Carezza shot - test

Carezza shot
Originally uploaded by waxteeth

This is just a test post to see how pushing a pic from flickr directly to the blog works. One day I might figure out how to work basic technology. :)

Week 23 weigh in

This is the strangest weigh in so far.

Over the last week I have noticed that my "smaller" pants are getting loose (so I'm going to have to move down a size again). I'm feeling lighter on my feet, and I'm having more frequent bursts of energy where I feel REALLY strong.

And the scale today says I have gained one pound. :O

GAINED a pound....

It's strange and I don't know what is going on but there it is:

Weight today 227
Total lost 43#'s
Net +/- from last week +1 pound.

This is the first time in 23 weeks I've gained weight. I'm not sure what to think because I'm pretty sure that I must be doing some body recomposition because my pants are getting so loose and I feel lighter.....

??

If I gain another pound next week I'll probably spin off into a panic mode or something and turn to drastic measures but for now I'm going to just try and observe it, make sure my nutrition is on track and everything else is going like it should and see what next week brings.

weird.

Babysitting Brutus II

When one coffee fanatic leaves another coffee fanatic to feed the dog while he is on vacation....what do you think happens to his coffee gear while he is gone?


The answer is obvious isn't it....It's getting used! :) :)








Now for some pics of an iced drink just because...

Week 22 weigh in

Weight today 226

Weight lost to date 44#'s

I've settled in to loosing 1# per week now and I'm undecided on how I feel about that. On one hand I know I could step up my efforts at this point and speed my weight loss but on the other I am currently eating/exercising in a form that I can live with forever and am still improving my health/loosing weight just slowly.

I'm not sure yet......

What I don't know is if I will hit a wall somewhere and then it will be required of me to re-double my efforts so I guess in the back of my mind I'm holding back for that time because it's going to be necessary at some point.

The only downside to not amping it up right now is time. If I changed nothing and my progress remained steady I would not reach my goal until 6/09. If I amp it up I can get there faster but I'm not sure how much faster.

In typing this out I already feel lazy for not jumping on it because I "know" I can do more so I guess I just made a real time decision while writing this sentence that it's time to take it up a notch right now.

The next few weeks will show if I can get off the 1# per week trend and back into the 2+ range for a while and start bringing that goal date closer in....

Week 21 weigh in

Weight ?

Weight loss to date ?

Funny story, I forgot to weigh in this week...

I had a pretty big workload at the end of last week and I had to put all my attention on getting the jobs done that needed to get done. It wasn't until I was standing in a bikeshop with my buddy Shaun looking at bike trainers that I even knew it.

We were looking at different models of bike trainers and Shaun asks "so what do you weigh right now"? I said..."huh, .....that's a good question, I have no idea" and that is when I realized I had forgotten I was even loosing weight. I had no concept in that moment of what I weighed because I have weighed so many different things over the last few months.

It might have been the first time in 20 years that I had no sort of weight awareness just being in my skin. It was cool and surreal.

Anyway, I forgot to weigh in and now that I've missed it I'm just going to let it ride one week and make sure to make the Friday weigh in.

Iced AeroPress coffee

Just a few pics of Todays afternoon Iced coffee.

A nice smooth Brazil that went down good over ice on a hot 4th of July weekend. :)

20th week weigh in

20th week.

Weight 228

Weight loss to date 42#'s

I don't even need a calculator to to the average this time it's 2 & 1/20th #'s per week. :)

I'm good with that average and happy with my results here at week 20. I suppose if you would have asked me on day one how much weight I would have lost at this point I'd have said 50#'s figuring I'd loose 10#'s per month. But I would not have accounted for weeks where I only loose 1# or even weeks where I don't loose any weight but can tell my body is re-adjusting. Now that I've done that enough times I feel like it's important. it's something my body wants to do for whatever reason and I just continue doing my thing....a few days later the scale starts moving again and I think it's probably healthy.

Quick notes about loosing this first 40#'s in case anybody ever reads this blog for ideas..

So far I have not deprived myself of food to the point of going hungry for any length of time. I do get hungry but when I do I eat asap. I eat 4-5 times a day and might even have a small snack or 2 depending on the day. My past weight loss experiments that involved going hungry for hours on end and using will powered deprivation are FAR behind me.

