lose weight

was my 20th reunion, so I think I should post a picture of me from my reunion. I apologize about the effeminate beer holding thing. I couldn’t find the right position when I realized I was holding a beer in this picture. Normally I would hold it across my stomach, but then it appeared to be a little too ‘ready to go’ and that could come back to haunt me if I got too drunk, so I went with this.
Note: Obviously this isn’t the whole class, just a handful who were helping to set up. I am in the middle.

19.8% body fat
178.2 lbs
MOU is way down to 33…

Okay, the MOU is clearly suspect. I cannot imagine the my cardiovascular system is getting worse, yet I can run farther faster than I ever have in my life. Otherwise, though, I choose to believe the good numbers. I am just that way!

So, I have 35.3 pounds of fat and 142.9 pounds of lean mass.

Lets compare this to when I started:

23.7% body fat and 186 pounds.

I have lost 8.7 pounds of fat and gained 1 pound of lean mass.

I will cross this one off my list and create a more specific goal. Thank you everyone for your kind comments and support. I am nowhere near where I want to end up, but I am getting there and I averaged about 2 pounds a month for 4 months. Slow and steady and possibly sustainable. Man is getting weight off hard for me….

So, to summarize:

Evaluation #1.
23.7% body fat.
186 pounds (44.1 lbs of fat)
MOU is 34

Evaluation 2
22.0% body fat DOWN: 1.7%
187.9 pounds UP 1.6lbs (41.4 lbs of fat DOWN 2.8)
don’t have MOU for some reason

Evaluation 3
21.6% DOWN 0.4%
Weight 177.1 DOWN 10.8 pounds (38.3 lbs of fat DOWN 3.1)
MOU is 41. Up 7

So I have lost about 5.8 pounds of fat and about 9 pounds overall.

I am down to 21.6% body fat. I would love to see that in the 17-18% range If I can get to 170 pounds with all of that loss being fat, I would be about 17%. That maybe my future goal, we will have to see how Friday goes.

Last week was a pretty relaxing workout week, but it was a good week. I will set up one more fitness evaluation not this week, but next and then I can check this goal off and add a new one in its place.

I feel very good about this goal, it was the most important goal that i had and I really have had success, but only because I put some realistic steps to achieve it.

After my next fitness evaluation, I will come up with what I want to achieve next in terms of weight loss/management.

I have exactly 30 days to complete this goal. I want to go in for another wellness evaluation, but I apparently went just over a week ago… I need more patience there. I know I have lost a fair amount of weight, I think the last couple of weeks it has become noticible.

I really would like to be down to a respectable fat % by the reunion, but I just realized that I didn’t put any real teeth into this goal. Technically, I have already achieved it. The more concrete goal of running the 5k is all that is driving me here. I really need to work on my goal setting….

Although I was still hung over a little on Monday. J was brutal and I was still hurting on Wednesday. Had to do 7×1 minute uphill runs. It was brutal. Then back to the ocean to cool off. It was raining and cold, and towards the end of our ocean vigil the thunder started, so we figured we should get out. I know you don’t want to be in a lake when the lightening starts, but how about the ocean…
In any case my calves hurt a little today so the ocean didn’t work as well as last week. It is fun though. I like climbing in the ocean at noon. We should maybe do a hill/trail run to one of the lakes in the hills above us. That would be so cool. I will talk to J about it.
Sad news though, my month of 3 times a week is up… I am now down to 2 times and to make things confusing, I don’t want to give up any one day, like Monday or Friday, so I am asking them to just drop 2 Mondays and 2 Fridays. They appear ameniable to this, but not very.
It has been suggested that my gym is a cult and getting out is very, very hard. My wife is still very unhappy about my 2 days a week and is trying to get me to drop the gym entirely. This sucks… There goes my trainee of the month award that I was certain to get, at least according to my friend. I normally couldn’t give a rats ass about being the anything of the month, with the exception of Dad of the month, but secretely I would be happy being the trainee of the month… Speaking of Dad of the month, my daughter made me a #1 pizza chef award because of the pizza I cooked last night. God I love being a dad!
I love this gym too, so I need to find away to come up with the additional money. Right now is not good though, we just bought a new house that we can’t afford and I am investing a lot of money in the poker timer business that my brother and I started up… In any case, I doubt I will be able to push myself as hard without the gym, so we will see how my weight loss goes…
Always challenges. I think I look a lot thinner though (at least I think so, you don’t want to know what my wife thinks) so that is totally cool!!!!!

would be as bad as Hill Run Wednesday. Ouch.

