I am back starting today!

Well it has been a long time. A lot has been going on. Since the trip to spring training life has been crazy. Work is a mile a minute, I have been sick ( I never get sick) I have been reading a novel and I got an Iphone. So while all of this has been going on I haven't been logging my food or working out but I have found that the knowledge that the body bug gave me over the first few months really help me manage my weight. Although I have not lost any weight I have no gained and I am really happy about that. Over the last five weeks I have fluctuated up and down 1-3 pounds and as we speak I am down a total of 17 pounds since Jan 1, 2009.

I plan on getting back on the complete program wearing the BB and using the food portion because I think it is so helpful.

TODAY, Numbers and Goals

Two work outs today and good on food back at subway and lean cuisine for dinner, but I was starving afterwards and had some 100 cal pudding.

Things have been tough this week not really sure why, I have tried to reflect on it but have not really come to any conclusions. I have been stepping on the scale almost daily and it is not looking good. Someone was nice enough to comment that they thought maybe my body was just hanging on to the weight and it would reflect this week. Well I dont think that will be the case but I am still hope full. I have lost 14 pounds since Jan. 1 which is great and I guess I should be happy with that. Since starting the bb I have lost a little over 10 and I hope I am not hitting another plateau. I really dont want to make any excuses. I related so much to the BL tonight with their 24 hours of luxury... I had 48 this weekend but I did account for all my food and drinks.

A week from Thursday I will be in a bathing suit for the first time, drinking playing golf and watching some baseball and eating terribly. So I really need to kick it in the next 9 days. The only problem is we have another "big" weekend planned. My parents are coming to town and all we really have planned is dinners. Both my parents are turning 60 and my wife and I wanted to do something special for them so I am sure it will be a blast, but I am sure it will be stressful and not to mention almost impossible to work out till they leave late Sunday night.

NUMBERS I have deficit of 8418 which equals 2.4 pounds. I am not going to say that any loss will be fine because I truly dont feel that way. When I look back at how I used to eat and how I used to "reward" my self for working out and I stayed the same weight I will be really disappointed if I gained or stayed the same this week. Well wish me luck!! Good luck to everyone else on the journey.

Monday

Good on food and good on work out all though there was only one of them. I am much better on the weekdays no temptation to drink and no temptation to eat bad.

Sunday, Back on track (kind of)

Somewhat back on track, got 40 mins in even though I didnt feel like going. Cals burned per min not where I want them to be but starting to move back up to where they were before the 25 miles or so I did last weekend. Starting to be hopefull about the scale...

Saturday, Ummm more dinner and drinks

Can you say sloth? Layed around and watched basketball all day. Really not motivated to work out still disappointed about one pound last week but determined not to go over bored with food. We were meeting a group for dinner up in frisco at a new place they have been dieing to go to and guess what it is. You guessed it sushi at a place called RA. Now this place is 40 mins from my house has a long wait and is the kind of hipster dofus place I dread. Not to sound like a snob because I am told that Dallas is snobby but this is a whole new level complete with the people that think people are fooled when guys show up in suits like they just came from work on a saturday. I guess they were all stock brokers that are working in European markets:) The women werent much better and I detected that no one was there for the food but a place to be seen. The sushi was average I ll take Blue fish which is about 10 mins from my house every day over this place.

Friday, the start of another bad food weekend

As you can tell, this is me with no work out not to mention going out to dinner with my wife. We went to Dallas Fish Market... I did well on the "food" portion but had to much wine. I had a salad and some tuna sashimi, and a spicey tuna roll.

Thursday

Got the cals burned up a little but only got one work out in. Did well with the food side but need to improve on both at the same time.

Falling behind with everything

Well here we go with multiple days posted all at once I don't like doing this but I have been busy and bad. After a disappointing weigh in. I kicked it up a little. Two work outs and not many calories burned. This is when I started to get disappointed because my calorie burned during my normal work out were starting to drop. I used to be around 14 per min and you can see here I was lucky to hit 10 and I was doing more resistance and faster. I was begging to think the tough weekend work outs were hurting me.

OH NO!!!!!!!!!

