Oh hey, fancy seeing you here.
So a whole month goes by, on the back of the previous slack month, with nary a post from me.
I won't bore you with the details except for this:
...booyah, fatpants, I finally made it to 220.
So that's 16lbs in 97 days, a little less than 14 weeks, a smidge over a pound a week which means that 215 by November 4th is maybe reachable. If I can maintain this level of weight loss to the end of the year that'll put me at about 205lbs, which is my lowest weight since 2004. Can you imagine the unbridled joy of it?
Sadly between now and the end of the year is my birthday, Thanksgiving and Christmas. So if I manage to get to the end of the year at 220 I think I'll call it a success.
I'll write more things as they happen, hopefully before I turn 35.
Sorry this was so boring.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Day 67 - September 2nd
Okay, only three more days to go till we're at ten weeks and I weight in at....
...I'm not telling you without one of those finger/desk drumrolls...
Better.
...weigh in at...226lbs.
I know, WTF happened?
I'll tell you what happened, August happened.
With two big birthday events, many days of eating like a fat kid who loves cake, and a weekend all to ourselves where Jen and I vegged out on the couch and played video games, I'm thinking that August is to blame.
So now I am faced with the prospect of shedding 6lbs in as many days.
What to do, what to do? I know...
I'm going to reset the goal, right now.
It's my birthday in nine weeks. Let's see if I can get to 215 by then. That's keeping track at about a pound a week, and if I get there before my birthday, I'll set a more aggressive target for the next one.
So what's been happening in the life of The Dieter?
Not a whole heck of a lot, actually. For Terry's (Jen's mother) birthday we compiled a book of memories of friends and relatives, talking about good memories of the lady and what they like best about her. It was a fun thing to compile. People recall the strangest things. It was a little bitter-sweet for her to read, because things that just were what they were all those years ago, viewed with hindsight take on more meaning. The abused childhood friend who remembers hiding from pretend monsters, the long-time friend who remembers Terry's insistently compassionate response when the friend was suddenly widowed, the niece who is so proud to share her name.
My mother-in-law is an amazing lady, who doesn't just touch people's hearts and lives, she hugs them, holds them close, and does it all without asking for anything in return.
So there was cake for that, there was cake for Jen's birthday, and if you know this family, you know that there is first birthday, second birthday...chances are there will be three or more birthday things, most of which involve a good deal of eating.
We had the Home Owners Association meeting a couple of weeks ago, and I am, somehow, now the newsletter guy for the neighborhood, so I have to think of things to write about. I think I got the gig because I send out marketing newsletters every couple of months, and I was surprised at how many people actually read them. I had a few people let me know that they like getting them, so I will continue. I'm working on that right now, in fact. Well, not right now, but you know...
We watched the latest season of Weeds, which was fun, and we're playing inFamous on the PS3, which is slightly addictive.
The English football has started, gridiron will be back in a couple of weeks, and so will college football, so I am very excited. I've said it before, but the song "It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is about September and October. Football (both kinds) have returned and pennant and wildcard races and heating up in baseball. How can another time of the year be more wonderful than that?
...I'm not telling you without one of those finger/desk drumrolls...
Better.
...weigh in at...226lbs.
I know, WTF happened?
I'll tell you what happened, August happened.
With two big birthday events, many days of eating like a fat kid who loves cake, and a weekend all to ourselves where Jen and I vegged out on the couch and played video games, I'm thinking that August is to blame.
So now I am faced with the prospect of shedding 6lbs in as many days.
What to do, what to do? I know...
I'm going to reset the goal, right now.
It's my birthday in nine weeks. Let's see if I can get to 215 by then. That's keeping track at about a pound a week, and if I get there before my birthday, I'll set a more aggressive target for the next one.
So what's been happening in the life of The Dieter?
Not a whole heck of a lot, actually. For Terry's (Jen's mother) birthday we compiled a book of memories of friends and relatives, talking about good memories of the lady and what they like best about her. It was a fun thing to compile. People recall the strangest things. It was a little bitter-sweet for her to read, because things that just were what they were all those years ago, viewed with hindsight take on more meaning. The abused childhood friend who remembers hiding from pretend monsters, the long-time friend who remembers Terry's insistently compassionate response when the friend was suddenly widowed, the niece who is so proud to share her name.
My mother-in-law is an amazing lady, who doesn't just touch people's hearts and lives, she hugs them, holds them close, and does it all without asking for anything in return.
So there was cake for that, there was cake for Jen's birthday, and if you know this family, you know that there is first birthday, second birthday...chances are there will be three or more birthday things, most of which involve a good deal of eating.
We had the Home Owners Association meeting a couple of weeks ago, and I am, somehow, now the newsletter guy for the neighborhood, so I have to think of things to write about. I think I got the gig because I send out marketing newsletters every couple of months, and I was surprised at how many people actually read them. I had a few people let me know that they like getting them, so I will continue. I'm working on that right now, in fact. Well, not right now, but you know...
We watched the latest season of Weeds, which was fun, and we're playing inFamous on the PS3, which is slightly addictive.
The English football has started, gridiron will be back in a couple of weeks, and so will college football, so I am very excited. I've said it before, but the song "It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" is about September and October. Football (both kinds) have returned and pennant and wildcard races and heating up in baseball. How can another time of the year be more wonderful than that?
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Day 57 - August 22nd
Who are you calling a big slacker, narrow-pants?
So it's like this:
It was Jen's birthday (when last you and I spoke) and that involved a lot of food...like this...
..and especially this...
But, at 3pm that Sunday, we got a call from home that someone had done this...
...and this...
...and suddenly our beautiful tomato crop was going to fit into a small basket.
Apparently some kid who had been getting a driving lesson came down the hill behind our house, jumped off the side of the road, hit two cars in the driveway behind us, careened through a couple of trees and crashed through our two vegetable beds, finally coming to a rest along our back hedge, fifty feet from where it first violated the vegetables. Total effing downer.
So the rest of Sunday and a couple of days after we spent time picking what fruit we could, and ripped up the plants.
"But Dunc, that doesn't explain the other ten days you've been AWOL, so what's up, fat butt?"
Oh, that's ust great, beanpole, I don't see you making comments lately? Did I get fatter, is that why you don't want to leave any comments?
Actually, I've been struggling to push below 225, but yesterday, after mowing for two hours in the baking-hot sun I got down to 223. Yes, I went back up to 227 when I drank...like...five gallons of water. Work and home has been hectic, and so other exercise has been mnu-hum-na-hum-da-dum...or whatever. Shut up.
Anyway, it's Jen's mother's birthday tomorrow, and we had an early celebration on Wednesday, when Jen's aunt, uncle and cousin came into town from Rhode Island. I made barbecue ribs. They were delicious, thanks. Sorry you didn't get an invite but apparently you aren't cool enough, so work on that, won't you?
So now, here I sit, late Saturday afternoon, watching "In Plain Sight" on the DVR, thinking about what we might have for dinner tonight, and how I'm going to drop that 7lbs in the two weeks before my Labor Day target. When I began this adventure..what is it, eight weeks ago...I knew it would be tough and that there would be times the weight came off slower than others, but I never really thought about the correlation between losing weight and how frequently I update this here blog. Seems that writing about it keeps me motivated to do something about it, and while I'm not writing I lose weight slower, and it takes more effort. Maybe, probably, I need to get back to doing this a few times a week, because I know that it works better for me when I do.
Your job is to read, and keep me honest and writing. Could you do that for me, slim?
Good.
So it's like this:
It was Jen's birthday (when last you and I spoke) and that involved a lot of food...like this...
..and especially this...
But, at 3pm that Sunday, we got a call from home that someone had done this...
...and this...
...and suddenly our beautiful tomato crop was going to fit into a small basket.
Apparently some kid who had been getting a driving lesson came down the hill behind our house, jumped off the side of the road, hit two cars in the driveway behind us, careened through a couple of trees and crashed through our two vegetable beds, finally coming to a rest along our back hedge, fifty feet from where it first violated the vegetables. Total effing downer.
So the rest of Sunday and a couple of days after we spent time picking what fruit we could, and ripped up the plants.
"But Dunc, that doesn't explain the other ten days you've been AWOL, so what's up, fat butt?"
Oh, that's ust great, beanpole, I don't see you making comments lately? Did I get fatter, is that why you don't want to leave any comments?
Actually, I've been struggling to push below 225, but yesterday, after mowing for two hours in the baking-hot sun I got down to 223. Yes, I went back up to 227 when I drank...like...five gallons of water. Work and home has been hectic, and so other exercise has been mnu-hum-na-hum-da-dum...or whatever. Shut up.
Anyway, it's Jen's mother's birthday tomorrow, and we had an early celebration on Wednesday, when Jen's aunt, uncle and cousin came into town from Rhode Island. I made barbecue ribs. They were delicious, thanks. Sorry you didn't get an invite but apparently you aren't cool enough, so work on that, won't you?
So now, here I sit, late Saturday afternoon, watching "In Plain Sight" on the DVR, thinking about what we might have for dinner tonight, and how I'm going to drop that 7lbs in the two weeks before my Labor Day target. When I began this adventure..what is it, eight weeks ago...I knew it would be tough and that there would be times the weight came off slower than others, but I never really thought about the correlation between losing weight and how frequently I update this here blog. Seems that writing about it keeps me motivated to do something about it, and while I'm not writing I lose weight slower, and it takes more effort. Maybe, probably, I need to get back to doing this a few times a week, because I know that it works better for me when I do.
Your job is to read, and keep me honest and writing. Could you do that for me, slim?
