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.