hoogie

After doing pretty good for a while. I had an ingrown toenail removed at the start of March. Sidelined me from hitting the traeadmill for a bit. Then at the start of April I took my family on a cruise, ate too much, drank too much and came home to pollen season. I’ve read before that it takes 3 years for allergens to affect you and with the high pollen counts we had this year I got creamed. Ended up with sinus and ear infections,the meds from those and antihistimines killed any energy that I had left.

To cut a long story short, too much of everything has me back up to 267. I’m feeling like quite a loser. I can make up all the excuses in the world (I’ve got a lot more if you want to hear them) but truth of the matter is I used all the real excuses I had to fall back into my old patterns of eating too much, drinking too much and not exercising enough.

I cut lawns with my son on the weekends, he gets the money, I get the exercise but it’s not enough. I need to get back at it everyday and start paying attention to what I eat. I still don’t know exactly what to eat yet. I bounce back and forth between being good and then giving into temptation. Not having a solid plan is killing me.

I’m thinking of using the “if you can’t kill it or pick it, then don’t eat it” rule. Sounds good in theory but putting it into place has it’s challenges.

I’ve been guiltily staring at my treadmill that’s just 3 feet away from me everyday and working on getting myself motivated to get the hell on the thing and get moving again. Everyday I say today is the day and yet somehow it stills sits idle waiting for me, the missing link. I think all the booze has caused some missing links in the brain.

I love this thing. I’ve finally got something that I don’t mind using and can work at the same time. I think the work part is what really makes it tolerable, it’s a great distraction.

I’ve had treadmills in the past and walking for like a half hour was absolute torture. Now the time flies by.

I’ve been averaging about 1.5 to 2 hours a day, walking at about 2 miles an hour.

I’d probably go longer but I don’t want to get injured and lose interest, trying to ease into it. My longest stretch so far was 2 hours and 50 minutes, just today. I’d never walk that far unless I was at disney and then you take breaks in between anyway so it’s not constant walking. Sometimes I’ll break it up into 45 minute or 1 hours at a time and that works great too.

I’m not sure of any benefits yet and last time I weighed myself, I was up 4 lbs. One step at a time I guess. All this walking builds up a mighty appetite and the thing I end up heading for is sweets. Doh, not helping much to eat crap in between walking I guess but I’ll get a handle on that too eventually.

I really need to get outside and walk a bit more too but this is a great way to alleviate the guilt of sitting all day.

After walking for a while and focusing on the monitor, when you get off the thing, everything is wobbly for a minute or two but man does it feel good. When I get a break from work, I’ll boost the speed up and watch fox or youtube videos to pass the time, those are good distractions also.

I think I’ll wait until next week to weigh myself after no crap for a few days and see what results I’ve had.

Well, all done, kind of boring but just thought I’d share.

I’ve been reading about these for while now. Being a programmer, I spend long hours at my desk doing nothing by flapping my hands around. My posture is definitely bad — slumped, drooling and inactive.

I’ve always wanted to be able to work and exercise at the same time. Taking walks during the day was the  obvious choice for me. I work for a small company, 8 employees, and when I tried taking breaks and walks during the day, it seemed that was always when someone tried to call me.  Since I work at home and where it seemed that I was never around to answer my phone, everyone figured I was goofing off.  I’ve always been attentive to my job and being available, so this was trouble for me and I used it as one of many excuses to not walk the last year and a half.

Last year, I bought a mini exercise bike and put in under my desk thinking that I could peddle away while working. Good concept, bad design. My knees would hit the desk so you actually had to move away from the desk to peddle which meant the keyboard was now out of reach. Another useless piece of exercise equipment for the scrap pile.

Still all this time I’ve been reading about treadmill desks and liked the idea. I like to walk, just didn’t want to leave my desk to do it. Exercise at night and in the morning is great but what about the 10+ hours I was sitting each day, surely I could get some productive movement in there somehow?

Enter the treadmill. My wife has been leary of me buying and not using additional exercise equipment so I never asked. I slowly started talking about the treadmill desk idea and eventually she started to like the idea. Well not really, but I perceived it that way.

We were at Wal-Mart and treadmills happened to be on sale and well, we happened to leave with one. It’s not all that scandalous and was relatively inexpensive but man, does my notebook fit mint on the little shelf up top and I made a shelf for a keyboard and mouse that fits over the handles. I’ve been walking while I’m typing this and have actually logged about 1.5 hours of slow paced walking today. Pretty cool.  I likeit so far. I’ve walked 3 times more just today than I did last week.  I’ll still be using my bike at night to get some good cardio in but it feels good not sitting.

I’ll update you all after I ‘use’ it for a while and let you know how it goes.

Howdy y’all. Still here and been working on myself a bit. I’ve been exercising each day, a least a .5 hour of cardio and I can see improvements already. Most days I try to get in more than a half hour with riding the bike and walking a bit.