Good.
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Day 43 - August 8th
So here's the thing, a little math for you:
Q. L+APO(G+GA)= ?
What is the answer when:
L = Laptop
APO = Accident Prone Owner
G = Gravity
GA = Guitar Amplifier
If you guessed something along the lines of "buggered up laptop" then for the last few days you would have been 100% dead on balls accurate.
Since my warranty expired a month and a week ago, and the help desk people are based in darkest Outsourcistan, I think it's unlikely that they will heed my call for help under the expired warranty. And so, last night, armed with a couple of screw drivers, a spare hard drive, and a cast-iron will to "make this effing thing work", I settled down to make it effing work.
As you can probably tell, I am claiming victory over technology by the application of brute force and adult language.
Yes, victory. I may have just had to install Windows to the spare, significantly smaller, hard drive so I can check the status of the damaged hard drive. And now, it turns out that the laptop, leaping lemming-like from my grasp and clattering against my little amp, causing the hard drive to explode out of the machine, has physically damaged the drive to the point where it won't work ever again. Poop. Well, I guess I have the first item on my 2009 Christmas List.
The what? Oh, the diet! That old thing. Yeah, well, the thing about that is: shut the hell up.
I'm at the lake this weekend to celebrate Jen turning thirty-hmmph, and that means that I will likely put on about twenty pounds because I know what the menu is, and the menu is good.
I will update again once we return home, in the meantime, there may be pictures of the delicious foods, and (who knows) maybe the recipes themselves.
Q. L+APO(G+GA)= ?
What is the answer when:
L = Laptop
APO = Accident Prone Owner
G = Gravity
GA = Guitar Amplifier
If you guessed something along the lines of "buggered up laptop" then for the last few days you would have been 100% dead on balls accurate.
Since my warranty expired a month and a week ago, and the help desk people are based in darkest Outsourcistan, I think it's unlikely that they will heed my call for help under the expired warranty. And so, last night, armed with a couple of screw drivers, a spare hard drive, and a cast-iron will to "make this effing thing work", I settled down to make it effing work.
As you can probably tell, I am claiming victory over technology by the application of brute force and adult language.
Yes, victory. I may have just had to install Windows to the spare, significantly smaller, hard drive so I can check the status of the damaged hard drive. And now, it turns out that the laptop, leaping lemming-like from my grasp and clattering against my little amp, causing the hard drive to explode out of the machine, has physically damaged the drive to the point where it won't work ever again. Poop. Well, I guess I have the first item on my 2009 Christmas List.
The what? Oh, the diet! That old thing. Yeah, well, the thing about that is: shut the hell up.
I'm at the lake this weekend to celebrate Jen turning thirty-hmmph, and that means that I will likely put on about twenty pounds because I know what the menu is, and the menu is good.
I will update again once we return home, in the meantime, there may be pictures of the delicious foods, and (who knows) maybe the recipes themselves.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Day 34 - July 30th
So I have only one thing to post for you tonight, and it's this:
SERIOUSLY THE BEST 5-MINUTE POPCORN
by Duncan
This is my own new secret recipe, and I'm including nutritional info for those of you who are so inclined. This recipe and the nutritional information is for two servings, so feel free to share it with a friend. :)
You will need:
Your ingredients are:
All you need to do is:
1. Put the butter in the small receptacle. Nuke it for 20-30 seconds until it is melted (the butter, not the bowl)
2. Put the sugar and the cinnamon stick (break it if you need to) in the blade grinder and whirr it to a fine powder. I suppose you can use granulated sugar and cinnamon powder if you want to, or even soft brown sugar, and skip this step. I just found that it doesn't work quite as well.
3. Put the popcorn kernels in the melted butter. Stir them to make sure they're evenly coated.
4. Add the cinnamon sugar powder to the popcorn kernels and stir until they look evenly coated.
5. Pour the popcorn into the paper bag, leaving plenty of room for popping. Fold the top over - you can probably staple it, too if you want, but if you're worried about killing your microwave just make sure you have a sharp fold that will probably stay closed. When you have the thing closed, hold the bottom of the bag in one hand and the fold in the other and give it another quick shake, just to puff out the bag a little and loosen any kernals that have stuck together.
6. Nuke the bag for two minutes. None of that crap about listening until the pops ae 3-4 second apart. Two minutes. I'd rather you had some unpopped kernels than the burnt stink-bag that you get when you over-cook it. If you've gona off-script and added other stuff (like nutmeg and cloves and ginger for Christmas Popcorn) you're going to need a little extra, but seriously, you're on your own.
7. Take the bag out of the microwave and, using a pot-holder or dish towel, grab the bottom of the bag and give it another shake, like you did two minutes ago. Put the bag on the counter and open it slowly - there will be stam in there, and the butter on the bottom of the bag is hot and burny. Pour the popped popcorn into the large bowl and...let it cool for a couple of minutes. This will allow the popcorn to crisp and will save you from burning your mouth with red-hot sugar.
Told you it was easy. And, what's more, it's not horrible for you.
To there you have it. Foolproof perfect cinnamon sugar popcorn.
SERIOUSLY THE BEST 5-MINUTE POPCORN
by Duncan
This is my own new secret recipe, and I'm including nutritional info for those of you who are so inclined. This recipe and the nutritional information is for two servings, so feel free to share it with a friend. :)
You will need:
- One small microwave proof receptacle (bowl, jug, cup, whatever you have)
- One thin paper bag, like you use for lunches
- One large bowl for serving
- One clean blade grinder (the kind you might use for coffee beans)
- One microwave
Your ingredients are:
- 1/4 cup / 50g unpopped popcorn
- 1T / 25g unsalted butter
- 4t / 20g turbinado/demerara sugar
- 1 stick of cinnamon
All you need to do is:
1. Put the butter in the small receptacle. Nuke it for 20-30 seconds until it is melted (the butter, not the bowl)
2. Put the sugar and the cinnamon stick (break it if you need to) in the blade grinder and whirr it to a fine powder. I suppose you can use granulated sugar and cinnamon powder if you want to, or even soft brown sugar, and skip this step. I just found that it doesn't work quite as well.
3. Put the popcorn kernels in the melted butter. Stir them to make sure they're evenly coated.
4. Add the cinnamon sugar powder to the popcorn kernels and stir until they look evenly coated.
5. Pour the popcorn into the paper bag, leaving plenty of room for popping. Fold the top over - you can probably staple it, too if you want, but if you're worried about killing your microwave just make sure you have a sharp fold that will probably stay closed. When you have the thing closed, hold the bottom of the bag in one hand and the fold in the other and give it another quick shake, just to puff out the bag a little and loosen any kernals that have stuck together.
6. Nuke the bag for two minutes. None of that crap about listening until the pops ae 3-4 second apart. Two minutes. I'd rather you had some unpopped kernels than the burnt stink-bag that you get when you over-cook it. If you've gona off-script and added other stuff (like nutmeg and cloves and ginger for Christmas Popcorn) you're going to need a little extra, but seriously, you're on your own.
7. Take the bag out of the microwave and, using a pot-holder or dish towel, grab the bottom of the bag and give it another shake, like you did two minutes ago. Put the bag on the counter and open it slowly - there will be stam in there, and the butter on the bottom of the bag is hot and burny. Pour the popped popcorn into the large bowl and...let it cool for a couple of minutes. This will allow the popcorn to crisp and will save you from burning your mouth with red-hot sugar.
Told you it was easy. And, what's more, it's not horrible for you.
To there you have it. Foolproof perfect cinnamon sugar popcorn.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Day 32 - July 28th
IN YOUR FACE SCALES!
That's right, for the first time in a long time I'm at 225lbs. How have I achieved this miracle of a pound every third day? In my good friend David's words, "just by not eating stupid crap, eating sensible portions". And also with the help of the half-dozen or so people who read my blog and send me supportive messages periodically - I really can't thank you all enough. Oh wait - when I get to 195 I'll make us all a big cake - just out of lard and suet, and frost it with arterial plaque. Sound good? Good.
So what's with the slacking off on the exercise, dude?
Good question, and I have an excellent answer. After I recovered from my near-death snot-sickness, I decided that now was a good time to have a doctor look at an ingrown hair on my thigh. Oh - if you're squeamish, skip to the next paragraph now. The doctor looked at it and gave me anti-biotice because the hair follicle had gotten infected and resembled an unsquishable pimple. When that didn't work, the doctor sent me to a guy to remove it surgically. What they do is slice open the skin and scoop out the whole infected follicle, and then stitch it back up. Which took about 20 minutes under local anaestetic. Long story short, I have a bit of a sore leg, so no strenuous exercise for a few more days, at least till it heals up properly.
Two things have happened the last week or so, though that will worry me if I still feel this way in two more weeks. 1. I'm not very hungry at all. 2. I can't hardly sleep. Around 1am my body will complain that it's too hot, no matter what. Then my arms and legs decide to twitch, but not in an over-caffeinated way - more like a brief tensing like I want to kick or punch. Then I will have 15-20 minutes where I almost fall asleep, then I feel too hot. Then the whole thing repeats. This will go on until 3 or 4am, when my body finally shuts down despite protestations about heat and twitchiness. I've read about Restless Leg Syndrome, and I'm pretty sure I don't have that. I fear that what I do have is Old.
So anyway, not sleeping and not eating seem to work for weight loss. So hurrah, I feel healthier already.
Jen is out of town on a business trip till tomorrow night, so it's likely that during the day tomorrow I'll be picking up the empty beer cans and making sure that the hookers took all their drugs and underwear with them.
