Two weeks down, Too many to go!

Ok, today is day 14 of my 90 day challenge. I had a fun surprise for me this morning.  I did not do laundry over the weekend, so most all of my workout clothes were dirty.  Looked through my drawer o' clothes and found a shirt that I tried to wear on day 1 which did not fit.  Figured, what the heck.  Throw it on and see if maybe it fits better.  What do you know, it fit much better and I could actually wear it out in public and not feel like a fat slob!

Got on the scale this morning and found out I have lost 12 lbs in 14 days, which is awesome in my book.  The slightly depressing part is it is only 1 lb in 6 days, but it is a loss.  But, then again, this weekend I was not exactly tracking my calories and I am sure that I went over, especially yesterday when I binged on some cheese puffs. 

Our upstairs Air Conditioner is out right now and I did not feel like sleeping on the couch so I slept with the windows open and some fans blowing cooler air (about 75°) into the 80°+ room while I slept.  Should mention it was about 90% humidity too...  Needless to say I did not sleep all that soundly, and when my alarm went off at 0600 to get my sorry ass out of bed, I did NOT want to!  

But - I had to.  Why?  Because of the fact that if I do not get up on Monday-Friday, chances are I will not make my 5 days of working out in for the week.  Yeah, I could've slept in, but I would have only gotten about another 30 minutes at most because I had an appointment with my personal trainer before work too.  The toughest part of working out is just getting into the gym.  I almost say getting to the gym, but in the past I have gotten to the gym, looked at the doors, then decided to drive home. 

So, while at the gym I weighed in. Why not do it at home?  Simple: the scale at home cannot weigh me.  That is one of the reasons I am working out, so I can weigh myself at home.  Did an easy 3.5 MPH walk on the treadmill at 0 incline for 30 minutes.  I took it easy, my right quadriceps are a bit sore from moving some oak furniture up the stairs Saturday and I did not stretch afterwards.  Since I was meeting my personal trainer afterwards, I did not want my quad to be killing me even more.  Did stretching before and after my cardio to loosen up my legs.  Headed to find my personal trainer and while waiting stretched some more.  

Olo always knows how to push me just to the line, but not so much that I cannot complete the workout.  We did barbells today.  All but 1 of the exercises was done while standing up, and Olo makes me do a shallow squat instead of just standing to increase the burn.  Not great for the quads, but  a great workout none the less.  After my workout, came home and went upstairs....to my 80°+ wonderland to shower.  Not the best thing to come home to, but what are ya gonna do.  Stretched some more, and my right quad is killing me more than before.  

Well, enough whining about my quad.  It feels (mostly) good to have 2+ weeks of working out under my belt.  Still not quite a routine yet, but it gets easier every day.

Many thanks again to Amy for sending me motivational photos.

Update 1

Ok, time for an update. I have been doing the ViSalus shakes pretty constantly, but I had one minor hiccup.

July 6 was my Birthday, and I went a little crazy eating out with friends and such.  That coupled with the fact that my ViSalus shakes did not arrive until the 9th, I am calling the 9th day 1 of my 90 day ViSalus challenge.

Although I gained a few pounds, I did not freak out about it and I did not give up.  Just a little speed bump, but I reset the clock and started from scratch.  That is all we can do when we get derailed a bit.  If we let ourselves get mentally overrun ever time something is not perfect, we will never get anywhere.

So, today I weighed myself and was quite shocked that in only 8 days that I had lost 11 lbs.  This included 2 days on the road, and I went out to eat Friday and Saturday with friends.  I tried to make good choices, but most importantly I made sure to track my calories.

I have gotten some motivation from one of my friends who has had a tough weight loss journey.  She shared this picture about SWEAT with me to help keep me motivated.  That is the toughest thing to do - keep motivated.  Moving forward can be tough at times, but if we do not try to do this, we are only giving up.  No matter how steep the hill, we must keep climbing. 

I have been trying to keep my workouts varied, combinations of treadmill, bicycling (not on a stationary bike), elliptical trainer, hill walking, swimming, stairs, along with circuit training with my personal trainer.  I have not had great access to my trainer, I was out of town last Wednesday, and he was traveling Friday and Monday.  Despite this I have still managed to get some quality workouts in. I need to check with my gym and get into some of the workout classes to break up the monotany.  Granted, I have been watching old episodes of The Big Bang Theory when working out, but it might be nice to work out with some other people and perhaps meet one or two of them.

The first bike ride I took was only about 20 minutes and my pace was around 8 minutes a mile.  My second ride was for 30 minutes and I had trimmed my pace down to only 6 minutes per mile.  The downfall is that my quads are pretty tight from pushing myself so much and I have been working on stretching them, but it is taking a lot to get them lose again.

Well, time to go grab a late lunch (ViSalus shake!) and get some more work done this afternoon.

John is a loser!

Ok, so many of you will completely agree with the title of this blog.

This blog is intended to be a weight loss journal for anyone who cares to read. 

I have been struggling with my weight for most of my life, and for the past 18 months I have been working on my mental health and feel that I am in a spot where I am ready to start making changes.  I have found out a lot about who I am, what I want to be and what I have been through.

Just this week I started working out with my old personal trainer Olo Onuma.  He has kicked my ass around the gym once this week, and tomorrow he will be doing it again.  To think, I pay him to do that!

Olo is also promoting the ViSalus products as nutritional suppliments/meal replacements to augment the workouts.  He gave me some samples of it to try out, and I have to say they are not that bad.  My biggest issue with them is that I feel I am not getting enough calories in with just doing 2 shakes per day plus some small snacks and a real supper.

I am strongly thinking of doing the 90 day Body By Vi challenge to see what it can do for me.  I am not interested in getting involved in selling the ViSalus products, just using them to see how it works.

I am using MyFitnessPal on my tech gadgets to track my calories.  I may not track everything every day, but most days I hope to track it.

Today I swam for 60 minutes at the pool at my gym.  I am not sure how far it was distance wise, but it is somewhere between 1.25 and 1.5 miles.  I did not count laps, just started a timer and checked it every now and again and stopped when it hit 60 minutes.  I was quite sore and cramped up a bit as I had a hard workout with Olo yesterday, but I stretched as needed and pushed through the workout to finish strong.

Check back in from time to time to see how things are progressing. 

As of right now, I am not a loser, but hopefully in a few days I will be a loser!

I will keep a ticker that shows my progress from MyFitnessPal: