keep going, not at the same pace, but keep going nonetheless. I guess the main lesson I learned today, is that even though I'm not losing much weight, I am getting in WAY better shape. Now I just gotta get the weight off, then I'll look good busting out 10 minute miles, lol thats slow but I'm working on it. And I'm gonna go up there and kick the 10 minute mile's ass in the next week or so.

By the way, Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters, the cashew ones, are freaking good. I just had one, like 10 seconds ago, and they're hecka crunchy, but really good. (And 100% Natural, adds the girlfriend, haha)

On that yummy note, have a nice night, and a successful tomorrow.

Weigh-In 9-21 and then some

232.8 lbs--- up 2.6 lbs.

So yeah, the whole "workout weekend" thing didnt actually happen. And I ate fast food for 4 days, and I gained back almost all the weight I lost last week. Still a .4 lb net loss for the last 2 weeks. But damnit I was so close to finally breaking 230, looking forward to it soooooo much. Then I messed it up and regressed again. But maybe it will be a positive thing in the end.

With a little help from a certain very supportive blogette (thanks again), I've come to the realization that, on days that I work, even if I don't have the energy to go for a 3 mile run or a 45 minute lifting session, I can still manage to fit in a 20 or 30 minute workout. 30 minutes may not be better than 60, but even 20 is still way better than sitting on my ass all day. If all else fails, I can always make up some of the difference when I don't have work.

All that being said, I still managed to sit on my ass all day today. I love the internet because it gives me stuff to look at, but I hate that I tend to spend all day on it and my time just slips into the screen. I have to figure out how to keep it from taking up all my time. More importantly, I have to stop letting stupid shit get in the way of my workouts and the rest of my life.

Tomorrow is a new day, and a new beginning, and a new opportunity for me to get it going. It'll also be a pretty big test, because I think I'm gonna be pretty busy and have to scrape together some exercise time.

Well heres to building up some steam to get this fitness train rolling. (HAHA man can I come up with some cheesy shit, not literally) And heres to hoping that everyone was a good day tomorrow.

Routine

Unfortunately I've managed to stick to my routine for the last 2 days. In case you missed the post (it was in the last couple posts), over the last few weeks I've noticed that I haven't really had any energy to workout on the days that I have work. Its an energy thing, I'm just so damned tired after work that I dont feel like working out. So, true to form, I havent worked out for the last 2 days.

Arrrgghhh. Its annoying, and another reason why I dont like my job. But I seriously need to snap out of it tomorrow and Sunday if I'm going to finally break 230.

Alright, on my last post I mentioned some of the exercises I did in my workout. Remember? REMEMBER???? Lol, I mentioned the Standing Lat Pull Down, and that it was very difficult. Well lets just say, I dont remember my upper back ever being as tight as it has been the last few days. Neck, shoulders, between the shoulder blades, all hecka sore. But the thing that really surprised me was that my abs are sore. In my post I also mentioned that I didnt do any core work in my workout. And all the other exercises I did were the same as last time, so the only thing I can think of, is that the Standing Lat Pull Down worked my core pretty hard, I can still feel it in my upper abs, right around the bottom of my rib cage. Oh, and I didnt mention it because I didnt think it was particularly significant, but I did a lot of calf raises. I havent done calf raises in quite a while. And boy oh boy, my calves still hurt like hell 2 days later.

Oh well, I guess I should remember that pain is just weakness leaving the body. Or in this case, pain is just my body healing the micro-tears in my muscles that strength training causes and that it causes your body to continue to burn calories at an above normal rate for long after your workout ends. Good stuff, good stuff indeed.

Heres to having a successful workout weekend.

Yay for strength

Lame title, hahaha.

Okay, I did basically the same workout as last week. Made a few tweeks, and cut out the core work, because I want to be able to work tomorrow. But nevertheless, I got a great workout. Took like 40 minutes or so with warm up and some stretching during and after.