Being left home alone is much less fun when you're 34 than when you're 17. When you're 17, all you want to do is get your friends to come over, drink beer, play video games and fool around. When you're 34, all you want to do is sleep, veg out on the sofa and play video games.
Anyway, for those of you who still care at this point, yogurt was lunch, quesadillas were dinner, scotch is supper. Yes, you can tell that Jen is out of town, and I don't care.
Now...off to take a sleeping pill and then see if it kicks in. Failing that, I will be playing littlebig planet - see you there.
That's right, for the first time in a long time I'm at 225lbs. How have I achieved this miracle of a pound every third day? In my good friend David's words, "just by not eating stupid crap, eating sensible portions". And also with the help of the half-dozen or so people who read my blog and send me supportive messages periodically - I really can't thank you all enough. Oh wait - when I get to 195 I'll make us all a big cake - just out of lard and suet, and frost it with arterial plaque. Sound good? Good.
So what's with the slacking off on the exercise, dude?
Good question, and I have an excellent answer. After I recovered from my near-death snot-sickness, I decided that now was a good time to have a doctor look at an ingrown hair on my thigh. Oh - if you're squeamish, skip to the next paragraph now. The doctor looked at it and gave me anti-biotice because the hair follicle had gotten infected and resembled an unsquishable pimple. When that didn't work, the doctor sent me to a guy to remove it surgically. What they do is slice open the skin and scoop out the whole infected follicle, and then stitch it back up. Which took about 20 minutes under local anaestetic. Long story short, I have a bit of a sore leg, so no strenuous exercise for a few more days, at least till it heals up properly.
Two things have happened the last week or so, though that will worry me if I still feel this way in two more weeks. 1. I'm not very hungry at all. 2. I can't hardly sleep. Around 1am my body will complain that it's too hot, no matter what. Then my arms and legs decide to twitch, but not in an over-caffeinated way - more like a brief tensing like I want to kick or punch. Then I will have 15-20 minutes where I almost fall asleep, then I feel too hot. Then the whole thing repeats. This will go on until 3 or 4am, when my body finally shuts down despite protestations about heat and twitchiness. I've read about Restless Leg Syndrome, and I'm pretty sure I don't have that. I fear that what I do have is Old.
So anyway, not sleeping and not eating seem to work for weight loss. So hurrah, I feel healthier already.
Jen is out of town on a business trip till tomorrow night, so it's likely that during the day tomorrow I'll be picking up the empty beer cans and making sure that the hookers took all their drugs and underwear with them.
Being left home alone is much less fun when you're 34 than when you're 17. When you're 17, all you want to do is get your friends to come over, drink beer, play video games and fool around. When you're 34, all you want to do is sleep, veg out on the sofa and play video games.
Anyway, for those of you who still care at this point, yogurt was lunch, quesadillas were dinner, scotch is supper. Yes, you can tell that Jen is out of town, and I don't care.
Now...off to take a sleeping pill and then see if it kicks in. Failing that, I will be playing littlebig planet - see you there.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Day 29 - July 25th
Wow, I am a lazy boy. Really. This was supposed to be a daily commitment, but you know...I have a life...and writing every day doesn't rank too high on my must-do list of things I must do. Certainly not as high as watching cartoons with my nephew, or playing video games. Some days, though,it's higher than getting dressed. Today is one of those days. So here I sit, in front of the tv, laptop on top of my lap, clad in a t-shirt and comfy lounge pants, thinking of how best to convey the daily struggle to keep losing pounds.
So. Ghostbusters. They're making a third movie, due out in 2011, if they see it through. I dunno, though. Bill Murray and Dan Ayckroyd got pretty fat in their old age, and I just don't see them squeezing into those jump suits again. Probably you remember the first movie, when they go to the hotel and they corner the ghost in the dining room. After shooting the place up, they get the ghost in the proton beams and wrestle it back and forth until it's over the trap and then...whoosh, show's over.
While getting to 230 was the equivalent of that scene (easy, simple, quick), trying to edge to 220 is a bigger struggle. Some days I manage to get down to 226, and then the next day I'm back at 229. It feels much more like fighting the Marshmallow Man, and some days I look like the Marshmallow Man. All pudgy and grinning.
Anyhow, that's the fun part, now comes the lesson.
In the 1920s, the Hawthorne Plant in Cicero, Illinois, was making electrical relays. The management thought it would have a little experiment. In one part of the factory they increased the light, and those workers managed to make more relays. The management thought it was obvious: more light means the workers can see better and therefore work faster. Then they made that section cleaner, and productivity went up, they gave the workers more breaks and productivity went up. The management thought this was all amazing. Then they started to return the two areas to the same standard. They reduced the lighting, took away the breaks and allowed the workers to clean their own stations. But oddly, every time they changed something back productivity went up again. Eventually, both areas were back at the original conditions, but the experimental area was working much faster than the non-experimental area.
The big-wigs scratched their chins and wondered: WTF.
It took another couple of decades for someone to figure it out. They called it the Hawthorne Effect. The fact that when someone knows they're being watched, they work harder, and that every change demonstrated to the workers that they were being watched. You and I just call it "Quick! Look busy, the boss is here!"
The reason I mention it is that weight watchers and other diet and exercise things make us do that to ourselves. We change things to try to lose weight and as long as we're being honest about applying ourselves to each new thing, we're successful, even if it's just for a while.
So I'll leave you to ponder on that while I go make some lunch and figure out what I want to do with the rest of the day. Maybe getting dressed will feature.
So. Ghostbusters. They're making a third movie, due out in 2011, if they see it through. I dunno, though. Bill Murray and Dan Ayckroyd got pretty fat in their old age, and I just don't see them squeezing into those jump suits again. Probably you remember the first movie, when they go to the hotel and they corner the ghost in the dining room. After shooting the place up, they get the ghost in the proton beams and wrestle it back and forth until it's over the trap and then...whoosh, show's over.
While getting to 230 was the equivalent of that scene (easy, simple, quick), trying to edge to 220 is a bigger struggle. Some days I manage to get down to 226, and then the next day I'm back at 229. It feels much more like fighting the Marshmallow Man, and some days I look like the Marshmallow Man. All pudgy and grinning.
Anyhow, that's the fun part, now comes the lesson.
In the 1920s, the Hawthorne Plant in Cicero, Illinois, was making electrical relays. The management thought it would have a little experiment. In one part of the factory they increased the light, and those workers managed to make more relays. The management thought it was obvious: more light means the workers can see better and therefore work faster. Then they made that section cleaner, and productivity went up, they gave the workers more breaks and productivity went up. The management thought this was all amazing. Then they started to return the two areas to the same standard. They reduced the lighting, took away the breaks and allowed the workers to clean their own stations. But oddly, every time they changed something back productivity went up again. Eventually, both areas were back at the original conditions, but the experimental area was working much faster than the non-experimental area.
The big-wigs scratched their chins and wondered: WTF.
It took another couple of decades for someone to figure it out. They called it the Hawthorne Effect. The fact that when someone knows they're being watched, they work harder, and that every change demonstrated to the workers that they were being watched. You and I just call it "Quick! Look busy, the boss is here!"
The reason I mention it is that weight watchers and other diet and exercise things make us do that to ourselves. We change things to try to lose weight and as long as we're being honest about applying ourselves to each new thing, we're successful, even if it's just for a while.
So I'll leave you to ponder on that while I go make some lunch and figure out what I want to do with the rest of the day. Maybe getting dressed will feature.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Day 26 - July 22nd
Well, four days off from writing and what have I done...?
On Friday we indulged in our new tradition of eating pancakes and bacon for dinner, which is totally the best dinner ever. Carbs and protein. Yummy.
Saturday was awesome. We had hot dogs for lunch, went out and played pool and had a burger, got ice cream on the way home, took a late night trip for Jen's job and got Krispy Kreme donuts on the way home. I dare not tell you what that did for my weight loss.
Sunday was slightly more moderate.
Yesterday was hot dogs (again) and potatoes and slaw.
I am back to 230.
This makes me sad (on the one hand) because I'd been doing so well; and happy (on the other hand) because I was back up to 235 on Sunday, and it's gone away again. Time for more discipline, I'm afraid, and not the fun kind.
I've been looking for something for my phone that helps me measure my walking workouts. So far nothing has done the job, but today, like Indy finding the Holy Grail, I found my software. And it's free. If you have a phone that is compatible, I urge you to go to www.sportypal.com and get the software.
I set off for a quick walk around the block to try it out. The results are shown here:
Isn't that awesome? You can move it around the frame like google maps. It shows in full on their website, I just have my frame set really narrow.
And it allows you to archive each workout, and allows you to track walking, running, blading, cycling and "freestyle", whatever that is. All you do is tell it the kind of workout you're going to do, tell it to start, work out, tell it to stop, then tell it to upload, and it transfers the data to your account at sportypal.
I'm going to lose tons of weight just because I like to look at the nice workout summary. :)
On Friday we indulged in our new tradition of eating pancakes and bacon for dinner, which is totally the best dinner ever. Carbs and protein. Yummy.
Saturday was awesome. We had hot dogs for lunch, went out and played pool and had a burger, got ice cream on the way home, took a late night trip for Jen's job and got Krispy Kreme donuts on the way home. I dare not tell you what that did for my weight loss.
Sunday was slightly more moderate.
Yesterday was hot dogs (again) and potatoes and slaw.
I am back to 230.
This makes me sad (on the one hand) because I'd been doing so well; and happy (on the other hand) because I was back up to 235 on Sunday, and it's gone away again. Time for more discipline, I'm afraid, and not the fun kind.