Arg! One crappy pound! And I am behind again. I am hoping that it is water weight or something, but who knows with my body. I have noticed a few things... 1) I am not burning as many calories no matter how hard i work out on my favorite machine since I did the long work outs on Sat and Sunday. 2) I am hungry all the time but making good choices. I have read a bunch of things about muscle memory and maybe I need to switch it up. So I tried that today with my bad results for the week. I get 10 cals per min on my same exercise even though I am doing more resistance and faster seeing this I moved to the stair mill and thought i was busting my tail but I was only getting to 6 cals per min. So I moved to the rowing machine and only got four cals per min.......... NOW WHAT? Is it possible that being 10 pounds lighter my body isnt working as hard? If so I now know why the "last" 15 pounds are going to be so hard. I am a little frustrated because there isn't enough time in the day to work out any more. I am already doing two work outs a day and it doesnt seem to be helping me kill myself on the weekends. I am going to continue to work out on the weekends hard because it makes me feel good but if this keeps going on I am going to drastically have to cut calories consumed or I am open to any ones advice. I am going to weigh again in the morning even though I just ate an ounce of salted almonds and hope that there was something weird going on the last few days on the scale. Well that is probably enough rambling for one night.

Tuesday, Another night before the scale

No work out today and a little upset that I didn't get one in.... We celebrate birthdays at work buy having lunch catered in and announcing every ones birthday for the month. I did pretty good at lunch even though I really wanted the chicken fried steak and biscuits. They did have a healthy option... grilled chicken. So I had grilled chicken, Salad, baked beans and Nilla Wafer banana pudding. I left work about 5 mins early thinking i would be a little traffic and get to the gym early. Well that didn't work because there was an accident on the highway. I live just far enough form work that it can take me 20 mins or three hours depending on accidents, construction or just regular bad drivers going the speed limit.

So Mr. Math what do the numbers say this week?

Total deficit "according to MY food log" is 11,904 that is obviously due to the good workouts on the weekends and nothing to do with the last two days. Mr. Science says I should lose 3.4011873456 pounds. I stepped on the scale on Sunday and it wasn't good so even though I have pretty nice deficits this week I am hoping for ANY loss.

Monday

Well after a long weekend of working out hard I was tired and a little burned out. Couldn't do anything at lunch because I had to go to the dentist. So just did a few miles in the evening and even cut that short because there were people waiting for the machines and I felt guilty. I still did 45 mins even though the sign says 20 mins, but really if people knew how little can be accomplished in 20 mins they wouldn't bother... not that 20 mins of exercises isn't worth doing I know it all adds up but for me that is only a bag of kettle cooked jalapeno chips at subway, or 4 tag a long peanut butter cookies, or 18 oz of regular coke, or 8 corn tortilla chips. Yes everything has been broken down to calories burned and if they are truly worth the time I have to put in moving around. I guess that is the thing I like the most about the BB and logging food.

Sunday, Half Marathon

Well after doing 12 miles yesterday, and reading an article in the news paper about the Fort Worth Marathon, I decided that I would see if I could do one on the elliptical. Yes it is only a mile and .2 miles further but those are big at the end of long "run." I did complete it in 1 hour and 53 min.

Saturday

So I didn't have much planned today but I did do 12 miles on the elliptical. Felt great but it really takes a toll on your body. It is amzaing what it looks like on the graph not to mention the steps. Here are the two graphs.

Friday

Not much to report, just more of the same. Lunch had shrimp and fish tacos and got a quick 4 miles in.

Thursday

Well as I mentioned earlier I didn't get much sleep last night and I am still out of English Muffins so I had two eggs and sausage. Didn't work out because I went to the store to try and find some pants to get me through the hopefully "middle" weight loss, because when this is all over I plan on buying a lot of new clothes, but do want to spend a lot of money on pants I hope won't fit me in a few weeks/months. Had Chipolte Chicken bowl for lunch and a lean cuisine for dinner. Work out was pretty good only did four miles this evening and kind of took it relatively easy... basically did the work out I started with. Still couldn't get to the weights, I wish Jillian or Bob was here to give me advice on how much and when I should be lifting. I have a trip coming up next month in phoenix which will probably the first time I have to take of my shirt for the season so I am hoping to keep things going in the right direction. It is nice to hit my calorie burn goal without killing myself, I am hoping at some point the math evens out where I can rely on the fact that if I have 7525 deficit I will hit my goals right now I still feel like I need to really knock it out of the park with the deficits to stay on track.