It's mainly a mental game. The absolute hardest part for me so far was getting used to the pace of progress. Now that I have 20 weeks behind me it's a breeze but weeks like 8, 12....you are months in and those 2#'s per week seem so small. Your brain tries to tell you "nothing is happening". It's difficult at first to accept the pace . I think the reason is that in order to get yourself ready to loose a lot of weight you almost have to do the equivalent of throwing something super heavy with somebody when you say "ok on 3...1....2.....Three!" and it requires you to get some swings going first for the momentum or else you could never throw it. In weigh loss it's like you are getting up that momentum and say "1,2...Three!" but once you get to 3 you have to hold it out there for a few months before you can let go.

You do not get to see real time results based on immediate actions.

You have to find ways to mentally deal with that and accept it.

Work today pays off tomorrow and work tomorrow pays off next week and you need to keep on working next month for it to pay of next year....I sometimes ask myself if I want to be in shape for Thanksgiving 2010 or not just to think out into the future and keep the right perspective.

Enough for week 20 but I do want to say that my post for what diet am I on part 1 turned into more of a rant than I intended. I think it's because as I get further away from it and look back at myself and food...the relationship we had I get really pissed off. I'm mad at myself, food marketers, the food itself, but mostly myself. I'll get back into it on part 2 but the gist of it as whenever I think about the gimmick diet I get very aggravated. Instead of directing that aggravation into a general rant maybe I can figure out how to use that energy in a better way.....we shall see.

Week 20 42#'s down Very cool!

Houston we have chin ups

It took over two weeks and about 80 "at bar"s but I can now do one rep chin-up sets.

As soon as I did the first one I took 30 seconds rest and repeated with 3 more sets of one. Niccccccce!

Not sure if it was only a physical barrier or if some of it was mental because as soon as I went over the bar I "knew" I could do more. It wasn't a smooth pull either, I got stuck in the normal spot of just 2" shy but instead of doing my slow decline I added a second pull and toped the bar. The next reps were smoother pulls.

This was sort of a hard fought victory to be honest getting to the 1 chin up club and it might make most people laugh but my foot is in the door now baby....let's see if it's laughable in 60 days. ;)

Cool, after about 20 years I can do chin ups again....

What diet am I on? (part 1)

With 40#'s weight loss now people have started asking me (every 24-48 hours) "What diet are you on".

This is becoming a problem because 1)I don't have a prepared answer for them. 2)They are not prepared to hear the real answer. The answer is a lot easier to say than explain so I've got to figure out how to come up with a concise explanation that works.

The simple truth is the oldest diet philosophy in the world sums up my "diet":

Eat healthy foods and get some exercise.

Yesterday I tried to give those exact words as my diet and it didn't work at all. :
There is such a powerful marketing force in out food industry that it clouds people's judgment and confuses them against what they already know. We know that broccoli is more healthy than lean pockets. They have created zillions of things like lean pockets, Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, and weight watchers Pizza that people buy into as healthy food. Making an ice cream sandwich with less fat and sugar in it does not make it the nutritional equivalent of brown rice.

So healthy foods do not mean (alternative versions of unhealthy foods that have reduced fat, sugar, or are now made with fortified whole grains) healthy foods are real foods that are healthy PERIOD. Somebody said if your great grandma would not know how it grew/was raised don't eat it. There is no Lean pocket tree. It's an oversimplification but that is the idea.

Good clean healthy real foods are what I try to eat as often as possible. It's the absolute most important thing I've found that you have to get into your mind. Shift away from fake, processed, engineered diet foods. Shift away from obviously unhealthy foods and move towards as much good clean healthy food as you can eat and do that 99% of the time. If that is all I did I'm sure that (it would be slower) but I'm sure weight loss would be inevitable.

That is weight loss....fat loss...very nice but that is only part of it and health/fitness is the next part.

We could loose lots of weight/fat on the cabbage soup diet or the Diet Coke diet I'm sure but it will not be healthy.

To be healthy we need....and here comes the next million year old idea:

We need a healthy balanced diet that provides all the nutrients required to sustain good health. We need vitamins, minerals, carbs, protein, fats, and all the other tiny things it takes to run the machine. We can get really skinny on the all white Rice diet or the Micheal Beal diet of one apple and one can of tuna per day but just like it did him we are going to pay a price for doing that to ourselves.

How exactly to divvy up those individual food items is too complicated to say right now other than more age old wisdom a "healthy balanced diet".

I do eat plenty of meat...I wold like to eat less someday but I like this quote from Micheal Pollan:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

So that is the part 1 just to lay it out. In part 2 I'm going to try and make a short answer that explains the above in a way that people will accept. People strongly want to believe that there is a new whiz bang package diet program or product that will make them loose weight easily without having to..

Eat healthy foods and get some exercise. :(

to be continued...