fitness blog

227.8 – MRI Today

About the same weight as yesterday. Admittedly we were out running errands and decided to eat Jimmie John’s for dinner. Thinking the sodium in that meal caused me to retain a little water and hence the .2 lb weight gain. Or it could just be my scale which tends to fluctuate its readings a little here and there.  Nonetheless, the onus is strictly on diet today.

I’m having an MRI on my right knee today. I hurt it playing basketball down in Gainesville 9 days ago. Landed awkwardly, kind of buckled. It feels tight and though it’s not really hurting continuously, when I walk it often locks up which shoots pain down the front of my leg from my knee to my foot. It also hurts to kneel down on that knee, so I’m really worried that surgery is going to be my only option. Guess I’ll find out in a couple of days when the doctor has a chance to review my MRI.

It has been depressing not being able to run or use the elliptical at YouFit. The weather has cooled things down outside and now it is so nice outdoors – it’s the perfect time to do some running before the harsh, colder winter air moves in and I won’t want to even step outside, much less go running.

Edit: MRI completed. Now I play the waiting game until I hear the news from the doctor
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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.

222.6 – Return from the Swamp & FitBet II

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Labor Day weekend. The unofficial end to summer and the official beginning to something new… FitBet II.

Well I’m back from Gainesville and the football weekend extravaganza! Weight gain was inevitable, but not unexpected. Here’s some of the things we did over the course of the weekend…

We went to the Gator game, watched the Gators win, sang “We Are The Boys” with ninety thousand friends, Did the Gator Chomp, rode a bus, got drunk, played poker, cooked out, played basketball, went to the pub, drove through campus, saw Tim Tebow’s statue, went to the student union, played corn hole, played some Xbox football, ate at Ker’s Winghouse, shopped for gear, ate at Red Robin, went to the mall, and watched as much college football as humanly possible on tv. (Not necessarily in that order)
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But today is a new day, a new start… September 2nd, Labor Day. Rick has given me until late November to get my weight under 200 pounds (aka Onderland!) I’ve dubbed this new challenge, FitBet II. Time to put in work…

Time to go to the gym…

220.0 – What Now?

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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…

218.6 – Danger, Will Robinson

Warning!…  Warning!…  Danger, Will Robinson! 

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After getting my weight as low as 205 and on the precipice of breaking back into the 100’s [Onederland] for the first time in nearly a decade and a half, I have dramatically put back on the weight. The reason can be summed up in three words: Diet, diet, diet. I weighed in on Tuesday (didn’t post it) at 214.2. Forgot to weigh in yesterday and last night Rachel and I made the not-so-smart decision to eat Hibachi from a local Japanese steakhouse. I’m sure I ate way too much (calorie wise) and the food is no doubt loaded with sodium.

So here I am … instead of breaking new ground into new frontiers, I’ve lost some serious ground. I’ve fallen off the edge of the fitness cliff, and I’m hanging precariously by a small vine (of hope). I need to stop the bleeding now. Once and for all.

Lately, breakfast has been the issue. I have to eat early since I work at 6am. I have been eating either cereal or PB&J toast with Orange Juice.  Then by 8am I’m usually starving again. Why? Because I’m not ingesting very much protein which helps to keep one fuller longer. Lots of carbs which I apparently burn right through. So then at 8 (I try to hold off until at least 9), I must eat some sort of snack. It used to be a protein bar, but I got burned out on eating those (they taste like crap after a while). So lately I’ve been eating some peanut butter crackers and a Coke (damn you evil soda). More carbs, no protein. As you can guess, that also doesn’t keep me full for long.

By the time my lunch break rolls around (usually around 11:30) I’m starving again. I get in my car and contemplate having to go to my house and take the time associated with actually make something healthy, but the growls from my stomach and mild nausea from being slightly hypoglycemic usually cause me to head to a nearby restaurant instead. It’s quicker to satiate my appetite and hunger. And although I’ve been trying to avoid the usual pitfalls of fast food like McDonald’s or Zaxby’s I do find myself getting Subway or Chick-Fil-A. But I haven’t been stringent about making those meals healthy. At Subway, I’ll generally get chips and a big sweet tea with what is usually a 6″ Tuna on wheat (But sometimes I opt for a foot long – although when that happens, I usually get full after eating about 75% of it).

Then I get off work at 3 and head home to do my Insanity workout. But the Insanity workouts are tough so I eat something for an afternoon snack, usually like a Nutragrain bar or something to give me a quick boost of energy. More carbs, no protein.

