Needs more Oomph.

  By Mike | May 18, 2012 - 8:53 am | Weight Loss Journey
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Lame, but honest.

I am so over… not in the trip towards the goal, but just in calorie intake over the last few days.

I’ve enlisted the help of an app called Lose It! which isn’t unlike the other thousand weight loss apps for various smart phone flavors. I have used this one before back when I had an iPhone and it has the foods that I eat pretty well covered so I don’t have to search hard or make many custom foods. I also like its layout and ease of use.

This isn’t meant to be an app advertisement, but I wanted to give a little explaination of where the chart comes from.

Today I will focus on trying to offset the three prior days by not only eating less but finally ACTUALLY going out and exercising. I got a good night of sleep and won’t be full of green beans. It’s a lame excuse, but believe me, it’s not easy to go from sedentary to moving. My hope is that I can get enough oomph together tonight to get myself in motion, and then according to Newton’s first law of motion, it should be easier to keep moving. :)

Lots of Lessons

  By Mike | May 16, 2012 - 1:48 pm | Lessons Learned
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A few things I’ve learned and will be working on avoiding:

  • No bars. If I’m there, people want to keep me there. If I show up for “one” I’ll be out for hours.
  • The fitness room at work is full-ish between 3:00pm 6:30pm. No exercise can be done easily right after work, and it’s really hard to drag my ass down there later than that. Perhaps the streets after dark are better.
  • I am really hungry (by volume) when eating mainly veggies… but they are super low in calories!

Exercise Right After Work

  By Mike | May 15, 2012 - 10:26 am | Lessons Learned
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I failed… on the first day no less. More correctly, I faltered. It’s only a failure if you don’t correct it going forward, right? If you learn from a failure then it is a lesson learned and will be categorized as such on this blog.

So, I should have guessed it, but now I know. Once I get home and sit down in the comfy chair I am probably not going to move again.

It’s so easy to want to “rest for a minute” only to let that minute degrade into several self-promises to go walk as soon as they cut to commercials… until the next show pops up leading to the decision to slip a bit longer. Soon after that it is dark, and sleeping becomes a bigger priority than TV or walking.

I learned this lesson last night. I won’t be sucked in by the siren song of the comfy char tonight. I’ll tie myself to the mast of exercise and force my tired feet to carry on.

First Day

  By Mike | May 14, 2012 - 3:06 pm | Weight Loss Journey
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Whelp, I forgot the damn eggs. Luckily I did decide to get some yogurt at the store yesterday, so I’ve got a bit of protein.

I am feeling pretty crappy today, but mostly this is from last night. I had a final hurrah while visiting Jeff down at my favorite bar and I lost count of the glasses of “cold&yellow” I imbibed. It sucks to pay the price with a flushed face, sweating, and overall ickyness. A feeling I’m very used to. I have not been kind to my body or my liver in the last several years.

Enough of that shit though, I am writing about weight loss. Beer and Burger King are off the list of intake for now, so I guess I just went a bit wild.

I’ve eaten an extra fruit already today along with following my meal plans and am finding that I am craving something terribly greasy to satiate my hunger… the kind of hunger only brought on by the night before. Luckily the day is about over which will allow me to go home and focus on motivating myself to walk for 45 minutes.

That’s gonna suck.

Oh well, I guess you can call this the flip side of my multiyear hangover, a change is good, but my body is in the middle of ‘revolt’ mode. Soon I hope to find myself craving an apple and motivating myself to run a few extra miles.

Here’s to a strong start! ::holds up mug of tea::

Who the hell is Jeff?

  By Mike | May 14, 2012 - 2:56 pm | Background
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A good question. Jeff is a lot of things, a bartender, a fiance to Jackie, an soon-to-be Respiratory Therapist… and he’s also my good buddy and a part time enabler. (the enabling goes both ways)

We met in college while finishing up our Marketing degrees and grew to become friends over several thousands of dollars worth of beer and food in bars and restaurants.

He and I share some bad habits, in fact we originally bonded over them, lately though we share increasingly better habits…

We’ve both nearly bridged that after-college gap filled with too much alcohol and too much partying. With his wedding coming up, and my girth expanding we’ve both been looking for ways to modify our behavior in positive ways.

So there you go, that’s a pretty decent primer. Lets move on.

Oy, I’m starting this journey TOMORROW!

