223.0

Today is my brother’s birthday, so here’s a shout out to Dave – “Happy Birthday Bro!”

So I’m down about a half pound since Tuesday. I finally spoke with the Orthopedic Surgeon’s ARNP about my knee damage. The good news is that are no tears. No meniscus tear, no ACL tear, no MCL tear…. The bad news is I have Stage 4 Cartilage damage and osteoarthristis in there. What’s that mean? It means my knee is pretty much screwed and there’s not too much anyone can do about it. Fortunately for me, my knee doesn’t hurt too bad currently. When I turn or twist a certain way, I do get a little jolt of pain. It’s a little painful to bend down as well. The ARNP found it odd and surprising that I have as much arthritis in that knee as I do for only being 40 years old. She thinks that there was some sort of traumatic event that damaged it years ago and it has finally progressed to this stage. Although I cannot recall any traumatic events leading up to when I hurt it playing basketball a few weeks ago.

So what are my options? As far as treatment, if it starts hurting, they suggested possibly doing cortisone shots. If it finally gets to a point where that no longer helps, they suggested having the doc scope it and see if he can “clean it up a little” which may give some temporary relief. Ultimately I have arthritis and it will continue to be a problem until a knee replacement (way down the road) ever happens.

So now the question is … What can I still do physically? For starters and priority #1, lose weight. ARNP says for every 1 lb of body weight I have is equivalent to 4 lbs of pressure on each knee. So I’m about 50 lbs overweight. That’s 200 lbs of pressure crushing on my knees. Lose the weight, extend the life and comfort of my remaining knee cartilage. How can I lose weight? Besides diet, what exercises can I still do that won’t damage the knees any more than I need to. The ARNP says they are giving me no restrictions. And to let pain be my guide. If I want to run (a great way to lose weight as I’ve seen) go for it. But I tried running down my driveway a couple of days ago and it was a little uncomfortable. In fact, I haven’t really gone for a run since August 27th according to my Map My Run app. Wow.  Rach thinks I should stick to low impact cardio exercise (swimming, biking, elliptical) until I get he weight below 190. Then ease back into running and see how it goes. Rick suggests taking Glucosamine to help with the cartilage damage. Both of which are good advice that I think I’ll heed.

Can’t wait to begin exercising again though. Feels like it’s been forever.

228.4 – Official Weigh-In

So I forgot to post my weigh in yesterday and I’m sorry that I did. Even though it wasn’t good, it was 226.0. Yesterday we had some friends over for dinner and to watch the Florida v. Kentucky game. We ate BBQ pork sliders, coleslaw, baked beans, and mac & cheese. In addition to that my buddy Will and I probably put down 10 beers a piece. What’s that spell? D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R. Woke up this morning a full 2 and a half pounds heavier than yesterday. I have the blessing/curse of being able to lose weight very quickly but also able to gain it just as fast.

The other day Rick posted something on my blog or texted me (I can’t remember), but he said something about how I initially created this blog for myself. I was doing it so Rick could see where I was and I could go back and read where I’ve been and what I was doing.  Somewhere along the way I was surprised to find that people were actually starting to follow my blog. Wasn’t sure how they even found it (still not sure to be honest), but I kept blogging as if it was just Rick and I reading it. Soon I hit 50 followers and I think I started blogging more for what I thought people wanted to read. Before long I crossed the 100 follower threshold and I had some personal things come up that all contributed to me losing sight of what this Fit Gator blog was really about. Me.

Rick was also right when he said that this was no longer a fitness/weight loss blog, but just a blog about some guy living his life. Not trying to get better or to lose weight or anything. That really hit home. I wasn’t exercising much. Wasn’t watching what I ate. Didn’t track calories. And basically I was just doing all the crap I used to do before I began my fitness journey.

Now my knee is jacked up. MRI is scheduled for Tuesday. Fearing that I may need surgery. My knee doesn’t hurt too much, but when I walk, it is a little tender, but what really gets me is when I’m walking and it locks up on me. I get a shooting pain from my knee down to my foot and it literally stops me in my tracks. It’s depressing because I see my weight creeping up higher and higher and now I can’t do any cardio. “What Next?” I think. Seems like I can’t catch a break.

But this blog is about rising above all this. Go back and read what is 1fitgator in the links above. It’s as much, if not more, about the mental struggles of overcoming obstacles as it is the physical ones. I need to beat this. So what… I can’t run or get on the elliptical. Ok. What can I do? well I can weight train – I can build my muscles and still burn calories. I can also quit eating shit. That’s priority #1. Stop the bleeding. Reverse the trend.

