Archive for March, 2008

T-Minus Six Weeks View Comments

I have exactly six weeks until I go and visit my family back in Oklahoma for a week. Yesterday, I clocked in a exactly four hundred pounds. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am both aiming for a minimum of three pounds a week and to step off the plane in Tulsa at 385 pounds.

Looks like I need to adjust my numbers, because they are too easy. Too doable. Too possible for me to get lazy.

So, I’m upping Goal Two to 380 pounds. I will set about achieving it by alternating weeks of three and four pound weight loss between now and the end of April. Of course, I will aim for and enjoy seeing losses of more than five pounds, but my quota will be the threes and fours.

Being back in the ole stomping grounds and being lighter (and healthier) than I have been in years? How crazy will that be?

Just One More Pound! View Comments

Today’s Weigh-In: 400 pounds
Days till Goal One: 7
Weight To Lose for Goal One: 1 pound!

I didn’t really consider it to be that spectacular of a weekend, really. I attacked the gym Saturday with my 4×5 lifting routine in the morning, then hit up some HIIT and biking in the evening (and by biking, I really mean I sat and absent mindedly pedaled while I watched the end of the Blazers game). Sunday, I didn’t even go to the gym (shame on me). However, I kept my food intake in line, and it looks like it payed off.

Clean & Press, How I Love Thee, How I Loathe Thee

At the gym this morning, I incorporated the clean and press in exchange for my standard should press. Essentially, the C&P is where you grab a barbell with weight on the ground from a deadlift position, and explode upwards to lift the weight above your head ala a military press. Basically, it’s a full body beatdown. I started out my routine with it and only put seventy pounds on the bar. I figured it would be best to use a lighter weight as to try and get the form right. Those seventy pounds beat the tar out of me. How nice!

I hate it and love it all at the same time, but the clean and press is here to stay.

Past my new form of self-torture, the rest of the routine went okay. It was the 3×10 version, and as it happened, this was the first time I finished my final set of chest press at 160 pounds without having to give myself a break. That was a good feeling. However, the bad feelings crept up as well as my grip continued to give me big trouble, especially on the Romanian Dead Lifts.

I don’t know what I did to offend my fingers, but my grip’s been failing me at about the fourth or fifth rep of each set for about a week now. Today, I backed down on the weight some, thinking it would be a good idea to finish well my sets, but still my grip decided to clock out early. Bah.

Giddy Like a School Girl

I’m going to try and be a good boy for Saint Paddy’s tonight and keep the health attack going strong. I can’t weight to weight in on Wednesday at hit Goal One several days ahead of schedule. I’m going to shot and scream – it’s going to be awesome to be back in the 300s!

Five More View Comments

Today’s Weigh-In: 404 pounds.
Days till Goal One: 9
Weight To Loose: 5 pounds

Not much to report here, really. Went in for my cardio day today and did some HIIT on the elipticals and followed it up with ten minutes of rowing just for kicks. It was a really fantastic feeling to watch the scale at the hospital drop to the 404 mark. Really fantastic.

I’m going to keep up the attack this weekend and see if I can get a 402 weigh in on Monday.

Planning for the Future View Comments

With Goal One a meager ten days away, I’ve been thinking some more on my future health and wellness goals in a more comprehensive way than just “loose weight and fit in my Seahakws jersey.” Not that it isn’t a wonderfully admirable goal, mind you, and I will have a blast getting rowdy this fall wearing it. Simply, I need to give myself a more comprehensive game plan of weight loss that I can aim for.

The End Game

Will in Five YearsYeah, I know. That’s pretty much the coolest picture to ever exist right there, brought to you by our friend Adobe Photoshop. I’ve thought that Daniel Craig’s physique in Casino Royale was awesome, and it’s become the physical goal I want to achieve by the time I’m thirty. Achieving it by my ten year high school reunion in three years would be mind-boggling (and not impossible), but for the time being my primary goal and metric is weight loss rather than muscle definition. Once I shed a good majority of the pounds, I can change my workouts from focusing on weight loss and into developing muscle. So along those lines, my second big picture goal revolves around that ten year reunion.

