Hovering at 195

For the past 2 weeks my weight has been hovering right around 195. I think part of the reason is that because of my current running schedule, I’m not burning as many calories as I was when I was riding the bike every day. I think what I need to do is keep with my 20 minute runs 4 days a week, but add in a 20-40 minute bike ride in the evenings. The main problem with that lately has been an increase in the amount of projects I have been working on. They seem to be taking up a lot of my time. But, if I’m going to reach my goal, I’m going to have to make the time. No excuses. Gotta get on the bike!


My current running pace is right around 12 minute miles. I’m doing 2 minutes of running and then a 1 minute walk. Rinse, swish, repeat. The pace has been good and I’m hoping that by this time next week I will be ready to move to a 3 minute run/1 minute walk schedule. I don’t really have a goal for where I want to be by the time the race gets here in December, but I’m thinking 8-10 minute runs with a 1 minute walk would be awesome. With that I would expect to be doing about a 10.5 or 11 minute mile. But, these are all just things I have cooked up in my head since this is the first time in my life that I’ve been running. So, what the hell do I know.

Poker lately has been pretty interesting. I have always considered myself a tournament player as compared to a cash game player, but that all seems to be changing. Part of that comes from my daily conversations with my buddy Scott who is working full time in LA as a poker player. Having somebody to discuss situations with on a daily basis is so great and it’s really helping my cash game a lot. My last 2 live cash game sessions have resulted in 2 consecutive winning sessions, but more importantly, looking back on those two sessions, my confidence level at a cash game has never been higher. In both sessions I felt completely comfortable at the table and wasn’t intimidated by anybody. I felt like I knew where I was at in every pot I played and showed down the winning hand on the river far more times than showing down the loser. I large part of that comes from tightening up my cash game a lot. I realize now in the past I normally would play a loose aggressive style that was always finding ways to put me in difficult situations. By tightening up my play and folding several hands that I would normally have played in the past, I was able to walk away with a decent profit on both sessions.

The World Series of Poker is going on right now and I’m really trying to figure out a way to play in it. I’d rather not just go plunk down $1500 to play in a 3000 player event. Even if you play your best poker, with that many players, you are going to have to run really really good in order to make the money. Just playing tight will only last so long. You need to get in and mix it up. You have to accumulate a lot of chips. You need to play your best poker for 3 full days. No 30 second mind farts where you call off your entire stack with A/J after being re-raised. Yeah, I did that last year in a big tourney. I may go down to the Rio and play in one of the “second chance” events in the evening. It won’t be a bracelet event, but getting to play in the poker room with so much action going on is really amazing. There is a great amount of energy in the room and I want to go and be a part of it. Hell, it only comes around once a year.

Tomorrow morning Chris is having Lasik eye surgery. We’ve talked about doing this for years. I’m very excited for her to finally get this done. The only problem is, if you know my wife, you know how squeamish she is. She’s pretty nervous today and I’m sure that’s only going to get worse as the day rolls on. Luckily she has 2 classes to teach today so that should keep her fairly busy. Sadly, I’m not allowed to go in and watch the procedure. You know damn well I would have shot video and put it up on YouTube. If things change, you’ll be the first to know.

Not as ignorant, still blissful

This morning at just before 7:00 we met up with Justin, Jessi, Nita and Matthew along with nearly 100 other people who showed up to run with the Las Vegas Roadrunners. After a quick pep-talk from Tim, we broke up in to groups based on your expected time to finish the race.

The run was supposed to be 30 minutes. The groups would run 15 minutes out and then 15 minutes back. I made a few mistakes this morning and it caused me to run too hard and long.

Here is the list of mistakes I made:

I know for sure my heart rate was somewhere north of 160 and probably closer to 180. My “zone” is around 135-140.
I started out in the 2:15 half-marathon group. I ran with them for a while but eventually stopped to walk. At some point they turned around and i didn’t realize it. Because I didn’t have a watch, i just sorta kept going… When I finally turned around, I was one of the last runners heading back. Oops!

For next week, I will correct my previous mistakes and I will drop down to the 2:30 half-marathon group. We will see how that goes.

Blissfully Ignorant

It’s currently 11:40 on Saturday evening. I’m heading to bed because I’m excited about tomorrow morning. We go on our first run at 7:00 am with the Las Vegas Roadrunners in preparation for running the half-marathon at the end of the year. The running joke is that I have no idea what I’m getting myself in to. But here I go, headlong in to something with a smile on my face and no sense of what I”m up against… I can’t wait! :)

Let’s see if I’m as excited next weekend when I have to get up to go run. Especially considering they start at 6:00 after this first week. Can’t wait.

Concert, ATV riding & the diet

This has been another busy week. Don’t know when the heck things are going to slow down. It’s really been insane the last couple months. So much stuff going on. Well, to catch you up for the past week:

Thursday evening we went to see Cross Canadian Ragweed at the House of Blues. Once again, they put on a fantastic show. It’s a shame they don’t get more radio airplay. We drug Jake and Diane along for the show this time and they both really enjoyed the show. Not to mention the opening act, who I had never heard of, Micky and the Motorcars. Another great rock band. I’ll definitely be picking up their CDs in the near future.

If you are a fan of good ‘ol fashion southern rock, you should definitely check both of these bands.

Paxton on an ATVOn Tuesday Paxton will turn 16. We wanted to do something really cool for his birthday rather than just getting him a gift that he’d forget about in a few short weeks. Chris came up with the idea of taking him out on an ATV tour. We had originally planned to take him next weekend, but since I’m having surgery on Friday, I didn’t think going ATV riding with stitches in my back would be a good idea. So, we moved it up to this weekend. Holy crap, what a fun time!

This was the first time Paxton had been on an ATV. It was also my first time on an ATV in about 20+ years. They started us out on the skills track. You go pretty slow and get used to the machine and how it handles bumps, dips, rocks and such. Paxton started off fairly tentative and that had me a bit nervous. Next we headed out on the the trail around the base of a mountain. We had our guide out front, then Paxton and then me pulling up the rear. We were told to stay a certain distance behind the guide. Not to get too close and not to drift back to far. Paxton started out fairly well behind the guide to start. But, by the end of the first hour, he was hanging right in there with him. At the end of the second hour on our way back to the hanger where we had started out there was about a quarter mile stretch of wide open flat ground. The guide waved us on to open it up. It was awesome seeing Paxton peg the throttle and just tear down the open stretch. No fear. Just flying!

For as much fun as I had riding, I had 10 times as much fun watching Paxton ride.

And finally, the diet. This has been another pretty good week. I still have yet to wake up and have my morning weigh in be under 200 pounds, but Saturday was pretty close with an exact 200.0. Actually, something really interesting happened on Thursday night at the concert. I had a beer. It was only my second beer in 5 weeks. The first can be seen here. The interesting part being that I did not enjoy the beer at all. I would have so much more enjoyed a bottled water. So this getting in to shape thing has really started making some major changes in me. I am just about certain that I have had my last beer until after I reach my final goal. And even then, I don’t know that I”m going to rush back to drinking beer on a regular basis anyway.

Saturday afternoon Chris and I went to the Village Runner shoe store to sign up for the Las Vegas Road Runners and also the Las Vegas (half) Marathon. It’s official now. We have until December 2nd to get ready to run 13.1 miles. You know I’ll keep you updated!

if you are interested in joining up with the Road Runners, they will be back at the Village Runner and also at some other locations next Saturday, May 19th. The first session running with them will be at 7:00 am on Sunday, May 27th. The scary part is, after the first run, all other Sunday morning runs START at 6:00 am. If there was anybody remotely interested, that last sentence probably killed that, huh?

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.

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!