Back in the saddle again!

So, we are back on track again, and it's been a really long time since our last post! I'm going to try to post once a week and talk about our progress at a minimum. I've got a powerful new tool in my toolbelt... we are using StickK.com to create a commitment contract. Basically my wife and I have set aside $1200 each to commit to meeting our weight loss goals. Each week we need to meet our goal or else we lose $100 from our balance... the best part about it is that if we do miss a week the money that we put goes to charity!

So, it's been a long while....

November 29th to be exact... Since my last posting here.
Well, to say the least, I fell off the wagon. The holidays hit and between having family in town, celebrating with family, being out and about shopping for Christmas, and just the general unstructured craziness that was going on... I didn't do a good job of keeping my goals or my plans in mind and I stopped working out and eating healthy.

Since then I've gotten back up to my beginning weight (almost anyways), and felt terrible in general. On Wednesday of this week Leann, My Dad and his girlfriend, and my brother and I all started a competition together. We are trying to see who can lose the most weight as a percent of our beginning weight by April 1st. My goal is lose 40 pounds by April first. I've already lost 3 pounds this week and we have been doing a great job of eating healthy this week. It's definitely a harder task finding the time to fit it all in (weight training, cooking healthy food, taking Ethan to daycare (actually just taking care of Ethan in gerneal), and finding time to do cardio work... not to mention document everything here).

Anywho, I've got a much better attitude and Leann is in this thing with me now so I know we are on our way to success!
Until next time.... L8rs Gators!

It worked!

So in my last post I talked about how poorly I was feeling and what a bad attitude I had that day and I was hoping that working out would change that. Well I'm happy to say that it did! It's crazy what a difference it makes. I remember from the last time that Leann and I really worked at getting in shape. We were really committed to the program and the work out regimen... we would be in such a bad mood by Friday night but we would force ourselves to go to the gym... even if it was 9 or 10pm on a Friday night and it helped so much! It was same for me earlier this week when I made that post.

Anywho, I think my posts will be less frequest for the next week or so as my mom is in town to hang out with us and Ethan this week and we will be spending lots of time with her. I need to try to stay on track with my fitness goals while she is here... but it's tough because I want to socialize a lot and that means less working out and more eating out. We'll see how it goes!
Anywho, until next time.

The last 5 days...

Hey Gang,
It's been a while since my last post. I actually put a couple of them out there via email but I had a problem with my blogger account and the posts disappeared! Anywho, I now think I've got the problem solved and I can post again.

I've updated my weight information below as you can see I had been going down quite a bit and had hit my lowest since I started tracking with this tool... but it is now going back up. I actually did pretty well on thanksgiving... I practiced portion control and didn't eat a lot of unhealthy things. The downside is that we did a LOT of socializing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and I fell off the wagon a bit. I didn't all out binge at any point but I did eat bad stuff here and there each day.

I've got a bit of a bad attitude today... I'm just not feeling optimistic. I think I just need to get up and do some exercise to get my Endorphins up! Anywho, that's my post for today.... short... but that's the mood I"m in.

My free day...

So yesterday was my first free day in earnest in a long time. I felt that I actually deserved this one as I worked hard all week to not eat poorly! So I had a little bit of everything that I was craving:

• I started with some Swiss cake rolls and a sprite.
• I had a double cheese burger and some strawberry Fanta at jack in the box.
• I had 3 diet coke's.
• I had a few handful of cashews.
• I had some Borro's Pizza.
• I had some boneless buffalo wings.
• Finally I also had some red mountain dew (which I haven't had in over 6 months)!
• Actually… last but not least I had an Ice Cream Cookie!

Wow! That was a lot of stuff… but I must say that, of the things that I did eat, most of them I did not finish… only had part of because my stomach was sooo full. I woke up this morning a pound heavier and feeling super dehydrated. I also didn't really feel like eating any of that stuff again today… though I’m sure that by next week I'll be craving it again. Anywho, as far as results go, I weighed in at a pound heavier today… which is actually not that much for a free day. We'll see if it continues to add on tomorrow. Today is a cardio day and I'm hoping to get some in tonight. Nike + Jogging here I come! :)

Today I've eaten a protein bar, a chicken caesar salad, two pieces of chicken, and some corn. I've also had some grape juice and some apple juice. I haven't had hardly any water… which I should be having a ton of!