I've been looking for something for my phone that helps me measure my walking workouts. So far nothing has done the job, but today, like Indy finding the Holy Grail, I found my software. And it's free. If you have a phone that is compatible, I urge you to go to www.sportypal.com and get the software.
I set off for a quick walk around the block to try it out. The results are shown here:
Isn't that awesome? You can move it around the frame like google maps. It shows in full on their website, I just have my frame set really narrow.
And it allows you to archive each workout, and allows you to track walking, running, blading, cycling and "freestyle", whatever that is. All you do is tell it the kind of workout you're going to do, tell it to start, work out, tell it to stop, then tell it to upload, and it transfers the data to your account at sportypal.
I'm going to lose tons of weight just because I like to look at the nice workout summary. :)
Friday, July 17, 2009
Day 22 - July 17th
Wow, it's really humid today. And the thing with humid weather is that it makes me want to nap. Also cold weather and rainy weather, sunny, cloudy and snowing also make me want to nap.
I'm not sure if it's my body's way of telling me I'm taking in fewer calories, or if it's a hangover from my medication, or something else, but it's hard to feel motivated to do anything when what I want to do is take a nap.
I just got back from a couple of hours of babysitting Bradley. He's coming up to three, so I thought I'd take him to a fun store, and then to Jen's office, which is dog-friendly. We met Jen at World Market and had a look around candy and toys and things. He spotted a few wooden cars and took them out of their respective buckets and began playing with them on the floor. He did not - DID NOT - want to leave them when it was time to check out, and the ones that were wrapped in plastic were just not good enough, he wanted the ones that a hundred kids had already smashed and chipped paint off. I swear, I don't understand the lack of discernment kids exhibit.
Let me preface he office visit by saying that Jen's office is awesome, progressive and very friendly. When we arrived there were Krisy Kreme donuts on the reception desk. When Jen asked if Bradley wanted one, he said "No", but still took the one she handed to him and proceeded to munch on it for the whole of the visit.
At Jen's office there are a lot of dogs, notably Scooby and Gizmo, a pair of boxers that are brought to work by a near-neighbor in the office. Bradley wasn't impressed with those, but Abby, a tiny white fluff of a dog, and ParkChop, a mini dachshund, were fun to chase around. And since Jen's office is very open, it was kinda fun to chase the Bradley around the cubicles as he threw his head back and did that giggling blind sprint that toddlers do. I say that that style of running is probably to blame for more toddler accidents than anything else.
On the way out, he said he wanted a donut. Kids remember the most random stuff. I told him that there were no donuts, and then he said he wanted Jen. He's pretty good with the mommy/daddy manipulation, and he's cute enough that it's hard to say no. Anyhow, he fell asleep, donut-less, listening to the oldies station on the way home.
And now I have to mow the grass, which I have let slide for two weeks, with the being sick. I'm not really looking forward to it, but if I can cross it off the list for the weekend, the weekend will be better for it.
Oh - food. Veal and spinach burgers last night, with tomato mozzarella salad. Amazingly still not going over 230, even when I eat like an idiot. So maybe this thing is working. I guess we'll know soon enough, right?
Was that thunder I just heard? Crap - might not be able to mow after all...
I'm not sure if it's my body's way of telling me I'm taking in fewer calories, or if it's a hangover from my medication, or something else, but it's hard to feel motivated to do anything when what I want to do is take a nap.
I just got back from a couple of hours of babysitting Bradley. He's coming up to three, so I thought I'd take him to a fun store, and then to Jen's office, which is dog-friendly. We met Jen at World Market and had a look around candy and toys and things. He spotted a few wooden cars and took them out of their respective buckets and began playing with them on the floor. He did not - DID NOT - want to leave them when it was time to check out, and the ones that were wrapped in plastic were just not good enough, he wanted the ones that a hundred kids had already smashed and chipped paint off. I swear, I don't understand the lack of discernment kids exhibit.
Let me preface he office visit by saying that Jen's office is awesome, progressive and very friendly. When we arrived there were Krisy Kreme donuts on the reception desk. When Jen asked if Bradley wanted one, he said "No", but still took the one she handed to him and proceeded to munch on it for the whole of the visit.
At Jen's office there are a lot of dogs, notably Scooby and Gizmo, a pair of boxers that are brought to work by a near-neighbor in the office. Bradley wasn't impressed with those, but Abby, a tiny white fluff of a dog, and ParkChop, a mini dachshund, were fun to chase around. And since Jen's office is very open, it was kinda fun to chase the Bradley around the cubicles as he threw his head back and did that giggling blind sprint that toddlers do. I say that that style of running is probably to blame for more toddler accidents than anything else.
On the way out, he said he wanted a donut. Kids remember the most random stuff. I told him that there were no donuts, and then he said he wanted Jen. He's pretty good with the mommy/daddy manipulation, and he's cute enough that it's hard to say no. Anyhow, he fell asleep, donut-less, listening to the oldies station on the way home.
And now I have to mow the grass, which I have let slide for two weeks, with the being sick. I'm not really looking forward to it, but if I can cross it off the list for the weekend, the weekend will be better for it.
Oh - food. Veal and spinach burgers last night, with tomato mozzarella salad. Amazingly still not going over 230, even when I eat like an idiot. So maybe this thing is working. I guess we'll know soon enough, right?
Was that thunder I just heard? Crap - might not be able to mow after all...
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Day 21 - July 16th
Wow, three weeks already come and gone, and you knw what...I weighed myself earlier. 226lbs. This Diet of Public Humiliation rocks!
So okay, my narrow-waisted friend, it's been a few days, but I suffered an honest-to-goodness relapse of the coughing and night-sweats and it was, let me be clear on this, very unpleasant.
But now everything is hunky-dory because I'm better, and I have managed to get safely under 230 that I don't fear I might go back over because of one bad doughnut day.
An online Body Mass Index calculator says that to be a "normal" weight, I should be between 137 and 183 pounds, which is to say, have a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9. Currently my BMI is 30.6, which means I am obese. I say that the BMI is a giant crock of doo-doo. It's designed to make everyone feel fat. Seriously, a 6ft tall man who weights 137lbs is going to look malnourished, I don't care what some chart says. Rest assured, 140lbs is not my goal. Right now, 220lbs is. We'll see what happens when I get there.
Food has been fun lately - we made veal and zucchini pasta last night, and it was delicious. Did you know that if you julienne zucchini fine enough and heat them up, they turn into a creamy sauce? Isn't that amazing?
Exercise has taken a hit with me being sick - I meant to start the shred but it's no fun when you cough and get out of breath in the first set of exercises. Once this crap is clear of my system I will be working out and letting you know how the pounds are simply falling away.
We finished the bedroom and the office floors, trim and everything. They look great, and I'm typing this sitting at my desk. Once the pictures are up and the clutter is gone there will be pictures, I promise.
But right now it's 1:30pm and I should go have some food and then do some work. I'm going to leave cutting the grass till this evening when it might actually be a little cooler.
So okay, my narrow-waisted friend, it's been a few days, but I suffered an honest-to-goodness relapse of the coughing and night-sweats and it was, let me be clear on this, very unpleasant.
But now everything is hunky-dory because I'm better, and I have managed to get safely under 230 that I don't fear I might go back over because of one bad doughnut day.
An online Body Mass Index calculator says that to be a "normal" weight, I should be between 137 and 183 pounds, which is to say, have a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9. Currently my BMI is 30.6, which means I am obese. I say that the BMI is a giant crock of doo-doo. It's designed to make everyone feel fat. Seriously, a 6ft tall man who weights 137lbs is going to look malnourished, I don't care what some chart says. Rest assured, 140lbs is not my goal. Right now, 220lbs is. We'll see what happens when I get there.
Food has been fun lately - we made veal and zucchini pasta last night, and it was delicious. Did you know that if you julienne zucchini fine enough and heat them up, they turn into a creamy sauce? Isn't that amazing?
Exercise has taken a hit with me being sick - I meant to start the shred but it's no fun when you cough and get out of breath in the first set of exercises. Once this crap is clear of my system I will be working out and letting you know how the pounds are simply falling away.
We finished the bedroom and the office floors, trim and everything. They look great, and I'm typing this sitting at my desk. Once the pictures are up and the clutter is gone there will be pictures, I promise.
But right now it's 1:30pm and I should go have some food and then do some work. I'm going to leave cutting the grass till this evening when it might actually be a little cooler.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Day 16 - July 11th
Okay, so I'm feeling a lot better now. The drive down to Waycross and the 13 hours we spent getting to Clayton and back really did me in, and so yesterday I really didn't feel like doing much of anything. My weight continues to waver in the 227-232lb range, which is good. I know I'm not really losing anything right now, but I'm also not really exercising - or exercising any self control when it comes to food, truth be told. Still, better to be in the 227-232lb range than the 232-237lb range I was in when I started this adventure.
Last night for dinner we had pancakes and bacon and irish coffee. Nutritious? Not really. Delicious? Absolutely. Packed with sodium? You betcha.
I'm writing this now, in the middle of the afternoon, because of two things.
1. We're about to go out to Twains, get a burger and play a little pool, maybe have a drink or two. Therefore I may not be in any condition to write anything later.
2. If I am in any condition to write, I will be doing Level 1 Day 1 of Gillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. I did this once before, for a day, a few weeks ago, and had to sleep for two hours straight after the workout. If I am similarly affected today, I will not be writing. Or moving my arms and legs in any way.
