That’s right, I’m headed to Fitbloggin 2012 in September this year. I had a great time last year and learned a ton. It was pretty amazing meeting all of the bloggers I’d been reading for years, to put faces to names and voices to words.
Photo Courtesy of Brittany
I hope to see you there!
I woke up yesterday morning extremely dizzy. That kind of feeling where you can’t really stand very well, the room is spinning, and vertigo really wants you to lie down or sit completely still. I’m not one to really get dizzy and can’t say I ever feel it except after working out hard or running long distances and then making sudden movements.
I had a great workout on Sunday night and rode ~22 miles in an hour on my trainer in the basement. I made sure to drink during my workout but I went to bed without continuing to hydrate and my snack didn’t exactly contain any protein (aka a sweet was consumed) and was way too processed. Combine that with the tail end of a cold and you have the makings of a dizzy start to the day, make that the dizzy half of a day.
I reluctantly decided to take the day off from working out and made sure to drink a lot of fluids and not push myself. I’m feeling much better as I write this in the evening.
I’m picking up tomorrow (today when this posts) where I left off and I’m not planning to take another day off until after my weigh-in on Friday.
Have you ever experiences really bad vertigo for extended periods of time?
A little over a week ago Jeff from DietingSmarter.com reached out to me to see if I was interested in doing an interview for his site. He’d read my story and thought it’d be interesting (and maybe even a little inspiring) for his weight loss success stories series.
I was honored and thought it’d be fun so told him I’d be happy to! Little did I know that I’d be in the company of David from Keep It Up David. While I’m certainly not as motivational as David I do have a long story to tell.
Anyhow, grab your coffee and head on over to check out my interview over at Dieting Smarter this morning. Thanks for asking me Jeff, it was fun answering your questions and I hope your readers enjoy what I have to say. As usual I’m pretty long winded in my responses but did you expect anything else?
It’s been a long week, and it felt twice as long as it actually was. I’ve been fighting a cold the last couple of days, it’s been going around our house lately. Because of this I have no idea what to expect on the scale this morning. I did take my usual day off but I took it easy at the gym the last few days, I wanted to keep my body moving. While some people may have just taken a few days off to let their bodies repair I didn’t … you see, I get worried.
I’m worried about losing momentum and worried about changing something that’s working … so I took it easy but still kept moving. Fortunately mother nature helped me out a bit as well and threw some snow at us so I was able to get an hour and a half or so of throwing frozen water around for good measure.
Anyhow, lets take a lookie to see how I did this week.
Previous Weight — 286.4 lbs (on 01.06.2012)
Current Weight — 283.2 lbs
Change In Weight — -3.2 lbs
Not bad for week two of being back on my A game if I do say so myself. I wasn’t expecting much this week and am glad that I was able to lose something.
So what did I do this week in terms of workouts to lose the weight?
- Sunday — 30 minutes Stationary Bike, 20 minutes Elliptical
- Monday — 45 minutes Weight Lifting
- Tuesday — 30 minutes Elliptical, 10 minutes Stationary Bike
- Wednesday — Off Day
- Thursday — 25 minutes Stationary Bike, 25 minutes Walking @ Incline, 2 x 30 minutes Shoveling
- Friday — 25 minutes Circuit Training, 30 minutes Shoveling
A total of 290 minutes or 4 hours 50 minutes of workouts for 3,996 calories burned over 6 days. This weekend I’m planning some trainer riding, I need to get some saddle time in to knock out that goal. It’d be good to get a few solid hours in per day, to burn some calories, and drop some serious numbers.
Happy riding! (or shoveling)
How’d your workouts go this week?
I know it’s a new year and you may want to read a ton of new posts from yours truly but I wanted to take a minute to look back at some of my original posts on this blog. I’m not talking about posts I wrote last year or even the year before. Not all of you may know this but I started blogging about health and fitness back in 2000 when I started losing weight. Don’t believe me? Scroll to the bottom of this page, way down, and check out the Archives drop down, seriously … I’ll wait.