What I have done well today is not turn this Sunday into another free day. I did have temptations… the Swiss Cake Rolls waiting for me in the fridge this morning, all the sample food at CostCo, etc… but I didn't give in!

Anywho, that's the skinny for today.

This week's progress...

So I thought I would take a moment to recap this week. Things went pretty well this week. Though I ended the week at the same weight as last week I am remaining positive about my progress. I think that I've built strength and muscle from where I was just last week. With respect to my weight lifting my reps are stronger and the weight that I use for those reps is more than it was a week ago! I went through the whole week again with out eating any fast food, drinking any pop, and in general with out cheating on my diet. I feel better than I did a week ago, and I'm proud of myself for the progress I have made.

As to what needs to be improved for next week...
Well, lots of things.

• This week I only actually did my Cardio once.
• I didn't do a single leg workout.
• All my exercises were done here at home. I didn't make it to the gym.
• I didn't stick 100% to the nutrition plan (I had a breaded chicken salad for lunch yesterday along with simple carbo pasta, cheese and chicken, I ate pepper jack cheese with crackers instead of mozzarella cheese, and lots of other little violations). I didn't cheat on the diet (meaning eating potato chips, pop, and icecream), but I didn't follow through 100%.
• Sunday turned into another free day last week.

So, what are the things I'm going to do this week to improve? Well for starters I'm going to force myself to go to the gym on leg days. I'm also going to use my Nike Plus Ipod Nano gadget to challenge my brother and my buddy Eric to a most miles over 6 days competition. As to the diet I think I'm going to start preparing some quick snacks at night for the next day when I'm hungry but need to be on the run. One of the other things that was tough this week was that we were taking Ethan out a lot and I didn't have a good way of taking food with. I think this week I'm going to go buy some of those freezer packs and use those to keep my food cold that I bring with me in my lunch cooler.

Anywho, it's freeday time and I'm off to have a sprite and a swiss cake roll!

New Feature on iUpgrade!!

Hey there,

scroll to the bottom of this link to check out the latest feature! I was going to try to write an interface to my google docs spreadsheet to track my weight but it seemed like a pain.... so I went looking for another option. After a quick check on the apple website I remembered that there was an article I read someplace about a google spreadsheet competitor called EditGrid. Another quick google search revealed that indeed this tool existed and they had an iPhone interface that allows you to edit spreadsheet information directly.

So I created a spreadsheet to track my daily checkin with the scale in my bathroom... and I created a chart on this sheet that I was able to share as an image. The graph below is automatically updated every time the page loads with the latest information! Pretty cool eh??

Not only can you publish your charts from EditGrid but you can also publish your spreadsheets as well. You can publish them as read only or you can add a mini update panel to your blog and let other people update the spreadsheet! Way cool!

If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!

So the last two days have been really rough! Yesterday was especially bad... I think that bad habits are really hard to stop. We headed over to Gilbert on Wednesday to take Ethan and his cousin Makenna for a walk in their strollers around the new mall. Well I didn't think to plan out my meals for the day or my activities so I ended up heading off to the mall w/o a good meal before we left. By the time I got there I was super hungry. We decided to eat at the food court and I was really tempted by a new Philly Cheese Steak place and the pizza place. I fought the urge though (largely in part to my wonderful wife who suggested that I not eat Pizza even though she really wanted some). Instead we got food from Panda Express. Although this provided me with he opportunity to eat healthier... I choose instead to split a meal with my Leann and justified the action of ordering non healthy food by the fact that we were splitting a meal. So I ordered half and half fried rice and chowmein... not a good choice. Next we ordered the entree... and I picked something with Chicken in it.... but as it turns out the potato chicken was not a good choice either.... it had mostly potato in it. Leann ordered the chicken and mushroom entree. On top of that we split a medium lemonade... that was loaded with sugar and was not "lite lemonade"!