  By Mike | May 13, 2012 - 3:17 pm | Weight Loss Journey
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OK, so I talked big game and now I am going to actually take action. As mentioned previously, I am beginning my transformation with a 3 point strategy including swapping out bad foods for good, making sleep a priority, and beginning the routine of exercise again.

I am going to the supermarket this afternoon and I’ll be buying the many things detailed below for work meals.

  • 10 pieces of fruit (bananas, oranges, apples)
  • 1 Jar of peanut butter
  • 1 loaf of whole wheat bread
  • one dozen eggs (to hard boil)
  • 5 bags of frozen “steamers” veggies

This should get me to the point where I can swap out the bad foods I have been eating out of convenience and due to a lack of planning ahead. I’ll have two eggs and some peanut butter toast in the morning, a fruit and frozen veggies for lunch and another fruit for a snack. While this is more than I usually eat at work, it will still be lower in calories… They have good cheesy casseroles and greasy breakfast sandwiches in the cafe at work, I eat them WAY too often. I also expect that this amount of food will keep the hunger at bay all day, leaving me in a good position to eat less dinner because I’m not SO DAMN HUNGRY when I get home, so yeah, Bonus!

I will be buying just enough for the week to see how it goes. I’ll reassess next weekend and make changes as needed explained in a post to come.

I’ll be forcing myself to go to bed tonight at 10pm as well… This is inconvenient as I am a night person, but hey, it’s part of the goal of overall healthiness that will lead to that half marathon I’ve tasked myself with finishing.

Oh, speaking of running… I don’t think I am up to straight up running so I think I’ll start sloooow. I’ll be walking for 45min a day this week and bump it up to jogging/walking soon. I just want to get into this gradually without overdoing it in the beginning. I am the tortoise in this race. :)

Believe it ONLY when you see it.

  By Mike | May 9, 2012 - 10:56 am | Weight Loss Journey
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I admit it. I have blogged before about weight loss. Several times.

Given my last post, and that I am roughly the heaviest right now that I’ve ever been, it’s pretty easy to see how well that went. Blogging in the past, I did about 4 posts over a week, one in the whole month after that, then I followed with an apology and promise to get back into it, and then nothing.  A few silent months later I take the site down out of embarrassment. This happened twice.

This is a great way to illustrate the struggle that is weight loss. try hard for a week, see a pound or two drop off, get frustrated, skip exercise/diet for a day or two, then stop caring …once again.

I’ve had minor success over those single weeks where I eat right and drink very little. I run and lift weights often and keep track of calories religiously. Then though, something happens. The fire goes out.  Willpower is never a problem for me as long as it only has to be exerted for a few hours, which if we’re honest, is not really saying much.

So how do I stay motivated to go for my goal of running a half marathon next year? How can I be sure I don’t fail?  Boy, if I had a simple answer to that I’d be making millions as a weight loss guru right now! I think though, that keeping the “I’ll believe it when I see it” attitude about the whole thing might be a good start.

In the past I have had coworkers, friends, and family catch onto (honestly, I usually tell them) the fact that I am starting on “the journey for weightloss” and they are really congratulatory. So congratulatory and positive that I already feel as if I hit a major milestone just by saying I’m GOING to lose weight. So congratulatory that I feel like I earned a day or two to slack on the diet. – You can see where this is going.

So this time around, ESPECIALLY for right now:

  • I will tell no one. (This blog is ok as no one reads it but spammers :) )
  • I will prepare a schedule for exercise and eating right that will hold me accountable.
  • I will shop over the weekend for healthy foods to eat for breakfast and lunch instead of the work food offered in our bistro.
  • I will make sleep a priority, even if it cuts into social time.
  • I will focus on the days one at a time. If I win the day over and over, I will win the year.
When it comes down to it, I guess the action items here for the beginning are:
  1. Get good food to swap out for the Cafe’s delicious (calorie laden) offerings.
  2. Focus on Sleep, make it a priority
  3. Start moving already… I have been far too still for far too long. Exercise 5 times weekly.

The big push begins Monday, but that doesn’t mean I am congratulating myself just yet.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Marathon Photos & Wrestling with Timelines

  By Mike | May 7, 2012 - 11:28 am | Weight Loss Journey
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I am not a runner or even a jogger, but yesterday I found myself hoofing it all over Lincoln, NE .

