My first trip to the gym all year

It's January. Everyone is ready to lose some weight. It makes it a lot harder to find a open parking spot, an open locker or an open machine, but letting that stop me would just be an excuse. I've got a bag full of those, so I really don't need another. Yesterday, I stepped back into the gym for the first time since last year (ie last Tuesday), and got the stare-down from my old buddy, the elliptical.
I respectfully climbed on and got to work. I haven't changed my routine up for a while now. I was briefly doing interval training last fall. This routine had me warming up with a 75rpm sprint for 8 minutes, then dropping to a 60rpm jog for 2 minutes. After that, I'd just go from 70 for 3 minutes to 60 for 2 minutes back and forth for an hour, but I kept increasing the duration of the sprint until I had worked my way up to my current workout, which is an 80rpm sprint long enough to get my heartrate up to 180, then drop down to 71-73rpm for the rest of the one-hour workout (with random bursts of 77-80rpm charged by whatever song happens to come on the mp3 player).

The workout was pretty brutal after my lack of consistency over the Christmas season, but I survived it at full force and am very happy with that. I'm still sucking at incorporating weights into my regimen and am starting to think I may just need some trainer assistance on that front. That may need to wait until I have a job. In the meantime, I think I'll just keep doing what I'm doing on the elliptical and start increasing intensity in one way or another, possibly by adding 5 minutes to the duration over the next few months like I did when I first started. That is, after all, how I worked my way up from 30 to 60 minutes.

I'm really happy with where I am in the weight loss arena right now. My eating and tracking are spot on. My workout intensity is right where I want it. My motivation in general is at an all-time high, and my urge to binge is reasonably low. I'm thinkin TwentyTen is gonna be a good'n.

Another New Year

What does the new year mean to me? Remotivation toward my weightloss? The beginning of something new and exciting? The start of the year I reach my goal/get married? All of those, to be sure, but unfortunately, I'm a curmudgeon and the first thing that enters my head is the rush of people with resolutions cramming themselves into my gym and my meetings. It's crazy. It's going to be crazy until Valentine's Day. Ugh. But then, I'm repeating myself.

When I posted at this time last year, I was 8 months and 72 pounds into this weight loss journey. Now, another year later, I've learned a lot about myself and my weight loss. I've slipped heavily and recovered from it. I didn't hit my goal last year like I thought I was going to as 2009 began, but I have managed to lose another 46 pounds. Considering I gained back 40 pounds in the middle of the year, I'm very happy with how I handled myself with the whole thing. Do I regret letting myself get that out of control? Certainly, but in the scheme of things, I am going to have to learn how to live in the real world and maintain my weight for the rest of my life.

I know it's going to be a very big challenge. It's going to take a lot of education and feeling it out for this whole thing to become intuitive. I have a lot of tools at my disposal. Some of those, I've taken for granted these past several months. That's the past. This is a new year. I'm going to put a real effort into keeping this blog more active. If nothing else, I'd really like to update weekly.

Speaking of updates, I survived the holidays and am still working off a little bit of Christmas gain, but it really wasn't that bad and I think it will be all gone by my next weigh-in on the 8th. I may even post a loss, which would be fantastic. I'm just 1.8 from hitting 120, another 5 from my 5th trinket and just 8 more from there to the "final goal" I set for myself 20 months ago when I started this journey. That's incredible.

I'll be interested to see how this year pans out for me. I'm definitely ready for it.

Update

As promised. I was very pleased to see I was a bit under on my estimate. Down 4.2 for the week!

Progress so far: 115.2 pounds.

Where am I?

I'm still here. I'm still alive. I'm still pushing my way through the summer's gain to get back where I was in July. I'm still sucking serious ass at updating my blog.

Since I last checked in, over 2 months ago, I struggled with my weightlifting and wound up falling back to my cardio routine. I had another slipup and gained a few, so I took advantage of what was going to be an ugly gain anyhow and switched from weighing in workout clothes to weighing in street clothes. That added about 3 pounds to that and all subsequent weigh-ins. I'll switch back to workout clothes when spring returns, but in the meantime, I'm tracking what the scale says.

What it has said to me recently has been very encouraging. The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving were solid food-wise, but a bit sucky workout-wise, and the losses were pretty skeezy (for me) at about 1 pound per week. I decided to get through the holidays this year just like I did last year. I got back into a consistent gym regimen (even working out Thanksgiving day), I planned ahead for the three Thanksgiving dinners my fiancee and I attended, followed through on those plans and continued to show discipline and focus in my eating and tracking. With a canceled meeting on Thanksgiving, I was fully two weeks into my re-focused weight loss before I had to face the scale again last week. The scale must have heard about all my hard work because it rewarded me with a 7.2 pound loss. Today, I anticipate another solid loss in the neighborhood of 3 pounds.