So on with the day right.... well on our way back from shopping at the new mall the girls were getting really cranky and I suggested that we stop by Bahama Bucks (which is Tiffany's favorite) so that they would feel better after getting a little sugar in their system. Well when we get there Tiffany offers to buy me a strawberry smoothie... to which I just say yes without thinking. When she brings it to the car it's HUGE and topped with a ton of whip cream.... and at this point I feel bad not eating it since she bought it... so I down the whole thing...... bad decision again! On top of that when I get home I take a nap because I was up late with Ethan and got up early.... and probably because I was crashing from all the sugar I took in. Anywho... when I get up Tiffany offers me a Little Debbie Nutty Bar that she says she put in the freezer just for me (I know... Tiffany is the devil right!), well I resist at first but then I go into the freezer to get some chicken and I see it sitting there and I eat it... fully knowing the consequences of my actions! I tell you .... bad habits are hard to break. For dinner I was going to just have a protein shake because of all the bad eating throughout the day but then Leann offers to get me a bowl of the dinner that she and Cori made and I felt bad saying no (plus I was really hungry) so I said yes... well this dinner involved Chicken, lots of cheese, white rice, and pineapple. I am proud to say that I limited myself to only one bowl though! Once again I was provided with the opportunity to eat healthy and I just opted not to..... because it was easier, or I was weak, or some other excuse that I was able to justify my actions with! I think that is my biggest weakness and the biggest thing I need to overcome... my ability to justify my actions. The last thing that made yesterday a setback was right before I went to bed I was hungry again (probably because I only had one small bowl at dinner) so I opened up the closet and there waiting for me were some Little Debbie Swiss Cake rolls that Tiffany had bought... and bam, just like that I had one in my mouth. But I did feel guilty so I only ate one of them... until this morning when I woke up and the other one was just waiting for me there at the counter. That's when I ate Swiss Roll number two... which lead to my bad habits this morning. One of the big things that I struggle with is if I cheat once in particular day, or even week for that matter.... I end up justifying that as a good reason to continue to cheat the rest of the day (or, heaven forbid, week)... because "I've already blown today".

So today wasn't as bad. So far today I've eaten 1 Swiss cake roll, 3 protein bars, and a mini turkey meatloaf from the eating for life cook book..... oh, and 4 mini soft chips ahoy cookies.... that guess who left on the counter.

On top of all of this I blew my exercise routine as well:

• I didn't do my leg work out (though my legs were killing me from the previous day's squats
• I didn't do any crunches
• I didn't do any pushups.

Things that I did do well over the last two days:

1. Refused to get Pizza even when I was still hungry after Panda.
2. Took my vitamins.
3. Only ate one bowl of fattening food for dinner when I wanted two.
4. Blogged this stuff.
5. Documented my eating habits.

So what have I learned from all this and what will I do better tomorrow?

I'm not a very religious person... in the sense that I don't subscribe to any particular religion.... and frankly I'm not the biggest fan of organized religion but.... I am certainly a spiritual person and I do believe in a higher power.... or a connectedness amongst all things. Having said that (and that sounding way more deep that what I was planning on blogging tonight), this next thing I'm going to say is going to sound cheesy and silly... but... Last week I was watching Evan all-mighty with my family, which is admittedly a cheesy movie, and I was struck by some of the comments that "God" (played so well by Morgan Freeman) said:

"Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other? "

I know it's silly because it's from a movie but I'm really moved by this quote. I whole heartily believe that it is true. I've had opportunities all my life to get in shape and get fit as well as opportunities to eat poorly and make poor choices... which I've done my fair share of when it comes to my health. Some times I made the right choices and I took advantages of those opportunities for a while... and I got in really good shape and I maintained it.... but lately I've been making poor choices. Actually for the last 10 years I've been consistently making those poor choices. Well starting tonight, starting this very instant I'm going to be making more of those opportunities, I'm going to be choosing more wisely and I want each and every one of you out there reading this to hold me accountable to that. Please, please do, it's going to help me a lot to know that you all are helping to keep me honest on this one.

Anywho, back to what this section was supposed to be about... the things that I've learned and hence going to do better tomorrow:

1. I'm going to work on not justifying things and stick to the plan.
2. I'm going to see my opportunities for what they are and take advantage of them.
3. I'm going to lay down some ground rules for next time Tiffany comes to town :)
4. I'm going to plan more!

Big day today!

