Shifting focus...

Im getting stronger. I need to bring a clip board so I can start to record my exact number of reps and sets, but I am starting to see some progress. Not really on the scale however. I guess the first bit your body starts to hang on to more water because it is having to re-hydrate your muscles more than it is use to. The amount of food I am eating isn't changing which has been hard because I find the more I work out the more hungry I become. Im making better choices though so progress there too.

Comming up is the big trip to San Antonio with my wife. She has been looking forward to it forever and it was one of the reasons this proccess started. I have two weeks. Im switching my focus from just creating better workout habbits to pure weight loss. Lots more cardio than I want and a longer amount of time total spent on the weights if not as high a weight. Diet is going to take a big hit this week. I need to eat more often but smaller and healthier meals. Any one have any ideas on how thats suppose to work?

I start my school day at 8 and have a break at 230 and am home at 5. I can't seem to get myself to eat breakfast and I know it would make a difference. Im going to try to choke down a basic protien shake tomorrow morning... it just too early to be hungry. At school im going from one class to another, sometimes not even changing rooms, and by 1 I could eat but don't have a chance for quite a bit longer.

I always figured if I could wait till I got home and eat at five thirty it would mean i would eat less calories over all. Im thinking now that im eating more because by then im so hungry its impossible to not over-eat. Eating at 5 also pushes anything I may plan for dinner till 9 or later. New plan? Eat breakfast. Eat lunch. Eat dinner before 7. Sounds simple but its going to be a challenge. 

Progress is slow

The perfect diet? Get sick and don't get over it for like 3 weeks. I think its back to the doctor today... Can't find anything wrong with me, just get pain pills or antibiotics but it hasn't helped yet. I work at the mall at it seems like a lot of other people that work there are getting sick too... If you haven't been to Fashion Place the total scale of the construction is hard to believe. There is a lot of dust floating around especially when the air kickes on. Maybe that is whats making me sick? My manager has aesthema and i know it hasn't been awesome for him but some nasty something in the air would explain a sore throat and bloody sinus infection. 

The biggest problem is that when you cant breath it is hard to work out. I hope I can get over this soon and actually make my goal of 3 times a week at the gym. That is just to start, I was going 4 or 5 but it seems like its getting harder to do the things i need to. I have seen success so far. In the total time I have been doing this blog I have lost 7lbs! (yes I am happy I did that much, but if I was able to work like I want it would be better.)

Maybe that is the real challenge though. Its not about loosing weight in a perfect world. We don't all get the chance to go on tv and have a personal trainer tell us what will work for us and cook our meals and hold our hand at the gym and because your on tv you just hang out with the other contestants in a big house. I would jump at the chance to do something like that but I live in the real world and am faced with trying to squeeze a few min on the treadmill between school and work and homework and family and well... life. But its my life and if I don't continue down the path i have chosen it will be cut shorter than i would like. 

I wanted this to be a blog about the amount of progress I made in getting more fit and so far it reads like a blog about the growing frustration in trying to get fit. You can observe the change over time, but its me pulling my hair out and killing myself to make anything happen, not the results. Perhaps I'm just discouraged this week. That Doesn't mean I'm going to stop!

Recipe for Success!

Im trying to focus a little bit more on my diet. I am limited by how many calories I burn becaues of the amount of time I can spend at the gym, but can control compleatly the amount going in. In doing my research it seems that a piece of bread takes about 30 min of walking to burn off... Seriously?!? So that energy drink and candybar breakfast is going to totally erase the time I spent at the gym. (no i don't do that.)

As it is I only eat once or twice a day and they are normal sized meals. I eat the same sized dinner as my wife, and my lunch varies quite a bit but is usually a 1/4 cup of granola, a penutbutter and jelly sandwich  and a diet Dr. Pepper. Thats if i eat lunch...

