MainPain Challenge | Day 1

Today is the first day of my new fitness challenge. This challenge I’ve already alluded to in a previous post, but essentially, I want to see if I can transform my body beyond what I’ve already done with the weight loss. This challenge is primarily a strengthening challenge. Here’s what I plan on doing.

Tomorrow I will post my before measurements for certain areas of my body that I think might actually be affected by this challenge. I do not know what sort of goal I’m going to have though, as I’ve not actively tried to increase the size of my muscles. I will set my goal tomorrow also. (I have to wait until tomorrow because I still cannot find my fabric measuring deal so I can get an accurate measurement. I’ve got it somewhere.

Here are the details to a certain degree of what I’m going to do.

• Duration: 100 Days
• Check Ins: Weekly
  • Body Measurements
  • Weight
• Goal/s: See tomorrow’s post
• What I’m Going To Do: My plan right now is a 5-6 days per week lifting regiment.
  • Monday: Arms/Upper Body
  • Tuesday: Legs/Abs
  • Wednesday: Cardio w/Open Option for Weights
  • Thursday: Arms/Upper Body
  • Friday: Legs/Abs
  • Saturday: OFF
  • Sunday: Full Body w/Cardio

That’s a real rough plan for right now. I may post my workouts here. At this point, I’m leaning towards posting my workouts. That’ll help me stay on task and stay honest. I don’t intend on posting everyday, though if I can that’ll be great. I also plan on posting before and after pictures. That was one thing I didn’t specifically go out of my way to do in the weight loss challenge that I wish I had done a better job of so we’ll do that for this challenge. Hopefully I will actually see something different.

I’m pretty excited but also nervous about this new challenge. It’s going to put me all the way into September I believe. So by fall, I should be totally ripped. Ha ha… maybe not.

I hope you’ll join me on this new journey. It should be a lot of fun, and a little painful as I do plan on pushing myself further than I usually do.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 230 | DONE

I was originally planning on posting this yesterday, but time got away from me, so I’m posting today. On the bright side, the math adds up that (if you consider counting math) today is the 230th day of the challenge which makes this a good round number to end on.

Here’s the deal, I am putting an end to the Weight Loss Challenge. It has been 230 days since I started it and I’ve lost a lot of weight. Let’s take a look at the final results.

Starting Weight = 221.4 lbs

Ending Weight = 174.8 lbs

Total Weight Loss = 46.6 lbs

Overall, this was a great experience. Obviously since I managed to lose 46 lbs. I learned a lot and made a lot of changes in my life. It has become quite obvious to me, however, that I am ready to move on to something different. Today I will be starting a new challenge which you can read about here.

Thank you to everyone who has read my blog along the way and supported me. I hope those of you who have been reading my blog have not been too bored by my writing style (if you can really say I have a style). I’ve found a lot of really cool blogs that I try to follow daily or at least weekly.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 227 | Quite the Milestone

It’s been over a year since I hurt my foot (Plantar Faciitis) and I’ve not run or jogged since. Today, after I did my leg workout, I decided I’d go for a job. Yup, that’s right, I decided to go against everything the doctors and everyone else smarter than me has said about treating PF and I went for a job. On the running/walking track no less at the gym.

Here’s what went down. I jogged, very slowly.

You were expecting more? Ha ha… Ok. So I initially planned on doing 2 laps which would be 2/10 of a mile. For those of you Math reducers out there, that’s 1/5 of a mile or .2 miles. I wound up going way over my goal and jogged a whopping… wait for it… 5 laps. That to me, is so huge. I’ve not run a half a mile, like I said earlier in over a year.

Now you’re asking, “Ok, so how badly did it hurt?” Not too bad. Actually, it didn’t hurt at all. Though I’m pretty sure it will hurt tomorrow morning when I wake up. I did notice a slight discomfort in the outside of my heel, but just discomfort. I tried my best to use a normal stride, not one that is compensating for something (get your mind out of the gutter freaks).

I did not run all that hard/fast. I ran at a steady 10 min per mile pace. Pretty slow, but not something I’d likely be able to do walking either.

Overall, I’m really happy with what I did today. I’ll be even happier if I don’t have pain in the morning too. What’s in store for the future is unclear. I don’t plan on jogging regularly, though I might throw a short jog into my workout once per week, if it feels right. We’ll just see. I do not want to jump back into this too soon.

Finally, I’ve made a decision on this Weight Loss Challenge deal. I’m done with it. Well, I will be on Sunday. I’m not really working towards those last 5 lbs I thought I wanted to drop. I’ve been sitting at 175ish the last couple weeks and I’m happy with that right now. On Sunday will be my last Weight Loss Challenge post and on Monday I will begin my new challenge. I’ll lay out the goals and rules and all sorts of other fun stuff then. Until then, keep it real yo.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 226 | How do you choose?