I wasn’t part of the marathon that was being held because well… like I said, I’m not a runner. I was there to shoot photos of a few friends/coworkers for various reasons. It wasn’t an easy task due to traffic being screwed up by the event and the TERRIBLE runner tracking app made by Planet What Development.

After missing my runners a few times only to be updated after the fact (through multiple force closes) that they had already passed by, I ditched the app which had killed off my fully charged battery anyways and just went old school on judging where they were by time. That seemed to work a lot better.

Memorial StadiumThe number of people was astounding and the energy in the crowd cheering them on was downright inspirational. Runners got to finish in the middle of Memorial Stadium where the Nebraska Cornhuskers play home games, with a massive crowd in the stands cheering behind them!

I must have covered 5 miles on foot by the time the Marathon was over trying to get all the photos I could. It didn’t help that traffic (as previously mentioned) forced me to park long distances away from the places I needed to go to get the shots.

What I kept noticing though, was how out of breath I was… and how much I was sweating despite a very decent 65-75 degree day and a steady amount of wind. This event slowly crept up on me and forced emoitions and thoughts to the surface I didn’t expect… I have been a big guy (read FAT) for a long time and it has held me back in multiple facets of life, but never until yesterday from being able to walk/jog short distances without stopping to rest.

As I huffed and puffed and struggled to move at the rate my mind was was willing my body forward, I really had to reflect on where I was in the timeline of life compared to where I wanted to be. I had to wrestle with the fact that my weight is a massive roadblock on that line, and that I got myself to this point by not (truly) thinking about these things. A point made even clearer when I got back to the car and saw the McDonald’s bag from breakfast sitting on the passenger seat.

There were also a few times that ambulances passed by with lights flashing and sirens blaring as if to reinforce what my current lifestyle will eventually bring… a bit dark I suppose, but hey, that’s how I think.

So here it is… I really want to be in that race next year and manage to finish the half marathon regardless of time. I want to run into the stadium and feel the sense of accomplishment that so many people did that day. I want to be the fat guy that changes his life and begins running marathons. (as one of my coworkers is, I feel like I might have some support in that)

A lot will need to change in my life before that happens though… More to come.

 

Invasion of the… Holy crap I’m old.

  By Mike | April 10, 2012 - 8:05 am | Found on the Internet
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Bawww threads and ‘remember-when’ conversations are a mainstay of picture boards and forums alike, but sometimes something jumps out at you and hits you over the head with a nostalgia hammer.

Invasion of the Nintendoids Ad from Homer's in Omaha, NE

Take this ad which seems to to be the bee’s knees on the interwebs at the moment. “The Invasion of the Nintendoids” is what I noticed first. I was sucked in, remembering back to my friend down the block that had an original NES system that he and I spent hours on.

The patches they are selling for $3.99 gave me a laugh. Patches? Really? And whats with the ripped acid wash jeans? You gotta love the late 80s – early 90s.

But all this was just fun – a laugh from the past – until I saw the Homer’s Logo at the bottom. I wouldn’t call it sadness, but I felt an immediate and strong longing for the days of my youth which included several trips to the Homer’s of old right here in Omaha, NE.

I know some have an even longer memory of the old Homer’s stores, and they would probably laugh at me for remembering my version as the “Old Homer’s” but I get that much leeway because this is my blog.

I remember the cassettes on the left as you walked in, and how they were always exactly $3 cheaper than CDs. I remember the interesting music they played, which I assume was the employee’s choice given it’s considerable range in styles. I also remember staring at a Large NES Advantage pad behind one of their glass cases.

Homer’s stores are nothing like that now. The old cassette stacks don’t exist any longer. The music is pumped in via Muzak and contains a large amount of pop music.  They don’t sell video games either. The number of their locations has also dwindled over time, a sure sign that music printed on physical media is not as profitable as it once was.

Mostly the stores that exist under the Homer’s name now are full of “lifestyle apparel” and LPs that have a bunch of Skinny-jeaned Hipsters and Beatz-headphoned wannabe DJs hovering around them.

Not that I blame Homer’s for changing… How can you compete in a market where digital has so many obvious benefits? Well, you can’t really, so there you go. :)

Meh, I guess that picture just hit me in a way I didn’t expect. Enough so that I would post about it here.