Gillian Michaels does the exercise routines for the folks on The Biggest Loser, so I'm sure that they work, and the routine itself is only 20-25 minutes long. It's all those exercises you remember doing as a kid - jumping jacks, jumping/skipping rope, jogging on the spot...but done for 20 minutes without a rest between exercises. I'm looking forward to it. I should end the 30 days the day after Jen's birthday, so don't be surprised if it turns into a 28 day shred. :)
Okay, time to put my shoes on and go get food and beer.
Last night for dinner we had pancakes and bacon and irish coffee. Nutritious? Not really. Delicious? Absolutely. Packed with sodium? You betcha.
I'm writing this now, in the middle of the afternoon, because of two things.
1. We're about to go out to Twains, get a burger and play a little pool, maybe have a drink or two. Therefore I may not be in any condition to write anything later.
2. If I am in any condition to write, I will be doing Level 1 Day 1 of Gillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred. I did this once before, for a day, a few weeks ago, and had to sleep for two hours straight after the workout. If I am similarly affected today, I will not be writing. Or moving my arms and legs in any way.
Gillian Michaels does the exercise routines for the folks on The Biggest Loser, so I'm sure that they work, and the routine itself is only 20-25 minutes long. It's all those exercises you remember doing as a kid - jumping jacks, jumping/skipping rope, jogging on the spot...but done for 20 minutes without a rest between exercises. I'm looking forward to it. I should end the 30 days the day after Jen's birthday, so don't be surprised if it turns into a 28 day shred. :)
Okay, time to put my shoes on and go get food and beer.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Day 13 - July 8th
So Skinny Reader, I'm sorry I haven't posted for two days, but it's like this, you see: I'VE BEEN FRICKING SICK.
Seriously, I had no idea that this much crap could come out of one person's sinuses. Sinii?
Anyways, I digress. I'm back under 230, have been for a day or two, but that's probably because I have been a) sleeping a lot and b) not eating hardly anything. No, I know it's not grammatically correct, but I'm sick so suck it up.
Right now Jen and I are in a Comfort Inn in Tifton, GA, on our way to pick up a little tiny baby poodle puppy for Jen's grandmother. Of course, that means that tomorrow we'll be heading to Waycross (1.5 hours) to pick the little thing up, then up to Clayton (7 hours) to drop it off, and then back to Atlanta (2 hours). Ten and a half hours in a car, lemme hear ya say yayuh! Ok, don't.
So nothing to report except that the July 4th weight is back off, but the no-exercise and junk-road-food for today and tomorrow are likely to be the undoing of my undoing.
Okay, I'm done, going to watch last season of Weeds so we can get on with this season, and I need this here laptop, because it's also my TV tonight. And since I can't blog and watch tv, you're getting the skinny end of the wedge. It's not personal, but honestly: Mary-Louise Parker and Julie Bowen or...typing some more. You see my dilemma?
Seriously, I had no idea that this much crap could come out of one person's sinuses. Sinii?
Anyways, I digress. I'm back under 230, have been for a day or two, but that's probably because I have been a) sleeping a lot and b) not eating hardly anything. No, I know it's not grammatically correct, but I'm sick so suck it up.
Right now Jen and I are in a Comfort Inn in Tifton, GA, on our way to pick up a little tiny baby poodle puppy for Jen's grandmother. Of course, that means that tomorrow we'll be heading to Waycross (1.5 hours) to pick the little thing up, then up to Clayton (7 hours) to drop it off, and then back to Atlanta (2 hours). Ten and a half hours in a car, lemme hear ya say yayuh! Ok, don't.
So nothing to report except that the July 4th weight is back off, but the no-exercise and junk-road-food for today and tomorrow are likely to be the undoing of my undoing.
Okay, I'm done, going to watch last season of Weeds so we can get on with this season, and I need this here laptop, because it's also my TV tonight. And since I can't blog and watch tv, you're getting the skinny end of the wedge. It's not personal, but honestly: Mary-Louise Parker and Julie Bowen or...typing some more. You see my dilemma?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Day 10 - July 5th
Heeeyyyy...good evening skinny reader. So guess what? No, I haven't joined a doomsday cult. No, I haven't been accepted into the Polish Space Program. Wow, you're just a terrible guesser.
No, I'm still sick. But, the floor and walls in the bedroom are done. See:
We started work emptying stuff out of the room around 10am, right after a hearty breakfast of chocolate croissant and Irish coffee. Yes, Irish coffee. Did you not read that I'm sick?
The flooring went down with a minimum of...let's call it...adult language. And we took a break around 2pm to have another chocolate croissant and a can of coke. Then we put the last board down around 4pm, by which time we felt awful. It was only over dinner with Jen's family that we realized that we had shoved almost nothing in our faceholes all day. Pizza tasted really good, but it didn't stop me from wanting to sit around and do nothing when we got back home.
So last night we moved the mattress into the living room, and we're going to sleep in here tonight, too. It's kinda fun to lie two feet away from our tv. Watching Alton Brown cook a Crawfish Boil up close and in hi-def is making me feel nostalgic for our wedding. Except we had shrimp, but you get the idea.
Oh my weight...back up above 230, but seriously, I've eaten crap for four days, so what do you expect?
No, I'm still sick. But, the floor and walls in the bedroom are done. See:
We started work emptying stuff out of the room around 10am, right after a hearty breakfast of chocolate croissant and Irish coffee. Yes, Irish coffee. Did you not read that I'm sick?
The flooring went down with a minimum of...let's call it...adult language. And we took a break around 2pm to have another chocolate croissant and a can of coke. Then we put the last board down around 4pm, by which time we felt awful. It was only over dinner with Jen's family that we realized that we had shoved almost nothing in our faceholes all day. Pizza tasted really good, but it didn't stop me from wanting to sit around and do nothing when we got back home.
So last night we moved the mattress into the living room, and we're going to sleep in here tonight, too. It's kinda fun to lie two feet away from our tv. Watching Alton Brown cook a Crawfish Boil up close and in hi-def is making me feel nostalgic for our wedding. Except we had shrimp, but you get the idea.
Oh my weight...back up above 230, but seriously, I've eaten crap for four days, so what do you expect?
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Day 9 - July 4th
They call it Independence Day, and yet I have been dependent on Mucinex and ibuprofen to function at all, due to the scratching in my throat, and the copious goop which simultaneously plugs up and drains out of my nostrils.
So while some of you were grilling steaks and hot dogs this afternoon, I was merrily painting up the bedroom. One wall is painted Guacamole, which, appropriately, is the color of avocado skin. The other walls are Hampton Green, which is kind of a yellowy-green color. Not entirely unlike the crap I've been blowing out of my nose all day.
Food was a little disorganized due to having to fit it in between pulling carpet and painting the walls.
So - breakfast was coffee and a zucchini pancakes (seriously, they're pretty good). Lunch was mac n cheese and a yogurt, while dinner was cheese biscuits (really soft cheese scones for you folks in UKLand), milk and a coupe of zucchini mini-muffins.
Feel tired and too crappy to go walking this evening, especially since the painting isn't finished yet and we're supposed to be sleeping in that room tonight. Perhaps tomorrow will be less exhausting. I really don't know how Jen is preparing for a full week at work next week - maybe it's because work will feel like a break from the weekend.
So while some of you were grilling steaks and hot dogs this afternoon, I was merrily painting up the bedroom. One wall is painted Guacamole, which, appropriately, is the color of avocado skin. The other walls are Hampton Green, which is kind of a yellowy-green color. Not entirely unlike the crap I've been blowing out of my nose all day.
Food was a little disorganized due to having to fit it in between pulling carpet and painting the walls.
So - breakfast was coffee and a zucchini pancakes (seriously, they're pretty good). Lunch was mac n cheese and a yogurt, while dinner was cheese biscuits (really soft cheese scones for you folks in UKLand), milk and a coupe of zucchini mini-muffins.
Feel tired and too crappy to go walking this evening, especially since the painting isn't finished yet and we're supposed to be sleeping in that room tonight. Perhaps tomorrow will be less exhausting. I really don't know how Jen is preparing for a full week at work next week - maybe it's because work will feel like a break from the weekend.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Day 8 - July 3rd
Okay, I skipped a day, but that's only because I was stupid busy yesterday, picking up paint for the bedroom, returning excess flooring to the flooring place, tidying the house so that we could come to the lake.
We got here at about 9 o'clock last night, went to bed and woke up early to go pick raspberries at a local farm. Then we went to a farmers' market and bought stuff for today's dinner.
When we got home we went down to the dock and sat with out feet dangled in the water, and eventually just dived right in. We spent about an hour swimming around, across Timpson Cove and back and around between the diving dock and the boat dock.
We're going home in a couple of hours so that we can wake up early in the morning, empty the furniture out of the bedroom, pull up the carpet, remove the tack rods, tape the ceiling to protect it from paint spatters, paint the walls, put the floor in, re-fill the bedroom with the furniture. So, easy weekend ahead...
Food yesterday, for those of you interested, was chicken salad, chicken salad, a yogurt, a Sonic Strawberry-Lime Soda, half a cuban sandwich, a delicious thing from a cuban food place which was spiced ground beef, covered in a ball of mashed potato and then deep-fried, half a big chocolate frosted doughnut bar, a couple of squares of 72% cocoa dark chocolate and some Talisker 10 year old single malt. I expect that I will have to work to get back to 230.
Today was better, like it could be worse than what I just described. Half a cuban sandwich, half a bear claw, some tomato/mozzarella salad, BBQ ribs, squash casserole, potato salad and a grilled ear of corn - finished up with ice cream, whipped cream and a handful of today's raspberries. There is likely to be hot dogs in the car, too.
Apparently when I skip a day it's because I have abandoned eating like a human being.
This weekend, being July 4th, is normally a time for eating like a dog that hasn't been fed for a month, but we'll be working our tails off getting the bedroom fixed up instead.
Jen says she'll kill me with her eyeballs if I decide to feel bad about the last couple of days. So I'll probably try to feel okay about it. Which is probably for the best.
I may post pictures of the bedroom as we work on it, which I know is terribly exciting for all you people who wonder what the Connors' bedroom is like. Less so for those of you who have jobs, children, lives and/or something else to do.
Might blog again later, but probably won't. There will be a weight update at the end of the weekend or sometime next week. Probably.
We got here at about 9 o'clock last night, went to bed and woke up early to go pick raspberries at a local farm. Then we went to a farmers' market and bought stuff for today's dinner.
When we got home we went down to the dock and sat with out feet dangled in the water, and eventually just dived right in. We spent about an hour swimming around, across Timpson Cove and back and around between the diving dock and the boat dock.
We're going home in a couple of hours so that we can wake up early in the morning, empty the furniture out of the bedroom, pull up the carpet, remove the tack rods, tape the ceiling to protect it from paint spatters, paint the walls, put the floor in, re-fill the bedroom with the furniture. So, easy weekend ahead...
Food yesterday, for those of you interested, was chicken salad, chicken salad, a yogurt, a Sonic Strawberry-Lime Soda, half a cuban sandwich, a delicious thing from a cuban food place which was spiced ground beef, covered in a ball of mashed potato and then deep-fried, half a big chocolate frosted doughnut bar, a couple of squares of 72% cocoa dark chocolate and some Talisker 10 year old single malt. I expect that I will have to work to get back to 230.
Today was better, like it could be worse than what I just described. Half a cuban sandwich, half a bear claw, some tomato/mozzarella salad, BBQ ribs, squash casserole, potato salad and a grilled ear of corn - finished up with ice cream, whipped cream and a handful of today's raspberries. There is likely to be hot dogs in the car, too.
Apparently when I skip a day it's because I have abandoned eating like a human being.
This weekend, being July 4th, is normally a time for eating like a dog that hasn't been fed for a month, but we'll be working our tails off getting the bedroom fixed up instead.
Jen says she'll kill me with her eyeballs if I decide to feel bad about the last couple of days. So I'll probably try to feel okay about it. Which is probably for the best.
I may post pictures of the bedroom as we work on it, which I know is terribly exciting for all you people who wonder what the Connors' bedroom is like. Less so for those of you who have jobs, children, lives and/or something else to do.
Might blog again later, but probably won't. There will be a weight update at the end of the weekend or sometime next week. Probably.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Day 6 - July 1
Oh frabjous day!
Spent the day doing all kinds of fun stuff. Like what? Well, my skinny chum, like putting in a hardwood floor (pictures to follow when the trim has been put on), like getting rid of about half a ton of dirt that I dug out of the yard when I put in the raised beds, like...like...like getting the cat shorn, like...like...oh, I know...
Like weighing 229.7lbs.
Phase one complete, now to try for 220. When should I set a target for that? Hmmm. Let's say Labor Day, which is Monday September 7th. A little under ten weeks to lose ten pounds, do-able, I reckon.
So what have I eaten? Breakfast was...umm...skipped. Lunch was chicken salad (you know you love it) and some honey roasted peanuts. Then, as a reward for doing some excellent DIY, I bought myself a 32oz (that's about a litre for my fellow Europeans) of Sprite from the gas station fountain. Yes, my gas station has a fountain that sprays Sprite, what of it? No semi-naked redneck children running around and peeing their shorts in it, either.
Thankfully Jen came home and we had pork dumplings (not the suet things, my English friends, the Asian mini-pies), and teeny tiny spring roll-ettes. Which was just what I was in the mood for. Then a lovely cherry yogurt for dessert.
Some, or a lot, of you folks might not know that Jen and I keep all our music on hard-drives, and have done for about a decade. Back in 2004 we had a bit of bad luck with one of our drives and thought that we'd lost about 500 hours of music. We bought a hard drive recovery thing, and thought it would be fine, except about 50 hours of songs came back as "Unidentified MP3 0001" or some such other totally useless way of letting us know what we are listening to.
Reason I say that is: Jen has spent the last two hours identifying about 100 songs and renaming them appropriately.
The wiser of you out there might be saying "well, if you haven't missed the song for five years, how much do you really like it?", but that's not the point. No sir, so stop your foolishness. The point is that we had something disorganized, and it needed kicking into shape, which Jen is taking care of.
And seriously, how many of you have thought "Hey, what I want to listen to right now is Every Morning by Sugar Ray or Steal My Sunshine by Len or The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang." No, probably none of you, but if they come on the radio don't you feel a little pang thinking about how cool it was to be in your 20s still? And maybe you turn the volume up a little. Well, that's why we still have them on a hard drive somewhere...so we can remember what it was like to be young and carefree.
And just for that you can have our favorite re-discovery of the evening.
Ah, Neil Tennant...NME's loss was that guy with the slung-around-his-neck-synth's gain...
Spent the day doing all kinds of fun stuff. Like what? Well, my skinny chum, like putting in a hardwood floor (pictures to follow when the trim has been put on), like getting rid of about half a ton of dirt that I dug out of the yard when I put in the raised beds, like...like...like getting the cat shorn, like...like...oh, I know...
Like weighing 229.7lbs.
Phase one complete, now to try for 220. When should I set a target for that? Hmmm. Let's say Labor Day, which is Monday September 7th. A little under ten weeks to lose ten pounds, do-able, I reckon.
So what have I eaten? Breakfast was...umm...skipped. Lunch was chicken salad (you know you love it) and some honey roasted peanuts. Then, as a reward for doing some excellent DIY, I bought myself a 32oz (that's about a litre for my fellow Europeans) of Sprite from the gas station fountain. Yes, my gas station has a fountain that sprays Sprite, what of it? No semi-naked redneck children running around and peeing their shorts in it, either.
Thankfully Jen came home and we had pork dumplings (not the suet things, my English friends, the Asian mini-pies), and teeny tiny spring roll-ettes. Which was just what I was in the mood for. Then a lovely cherry yogurt for dessert.
Some, or a lot, of you folks might not know that Jen and I keep all our music on hard-drives, and have done for about a decade. Back in 2004 we had a bit of bad luck with one of our drives and thought that we'd lost about 500 hours of music. We bought a hard drive recovery thing, and thought it would be fine, except about 50 hours of songs came back as "Unidentified MP3 0001" or some such other totally useless way of letting us know what we are listening to.
Reason I say that is: Jen has spent the last two hours identifying about 100 songs and renaming them appropriately.
The wiser of you out there might be saying "well, if you haven't missed the song for five years, how much do you really like it?", but that's not the point. No sir, so stop your foolishness. The point is that we had something disorganized, and it needed kicking into shape, which Jen is taking care of.
And seriously, how many of you have thought "Hey, what I want to listen to right now is Every Morning by Sugar Ray or Steal My Sunshine by Len or The Bad Touch by Bloodhound Gang." No, probably none of you, but if they come on the radio don't you feel a little pang thinking about how cool it was to be in your 20s still? And maybe you turn the volume up a little. Well, that's why we still have them on a hard drive somewhere...so we can remember what it was like to be young and carefree.
And just for that you can have our favorite re-discovery of the evening.
Ah, Neil Tennant...NME's loss was that guy with the slung-around-his-neck-synth's gain...
All aboard, one world, her man, his girl...
So I was picking the Muldercat up from the vet today, and listening to the oldies station, which I do sometimes because I'm just that cool. And I can't work the radio in Jen's dad's truck.
Anyway, the following story was told, and I checked it out, apparently it's true.
As a preface, I read last week that Ryan O'Neal, the long time partner of Farrah Fawcett, had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and over the years she always said no. On her deathbed, she apparently said yes, which I think is either the saddest or most romantic thing I've ever heard.
So, onto the story. Back in the early 70s, a songwriter named Jim Weatherly played in a touch-football sports league in LA, with an up-and-coming actor named Lee Majors.
Here he is in The Fall Guy.
Remember him now?
Anyway, Weatherly wanted to get in touch with Majors and called his apartment, and the phone was answered by Farrah Fawcett, who was dating Majors at the time. They had a chat and she said that she wouldn't see Majors to pass on a message because she was taking a midnight plane to Houston.
Weatherly took the line and wrote a song around it, releasing Midnight Plane to Houston on a country label where it sunk without trace. Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney, was recording an album in Atlanta at the time and her producer liked the song, but didn't want Cissy to sing a song with her own last name in the title, so they changed it to Georgia, and since the character following her man in the song would have many more chances to change her mind if she was taking a train, they changed that, too.
Houston released Midnight Train to Georgia in 1972. It also sunk without trace, so Weatherly sent the newly titled song to Gladys Knight, who recorded and released it in 1973 - and it became her first number one.
I just found it odd that such a great song should have been through so many famous hands, that's all.
That and, even since before I knew Jen, I love this song - it never fails to move me, which is one of the many reasons why we put it on our wedding playlist - but not Gladys' version - we used the Indigo Girls, so here you go...
Anyway, the following story was told, and I checked it out, apparently it's true.
As a preface, I read last week that Ryan O'Neal, the long time partner of Farrah Fawcett, had repeatedly asked her to marry him, and over the years she always said no. On her deathbed, she apparently said yes, which I think is either the saddest or most romantic thing I've ever heard.