Today was a great day!
Today was day number two and my eating habits were much better than day one. I started this morning with my vitamins, some hydroxycut, and some cheese and fruit. Meal two was a protein bar, meal three was two chicken links, meal four was a protein bar, and meal five was a protein shake.

I need to take pictures for my before shot some time this week. Anyone with suggestions for the best technique as far as lights and backdrop goes, please leave a comment and let me know. I want to enter in the official body for life challenge. The last time I did I lost 40 pounds in three months!

As far as exercise goes, I spent way to long playing video games with my brother online (Rainbow Six Vegas) and didn't get outside in time to Jog. Instead I did 50 squats… which really got my heart pumping. I followed that up with 50 crunches and 10 pushups. I know, I know… weak… but it's a start for me… and that's a good thing.

I know it sounds silly but I'm going to create some of those silicon wrist bands with the iUpgrade tag line.
Anywho, that's it for the status update from me for today. Tomorrow I'm going to focus more on finding some good tips out there and sharing them here. L8rs Gators!

Today is Day 1:

So I'm starting this new life of mine today. I'm going to be trying to find some good templates to capture my daily meals and fitness routine. For now I'll just be documenting it in blog format as text. My plan right now is to use a loose version of the body for life program. I'll be trying to get in my lifting on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'll be doing cardio on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. I also think I'll be trying to do the following each day: Pushups, Squats, and Crunches. My plan is to be 40 pounds lighter in the next 90 days. Keep me honest. Please post some feedback and encouragement hopefully!

My meals thus far today:

Meal 1 - 9am
Protein Drink - I'm using Body Choice's Liquid Protein.
Vitamins - Thai Mangosteen
Caprisun 100% grape juice box.

Meal 2 - 1:30pm
Tuna on Whole Wheat with light mayo (one 6oz can of Tuna)

Meal 3 - 4:00pm
2 Chicken Links, 1 piece of Costco Cake (I know I cheated already! Lord help me!!!)

Both the Liquid Protein and Mangosteen I bought from Costco this weekend. The protein is pretty good going down… but has a bit of an aftertaste that I'm not fond of. The Mangosteen is really pretty tasty. It tastes a bit like pineapple juice.

Exercise today:

On the exercise front I spent my morning doing an upper body workout. I'm starting small but want to be controlled and do it right.... so the weight is not much but I focused on movement and doing it 100%. The methodology i'm using starts with 12 reps, then 10, then 8, then 6 increasing the wieght each time. Once I get through that I rest for 2 minutes and then drop the weight back down usually to the weight I used for the 10 reps and do 24 reps straight. For now I'm working out at home. I've got a 3 week old baby (3 weeks as of today) and time is kind of short. I have the Bowflex / Nautilis Select Tech Free Weight System and stand that I'm using here at home. I'm also recording each day's workout on a miror behind where I work out with a magic marker. I've also listed my goal for weight on there as well.

Today:

• Biceps - Curls - 7.5lbs to 15lbs, 24 reps at 10lbs.
• Shoulders - Front Lifts - 7.5lbs to 15lbs, 24 reps at 10lbs.
• Delts - Flys on balancing ball - 7.5lbs to 15lbs, 24 reps at 10lbs.
• Lats - One-Arm Dumbbell Rows - 7.5lbs to 15lbs, 24 reps at 10lbs.
• Tricepts - Still working on a good exercise I can do here at home for this one.

What I'm blogging about...

I want you guys out there to keep me honest. I'm opening this blog up to anyone that wants to read it and see how my transformation goes.

I'm hoping to capture here what I'm eating, what I'm doing to work out and get exercise each day, the supplements that I'm using, and just my general experience in getting back in shape. My hope is that the general public out there reading this will help keep me honest and working hard to meet my goals. One of my biggest weaknesses is my ability to rationalize my cheating, laziness, and bad behavior when it comes to health and fitness. I'd like to solicit comments about what is working and what isn't working for people out there... what you think of how I'm doing, and hopefully lots of encouragement.

Hopefully I can go from where i'm at today (probably the worst physical health and fitness state that I've been in ever) to where I was 10 years ago (probably the best shape of my life). Now is the time.... I'm on sabbatical from work (about 2 months off), so I have time to go to the gym, cook healthy meals, eat right, and of course... blog about this stuff.