it’s been a while..

I haven’t posted an update in a while, and for that I apologize. I’ve been working on several projects that have consumed most of my free (HA) time.

I’ve still kept up with my walking. As you can see, I broke the 50 mile marker earlier this week. Was planning a big post for that milestone, and then this project took over.

I’ve also still been on the weight slide…. and my clothes tell the tale if the scale doesn’t (which it does). I am now nearly at the weight I was when I graduated from the Fire Academy in 1997. Need I say I’m pumped?

Yeah, I know eventually I’ll plateau, and when I do I’ll have to work harder, but for now I’m enjoying the slide.

How are you guys and gals doing?

Joe’s Goals…

As part of the Weight Loss Challenge, you may have noticed the “Joes Goals” widget on the right. It measures the amount of exercise and weight loss (exercise in 30 minute intervals, weight loss in one pound increments.) I’ve decided that the only way for me to keep track of weight loss is if I only weigh myself once a week– so since I last weighed myself on Wednesday, I have designated Wednesdays to be weigh in days. I don’t know how everyone else is doing it, but I plan to weigh every Wed, if my weight goes done I’ll add to the list, if it stayed the say I’ll do nothing, and if I gained weight I will subtract it from my previous weeks net loss. Seems to be the only way.

And if I get to the point where I’ve gained more than I lost, I’m doing something wrong.

Oh, and I added three more miles to my total– 33 miles out of 500.

Hit 30 miles..

Last night I hit the 30 mile mark and still going strong. I ‘m thinking about increasing my walk to 3.5 or 4 miles, I haven’t yet because the weather has been less than cooperative.

I’ve been listening to podcasts on my walk, I’ve found them to be more enjoyable than music. While I love music, sometimes my musical mood changes between the time I put fresh music on my mp3 player to the time I walk. Then you spend a lot of time skipping files and folders and getting annoyed because the music isn’t right. And that makes the walk far less enjoyable.

The podcasts I’ve been listening to have been about home brewing, a hobby of mine. I get them from Basic Brewing, and they’re very informative.

I’ll be looking to find some baseball podcasts, and probably a hockey one or two.

Holy Crap Batman…

Okay, so I never had a scale. Why? Because I never found one that went up to my weight. I typically never knew what I weighed, just know if I were gaining/losing based on how my clothes fit.

When we take the kids to the doctor I’d hop up on his scale just to get an idea of where I’m at– for the past three years that’s been in the range of 329-345.

And when I went to the nutritionist in November I got weighed. (hence the weigh loss/gain in the right hand column is “since 11/—”.

So when I signed up for the Challenge I decided to go out and get a scale so I can track weight loss. That was on Tuesday. I weighed myself and the scale read 322. That’s about 12 pounds lighter than I was in late November.

So this morning I jump up on the scale for sh*ts and giggles. 318. What? How is it possible to lose 4 pounds in two days. I must say that I’ve been eating normally, I’m not on a starvation diet. In fact, I’m not on any fad diet. I’m just eating more consciously— I’m not mindlessly shoveling food in anymore, I make it a conscious effort to chew everything completely, and to savor what I had in my mouth instead of instantly looking towards the next bite like I was before.

But still… 4 pounds? Is it possible to lose that much water weight? I’m plenty hydrated (I make it a point to drink lots of water!!).

I’m not complaining, just baffled.

I’ve been walking three miles daily for the past two weeks (except for a few days) and I’m at the point where I feel I can increase the distance slightly. So tonight I’m going to go for at least 3.5 miles. We’ll see how I feel after that.

I joined a Challenge today!

I was on one of the message boards I read and saw a post about the FWJ/WP Challenge. It’s simple; (so simple, I’m going to cut/paste from the site! )

Welcome to the Freelance Writing Jobs/Write Path Weight Loss Challenge.

How does it work?
It’s simple. Visit Joe’s Goals and create your own weight loss goals tracker. Get the code and place the widget on your blog along with the “Take the FWJ/WP Weight Loss Challenge” Code. At the end of each month, we’ll check each participant’s goal tracker. The person with the most weight loss and exercise points at the end of each month wins the monthly prize. At the end of 2007, the biggest winner will be awarded the grand prize.