So I will need to be meticulous about inputting everything I eat into my fitness pal app. Track all my calories. I’ll continue to set my daily calories as “Weight x 8” but with the exception of if I’m still hungry between meals, that I can eat a piece of fruit. My daily calories based on today’s weigh in are about 1827. If I eat a couple extra pieces of fruit in addition to this, my daily intake will only be about 2000-2200 cals which is still low enough to help me lose weight.  By adding in the “optional fruit” I won’t be as hungry by the next time I eat a meal and therefore won’t get lazy and eat crap.

Sacrifice. Dedication. Victory.

225.4 -Weigh In

Cleaning it up! This morning’s breakfast – Eggs, Oatmeal, & Water. Check out my nutrition under the Diet Hawk link

My weight is surprisingly high this morning. I’m not surprised that it’s up, but am surprised at how much. Yesterday I was up to 223.6. Why is my weight so high? I have to disclose that I haven’t been trying to hard lately. Back to half-assing things – diet, exercise, dedication… I went for broke on Monday and had Panda Express for lunch. I added up the calories based on their website nutrition to see exactly how bad it really was…. Wow it was really bad. Over 1700 calories! just for lunch! I only have around 1750 total daily calories allotted to me. Last night we had pizza and soda for dinner. Nothing but crap…

A major problem that I have is that I have a “Perfectionist” attitude. You’re probably thinking, “Some one with a perfectionist attitude would strive for perfection and lose weight, not gain it” right? My problem is that I’m all-or-nothing, which is bad. You see, I can eat well in the morning, maybe even eat well for lunch, but if I screw up and eat something crappy later, then my mind thinks “Oh well, today’s shot – You might as well eat whatever you want and don’t exercise because it won’t matter. Try again tomorrow.” It’s what kept me fat for so many years.

In addition to that, I’m heading back down to Hogtown this weekend for the Tennessee/Florida matchup for a guy’s weekend with my buddies Rick and Will. I know, as it always is, this weekend will be rife with beer, chicken wings, and who knows what else. Yes, it’s going to be hella fun, but then my brain goes into overdrive again…” Hey you’re going down to Gainesville for guy’s weekend. You’re going to ingest a shit ton of calories. Why even worry about getting back into shape and losing weight until that weekend is over.” It’s quite defeating.

Rick and I spoke about it. He uses logic – “eat well until that weekend, then get back at it afterward. That way you only have one bad weekend.” (I’m paraphrasing here). As much as the devil on my shoulder tries to justify my weak ass approach to procrastinating, I can’t win this argument. Remember… Tomorrow Never Comes. There will always be something else coming up. I must persevere. So I’m forcing myself to clean up my diet, even if it is just for the next couple days before Guy’s Weekend.  I restarted Focus T25 (a Beachbody Fitness Program similar to Insanity) on Monday, but I haven’t run in three weeks! Three weeks! I can’t believe it. My wife started a new job recently and she’s working longer hours. She’s pretty tired at night, so we don’t always see eye-to-eye about me leaving for an hour to run the neighborhood while the kids are still awake. I have to work on getting them to bed earlier or simply sacrificing sleep and running late at night like I used to. I must get that type of dedication back.

By the way, for those of you who have noticed me calling Gainesville “Hogtown” every once in a while but don’t know why… here you go.

Hogtown. Click to enlarge pic.

T25

Focus T25. 25 intense minutes!
Thinking about joining the Beachbody Challenge. Anyone know anything about it?

222.4 Monday Weigh-In

Down about a pound from Saturday’s weigh in. Didn’t have much of a chance to do exercise this weekend as my wife was out of town and I had the kids to myself. So no gym, no running… Tried to eat a little healthier. Yesterday morning made the kids some pancakes for breakfast, but I opted for an egg white omelet and oatmeal…

We took my buddy Ricky and his son out to a place called the Jr. Museum which is kind of like a zoo, I guess. They have bears, tigers, bobcats, wolves, panthers, etc… out there. We let the kids play for a little bit on the playground. It was Ricky’s birthday so we also took him out to lunch. Unfortunately he wanted Barnaby’s pizza, so I didn’t eat well at lunch time. Although I limited myself to just a few slices of pizza (I was still hungry when we left), I also drank water while everyone else had sweet tea.  For dinner, the kids and I made sandwiches. I had a turkey on wheat and the kids had grilled cheese. Then we picked up Rach from the airport around 8:30.

Today’s been good. Healthy breakfast (Special K Almond with Almond Milk), snack was an apple and cheese stick, lunch was a grilled chicken breast, steamed broccoli and brown rice. I did have a sugar free pudding and a diet Coke with Lime with lunch. Working on dinner now, likely tilapia tonight with sweet potatoes and probably more brown rice.

Hoping to get out and run tonight since Rach is back in town.

