278.8

Getting a little derailed by life.

The new position at work has required staying late every night. I've been in the office as late as 11:30pm, and routinely until 9pm. Hoping the workload calms down, but the hours aren't optional at this point.

Due to this schedule, I've only made it to the gym about 3 times in 3 weeks. I am able to maintain weight when not working out though, so that's good.

When possible, I like to workout like crazy and diet very strictly, but in the long run, being able to maintain or continue on a slow weight loss when that is not possible is a more valuable skill than being able to drop 20 lbs in a month.

January should bring a lightened schedule and I got approval to setup a company computer at home, so I can work from there, which will allow me to hit the gym on the way home, then put in whatever overtime I need to from home. Currently I have to stay in the office, and it would take too long to go to leave work, go to the gym, come back to work and then go home.

So it's all looking good, I'm just not quite as far along as I had planned.

-Mike

278.4

I broke through the 280 mark! I know that isn't a standard benchmark, but a few years ago I stuck to a very strict calorie counting & excercise program and got down to about 285, then got stuck and gave up. I slowly put the weight back on. When I got down into the 280s again, I seemed to hit a mental block, got sick and had some other stuff happen, so I was worried I'd level off, but I keep marching on. That's the difference the BodyBugg seems to be making, it keeps it all in perspective, so I can look at the numbers and know that I'm eating too much or exercising too little, and not convice myself that things have just "stopped working".

I've started a new position with my company and am rediculously busy. I've been having to work 60 hour weeks for the last month or so. I'm the Central Property Supervisor and am reviewing all the work of 42 adjusters. In our companies history, I'm not sure anyone has ever attempted to supervise this many people. But like many things with my company, I'm young, stupid and related to the owners, so they use me for experimentation and know I can sue them. It's not so much that the hours are long, its that I was used to working out twice a day and doing all kinds of stuff in my free time, so it's getting harder to fit the gym time in. I've still managed to do it though, and reduced my calories on the days I knew I wasn't going to make it.

I'm pretty determine to make it down to at least 230. We'll see how hard that is and what I look like when I get there. At some point I'm going to switch the focus from weight loss to strength training. Ideally I'd still see fat loss during the strength training, but I would have to significantly increase my calorie intake to start serious lifting again. I'm not even attempting any lifting right now, the risk of injury is too high and my recovery time would be longer.

Well, it's 11:28pm and I'm typing this from the office after having just put in 6 hours of unpaid overtime (see earlier paragraph about new position at work). I'm going home.

283.6

I'm back.

I went to Texas, maintained my weight, but got sick on the last day. Well, I got a little sick on the last day in Texas, but what nearly killed me was having to get up at 3am, drive the airport, fly back to L.A. (with a layover), then drive straight in to work and stay there until 8pm.

The day before that I was slightly ill, by the end of that day, I had a 102.4 temperature. It was some kind of stomach flu, I didn't have any congestion or sore throat (which I usually always get when sick), but I had incredibly terrible things going on inside of me. That's all I'll say on that. And I feel mostly better, but haven't totally recovered.

So, 2 weeks off from the gym, and I'm still holding at the same weight. Not bad. I went to the gym last night, didn't feel too bad, but I have been having continuous headaches since being sick. Hoping that goes away soon.

I like breaking it down into pieces, so my next goal is to be under 260 in 6 weeks.

Thanksgiving in Texas... - w/Photo

It comes full circle. I think the first photo on here is from Texas a few years ago and now I'm posting photos from Texas last month. We raked all my grandma's leaves into a giant pile and burned them. When you're from LA (where you can't even light a cigarette in many parts of the city), bonfires are pretty entertaining.

283.8

Had a wild weekend. On Friday I met a friend at a bar and just got drunk for no reason. On Saturday, my wife's parents rented a room at the House of Blues on Sunset and had a fancy birthday party for her dad. Free food and drinks.

I'm going to Texas for Thanksgiving, we'll see if I live through that.

282.8

I'm going to a German restaurant tonight, I'll probably enjoy a dunkel, but I won't go too far.

283.5

Still moving in the right direction, but I think I've been slacking off the cardio a little. I've been doing a circuit of 10 minutes on the rower, heavy bag work, double-ended bag work and v-slips under a rope (basically lunges with boxing in mind).