Wednesday Results

Well Wednesdays have been bad for me after weigh ins but I broke the cycle this week. The calories consumed wasn't on purpose. We ran out of my favorite breakfast (lately) Whole Wheat English muffins with 50 cal per table spoon country crock. So when I got to work I looked for something and there was nothing I could "trust" in the vending machine. So, I just had to suck it up till lunch when I knew if I ate before I worked out 1) I wouldn't eat correctly and 2) I wouldn't work out because I was too full or whatever else I could come up with. So I went to the gym and hit it pretty hard and then went to a new place in Arlington called Fuzzy Tacos and had two grilled fish tacos which are incredible. There is no nutritional info on them so I did my best to guess on every thing and think I was pretty close because I found some in the BB data base that sounded less healthy and had less calories than I budgeted for the ones I ate. I then hit the gym hard again on the night work out and did 7 miles in less than an hour.... the burn is about the same as when I started which is sad because I am having to go a full mph faster than when I started and increase the resistance. I came home and made a three scrambled eggs with salsa and a 1/4 cup of 2% cheese. Talk about a filling meal. I need to do that more often. the only bad thing was I barely slept last night. A combination of the dog wanting to go out and sleep on the drive way, being hungry, my legs with like they wanted to run a few more miles I think it is restless leg syndrome and maybe being a little dehydrated.

Spelling

Umm why didn't any one tell me I misspelled Challenge on my tittle.

Weigh In Results

Well I tired to enlarge this but my computer skills aren't that good. I barely hit my goal but as I said yesterday, I am happy to be staying on track long term and short term goals but I really wanted that three pound lost. I am now the "lightest" I have been in four or five years I got down to this weight once before but I don't think I kept it around this number for more than a week. So that is the real goal the next several weeks and months. I don't know that I have ever said out loud what my goal is but I am trying to lose 25 pounds by April 19th... nothing going on that date but that is the date the BB picked for me. I still have only been weight training about once a week, I think I need to be doing much more but so concerned with calories burned that I hate to give up the cardio. So my goal for this new weeks challenge is to do three days of circuit training breaking up Chest/Tris and Back/Biceps. I have never really worried to much about percentage of fat but now that I am starting to see gains I don't want to be a "skinny" fat person. My body fat has only gone down 2% since I started this.

Tuesday Before Weigh-In

Pretty good work outs today had some 15/min burns which I was happy with. Did 3 miles at lunch and did 7 miles in the evening at faster than 7 mph. All the miles are really starting to take a toll on my feet and body. It is so fun with the BB to see calories clicking off and that is what has been keeping me motivated.

I had a 10540 calorie deficit even with the terrible Wednesday last week (66 calorie surplus) so even with a bad day I averaged 1505 deficit per day. I really kicked it up a few days there to try and catch up. According the BB fuzzy math that is 3.011654982 that I should lose this week. Not counting the extra calories I should burn tonight before midnight. As always I would be happy hitting my 2.15 pound goal but I feel like I should hit three or at least 2.5 lbs. It is amazing how this thing makes you obsess about tenths of pounds.

Today, Monday, February 23

Great work out at lunch and good work out after work. Food was really good today, but I am going to have to have more. I am really hungry! I weigh in on Wednesday for the third time. Today is actually the "non-official" third week and I peaked at the scale and I was exactly the same as last week I am hoping that is because I weighed at the end of the day. Tomorrow I will add up the deficits for the week and "project my losses for the week. It was a tough Wednesday, Thursday and Friday so I wont be crushed if I don't hit my goals but I did good today and plan on doing well tomorrow.

