Week 9 Progress Report

It is amazing to me that NINE weeks have already elapsed in this personal challenge of mine.  Time  just seems to accelerate as you grow older.  I know that is not the case objectively, but subjectively I certainly believe it.  Anyway the good news is that I am another 3 lbs. lighter this week than I was last.  That brings my 9 week total to 35 lbs. lost.  The bad news is that this was done almost exclusively with diet since my activity level was very low.

What is encouraging to me is that I do continue to lose and I am not really feeling deprived of food.  Sure when everyone is eating donuts or cookies, I certainly would love to have one, but I know that would be sabotaging my health.  So I stay away and stay focused on eating healthy snacks like an orange or veggies.

I do need to get my butt more active though.  Too much time is still spent sitting on my rear-end on the computer or watching TV.  I did have at least a small excuse this week end as we actually had rain the last 3 days.  No it wasn't all day rain but it was significant for the area. Of course that is just what I said it was, an excuse.  I still could have done SOMETHING active, but I chose not to.  This will be changing and soon.

Week 8 Progress

It has been a good week.  I've been fairly good with my eating and have gotten in more steeps on a few of the days and I guess it all adds up.  I got on the scale yesterday and it read 426 lbs.  I am very happy with that.  That gives me a 32 lb. loss over the 8 weeks since I made my personal goal.  That is an average of 4 lbs. per week and that pace is right where I want to be.

While I am happy with my progress towards my weight goal, my activity level is still below where I think it should be.  I really need to get into a routine where I can increase my activity, both walking and on the bike, in order to start reaping even more benefits from the weight loss.  I am noticing a difference in my body and how my clothes are fitting but I need to start building the muscles as well as stamina.  I need to get my mind into an active lifestyle mindset where I am focusing more on doing things and less on just watching my diet.  The diet is still a priority but while it it is a major part of the equation, it is still just a part of it.

Looking ahead to May and the National Bike challenge, my goal for this year is to beat my 2014 total of 3,136 points and 336.5 miles.  I know that the only way to do this is through consistency and effort.  During the challenge in 2014, I rode every single day.  If I am going to beat my point total, I will need to do the same this year and increase the distance per ride.  Who will join me for the challenge?

Week 7 Progress

OK, I know I missed last week but that was because I was away at a conference for work.  I left on Sunday and returned on Wednesday evening.  The good news is that I wasn't totally derailed by the conference.  At times it was a challenge to find decent foods to eat following the Paleo diet, but I made it and didn't resort to awful food choices.  I weighed in this morning and the scale showed 431 lbs. That is a loss so far of 27 lbs. since starting this personal challenge 7 weeks ago.  I'm still on track to hit my goal as long as I maintain my progress.

My 2 toughest days during this time were heading to and from the conference as I spent about 6 hours int eh car each way.  I was so tempted to just grab fast food or other snacks to help occupy me while I was driving, but I didn't give into the temptation and made it through.  One highlight of the conference was a special event where we had dinner on the USS Midway which is set up as a living history museum.  While the food choices were scarce, seeing and touching the history was awesome.  I also got in my most steps for the week traipsing around the decks and it didn't feel like exercise at all.  Here is a peek at the flight deck:

With that over, it is now time to buckle down ans really make some progress.  A plus is that within our family we have also started our own competition wherein we are each putting up cash for the next 6 months and the person who loses the highest percentage of weight gets to take home the Prize.  Because of the format of weekly weigh-ins and exemptions for the weekly percentage winners, the purse will be a nice $390.  I'm planning on walking away with it.

Week 5 progress

Another week has come and gone and I have lost another 2 lbs.  Not a great loss, but a loss, none the less.  I do need to get back on target to bump up the losses, though.  If I want to hit my goal, then I need to lose an average of at least 3 lbs per week over the next 21 weeks.  Hard to believe I'm already 5 weeks into this personal challenge.

Next week is going to be a big challenge.  I will be attending a conference for work and I'm hoping to get in a decent amount of walking but the food is what worries me.  Finding the best choices may be an issue.  I will do what I can to stay on track, though.  Of course I can worry about that next week. Now I need to focus on this week and eating as clean and healthy as I can.