It's a great workout, but has a lot of peaks and rests, so I think a more consistent cardio workout would be better.

I still plan on doing the above circuit every morning (as I've been doing since I set up my home gym), but want to start going back to 24 Hour Fitness at night (instead of working out at home a 2nd time each day).

Here is a graph I've been keeping. I like to keep graphs because it helps to have a quick visual of your progress. Without it, those days where you go up .2 lbs can be really annoying. The general trend of the graph will show you if things are working:


The graph starts at 309.2 lbs on 10/6/09.

The last point is today, 11/19/09 at 283.5 lbs.

I keep this taped up above my scale and update it each morning after I weigh myself. That weird spike and then dip in the graph a few days ago was a glitch with my scale. The number kept jumping around, but I weighed myself several times in a row and the last few times it held steady at a weight 3 lbs heavier than I thought was correct. I marked it on the graph, but the next day it dropped back down.

285.2

My weight was holding steady around 288, so I decided to just destroy myself with as much exercise as I could possibly fit in over the weekend, and now I'm at 285.2.

I weigh myself first thing in the morning (naked if you must know), every day, for a very consistent measurement. I know a lot of the programs out there advise not to weigh in daily, as this can be discouraging, but when you are trying for a daily deficit that is equal to most people's weekly deficit, I think it's OK.

My wife was sick on Thursday and Friday, so she was still recovering this weekend and didn't want to do anything. That worked for me, because usually my weekends are the hardest times to workout because I never know what we're going to do or when. But I started working out around 2pm on Saturday and didn't stop until about 8pm. Well, there were plenty of breaks, but I would try to stay active during the "breaks", like one of my breaks was getting on the roof and clearing off a bunch of leaves that had built up. Another "break" was moving all the old stuff that was stored on our side yard to try to throw away as much old crap as possible.

On Sunday, I did the same thing, but longer and harder (no pun intended). I thought I might have over-done it, but I feel pretty good today. I think I'm finally in that mode where I can just keep pushing myself.

-Mike

P.S. - The title of each post will be my weight from that morning's weigh-in. Wasn't sure if that was obvious or not.

People love photos in blogs, so here are some...

This is me hitting a can of beer with a baseball bat at a redneck themed party.









This is at the Bonneville (is that how you spell it?) Salt Flats. I think the salt makes me look fatter than usual.

This was just a post on the BodyBugg website, but...

I ended up rambling on a lot longer than I intended, so I thought I'd copy it over here.

I'm at 288.2 as of this morning. It seems to hold for a day or two, then drop 2 pounds, then hold again.
-----------------

Slow and steady may win the race, but I can't get excited about a race that slow. I don't watch golf or sailing for just that reason.

I've been hanging out on this message board and don't see many people going on crazy "Biggest Loser"-style programs.

Just curious if I'm the only one.

I also know that I should probably keep my head down until I've managed to stick to this crazy program for a little longer, as anybody can start a crazy program, it takes a true nut to finish it.

Assuming I don't flake out, I'm off to a good start.

In the last month, I've gone from 312 to 288, which is actually short of my target, but I'll take what I can get.

I don't like to publicly admit failure, so I'm hoping the more I document my goals, the less likely I will be to quit and hope nobody notices.

I want to get back into competing in Judo or Jiu Jitsu. Maybe take an amateur boxing match.

I'd like to get down to around 225 (I'm 6' 3" and reasonably muscular, so that would be a pretty good weight for me), before I start all that training again. It is great exercise, but often leads to injuries that make it hard to keep up a really consistent weight loss. I want to focus on the weight loss for a few months, then focus on training.

Well, this ended up being a lot longer then what I had in mind when I started typing.

Anybody else want to add their plans/goals so everybody else can harass you if you don't stick to it?

-Mike

288.6

Finished the main parts of my home gym. Have a punching bag hung up and a rower. I've been able to do it really cheap because the rower was left at my house by an old roommate (who asked me to sell it, but I never got around to it) and the punching bag was my brothers.