So, onto the story. Back in the early 70s, a songwriter named Jim Weatherly played in a touch-football sports league in LA, with an up-and-coming actor named Lee Majors.
Here he is in The Fall Guy.
Remember him now?
Anyway, Weatherly wanted to get in touch with Majors and called his apartment, and the phone was answered by Farrah Fawcett, who was dating Majors at the time. They had a chat and she said that she wouldn't see Majors to pass on a message because she was taking a midnight plane to Houston.
Weatherly took the line and wrote a song around it, releasing Midnight Plane to Houston on a country label where it sunk without trace. Cissy Houston, mother of Whitney, was recording an album in Atlanta at the time and her producer liked the song, but didn't want Cissy to sing a song with her own last name in the title, so they changed it to Georgia, and since the character following her man in the song would have many more chances to change her mind if she was taking a train, they changed that, too.
Houston released Midnight Train to Georgia in 1972. It also sunk without trace, so Weatherly sent the newly titled song to Gladys Knight, who recorded and released it in 1973 - and it became her first number one.
I just found it odd that such a great song should have been through so many famous hands, that's all.
That and, even since before I knew Jen, I love this song - it never fails to move me, which is one of the many reasons why we put it on our wedding playlist - but not Gladys' version - we used the Indigo Girls, so here you go...
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Day 5 - June 30th
Well, bye bye June, I'll remember as the month when the weather started to suck.
I should have said something about Sunday. On the way back from showing my buyers, I drove north on Buford Highway, a 2-lanes-each-side stretch of road that goes from the retail heart of Atlanta to the 'burbs of Buford some 25 or so miles north. I live of a street at about the mid-point. Because Buford Highway runs pretty directly north-south, there are a lot of streets that cross and intersect with it. One such thoroughfare is Pleasant Hill Road, which is about 2 miles south of my neighborhood. The way that you get from Buford Highway to Pleasant Hill is by way of a little cloverleaf/spaghetti junction affair.
Got that little geography in your head? Good. So...I'm driving north and I'm in the slow lane, which is also the exit lane for the cloverleaf, and out of nowhere, an SUV with California plates drives past me and cuts me off, making a sharp turn onto the Pleasant Hill off-ramp at the last moment. Thing is this: the tag on the SUV was a vanity plate that read "DENNIS Q".
Think for a moment, and name me three people you know whose first name is Dennis, and whose last name begins with Q.
Thought about it? Can you think of more than one? Me neither. And so I have concluded that I was cut off, by a swerving, veering, Dennis Quaid.
This crazy Dennis, one presumes, and not:
This Dennis "normal" looking Dennis, who is apparently playing the worlds two tinest violins for me and my lack of progress towards 230lbs.
So, that was an uncontrived segue, huh?
I weighed myself before dinner tonight, and I was thrilled when the scale read 230.1lbs. An hour ago all the good food and wine had put me back to 233lbs. Which is why Dennis is playing the tiny violins.
For those interested enough, breakfast was a chicken salad sandwich, lunch was chicken salad and dinner was...
...actually, raise your hand if you know what Rotolo is...
No wait, your pants are on fire...
Rotolo is an Italian dish that blends, in this case, a sauce made with zucchini (courgettes) and bacon (or prosciutto), with spaghetti.
You make the pasta and the sauce and then lump them into the same pot and stir them together, then you get a giant fork (we used a meat themometer fork), and you twist it in the spaghetti mixture to make a ball, like wool.
Then you drop the wooly spaghetti onto a plate and consume it. It was good, and no one was more surprised than me, when I finished a food that includes zucchini. Then I had a yogurt and a couple of brownies. Then I weighed myself with the aforementioned distressing results.
Still haven't had my daily walk, but I'm not hopeful that it will shed 3lbs for me.
I should have said something about Sunday. On the way back from showing my buyers, I drove north on Buford Highway, a 2-lanes-each-side stretch of road that goes from the retail heart of Atlanta to the 'burbs of Buford some 25 or so miles north. I live of a street at about the mid-point. Because Buford Highway runs pretty directly north-south, there are a lot of streets that cross and intersect with it. One such thoroughfare is Pleasant Hill Road, which is about 2 miles south of my neighborhood. The way that you get from Buford Highway to Pleasant Hill is by way of a little cloverleaf/spaghetti junction affair.
Got that little geography in your head? Good. So...I'm driving north and I'm in the slow lane, which is also the exit lane for the cloverleaf, and out of nowhere, an SUV with California plates drives past me and cuts me off, making a sharp turn onto the Pleasant Hill off-ramp at the last moment. Thing is this: the tag on the SUV was a vanity plate that read "DENNIS Q".
Think for a moment, and name me three people you know whose first name is Dennis, and whose last name begins with Q.
Thought about it? Can you think of more than one? Me neither. And so I have concluded that I was cut off, by a swerving, veering, Dennis Quaid.
This crazy Dennis, one presumes, and not:
This Dennis "normal" looking Dennis, who is apparently playing the worlds two tinest violins for me and my lack of progress towards 230lbs.
So, that was an uncontrived segue, huh?
I weighed myself before dinner tonight, and I was thrilled when the scale read 230.1lbs. An hour ago all the good food and wine had put me back to 233lbs. Which is why Dennis is playing the tiny violins.
For those interested enough, breakfast was a chicken salad sandwich, lunch was chicken salad and dinner was...
...actually, raise your hand if you know what Rotolo is...
No wait, your pants are on fire...
Rotolo is an Italian dish that blends, in this case, a sauce made with zucchini (courgettes) and bacon (or prosciutto), with spaghetti.
You make the pasta and the sauce and then lump them into the same pot and stir them together, then you get a giant fork (we used a meat themometer fork), and you twist it in the spaghetti mixture to make a ball, like wool.
Then you drop the wooly spaghetti onto a plate and consume it. It was good, and no one was more surprised than me, when I finished a food that includes zucchini. Then I had a yogurt and a couple of brownies. Then I weighed myself with the aforementioned distressing results.
Still haven't had my daily walk, but I'm not hopeful that it will shed 3lbs for me.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Day 4 - June 29th
I'm going to write this before I go out walking tonight, just because I'm only watching TV and when I get back from my walk I don't know that I'll have the motivation to do it.
Today was a pretty full day, by my usual standards. I kept up with a couple of clients, painted the home office so I can move into it in a few days, moved all my junk out of the office at work, which is now almost deserted. Oh, and I got the last prize bubble in LittleBig Planet. That's probably my greatest achievement today.
As for food...well, any of you who work from home will know that it's just so hard to get off the couch and make something, so for lunch I had some grapes, a pot of yogurt, and some honey roasted peanuts - healthy, huh?
When I got to the office there was pizza. There's something almost sinful about eating pizza that someone else ordered, makes it all the more delicious. Twice as delicious when you eat two slices.
Thinking ahead (for once), I made chicken salad so I don't have to think about lunch tomorrow, and Jen made pasta with tomato, prosciutto and feta. It's nice to eat real food while I'm trying to lose weight.
We're watching American Gothic, which I only vaguely remember from when it originally aired back in the mid-90s. Mostly it stands up to re-watching without looking too dated, but sometimes...well, not so much. Everyone looks much much younger, but then I suppose I would, too.
So I've eaten a couple of brownies and downed a glass of milk over the course of tonight's two episodes. I haven't stepped on a scale today, and I'm not sure I'm going to. That's something that can just wait till another day.
I'm feeling like this has been easy so far, but I don't know if I've lost a single ounce, and I haven't taken a walk this evening - so I'd best do that.
Today was a pretty full day, by my usual standards. I kept up with a couple of clients, painted the home office so I can move into it in a few days, moved all my junk out of the office at work, which is now almost deserted. Oh, and I got the last prize bubble in LittleBig Planet. That's probably my greatest achievement today.
As for food...well, any of you who work from home will know that it's just so hard to get off the couch and make something, so for lunch I had some grapes, a pot of yogurt, and some honey roasted peanuts - healthy, huh?
When I got to the office there was pizza. There's something almost sinful about eating pizza that someone else ordered, makes it all the more delicious. Twice as delicious when you eat two slices.
Thinking ahead (for once), I made chicken salad so I don't have to think about lunch tomorrow, and Jen made pasta with tomato, prosciutto and feta. It's nice to eat real food while I'm trying to lose weight.
We're watching American Gothic, which I only vaguely remember from when it originally aired back in the mid-90s. Mostly it stands up to re-watching without looking too dated, but sometimes...well, not so much. Everyone looks much much younger, but then I suppose I would, too.
So I've eaten a couple of brownies and downed a glass of milk over the course of tonight's two episodes. I haven't stepped on a scale today, and I'm not sure I'm going to. That's something that can just wait till another day.
I'm feeling like this has been easy so far, but I don't know if I've lost a single ounce, and I haven't taken a walk this evening - so I'd best do that.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Day 3 - June 28th
In case anyone is wondering why there isn't a daily update of my weight and the appropriate celebration/mourning of the weight I've lost/gained, it's because that kind of reporting is tedious for you guys, and is also unhelpful to me. For the last year my weight has been in the 232-238lb range. My immediate goal is to get under 230lbs and stay there, then we'll see what's next. Rest assured, skinny people, that when I do get under 230lbs, I will let you know. :)
It was, and let me not understate this, effing awesome to sleep in my own bed last night, with the fan on and the A/C running. If you've never been to Georgia, it's hard to convey how oppressively hot and humid it is. Let this screenprint from AccuWeather.com illustrate for you:
And yes, that's the temperature and humidity at 11:59pm, as I'm typing this.
