Sunday, November 22, 2008

Well another couple of weeks have passed.  I have continued on my regimen of working out and eating my mixture of yogurt and protein powder for breakfast and dinner.  I have dropped the morning workouts for the past 9 days, but continue to do a pretty intense evening workout mixed with both weights and cardio.  Since my last post, I have lost another 3.4 pounds.  I started this endeavor when I got on my scale and clocked in at an even 220.0 pounds.  As of this morning, I am an even 198.0 pounds, which is interesting because every time I weigh myself, it's never an even number.  Anyway, my total weight loss is now 22 pounds.  I think I've done this in about 6 weeks.  I still have 11 pounds to go, but I think I'm in control to achieve it.  It's too bad the holidays are right here, since they are such a time of temptation.  

So that's the diet.  A few other small things of note:

1.  I scraped my car last weekend when pulling out of my carport.  I'm sure it'll be a very expensive error.  =(  

2.  I bought my ticket to SLC for Christmas.  I arrive the same night as Brian, which is December 21.  I'm looking forward to being in Utah for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  

3.  I can't wait for my vacation which starts Monday, December 8 and goes through January 5.  It will be great to once again take a good amount of time off of work.  I've been growing weary of this job as of late so it'll be a good time to recharge.  

Week of Good News

For me, the week brought three big successes:

1.  We elected Barak Obama for President.  I believe I'm the only Democrat voter in the immediate family.  I really hope in the first two years, you all will see that a strong choice was made, but enough about politics.  That's a slippery slope!

2.  At my Firm, the Audit Department made some strategic realignments with how we've structured teams.  I will be on a team with two other managers, and we will manage 4 seniors, 4 experienced staff, and 2 new hires.  This is effective for all jobs that haven't started.  This is a great shift of approach for us, as it will make managers more accountable to a specific smaller group of people, and those people will have more specific responsibility to a much smaller pool of managers.  We're hopeful this will really help a better and more productive year. 

3.  I have lost 4.1 pounds this week.  The great thing about the loss for me is that I had two bad eating nights this week, where I had pizza, and when I have pizza, I eat the whole thing.  The good news is that outside of those two dinners, I was pretty good about what I ate and the two-a-days at the gym did ensue.  As of today, I am 14.4 pounds away from my goal.  In case you need some help with the math, I have a total weight loss goal of 33 pounds.  This is to get back to the weight I was when I went on my cruise back in March 2007.  The really cool thing also, is that based on the goal and how much is left, I'm more than halfway there.  I can't wait to get back into all of those jeans that I haven't worn for over 18 months!   

On a side note, the past couple of mornings after my stair stepping, I have been noticing that I can see the steam coming up off my body if I lay still on the stretching mats and pay attention.  It's not cold in the gym, so that to me says "Trevor you've done a good job to produce that kind of heat".  

So far this weekend has been pretty low key, but that's exactly what I wanted.  Friday night I came home after the gym, ate my protein powder and yogurt and at about 8:30 fell asleep from exhaustion.  Yesterday, I did the gym twice and saw the movie, "Zack and Miri".  I wouldn't recommend this movie to you as it's pretty risque, but it did have some very funny parts.  I saw the movie alone, and while I've seen other movies alone before, to me, it's really cool to see just how many other people see movies alone.  =)  Today, I plan on getting a haircut, going shopping at the grocery store, Target and Costco for various things and then maybe seeing if the recession has produced any "must have" bargains that I need to buy.  

I'm a Loser (a weight loser that is)

With the exception of Sundays, since my gym closes early at 1:00 p.m. and two other days where I only went once, I have been doing these two-a-days at the gym for three weeks now. I am not sure what finally kicked me in the pants to start going but getting on the scale and seeing a new heaviest weight for me did not help. As of this morning when I weighed myself, I have lost 13.6 pounds since starting this little love affair with the gym. Here is my routine (1) wake up at 5:10 a.m. and go to the gym and do 40 minutes on the stair stepper -- always trying to exceed the number of calories in each 40 minutes from the previous morning (2) go home drink ice water and eat plain yogurt mixed with EAS protein powder (3) go to the gym in the evening around 5:00 p.m. and do a full weight workout regimen and then another 40 minutes on the stair stepper, again trying to exceed the previous night's calories in the 40 minute timeframe. If you workout in the morning and evening you know that you are able to exert more energy in the evening than the morning. I initially was only doing about 425-450 calories in 40 minutes but yesterday, I did about 610 calories in the morning and 697 calories in the evening, on top of whatever the weights burn off. So far I'm pleased with the progress and hope to return home for Thanksgiving in pretty good shape. I will keep doing two-a=days until I've reached my goal weight, which is what I weighed at the cruise I went on in March 2007.

