Start of Week 6

Attempting to change your lifestyle can be... sporadic. I feel like things hit me randomly throughout the days, weeks, and months that I've been doing this. This week I was struck with a realization. I'm am, without a doubt in my mind, an athlete.

This is what I've been shooting for since I started on this journey. I wanted to be an athlete (again...?). I was always athletic. You know that fat kid on the playground that could shoot a basketball and knew how to throw a frisbee before a lot of his peers? That's me. I have good eye hand coordination. I have quick reactions, and I believe in my ability to feel where my body is in space. Along with that, I feel like I know where my body SHOULD be in space, so I get there. I can cut down angles. I can read a play. I don't mind laying out in the mud to stop a ball or catch a frisbee.

Having all of those abilities doesn't mean squat unless you have endurance. As a kid, I played soccer. I was the goalie. I didn't have to run much, but I could be active for about 10-15 seconds at a time, wind myself, then I'd get a break as I punted the ball down to the other end of the field. It worked well for me. I got to be a part of the team. I got to hang out with friends. I even got to have my dad coach me... so at least I knew I wouldn't be riding the bench for being the fat kid.

This week I'm coming to the realization that I am an athlete. Now, I'm not saying that I have ridiculous endurance or anything. I'm still not fast. What I do have going for me, though, is that I'm not afraid of going the distance.

When I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon a few weeks ago, I knew that I was getting myself into something that was going to test me physically and mentally. Honestly, it just seemed like the next logical step after running a half marathon. Why not a full?

I've found that when it comes to endurance sports, distance is all relative. If the farthest you've ever run is 2 miles and someone asked you to go run 5, you'd think they were crazy! 5 Miles? That's so much! It's over twice as many as you've ever done before. As I build to the half marathon I'm doing with my wife (and some of her family), I don't fear 10 mile runs anymore. I've done 5-10 runs over that distance already. Sure it hurts sometimes, but it's not bad, and I live. So when I think about running 13, it's just 3 more... and 3 miles is no big deal anymore. So when I think about doubling my half marathon to do a full... here's how I see it.

After my rest week, I have 29 weeks to build up to the 26.2. I could start at 0 and add 1 mile per week and I would get there. That's not scary to me. But I'm already at 13.1, so why start at 0? I won't. I'll start at 13.1. And then I'll build. My plan is to run 20 miles on July 20th. That gives me 14 weeks to maintain my endurance and build my speed.

Between now and the marathon in October, I'm planning on 3 bike rides (50 miles, 75 miles, and 100 miles) at least 5 foot races of varying distances (5k's to half marathons). I also want to do a Duathlon.
(run, bike, run). Not only does this stuff not scare me anymore. I'm excited for it.

As I go into my last week before the half marathon, I'm on the end of my taper, which means I'm totaling about 8 miles over three runs. I'm used to 20-26 miles per week right now (when the marathon training really picks up, I'm expecting 35-45 miles per week). The taper means I'm burning less calories which doesn't help with weight loss, but it does help with recovery which should allow me to run my best half marathon.

I want a sub 2:05:00 finish time. But more importantly, I want to finish with my wife.

All that stuff said, I'm already bored with my runs this week. I have two 3 milers and a 2 mile walk scheduled. I may or may not take the walk... if I do, Yahtzee can come.

I'm not happy about my weight loss as of late. I'm not completely sure what's going on with me. Regardless of if I'm eating too much or what, with the amount of running I had been doing, it shouldn't be a problem. I think I might have the appetite of someone running 25-30 miles a week but I'm only doing 15-20 over the last couple weeks because we're tapering for the half. What that means is that I'm burning 2000 calories in exercise instead of 2500, but I'm still eating like I would have when I was running more. I just need to get it under control.

With that in mind, I'm REALLY worried about this week and next week since I'm barely running this week and I'm taking a week off next week to let my body recover. My ankle has been screaming at me, so I'm gonna give it a break.

This week, my weight was 232.5. Again.

Start of Week 5

I spent a lot of time in reflection this week. I decided to look back at my life and really evaluate where I am right now. What's changed? Why does this feel permanent when nothing ever has before?

Well, first of all, I have a supportive wife and family. Not that I didn't have my families support before, but my parents can't physically do what I can/could, and although my brother can, we didn't live close enough to each other any of the times when I got serious about weight loss. My wife is with me now. I can talk with her about ANYTHING. Having support is extremely helpful.

In the past, when I lost weight, I think I looked at weight loss as a finish line. I had a goal, and I was going to accomplish it. It was a race. I dropped weight as quickly as I could and once I crossed the finish line, I didn't have to do this crap anymore. That's what it felt like to me. Crap. Lifting weights is BORING. Is it cool to see your body change, physically? Hell yeah! But do I want to spend an hour in a stinky gym a few times a week? Hell no! So once I was done, I was DONE.

Then the weight would come back. Sometimes slower than others. Sometimes I would sit comfortably... about where I am right now... but it wouldn't last. The weight came back. And every time I got scared that it was coming back, I'd "lose weight" again, drop down to where I was comfortable the last time, and call it quits. I would try to maintain by going back to what I had always done, eating whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I had already done the work, why wasn't I maintaining?

Well duh, Matt! Just because you're lighter doesn't mean you can eat like a fat man again. Eating like a fat man makes you fat!