Sunday

Completely lazy all day and then did a pretty hard work out. The little spikes are me doing imaginary jump rope while drinking wine and grilling fish for me a steak for my wife. Most days I am up to six miles at 6.5-7.5 mph. It is really exciting to be able to do that much with out keeling over. I am thinking of doing at least a 5K or some kind of running event. If I can get over the hump I am going to try to start running on the treadmill and see how it goes. I love the elliptical because it seems pretty easy on the body, running on the other hand has never been easy but that may because of the extra weight I am/was carrying.

Saturday

Great day, back on the waffle diet :)

Tempered that with some ceviche at the Flying Fish... tons of protein and good for you too. A cup only has 171 Calories and then the put a couple of slices of avocado and cilantro. The only bad part was the chips that I ate it on, but only had 9 chips.... still adds almost the same amount of calories as the ceviche for a "condiment." Came home ad had a few glasses of my new favorite wine Geyser Peak Sav Blanc. The work out was more of the Life Fitness elliptical. I am starting to notice the calories burned starting to drop. People have always warned me not to continue doing the same exercise because your body get used to it and has muscle memory and I think that is what is going on now. When it drops to below ten I am going to have to start running. I have always said that I do not like to run unless there is a large man chasing me with a stick.

Friday

Another day with out a work out. Didn't do terrible on food but still not content.

I told you it was bad

I am not even going to post it one because i did it wrong and two because i had a surplus of 68 CALS.

Today was good, back on the good eating and good work outs. I can tell that my body it is getting used to the work outs and I am going to have to figure out a way to shake it up. My average work out spike there is dropping about a cal per min which isn't a ton but you can notice it. Did 3 miles at lunch and 6 at night. Food was much better it is amazing how much you can eat if you choose correctly/better. Not to mention no alchol and no chips.

Pleasently Surprised

Well I was back on track until today. Usually Wednesday are really good for me... but i decided to go to dallas and take my wife out for lunch. Again sandwich shops aren't all the same, we went to Schlotsky's I stared at the menu for a long time and came up with the chicken fiesta sandwich... no mayo no mustard just salsa and lett and green peppers a little cheese. Looked great right? well NO. it was ridiculous and compared to subway. Then one of my work friends had his b day today and a bunch of work people went out for drinks and dinner.... I didnt eat but i did have a lot of beer and chips with pico.

On another note,I am so excited about this weeks weight loss and catching up to my goals. I was only .3 pounds away from the food I logged so I am very happy about that. i am going to have to kick some ass the next few days to catch up and get back on track.

Tuesday, Night before second Weigh In

Lunch and Evening work outs trying to make up for Thursday -Saturday last week. Total Calorie Deficit for this week should be around 11,761 based on my food log I am sure the BB will tell me that I only logged 50% of my food or something like. But if I am correct and I did over estimate on most day calories consumed than I should lose 3.36028571 lbs. As you may remember from last week it was about half the average. I am still hoping for three pounds.

Monday

Another good workout at lunch and that added to my after work work out it gets the calories burned. I am now doing 4 miles and 6 miles on the elliptical at about 7 mph or level 5 and 6. I love this machine and I hope people don't start using it more there always seems to be a few free ones, the other free machines in my gym are the "tread-stairs" which used to be my favorite machine till I found out that the Life Fitness elliptical burns more calories because I can go faster.

Sunday

Ok so I knew I wasn't going to be able to resist another waffle! So last night I looked up something to get me going early in the morning... what I found at my gym was a spin class. I have never done one before. I had always seen people sweating their butts off but I thought there was no way it could be that tough. Well, I think you can make it harder on your self than I did. I did sweat a lot but was a bit disappointed in the calorie burn. You can see the spin class form 9:15 till around 10:00 the instructor started the cool down phase and I just jumped of the bike and ran out, she gave me a little bit of a dirty look like I was breaking some cardinal rule of the gym.

After that I jumped on my favorite machine the Life Fitness with the moving arms and did another hour. Again I am not sure if the BB reads that acurately but I sure like the way it looks on the graph. After that I came home and had a quick lunch and took our dog out for a quick walk. Then came home and sat around some more and then went back to the gym and did a quick mile on the eliptical and did a quick circut of lifting. 4 sets each of chest, tri's, back and bi's.