The last couple times I’ve been at the gym I’ve been asked to spot some dude at the bench press. I always wish I could ask why they chose me as opposed to all the other people around. What was it about me that made you think I was the right person to trust your life with (assuming the weight you’re lifting is heavy enough even to kill you should it fall on your head).

Obviously I far too socially uncomfortable to ask, but I’d love to know, when you choose a spotter, what’s your criteria? Obviously if you know the person that’s different, so let’s change the question up. What’s your criteria when you ask a total stranger to spot you while you lift?

Honestly, I never lift so much weight that I’d feel compelled to need a spotter. That’s totally because of my social awkwardness, as well as I’m not really looking to lift that much weight. Not sure why. So I don’t know what my criteria is. I figure these guys chose me, because I too was using a bench press, and I just finished my set so I was probably available, and also, I was closest.

What would be awesome is if these guys chose me because they thought, “well, if I’m gonna be in danger, that’s the guy I need saving my life. He looks like he could lift a car off my chest if I needed him to. He also doesn’t look like he’s going to want to talk to me after I finish so double win.”

So, I hand this off to all of you. What’s your criteria?

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 224 | At least it’s not Monday

Yesterday and today have been much better days than I’ve had in a couple weeks. I actually worked out yesterday and today. That’s such progress. I didn’t entirely want to, but I pushed through it.

I did re-entry workouts. Monday was arms and today was legs and abs. Each day I ended with a short 10 minute row. It feels so good to actually accomplish something, even if it’s just so little.

My eating has even been pretty good. Though the eating hasn’t been the worst of my problems over the last couple weeks.

Tomorrow is my work from home day, so I need to decide if I’m going to go to the gym in the evening like I had been or do I just workout around the house (meaning do I just work on my diorama for my action figures). I should do the workout.

Good luck everybody. The day is almost over, but it’s not too late to make a dent in one of your goals. Keep on Keepin’ on.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 223 | Have I Met My Match

It’s been 11 days since I last posted for the challenge. A lot has happened since the last post, and most of it, hasn’t been awesome. Here’s the run down of excuses. 🙂

• My wife has fibromyalgia and has had a really bad case of it for the last 2 weeks. When this happens, it’s like I become a single dad. And not one of those Daddy Daycare kind of single dads. I’m talking the frazzled, just trying to keep my head above water kind. It’s not that I can’t handle my kids. It’s not that I can’t handle my work. But handling both at the same time, as well as being stressed about your wife maybe needing to go into the ER (we’ve thought for a while she had kidney stones), that starts getting to you.
• Add to the first bullet, we’ve been having server issues at work. I’m on a team of two who manage SharePoint for a decent size hospital. We probably have 15k-30k users online each day in our environment, so it’s not small. We have locations on the East Coast, West Coast, and the Midwest. That means, in order to work on the system, we have to schedule it after hours for all of our locations. That means I don’t get to start my work until about 8:00pm my time (CST). I said we are a team of 2, but I’m technically the only “technical” person on the team, so that means I’m it. Yippee! Anyway, after several nights working till 3am, we’re at least at a point where I’m pretty confident we can fix the problem. The good thing is, the problem never really has caused an outage, but the work I have to do to fix it does.
• I’ve been sick the last 1 1/2 weeks or so. Not great when you’re relied upon for so much. Yeah yeah, I know there are plenty of people out there that have it worse than me, remember, this is a list of excuses, not valid reasons for my not keep up with my challenge. ;-). Anyway, it always seems that when my wife has a flare up as we call them, I wind up getting sick around that time too. I don’t remember the last time I got to just “be sick” and be taken care of.
• Finally, it’s the end of the school year. That means, my two school age daughters have events during the day, that need to be attended. That’s right, so now I need to figure out which events I can and can’t go to. Yup, track and field, was a no go this year. Luckily, it rained so I dodged that one (the kids weren’t so lucky).

Ok, now that you’ve seen all my excuses, let’s just take a look at how bad I’ve done. In reality, it’s not so bad. I’d say I’ve done pretty darn well, considering.

Weight Loss this week: +1.2 lbs

Total Weight Loss: 46.2 lbs

Not too bad, considering. The eating right, or at least eating better, has been pretty easy, though I will admit, I’ve been sneaking little bits here and there a lot more often. Those little sneaks usually don’t get recorded very accurately. In the end though, I’d say, I’ve been in a relatively solid “maintenance” pattern. The problem is I didn’t want to be in a maintenance pattern just yet.