<taps foot waiting>
You’re back, crazy ahe … and that doesn’t count the old posts from over at my other blog (hasn’t been updated in years). Anyhow, I was looking around my archives and found some interesting things that I’d written. Here’s an interesting quote from a post entitled Dr’s, Obesity, and Dreams that I wrote in February of 2000:
… How many people do you know that have had strokes? Heart attacks? Have diabetes? Can’t walk up a flight of stairs without resting? Hell I am/was one of those people. But I made the decision to make a change in my life. I decided to transform, hell to transcend from my old dead, overweight, ugly body to a new me. To a trimmer, fit, and healthy Sean. If I can do it, anyone can, regardless of what a “Dr” says. If you want, slap a “d” and an “r” in front of my name and listen to me. I will tell you to “listen to your heart”, “set goals”, and “realize your dreams”. don’t be a typical American, but instead, raise the bar and dream a new you. When you decide to do this, something miraculous will happen. Your confidence will shoot up, your entire life will come into focus, and you will be happy. Let this happiness propel and guide you to achieving your dream. …
Those are compelling words even today when doctors are prescribing more and more drugs to augment our lifestyles. Instead of giving their patients the tough love they likely need they’re selling them on quick fixes or lying and telling them they can’t lose weight.
Rather than treat it with surgery, pills, or insulin shots why not change your lifestyle and get back in the game? It’s not going to be as easy as it is eating that double stuffed pizza or burger and fries but you’ll feel younger and thank yourself later when you make it to your kids graduation, your retirement, or maybe even your 90th birthday.
Here’s an example of a random vent I went on about huge gyms, or as I called them Fitness Megaplexes from back in April of 2000:
… What does this have to do with a fitness megaplex. I never claimed to think in straight paths, I’m a programmer not an author … hehhe … give me a sec here. So does anyone get fit in these megaplex’s? Well they are hoping you don’t. If you did you might not come back. They want you to come in during that migratory cycle and then leave after a few months. All the while, during the rest of the year you still pay the dues each month for that “life time” membership you signed up for. Keeps the place empty, keeps them in jobs, and keeps a nice flow of cash on the books. So what do I suggest to solve this dilemma? Well first you have to dig deep into yourself and ask a few personal questions. Think about where you want to be in a few year … what shape is your body in? What about success in your job? Your family? These are dreams and desires … we all have them. Now you just need the energy to reach those dreams. What better way then through fitness? Not the wait in line kind of fitness, I am talking about the fitness that has a personal touch. The fitness that makes you smile, makes you grow mentally as well as physically. The kind of fitness that gives you the energy from morning to night. …
What’s interesting to me about this post is that around 2005 I joined one of those megaplex gyms and actually quite enjoyed it. What I enjoyed most was the variety of equipment & classes and the 24 hour access and wish we had an affordable option like that near our house today.
Why am I sharing this change in viewpoint with you? Well first to show how even I get things wrong and am far from perfect. While I made a lot of good points in that post I’m far from being an expert. I’m just like you, I have my ups and downs and I construct my opinion the same way as everyone else and it’s not always correct.
I don’t pretent to know you or your body, what I try to do is share what does and doesn’t work for me … “for me” being the point of that statement. Please take time to learn what works for you, by all means start with what I’m sharing but don’t give up if it doesn’t work. If you love that huge gym then join it, just because I didn’t doesn’t mean anything because I changed my viewpoint. If you find something that is healthy and works for you then by all means ignore me (and all other media) and just do it.
The key is to get healthy and fit and not to keep up with the fitness joneses.
And in closing here’s a quote from one of my favorite old vents from June of 2000:
So why is this article entitled “Obesity vs Corporate America”? Well looking back at that insulin question I asked above. How much do you think Eli Lilly made from insulin last year? In case you didn’t know insulin is used to balance out the blood sugar of diabetics. Where is the largest population of diabetics, yep you guessed it, overweight and obese individuals. So how much did they make off of insulin sales last year? $1.5 billion dollars … and there are around 50 companies that produce insulin products. This is only a small view of how corporate america profits from an obese society.
In that posting I quoted Eli Lilly as having sold $1.5 billion dollars in insulin (not including related insulin products) in 1999, the market at the time was $3.85 billion dollars. In 2010 worldwide sales of insulin products have quadrupled to 15.4 billion dollars, and the largest maker, Novo Nordisk, sold $7.1 billion of insulin. (cited from Forbes)
Does that sound like a decade of healthy change for America? Should we really be looking out for our own health and fitness or continue to put our faith in corporate america and shareholder value? I think I know the answer, what about you?