So this time, things are completely different. I'm taking it slow. I'm not racing to the finish line. I'll get there when I get there. I'm also changing habits. I feel gross on rest days. I know I need the rest, but I'm finding that I don't think to myself, "Thank God I don't have to work out today!" Instead I'm thinking, "I really want to work out, but I can't because I don't want to hurt myself or have a setback in my training."

I'm also changing my palate. I often think that I really love chips and fries and other junk food, but once I'm eating it, I realize that it doesn't really do anything for me anymore. In fact, the other day I went out for brunch with some friends. I had a healthy sounding burrito... grilled chicken, black beans, vegetables, some salsa... but I ordered some sweet potato fries as well. I knew they were going to be deep fried, but I thought I wanted them.

I was wrong.

I ate them anyway, but I found myself eating them because I felt guilty for spending the extra money, not because I was hungry or because they tasted good. Shit, I covered them in katsup... I didn't even taste the sweet potato fries.

Sure, I guess I enjoy junk food sometimes... the occasional slice of pizza or Chinese food is nice, but I wouldn't say I get out of it what I used to. I certainly don't crave that stuff very often anymore.

The other thing that's really changed in my life, is exercise. Winter is by far the hardest time to exercise for me. That's why I decided to do p90x on my last cycle. To push me through the winter. I've found joy in exercising. I think that I stopped cycling in the winter in the past because it was too cold to do it. I don't have the gear. But I certainly have stuff to run in the winter, and there's no excuse not to. Is it pleasant? Not always. But it works, and I do enjoy running.

Now that it's been warm out and I'm training for a half marathon, I'm encouraged to keep going. Last week, I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C. It's on October 28th. I have 7 months to train for it. That's 7 months to stay in shape and continue losing weight.

Over the weekend, my wife and I ran a 10 mile race in Margate as a warm up for the half-marathon on April 1st. We finished in 1:33:51 (9:23 pace). That's a personal best for me. We're looking at finishing the half somewhere around 2 hours. I'm hoping to get under 2, but I'll be happy with under 2:05.

Despite sitting on a plateau at 232.5 pounds, this is my life now. I eat well. I exercise a lot. I have goals. I keep pushing. And I will continue this process until I'm where I want to be. Then I'll keep pushing forward. Because if you're not moving forward, you're standing still. And I'm not ok with that anymore.

Today's pictures:

Start of Week 3

So I have a disappointing start to the week. I weighed in and gained 2 pounds. Like I said last week, I thought I had lost a bunch of water weight... after this weekend... I'm pretty confident I'm holding water again. There was a lot of beer and salty meat, potatoes, etc. YES, there were vegetables too.

This morning, I was 234.5

Like I said, disappointing, but not the end of the world. My weight loss goal is still attainable. Especially with the training we're doing. This was just a bad week for weight loss in general. I only ran 3 days this week, I also ran less mileage than I was supposed to. This week, we're busting out 12 miles on Saturday. That will be my high calorie day, and I'm not anticipating having another one this week.

When I started this blog, I decided to name it The Matt Train because that's what I wanted to be on my bike. A train. The steam engine, pulling my group along behind me. I've always been a leader, but I don't physically look like guy who's gonna do all the work. I want to look like that guy. I even said to my wife the other day that I'm starting to get self conscious of my stomach again. Which is weird because it's so drastically smaller than it used to be.

I also haven't been so in to cycling lately. I'm finding it hard to even think about getting on my bike and going out for a ride. Running has, for better or worse, replaced cycling as my passion for the time being. Over the weekend, I had a friend here for our party that is really great with bikes. He looked at my bike and tuned it up for me a little bit and told me what repairs I need to make... new chain... new shifter... etc. Another friend send me a new pair of bib shorts, which I'm pretty excited about wearing.

Once my bike is repaired and ready to go, I think I'll enjoy it more. It might also be a winter thing... it's too freakin cold outside to ride!

I'm looking at signing up for 4 big bike rides this season. Hopefully they all fit into my schedule. Plus the half-marathon, and the full marathon at the end of October (I'm signing us up on Wednesday!!!). Maybe there is something like a triathlon in my future. Who knows?

In the mean time, I'm going to refocus, and get my eating and exercise back on track for the week. I don't have any weekend distractions scheduled for the next few weeks, so I should be able to drop a decent amount of weight in this time period.

I feel like I should talk briefly about how my body feels lately. My wife and I ran 8 miles on Friday evening. When we do our long runs, it's usually in the afternoon. So I expected to not feel so great on the run. Oddly, I felt fine. I also felt fine at mile 4, despite the rain. And at mile 6. And 8. I could have kept going, but it was raining, and I wanted dinner. haha

I did not like how I felt this morning or yesterday after all of the drinking and eating I did. Although I stayed under my calorie limit, I didn't eat well. There was a lot of starch, and not a lot of vegetables. I laid in bed thinking about how terrible my body felt.

When I'm working with clients and we're talking about nutrition, I talk about how important fueling your body with the right kind of fuel is. You don't want to fill a high performance engine with low-grade gasoline just like you don't want to fill your body with low-grade food. I don't usually forget about this, but when I do, my body remembers and lets me know.

The Matt Train is back on track from this point forward and we'll be chuggin along until we reach our destination. At this point, it's inevitable.

This week's pictures:

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.