If significant weight loss stories are your interest, this guy also weighed 400 pounds, and only 3 months into his weight loss journey ran a bloody marathon over the course of 9 hours.  That’s… astounding.  There’s no way I could do that.

[making post public to spread the word]

The treadmill’s set up at home, but I haven’t gotten over the flu enough to give it a go yet.  Soon.  Hopefully tomorrow morning.

Of the four weeks I missed, two were genuine schedule conflicts, and two were me knowing I’d gained and not wanting it to be officially confirmed. This is not a good mindset if you’re going to lose weight.

I should add that my schedule has made it increasingly difficult to go to the gym on a regular basis as well. If I were willing to never car pool, I might make it there a couple of days a week, but at my peak I was going 5 days a week, sometimes more. That’s not attainable, though — not through the gym. So I spent some time thinking about my usage pattern at the gym and decided that since I’m almost 100% on the treadmill these days, if I found a treadmill I liked for home it would solve my problem.

I could get up in the morning, go downstairs and walk for 45-60 minutes, watch the TV while I’m doing it, come up and shower, then go to work. No dealing with crowded locker rooms full of inconsiderate right-wing suburbanites. No dealing with weird showers that have oddly creepy holes cut in them all the time. This can work.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m canceling the health club membership, and I bought a nice fold-up treadmill.  It should be delivered this Sunday, at which point begins the daily workout regimen. And we’ll start seeing the results soon.

Oh, and to end the suspense, I lost almost 7 pounds over those 5 weeks.  That’ll teach me to be pessimistic.

I didn’t do much in the way of workouts over the Christmas holiday, and much as I intended to while I was in San Francisco, I instead ended up falling into my typical pattern when on business travel at a conference — spending my downtime in the hotel and generally not eating healthy.

Last night at the gym I stepped on the scale, afraid of what I’d see. It wasn’t bad — maybe two pounds since my last weighing. I’m hitting the gym after pool league tonight and then in the morning on the way to work. I may be able to get this into a loss.

But if I don’t, well, now you know why.

Going to the gym was pretty much impossible last week, since we only had one car. Combine that with how sore I’ve been, and spending 45-60 minutes on a treadmill was not an appealing thought.

However, last Saturday, we got our new car so I can start hitting the gym on my regular schedule. I went on Monday night, and did 30 mins at 3 – 3.5 mph. I didn’t go much longer, since I still have a significant amount of leg pain in my right leg. Tuesday night I was going to go after pool, but had some work to do before the morning, so I just went home and did that. This morning I went for 60 minutes, 45 at 3 mph and 15 at 2. I want to stretch things out, but I’m my shin is too bruised for me to use the stretching equipment. I’ll get back into the swing of things before too long.

I did get my new Weight Watchers materials today. They’ve changed the program again — I’m not sure what’s up with all the tweaks. Now, instead of a simple weight/points chart, it’s a series of factors. You start with your gender (2 points for women, 8 points for men, 12 points for nursing mothers — I’m not sure why women get the short shrift there). The next factor is your age, I fall in the 3 point group — I don’t remember the exact groups. Next up, the first two digits of your weight, in my case 33. That puts me at 44 which is the maximum points allowed, so I stopped reading, but you can earn more points per day if your daily life involves more work than just sitting down all day. Previously, I had 34 points per day allowed, with a 35 point weekly overage. I’d pretend that 35 didn’t exist, and I’m going to continue to do that, since there’s no way I want to be consuming 44 points per day — that’s a lot.

So, I’ll keep on doing what I’m doing, since it seems to be working.

Onwards!

Speaking of the accident, it’s official. The car’s a write-off. I’m going car shopping tonight after work. We’ll see what I get.

Why am I happy?

Let’s look at the many reasons:

1. For the first time since 1996, we’ve had a national election result in the US that didn’t make me want to cry.
2. The next two years will not be two years of unchecked power from the White House.
3. I lost 3.6 pounds since my last weigh-in.

Hooray!