Week 4 progress

To be honest there isn't a lot of progress this week.  I seem to be on a little plateau as my weight stood at 437 yesterday. Now don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic that I have lost 21 lbs. since I challenged myself, but I was hoping that I might have lost a bit more this week.  I was spoiled by the losses so far and was hoping that they would continue apace. No worries, though as I know that if I do the right thing with my diet I will lose weight.  I am planning on adding a bit more exercise as well just to bump up the losses.

I was bummed last night when I got home and looked at my FitBit page to see my total for the day.  It stood at just 44 steps.  It seems I left it sitting on the bed yesterday morning when I got dressed so all of yesterday's steps went uncounted. It was surprising how upsetting that little faux pas was.  Anyway, today I have it with me and I am back to accumulating steps and distance.

Speaking of accumulating distance, I did get an email from FitBit congratulating me on earning the Japan badge for walking more than 1869 miles.  While that seems like a fair distance, I think it has taken quite a while to get there.  I think my next lifetime distance badge comes at 1997 miles and hopefully that won't take too long to achieve.

So, the focus this week is to avoid salty foods and stay within my goals and hopefully next week there will be significant progress to report.

Biggest Winner 2016

So, here it is, the start of my 4th Biggest Winner weight loss competition as part of the City of Las Vegas' Corporate Challenge.  The weigh in was yesterday and their scale put me at 438 lbs.  I thought it might have been a couple of pounds light and when I got home and on my scale it showed 440 lbs.  So there it is.  Now this is actually a bit heavier than I was on Tuesday and that was a result of eating some salty foods and drinking a ton of liquids.  I expect that increase to disappear in the next day or two as I flush out my system.

What I find strange is that while we have medaled, taking the bronze last year, and I have lost weight in the competition, it obviously has not 'stuck'.  Let's look back just a single year to last year's competition.  I started the competition with a weight of  448 lbs. and ended at 420 lbs. for a loss of 28 lbs.  You will notice that that is significantly less than yesterday's weight and especially my weight of 458 lbs. back on 2/8 when I started my personal weight loss challenge.

What this tells me is that if I set my sights on a concrete goal, then I am actually pretty good at doing what I need to in order to lose weight, but when there is no target I let my eating slip way out of control.  I see that this is not just a short term change that I need to make in order to meet these short term goals, but it needs to be a lifetime change in my eating behavior. I am working to make that lifetime change a reality.

So, until I get to where I need to be, I am going to keep putting short term goals out there and then striving to meet them.  I have my 6 month goal of losing that 80 lbs. and I am going to hit it, no if's ands or buts, but then I am going to continue on until I reach my ultimate target goal of under 250 lbs.

Week 3 progress

OK, here we are already 3 weeks into my personal 80 lbs. in six months challenge.  I was supposed to post yesterday but the time got away from me and frankly it wasn't a priority so I waited until today. the good news is that I did my weigh in Sunday morning and I was at 439 lbs.  That is 19 lbs. lighter than when I started this challenge and I am very happy with that.

In terms of activity and exercise its been all but non-existent this last week.  I got some steps in but nowhere near my modest goal of 7,000 steps per day.  I also squandered another week of nice weather and didn't get on my bike once.  Part of the reason is that I have been holding back pending tomorrow's weigh in for the start of the biggest winner competition.  I know it's a lame excuse (and really no excuse at all) but I wanted to save some of the weight loss for during the competition where it works for a dual purpose - a 2 in 1 loss as it were.  So after tomorrow I am removing that excuse from my head and will be getting back to it much more actively.

Not much else to report on this week, other than I am starting to see a difference in my body which is a good thing.

The experts seem to be correct

I've been reading about weight loss and fitness for several years now. I have been, like many people, looking for the secret, the magic bullet as it were of weight loss. I was seriously hoping there was some small change that would let the weight melt away while letting  me eat what and as much as I want. Well, the is no such thing. So then I thought that maybe if I just exercised more, maybe that would do it.  I then worked out that I don't have the 5 or 6 hours each day to make up for poor diet. So that means that I just need to eat right.

Now, the question is what does that mean, 'I just need to eat right'?  What does eating right entail?  Is it merely watching a total caloric intake number and making sure I stay within it?  Does it mean I have to only eat certain foods?  For me, it seems that it means to set a fairly aggressive calorie target fr each day and to follow, what amounts to, a sensible diet.  Now for me, and I certainly can't speak for ANYONE else, that means I am targeting to eat 1800 calories per day.  Those calories are coming from mostly natural foods like fruits and vegetables and meats with very little dairy and no refined grains or sugars.

