Week 2

When I write goals, I anticipate that they're going to be challenging, but doable. I'm debating right now if I've bit off more than I can chew this time.

The weight loss, calories, and exercise goals are absolutely attainable. The time and clean eating goals may not be. It became abundantly apparent to me when I went grocery shopping last week that the clean eating goal may not be realistic. Not because I can't find foods to eat, but because the good options are super expensive. So while my wife and I try to stick to a budget so we can pay all of our bills and save some money, I'm spending extra on already outrageously expensive cereal? I don't know about that... I'll have to see how things go this week at the store and decide if this is really a good goal to attempt. That's not to say that I can't continue to concentrate on eating better foods, but I may not be able to eat clean for an entire day.

My "Time" goal is becoming frustrating. I'm finding that I can't sleep because I'm hungry when I go to bed. I'm eating within my calorie range, but on days when I run and burn 600+ calories, I can almost feel my stomach eating itself by about 9:00pm. Having an 8:00pm time limit seems too early at this point. Especially on nights when I'm working until 8:00, that means I'm done eating at 7:00 or earlier. As last week progressed, it became obvious to me that I need to move the time to 9:00 instead of 8:00 so I can get some freakin sleep!

My wife and I have been training for this half marathon on April 1st, and as part of our training, we do our "long run" on Saturday. Over the weekend, we had 11 miles scheduled. If any of you are in the area, you'll remember what last weekend felt like. Cold and windy. Not just normally windy, but 45mph wind gusts (at least) windy.

Although we completed the run, it wasn't a whole lot of fun. It was as if we were running on a treadmill without the belt going. I swear at some points I could have opened my arms and leaned into the wind at a 45 degree angle and been fine. It felt like we had a headwind for 75% of the run. I only distinctly remember feeling wind at my back for about a half mile stretch along the beach. The cross winds were just as brutal as the headwinds. I kicked myself a few times because the wind blew my foot into my other leg! Ridiculous. It was good training, at least, for our half, because we're expecting it to be windy. Hopefully not THAT windy, though!

This week is posing a few problems for training. My wife is working at a different location one day this week, which gets her home around 5:30 or so... sunset. I also have a client scheduled at 7:00, so by the time we cook and eat, there's no time to run together. I'll have to do it solo that day. I also am going to see my dad for a Flyer's game on Thursday, so I can't run with the wife that day either. Then on top of that, we have friends coming this weekend, so we can't do our normal Saturday long run (12 miles this week). I mean, I'm not complaining... I love getting to see my dad and have friends come visit. I'll just have to figure out a different run schedule, maybe use this as a "rest week" and hit it hard the following weekend for the 12 miles, and then taper down before we run the half.

Ok, enough of the boring stuff, let's get down to the business.

Weigh in this morning was 232.5. Back to where I ended last cycle. I knew that 5 pound weight gain wasn't real weight... no way would I have lost 4.5 pounds based on the way I ate this weekend. I must have been holding water. Regardless, progress is good.

Here are the pictures from this morning.

See ya next week!

Cycle 4 - Day 1 Pictures

Because I didn't get to taking pictures yesterday, my lovely wife took my pictures this morning to start the cycle.

We took them with my phone. I don't like the way they turned out. Looks like we're going back to the camera next week.

 

Remember - 237lbs.

Day 1 - Start of Week 1 - Cycle 4.

Today begins the first day of my fourth 90 day cycle. By the end of this cycle, I will have been doing goals and 90 day “challenges” if you will, for an entire year. Also, hopefully, I will have lost enough weight to get down into the low 220’s or even the 210’s.

I took some time off to get myself in order. I needed a break and I needed to refocus myself. It’s not that I wanted to binge eat or drink or anything like that on my break… overall I still ate and drank pretty well, but I needed something new, different, and exciting.

I don’t believe these cycles to be monotonous or difficult, even. In the beginning I did, but now it’s almost second nature. I enjoy the challenge. I also enjoy seeing how my goals affect my body, my mind, and my lifestyle.

In the past, I have written goals that force me to do healthy things, like drink more water, or exercise more. I don’t feel like I need goals to keep me motivated to work out or drink water anymore. I also don’t think I need goals that would encourage me to eat healthy foods. I prefer them over junk food these days anyway.

What I do need is to make sure I’m focusing on keeping within my calorie limit. I also need to figure out how to train for more than one athletic feat at a time. My wife and I will be doing our annual City to Shore Century (100 mile) bike ride with my brother and friend from home that is scheduled for the end of September. We are also planning on running my first full marathon at the end of October. Because the training would overlap, I need to build and maintain a strong base for both sports so I can finish both events. I don’t plan on even starting my cycling training until after our half marathon in April, though. That might be a goal for the next cycle.

