4 weeks, no soda

Wow! I can’t remember going 4 DAYS without a soda in the past. 4 weeks is pretty amazing to me. The cool part is, I’m not missing it. While being on the diet, so far the thing I miss the most is potato chips. But that issue is sorta handled by the new 100 calorie snack size bags of Dorritos we found at the store. On Friday I had the first chips I have had in nearly 4 weeks and they were heavenly!!

The stationary bike is getting a work out. I’ve been riding at least 10 miles every day. Riding in the morning is becoming a nice little habit. Unfortunately, I’m not really getting to bed any earlier, so I’ve been fairly tired in the evenings. On Saturday I took a 45 minute nap prior to Don & Hope’s wedding, thankfully.

My weight continues to go down each week. As of this morning I was 202.4. This is, again, my new low. Woo hoo! If I have another week like I did this week, I will break that 200 mark on Thursday or Friday.

Last week Jason turned me on to a new Word Press plug-in called The Hacker’s Diet. You enter your daily weight and it creates a graph for you showing your progress and trend. Normally this only shows in the Admin section, but, I found that you can simply call the image directly if you choose. So, I’ve create a page to display my diet progress. You can check it out here.

Starting tonight I’ll be adding in an ab workout thanks to the 6 Second Abs system I bought over the weekend. I watched the video and have it mostly figured out. The only thing they don’t explain real well is how often to use it and how long each session should be… I guess I’ll wing it and see what happens. Unless anybody reading this has used this equipment before and knows the answers to my questions.

Over the weekend, at the wedding, 3 separate times people came and said, “Are you losing weight?” When you are on a diet and working towards a goal of getting in shape, there are no sweeter words that you can hear. When it happened again Monday morning at work, that really made my day. Yes, yes I am losing weight, thank you very much. 18 pounds so far. 22 to go.

Hitting my stride

I think I’m going to have to stop calling it a diet. I’m not on a “diet”. I am on a “Get In Shape.” To me, being on a diet means you count calories, watch everything you eat and stress about it at every meal. I am certainly not doing that. It’s true that I have altered my eating habits, but I’m not fanatical about it. For example, Tuesday night we went out with friends and I had a huge steak. I skipped the potatoes and opted for steamed broccoli instead, though.

Every day this week I have woken up at 5:15 am and rode the stationary bike for a little over 40 minutes. I watch 2 episodes of “My Name is Earl” on DVD which run between 20 and 22 minutes each. After that, I shower and head to work. Lately we have been going to the driving range at lunch a couple times a week which provided another light workout. Then, in the evenings Chris and I walked around our neighborhood. The time spent working out in the evening is usually 40-60 minutes.

Last night I bought some new work out equipment. I bought ankle weights for our evening walks, a chin-up bar and the 6 second ab thing. So far, I’ve only used the ankle weights and they proved to be pretty cool. 2.5 pounds per ankle isn’t a lot, but, it was enough to cause me to break a sweat which isn’t something I have been doing on our last few evening walks.

My progress is becoming visible. Slowly, but surely. Starting tomorrow I’m either going to have to start wearing a belt to hold up my 36 inch waist pants, or, I’m going to need to go buy some 34s. My only concern with that is if I lose enough around the midsection to require 32s, or, dare I say, 30s… Then I’m going to be stuck with a pair of pants that I’ve only warn for a few months… I guess there are worse problems to have.

Anybody from work interested in bringing walking shoes and spending 30-40 minutes walking during lunch? I’ll throw mine in the car tomorrow! We should walk now before it starts to be 100+ every day.

Working out in the morning

Today I tried something new on the new “get in shape” program… I got up at 5:15 and hopped on the stationary bike for 45 minutes before showering and heading to work. I liked it quite a lot. I got to work feeling energized and ready for the day! Though, my wife is concerned that me working out in the morning means I will not be interested in walking during the afternoon. Not true. I have no problem getting in 2 workouts in one day. As a matter of fact, I’m thrilled with the idea.

At this morning’s weigh in, I was down to 206.8 - Another new low for me. Woo Hoo! This is another win considering we had a weekend where we went to Craig & Ashley’s for Movie Night on Friday and I had some not-so-diet-friendly food while we were there. Then, a double-double with fries from In ‘n Out burger for lunch on Sunday. Almost every other meal I had this weekend was a salad of some sort, so I don’t feel bad about the other foods. Especially since I know I’m working out regularly now so I at least am battling back at the foods that I’m eating.