Every once in a while I like to use the opportunity that this blog affords me to offer people some tips on working out. This is one of those times: I did two of the most challenging and complex (in muscle usage, not performance) exercises that I've done in quite a while. Here they are:

1) Straight arm lat pull down-- At the lat pull machine, stand up, grab the bar and back up far enough that your arms are straight. Pull the bar down, keeping your arms straight, in an arc until either just before the weight stack hits the top of the machine or as far as your strength and flexibility will allow. Focus on keeping your arms straight and keeping your body from rocking back and forth with your movements. The move uses your chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, abs and back. Take it from me, start out with light weight to make sure that you maintain good form and are able to perform the lift correctly.

2) Lunges with twist-- I used a stability ball, but you can use medicine balls, dumb bells, milk jugs, anything that ha some weight, or if you can just use empty hands. The important part is that you keep your arms extended fully in front of your body. Perform a traditional lunge, keep your knees roughly in line with your ankles at about 90 degree ankles, a little bit of leeway is okay, but injuries can happen if your knees get too far in front of your ankles. When you get to the bottom of your lunge, with your knee just above the floor, or as far as you are able to go, rotate your arms as far as you can in one direction, rotating your torso, keeping your legs still. Return to the middle, then repeat the movement in the opposite direction. Then return to the standing position and repeat with the other leg. This is a very exhausting and difficult exercise. Make sure that you perform the same number of repetitions with each leg. Remember to only do as many reps as you can with proper form, for this type of exercise stop as soon as you can no longer use proper form.


Okay wow, those were kind of long winded descriptions, lets just say, I'm better at demonstrating than at describing, haha. Regardless, those are still two completely kick ass exercises.

I just got an idea. Would any of you be interested if I were to record myself demonstrating exercises and post them on here. That could be an interesting new feature to this blog. But I'm only going to do it if my readers like the idea. So now is the time when I'm asking you guys to give me a little feed back.

On a bit of a different topic. I really like strength training, weight lifting, olympic lifting, all of it. I've enjoyed it ever since I started doing it in high school. Actually, thats probably the thing I enjoyed most about being on the football team. God knows it wasn't because we were particularly good, and I barely even got to see the field. But I've always loved lifting weights. And to be perfectly honest, throughout this whole process of getting back in shape, over the past few months, the most athletic I've felt has been tonight, and last Wednesday night, when I was getting in a really good lift. It gives me a nice little confidence boost too, which is freaking awesome, and always helpful.

This is gonna be long

Workout first: running, 3.357 miles, 52 minutes, 592 calories, avg speed 3.88 mph

Pretty freaking awesome workout. My farthest run yet, by like 1/4 mile or a little more. And if I'm not mistaken, I think thats also my "fastest" avg speed as well. I'm thinking that, in the near future, I need to time another mile to see how much I can take off the 11:30 and change I did a while ago. I think I've definitely improved my endurance, and thats really the only thing thats holding back my mile times. So, I'll have to give that a shot.

As I promised last night, I really don't know how I managed to lose 3 lbs last week. I got 2 good workouts in, really good ones, and spent 2 or 3 hours walking around the Vancouver Sausage Festival, which by the way is really cool, on Saturday. I guess a big part of it was that I took food to work most days, which cuts back my calories a lot.

Anyways, after the 3.2 lb loss, I'm currently .2 lbs from hitting my first weight loss goal, which is totally awesome. So I'm going to build on my awesome workout today, keep it going for the rest of the week, and (hopefully) the wall will finally be brought down.

I've noticed lately that I've been having problems maintaining workouts on the days that I have work. Its most likely because the crazy sleep schedule zaps my energy, and the last couple weeks have been pretty busy which also can make my job physically tiring. So, I'm definitely going to have to get a handle on the whole work thing if I'm going to be able to stay on the weight loss train.

I also wanted to mention the Biggest Loser premiere tonight. For the most part it was awesome. I'm worried for the one lady, I think her name was Tracy, the one that collapsed during the first challenge. To my non-medically trained eye, it looked like she had a stroke, so I hope she ends up being okay. This brings up the point that what the hell were they doing having these people, I think 5 people are over 400 lbs, running that much on their first day. I've been watching the show for several seasons, and thats really the only beef I have, other than the fact that someone can lost 15 lbs and go home, they make the contestants do stuff that they really have no business doing. I realize that it is a TV show, and they need to do entertaining and dramatic stuff to keep people watching, but there has to be some kind of happy median they can come to that would make it interesting and safe. Considering that the trainers are supposed to be world class, not to mention the team of doctors and exercise scientists advising, they have entirely too many big injuries, in my humble opinion. I guess this is probably debatable, but like I said, I absolutely love the show, thats just the issue I have with it.