Last night was some good sleep.
And I needed it because I was showing houses today for a few hours, which I stupidly did on no breakfast, and wound up eating mints to feel less like I'm starving myself. Surprisingly it worked, more or less.
At home, a BLT with cheese sandwich was lunch.
In the afternoon Jen and I figured out what paint colors to put on the walls of my home-office. That's been pretty big news: my brokerage is down-sizing it's offices and asking all the agents to work from home - that means that I need to have a functional office in the house 100% of the time, which I really haven't had till now. I'll take pictures when it's done so you can ooh and aaah.
Anyway, we really didn't get much more than laundry done (you know those days), and then ate scrambled eggs with onion, tomato and cheese for dinner, before playing LittleBig Planet with a couple of friends. I used up the last of the brownie dough that I made a couple of days ago and restrained myself - I only ate two of them.
We rounded the day out by walking the dog for half an hour - I think that Murphy enjoys the exercise less than I do.
ANyhow
I'm feeling like this is achievable. Not soon, but not too far off, either.
It was, and let me not understate this, effing awesome to sleep in my own bed last night, with the fan on and the A/C running. If you've never been to Georgia, it's hard to convey how oppressively hot and humid it is. Let this screenprint from AccuWeather.com illustrate for you:
And yes, that's the temperature and humidity at 11:59pm, as I'm typing this.
Last night was some good sleep.
And I needed it because I was showing houses today for a few hours, which I stupidly did on no breakfast, and wound up eating mints to feel less like I'm starving myself. Surprisingly it worked, more or less.
At home, a BLT with cheese sandwich was lunch.
In the afternoon Jen and I figured out what paint colors to put on the walls of my home-office. That's been pretty big news: my brokerage is down-sizing it's offices and asking all the agents to work from home - that means that I need to have a functional office in the house 100% of the time, which I really haven't had till now. I'll take pictures when it's done so you can ooh and aaah.
Anyway, we really didn't get much more than laundry done (you know those days), and then ate scrambled eggs with onion, tomato and cheese for dinner, before playing LittleBig Planet with a couple of friends. I used up the last of the brownie dough that I made a couple of days ago and restrained myself - I only ate two of them.
We rounded the day out by walking the dog for half an hour - I think that Murphy enjoys the exercise less than I do.
ANyhow
I'm feeling like this is achievable. Not soon, but not too far off, either.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Day 2 - June 27th
So I got very little sleep last night - the bed at the lake is very soft, and it has a pillow-top - for those of you unfamiliar with the concept, it's like a 2inch thick pad on top of the mattress. Anyway, between the soft mattress, the lack of air conditioning and the over-80-degree temperatures we had, I didn't get to sleep till after 2am, and then I was awake again around 4am and 7am. I even tried taking a shower, but those of you who remember the showers in M*A*S*H will have a good idea what the shower at the lake is like. All in all not a good night.
I have clients tomorrow, and so our choice was either a) stay the night at the lake and then run around like a crazy person making sure I get home to meet my buyers; or b) come home tonight, sleep in my own bed, with aircon and a fan going. Can you guess which choice won, boys and girls?
To throw another hurdle in my own way, my food today was: 2 scrabled eggs, one sausage patty and an english muffin with butter (please, English people, don't ask me about this, I think it's as odd as you do). Lunch was guacamole and chips while I worked on the gumbo we ate for dinner with cornbread and a salad made using tomatoes grown from our garden. I ate the last two table spoons of chicken salad, and a slice of cheddar sourdough bread, and just finished a yogurt.
It's not so much the food, I think, as the lack of exercise. My exercise today consisted of walking around the supermarket, which hardly counts, and cleaning out the car in 95degree heat. And while that made me sweat a lot, I can't record any weight loss yet.
Tomorrow I'll be showing houses till lunch time, and then probably picking a paint color for the office, whoch will become my permanent, full-time workplace from Tuesday afternoon. So I have some stuff to do.
Right now I'm feeling tired, but that's probably lack of sleep. Oh well, back at it in the morning.
I have clients tomorrow, and so our choice was either a) stay the night at the lake and then run around like a crazy person making sure I get home to meet my buyers; or b) come home tonight, sleep in my own bed, with aircon and a fan going. Can you guess which choice won, boys and girls?
To throw another hurdle in my own way, my food today was: 2 scrabled eggs, one sausage patty and an english muffin with butter (please, English people, don't ask me about this, I think it's as odd as you do). Lunch was guacamole and chips while I worked on the gumbo we ate for dinner with cornbread and a salad made using tomatoes grown from our garden. I ate the last two table spoons of chicken salad, and a slice of cheddar sourdough bread, and just finished a yogurt.
It's not so much the food, I think, as the lack of exercise. My exercise today consisted of walking around the supermarket, which hardly counts, and cleaning out the car in 95degree heat. And while that made me sweat a lot, I can't record any weight loss yet.
Tomorrow I'll be showing houses till lunch time, and then probably picking a paint color for the office, whoch will become my permanent, full-time workplace from Tuesday afternoon. So I have some stuff to do.
Right now I'm feeling tired, but that's probably lack of sleep. Oh well, back at it in the morning.
Friday, June 26, 2009
June 26th - Day 1
Weight (lbs): 236.4
So day one of the Great Loss began with the promise of some exercise in the form of helping our good friend Meg to pack up and move house.
The drive is a little less than an hour and a half, and we had whole grain toast and home made chicken salad for breakfast. Hitting the road a little later than planned, we arrived a little before eleven - in time for lunch, which was BBQ pork from Bar H. This was not how I had planned to lose weight, so I ate until I wasn't hungry, but less than full.
The next two hours were all about moving boxes and furniture into the living room of Meg's house, where the truck, when it arrived, would be loaded from. By 2pm we couldn't realisticlly fit anything else into the living room, and so we slowed our activity and waited for the moving truck. And waited. And waited. I don't know how poor Meg wasn't more frustrated than she was showing, because I'm pretty sure she'd have liked to get the boxes into the truck, which didn't arrive until after 6pm.
Once the truck was in position to be loaded we...went out for dinner at Siblings in Hartwell, where I ate Bacon-Wrapped Chicken in a Bourbon Glaze, a large baked potato and some green beans. It was, as you might imagine, fantastic. Feeling quite full of delicious food, I declined dessert, and we headed back to Meg's.
By now it was getting dark and there was no way we'd get all the boxes into the truck tonight, so we called it good and got in the car to come to the Lake, where I'm sitting writing this.
Tomorrow we will be picking blackberries and probably washing the car. Sunday is our day to head home because I have clients who want to look at houses. We'll see how things go, then.
I am feeling: Like I didn't make any progress today. :(
So day one of the Great Loss began with the promise of some exercise in the form of helping our good friend Meg to pack up and move house.
The drive is a little less than an hour and a half, and we had whole grain toast and home made chicken salad for breakfast. Hitting the road a little later than planned, we arrived a little before eleven - in time for lunch, which was BBQ pork from Bar H. This was not how I had planned to lose weight, so I ate until I wasn't hungry, but less than full.
The next two hours were all about moving boxes and furniture into the living room of Meg's house, where the truck, when it arrived, would be loaded from. By 2pm we couldn't realisticlly fit anything else into the living room, and so we slowed our activity and waited for the moving truck. And waited. And waited. I don't know how poor Meg wasn't more frustrated than she was showing, because I'm pretty sure she'd have liked to get the boxes into the truck, which didn't arrive until after 6pm.
Once the truck was in position to be loaded we...went out for dinner at Siblings in Hartwell, where I ate Bacon-Wrapped Chicken in a Bourbon Glaze, a large baked potato and some green beans. It was, as you might imagine, fantastic. Feeling quite full of delicious food, I declined dessert, and we headed back to Meg's.
By now it was getting dark and there was no way we'd get all the boxes into the truck tonight, so we called it good and got in the car to come to the Lake, where I'm sitting writing this.
Tomorrow we will be picking blackberries and probably washing the car. Sunday is our day to head home because I have clients who want to look at houses. We'll see how things go, then.
I am feeling: Like I didn't make any progress today. :(
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Day 0 - June 25th
Okay, so Diet-Eve is here.
The plan is simple.
The plan is this:
Eat healthier, and healthier portions (which means smaller).
Exercise
The exercise will be doing yoga 5x a week and walking or running every day. That's the drill till we go pick up a puppy for Jen's grandmother on July 8th.
From the 9th, the goal is to do cardio/strength workouts and continue the walking/running. Keep doing that for a month, until Jen's birthday, then reassess.
The first weigh-in will be tomorrow. After that I will post my weight, food consumption and exercise every day.
If you're not morbidly interested in this, it will, most likely, bore the crap out of you. But I think that writing this stuff will keep me focused.
Now, just one last brownie - after all, it starts tomorrow, right?
The plan is simple.
The plan is this:
Eat healthier, and healthier portions (which means smaller).
Exercise
The exercise will be doing yoga 5x a week and walking or running every day. That's the drill till we go pick up a puppy for Jen's grandmother on July 8th.
From the 9th, the goal is to do cardio/strength workouts and continue the walking/running. Keep doing that for a month, until Jen's birthday, then reassess.
The first weigh-in will be tomorrow. After that I will post my weight, food consumption and exercise every day.
If you're not morbidly interested in this, it will, most likely, bore the crap out of you. But I think that writing this stuff will keep me focused.
Now, just one last brownie - after all, it starts tomorrow, right?