Shattering the 200 Pound Barrier!

This was a banner week for me. I broke the 200 pound barrier, and at approximately the same time crossed the halfway point!

Wait Weight

Here's the March 2nd weight!

Belated Updates

I was on vacation the end of last week, so I'm late updating. For the sake of catching up, here's what I weighed in at for the Thursday the 24th weigh in:



While on my vacation I pretty much stayed on the diet. I went to a few Spring Training baseball games, and allowed myself a hot dog at one, and a pretzel (salty, with mustard FTW!) at the other. Other than that, I tried to eat my normal complement of fruit for breakfast and had sensible dinners. This included a Grilled Dijon and Portobello from Applebee, Pad Krapow (Thai Chicken Basil), and a Steak and Blue flatbread from Crispers.

When I weighed in the morning of my return, I was only .4 pounds below that scale pic, but that's still pretty good for a vacation!

Pushing through - no pain no gain

Another one of the diet cliches that happens to be true is that there's value in pushing through, in dieting when it's hard. Whether that means resisting getting in on the Crawfish Etouffee order at work (true story), or exercising when you're tired and just don't feel like it. Well tonight was one of those nights for me.

I worked late, I'm tired from getting way too little sleep (Civilization 5 is insanely addictive, been up until 2:30 AM, and 1:00 AM the past 2 nights), and working long hours to minimize the vacation time I have to use, starting tomorrow. Needless to say, I didn't feel like working out before eating dinner once I finally got home and sat down at 8:30. But I did. I put on the TV, and I watched a few things off the DVR. And I rowed. I rowed for an hour. Maybe not at a backbreaking pace the whole way, but steady rowing for an hour. I've got the sore back as I type now to prove it. I also have these:



It's a bit of a weird picture, the lighting is too bright and makes it look horrific, but I have some decent calluses from rowing, even though I wore gloves. No pain, no gain!

Why I'm Doing This

I realized, I didn't really get into one of the major reasons I'm embarking on this diet. My father and I will be hiking to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in August, spending the night at the Phantom Ranch at the bottom, then hiking out the next day. That means I've got this in my future:















I can't wait. However, if i want to actually make it down and back, I need to get myself into better shape. Hooray!

The Daily Weekly

Here's this week's update: I suck at doing the weight update. Still and all, here's what Mr. Scale showed this week:














w00t!

5K(ish)

I just ran the first 5K of my life!

Probably the longest sustained piece of running I've ever done. I've never been a fan of running just to run, but have never had a problem with it in the context of sports. Just now though, I just ran for 35 minutes at an eleven minute mile pace, total distance 3.25 miles.

The rub, of course, is that I did this on a treadmill. Treadmill miles are somewhere between 1/2 and 3/4 of real world miles.

Still, the muscle is building underneath this slowly dwindling wrapping of fat.