As I said, this is pretty damn long. So I'm gonna grab a bite and go to bed. Hope you all had a successful day.

CRAP

Totally got distracted by America's Got Talent and the new Jay Leno Show, which was really good by the way, and forgot to post.

Uhm, real quick, weight in, 230.2 lbs, down 3.2 lbs. Completely surprised by it, happy, but surprised, hope it doesnt come back and bite me this week, lol. I'm going to bed, so I'll elaborate on everything tomorrow. Crap I hate not posting on here, tomorrow I'll make up for it. Stay tuned. Hope life is going well for all.

Well

Unfortunately, I wasn't actually able to find out any information about how training on an elliptical relates to running, just a bunch of people saying ellipticals are better. I did manage to stumble onto one amazingly scientific and interesting discussion board about the difference between running on treadmills and running on the ground. Apparently, there are people, and even scientific researchers, who believe that running on a treadmill is significantly less effective than regular running. Not to get into boring sciency stuff, but they say that the treadmill, among other things, eliminates wind resistance (which it does), and utilizes different, and smaller, muscle groups then does running on the ground, which in turn makes it less efficient of an exercise, meaning you'd burn about 3% less calories. Okay, I guess I did get into the nerdy science part, lol. But I found it interesting. I'm am absolutely intrigued by science, but thats a story for another day.

Anyways, today I didn't get a work out in. Instead, I decided to focus on doing some stretching and relaxing and trying to loosen up my still tight and sore muscles. I made it through work okay, but it would sure be nice to not be so damn sore, haha. Tomorrow I'll have more time and be able to get in a nice hard workout, which will be good. Hasta Manana.

Ah My Old (New) Friend

The elliptical.

30 minutes, 3.1 miles, 300 calories, avg speed of 6.3 mph.

Whew I'm freakin exhausted. When I stepped off the machine my legs were wobbly. Thankfully, after a bit of a cool off and stretch they stopped doing that.

Quick hit, does anyone happen to know how elliptical speed/distance relates or translates to actual running???? I'd be very interested to find that out. If no one knows I might actually have to google it and see if I can figure it out on my own.

And in case any of you are wondering, I'm still pretty sore from last night. Nice and stiff and tight. I thought working out would help, but it really didnt. Oh well, hopefully it'll get better by tomorrow, it'll be pretty hard to do my job if my arms are still this sore, lol.

Now I'm gonna go pass out. Hope you all had a pleasant day and evening.

Late Weigh-In and more

233.4 lbs --- up 1 lb

As I mentioned Sunday night, I wasn't expecting a good weight this week. Messed up pretty bad last week. So I'm just moving on.

Didn't do a tough workout yesterday, did go on a bit of a walk with my girlfriend (hmmm I should come up with a cool nickname for her, girlfriend just sounds boring, lol) something like 3/4 of a mile or maybe a little more.

Tonight, I worked my arse off. Well...... yeah whatever, the "funny" line I was gonna use kinda slipped out of my head just as quickly as it popped in. I did like 45 minutes of strength training. Definitely a good workout. Uhm, I was going to list what I did on my workout, but that sounded boring, and I didnt feel like it. If you're interested in it then just ask and I'll blog about it later, I think I might actually stick to the routine I did tonight. Its pretty kick ass and for sure I'm gonna feel it in the morning. Hopefully I can get up, lol. I think I've mentioned it previously on here, but basically ever since I got out of college, where I did all kinds of super intense lifting routines, I've never managed to actually put down a plan on paper and stick to it. I'm going to record this one and keep at it and see where it takes me.

Okay, well I completely lost my train of thought and I have no idea what I was going to say. So anyways yeah, how do you like the whole "inner dialog" thing I've been doing the last couple posts? Like where I say what I was thinking or what I almost said or whatever else. If you think it makes it more interesting then let me know, if you don't like it then say it, and I'll knock it off, haha.

Well thats all for me tonight. If I can make it out of bed in the morning, I'll let you all know how it goes.