I have also been taking an EGCG supplement and an enzyme supplement every morning.  I don't know if these are making much, if any difference, since I started the clean eating of the paleo diet at the same time.  What I do know if that over the last 2 weeks, since I started my latest round of weight loss, I have lost 15 lbs.   I am astounded.  This is working better than it ever has.  The exciting thing is that I'm not really hungry and craving foods, like I have in the past when I've been on diets.  I really haven't increased my daily activity, either.   Sure I've gotten on my bike a few times, bu it's nothing consistent.

I am extremely happy with the progress I've made so far and I am excited that I will make my 80 lb. goal by August.  I am well on my way, for sure.

One other thing I want to note is that I will be captaining my organizations team for the Biggest winner competition in the Corporate Challenge.   The initial weigh in is on March second.  We then have until  May 9th to lose as much weight as we can.  Last year I lost 28 lbs.  As a team we lost 81 lbs. which got us the bronze medal.  I am excited that we may actually have a chance at the gold.  

Progress

It's been eight days since I restarted my weight loss journey and I'm happy to see my dedication paying off on the scale. Eight days ago my weight was 458 lbs. This morning the scale read 450 lbs. That is a loss of 8 lbs. in 8 days. It shows that my clean eating, following the Paleo diet and resisting all of the temptations of the weekend is worth it.

I'm sure that actual exercise, like getting back on my bike for a couple of short rides, hasn't hurt either. Sure, I've been tracking my steps and getting in a low number but its been usually many short little trips and no longer walks. Usually I would walk maybe 100-200 steps at a time and no more.  Sure I would do this many times a day, but I don't think it is as effective as a longer walk to get the same number of steps.

As a means of testing my theory, I set out to walk about 2,000 steps in one, single go.  Now, I wasn't going to leave the house to accomplish this.  You see, if I walk from the sliding door to the front door and back it is about 50 steps.  OK, depending on my stride and which foot I pivot on it is between 47 and 50.  Anyway, I determined to walk this 40 times in a row. Now that may not sound like much to a lot of people, but remember, The longest I have been walking is from my car to my desk at work, maybe 750 steps.

I do have to say that there is a difference.  I could definitely feel it in my legs and my back as I got past 20 trips.  I persevered and made it to 40, though.  When I looked at my FitBit once i was done, I saw that I had actually logged 1946 steps during the 15 minutes or so it took me to complete this.  I certainly felt it.  I was breathing harder than normal and there was a bit of burn in my legs.  Now, in the past if I had accomplished the same roughly 2000 steps, it would have been in at least 10 separate little walks and I would not have felt it like I did, so obviously intensity and duration are key.

OK, I know there are some people who are like 'DUH!', but this is something I had to once again experience for my self to get it more than intellectually.  Truthfully I knew this, but had forgotten it.  The interesting thing is that since I never left the house yesterday, I didn't hit my step target but I feel I got better exercise than if I had with all of the short trips.

So, it's a new week, or at least a new work week, and I am happy with my progress so far.

Starting is the hardest part

Finally got my butt back on the bike today and 3 things were immediately obvious to me:

1.  Not riding a bike for 8 months greatly reduces one's capacity to participate in this activity.

2.  There are no flat roads in my neighborhood.

3.  Riding my bike is fun and I need to do more of it.

Now the first point was actually something I knew intellectually.  It was the wheezing, lung burning, struggle to move that brought the true reality of this statement home.  I survived the ride but it was more work than it should have been.

The second point I sort of knew from driving through the area, but when experienced from the seat of a bike it is much more readily apparent.  Now Strava and Garmin say I only experienced 71 and 72 feet of elevation gain respectively over the ride, but it certainly felt like a whole lot more!

The last point is one I know and one I am reminded of every time I swing my leg over the bike and propel myself along.  I've said it before and I will certainly say it again - I would rather bike 5 times a distance than walk any day.

One other thing I noted on the ride, as I was huffing and puffing my way uphill on Gowan, was that there are other cyclists in the area.  I call them cyclists because they were decked out in matching jersey and riding not inexpensive bikes.  2 of the 3 riders, however were just.  Not a 'hello' or 'on you left' as they rode by me.  Sure I was on my hybrid, in jersey shorts and a t-shirt and I even went heltmetless, but I said hi to them between gasps as they passed.

Anyway this was my first ride of many to come and I enjoyed it.