I’ve had this exercise bike/coat rack for a few years and I used to ride it once in a while, between yodels or something like that. I’ve been riding it everyday since my last blog and it was tough at first to get through 10 to 15 minutes on level 1 or 2 without my heart rate going up to 150 and getting winded.. Now I’m up to 30 minutes at levels 2 and 3 and can barely get my heart rate up to 135. My cardio is definitely improving and I’m taking it somewhat slowly so I don’t get injured or work too hard.

Sure, there’s been some stuff in between. Went to Mohegan Sun for a night, how can you not booze and eat there? But for the most part been sticking with not eating sugary foods and junk. I’ve haven’t weighed myself in a while but will soon. I’m sleeping a bit better and my insomnia is improving also. Now if I can just figure out a way to exercise at my desk while I’m working. I like the looks and the idea of a treadmill desk but my wife will kill me if I buy another contraption. Gonna have to work something into the budget.

Once I start working it’s hard to break away, there’s always so much to do and plus with my getting used to the heat of the south, it’s freezing out and I hate to go outside when it’s so cold. Lol, it’s in the 40’s, what a wuss.

Anyway good luck to all of you that are staying on track!

I’ve been searching for a place like this for a while. Thanks!

I’m gonna lay all my cards on the table. I know I’m not the only one in this position.

My avatar if from November 2007 trip to St. Thomas with the wife and kids. I was heading back to the table to drink my 4th Red Stripe beer when my daughter snapped this great shot. All 262 lbs of me. Hot, sweaty, bloated and buzzed.

It creeps up on you so fast. Oh yeah, I noticed my pants were getting tight, shirts were stretched out and the elastic band on my underwear kept flipping over on me but never really thought about it so much until I saw this photo and a few other things that I’m sure you’re dying to read about. I thought, man, you gotta do something.

I recently came across some pictures from when I first got married in 1991. I was a slimmer size 38, 235 lbs, had a bunch more hair on my head than I do now and just looked a whole lot healthier and thinner. I maintained my weight pretty well over the next 15 years and stayed at around 240 lbs. At 240 lbs, I knew I had a few lbs to lose but I never really felt that fat and felt healthy. I always carried my weight pretty well.

After moving from MA to NC in June 2006 and working from my home office, my activity level dropped off to maybe a yard project here and there, cuttng the grass and brief episodes of “I should exercise” walks for two days then quitting. 

I had high expectations for myself when moving here and planned all kinds of stuff to get in better shape. You know, with working from home I’d have plenty of time to walk, bike, hike, travel, garden and other types of healthy activities. Instead I fell into a pattern of drinking every weekend, not just a few beers mind you,  but 15-20 on a Friday night with maybe a few vodkas thrown in here and there. I ended up about 25 lbs fatter after 1.5 years and I didn’t expect that I’d feel and look like I was 100.

Once you have a bunch of beers in you, the will power is gone. Pizza, burgers, fries whatever couldn’t escape the grasp of my ever fattening hands was not safe. Forget about being good the day after drinking. If I wasn’t drinking again on the weekend then I was sitting my fat ass on the couch ordering take out.

Anyway, about December of 2007 I decided that it was time to lose some weight, over the past few years my cholesterol was up, my bp was up, moral was down and my weight was up. I’ve been on vytorin and toprol xl and side effects of both of these for me is fatigue and weight gain. figures. 

Like I’ve done probably 100 times in the last 10 years, I decided to start a low-carb diet on December 26th 2007. Everytime I started in the past, I’d do good all week, then the weekend would roll around and I consider it a ‘cheat day’. It’d start out with a couple of beers and all down hill from there. I think I restarted every Monday for about 4 years straight. You can imagine how helpful that was to my waistline and health. 

I still believe that cutting sugar is a good plan but I don’t agree with eating lbs of bacon. I think of it as if you can’t pick it or kill it, then don’t eat it.  Essentially, I cut out processed foods and sugars. After my most recent start in December, I was doing good staying away from bad food and booze except for, hmm, let’s see December 29th, that was dinner out, New Years eve booze/food binge and a neighbors birthday party(booze/food binge) on Jan 5th on.  Maybe I wasn’t doing so good after all.  

On Jan 10th, 2008 I ended up in the ER with atrial fibrillation, possible diet side effects, too much alcohol, too much fat?? My potassium was low, blood sugar was low, my exercise at a lifetime low and my weight was at a lifetime high. Nobody knew for sure what caused it but it scared the crap out of me and I think it was a warning to shape up or start planning for a dirt nap. I could imagine that during the prior weeks between low-carbing then drinking every weekend that my body must have been riding up and down on waves of sugar and fat not knowing what the hell to do next.

So.. currently, I’ve got quite a bit of motivation to start exercising and stop eating crap. My kids are young, they don’t need to see me sitting my fat self on the couch every night and drunk every weekend. They need me to be there for them and to be healthy.

On January 11th, with the okay from my doctor, I started walking or riding my exercise bike daily and I’m looking forward to the positive changes that it’ll bring me. My aerobic capacity is at about zero now so there’s nowhere to go but up. 

My starting weight on December 26th, 2007 was 262. January 9th, it was 251. I’ll update on my next weigh-in.

Thanks for reading my first blog ever.

Exercise Log