Busy Busy Busy

So I had a super busy work week. Made me a lot of money, but unfortunately it also made me a lot of tired. Didnt really have any energy left over to workout. I guess being busy at a somewhat physical job means that I did burn some calories, but it doesnt make up for not working out.

Luckily for you, the reader, my computer has been on the fritz the last few days, so you didn't get the opportunity to read "I'm tired", "I'm tired", "Too tired to workout" every day.

Oh well, weigh-in tomorrow morning. Hopefully I don't completely implode. (I almost said "Hopefully the scale doesn't screw me", but of course, the scale has nothing to do with it, I'm the lazy ass who didn't work out.) Then its back to actually working out. Its gonna be a good day, I'm going to make it be a good one. I'll let you know how it goes.

Good run

2.7 miles, 45 minutes, avg 3.56 mph, 460 calories

Like I said, good run, almost no leg pain at all. Nice sunny day, and all that fun stuff.

To be perfectly honest, I can't really think of anything to say. So I'll keep it short.

Quote of the Day: "I've been spending way too long checking my tongue in the mirror. And bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer. But my breath fogged up the glass. So I drew a new face and laughed." - Jason Mraz "I'm Yours"

Haha, good stuff, awesome random.

The End of Summer

is almost here. So, in my attempt to fully enjoy every last drop of it, I went swimming tonight. I love the pool. That signals another transformation I've made, although this one has happened over a period of several years, I used to hate swimming. I don't know when or where, or even why, it happened, but now I find myself looking forward to early June when the pool in my apartments opens. Hopefully by this time next year I'll be in a position to not have to worry about the pool closing, either by having a membership to a pool, or living in new apartments with a year round pool, but thats a whole different story that I'm not going to get into tonight.

The point is this, life isnt about where you start, its about how you change and adapt, and more importantly its about where you end up. When I started on this adventure, I didn't like where I was in life, I feel that I've made some positive changes, and I think I like where I'm headed at this point. And, thanks to some very supportive people, and a little bit of reflection, I have to say that I'm pretty happy with where I am at the moment.

Oh, also should mention, that yesterday I spent roughly 30 minutes on the eliptical. That shit is tough. Oddly, it was harder at the end when I was going slow trying to cool down then it was when I was at the peak of my workout. I started off the session with a fitness test. after several minutes trying to figure out what to do, and a 3 minute test, I spent a couple minutes trying to figure out what "OLYMPIC" meant. Apparently, that was the result of my test, although it offered no explanation of what it meant. So I guess, according to a nautilus elyptical, I am now an Olympic caliber athlete, I could get use to hearing that, lol. Then I did 10 more minutes, then another 10 minutes, then the afformentioned extremely difficult cool down. All together, I got somewhere between 25 and 30 minutes, and somewhere north of 250 calories. Not bad at all.

Centennial Weigh-In

232.4 lbs --- down .4 lbs

Have to say that is a pretty good loss, especially since I didn't eat well at all this week. Way too much fried foods, and a few cookies thrown is as well. Oh well, half a pound lost is half a pound lost.

April 4th 2009 was my first post on here, as well as my first weigh-in. Funny thing is, wanna know what I weighed? 242.4 lbs. I've lost exactly 10 lbs, and it "only" took me 100 posts to do it. If you've followed this blog for a while, like Jack Sh*t and some others, then you undoubtedly know that its been very frustrating how slowly the weight is coming off. Not that I have anyone to blame but myself. Consistency is the problem, one week I'll do awesome and lose 3 or 4 lbs, the next I'll eat crap workout twice and gain a pound. Something that I struggle with, but also something that I'm constantly working on and trying to improve.

As seasons come and go, summer is almost over. The swimming pool in my apartments will be closing in the next week or so, which means I'll have to turn exclusively to running and biking, all the way through June. Which is actually good, ever since like early July, I haven't really been using the pool for exercise, at least not consistently. And I've been letting it take away from my other workouts. So, no I can focus on my running, and throw in some bike time when my legs hurt, or if I want a change, or if my girlfriend wants to go for a bike ride. I'm also going to make a concerted effort to *consistently* add more strength training into my routine. Ironically, for someone who has a personal training degree, I've been "winging it" the whole time, I haven't made any attempts to try to make up, and adhere to, a fitness plan where I can have an actual routine. I'm going to do that and see if it helps with the C-word.

So to recap, even though I haven't realized the results as quickly as I would like, not even close, I have to say that its been a good first 100 posts. I haven't lost ten pounds, probably since my first year of college, 3 years ago. I'm refocusing my efforts and hopefully I'll make some very real and positive changes over the next 100 posts. Heck, maybe I'll even manage to lose more than 1/10th of a pound per post.

Lonnnngggggg day

Sucks to say, but work was even worse than I thought it would be. And it totally wiped my out.

As far as my workout goes, I ended up going for like an hour walk with my girlfriend. Not strenuous by any means, but on top of a hard day of work, it was a really active day.

Rest

Yup, I decided I'm going to rest today. I only got like 4 hours of sleep last night, then I had a busy day at work. And in about an hour I have to go pick up my girlfriend from work. Not leaving much time for any meaningful exercise.

So I decided I'm gonna rest, get a good night sleep tonight, then attack the shit out of tomorrow. Tomorrow work is going to suck, I already know it, and I'm hoping to have energy left over to get at least 1 good workout in tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get two, but I guess we'll see.

Cheers, andI hope you all have a good night.

Running my @ss off

45 minutes, 2.7 miles, 468 calories, avg speed 3.56 mph

I think I finally figured out how to measure my success. I happen to like the course I've been running, so I'll stick to it the majority of the time. And I think that average speed will be a more accurate measure than just time, although I suppose both will improve as I get more fit. But if I stick with average speed, it will be able to track it if I run on the treadmill, or a different route, or a shorter or longer distance.

But anyhoo, it was an awesome run. My legs felt great. I did a little stretching after a warm-up and at the midway point, and I think that might've helped. Like I said, all around awesome run. And after a run like that, its safe to say, I love running. Now that is a phrase I never would have expected to come out of my mouth (or fingers in this case).

That is why I'm thinking about changing my blog's name to, or possibly just adding, the title of this post: Running my @ss off. I don't really know if doing that would affect the few readers I have. But if anyone has any experience doing this, changing blog names, let me know.

Just figured I'd add, yesterday I went for a swim, and spent my evening expanding my personal blogosphere. Stumbled upon some good blogs, won't list them here, but they'll probably be mentioned later. And I do have to see, it is completely awesome to see people (close to) my own age doing the weight loss thing. No offense to people who are older than me, I'm 22 if it hasn't appeared on this blog prior, but its cool to see people turning their lives around relatively early in life.

Last thing tonight, I think I'm bi-polar (not literally). Like 2 days ago I was all depressed about not losing weight fast enough, and here I am tonight talking about how happy I am and whatnot, in case you haven't noticed I'm happy tonight. Haha, I guess a couple days, and an awesome run, can make a helluva difference.

Ad-libbing

I figured I'd do something different today. So I took the exercises I mentioned a few days ago while talking about Pilates, look back over the past few posts if you're interested, tried to do a few yoga-ish exercises on my own with no pictures or anything, and did a couple other exercises that seemed to fit the mold.

The result: an actually decent workout, not overly difficult, but enough to get my blood flowing and wear my muscles out decently.

To be perfectly honest, I'm kind of floundering right now. I don't know why. I think it might have something to do with the fact that I missed my first deadline for 230, and it looks like I'll miss this one too. I think that I'm motivated, I mean I know that I want to lose weight and hit my goals and everything, but its like, I dont really know how to explain it. Maybe I put too much pressure on myself with the deadlines, maybe that isn't a good way to go about it. All I know is that its fucking frustrating as hell when it seems like I'm doing well, then I gain half a pound, then another half, then next I know, I'm a month and a half behind, and I STILL havent got to 230 lbs. I think I really need to figure out a way to eat healthy while being poor, living with fat people, and working a job that makes it difficult to eat very healthy.

What I really need is to find a new and better job, but right now I don't know if I'll be able to find one that I'll make more than I do now. And since I can't even accomplish my own damn goals, I'm certainly not ready to try to get a job as a trainer yet. I dont really know what to do. Anyone got any advice? I think I could use some right now.