After the last 2 weeks, I’ve really been wondering if I should just be done with this challenge. Getting down to 170 lbs really isn’t a need, it’s more of a want. I do want to start up the new challenge soon, though I honestly haven’t put any thought into that yet either. At this point, I’m not even going to the gym. I’m so tired all the time.

I’ll keep posting, and I’ll keep eating better. We’ll just have to see what happens from here.

Have a great week everyone.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 212 | That’s a Lot of Coffee

It’s nearly 10:30am and I’ve already drank nearly an entire pot of coffee. That’s right, I’m about 9 cups into a 10 cup pot of coffee. That, is not healthy. Not healthy at all. I think it’s time for a giant glass of water. Maybe two.

This week has been quite good in terms of my calorie intake goals. I’ve not gone too far over my calories any day this week. My workouts, though minimal, they have been still been more intense than last week (which was nothing if you recall). I don’t know if I’ll lose any weight this week, but I feel pretty good about how things have been going this week.

Yesterday I finally did a small amount of weight lifting. I had meant to lift some weights each day this week but never did. I started my workouts with my cardio and by the time I was done, I just didn’t have the energy. Yesterday I switched it up and started with the weights. Like I said, it was a pretty minimal amount of weight lifting, but it was a step in the right direction. I then was able to go do my rowing which was a pretty good intense 15 minutes. Yeah, 15 minutes is pretty short, but still it’s better than nothing right?

Slowly, I’m getting back into the swing of things. I fully expect by next week, my workouts will be back to normal.

How long does it take you to get back into the swing of things when you’ve been on vacation or an extended work trip? Apparently I’m at 2 weeks now.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 211 | That Just Happened

I just said no to a free bag of BBQ chips a little bit ago. That is all that need be said for today.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 209 | I’m just so tired

Last week was a pretty pitiful week in terms of my workouts. If I were to count my workouts, it was a total of 3 times I made it to the gym, but of those 3 times, I managed to hit the hot tub and only the hot tub all 3 times. Yeah, zero workouts last week. I’m going to chalk it up to being the first week back after the Microsoft Ignite conference, but I don’t know if that’s all it was.

Anyway, it was weigh in day yesterday, let’s get to it.

Weight Loss this week: 3.8 lbs

Total Weight Loss: 47.2 lbs

That’s a little better. I gained some weight while I was gone, but after last week, I think I should be able to get back to where I left off in about a week or so. That being said, I don’t know if I can legitimately make the 170lbs mark by the end of this extra 30 days I gave myself, since that would have been, well… tomorrow. I think I need to add another 30 days to my challenge so I can get there. No biggie. Yes, I failed, but I didn’t fail by completely giving up. I failed because I dropped the ball for a week and that set me back about 2 weeks. That’s the 4 lbs I now needs. No worries though.

I started this week off, ok. I did a really short workout, but I actually worked out, which is 100% better than last week and it’s only Monday. My calorie intake is on track so I don’t need to worry about that one. Granted, last week I ate quite well also, but I suppose that’s why I lost 3.8 lbs of the nearly 5 lbs I gained while gone.

The most difficult struggle I’m having is my energy levels. I got very little sleep while I was away and I think that is still haunting me. I have zero energy to workout. I’m just lucky I’m back to my diet otherwise, fat city here I come again.

I don’t mean to be negative, I’ve got a lot to be satisfied about and a lot to look forward to. I’m on track to get to 170 lbs very soon, so I may not need the additional 30 days. Let’s see how soon I can get there.

Have a great week everybody.

Weight Loss Challenge – Day 202 | That Sounds About Right

I’m back. Microsoft Ignite is over and now I need to pick up the pieces of my food choices. I started the week off relatively well. I planned to eat no more than 2,500 calories per day, which I came pretty close to the first 2 days. Then things went downhill. In the end, I don’t regret it. I don’t even feel that bad. Here’s the results of a week in which there was free food, drink and everything else.

Weight Loss this week: -4.8 lbs

Total Weight Loss: 43.4 lbs

I’ll admin, that doesn’t look too good. In the end, though, this isn’t that big of a deal. Here’s why. I don’t really believe I gained an actual 4.8 lbs. We all know it takes a little time for… um… your food to pass through your body. I’ll have a much more accurate picture of the damage I did this Sunday when I do my weigh in.

Today I am back on the 1,800 calories per day. I’ve already begun with my standard yogurt and granola breakfast. I’m hoping that being back on the controlled diet will help the way I feel. Eating whatever I wanted was starting to make me feel disgusting. Hopefully this will get me back to a better feeling.

Don’t worry about me folks. I may have had a seemingly large setback, but I’m back on track today. I may need to extend my challenge again so I can actually get down below 170 lbs, but that’s ok.

Have a great day everyone!