So now it’s 4:30. Workout is over. I’ve been up since 5am (likely went to bed too late, 11p or later as usual). I’ve worked all day til 3. I’ve worked out til 4:30. Then I have to pick up my daughter from camp. Home by 5. I’m exhausted, tired. Plop down on the couch to hang with my daughter for a few minutes and to actually take a much needed break. 5:30 hits and my wife is off work and heading to daycare to pick up our other daughter. “What’s for dinner?” she asks. Hell, I don’t know… I’m tired, and much like I do at lunch, the motivation to take the time to cook a healthy meal after my day so far seems quite unappealing. So what do we do? We order Hibachi. Ugh… I can hear me getting fatter just by talking about this…

Dinner’s over. Kids need to be bathed. Laundry needs to be done. Rooms need to be picked up. Dishes washed. Trash taken out… The list continues. Now it’s pushing 9 pm. Kids need to go to sleep, but fight and argue to stay awake and play. I really need to incorporate my night-time cardio workout that seemed to work so well for me – even if it’s now just to counter some of the negative effects I’ve caused by eating poorly. I am literally fighting to simply stay the same weight and not gain weight, don’t even think about losing weight at this pace.

But now more often than not, the late night cardio doesn’t materialize. Since I go to work so early, when the rest of my family sleeps, my wife is solely responsible for getting the kids up, fed, and off to their respective places-o-fun for the day. Often it’s a struggle for her just to make it to her job on time.  I can’t justify not helping her after dinner, cleaning up and helping with the chores which includes making sure the kids are bathed, teeth brushed and asleep. It’s not fair to her. She deals with the arguing and struggles by herself in the morning. Kendall, the eight year old is a piece of cake. She’s tired and wants to go to bed by 9:30 on her own. Drew, our three-year old wants to party until the sun comes up. We literally have to make sure everything is shut down and lights off for her to go to sleep. Otherwise she’s too distracted and stays awake and wants to play and talk and generally keep us from doing anything we want to do.  So we turn off the lights and lay down with her to get her to go to sleep and I’m so tired and exhausted from the day and poor diet already that I usually fall asleep before she does. I wake myself up, but now it’s usually too late to work out. Closing in on midnight. 

Day over. Fat 1, Andy 0.

Rinse and repeat.

Long post, I know… hang with me. It’s almost over. I’ve gotten to the point where I simply must force myself to eat clean. I have to change-up my diet to include more protein. I have to force myself to drink shit tons of water to stay hydrated and keep the hunger pangs at bay. I have to resist the urge to be lazy and instead make my lunches and dinners. Eat healthy foods. Keep a close eye on my calories and macros. Watch my diet like a hawk. Also need to shut things down earlier at night. Get the kids to sleep earlier, so I can go to the gym or running.

So today is Day 1 on the road to recovery. Like Rick says, I must make up lost ground before I can forge new ground. But I’m determined. I won’t let this beat me. I’ll persevere and succeed.

215.8 -Full Disclosure & A Promise

In the name of full disclosure, I weighed in this morning at 215.8 pounds. I have been neglecting my health (and therefore this blog) for far too long now.  A while back I made the decision to start posting my weight upon waking up every day. Rick had suggested doing it once a week to keep myself honest and accountable. But I knew if I didn’t post it every single day that it would give me way too much leeway to slack off on my diet and exercise – thinking in the back of my mind that I’ll “make it up tomorrow”.

Well lo and behold, somewhere in the past few months, I stopped doing that. And it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.  For those of you who may have been keeping up with this blog, you know I had suffered a personal loss just under two months ago. As much as I tried to get my mind right, I continued to slack off. Rick saw this and gave me a freebie month on our Fitbet, extending the deadline by one month to the end of September to hit my goal weight of 170-175lbs.

Then began the zigzagging. I would do great for a couple of days, lose some pounds. Then I’d disappear from the blog for a couple of days, do poorly, gain a few pounds. Even Rick noticed the pattern. He’d text me after not seeing any posts on my blog for a couple of days and say something like “haven’t seen any posts for a few days; that’s usually a  bad sign.” – which it was. Inevitably I would be up in weight due to poor diet and half-assing the exercise – too embarrassed to post my weight gain.

But the past few days exercise has started becoming fun again. I’ve started looking forward to it like I used to. To be honest, up until this point, the past couple months, I’ve been dreading it. Knowing that I had Insanity workouts looming 6 days a week. Knowing that I really needed to hit the gym or run the neighborhood to compensate for poor food choices. But now, I’m beginning to look at this with excitement once again. I feel like I’m breaking out of the complacency that’s burdened me for over eight weeks now.

I looked back at some posts early on in this blog and I notice that I’m roughly at the same weight now as where I was in late April. That not only sucks, but could really be defeating if I let it be. But for some reason it’s not. It’s motivation for me. It shows me how well I was doing. How far I had come in such a short amount of time. It reminded me that I can actually do this!

This blog originally began as something that I was going to use to simply chronicle my journey. I didn’t think anyone but Rick and I and possibly my wife would ever look at it. But now over 90 of you guys have subscribed to this!  You’ve bought into it. You’ve actually expressed interest in seeing my progress. And I sincerely thank you all. For this reason, I make this promise to all of you – I promise to see this thing through to the end. I promise to never give up. I promise that no matter what life throws my way, no matter how many times I may get knocked down or stumble and fall, that I will always find a way to persevere and rise above it. Just seeing those “likes” on my posts let’s me know that you guys are still out there. You’re still rooting for me … a stranger … perhaps on the same path as you – to get healthy and fit!

The Fit Gator Journey continues….

SDV.