Two-a-days

In an effort to kick start losing the 25-30 extra pounds I've been carrying for about a year now, I began two-a-days at the gym last week. I actually successfully did two-a-days every day last week, except for Sunday, where I did work out one time. I'm doing 40 minutes of stair stepping two times a day and then weights in the evening before the stair stepping. I have also not had any pizza, hamburgers or tacos all week, so it was a pretty good week for dieting. The saddening part was that I didn't lose an ounce. This guy at work that is pretty big into nutrition told me not to get frustrated because I've been sedentary so long that my body is in conversion, where it's storing a lot more water and then there is some transition from fat to muscle so in the initial few weeks, weight loss might not be very much. I've continued the practice into this week so far. I'll keep you guys up to date on any progress.

Also, I talked to Mom & Steph on Skype this weekend and then Brian & Becky as well. If you haven't downloaded Skype yet, you should. It's really fun to talk and see each other's faces rather than just the traditional looking at the wall while you talk on the phone. Also, it's the only free way to talk to Brian & Becky. Go get Skype and give them a ring this weekend. They miss the family and want to talk to all of you.

Weekend in Review

The weekend, as many weekends, was less than spectacular, but much needed.  This particular busy season of employee benefit plan audits, while not the worst, has been pretty challenging.  The business of these audits is high volume and low dollar, much like a personal tax return.  There are a lot of components to manage and stay on top of, so needless to say, weekends, when I don't work, are a think to look forward too.  

This particular weekend I have decided to finally once again re-engage in working out and worked out both Saturday and Sunday.  I'd say the highlight of this weekend was today.  My best friend, Chad (see picture) and I went to Williams Sonoma this morning for a baking class.  The class was supposed to demystify the secrets of baking great cookies.  Well, Williams Sonoma is a great store with lots of cool thngs to buy, but this morning, the person in charge of the presentation was not well prepared, and in my opinion, really just gave us lessons in how to ice a sugar cookie.  She had pre-made the dough that she rolled out and didn't tell us any of the products that were actually sold at the store.  At the end of the presentation, she asked if there were any questions, and so I asked, "So how do we make the cookie dough?"  She told us to follow the recipe!  Can you believe that?  Wow!  Anyway =)

After the cooking class, Chad and I went up to Palo Alto to go to the Stanford Shopping Center and we ate lunch at P.F. Changs up there.  There were so many really cool things to buy, but I withheld for two reasons (1) I need to save and (2) I want to lose weight before buying anything new.  By the way, WE NEED TO RESTART THE BIGGEST LOSER CHALLENGE!!  The rest of the day was nothing of interest, T.V., reading your blogs, watching some stuff I had recorded and making my dinner (Chicken Florentine that I baked in the oven---yay for me--and coleslaw)

I hope all is well with each of you and thanks for the comments on my blogs so far.  I'll start adding comments

2008 Cadillac CTS

October 11, 2008

With the passing of this week, I have seen a bad situation spiral into chaos.  The market is down more than 30% since December 31, 2007 and trillions of dollars in wealth are lost.  Millions of Americans are left wondering how they are going to be able to afford retirement.  As I sit here and examine my personal situation, I wonder why I have kept saving into a falling market.  While I have all hope and expectation of living a long healthy life, there is a part of me that cringes knowing how much of my own savings is gone and how long it will take to rebuild.  I struggle every paycheck to save as much as possible, and I am left demoralized knowing that the market has lost almost double what I have put into it this year.  On top of that, I am in a condo that has lost more than 12% of the value I paid for it.  While I have a traditional 30-year mortgage, it will be 2012 before I have paid down the mortgage to where the principal and current market value are equal.  I also had purchased a new car about 2 months before these large market losses have happened.  I had been paying down my last car extra fast with the hopes of having it paid off by May of 2009, but got too eager to buy something new.  The problem with this is that there is no hope of a big increase in discretionary dollars because there is (1) no market appreciation currently in either stocks or housing (2) there is no debt that is going away anytime soon and (3) my work has announced that raises and bonuses will not be impressive.  

I didn't start this blog with the intention of being filled with negativity; however, the thoughts of finances have weighed heavily on me this weekend.  I have decided to make a very conscious effort to focus future savings into cash to build an 8-month cash savings for a rainy day.  I never really saw the need for this, but seeing how the market has changed so drastically, I can't be help but being a little pessimistic that tough times, even for my company, could be in the future, and I want to be prepared in the event of a layoff.  It's a little scary to think what 2009 will bring for all of us economically.  The words, "Get your house in order" come to mind, and this will be my personal mantra for 2009.  

Aside from the finances above, I also have enjoyed looking at each of my family members blogs, and finally felt motivated to start my own.  Very few of the family members get to see or read much about my life and it seems that for one reason or another, it's not really discussed.  I am hopeful this will help shed some light into the life of W. Trevor Gillespie.  

So there it is.  My first blog....literally a collage of random thoughts and feelings, but then again, this is me.