I’ve been putting in some great sessions on the stationary bike. Loving that thing more and more every day. 8 miles on Saturday (after a 60 minute walk), 15 miles on Sunday and 10 miles this morning. I’m working on keeping my heart rate below 140 while working out. My target area is between 120 and 130. The trick is going to be getting to a point where I peddle faster, but keep my heart rate at the same steady rate. Currently I ride at 14.9 - 15.8 miles per hour without getting above the 130 mark. I’d like to see that jump up to about 20 MPH.

I’m looking for a good stomach exercise to throw in so that I can start working on the love-handles a bit. Though, I’ve been taking photos every Sunday evening so that I can visualize the slow transformation… I’m going to wait until there’s actually enough progress to see a big difference, though, I can already see a bit. Yeah, I’m pretty stoked. I almost bought the “6 second abs” system yesterday. Not exactly sure why I didn’t…

Let me know if you have any thoughts on how best to get rid of the love handles.

Turning Digital Photos in to Prints

I could hardly believe it when I saw that the date on the photos from Zion National Park said 9/1/2003. Almost 4 years ago we went there. Amazing. I remember it like it was only a few months back. That place, if you have never been, is absolutely beautiful!

We took the tram all the way to the top, but we got out and explored at every stop along the way catching the first available tram up the mountain as we went. The only drawback to the day was that we drove from Las Vegas to Zion, did all our exploring and then drove back to Las Vegas the same day. Had to do over again, I would have loved to have rented a cabin and stayed the night. That would have given us 3 or 4 more hours of exploring before calling it a night and then we could have had a leisurely trip getting back the following day. Ahh well, next time…

So, what brought on this post about a trip from 3 years ago, you might ask? Well, I had been looking for an online service for turning some digital photos in to some larger prints. When we got back from Zion I had turned a couple of the photos I had taken in to some 8×10 prints that we got framed and they looked fantastic. I then took one of the shots and turned it in to a 36×48 photo that we got framed and is now hanging in our living room. It came out better than I had expected and makes for a nice show piece above the fireplace.

So, in my searching, I found a place that specializes in doing larger print. I thought I’d pass the info along. The place is called posterXXL.com. You upload a photo, select the size and you are on your way. If you have the need for a large format print of one of your digital photos, you may want to check them out. And, if you use my link, you’ll receive a 10% discount on your first order.

Here are some photos from our trip to Zion. Enjoy.

Pre-Cancer still has the word “Cancer” in the title

A couple weeks back I wrote about my trip to the dermatologist’s office. Since I wrote that before seeing the doctor, I didn’t give any details about what the outcome was..

I was at the doctor because my wife had seen a spot on my chest that she didn’t like the looks of. The first time I had skin cancer I found out because my wife didn’t like the look of a spot on my cheek.

The doctor checked out the spot on my chest and said we’d keep an eye on it, but there was no need to remove it at this time. We will check it out again in 6 months at my next appointment. Since I was at her office, I also went ahead and got my 6 month check-up at the same time. While the spot on the chest was nothing to be concerned with, there was a spot on my back that she didn’t like the looks of. So, she cut out a little chunk to do a biopsy.

After she removed the chunk, she asks me if it is OK if her office only call me if there is an issue. So I said, “You mean, if everything is fine, you won’t bother calling?” she said, “Correct”. I agreed to it, but when thinking about it later, I was NOT really OK with it. But after a week had gone by and I hadn’t received a call, I sorta put it out of my mind and figured I’d see her again in 6 months. . . . Wrong.

Last night there was a message on our home phone. It was the dermatologist’s office. Please give them a call. Instant pit in my stomach.

I called this morning and was informed that I have a “Pre-Cancer” something or other and the spot that they took out did not remove it all. So, on May 18th I get to go back to the doctors office and have them remove another chunk from my back. Only this time, they go deeper and wider and it will require stitches to close. Lovely.

I think my timing for starting a diet, eating healthier, exercising and just in general getting in better shape couldn’t be better. I seem to be falling apart and if I don’t get healthier soon, I can only imagine the health problems I’m be forced to endure.

I guess this wouldn’t be a bad time to put out a reminder about the fund raiser we are part of for Breast Cancer research. If you haven’t already, please consider giving a donation here. Thanks.

The Race for the Cure!

Last year, the event coordinator at my office set up a “team” for the Race for the Cure 5K run/walk. I skipped it, of course cause walking 3+ miles was pretty much out of the question… This time around, I don’t really have an excuse to miss it, so I signed up.

If you aren’t familiar with The Race for The Cure, it’s an annual fund raising event put on by the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation to support the breast cancer research. I have a cousin who just went through a battle with breast cancer and have a close friend who’s mother also went through it as well. Why not get out and support them, get some sunshine and exercise all at once?

If you are going to be in Las Vegas on Saturday, May 5th, Join Me in the race. I will not be “racing”, per se, but instead taking a nice 3.6 mile walk. If we could get a group of people to all meet up and go, it’ll be a fun time.

If you can’t make it out for the walk, why not Make a Small Donation to help with breast cancer research? I’m have a goal of raising $150 before the May 5th race. You can check out my progress right here.

Hope you can make it out. Sign up Now!

Diet update, end of week 2

statbike.jpg

Week #2 was another successful one for the diet. I was able to get in at least a short walk every day. Most of the days were either a 40+ minute walk or roller blade session. The treadmill came in real handy on those days when it was pretty ugly outside and a walk after work would have been rather chilly.

On Friday I decided I wanted to get a stationary bike, but wasn’t sure where we would be able to put it. After some maneuvering, we figured out that we would be able to set up the bike in the massage room. So, we headed to the mall and picked up the Edge 288r Recumbent Exercise Bike. Then, Saturday morning we went to our storage unit and retrieved a TV that we had been storing. A quick trip (two, actually) to Wal-mart for a super cheap DVD player (plus an adapter for our ancient TV that didn’t have RCA inputs… Bah!) and our “work out room” is up and ready for action. We’ve also decided that since the treadmill is on wheels and is pretty easy to move, we are going to bring it downstairs from the office and set it up in there, too. We’ll just need to move it once a week for our weekly massages.

OK, enough about the toys, back to the diet:

After my fluctuation in weight mid week, I worked extra hard on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday to keep my calorie intake low and my water intake high. That idea was put to the test on Saturday, though. We were invited to a pre-wedding shower for some friends. We knew ahead of time that there was going to be a lot of food and alcohol. We made a plan to eat a healthy dinner before heading over. We barbecued up some salmon, steam some broccoli and had a small amount of rice about an hour before the party started. The salmon was unbelievably good!

While we were at the party, Don tried relentlessly to get me to drink beer with him and to try every food item in sight. After telling him no for the first 40 minutes, I just started telling him “OK” and then not doing it. It sorta slowed his asking, for a bit…

Sunday we went on a long slow walk. Around 60 minutes total. I didn’t feel like it was “enough”, but I was too lazy to hop on the bike or treadmill. Blah.

The Monday morning weigh in had me at 209.4 -Â So, I’m down from where I started the week, but only by 2 pounds. Here’s hoping that next week is closer to 5 or 6 pounds…

An interesting week

This week has been sort of crazy with the diet. Monday morning I wrote about my weight at the time. Tuesday morning when I weighed myself, I was heavier than Monday. Wednesday I was heavier than Tuesday. Thursday I started going back down, but was still higher than Monday. Today, finally, I am below my weight from Monday. This, I believe has to do with some more intense walks on the treadmill over the past couple evenings. Mind you, my “intense” walks are still pretty weak, but I’m building up… Wednesday night was 2 miles in 40 minutes. Thursday night was a little over 2.4 miles in about 43 minutes.

I still haven’t had a single soda and I’m thrilled to say I don’t miss it. I’m still learning what foods fill me up without being horrible for me, so my food intake is still a work in progress. But, I’ve been avoiding things like pasta, which used to be a 3 times a week meal, and bread. I can’t remember the last hamburger I had. Pizza, that’s another one I’ve skipped. Oh, and my beloved breakfast burrito has been cut back to 1 day a week and I switched to egg whites only.

I seem to have more energy during the day, but since I’m not snacking after dinner at all any more, I seem to be getting tired earlier and am ready for bed at a somewhat reasonable time. That’s probably the lack of caffeine hitting my system in the evening hours. Either way, I’m pretty pleased with my results to this point. Just have to stay diligent and focused. I think I may look at picking up a stationary bike for the house… Those can’t bet that expensive, can they?


