Day 3 - Hi

Hello
just wanted to get one record that day 3 went well. Not working out unfortunately but the eating was pretty good. I'm still not ready to weigh myself but I'm getting excited about when I am. I really want to be able to track progress with numbers. Soon I'll take the plunge...

Anyway, Hope all if going well and perhaps I'll have a bit more to write tomorrow. Good Night!

Day 2 - Breaking My Silence and Hopefully Thiers

Yup, still here. Two whole days and going strong :)
I did well today on the food front. Made sure to eat breakfast where I had a small bowl of cream of wheat and a coffee. For lunch i had a giant salad. I forget all that was in it but it did NOT have cheese, dressing with any fat in it, or anything that was glaringly bad.

I didn't do any snacking except for about 6 skittles that someone had sitting on the desk behind mine. Not a good thing to be eating but I at least was aware of what I was doing and really did stop at 6, just a small handful. Basically the theme here is that I'm the one in control.

By the time I got home a bit ago I was starving and had a probably 160ish calorie no fat bowl of cereal with skim milk. Again, I didn't say I was eating healthy, just that I'm in control and not taking in a crap load of calories.

This is important because all around me both at work and at home are bad temptations. I have to make my son mac and cheese for dinner and not eat any. Candy type snacks all over the place at work, and so on. I plan to take a trip to Trader Joe's and get some better snacks to have on hand at my desk at work, which i expect to be a big help. The temptations are always going to be around so I have to get back to managing them better. Having better alternatives at hand was a huge help last time I did this and eventually it became second nature.

Aside from all of that if I'm lucky I'll go for a short run tonight after the kids are in bed and my wife gets home.

As I mentioned before there is no way I'll be able work out twice a day 6 days a week like I was basically doing when I lost 100 pounds in six months in 2007. This is a different animal this time, but I know I can make it work.

the huge elephant hanging over my head right now is the part where I weigh myself. I'm a numbers guy, and it's a huge motivator for me to be able to measure my success in numbers, even if I'm just seeing a pound or two a week. The catch 22 is that I'm not ready for the mental setback and pissed off scene I'm going to have when I see whatever that number is. I'm hoping by this time next week I'll be mentally ready to get on the scale. But who knows, maybe I'll do it sooner.

I will give you some other numbers in the name of coming clean.

July 2007 waist size in jeans - 44
July 2009 waist size in jeans - 34
July 2010 waist size in jeans - 36/38 (ouch, it hurts to write that)

July 2007 weight - 300 I think (I'll have to check the first page of this blog when I'm done writing this :) )

July 2008 weight - 204 (only really maintainable for me if I'm super active and eating perfectly. I'm 6'3 and not a small guy)

July 2009 weight - 215-220 - this is what I think is my sweet spot. Still fit into 34 pants. Looked OK without a shirt on, could still eat some cheese or some beers now and again. This is where I'd like to get back to.

July 2010 weight - ??? - I'm going to guess at best case high 240's, at worst high 250's. If I went and weighed myself now and it was over 260 I think I'd cry.

So there are some numbers to work with until I get hard current numbers. Not ideal, but it did feel good coming clean.It's never too late right?

One of the hardest parts for me is that I really not only felt good about myself before, but I felt like an inspiration to others because of all that weight I lost. Now I feel like I'm borderline looking like another douche bag who is on the way to gaining it all back. It used to be that people who I had not seen in forever commented how I was a changed man. Now no one says anything.

Silence is bad in this case.

Working on changing that and starting with me. Booyah!

I'm Back

I don't know if anyone reads this stuff anymore, but I'm back for another round of catch up. In the past 13 months or so I've had a lot of life changes. A new son last summer, and new daughter this summer, a new job, and basically a new life. Unfortunately not all of my good habits that I learned over the course of this blog have stayed with me. I have not weighed myself in who knows how long. Slowly my eating habits have gotten worse, I simple don't have the time to dedicate to all of the physical activities I did before.

My new job that I've been at for the past 5 months doesnt allow me to bicycle commute like I could at my last job. Much of my time is taken up by work and family.

The excuses are all over the place.

The worst part is that I spend a lot of time being pissed at myself for falling off the wagon instead of doing things about it.

So I'd really like to put that to a stop. It's going to have to happen slowly, unlike last time.

I'm going to start:

- paying attention to how many calories I consume daily. I'm not going to count, but I'm going to have an idea of what I'm eating and try to keep the number low. I did this for a long time during maintnence and it worked.

- working out in some form 3 times a week. It may be a run, it may be a bike ride, it might be a trip to the YMCA. What's been hard for me is that I don't have any set schedule. I really can't go to the gym the same time every day like I did before. I need to be more adaptable and go when I can in between working and being with my family.

- setting some goals. I might sign up for another half marathon in the winter, but in the short term I'm going to sign up for some 5k's or something. 18 months ago I was running half marathon distances in under two hours. Lat night I went got a 3 mile run, which turned into a 2 mile run because I thought I was going to die. I need to start from ground zero and build myself back up again.

- I'd like to blog when I can because that was a good help, but honestly a lot of that will depend on if anyone reads it. I really did get a lot more from blogging when I was doing it with other people. Hopefully that can start up again.

That's all I've got now. I've run out of time to be on the PC :) That's how life is these days.

Hopefully I'll be back soon with some positive updates that show I'm back on track!

-Brian

p.s. I think I have 30 pounds to get back to where I want to be, but I won't know for sure until I weight myself. I'm just not ready to do that yet though...