Here is a picture of the pup :)

Saturday

Again weekends at least weekend nights are hard for me! I did get a pretty good work out in. We had planned on eating pizza, I had a healthy choice dinner I can't imagine what it would have been like had we had pizza. The down fall this weekend besides the normal wine was the new waffle maker I gave my wife for V-Day. This thing is awesome and I am not even a breakfast lover. I have been surching for low cal waffle mixes or at least whole wheat waffles....

Celebrating V Day is not good on Calories Consumed

Another tough day! I was able to work out during the day which was good because I got a great work out in during lunch. I also had to walk around work a lot which was good because there is a lot of stairs and it is a big place. I can't wait for spring when I will be walking around all the time, those are some really good spikes around four at least better than I get sitting at my desk.

I had a lot of wine and I tried to do good with my choices at dinner I had sauteed Cod which scares the crap out of me but it was a relatively small portion and for and app I had some boiled shrimp with mixed greens everything was excellent. The Grape has great wine choices too!

I didnt get a work out in this day which is very sad but I was working on V Day for my wife and my mother's B-day. I did think I was cutting back on my food but it turns out that Jimmy Johns sandwhiches aren't as low cal as Subway. I guess that is why Jared and Biggest Loser don't go to Jimmy John's.

A Few Good Days and A Few Bad Days

Well I am going to try and do this where it will make since since I am posting three days at once. Wednesday are usually good days for me because even though I am a little frustrated not hitting my goals it always urges me on to work harder. Most days I am doing a minimum of 40 mins of cardio on the eliptical machine with moving arms. I asked to bb coach about it and she said that the arm thing isnt what is making the exercise "harder" it is that I can do it at a faster speed. I do it at atleast 6 mph so I can do 4 miles in 40 mins.

Well......

Not exactly what I had hoped for but I guess getting close every week is good enough for now. Talked with BB coach today and she seemed to think that my goals were a bit high since it is more than two pounds a week. I found her to be helpful but they sure won't ever admit that the bb might not be reading cals burned properly and that it has to be your food and portions etc. Again, she may be correct but I have over estimated on many days. She went into the story of how even a lean cuisine can even have more X in any given package than another and so forth so I guess i am eating 3500 more calories per week than i thought. Again not killing the messanger here but I dont feel like I can be any more diligent. I am still happy with the progress and will continue to work hard.

Today TUESDAY Night before Weigh in

Well these are probably all running together since I am doing a few days at once. I weigh in in the morning and some what excited plus I have my bb coaching session on thursday which I am looking for. All in all things seem to be going well. Just got through watchign the biggest loser and I want to make sure I am eating enough... I know i am on certain days but I wonder about some of the lower calorie days during the week. 8847 calorie deficit since last weigh in. Simple math says that is 2.5277435689012 pounds. I would be happy with 2.5.

Monday, 2/9/09 (unofficialtwo weeks)

Well it has been two weeks on the BB. Still love it and feel like I am seeing some gains at least in the clothes department. Everything just feels a little more loose and I hope that shows up on the scale. Was able to get in a lunch time work out and that is really the key to me being able to surpass my 3000 burned calorie goal. It is really hard to do it especailly since I have to shower and grab lunch all in an hour ( ok so sometimes it is a little more than an hour) but this is my more busy time of year. I have found that subway is really the key to because I know exactly what is in it. My wife did tell me about a great website that lists 100's of restaraunts and I think it is pretty detailed. Here is mondays chart

Sunday 2/8/09

Great day! Was able to get an hour in at the gym and cut back on food since I hadn't had very big deficits.

A few days

Well I have been falling behind on the blog and a little bit behind on burning calories. My food hasnt been terrible but it hasnt been good. I did get a really good work out in the morning but didn't do much the rest of the day. Our in-laws came in and treated us to a really good lunch and an even nicer dinner. We went to Cafe Pacific and I did really well ofcourse the drinks were my down fall but I tried really hard with the food and ordered some great grilled shrimp with pappya salsa and grilled vegtables. All in all a great visit and was able to "manage" with food.

Yesterday

Another day with out a work out......

