Happy Thursday! -- Size 38 ... WHOA

What's up everyone? Did about 12-13 miles on my bike tonight on high intensity, so feeling good!

Guess what, I'm back on the losing side! I lost about 1.2 pounds this week. 


Last week 255
This week 253.8

I have some family visiting in town this week so I wasn't able to get my full update in last night, but I wanted to give a quick update and share this Article I found that is really interesting. 

Here's the link if you want to read the whole thing ....  but I found these tips really useful.  

From Bob Harper's Article , "Here are my best suggestions:

1) Improve the quality of your sleep. New research shows that those getting 7-9 hours of sleep are less likely to be overweight. Sleep improves blood sugar regulation, reduces stress hormones, and balances out hunger/fullness hormones (leptin, ghrelin). Are you getting good sleeps? If not, is there anything that you can change that would help?

2) Increase and/or preserve muscle mass. The only way to push your metabolism back up is to gain muscle mass. The only way to gain muscle (or improve your ratio of fat to lean muscle) is to engage in strength training week (a goal of 2 times per week isn't enough because often, you'll only get 1 of those in).

3) Be very selective with type of carbs. Choose lean protein, lots of veggies (cooked and salads), and stick with higher fiber carbs (brown rice, high fiber cereal, high fiber bread, beans, and fruits). You could experiment with replacing 1-2 of your carb servings each day with veggies and protein.

4) Practice stress reduction. There is evidence that lower stress levels are associated with lower body weight. Regular exercise, hobbies, yoga, meditation, breaks at work, getting sunshine, etc. all help you lower stress level, balance hormones, sleep better, and be able to make healthier choices.

5) Revisit your eating. Are you writing things down or are you guess-timating? In fact, You may not be eating enough and under-eating can actually undermine weight loss as your body goes into starvation mode.

6) Revisit your exercise program. You body adapts to your exercise program which means that you burn fewer calories doing the same thing. You may need to increase the intensity."

It's a funny coincidence because these are all things that I found when I was doing research on getting over a plateau. 

Anyways, this first week of plateau fighting has been going pretty well , but not as well as I'd like. I'm going out this weekend to get small set of weights to do some strength training. I'd honestly rather do that then join a gym, just because I don't want to waste time driving somewhere 3 nights a week.  


On a brighter note I bought my first pair of size 38 shorts this week! It felt really amazing to buy a size since I haven't worn since High School. Also, the t-shirt I'm wearing while I'm typing this is from a family trip to the Outer Banks, also when I was about 15-16 yrs old. 
So good things happening.

Thanks again to all of you for your wonderful encouraging notes, texts, messages, posts , etc. 


Thanks to my Mom for sending me this quote for the week :-)


"By Perseverance, the snail reached the Ark." - Charles Spurgeon

Weigh-In Wednesday Week 21!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone!


21 Weeks Completed 

147 Days Down 

Starting Weight -- 294

Week 18 Weight -- 256.9

Today's weight -- 2-5-4.8! So that's another 2.1 pounds down!

Total Weight Loss to date = 39.2 pounds !!!


What a great week! Nice to see a 2-Pounder, and be within 0.8 pounds of the big 40 loss point. 


Before ( This is from our Honeymoon in June 2010)

And After ...

It's actually getting really late , and I need to make this one short. I have a good reason for the late post :-)

Tonight I didn't really feel like running, but I said to myself "Just go one mile and come back and do the blog." Well, once  I was out there I got my determination back and knocked another 5 miles tonight. Burned about 920 calories in just about an hour. Since I didn't workout till after church, this equals a later night. But SO worth it!

Really cool stuff. 

I want to do a post later this week on how the workouts have been going since so many people have asked me about them. 

Also, thought this was pretty cool. This is a list of the pageviews of this blog since I started. Check out all the international readers! I was surprised to see that Russia is #2 on the list. UK, Germany, Iceland, Indonesia, Brazil. So cool!

Who are you guys ??? I'd love to hear from you. 

Pageviews by Countries United States 3,457 Russia 39 United Kingdom 30 Canada 18 Germany 13 Iceland 11 Indonesia 2 Australia 1 Brazil 1 France 1

Thanks to all for your continued support. Almost 40 Pounds down! Next week on the 20th will make 5 MONTHS of this lifestyle change. What a great experience....

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them.” ~Dr. Denis Waitley

Weigh-In Wednesday...Week 11!

11 Weeks Completed 

77 Days Down 

Week 9 Weight -- 271.5

Today's weight -- 2-6-9! So that's another 2.5 pounds down this week.

Total Weight Loss to date = 25 pounds !!!

Oh yeah broke the 60's this week! Bye bye 90's, 80's, and 70's!

Before Pic with my brother Pat in Brussels ... 

Week 11 ... Front View

Week 11 ... Side View

We've had alot going on this week, so I'll keep this brief. I'm really going to try and post more often this next week coming up. Anyways, this week was actually quite a surprise. I thought I was getting a plateau effect because I kept seeing a flux of 270-272.5 all week long. So today, when I did my official weigh-in I was pretty excited about the loss for week. 

I've been incorporating some jogging and running into my workouts. Some days I'll do biking for about 10-15 minutes first to get my heart rate going. I'm working out at least 5 days a week, and most weeks I can get at least some form of exercise in every single day. 

FOOD:

Some people have messaged me, asking about my meals I plan for during the day. So....

Here's a picture of typical lunch I have during the  week. Special K Protein Meal Bar, Low-Fat String Cheese, and a piece of fruit. 

I really will have more posts this week, so keep checking in. Thanks to all again for your love and support. TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS! WOO HOO!!!

“Decide what you want, decide what you are willing to exchange for it. Establish your priorities and go to work.” ~H. L. Hunt

Weigh-In Wednesday...Week 10!

10 Weeks Completed 

70 Days Down 

Week 9 Weight -- 274

Today's weight -- 2-7-1.5! So that's another 2.5 pounds down this week.

Total Weight Loss to date = 22.5 pounds !!!

Before (last Christmas) ...

After ...

And from the side ...

WOW what a busy busy week! I just realized I haven't had any posts since last Wednesday. 

Part of the reason for this is the spontaneous trip I took to go see my beloved WV Mountaineers play on Saturday against the LSU Tigers. 

The game was Saturday night. My schedule went like this: 

Flew out Friday night after work and landed in Charleston at 12:15 AM. Todd picked me up and we drove to Morgantown and arrived around 2:30 AM. 

Woke up at 8 AM the next day and took in ESPN's College GameDay on the campus. Awesome.

Here's a video of the scene when we arrived at Gameday!

And here's the crowd singing country roads :-)

After this we went back  to my brother Patrick's apartment (thanks for the place to stay!) and rested and moved on to the gigantic tailgating festivities at about 2:30 PM and stayed there till we went into the stadium at 6:30PM when they opened up the gates. 

This gives you an idea of how massive the tailgating area is... 

And some pics from the stadium ...

And one last video to show you how LOUD it was in the stadium... 

I have lots more pics and video and I'll be posting those on Facebook later, probably tomorrow. I'm sure I'm leaving out a ton of good stuff, but I'm afraid this post is getting way too long.  

I also was very glad to be able to spend some time with my parents and Popsy on Sunday afternoon. I had time just to relax with my family. My workout Sunday was with my Mom, which was really fun. We walked up and own the hilly streets of Montgomery and got some calories burned before leaving for the airport back to Tampa. 

FOOD TRAPS:

Part of a great trip home and great football is inevitably GREAT FOOD :-). Ah man, there was just an array of great food all around at the tailgate on Saturday. Todd Wilson brought some KILLER pork. We also sampled Pepperoni Rolls, Chicken, Turkey Wraps, Shrimp etc etc etc whatever you can think of it was there. It seems like every tent and RV you pass has some good food to offer. We even had some nice LSU fans give us some of their real Jambalaya. YUM. 

We saw lots of great friends and family at the tailgate and overall just had a wonderful time. I managed to enjoy a bunch of different food, and still stay within my goals by planning ahead and making sacrifices in other places. Special thanks to Todd Wagner's wife Jessica, for packing me some healthy snacks and Sobe LifeWater. That made it much easier to stick to the plan!

My biggest splurge was a DUKE biscuit  Sunday Morning at Tudor's Biscuit World. LOOK AT THESE BISCUITS lol. They are the BEST! 

I was actually a little worried about the weigh-in this week. But I think because of consistent exercise and not "over-doing it" I was just fine and still lost over 2 pounds this week. Well on my way to the 60's!

Thanks to all of your encouragement this week. It was cool to have so many of you back in WV tell me you could see the difference. My buddy Luke picked up from the airport back in Tampa, and told me he almost didn't recognize me. NICE. 

"If we did all the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves." - Thomas Edison