Oh, I also feel like I need to say, RIP Ted Kennedy. The man spent the better part of 40 years trying to get unviversal health care, hopefully they can do it now in his honor.

Good Ol'

Stationary bike. Gotta love the thing.

45 minutes, 12 miles, 280 calories

Its amazing how much difference there is between biking and running. 3 runs ago I got my heart rate up to 190, not on purpose, but running just makes my heart rate sky rocket. Today, the first time I rode the stationary bike in quite a while, I was going as hard as I could, about 17 mph on level 5, and it was all I could do to get my HR up to 140. Should've probably stepped it up to level 6 or 7, but oh well can't change it now.

Also, I just happened to be looking over my goals, specifically the running ones, and I noticed something. They're a tad outrageous. I think I should be able to work my way to a 10 minute mile by the first of the year, but after that, there's no way anyone can drop 2 minutes off of their mile time every 4 months. If that was possible everyone would be turning out 4 minute miles. So yeah, I'm definitely going to have to rework the time frame for those 2 goals. Heck, I might even drop the target dates all together, from those two. I mean, those are secondary goals, something that I want to do, but the weight loss is far more important for now. On the other hand, maybe I should focus on the performance and let the weight loss happen as a result???? Any ideas? I dont really know what I'm going to do right now, just that I'll have to do some adjusting.

Weigh-In 8-24 + workouts

232.8 Lbs --- Up .8 lbs

Honestly I'm pretty pissed about it. I messed up really bad last week. I think I actually lost a little bit this week, when I weighed myself last week I was 233 and some change. I gotta get my eating under control, I need to start taking lunch to work again. I was doing that for a while and doing pretty well on the scale, but now I eat out all the time, and I'm thinking its at least partially responsible for the bad numbers I've been having lately. So now, here I am, one week away from my goal date, and a whopping 3 lbs away, yet again. Last time it was 4 lbs, so I guess I'm ahead of the game, not. I have to kick some ass on the workout front this week, and hopefully taking lunch will help.

Sunday Workout---- Went on a run, got about a mile out and my shins felt like they were about to explode, so I had to turn around and limp my ass home. It sucked big time. Can't remember the numbers exactly, but it took me like 35ish minutes and was a total of like 2.1 miles, well over half was walking.

Monday Workout--- Didn't want to run, due to the aforementioned shin issue, so I was going to go up and ride the stationary bike for a while. But then I was reading my daily emails from MensHealth.com, and they had this "15 minute workout to shred your abs" or some such title. It ended up being a short Pilates workout, so I decided to do that instead. And damn was it ever difficult. It consisted of (my short explanations) one legged push ups, a sort of reverse crunch where you start in the up position and lower your torso towards the ground, and a sort of bicycle crunch where you tap your feet on the ground. As I said, it was pretty tough, I was definitely sweating. I think I'm going to make it part of my normal routine. I'm also thinking about purchasing a Pilates dvd and doing that as a total body strength workout. I'll have to look into that.

Ouch

My legs hurt. For some reason my shins seem to be kind of flaring up again. Its happened the last couple of times that I've ran. I don't really know why, maybe its because I go faster when I run outside? That would be weird, because in the past, they've always killed me when I wasn't going fast, either trying to walk fast, or jog slowly. Like I said, I don't really know why, but it sucks, and it would be nice if it went away, lol. After I blog I'll do some good stretches and see if that helps.

Notice I said, after I blog I'll stretch. I just got done with my run. Walked in the door, sat down and got on the computer lol. Pretty good run tonight: 2.4 miles in 40 minutes, and burned 420 calories. I went out later than I normally do, about 8:30. So, I ran out on the trail, turned roughly (I'm guessing) 1/4 mile sooner than I normally turn around, went down to the road, and ran home on the side walk. Ended up about 1/2 mile shorter than my normal route, but not short by any means.

The GirlFriend has work tomorrow, so I'll get in another good hard workout before my weigh-in. So we'll see where that leaves us.

Now I'm off to stretch and watch the SeaHawks kick some Bronco ass.

Stupid Computer

It didnt let me post last night, and I barely got to the page tonight.