 I also need some new health-related goals to focus on. The ones I’m going to attempt this time are more of an experiment than anything else. I’m curious how my body will feel if I focus on eating even better than I do now. I will tell you that my diet consists mostly of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats. I do, however, consume a fair amount of refined foods and chemicals. Those things come in the form of diet soda and cereal, mostly. I also eat “low fat” popcorn, which undoubtedly contains a ton of chemicals to make it taste good. I find that I rely heavily on certain “diet” foods to keep my calories down during the day, but I do that at the expense of getting better nutrition. Rather than say that I’m not going to eat refined food anymore, what I’m going to do is say I’m going to focus on eating clean.

OK, now let’s talk goals.

Since this blog started as a weight loss blog, and I’ve been working on losing weight this whole time, I can’t give up on that as a goal. I weighed 237 this morning. I’m a little heavier than I expected right now. I expected to maintain around 235. I was SUPER dehydrated when I completed the last cycle, which was why I weighed 232. Five pounds gained isn’t a good thing, but I know I’m not dehydrated at least.

The weight loss goal will be to lose 18 pounds. Why 18? Because I think it’s attainable. It also means I’m in the 210’s at 219. Anything more than that is just a little extra awesome.

In order to lose the weight, I will be training for a half-marathon through April, and then I’m going to create a new exercise plan. I’ll use this as an opportunity to set a goal of exercising a minimum of 4 days per week. I’d like to exercise 6 days per week, but there’s no telling what the body will do with too much strain, and I certainly don’t want to injure myself. I will accomplish this goal 11 of the 13 weeks. I think I’m going to take a week off after the half marathon… I’ve been training without a rest week for a few months now.

My third goal, also along with the weight loss, is to track my calories and stay within my calorie limit. Since I dropped weight from the last time I started a cycle, my calorie range has changed. My new range is 1896 to 2322. I’m going to stay within this range for an average of 5.5 times per week, or 71 out of 90 days.

For the clean eating goal, I want to accomplish this goal 64 times out of 90, that’s 5 days per week on average. This will be an adjustment for me, because it means eating some different kinds of snack foods. To define the goal, I will need to avoid all refined foods that contain chemicals. In other words, if I look at product packaging and I don’t know what something is on the label, I’m not eating it… 5 days a week. Haha.

Lastly, I feel like I’m eating too late at night. I get to the point in the day where I’m done with my meals for the day and I decide to go eat some more because I have extra calories until my “upper limit” number. It’s not that I’m hungry; I just want to take full advantage of what I can eat. What that does, though, is inhibits my weight loss. I want to stop that habit. So I’ll be calling this my “time” goal. I’ll stop consuming calories by 8:00pm 71 out of 90 days, or an average of 5.5 times per week.

Here is how you will see my goal tracking on the side bar.

Weight Loss – 0/18

Exercise – 0/11

Calories – 0/71

Clean Eating – 0/64

Time - 0/71

May 19th will be Day 90.

I do not have starting pictures today because my wife went to work already and I just this morning decided to start this cycle today. I definitely don’t want to wait another week. I’ll see if we can get some pictures tonight or tomorrow morning, so check back soon!

I will continue to post on Monday’s throughout the cycle, so come check back every week!

Day 90 - THE END

No, not the end forever. I'll be back, but I'm taking a week or two off. I need to take some time to come up with some new goals and whatnot, but as of this morning, I'm all done with my 90 day cycle.

I started this blog in May of 2011 to try to get my life back on track. Since then, I've made some pretty drastic changes. Not only physically, but mentally. I have a much brighter outlook on life. I have a better marriage. I eat better. I drink less. I exercise more. I drink more water. I've also found out how to help people accomplish what I have started to accomplish by starting my own business that I call No Limits Wellness Coaching.

I've also accomplished a lot physically. Since I started in May, I've lost 41 pounds. I lost 20 of those pounds in this last cycle. Hard to believe I've done this 3 times and I lost half of my weight in one third of the time. I guess I figured it out! I also did something I never thought in my entire life that I would do... run a half marathon. Something I plan to do again in April of this year.

What I've learned so far is that the goals I write are there to motivate me to reach for something difficult. I spend a lot of days planning my life around accomplishing my goals. For instance, there are days that I feel tired or run down, then say to myself, "If I skip this workout today, when am I going to make it up?" If I don't have a free day to make it up, I just get up, change, and bust it out. I also remind myself frequently that it would look really bad on me if I busted all of my goals in the same day. It will also reflect pretty poorly on the scale.

I have also learned that creating new habits is hard. Much harder than I thought. It's easy to fall back into your old way of doing things. For instance, when I take a high calorie day, it's sometimes very hard to get back on track the next day because all I want to do is eat junk food, especially if there is still some leftover in the house. I also find that on my high calorie days, I sometimes eat more than I even want to so that I don't have the distraction of that leftover food sitting in the house the next day. I don't necessarily think this is a good thing, because I need to figure out how to just resist the temptation better, but I'm getting there. My wife had ice cream last night and I only had a bite instead of a whole bowl to myself.

Now, let's get on to the data.

This morning, I woke up at 232lbs. That's a 20 pound weight loss from Day 1. Even though I didn't hit my goal of 30 pounds, 20 is a great number and I'm happy with it. I realize this means I lost 6 pounds since last week, but as of Tuesday or Wednesday, I had already dropped 3 pounds of water weight. I know because I know. I'll spare you the details. I also might be dehydrated this morning a little bit, so I wouldn't be shocked if my weight goes up slightly before my next cycle begins.

I missed my workout goal by 1 week. I say 1 week because I gave myself credit for a few weeks I maybe shouldn't have. The goal was to run more and do p90x for 90 days. I stopped p90x a few weeks ago to focus on my running. I also had given up on my running when it was really cold outside and I knew I was killing myself in p90x. I will mark this as a failed goal, but I'm still happy with my progress. You can see pictures later on down the post.

I met my food goal. Right on the head, in fact. I wasn't planning on having a high calorie day this weekend, but one just happened on Friday night, which was ok. I was only about 500 calories over, but I'm still going to count it. I came out at exactly 71 days of being on track, which is what I set out to do. GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!

I did 9 weeks of my alcohol goal, which is what I set out to do. This goal was less challenging than I expected it to be. Not drinking during the week wasn't so bad. I did find, though, that on the weeks that I knew I would miss my goal, I started drinking on Monday and drank through Sunday. Not non-stop, of course. I would just have one or two a night because technically, I could. Regardless, GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!

Water was another goal I hit right on the head. 80 days of 2 liters or more of water. I would have gone over the 80 days had I not gone to pour my glass of water the other night and had it look like mud. It made me skiddish, despite the Brita filter. I drank a little less water the next day or two, and that's probably the reason I'm dehydrated today. Again, GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!

I didn't do my measurements as regularly as I had hoped to. I didn't think it was fair to ask my wife to get up early for work to measure my body, so I'll just take the measurements from day 1 and compare them to today.

Chest: 47.25 - 44 = 3.25
Shoulders: 53 - 52 = 1.0
Bicep: 15.25 - 15.25 = 0.0
Waist: 40.25 - 37.25 = 3.0
Hips: 43.0 - 42.75 = 0.25
Belly: 45.75 - 41.5 = 4.25

The numbers I really care about are the ones that are obviously different. Chest, waist, and belly. Those are the numbers that NEED to come down, because those are the ones that put me at risk of diseases later on down the road. Honestly, as my wife told me this morning, doing my hips isn't a real measurement. I don't store fat there. Also, my biceps changed, I just lost goo and added muscle, and my shoulders are really more a reflection of my chest than anything else, I think.

So on to what you've been waiting for... the before/after pictures.

I'm gonna try this in a way I haven't tried before. The pictures on the left are of the first day I started out at 273lbs. The middle was me on Day 1 of this cycle at 252. The one on the right is me this morning at 232.

And now for my p90x side by sides... I'm just going to show Day 1 on the left and Day 90 on the right.

As I posted these pictures, it was the first time I actually looked at them side by side. I'm shocked. There are so many things that we can do to our bodies to destroy them, but once we get our heads on straight and focus on doing the things we need to do to build our bodies back up, you can make some very drastic changes that are so obviously healthy, and if I do say so myself... can make you look pretty darn good.

Start of Week 13 (The Final Week!)

Weight loss is a fickle thing. As intelligent beings, we try to apply an exact science to it. 3500 calories equals one pound of fat. If you consume 3500 less calories than you need in a week, you will lose a pound. Similarly, if you burn more than 3500 calories in a week, you should lose a pound. If you consume less and burn more calories combined, you should lose more weight, right?

Let me tell you from personal experience, that weight loss is NOT an exact science. There's no way for us to know exactly how many calories we burn. There's also no real way to know how many calories we're eating, especially if we eat out, or drink fluids that we don't know what the calorie content is. Along with that, if you don't have a food scale, you're almost in the dark as far as weight of most produce and meats. So what do we do? We take our best guess and hope for the best. And let's be honest, that should be enough. The point of what I have been striving to do is to teach myself how to eat normal serving sizes, drink less booze, more water, and exercise regularly. In other words, create the foundation to weight loss. There's no magic pill, ointment, exercise, or diet that's going to get you to lose weight. It comes from eating right and working out. PERIOD.

That said, I gained weight again this week. I take ownership of the weight gain. I know that I could have done better with my food, but I stayed within my alcohol limits, and I worked out. A lot. According to a new website I've been using to track my calories and exercise (Lose It!), I burned just shy of 3,000 calories and for the week, I was over 700 calories under my weekly calorie budget. According to my math, that's a weight loss. Not a weight gain.

It is what it is, though. I gained two pounds and this morning I weigh 238 pounds. I'm not gonna make my weight loss goal for the 90 days, but I knew that weeks ago. What I can take from this, though, is that I'm able to control my drinking. I'm able to work out 6 days a week. I'm also able to eat within a calorie restriction most days, allowing myself to eat above that limit once or twice a week and still lose weight.

What I'm finding is that I probably could eat less calories than I have been eating. There are times when I get to the end of the day and realize that I've still got 6-700 calories leftover for the day, so I'll eat a bowl of cereal to bring it up. I shouldn't do that. If I decide to do another 90 day cycle, I'm going to have to do some kind of time restriction on myself, so I can't eat after 8:00 or something... but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

For now, I'll focus on the week ahead. I have an alcohol goal, water goal, workout goal, and food goal that I can still accomplish. After all, four out of five's not bad. That's a solid 80%. Not ideal, but on this grading scale, I'll take it.

This morning... 238lbs.

On another positive note, I think, if it's possible, I have fallen in love with running. My wife and I decided that we're going to run the April Fools Half Marathon in Atlantic City. I'm pretty sure I had written that a week or two ago, but I wanted to remind you all of it. Because we're planning on running it together, it makes sense that we train for it together. Yahtzee joins us on the shorter recovery runs because we're not going too fast, but for the most part, we leave her at home.

I'm finding that while I sit at home and work during the day, I am aching to be outside running. I think I feel like the dog does when my wife walks through the door. Although Yahtzee will jump and flail like a dolphin with her youthful excitement, I try to maintain my composure and just lace up my shoes. Once she's ready to go, we roll out the door and just run. We catch up on the day while we jog at an easy pace, and challenge each other during tempo runs to improve our cardiovascular insurance as well as increase our overall speed.

Don't get me wrong, I still have a passion for cycling. I love the challenge of cycling, but where we live right now is very flat and leaves much to be desired on the bike. Running is infinitely easier to get ready for also. I don't have to pump tires, lube chains, fill water bottles, carry stuff in my pockets. Also, I've accomplished a lot in cycling. Running is a whole new challenge.

I'm not giving up cycling by any means, but I think it's going to be less of a part of my summer as it has been in the past... of course that depends on if we're going to sign up for a Marathon a not...

Start of Week 12

I've had a little bit of a breakthrough last week. My wife and I have decided to run the April Fools Half Marathon in Atlantic City this year, which is now 9 weeks away. I started with some training runs last week and realized that I am becoming a powerful runner. I don't know if it's any thanks to the strength training, yoga, or plyometrics from p90x, but things are very different.

In college, when I was in the best shape of my life (until now), and the lightest weight as an adult, I was only able to push out an 8 minute mile. When I was done, I was DONE. No more running. Last week I decided to test myself to beat my 1 mile time and ended up trying to beat my best 5k time. I did my first mile in 7:45. I didn't feel like I had a lot of energy left when I finished, so I slowed it down a little, and pushed on to finish the 5k. I realize that the first 5k I ran had a little bit of undulation in the terrain, but it was reasonably flat. When I ran that 5k, I did it in 28:07. I was fried by the end. I felt sick, and didn't want to move. I really pushed myself to the end. This week I finished my 5k trial in 26:28. I averaged an 8:32 mile.