But that’s just my opinion, for what its worth …
In my New Years resolutions I set a goal of bicycling 6,000 miles in 2012. You might be wondering how the heck I’m planning on doing that and why?
I’ve always loved riding my bike, in fact it was one of the first pieces of fitness equipment I bought back in the summer of 2000 when I started this journey. It’s one of the easiest things you can do when you’re first trying to lose weight. Even if you’re heavy like I was (450 pounds) or maybe only a bit overweight, you can find a bike to meet your needs. You can’t say the same thing about running at 450 pounds. Yes, sure you can go for a walk around the block to lose some weight but there’s nothing like that feeling you have on your bike with the wind in your face and the road beneath your tires, your body the engine to adventure.
Once you’ve found a bike it’s a great way to lose weight because whether it’s 4 hour ride with your local bike club or a 10 minute ride to the coffee shop you can find a way to fit some riding in. If you really try, you can find a way to replace some of your driving with a bike ride. It’s an exercise that helps your mind & body and is great for the environment as well.
Not only has cycling been a huge part of me losing weight but it was always a huge goal of mine to get a great road bike. Well, two years ago I was finally able to fulfill that goal and purchase my first ever road bike. That bike helped me lose even more weight and stay motivated throughout the summer, fall, and winter months that followed. I was able to throw it on my trainer in the basement even on the coldest days … sorry for the bad picture, it’s not the best lighting in the basement.
I just throw on the news, watch a movie, or zone out to some music on my trainer and crank out some miles and calories. That’s one of the ways I’m planning on hitting that 6,000 mile goal by the end of the year. I figure all I need to do is crank out 120 miles per week and I’m golden. I can easily drop 20 miles in an hour on the trainer in one sitting … so that’s just 312 daily 1 hour sessions, easy peasy right?
In all honesty that can’t be the only way I hit this goal, I don’t know that I can get that many basement rides in without going a little crazy. There’s also going to be some long weekend rides with the club and solo rides as well. I really enjoy getting up early in the morning and doing 2 – 3 hours on my bike, it’s very therapeutic.
So is that going to be enough, just a bunch of weekend rides and some trainer rides? No, not by a long shot … the whole point of setting a goal like this is to make it something that isn’t easy to attain. If it were easy then everyone would do it and it wouldn’t be as rewarding. I fully expect this to be a goal that pushes me further on a bike that I ever have gone before. It’s going to force a diligence and dedication on the bike that I’ve never attained in the past.
So essentially I’m planning a combination of:
- Weekend rides with and without my club — 50 mile average
- Rides in my basement on my trainer — 20 mile average per hour
- Rides at the gym on the spin bike — 10 mile average for 30 minutes
- Training rides for a triathlon (yet to be chosen) — unknown average but could be big
- Random rides in the evening and on weekends with my daughter around the neighborhood and at random races — unknown average
I know it doesn’t look like much but you’d be amazed how a lot small things can add up to something huge.
It’s going to be an awesome ride!
I know it’s only been 6 days into the first week of the new year but it’s been quite a while since my last official weigh in, over 4 months to be exact. Friday’s my normal weigh-in day and that’s today so lets get to it.
I mentioned my new weight on my 2011 retrospective and while it wasn’t an official weigh-in I will count it, honest is honest 
Last Blogged Weight — 260.0 lbs (on 08/26/2011)
Previous Weight — 294.0 lbs (on New Years morning 01/01/2012, +34.0 lbs)
Current Weight — 286.4 lbs
Change In Weight — -7.4 lbs
I’m certainly not happy with the huge gain from last year but reality is reality and I got extremely lazy after my HIM. Sometimes reality is that splash of cold water, or in this case the punch to the gut that I needed to get going again. I have so much to live for and a backslide into a heavier and unhappier me is not what I want.
I’ve started this year off on the right foot with my loss and plan to continue on this path until I reach and maintain a healthy realistic goal weight. I feel like I can reach that this year, I don’t know why but I feel it … maybe the 3rd times the charm.
How have you been fairing with your healthy goals this year?