2.1 Pound Loss

Well as you know i was hoping for a 3.8 pound loss due to the huge deficits, mathmatically that is what it should have been, but heck two pounds and 2% fat body loss according to my scale is fine. It has been a difficult week in the work out catagory with things going on but my food has been pretty good till today. I still have a 800-900 deficit but I always want more. Have another busy weekend, which I like the activity but I know it is going to be hard to manage the intake.

I am excited to get back on track and it turns out I am actually happy to have my weigh in on Wednesday instead of Mondays where I have time to correct anything that happens on Friday and Saturdays.

This is day 11! Hard to believe. THis is the first day I haven't worked out and still going to burn about 2600 calories. I hope that the BB is correct.

Chart

Sunday, Day 7

Well it has almost been a week. I thought I was supposed to weigh in tomorrow but I changed my goals so it says I am not supposed to weigh in till Wednesday. If anyone can let me know how to change that back that would be great! I added up my deficits for the week and it was over 10,000 cals so I hope the scale is good to me. I am thinking 3 lbs. would be great but I dont want to get my hopes up. I think this was the first super bowl I didnt have chips and salsa, queso, and guac or a beer. I guess I am taking this pretty seriously. My wife says I am addicted and i think she may be right. I think I heard her on the phone talking to the A&E Show Intervention.

Funny

None of this as funny as I thought it would be. I guesss every other post I have read has had some humor to it. My life isnt that funny. I guess it is funny that I am addicted to a little thing I wear non-stop. I enjoy the hell out of some eliptical trainer with moving arms I guess that counts. By the way I started a poll at the bottom of my page please vote.

Weekends

Well I think weekends are going to be hard I like to have a drinks with dinner. We went to Blue Fish tongiht and had my normal sashimi and one roll plus a few glasses of wine. After that we went to out favorite neighborhood bar. I had a couple of beers and played pool. Tomorrow is the Super Bowl and I know I am going to have a hard time even though I really dont care about the game. I have found that the Apex site doesnt have a ton of options when it comes to eating out and i hope I am estimating correctly. I am really worried about the next couple of weekends when we have comapny coming to town and we are going out to nice dinners. I am going to try and add some extra cardio in so I can make sure to have some defficits. I really like this because I have a chance to talk about how hard it is to write down everything you ate. I used to write down my main meals but I now know that I was skipping some important things like two slice of bread and some olive oil, or a bottle of wine and a few slices of cheese. Things seem to be going pretty well but you can tell that you cant be complaicent with this thing. I sure hope this thing is reading my calorites correctly because I know the calories consumed portion is correct if not over stated. I would rather over estimate on the food than the workouts but if I am getting poor readings on both I am screwed. I peaked at the scale again this morning and I had lost two and .4 pounds I hope that is right and not water weight. I guess we will find out on monday. By the way for anyone else reading this, if I could get some help. I changed my program/goals alittle to have a 1100 cal difference as opposed to 1000, yeah i know it isnt much different, but it changed my first weigh in date.... is that going to make a difference or does it really matter in the scheme of things. I am going to finish my glass of wine and go to bed and hope for another great day.

Wednesday/ Ice Day

Thursday

Not sure how to post from the body bug website

This whole thing has become very addictive. I am trying to learn how to post the pages from the bodybug site. I have met my goal every day which is good and I plan on showing my pages so I can reflect back on the days/weeks/months. I ate less today so I could have a glass of wine or two or four. I have always totally been against blogging/face book stuff but I think this is going to be cool. I am hoping that this works because nothing else really has for the last couple of years. Seven years ago I lost 20 pounds and then gained it back and more after getting married and then got back on the health kick and got down to the dating/married weight and have been stuck there for 3-5 years even though I feel like I work out very hard and make good bad choices when eating. The one thing that i dont like about this is that I dont feel like i can eat out because I have no idea what I am putting in my body when I am not in charge of coooking it/heating it up. I hope to show some progress in the first few weeks, my wife says I look thinner already but I have a funny feeling that is wishful thinking and because I got my hair cut. Well that is about it for now.... the wine sure is good :)