 SO, for me its the snacking that i have to get rid of all together. Portion size could use adjustment but for the most part its the amount of simple sugar i eat. I LOVE bread. I would have a piece of pizza way before a piece of chocolate! Im starting a food journal to keep track of the foods i eat to keep myself more accountalbe. 

ok change of plans.

So, i'm back to not feeling well but I made myself go to the gym anyway. This time its something less serious however, I seem to be getting a sore throat that is probably strep as two of my co-workers had it this last week. I simply can't afford to be sick, so im deciding that im not. Hopefully my body will agree with me. As I was doped up on tylonol multi symptom i decided that I wouldn't get a good starting point for the lifts anyway, so today we started with cardio. Partly because its been a while and partly because it hurts to breath I was only able to do 30 min on the "dreadmill" at around 4.0. Come to think of it is that rating in MPH or what? I will have to look next time. I'm sorry I don't have something more interesting to report and I realize I promised big things, but bear with me. I won't be able to do this overnight. I am glad to report that it felt different at the gym tonight. It was the renewed sense of purpose that made everything bright and shiny. The sweat smelled like victory! (ok not really but I'm trying to be positive here...)

We will continue this tomorrow.

The Plan

Today at the gym I am going to concentrate on setting starting points for all my lifting points. In order to track progress I want to see an improvement in the amount of weight I can do, but instead of doing a maximum one time, which is a debatable measure of progress but requires a spotter for sure, I’m going to concentrating on slowly increasing the amount of each repetition. (rep) If done correctly I should be able to finish my planned amount of sets, but the last few should be very difficult, perhaps loosing form or not being able to quite finish. 

Pulldown 10 x 3
On a machine, 3 set of 10. 

Curls 10 each arm x 3
Free-weight barbells for each arm or x2lbs on a fixed bar

Butterflies 10 x 3
I think the machine allows for better form for this so I’m going to stick to that. 

Bench Press 7 x 3
I’m going to have to use the safety benches for this as I will be going without a spotter. Still a free-weight, but I have the ability to click the bar into place at multiple heights. I hate this one. 

Triceps extensions 10 x 3
I will have to pick between a machine and a straight bar on this one. I prefer the bar I think, but it may depend on the curls I end up doing. 

Power Crunches 15 x 3
On a machine with weight added. 

Power Trunk Rotations 15 x 3
Yeah you look stupid, but oh well

Straight Arm Pulls 10 x 1, 7 x 1, 5 x 1
These are done after the butterflies and tri-extensions and curls with progressively harder weight just in case my muscles didn't hate me before. 

Squats?
This is where I’m a little leery. Squats are where I almost injured myself severely with a personal trainer. I will be working on my legs but more on the cardio side of things than the weight side I think. At least for now. 

Wish me luck. First day of a new program always sucks. This looks like a ton, but go big or go home I suppose. See you At The Gym!

What the Doctor says.

Haven't been feeling well and finally went to the doctor today but he didn't have anything really definite to tell me. I had a bunch of blood work done including my hematocrit, thyroid, and blood sugar. I have immediate family that is anemic, my mom has been on thyroid medication since I was born, and by little brother Keynan was just diagnosed with diabetes and hypo-thyroid. With the challenges I have had at losing weight and with my energy level, I was almost hoping there was a medical reason that wasn’t too hard to fix because that would mean it could start to change if treated. 
The fact he couldn’t find anything more serious than the flu means the only treatment is a treadmill. I feel bad for my brother; he and I have always faced similar obstacles in this area. My middle brother, Braden is currently in Japan and is always getting approached by people in his area who want to see if his muscles are real… Some guys have all the luck! Braden has always been able to eat whatever he wanted without gaining a pound. I hope that the lessons I have learned and hope to learn will be able to help Keynan down a similar road. 
Developing type 2 diabetes is always a possibility as heavy as I am, and as something of a life-long concern, just another really good motivation. There are very few people I know at work, in my family, not even my wife, who is 100 percent happy with their current weight or wouldn’t love to drastically improve their level of heath. Of course more than anyone I’m doing this project for me. What with the doctor visit today I have a perfect starting place because I have another appointment in 3 months to re-evaluate medications and will have to weigh in. loosing 30 lbs by my next appointment is now my real life goal. 