The in gym workouts up to this point just haven’t been that hard, but all of that changed today. Man did K work me. He is mean. Also, I was on tv last week as the requisite background working out person behind the star of the fitness fantasy #2. I missed seeing myself because it was broadcast during the Hill run wednesday (this isn’t like the aroebics backup people, i am doing my own thing in my own corner of the gym, but apparently the camera found me).

They make you do crazy workout things at this gym like stand on one leg and do your bicep curls. You can’t help but look like an idiot. The trainers never do, but they are in shape and have balance (those bastards!!). So being a background workout person could be very, very embarassing. As well, I have no idea what I was saying but some of what we talked about was not fit for TV. I really hope I didn’t look like a tool.

When I was young I totally would have loved to have been on TV, but I have had to give a couple of interviews over the last few years and something dawned on me when I was answering questions. If you don’t say anything on tv and you are never on tv, there is no record of you being a jackass. I am not saying I am a jackass, but once you let someone film and edit you, you could be a jackass without even knowing it. Ask all of those reality tv contestants. Nope, I will try to stay out of the background of the shots from now on and try to lose my weight privately. Oh yah, and on here, but that is it…

On another note, I haven’t really noticed any weight coming off in the last week. I know that I should know better than to be impatient and a week really doesn’t count as a timeline to measure in, but I am a bit discouraged. I am working my ass off (not literally, I wouldn’t mind building my ass up a little, not lose what I have). I hate the whole weight loss thing, it is evil and difficult, you never see the results right away and then when you think you should lose weight you gain it, and on and on. Curse you forefathers for being so good at storing fat.

I cannot imagine a pain or torture that I would voluntarily endure worse than hill run Wednesday. I had to rearrange my workout and work until 1:30 last night to accomodate a kids dentist appointment that I had to be with the kids at. They were awesome and so brave, I am busting with pride for those two girls. In any case, I had to drop them at school and run to the gym and get changed just to run up the hill, over and over and over again. J said that she was proud of how mmuch I had improved. I have no idea if I did, but I did notice that we ran out of hill a lot earlier and had to walk down more often, which has to be a good sign. If you knew West Vancouver, you would know that there is no shortage of hills here. It is all hills.

So she has been trying to get me to sit in a cold bath after my workouts, which to tell you the truth, just isn’t going to happen. I tried, believe me, I tried, but I could barely put my feet in the water, certainly not my…rest of me. So, we decided to go in the ocean water here at the beach, rain or shine. I love swimming in the ocean, but the cold of the water is a little offsetting. For those who haven’t swam in Vancouver harbour in spring, I do warn you, it isn’t for the faint of heart. All that said, there is something so cool about stepping out of your work day and swimming at the Ocean on a rainy drizzly day. It is like you are finding time and things to do where there simply was nothing before.

So after swimming for a little while, I had to stand in the water for 8 minutes. When we both got out our legs were red as a lobsters. I have no idea if that worked, but it was fun, none the less. I think I like hill run Wednesday.

We talked about doing the stair climb up the wall centre in a couple of weeks. We would have to sneak in, but I have to admit, not only am I curious about how fast I could get up the building now, I am also curious as to how fast she can. She is a fast little gazelle of a girl.

Worked out today. It was totally cool, because my trainer takes me running as part of my warm up, and we noticed that the weather was beautiful, so we ended up running by the gym to pick up some equipment (okay, I was told just to keep running by the gym, while my trainer ran into the gym, picked up some equipment, including a medicine ball and caught up to me. I don’t mind saying, I didn’t make the catching up to me entirely easy, as she had a medicine ball and I feared if she caught me, I would have a medicine ball).
So we worked out on the pier at the beach. It was gorgeous, and I got a little sun.

J is going to revise my out of gym workout to account for my week being out with the cold/flu. Tomorrow I go running with my friend, M. Everything is right on track.

In any case, I will end my entry here as I am quite depressed today (see entry in ‘start a cult’ for reason).

Some good numbers here! A little odd though. I am not taking this one too seriously, because of the large lean mass loss. Oh well. I would have to say, I think I am considerably thinner than I was a month ago.

Fat % 21.6 down 0.4 Not great, but better than nothing.
Weight 177.1 down 10.8 pounds! This is startling. Probably not entirely true, but I will take it!
MOU/VO2Max 41. Up 7! This is awesome! I was still rumbly in the chest too!

I said that I wanted to get down to 37.4 pounds of fat, I actually got down to 38.3. Not bad. 3.1 pounds of fat lost.

Okay, so I am fitter, and I am slimmer. Looks like operation Lose Weight, which is of course misnamed-but I was new to 43 when I chose it and didn’t look around at other options-is going well. 45 more days or something… i would love to get down to 160something. That is 8 pounds or more away.

Also got a full workout in at the gym. I worked hard and it felt good, so yay I am back. Sunday run then Monday back in the gym.