Rules and Regs:
1. Your Joe’s Goal’s widget must be posted on your blog. Don’t worry, it won’t list your weight. Your name and blog will also be added to our FWJ/WP Weight Loss Challenge blogroll.

2. To be fair, only list the following on your Joe’s Goals widget:
*Lose 1 pound
*Exercise 30 minutes

3. Post the “Take the FWJ/WP Weight Loss Challenge” code above the widget on your blog.

/cut

I encourage you to go to the site yourself, read, and join! The two sites are:

Freelance Writing Jobs

and

The Write Path

And no, you don’t have to be a writer to join! Good luck!

A tip in measuring your walking distance…

I don’t know about you, but I can’t just go out and walk for 45 minutes. There has tangible goal. To me, time is not a tangible goal. Some use gadgetry to count steps. These may work wonderfully for you and that’s fine. But I need distance to measure goals. I can wrap my mind around walking one mile better than I can around walking for sixty minutes, or walking for 5000 steps. That’s why I decided to call it the 500 mile challenge and not the 400 hour challenge or the one million step challenge (although admittedly, that one sounds really cool.)

Some people drive to their local gym and walk, or head down to a nature path. If this is what you do and it works for you, wonderful! Some people don’t have that option, and others (like me) can’t get motivated to drive someplace to walk.

So here’s what I did; I used my car’s trip meter to map out a 1/2 mile square in the streets next to my house. This way, two laps equals a mile. If I get bored with this route, I’ll just use my car to create another route. It was a quick and easy way for measuring distance.

Try it out, it may just be the thing to keep you motivated on your quest towards 500 miles.

My First Milestone

I’ve broken into the double digits in my 500 Mile Challenge last night.

I don’t know if it’s the mild weather, but I’ve been able to walk three miles pretty easily since I started.

Way back in the day I used to walk up to six miles, and hopefully I’ll be back to that level in the future.

I find that after the first mile, my thighs feel very good, almost as if they’re thanking me for it. I know that sounds corny, but oh well.

My shins and knees, on the the other hand, aren’t so fond of the journey. Occasionally they decide to voice their opinion and force me to slow down a little. But even then, I slow down for a few hundred steps, and then I’m able to pick up the pace again.

I call onto you, the world, to answer this for me; I thought I heard somewhere that you shouldn’t exercise every day, something about your muscles needed some time to recuperate. Does walking fall into this category?

I ask because I’d like to walk everyday, because knowing me if I take the weekend off, the lazy gene is bound to kick in again, and I’d rather not have that happen (again).

Have a great weekend!

I didn’t get out and walk last night…

Mainly because I had my little son sleeping on my chest, but also because I was so tired once he was off I felt that my body’s need for sleep overrode the need to walk.

I’m not too worried, I’ll be back out there tonight.

I’ve decided to do two things, thanks to two different blogs.

Thanks to Waistloss, I’m going to keep track of my waist measurement (at the bellybutton). I figure I’ll measure it today, and then once a month and note any change.

Thanks go to The Middle Manager for this idea; when I finish eating I will brush my teeth. This will keep me from picking on leftovers or worse, going back for more when I know I’ve already had enough. I tried it last night and it seemed to work.

Why I haven’t done this before…

Well, I have. But now is a bit different..

Back in 2003 my 2nd son was born. We found out early on that he was sensitive to some foods– namely dairy. So even though he was breastfeeding, my wife had to cut dairy out of her diet. A few months later I read Fast Food Nation, and although it wasn’t eye-opening (I had known about the status of our nation’s meat industry) it did kindle the spark of taking back my life. I weighed 380 at the time.

We went vegetarian (Ovo-pesco) and I started walking. I walked for three miles at least five days a week, slowly increasing until I was up to six miles. I dropped thirty pounds. And then I stopped.