Diet update, end of week 1

Today marks the start of week #2 of the Weight Loss Challenge. I have to say, I’m quite pleased with myself! I’ve kicked several of the bad habits I’ve had for so long and honestly, I don’t miss them a bit. So far, here is what I’ve done:

There have been some interesting temptations this week that could have easily thrown me right off track. For example, the monthly poker tournament at my house. We always order 4 or 5 pizzas and it’s not uncommon for me to eat 2 or 3 pieces during the game and another piece or two after. However, we planned ahead and grilled up some salmon steaks just before our visitors showed up for the game. When the pizza arrived, I had a pretty easy time skipping it. Then, on Sunday we had a house full of guests and we cooked a turkey and pork chops. This was definitely the biggest meal I ate this week, but I had only a spoonful of stuffing, a few pieces of the chopped potatoes and I kept the amount of gravy I used to a minimum. Then, after we had dinner and played some cards, we went for a walk around the neighborhood to work it off.

I’m QUITE happy to say that I have made noticeable (to me) progress. When I started the diet, I weighed 220 pounds. This morning, I weighed in at 211.6. A pair of shorts that would have been uncomfortable for me to wear 2 weeks ago were a little loose on me when I wore them on my walk yesterday.

I meant to take a “before” photo so that I could take an “after” photo in a few months. I, unfortunately, forgot to do that last week. However, we took one Sunday night. That’ll have to do. I’m sure I don’t look much different yet, so hopefully the difference at the end is quite noticeable. I’ll take a photo each week and I’ll post them all when this crazy trip is over and I’ve reached my goal.

This is as good as I’ve felt in quite some time. I’m enjoying the feeling. I can’t wait to see how I feel when I break the 200 pound mark!

Watching a site grow

The process for launching a new website is, to me, pretty fun. First you come up with the idea of what you want to do. Then you have to decide on the design, what software is going to run it, do you want to use somebody else’s or write your own, how are you going to make it popular, how are you going to maintain it, etc, etc, etc…

So, by the time you get it launched, you are usually tired of seeing the design, you aren’t sure your idea is that great, you doubt anybody will want to see it, and so on. But, you have to push past all that and keep your enthusiasm up in order for your site to have any chance of making it.

That’s where I’m at right now with wellwtf.com. I’ve launched it, shown it around and have even brought on half a dozen other authors in order to keep the site fresh with new content at least on a daily basis, and usually more like 2-4 times per day. So far, so good. There has been a steady flow of content. Now, the trick… getting other people to see it!

I’m obviously trying to drive traffic to the site as cheaply as possible. I don’t want to go out and spend a bunch of money at this point since the site really isn’t making anything. Plus, I’ve set it up where I only get a very small amount of the revenue potential from the site. I’ve got it set up where the other authors are all able to share in the profits from the site which makes it worth it for them (in theory) to keep posting fresh content. Plus, the other authors all work as excellent viral marketing machines! They do just like they would with anything else they find on the internet, pass the link on to their buddies. There’s no better form of marketing in my opinion.

Still, you need to get your site linked from other sites that have traffic. The site has already been referenced from a few other sites who have found stories they have re-posted which is the first baby steps in the process. You can check out our incoming links at Technorati.

I’ve found a couple traffic generating sites that are pretty slick ideas. The first is a site called Tag-a-cloud. You place a banner on your site and the more clicks you get on your banner going to their site, the more points you earn. The more points you have, the bigger/better/brighter your link on their site becomes. They increase your font size, the color, the weight, etc.. for your outbound link. You also get points for people clicking on your link from their site. So, basically, it’s a win-win situation for the site.

The other site I found is a newer site, but one that I think has HUGE potential. I’m getting in basically on the ground floor of this one. The site is called LifeTimeTextLink.com. Basically what you are doing is bidding on placement for your link in their link directory. But, the really cool part is, your site visitors, if they like your site, they can help out by also donating to your text link. To check out the process (and, hey, to help out Well, WTF?), Click here and check out how the process works. You simply bid any account ($1.00 minimum) and your payment increases the bid for Well, WTF?. The more bids it gets, the higher it ranks on the list. The top 5 links remain on the front page, and also, you are ranked on the alphabetical listing page. It’s a pretty sweet idea and I’m excited to be a part of it.

So, there ya go. A quick update on my little project. It’s just now getting it’s legs and I’m really looking forward to what the next few months have in store for it. I’ve got a really good feeling about this one.

Next Page →