Friday, November 28, 2008

Inconsistent Workouts

I need to start getting up at 6am and working out regularly again. It just doesn't happen if I don't do it before heading in to the office.

2008-11-14 Friday 264.2 267.0 -2.8
2008-11-21 Friday 267.2 265.9 1.3
2008-11-27 Thursday 267.4 266.4 1.0
2008-11-28 Friday 270.2 266.8 3.4

Rather than committing acts of lung pollution, I've been eating. The SO and I tend to eat something a little special (Thai, Pizza, Indian, or some other calorie laden food) on homecoming nights. That happened on Wed night this week instead of Friday night. And, of course, a great Thanksgiving gathering added a few calories.

Up 3 week over week. More importantly, 3.4 over the trendline and uptrending .4 in a day. That's ugly. I was once a man on a mission. I am now a man distracted.

Additional comment: The treadmill says the workout today is the best calorie burn since Dec 31st.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Maybe I win today, maybe not

Have a cold-- stuffy, sore throat and achy. Finally making progress.

DateDayWeightTrendline
2008-08-01Friday 264.0 266.5
2008-08-08Friday 263.6 264.6
2008-08-15Friday 262.2 265.1
2008-08-22 Friday 263.2 265.6
2008-08-29 Friday 267.2 267.4
2008-09-05 Friday 264.2 266.7
2008-09-12 Friday 262.0 264.8
2008-09-19 Friday 259.4 263.3
2008-09-26 Friday 259.0 262.4
2008-10-03 Friday 263.8 261.6
2008-10-10 Friday 261.4 261.7
2008-10-17 Friday 263.4 263.1
2008-10-26 Sunday 272.4 267.5
2008-11-01 Saturday267.4 268.3
2008-11-07 Friday 267.8 268.3
2008-11-14 Friday 264.2 267.0

Actual weight-loss 3.6. More realistic trend-line loss is 1.3 which indicates I ate about 4500 calories less than I burned this week. That's about right. No lung pollution for three days now.

Last week.

OK. Here's my report. Third column is actual weight. The trend line in
the fourth column shows that I'm just turning the corner on some
serious negative momentum.


DateDayWeightTrendline
2008-08-01Friday 264.0 266.5
2008-08-08Friday 263.6 264.6
2008-08-15Friday 262.2 265.1
2008-08-22 Friday 263.2 265.6
2008-08-29 Friday 267.2 267.4
2008-09-05 Friday 264.2 266.7
2008-09-12 Friday 262.0 264.8
2008-09-19 Friday 259.4 263.3
2008-09-26 Friday 259.0 262.4
2008-10-03 Friday 263.8 261.6
2008-10-10 Friday 261.4 261.7
2008-10-17 Friday 263.4 263.1
2008-10-26 Sunday 272.4 267.5
2008-11-01 Saturday267.4 268.3
2008-11-07 Friday 267.8 268.3

I need to start making progress. On the upside, I actually worked out this week again. On the downside my cardio is weak-- especially my lungs-- and I'm still way, way behind where I was in March.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Bad Attitude

I haven't worked out since a week ago Wednesday. That's four workouts blown off. I have a decent work excuse for three of them. Really I do. Only one of them was unreasonable. I just stayed up late the night before a workout day and didn't get up in time and then a customer urgently required my attention unexpectedly in the morning. That night I had nicotine in my system and wasn't remotely tired at bedtime as a result. So, I watched TV until 1am and had to get back to work after 6 hours sleep.

Nicotine and I are old friends. It's a pleasant enough drug aside from it's most common delivery mechanism causing cancer. It was once professionally and personally useful to me because it would allow me to stay awake and alert for coding or late night gaming. Now that I don't code at night or game anymore and I'm realizing that this old friend does nothing but mess up my sleep cycle. This causes a messed up work out routine. Add to that the cardiovascular impact of not being able to run as far, as fast, for as long when I do get on the treadmill and we're talking about something that is standing square in the way of my health and fitness goals.

I hate working out. I hate not being able to run as well as I could three weeks ago. That makes me want to work out even less. Maybe even dread it a little. I need to get back at it anyway. Why? Because I hate my attitude even worse when I don't work out. Add to that a low grade withdrawal and I'm negative, angry, annoyed, overly critical and impatient. I try to keep this in check with high self monitoring in public and groups and maybe do a fair job. I cannot be high self monitoring all the time and I fear the smaller, friendlier groups where I don't do such a good job. Worst of all, my SO ends up getting hit with some of this. That alone is reason enough to get back on the treadmill and stop the lung pollution.

