Just missed it

I was up two tenths today.  I blame my stupid H&R Block job b/c I was going to go to the gym to work out after I got off Block at 9 but I ended up having to stay later b/c someone came in at 8:45.  I'm sure any activity at all would have burned off a pound or so and then I would have been down. 

I did work out with Peggy this morning and she gave me a plan that will definitely help me lose weight if I stick with it.  If.  But I need to justify my Freedom Center membership somehow, so maybe this will motivate me to go more often.

What a great day!

You have to love mid 60's and sunny in January.  After a weekend of two dinners out and a breakfast of Fr.-Wooten-going-away-party donuts while Will and I helped count the collection, I needed a workout or three.  So I decided to take my new bike out for a spin this afternoon.  What a difference from my other bike!  The rock hard (100ish psi) tires and lack of a suspension combined to pummel Jimmy's hind end pretty good.  But the lighter weight and more aggressive posture of the road bike definitely made me faster.  Granted, not as fast as Bob (or Joan.  Or Brendan, Peggy, Blaine, Carrie, or most likely, Lance), but faster than I used to be.  I did 11 miles on rolling hills and it took about 38 minutes. 

250s again

I'm back in baby's arms.  No, wait.  Back in the 250s.  Just barely, but it's official.  I've only been working out about twice a week due to the H&R Block job, so that's part of the problem.  My truly heroic intake of calories would be the other.  Starting next week I'll be at Block until 10 three days a week, so I can't even get to the gym afterwards like I did yesterday.  I managed to get out of there at 8:30 yesterday and played racquetball with Anil at 9.  (As a side note, how come people always beat me at racquetball these days?  I used to be the one giving tips and administering the beatings.  I wish you could bluff or go all in playing racquetball...)

As Peggy says, I'm going to have to give the morning workouts a try.  I'm not optimistic, though.

Still slacking in the posting department

Sorry guys, I'm just not used to this 60+ hour per week working thing.  Pretty much every single night of the week I'm either working at Block, or Therese is working, or I'm taking everyone's money at cards.  Here I am again at almost a week between posts.  Like last week, I'm not really down at all but still hanging right around that 260 mark.  Normally I'd find someone to play racquetball with tonight to get me over the hump for tomorrow's weigh in, but of course I'm working at Block until 9.  Ugh. 

On the up side, thanks for all the comments!  I think 8 is my most ever, even if one of them is a spam comment.  I guess I've truly arrived in the lofty company of the more famous bigwig bloggers now that I have my first spam comment.  Thank you Green Tea Weight Loss!

Congrats to my trainer Peggy Harris for getting a job at Sport and Health in Gainesville.  I know a couple of my readers are members there, so check her out.

Hello, also, to my high school friend Jess Angsten, who never has to worry about her weight.  Sorry, Jess, no Speedo picture.  I know Joe always looses a bunch of weight every Lent, so I need to do whatever he's doing this year.  How come he never plays racquetball or hoops with me any more?  I know the ankle's fully healed by now!

Weekly posts aren't going to cut it

I just realized that haven't posted since last Thursday, and yet no one called me on it.  Wake up, blogosphere!  Hold me accountable!

So I'm down a piddly .6 this week.  I guess it's better than being up.  Working H&R Block in the evenings is really taking up a lot of my time, and making things hard on Therese as well.  Thanks to Brendan for coming out and playing racquetball with me last night even though he had already worked out earlier in the day.  It's hard to get that guy tired but it definitely looked like he was fading down the stretech, which is probably the only reason I won a couple games.

Funny story.  I take my wedding ring off when I play racquetball to keep from getting a blister where I grip the racket.  Since we left Therese's birthday flowers in NJ by mistake, I went to the grocery store on my way home from the gym to get her another bundle.  As I was paying for the flowers, I saw my ring in the little change pouch of my wallet where I always put it.  Talking out loud to myself, I said somethingl like "Oops, better put this back on."  Then I realized how it must look.  Guy getting home late in the evening, buying flowers for his wife and putting his wedding ring back on!  Ugh!

Up? Down? Both?

I was 261.4 this morning.  Obviously that's up a bit from my last official weigh in, but it's down 3 pounds since Monday, so I don't know whether to be happy or not.  Either way I'm not proud.  My last big hurdle is this weekend with the big Nagle family Christmas in NJ, and then it's nose to the grindstone till Spring.  It doesn't help that until April 15th I'll be working at H&R Block a few nights a week when I could be working out.  I know Bob's answer would be to just get up in the morning and work out, but we all know Bob's insane.