Working out at home last night and this morning. It's a little harder to get a continuous workout, but I worked out a lot longer and in more intense bursts, so my total calories burned was actually higher than usual (for the workout period, the day overall wasn't that great).

I'm going to try to use the rower for 30 minutes in the morning (I only did 25 this morning because my shoes started rubbing the skin off my toes, I still need to work out a few kinks in the setup/attire to get on a roll). I'll then go to 24 Hour Fitness at night or do another 30 minutes on the rower and an hour on the punching bag (broken up into rounds).

290.8 - Rough weekend

290.8

Got a little crazy this weekend, had Chinese food and a few beers. My weight stayed the same, so I guess I didn't go too far.

Setting up a punching bag and rower in my backyard, so I can get a better morning workout without taking up too much time.

Additional photographic documentation of fatness

My screen seems to widen this photo, thereby maximizing my fatness, but I think I'm at least 5% less fat in person. This photo was taken about a year ago, but should be fairly close to how I appeared about a month ago (just prior to starting with the BodyBugg).

People like to see fatness it all it's glory

This photo is a couple years old, but it's still pretty cool. My brother and I were in Texas visiting our grandparents. I was trying to blend in (I'm the city-boy of the family, being the only one born in California). I don't normally look this cool/rednick-ish.



I'll add some more humiliatingly fat photos later.

The beginning (again)

After a year of considering getting a BodyBugg, I finally got one. I'm a cheap bastard and when they released the new black model, it made the old gray ones really cheap on eBay. Got one for $149 (which included a 6 month membership to the website).

I've been very surprised by how helpful it is. The biggest thing is that it keeps your mind on the task at hand. It's a constant reminder. Every time I would start a diet or excercise program, after a couple weeks it would seem like it was taking forever to see any results. But the BodyBugg is charting it out day by day, so you can see that actual time you've put in and your effort (or lack of effort), and pinpoint the problem instead of developing a feeling like nothing works.

I've been wearing it for almost 3 weeks now (I think the first day was 10/21/09). I had already started dieting for about 10 days before and dropped 9 lbs, so the easy "beginning/water" weight was already off. I've lost another 15 lbs since starting with the BodyBugg (averaging 5 lbs a week).

I always lean towards doing things over the top, I can't go the slow route. If someone told me they had a program that was really easy and I would lose a pound a week for a year, I wouldn't bother doing it. That's just me. I need to be able to go after something and see results now. It's probably not the best way to go about things, but it's the only way for me. That was the problem I've had with any programs in the past (like Jenny Craig), they always wanted to meet with you and set small goals each week. I could never get interested in those small goals.

In that regard, BodyBugg is perfect for me. It is just a measuring device. If you want to destroy yourself with a crazy workout and diet program, it will just track you body's output the whole way. And that's what I need.

For the 3 weeks I've been using it, I've kept to about 1,500 to 1,700 calories a day. Buring 4,200 to 4,800 per day. Going to the gym for 30 minutes in the morning on the way to work and another 1 - 1.5 hours at night. I'd like to start riding my bike everywhere as a way of getting in additional calories burned, but I'm still too heavy to do that (the bike seat destroys my ass. I've researched different solutions and tried 3 different seats, no luck). I rode to and from work once (about 20 miles round trip) and I couldn't sit down right for a week.

I've been using the BodyBugg website daily, and neglecting to update this one, so I thought I'd summerize what's been going on. I'll start updating this at least once a week to have a record of my progress.

-Mike

Enter the BodyBugg era

After a year of considering getting a BodyBugg, I finally got one. I'm a cheap bastard and when they released the new black model, it made the old gray ones really cheap on eBay. Got one for $149 (which included a 6 month membership to the website).

I've been very surprised by how helpful it is. The biggest thing is that it keeps your mind on the task at hand. It's a constant reminder. Every time I would start a diet or exercise program, after a couple weeks it would seem like it was taking forever to see any results. But the BodyBugg is charting it out day by day, so you can see that actual time you've put in and your effort (or lack of effort), and pinpoint the problem instead of developing a feeling like nothing works.

I've been wearing it for almost 3 weeks now (I think the first day was 10/21/09). I had already started dieting for about 10 days before and dropped 9 lbs, so the easy "beginning/water" weight was already off. I've lost another 15 lbs since starting with the BodyBugg (averaging 5 lbs a week).