I'm hoping that I can try to run a single mile trial and push as hard as possible to see if I can get my time down to 7:30. That would be pretty awesome for me. In 9th grade, I had to run a mile for the Presidential Physical Fitness test. As I came across the line after lap 3, my gym teacher called out my time... 12 minutes and some odd seconds... then told me good job. That was the signal that I was done. It took me over 12 minutes to run 3/4 of a mile. I have no idea how much I weighed at the time, but I was definitely closing in on 300lbs. I was also incredibly sedentary.

I'm proud of where I've made it... so far. I've got a lot of things I want to accomplish in my life. At some point I want to lose enough weight to see a 1 in front of my number... 199 would be ok with me. I'd also like to run a full marathon and cycle a double century (200 miles). I realize that these are lofty goals, but I don't feel like there's anything stopping me from accomplishing those goals at some point in my life.

I also am getting recognition from strangers. My wife and I went out for drinks with a coworker of hers and her husband. While out, we met another couple-friend of theirs and started talking. I told them what I am working on for my business (If you're not aware, I'm building a Wellness Coaching company called No Limits) and the conversation turned to what I've accomplished. I was talking about my weight loss and one of the guys said something about my jeans looking way too big for me. The next day, I tried on an old pair of jeans. They fit.

Those jeans I tried on have a hole in the knee, so I can't really wear them in good sense, but I was proud of that moment and so we decided to go get me a new pair of jeans that fit.

If you've never been fat and lost weight before, you might not get this, but when you're losing weight, even though you see the numbers drop, you still look fat to yourself int he mirror. Only when your pants start falling off your ass and you get lost in your shirts do you realize that you're making progress. Sometimes it's still hard to see it in the mirror... but how can you argue with photographic evidence?

Ok, so I didn't get pictures taken this morning because my wife told me I could sleep in. Who was I to argue? 

I'll get some either tonight or tomorrow morning and post them... but here is my first picture compared to last week...

Amazing.

I woke up at 236 this morning, down three pounds since last week.

Start of Week 11

There's a pattern here. I plateau around week 10-11 every time I go through the 90 day program. I'm not sure if it's because it's harder towards the end of the program to maintain the goals, or because my body doesn't like what I'm putting it through at this point. I think it's the former.

This morning I was back into the 230's at least... 239. I dropped a pound, but here's why it happened...

I did REALLY well this week. I had multiple longer runs, ate like a champion, and then went away for the weekend. I knew I was going to be drinking in excess over the weekend because I was with friends, and so I decided to use my final free alcohol week. Luckily I decided to do that on Friday as opposed to Tuesday so I didn't drink all week long.

Friday night I had a few beverages with my wife. Saturday, I had multiple beverages with my friends. I also used Saturday as a high calorie day. I did relatively well until dinner. Bagel with cream cheese, salad, half a sandwich, and for dinner I had a grilled chicken sandwich with sweet potato fries. The sandwich itself was probably ok, but the fries were deep fried.

After dinner, I had quite a few beers and quite a few slices of pizza and cookies. I knew as I was stuffing it into my face that it was a bad idea, but I was feeling good, enjoying myself, and not giving a crap.

I'm going to take some time to evaluate my goals and adjust them to make sure I stay motivated to the end.

I've lost 13 pounds. My goal was 30. Not gonna happen at this point. I have 20 days left. I'll be lucky to see the 220's. So instead of trying to lose 30 pounds, I'm going to try to, from this point on, lose another 5 pounds, which would put me at 234. Obviously I'm not finished losing weight, but every step closer is great.

I missed my second week of workouts this week. I missed it because I didn't work out on Saturday or Sunday. I'm disappointed about it, but it could be worse. I still can meet my goal if I finish all of my workouts for the remainder of the 90 days. I'm gonna keep going for that.

I've done 55 of my 71 days of staying in my calorie limit. I'm still on track to complete the goal, so I'm going to continue with this one as well, as is. I've got 4 high calorie days left for the next 3 weeks. No problem.

If I want to complete my alcohol goal, I'm going to need to finish the next 3 weeks on target. I'm prepared to do that, but I realized the other day that Super Bowl Sunday is Day 90. <crickets>. I'm gonna give myself a pass on the alcohol goal that day. I'll reserve a high calorie day for it.

I've completed 64 of 80 days of my water goal. I'm on track to finish it no problem. I don't have much of an excuse to not finish it. It's not a hard goal, I just happen to miss it sometimes for one reason or another. Usually because we're out of the house for longer than expected and I don't bring a water bottle with me.

So I guess I'm on track for all but my weight goal. I'm done missing alcohol weeks, though, so hopefully things go well for the next 3 weeks and I can drop my 5 pounds. If I get more than that, awesome.

Here's my pictures for today. Again, 239.