Stupid New Years resolutioners

So I show up a few minutes late for hoops last night and there's 19 PEOPLE there.  We generally have 10-12.  I hope this follows the normal pattern and people fall off pretty quick.  I played so little that I hardly worked up a sweat.  (Of course, you could argue that I should have played better so my team could have stayed on the floor, and you'd be right.)

This morning I swam with Therese, and she crushed me.  That's getting old.  I'm going to have to play racquetball with her just to stroke my ego.

Tomorrow will be the first 2010 weigh in/picture, so we'll see where I am.  Hopefully down a little.

Wow, I'm average!

They say the average American gains 10 pounds during the holidays, and I was 264.4 this morning.  (That's not up 10 from my last weigh in on 12/17 but it is up exactly 10 from the 12/10 weigh in.)  I had studiously avoided checking Mr. Scale for the last couple of weeks, but I wasn't really surprised.  Therese and I got road bikes for Christmas (here's a picture), and I got a new racquetball racket to replace the one that tragically broke when it came into contact with a brick pillar. 

I also have my trusty Freedom Center membership, and hoops starts again tomorrow, so starting today I'm back on the wagon.  Therese has gotten rid of most of the cookies by taking them into work, and we've burned through most of our excess cheese from the wine and cheese party, so the temptation level is dropping a good bit.  (By the way, Mr. Simpson, the chocolate pie was DELICIOUS!)

Happy New Year everyone!

I'm still here

Haven't worked out much except for shoveling my driveway over and over again.  And every time I go upstairs I'm surrounded by more cookies and fudge and stuff.  (Thanks, Joan!  And happy birthday!)  We have friends coming in from out of town tonight, so there's another big dinner.  I think I'm doomed to not lose much until January, but I guess now that the roads are clear there's no reason I can't get to the gym and at least try to work out. 

Have a merry Christmas everyone!

Didn't make it :(

Well, this is my 2nd "failure" post.  Apparently 8 pounds is too much to overcome in 2 days.  Who knew?  I just have to make sure I don't let myself get that far behind any more.  Thursday morning I was 257.2, which is 2.8 pounds up.  That's the most I've been up.  Maybe I can work some of it off by shoveling tomorrow!

Halfway there

A little over that, actually.  This morning I was down 4.4 pounds from yesterday.  Now I just need to lose 3.3 more by tomorrow.  My weight loss pattern follows my work pattern.  Instead of a slow, even volume of work throughout the quarter, I'm always scrambling the last biweek or two.  My New Year's resolution should be to stay caught up at work and to level out the peaks and valleys a bit in the weight loss.

Serious backsliding

I've settled into an unfortunate pattern of weighing in Thursday and then going buck wild Friday through Sunday.  Then come Monday, I'm frantically trying to work off those 4 or 5 pounds plus a little more so I can show a loss on the chart.  It must be what an unethical CEO feels like, always trying to make the quarterly numbers.  So I get on the scale this morning and I'm up almost eight pounds from last Thursday.  I'll pause a moment to let that sink in.  EIGHT.  With 48 hours to go before this week's weigh in.  Sure, there was a Christmas party or two in there, but still.  It's totally unacceptable. 

So tonight I did Peggy's workout and also played racquetball, and I'm hoping Brendan can break away tomorrow night for more r-ball.  Still, that's not likely to be enough.  I could run Thursday, but the forecast is pretty ugly.  Sure, the treadmills at the Freedom Center are probably stronger than mine so I won't have the embarrassing "belt-pinch" issue, but how boring is that?  Maybe a pick up game of hoops with the brothers...

Slide show updated

I added the last six weeks worth of pictures tonight.  Not a huge difference between them, but I am starting to notice more of a difference between the beginning and now.

This weekend wasn't so great.  I had a Christmas party Saturday night and hung out with the kids all day today eating chips and watching football.  And eating frozen pizza.  Therese is sick in bed and I obviously can't fend for myself.  The weekends have always been hardest for me, but this week doesn't look good either.  I have my office Christmas party Tuesday and no basketball until after the new year.  Ugh.

Racquetball thwarted

I was supposed to play racquetball with Brendan on Friday morning, but he called me a few minutes before broken down on the side of the road with a flat tire.  Since the wheel was stuck, he ended up having to call the tow truck.  I went over to the gym by myself and played solo basketball, streaking down the court doing amazing layups and hoping no one was watching.