Guess I will start with natures most painful but guaranteed to work crash diet, the flu. Not what I had in mind during my last blog. 

Food changes.

One of the areas I will be most effective in this process is what i decide to eat. Its so easy to sit on the couch doing homework and eat without noticing. The first thing I have commited to change is the level of attention I give what I eat. If you saw the series "I can make you thin," you know what "eat consiously" means.

One thing Paul Mckenna says is to eat whatever you want, but if your paying attention to yourself you won't eat too much. Well I aggree to a point, but will be changing the types of food I eat as well.

I also face a busy schedual. A labrotory study I read about showed successful weightloss in people that ate the same foods in the same amounts, but ate a large meal for breakfast and a small meal for dinner. Getting home from work at 9:45 and then making dinner has to change. The problem is that my wife and I would love to eat dinner together as some of the only time we get together; not a good solution to this problem.

I end up eating very little during the day and have a large dinner at night. The guys at the gym eat atleast 5 times a day...  

My first checklist; Eat less, more often, earlier in the day, healthier, and conciously.

1) Eat Conciously

2)Eat more often

3)Eat Earlier

4)Eat Healthy

Next week i will report on how I do. Wish me luck. 

REVOLUTION BEGINS WITH CHANGES IN THE INDIVIDUAL

If you haven't seen the Holzer exhibition on Adaweb.org you should defiantly check it out. The artist has been using words as art and this project is defiantly interesting. Both frustrating and interactive it seems to me Holzer has used the site to create active emotional response so that the phrases used have a bigger impact. One of the paragraphs that shift and change before you finish is in the sunniest yellow background you have ever seen and is talking about torture and agony. The fact that it shifts makes you angry and want to read it more. My initial response was to start clicking on things which led me to a different section rather than just waiting for it to come back around. The Truisms are powerful and some controversial. That section is my favorite. Something that uses a handful of words and can instantly create a moment of perfect recognition in another individual is wordcraft at its best. 

It amazes me how even though everyone uses language, few have an appreciation for the power of words. The fact that I have an audience is proof that in our time like never before we have the ability to express ourselves to millions like never before. The problems I have with blogging stem from the fact that for some this power is wasted. There are people that use postings to simply itemize their day rather than express anything of value. The idea of a truism or maxim is an expression of word crafting at its highest level. The idea is that something profound is trying to be communicated in a way that is not simply short but elegant. In high school I carried a little leather book that was about 2"x3" and would write down quotes and sayings I thought were worth remembering. I’m ashamed to admit that I don't know where this little book is, but I still remember much of it. Truly good literature is when the writer becomes a wordsmith and uses words as a medium to express something profound in a way that can guide our actions and change our lives. 

The fate of the world turns on tiny hinges and it is the clamor of humanity that forces its direction. You have only one voice, but it can join with others to create a mighty wind. SPEAK AND BE HEARD!

Ground Zero

In order to understand where I’m going with this, you should know where I have been. When I was 7 years old, my doctor decided that the 6 inch birthmark on the inside of my leg was suspicious enough that it should be removed. The resulting 2 weeks in a splint introduced me to the joys of a sedentary lifestyle. If I was bigger than the other kids before, as I continued to sit on my butt, continued to increase that difference. I found I wasn't the fastest runner in T-ball and my interest began to dwindle. Karate got hard too, so no more of that. By the time I was old enough to play football, my interest in sports had all but died. (I still have less interest than any other male on the planet I’m convinced) 

I'm not sure I was the fattest kid in school, but I was taller than I should have been too, so I was certainly the biggest. The difference between me and the other kids got greater and greater as the years went on. Not that having other interests didn't have its own benefits. I absolutely loved to read and remember going to the public library and leaving with so many books I could hardly carry them all. School was never really hard, I hated doing homework and almost never did any, but always seemed to ace the tests and so did rather well. By the time I graduated High school, I must have weighed at least 350lbs and certainly wasn't as happy as I could have been. 

