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.