Then this morning I played racquetball with Will.  HE managed to get a good workout, since the court is pretty big when you're four feet tall.  Me, not so much.  But still, I've technically been to the gym every day since I joined on Thursday!

Slow and steady wins the race?

Down another 1.6 this week.  I sure have leveled off the last few weeks, but it is a challenging time of year.  I have Andy's party Saturday and then my work "party" on Tuesday.  AND no basketball to counteract things.  I need to make sure that the days in between those two aren't too damaging.  I do think I'm going to finally join the Freedom Center so I can swim and run and such this winter.

Time for a cleanse

Roadblocks to weight loss can show up in unexpected places.  I went downtown to the Reagan building yesterday for an all day trademark conference.  (Yes, it's really as boring as it sounds.)  In the past, they've had a continental breakfast and fruit with the coffee breaks.  Yesterday, much more. 

The body count for the day:

1 ham/egg/cheese croissant
1 slice mushroom/spinach quiche
4 Cokes (not diet Cokes) (Did I mention the conference was boring?)
Lunch was curry chicken with cheesecake for dessert
3 cookies during the afternoon coffee (or Coke) break
1 large soft pretzel

Then a delicious dinner from Therese (I mean that seriously, not sarcastically; there was none left), followed by (when no one was looking) three more cookies.  If anyone out there (I mean either of you out there) ever feel prideful, just start a weight loss blog.  Talk about humility-causing!

So I think I need to make a clean carb break, as Kim suggested.  For the next few days, until the WDP Christmas party Saturady, I'm going to try to drink a lot of tea and eat just a little, mostly protein and vegetables. 

Updates

My personal trainer, Peggy, was nice enough to come over today and redo my measurements.  My body fat dropped from 29% to 26.6%.  That really doesn't seem like very much to me.  I know it's an inexact science, but if I understand it right, what it means is that I'm now carrying around 68 pounds of fat (.266 x 256) instead of 86 (.29 x 295).  But since I've lost 39 pounds, and only 18 was theoretically fat, what's all the rest?  21 pounds of muscle?  I don't think I had 21 pounds of muscle total before this started.  Oh well, I'll just go with the general trend (down) as well as the specific body part measurements.

Updates coming!

I just looked at the list of weigh ins on the side of my blog and realized that it's now been exactly 3 months, to the day, since I started this thing.  If you'd told me 3 months ago that I'd be down 39 pounds at this point I'd have been pleased.  If I look back on this on March 3rd and I've lost 39 more pounds then I'll be thrilled.  First, b/c the next 39 is always the hardest.  Second, b/c that will mean that I'll be weighing 217 which would be the lightest for me since college.  I think 225ish was the lowest I got in 2006.  It also means that when I run the Knoxville half marathon with Shiny* (which I haven't yet officially agreed to do), I'll be at prime fighting weight.

I'm going to see if I can stop by Peggy's house tonight and update my body measurements and body fat analysis.  I'm very curious to see the improvement.

* Shiny Head Pete, MobWars nickname of Erin Peterson, aka The General.

I truly can't believe it

I woke up at 260.2 this morning, so I figured weighing in less than last week was pretty much hopeless.  I figured a good, long run was the only possible way, but even then I figured it was a long shot.  During my run, I was actually composing my "I'm a failure" blog post in my head.  It was actually pretty funny, but now I don't have to use it after all!  I ran 5 again (albeit slower than Sunday, when I had Therese pacing me), and after my shower I was 256 even!  Alleluia!  I wouldn't want Shiny Head Pete, on the occasion of his visit tomorrow, to see me as a failure.  Speaking of failure, I probably should have had that drinking contest with him when I was closer to 300 since I've now lost a good part of my advantage.

I need a pick me up

OK, blogosphere, here's where you help me instead of me inspiring you.  I'm in a rut.  A rut the size that Rosie O'Donnell would make if she fell over into wet sand.  Bigger even.  Like a Redskins-sized rut.  I watched last night's blowout on the downstairs TV b/c my brother came over to watch the game with me, and I ended up the night on Pantry Inventory Duty somehow.  (Let's see, popcorn?  Check.  Cookies?  Check.  Crackers?  Check.  Soft pretzel?  Check...)

I don't, as Dave suggests as a possibility, think it's indicative of anything larger than just a love of food.  Sweet, salty, fatty food.  Why was I not born with a love of celery??