Magic Number and the Aria

Congratulations to me!  Today was the 21st day in a row that I did my 10-33s (3 sets of 10 push-ups, 33 bicycle crunches).  According to my amazing wife, repeating something 21 days makes it a habit.  I'll tell you that it IS starting to feel natural to wake up a few minutes earlier and knock those puppies out before I get on with my day, but it doesn't quite feel automatic just yet.  But, I do feel like I'll be able to keep it up from here on out.  Hopefully in another month or two it will be at that automatic stage.  Until then, I'll just keep plugging away.

Day 16

Well, I'm more than two weeks into my routine of logging my foods and doing my 10-33s every day.  So far, I've only had a few hiccups, but nothing to shed any tears over.  It all seems to be getting a bit easier, though I have found that I'm forgetting to log my calories as often as I should be.  I'm going to need to really knuckle down on that.  Only seven more days until it all becomes habit, or so my wife tells me.  I can't wait until I get to the point in my life when this is all so routine and second-nature that I don't even have to think about it to make sure it gets done.

Measurements coming soon, I promise!  I'll try to do them before I go to bed tonight....

Rough day

Well, I started the day off alright, but finished it out with a 1500 calorie meal from Applebee's.  Back to the old grindstone tomorrow, I suppose.

Great day!

Had a great day today!  Trina dragged me out into our overly-cluttered garage and we began the 4+ hour-long process of cleaning and organizing.  Still have a little ways to go on the organization, but MAN, does the garage look better?  We can even fit a car AND the motorcycle in there now.  Woo-hoo!  And to top it all off, MyFitnessPal says that I burned over 1000 calories doing it.  Seems a bit high, but even if it was half that number I'd be happy.

Food-wise, probably not the best food choices, but most definitely not the worst.  Had a healthy breakfast of cereal with LOTS of fresh berries.  Lunch was a meager apple because I didn't want to drop the garage project to eat.  Dinner was pork chops, a sweet potato, and green beans with a bowl of peach ice cream for dessert.  Then I had a 20oz. rootbeer, a pack of sunflower seeds, and several small candies throughout the day.  Altogether, I only went 322 calories over my daily goal, but after the 1420 calories of exercise I put in, I netted a calorie deficiency of 1098!  That's almost 1/3 of a pound lost today!

See you again in a day or two, and I'll try to get some measurements up soon.

Second day in a row!

Hopefully I can keep up this pace, or at least an every-other-day-post pace.  Anyhow, started the day off with my 10-33s and then played around on the Kinect with Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012 and burned off 117 calories doing that.  Altogether, I burned off almost 200 calories before noon.  It wasn't much, but WAY more than the previous Kevin's typical day.  As far as food goes, I must admit that I've indulged in some sweets, and haven't had as many fruits and veggies as I should have.  Still staying well within my calorie goal, though.  Except, I'm probably going to bust that tonight with a small Blizzard from DQ, but I've been planning that for a while.

Gonna head off to my son's baseball practice now, so hopefully I can play along and burn of a few dozen more calories!

A New Beginning

Okay folks, it's been almost a year since my last post.  In that time, I've not only not lost any weight, but I've actually gained weight.  Now, I realize that sometimes it takes a few tries, so I don't beat myself up too much, but it's still a little depressing.  I've heard that it takes a smoker an average of seven attempts to quit smoking.  Maybe it's the same with weight loss.

Well now I'm devoted to another (and hopefully final) attempt to get myself to a healthy weight.  I've got a small support system in place around me, and I'm taking it slow and steady in hopes of not burning myself out.  Since the reboot, I've already gotten back down to my previous starting weight of 265 (I topped the scales at 272.5!), so I'd say I'm off to a good start.  Today wraps up my first week of diligent exercise and of journaling my diet at MyFitnessPal.com.

A close friend of mine has suggested a routine of three sets of 10 push ups and 33 bicycle crunches every morning for a total of 30 push ups and 100 crunches (the last set has 34).  To his suggestion, I've added a final set of push ups to failure and 30 minutes of light/moderate cardio every other day.  It was a bit tough at first, but I've stuck with it for a week and it's getting easier.  My wife tells me that you have to do something 21 times for it to become habit, so I'm a third of the way there.

Another big change that we've made as a family is our budget.  We were at a point where we were dining out for most of our meals.  One, it was costing us WAY too much, and two, it was much harder to make healthy choices.  So not only has adhering to a strict budget helped us stop living paycheck-to-paycheck, it has also helped us all make smart choices in our meals since we make the majority of them at home now (and we don't waste our grocery money on junk food, either).  The budget has helped in another way: budgeting calories is very similar to budgeting dollar bills, so it has gotten me in the mindset of watching how many calories I'm "spending."

That's all I've got for today, folks.  I'm going to try to post more often so those of you who are interested can follow along (and encourage me if I start to slack off!).

Before you go, check out these websites/mobile apps:
MyFitnessPal -- http://www.myfitnesspal.com
EEBA (amazing budgeting tool!) -- http://www.eebacanhelp.com

-Kevin