Anyways, its been two pretty good days. The thing is, I didn't do a particularly difficult workout either day. But they were two of the most rewarding workouts I've had. It took me quite a while, but I FINALLY got my girlfriend to workout with me. She's not really in any kind of shape, so we've done a couple of walk/jogs. Mainly walking, but thats not the point. Not knowing about the relationship we have, it might be kind of difficult to understand how happy it made me when she told me yesterday afternoon that she wanted to run with me.

Motivation is a funny thing, it takes very different forms from person to person. I workout for my health, and my future career, and so that I'll be able to have a happy and healthy family. Others do it to look good, or to set an example for their kids. There are obviously a million different reasons why we do what we do. But I think my girlfriend's motivation is truly unique. Of course, she has all the typical desires, get in shape, be a smaller size, blah blah blah, but thing that finally got her to start working out is a deal we made the other night. Well she just forbade me from giving the specifics, but suffice to say, I have an old couch (it was my great grandma's), that she doesn't like, so the deal is, once she hits a certain, unnamed, weight bench mark, I will get rid of the couch. The story kind of lacks pizazz without the details, but whatevvv, lol. That conversation was Wednesday, yesterday was Thursday and that was when she told me she wanted to run with me. So it didn't take very long to kick it into gear. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Anyways, I'm in considerably better shape than she is currently, so while I've been working out with her for the last couple days, I'm going to have to figure out a way to keep pushing myself, while training with her at her pace as well. It's probably going to take some work, but its most definitely worth it, so I'll figure it out. Additionally, I get to put my personal trainer skills to the test, yay, lol. Whatever happens, I'm sure it'll be a fun experience, and it might actually give me some professional experience as well, double bonus.


P.S. ----- Heres hoping I hit the MegaMillons jackpot tonight and can quit my job and just train myself and my girl full time, lol. I suppose that would be every weightloss warriors dream.

I'M BAAAAAAACCCK

Okay, well at least for one day.

Running: 3 miles, 47 minutes, 520 calories

Kick ass run. I've realized that I do run faster outside than I do on the treadmill. I end up walking more as a result. But it probably helps me burn more calories as well, they say intervals make you burn calories long after your workout, similar to weight lifting, as well as help you increase your speed faster than running at a steady, typically slower, pace. So, it might actually be a good thing, even though I am walking more. I'm sure it will all even out in the end, pretty soon the weather will be crappy and I'll be running on the treadmill most of the time. I guess its all good.

This even I went for a nice fun swim to escape the heat. Lets see, I: played with a beach ball, played with diving rings, rode a killer whale, and subsequently fell off of a killer whale. It was fun, and it felt really nice to be in a pool, it was another hot day. Record breaking heat yet again, okay the record ended up being like 95, a full 12 degrees cooler than it was a few weeks ago. But its still record heat.

I should probably mention that I didnt suddenly end up at SeaWorld or anything, it was an inflatable killer whale. I think its also worth noting that it is a pain in a ass to ride a killer whale. My girlfriend ended up pushing me across the pool, between attempts to flip me over. Think of it like a big, very oddly shaped stability ball, floating on water. Basically it was incredibly tough trying to stay on top of it, and eventually she got me into the water. And I think I might have some saddle sores as well. Haha, thats a bit of an exageration, but lets just say, it wasn't very comfortable.

On a side note, and completely unrelated, did you hear about the South African runner who's being required to be tested to prove that shes a woman. At first I want to say its funny, kind of reminds of me of the Cuba Gooding Jr. movie where he fakes his way into playing in the WNBA. Apparently the woman set the world record in the 800m today at the world championships in Germany. Let me just say, I absolutely love the sport of track, if I was rich I would've went to the US Championships down in Eugene Oregon this summer, but obviously I'm not rich, and its extremely expensive. This is just a very odd story that I suppose could have some interesting outcomes. What happens if its discovered that its actually a man pretending to be a woman? Even the IAAF doesn't know if they can strip medal and/or records if that is the case? And what if she is actually transgender? Do they need to create a whole new category for that group? Or where would they be forced to compete? And of course, if she really is a woman, does she end up suing the IAAF for a crap load of money? I really have no idea how its going to turn out, but you can bet your ass that I'm going to pay attention to it.