I always lean towards doing things over the top, I can't go the slow route. If someone told me they had a program that was really easy and I would lose a pound a week for a year, I wouldn't bother doing it. That's just me. I need to be able to go after something and see results now. It's probably not the best way to go about things, but it's the only way for me. That was the problem I've had with any programs in the past (like Jenny Craig), they always wanted to meet with you and set small goals each week. I could never get interested in those small goals.

In that regard, BodyBugg is perfect for me. It is just a measuring device. If you want to destroy yourself with a crazy workout and diet program, it will just track you body's output the whole way. And that's what I need.

For the 3 weeks I've been using it, I've kept to about 1,500 to 1,700 calories a day. Buring 4,200 to 4,800 per day. Going to the gym for 30 minutes in the morning on the way to work and another 1 - 1.5 hours at night. I'd like to start riding my bike everywhere as a way of getting in additional calories burned, but I'm still too heavy to do that (the bike seat destroys my ass. I've researched different solutions and tried 3 different seats, no luck). I rode to and from work once (about 20 miles round trip) and I couldn't sit down right for a week.

I've been using the BodyBugg website daily, and neglecting to update this one, so I thought I'd summarize what's been going on. I'll start updating this at least once a week to have a record of my progress.

-Mike

306.8 - This whole "diet & exercise" thing might be a good idea...

After a week of limited calories and hitting the gym twice a day, I'm down to 306.8.

That's pretty good considering I was at 315 a little while ago.

I'm probably under-cutting my calories, but it's working for now and I feel ok, so I'm going to keep "eye-balling" my diet until things stop working, then I'll start actually tracking the calories and number of meals.

315.2 - Rock bottom for the 75,334 time!

Here I am. A big whiney bitch. 315.2 lbs. Jenny and I talking about fixing our lives.

But, luckily for me, I'm manic depressive. And all that depressive makes way for some manic. So here it comes.

312 - Got sick

I took a free class at 10th Planet Burbank, had a good time getting mauled, then got really sick the next day. That was last week, I'm basically over the sickness, but still congested.

Being forced to stop going to the gym always makes me want to start a crazy hardcore program, so that's what I'm doing.

Going back to basics, strict calorie counting (1850 per day) and doing strictly cardio. When I'm in better shape I'll mix back in some heavy lifting, but I stand to gain a lot more by being able to use the strength I have, then flopping and lumbering around as the fattest guy in the room.

I weigh about 312 right now. I haven't been able to figure out why I'm slowly gaining. I haven't been dieting or doing enough cardio to expect a big loss, but my activity level compared to my food intake doesn't seem to justify the slow gain.

Moving to a new house in Burbank, which has a large yard. Going to set up a gym at home, which should increase the odds that I'll actually get in 2 cardio sessions a day. We still have the rower, so I'm going for at least an hour a day on it (split into two sessions). Ideally I'd like to get up to 2 x 45 minute rowing sessions.

P.S. - tried to sign back up at XTC (BJJ/gym), but was told the girl I needed to see leaves at 2pm. Now I doubt I can afford it with the rent of our new house. So they can just sue me for the money they think I owe them.

306 - Well, here we are again

I suppose all thing considered, I'm doing OK. I'm down to 306, which is better than 321 in January, but is nowhere near where I should be.

After a long dispute with my BJJ place, looks like I'll be signing back up there soon.

Going to try to work out there once during the day and then attend BJJ class at night.

If this blog is any indication, I'm guessing I'll fall short of that. But you never know.

321

Got back from a month working in Massachusetts. Kept up the lifting there, but not much cardio. It's hard enough to go to the gym when you are living out of a hotel and working 14 hours a day, but trying to do cardio on top of all that wasn't going to happen (ok, it could have happened, but it didn't).

I'm going at it "Biggest Loser" style. Have stopped the heavy lifting and doing circuit training of lower weights, about 20 reps each with 30 seconds in between. I'm able to keep my heart rate around 145 between cardio sets.

Weighed in last Friday, 321 lbs, going to weigh in again tomorrow. Weighing in once a week, even though I want to weigh in daily.