As I began college I began to work out more than I ever had. Between trying to kill myself at the gym and a series of some of the most unhealthy crash diets you could think of I managed to lose over 120 lbs. I thought I had finally beaten my demons. 

Somewhere in the middle of that process I met the perfect woman and somehow convinced her to marry me. Married life brings its own set of challenges and between full time work and full time school, the frequency of my gym sessions dwindled. I had been able to manage pretty well at first, until out of the blue; I was struck with Bells Palsy. 

One morning I woke up with my lip slightly numb and by the end of the day had lost all ability to move my facial muscles on the right side. I had to rub lacrilube on my eye and tape it shut at night to keep it from drying out. Drinking from anything was a laughable ordeal that took forever. Although surgical decompression was considered, an aggressive dose of steroids and meds was decided upon as treatment. 

Thankfully the treatment worked and I regained about 95% of function. Even if you knew me before, it’s hard for most to tell anything different. The problem was the meds made me so dizzy that I pretty much sat on the couch all day as walking made me sick and driving was impossible. The steroids made me ravenous and my condition made me nervous... both made me eat. And Eat. Much of the weight I had been killing myself to lose over years of work came back on in a matter of months. 

So needless to say, I am not currently satisfied with my level of fitness. This is where we come in. Over the next several months I plan to report on how my diet and exercise patterns are re-invented. I’m going to do both right, the crash diets are no longer an option and thankfully I now know my way around a gym. I have a long long way to go, but the first part of my journey is a familiar one having started this process hundreds of times over the years from middle school on. What will make this cluttered spattering of thoughtless banter worthwhile is what I learn to do differently.

A word at the beginning...

I'm writing this blog to track my progress as I try to improve my fitness level. I haven't ever blogged before and probably would have led a happy and successful life without it, but it happens to be an assignment for an upper division writing class. I hope this blog will be of some use to someone. Maybe I will get some hidden reward out of spilling my guts every week. Perhaps the reward is to be found with whatever readers may stumble upon it; but before I can start there is something I need to get off my chest. 

I don't like blogging. Yeah you should know that about me to start. Blogs seem to have replaced actual literature as a hobby for hundreds of thousands. We are willing to trade the credentials of a professional for an intimate look into the lives of others. Have we become so voyeuristic as a society that we still crave the satisfaction of learning a person's inner most thoughts and feelings but are unwilling to reciprocate as an actual friendship would require? We sit in some familiar room with the clutter of life around us and crave human companionship but are unwilling to go meet one? What is it that makes blogs so popular? 

Of course this is an incomplete picture because if everyone one wanted to know about other people and were plain scared to put themselves out there then there wouldn't be anyone to write blogs either... which this and many other sites prove to be false. A desire to be acknowledged then? If people are willing to read the random spewings of my day certainly I must have value. Everyone wants to be different; everyone wants to be a unique little snowflake. Everyone. So even in our desire to be special we again affirming our place among the mediocrity of the masses. 

There are individuals with something extraordinary about them that blog too. Olympians for example possess abilities that by definition are at the pinnacle of the human ability to express. Still the idea of keeping a public journal seems somehow crass. Like in the bible when in Matthew he cautions to Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them... It seems to me that blogs are either so personal as to flay your soul bare revealing to the world and all its critics your most personal self, or a great big phony check with some charity's name on it your delivering conveniently as the press arrives...

I am not an Olympian. Nor would I call myself a writer. Like I said, I hope this blog will be of some use to someone, and for it to be, I will have to be off the mark in my assumptions. As I am exposing myself in a rather uncomfortable way, I hope to be dead wrong.