221.6

Per the rules of FitBet II, I have to post my weight each M, W, And Saturday. So here is today’s weigh in. 221.6. About the same as yesterday.

I ate clean all day except that I did have one Coke with my lunch yesterday. So nothing else to report.

Officially started Focus T25 yesterday. It’s a home boot camp style workout similar to Insanity or P90X. The beautiful thing about this workout is that it only takes 25 minutes. However, there are no “official”breaks so it is tiring and you do sweat a lot. But it’s fun so far. 5 days a week, for a total of 10 weeks.

220.0 – What Now?

So I weighed in at an astonishing two-hundred and twenty pounds this morning. I’m well off my target weights and somewhat spiraling out of control. I told myself I’d never let my weight get back into the 220’s, yet here I sit.

My diet has been shit lately (of course). It’s no big mystery how I gain weight back or how I stall my weight loss. All I have to do is look at what I’ve been eating. Laziness and complacency have been my biggest enemies.

As I’ve said in recent posts, the FitBet was supposed to create a sense of urgency to lose weight, but as I got behind on my weight loss, it became obvious that I won’t win the bet. Now I’m in limbo. I still want to lose the weight and get back to being fit, but I no longer have that beacon guiding me. It’s kind of like going to college but not knowing what you want to do with your life. You take some classes here and there to make it feel like you’re doing something, but you’re really just spinning your wheels because you don’t have that ultimate goal to guide your path.

It’s funny, because in a recent post I thought the constant reminder of the clock ticking and counting down to a deadline was too stressful, but it seems that’s exactly what I really need.

What’s my ultimate goal? I’m not really sure any more. I know I’d like to get my weight down to around 175. I’d like to be able to run races more often – not necessarily to compete against other people, but to set PRs for myself – although I would like to one day be competitive against Rick again. 

There are still many other fitness goals that I’d like to achieve (look under the tab “Gator Strong” above), but without an attainable fitness bet pushing me, I’m stuck taking classes without a major, so to speak. It’s not fair for me to ask Rick to postpone the FitBet Deadline again. He’s done about everything he can do to motivate me.

I had a major setback when my mother passed away, and it’s been tough getting back on the horse, although I do feel that I’m not that far away. I’m teetering. I just need that extra little Push. That incentive that will fire me up again. In the back of my mind I feel like I’ll ultimately reach my fitness goals, but without a time urgency (like FitBet) reminding me to “Get up and Go!” I’m simply continuing to slack and put it off like I had been doing for years leading up to the start of this blog.

Hoping to find resolution soon…

Dedicated? or Just Plain Dumb?

So I got up around 3:30 AM after my daughter woke me up. I got her settled back in soon after and was about to go  back to sleep until my alarm was supposed to go off at 5 AM, but Rach says “Why don’t you go running?”. I say “Because it’s freakin’ four o’clock in the morning!” She says “So.”    …

I didn’t have a good comeback after that. So I thought eff it, and went running. I’d like to say that I was dedicated because I was out running my neighborhood streets, but I really need to quit sabotaging my efforts with all the poor nutrition. Gainesville in just over a week. 

A very sleepy Fit Gator ran with MapMyRun! Distance: 3.19mi, time: 36:11, pace: 11:21min/mi, speed: 5.29mi/h.
http://mapmyrun.com/workout/361568425

216.2

Really hoping to get my weight down to 210 by Monday. If I can do that, it’ll give me a fighting chance to get below two bills by the time I go down to Gainesville on August 30th which is only two weeks away. It seems daunting no doubt, losing over 16 pounds in 14 days, but we’ll see if it’s possible. Can’t afford to have ANY slip ups in my diet though. Two weeks! Come on Andy…you can do this!

Yet I Run

Just got back another night run around my neighborhood. I’m going to miss these summer night runs once the cooler weather hits. I’ve really come to like the serenity of these late night runs.
In the muggy night air with a melodious orchestra of frogs and crickets playing  in the background, it’s just me and my shadow propelling down the roads and sidewalks under the amber glow of the streetlights. 

At this time of night I own the neighborhood. While most of my neighbors likely unwind on their couches after a long day, I pass by their houses and notice the tell-tale blue hue of their televisions, yet I run.

The humidity is thick and the sweat endlessly runs down my brow burning my eyes. I wipe it away with the rapidly disappearing dry parts of my shirt, yet I run.

It’s eleven o’clock in the evening and I have to be at work before the sun rises again. Six a.m. comes quickly when you go to sleep at midnight, yet I run.

My three point one miles are nearly up.  I don’t want it to end even if my feet, legs, and lungs are begging me to do so. Yet I run.

Finally my five kilometers is over and I  begin to walk my half mile cool down. It clears my mind and I feel good. I will sleep well tonight. Good night summer run… Until next time.