I was in the neighborhood of 280-290 pounds when I graduated high school. I would love nothing more than to show up and see a bunch of folks I haven’t seen in a decade looking better than I did all those years ago. That’s a goal of roughly 150 pounds at this point, which boils down to fifty pounds a year. Fifty pounds is nothing at all.

But I won’t be satisfied with just fifty pounds a year – that’s far too slow for someone my size and of my frustrated determination. So, in crunching some numbers and such, I’m aiming to loose a minimum of three pounds a week for the foreseeable future. Three measly pounds every seven days. Of course, I’ll be wanting – and working hard for – much more! However, if I crank in at least three a week for the next six months, that adds up to seventy-two pounds. That would push me into my upper 320s, which is hard to believe looking at the numbers in and of themselves, but when I step back and look at the incremental steps necessary of just three pounds a week, things seem absolutely doable.

Beyond Goal One

I weigh in tomorrow with nine days till the Goal One 399 pound deadline. I’m hoping to be in the range of 406-404. I’m heading up to the gym tonight with those numbers in mind. As long as my body doesn’t get weird (which it has a habit of), then my hard work at the gym and right eating will hopefully pay off.

Looking past Goal One, I have my sights set on the end of April. I will be back in Oklahoma for a week then specifically to see my sister (a rocking awesome high school / junior high band teacher) conduct her kids at a special clinic that she’s especially excited about. I would love to step off the plane in Tulsa around 385 pounds. At that weight, I would be about sixty five pounds lighter than the last time my family saw me. How awesome would that be? That would give me roughly four weeks to drop fifteen pounds, or 3.75 pounds a week. Consider it Goal Two.

Following is the third goal of 360 pounds by Independence Day. Assuming that I make the second goal, this gives me ten weeks, roughly, to drop another fifteen pounds. A pound and a half is all that I need, but remember my three pound weekly goal, right? So, in my head, thirty pounds to weigh in under 350 would rock my socks plumb off.

The trick to this for me is just to never let up. Thanks to all of you who are reading and leaving the encouraging blog comments and emails or checking in face to face. I can’t do this without all of your support.

Craving Some Chinese Buffets View Comments

I was minding my own business this afternoon, doing some strategic planning for work (of the clergy type, aka praying and waiting on God in a park near my apartment), when I got hit with some crazy, crazy cravings for some Chinese food. It was bad, lemme tell you!

The problem with my mental battle today was just that I love Chinese buffets. You could say like a fat kid loves cake (thanks, Fitty), but in this case it would be, well, like a fat kid loves Chinese buffets. In theory, you could eat pretty healthily at one, especially if it’s got a Mongolian grill. But I have no interest in eating healthy at them. I want lots of rice and lots of meat and lots of veggies over the course of two or three plates. And then I was my vanilla soft serve ice cream that I dip my fortune cookie in!

So, it’s best if I just stay away. For the next couple of weeks that is, until I hit my birthday goal (because it absolutely will happen). Then, dammit, I’m going to eat at that really good Chinese buffet in Beaverton, and nobody’s stopping me!! (Insert villainous cackle here.)

Speaking of poor eating choices and the broader concept of regularly scheduled cheat meals, I have to admit that now that I’m watching what I eat like a hawk, it makes my guilty pleasure meals all the more enjoyable. It’s as if I’ve earned them, which, in a sense, I figure I have. Also, now that I’m shoring up the food side of the health triangle, it makes me that much more hesitant to actually take advantage of the entire “off day” I theoretically schedule in each week. Each and every bit adds up!

And no, for the record, I didn’t cave in for my Chinese urge. Gotta hit 399! I weigh in on Friday, and hopefully I’m down to 406 or 405. So, in light of that herculean effort, I’m going back to the gym tonight for my second HIIT+Rowing session.