Perhaps the worst part of not working out is the appetite I get. When working out, I don't eat when I'm hungry. I simply eat six or seven hundred calories because it's time to eat. Last Tuesday night, after blowing through my snacks in the house, I went to the store specifically to get bad foods. I bought a big bag of candy, a bag of chips, a jar of salsa, a box of crackers, and a bag of sunflower seeds. I tried a little of each. By Thursday, the candy was gone. By Friday the crackers. By Saturday, the sunflower seeds. Of course, all of this was on top of my normal 1500 calories each day. The candy was 2800 calories alone.

The damage?





























DateDayWeightTrendDiff10aveDiff
2008-09-24Wednesday261.2263.0-1.8262.2-1.0
2008-09-25Thursday260.0262.7-2.7261.8-1.8
2008-09-26Friday259.0262.4-3.4261.3-2.3
2008-09-27Saturday258.8262.0-3.2261.1-2.3
2008-09-28Sunday260.8261.9-1.1261.1-0.3
2008-09-29Monday260.0261.7-1.7261.2-1.2
2008-09-30Tuesday258.8261.4-2.6260.9-2.1
2008-10-01Wednesday260.2261.3-1.1260.7-0.5
2008-10-02Thursday262.0261.40.6260.41.6
2008-10-03Friday263.8261.62.2260.53.3
2008-10-04Saturday263.6261.81.8260.72.9
2008-10-05Sunday261.8261.8-0.0260.90.9

As you can see, the trend line went bad on Wednesday and I've gained a half pound since. I NEED to get back on track again. I WILL work out tomorrow. I MUST.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Successes and Challenges

It's been a while. I apologize to anyone out there who might have been following.

It seems that I only post when making progress. I thought about writing many times this year but with the additional job and busy summer I found tons of excuses not to. Now that I'm making progress and constituent calls are totally caught up, no excuses come to mind. Funny how that works.

In late 2006 I weighed 389.2 and decided to do something about it. I shed fat down to a low trend weight of 249 (actual weight 244.6) on March 7. But on January 23 I stopped my regular workouts because my ankles were getting sore. All the walking that running for office entails on top of the workouts was simply too much. So, I had lost 130+ pounds but then, once off track, gained 20 back to 271 on July 21.

Then, I entered a weekly weight loss competition with a colleague. They've been doing 1000 calorie elliptical burns at the gym before doing weights. This has motivated me to get back in to my APFT routine. I'm not burning nearly as many calories but my physical and emotional energy are again good. I'm still not running the whole 30 minutes but am regularly running 2/3 of it. So what's the motivator? The loser buys lunch on weigh in day and, more importantly, bragging rights.

So far, my original opponent has been been kicking my butt more often than not. Perhaps they'll comment on the exact record to rub it in. While not exactly OK with loosing the competition, I am OK with losing fat regularly again. Over the 8 weeks thus far, I've lost 9 pounds in actual weight and the trend weight is down 3. (If you've read previous entries, you know that the trend weight more accurately indicating fat loss means more to me than the weight loss number.) I'm not exactly setting any records at this pace but am managing to lose and have the obligatory social life too. We have an additional opponent who is weighing in for the first time this week. It'll be interesting to see how the competition dynamic works out for three of us.

The goal remains 189, the trend weight is at 263.2 today, so means 75 pounds to go.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Holiday Backslide!

Early January...

I'm sweating more. My heart-rate is climbing faster than normal when running making me take breaks. I'm not giving up but shouldn't this be getting easier? I hate running. Hate it. No fun at all. I guess that's what happens when you gain 15 pounds over the holidays.

Last week....

There we go. ((26 / 60) * 5.2) + ((4 / 60) * 6.0) + 2.6 + 2.7 = 7.95333333. What's that? That's the number of miles I ran last week. Still a PITA but just powered on through.

Today...

Down to 248-point-something. The trend lines look good. My calorie intake is 1700ish a day and I'm still slowly making progress. Mild foot pain 20 minutes in to the run yesterday so stopped at about 1.7 miles. Walked for an hour last night after work and all seemed fine. We'll see how the run tomorrow morning goes.