After this weigh-in, I'll face a holiday party this weekend, the beginning of another round of holiday eating challenges. After that, we'll head out of town to visit my father and friends in my old home town next weekend. Next is the Christmas gauntlet, which will include visits to her family on Christmas eve followed by lunch with my paternal grandmother and family on Christmas day and maternal grandparents and family that evening. This is going to be slightly more challenging than Thanksgiving was, but I am confident that my success so far will carry me through the rest of the year. My goal is to not miss a meeting between now and January 7th without showing a gain at any of them. Since the meeting will be once again canceled on Christmas eve, I'll have a pad to help me through all of that. It won't be easy, but it'll be totally worth it.

This is where I apologize like I have in my last 10 posts about how lame I've been about updating this blog. It's all just empty promises at this point isn't it? I'm sure I've lost a lot of followers thanks to my weak-ass blogging for the past 6 months. I won't entertain any notion that I'll be back to where I was, updating every day, but I'll definitely try to be a little more consistent for those of you who stuck it out for me. Cool? Tell ya what. If you trust me, I guarantee I'll post again tonight with my official weigh-in results. Till then, thanks!

Ow.

Just finished my workout. Today, I went back to weight training after months of being out of it. Like... lots of months.

I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and then headed to the upper body circuit. After doing 2 of my intended three trips around the circuit, my arms were dead. Like... started at 10 reps of 130 on the bench and ended not being able to push half that. Dead.

Since I still had 10 minutes left on the full hour workout I'd intended, I hopped on the stairmaster for 10 minutes, which I've never done before and found to also be quite challenging.

Eesh. After I got home, I found it difficult to even shampoo my hair. I just couldn't lift my arms up that high for more than a few seconds.

Seriously, ow.

That said, I still feel absolutely fantastic about being back at this thing full force. I'm confident that another week or two of this and I'll be seriously rockin the workouts.

True to form

As I promised you, myself and the rest of the world yesterday, I am striving to make this a solid month of weight loss. To me, that means staying on top of my nutrition, working it in the gym to get back to the proper level of training and updating this blog much more regularly than I have these past few months.

I just finished my workout and had my afternoon snack. I feel fantastic. Since I got back on the wagon, I think my workouts have been pretty poor. Not working out for so long seems to have knocked me back a few pegs. Today, I was determined to show myself what I can do on the elliptical. I feel very good about the hour I did today. I never felt like I was overexerting myself, but I pushed myself and am very satisfied with the 175bpm average and 1200 calories burned I got out of it.

My post-workout snack consisted of a small banana, 3½ oz of strawberries, some yogurt and a banana nut fiberone muffin. Absolutely delicious and very refreshing. I really love how good I'm feeling on my nutrition and I feel like my fitness will be on the same level very soon.

Tomorrow, I get back into weights training.

A year ago...

Last year, I fell off the wagon in October. I spent a majority of the month not working out, not tracking, and gaining unknown amounts of weight before I got my butt back in gear. I pushed myself for the final week of the month before going back to weigh in on November 1st. I had gained a pound. It wasn't devastating, but I was disappointed to have lost a month of weightloss.

That month-long slip motivated me to get back in the gym (I even worked out on Thanksgiving morning) and track my food so militantly that I managed to pull losses over both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays despite visiting both my and my fiancee's family on both occasions. That streak of motivation wound up carried me through 30 pounds of loss over the course of 2 ½ months, an average of more than 2.5 pounds per week. During that time, I had not a single gaining week. I saw myself through some very significant milestones, particularly my final goodbye to the 300s and entry into the 200s.

Having another month like last October would have been a bad enough setback, but the one I had this summer, culminating in a ridiculous 42-pound gain was just crazy. I'm still fighting to get back to where I was in the middle of July at 241.8 pounds. Similar to last time, I let the gain motivate me to get back in the game. While my workouts are still not where I'd like them to be, I have been very good about my tracking. These past two weeks (apologies for not updating sooner), I've lost another 1.8 and 2.0 pounds respectively.

I'm now down 27.4 pounds since I ended the binging 6 weeks ago -- an average of 4/week that seems to be settling out to a more reasonable 2/week. In less than 13 pounds, I'll be back where I was. I intend to reach that 241.8 and let my momentum carry me on through the holidays, perhaps even reaching that original 225 goal before year.

Right now, I'm feeling very empowered and enthusiastic about my weight loss journey. I could sit here and lament over the fact that I'm still re-losing weight I had already once lost or that I should already be below 225 if not for that gain, but instead, I choose to hold my head high and recognize that I'm human and these things will happen. I'm just glad I caught myself before I'd done more damage.

So here's to a new October, one that'll be much better than last October. Here's to getting back to where I think I should be with my workouts. Here's to life.