I can’t tell you why, I don’t remember.

So for the next 3 + years I’ve hovered between 325 and 345. Our diet has been refined as we became more aware of food sensitivities, both in my son and myself. Cut our dairy completely, as well as corn and soy.

And then it happened.

One night I was feeling cruddy so I went to bed just as The Colbert Report started. My wife came into our room about fifteen minutes later and I startled awake (not uncommon for me, ever since my days as a firefighter.) My heart was pounding, as it did whenever I was startled awake. But something was different– My heart rate would not come down. I practiced controlled breathing, got a glass of water, and tried anything I could think of to slow my heart down. Nothing worked.

I panicked. I told my wife I needed to go to the hospital. This was it, I was having a heart attack. Even though I wasn’t feeling any pain or discomfort (other than the fast heart rate) I was convinced that I would never see my sons again. That didn’t help matters.

As it turned out, I wasn’t having a heart attack, my heart had somehow went into atrial fibrillation. I was pumped full of meds and by the next morning my heart rate was back to normal.

That was the final straw. Without being melodramatic, I’m not ready to leave this world yet. And the only I see growing insanely old with my wife is to drop this extra person I’m carrying with me. Of course it’s not like my wife (or other people) haven’t been telling me this for years, but I feel as if I’ve been given a notice to get it in gear or not at all.

It’s in gear.

The 500 Mile Challenge.

I’ve been toying with the idea of walking forever.  I knew I had to get out and go, but the motivation wasn’t there.

On New Year’s eve I decided to go for a walk.  I only walked for a mile, but on that walk I had an idea.  It was a simple idea, really.  Why not set a yearly mile goal?  So I did.  I decided on doing a five hundred mile year.

Sounds like a lot, but really it’s less than one and a half miles a day.   I can manage that.

In fact, seeing that I walked three miles last night, I would not be surprised if I reach 500 sometime in July.  BUT, even if that happens, I will not change my goal– I’ll just revise 2008′s number to more accurately reflect my walking.

Part of the reason I’ve been hesitant to walk is energy.  I can’t walk during the day with the kids.  I know my wife would love for me to take the boys.  But really, the only way I can do it is alone with music.  Why? Because I need that time to think. I know, selfish selfish me.  But really.  The only way I can walk is if I can just let my brain go wander.  I need that if I’m ever going to get my sh;t together and finish something worth publishing.  And I obviously can’t let my mind wander when I’m walking with kids, it’s just not safe.

So since I can’t walk during the day, that leaves early in the morning and at night after kids go to bed.  I’m not prepared to start getting up early enough to walk in the mornings.  I am a night person, always have been.

Of course I say that, and then when the kids go to bed I’m usually so tired that I just zombie through some web stuff/tv/video game and crash after one– if I’m lucky.

But last night, even though I was extremely tired (nearly fell asleep on the floor) I made myself go out and walk.  I set out to match my one mile output from the night before, but as I approached the finish line, I realized I wanted to go on.  So I did.  I just let my mind go, pondering over things such as where my screenplay needs to go now (which I should be working on right now…), also revisited scenes from my novel (which also should be getting worked on now…) as well as  pondering what we need for a home and what I’d like to do with it (either dedicate a room or build a small one for meditation– including sound-insulating it). I want to start doing yoga with my wife, I want to have to buy a whole new wardrobe because clothes are just falling off me (as opposed to having to buy because my shirts won’t button or pants wont zipper). I know it’s an ego-stroke, but I want to know what it’s like to walk into a room full of people I haven’t seen in years and have to explain how I did it– how I lost the weight of one and a half “normal” people, I want to be able to tell them how I changed my life.

The way I see it, I’ve already changed the hard part– the food.  Now it’s time to kick it into gear and finally live.

I can’t wait for the day when I can look into a mirror, or look at a picture of myself and not be disgusted at what I see.  I can’t wait for the days when I can just go to sleep  at night  and not be kept up because I can feel my heart beating and wonder whether it’s going to give out on me in my sleep.

I can’t wait.