[Previous entry: "New challenge... Redux"]
05/18/2007: "Another start, a year later..."
mood: Tired, but happy.
Well, it's 2007. A full year and 5 months since the last entry. Since that entry, I've had many false starts, and many ups & downs...
Today is 18 May, 2007. A little over a month ago, at 218 pounds, I had a personal realization (yah, so what else is new....) and decided enough is enough.
I decided to start running. I decided to use the Couch to 5k Program from CoolRunning.Com. I also found an awesome podcast from Ullreys.net that has taken this program, put it to music, and added a running parter telling you when to start, stop, and provide inspiration.
Each week of the progression builds upon the last. For example, last week was 2 cycles of 3 min run, 90 sec brisk walk, then 5 min run, 3 min brisk walk.
This week was week 5 for me, on that program, with each day different, and day 3 was a 20 min run, nonstop. All week long I kept thinking "I can't do it".
But I did. :-)
Click the links above and check it out, and don't wait as long as I did to start giving a damn about being healthy.
Now, lets discuss progress.
When I started this whole lifestyle change back in April, I weighed 220 lbs, on 4/12/007. I then had to travel for work for a week, and lived in a hotel and ate out every day. I gained 3 pounds, despite the fact that I was running every other day. Problem was, while I tried to eat healthy every morning ($10 fruit plate), lunches and dinners. while delicious, were extremely high in calories. Drinking 4-5 Guinnesses every night didn't help, with Kentucky Ale mixed in for variety.
Upon returning home, I started in on using the Body for Life program again, and the Couch to 5k program on my "Aerobic" days. I modified weight training days, however, to use a Pyramid and follow it with 2 SuperSets, the second superset being a different exercise for the same muscle group.
You can reference prior posts for details regarding all this.
Now, where am I today?
Well, as I said, on 4/12 I was 220. Then I went up to 223.6 10 days later. But since then, by using my exercise and controlling what I eat, meaning only "clean" food and keep my calories between 1100-1300/day. To help with this, I use the PC Version of FitDay.Com's online journal. It not only helps keep track of the food I'm eating, but there are areas for logging exercise, moods, journals, and there are reporting tools to help monitor your progress as well.
Let's take a look, for example, of my real weight vs my goal weight:
The red line represents where my weight should be to keep with my goal, which I set to 197 lbs, on 1 July 007. The whole goal was to get below 200 in 12 weeks, and originally that would have been a loss of 2 lbs per week for 12 weeks... but since i actually gained some weight, it took some more effort to get back on track.
The program has a variety of other tools such as tracking nutrition, comparing calories in vs calories out, and several more. I highly recommend it.
What was the inspiration?
Well, if you must know........
Halloween is very important to me. And this year, I decided to be King Leonidas, as portayed in Frank Miller's 300.
And I'd much rather look like this:
Than:
Check out the Failed 300 auditions for the source of that latter pic.
