If your automated recording starts with “Wait, don’t hang up!”… I’m probably going to.
The New Diet & Exercise Plan — Day #1 Report
Starting Weight: 225.8 lbs
Caloric Intake Required to Maintain This Weight: ~3058 calories
Actual Calories Consumed Today: ~1953 (my max. ceiling was between 2000 & 2200)
Amount of Exercise Performed Today: 30 min / elliptical to burn 431 calories
Net Required Calories: -1536 calories (1 lb = 3500 calories)
Day #1 is a success!!!
So needless to say, I’m very proud of myself today because I really didn’t think I’d be able to do it, but somehow I did – not only did I get up and exercise first thing in the morning before work, but I also stuck to a strict (at least for me!) diet all day long, counting the calories and turning down some very good looking donuts at the office! I know this probably doesn’t sound like much, but anyone who’s ever started a new plan knows that it really is a big deal. This is my first step towards finally losing this extra weight and returning to a level of health that I haven’t seen since I worked at the warehouse…
A couple things to note:
- As much as the exercise itself sucked, I couldn’t believe just how much more awake I felt at work this morning, despite only having gotten a few hours of sleep. I used to exercise every now and then before work earlier this year, but I never felt this good before. Kinda weird, but definitely a good thing!
- I was very happy to learn that ultimately, my diet isn’t going to kill me and I don’t have to entirely give up any of my favorite foods. Portions have never really gotten along with me because I love to snack and it isn’t hard for me to go through half a bag of chips in a single night … hence how I got so overweight, I suppose! But now I see that more or less, as long as I can keep my calories where they need to be, there’s really no reason why I can’t have a few sweets here and there and still lose the weight. Mind you, I’ve still got some tweaking to do because my sodium was absolutely ridiculous and that’s the one thing I really need to watch with my blood pressure, but in my defense, this is only day one and it’s really the first time that I’ve ever figured out just exactly how much of anything I’m taking in.
- And along the lines of not giving up my faves, while there truly are no substitutes for Oreos and fudge and those giant peanut butter cups from Disney World, I am making it my goal now to come up with some other alternate menus of things that I’d like to enjoy more often, but really shouldn’t at real world caloric values. First up is pizza because I’ve yet to see a single slice of delivery or frozen that’s under 300 calories and most are a lot more – this is a problem because there’s no way that I can stop at just one slice, so I need to see what I can do to clean that up a bit, at least as far as the homemade variety is concerned.
It’s going to be a long and arduous road, that I’m sure, but after years upon years of either doing things half-assed or simply putting them off altogether, at least now I’m finally taking a stand! I’m absolutely starving, but at least I’m taking a stand… 🙂
Another week that I forgot to update…
Oops.
So any idea where I left off???
Diet and Exercise (or a complete lack thereof)
I don’t think I’ve exercised at all in the last week, and I haven’t exactly been eating very well either because according to my latest trip to the scale, I weighed in at nearly fifteen pounds more than what my best weights were over the last year. 🙁 So it’s really time to step it into gear – no more excuses. I’ve been watching Sara eat her Weight Watchers religiously over the past couple of weeks now and even with a bit of slacking exercise-wise, she’s lost something like 7 pounds already, so I just need to take a hint of motivation from her and get moving. Starting tomorrow I’m going to begin a new routine – as much as I hate it, I’m going to actually get up and exercise first thing in the morning – even if only for half an hour. I need to start giving myself more time to get to work anyways so that I can stop being late and I figured I might as well get the exercise out of the way first thing as well. A long while back I was actually getting up an hour early and putting in some time on the eliptical, so hopefully it won’t be too bad. With any luck, an extra hour will knock out my exercise for the day first thing in the morning, give me enough time to actually sit down for breakfast, and get out the door without feeling quite as rushed! I’ll let you know what actually happens…Creativity
This one is still sorely lacking as well, but I really need to get off my kiester and get moving because recently I found a whole new slew of freelance postings that I could be cashing in on (literally) if only I was a little better organized. Between cleaning and getting some things ready for my new “diet” tomorrow, I didn’t really get the time that I had wanted in writing this evening but with any luck it’ll be a different story tomorrow night.Happenings / This Weekend
Another lazy couple of days, which might just explain why the first two items above are as slacking as they seem! Much sleeping and cleaning and fighting about cleaning was had, and Sara and I definitely took some much-needed relaxing moments amongst the mix, too. Yesterday I pretty much slept while Sara was at work, then tore apart the bedroom in a cleaning frenzy for most of the afternoon. Sunday brought us to the theater down the street to see Invincible, which was actually pretty good for a football movie, except that parts of the sound kept cutting out throughout the entire thing. We ended up getting two free passes to go back and watch something else on the house because of it, so I suppose all in all two for the price of one wasn’t too bad!Happenings / Next Weekend
Saturday we’ll be over in Orlando for An Afternoon with Kevin Smith, which I’m horrendously looking forward to! They say that the Q&A will be a minimum of 4 hours, but the venue will let it continue as long as Kevin wants and his longest so far has been 7 hours. It should be very cool, indeed! Sunday is, well, a special surprise for Sara, so I can’t post anything about it just yet, but I’m betting my money that she’ll have a good time and that’s really all that matters…Last Note: Disney Reservations FINALLY Made!!!
What: Sara and My six month anniversary (as far as dating is concerned)
When: the weekend of October 20th
Where: two nights at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, savannah room (giraffes and everything!); the first night at Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort (because we don’t make enough money to stay three nights at the AKL…just yet)Let the countdown begin! 🙂
Wireless AMBER Alert Initiative
I make it a habit of not publicly blogging about work in fear of being dooced, but this is one of those things that a) couldn’t possibly get me in trouble; and b) really needs to cross the eyeballs of as many people as possible, to the point that even the few folks that read this really do help…
So anyways, the company that I work for recently finished up a big project that allows the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to broadcast AMBER Alerts as text messages to wireless devices. For those who aren’t familiar with the program, the group works with local and state law enforcement agencies to help spread the word about missing and abducted children via various broadcast mediums. Text messaging is the latest method to be added to that array and in a race where every advantage could mean the life of one more child saved, hopefully it’s going to be a very beneficial addition to the program.
It’s a pretty simple program to setup – simply visit the website listed below and enter your wireless phone number. If your provider is participating in the program, you’ll be transferred to another website where you’ll setup the service. Following the on-screen instructions, you can select up to 5 zip codes that you want to monitor – if an alert is issued for any of your selected zip codes, you’ll receive a text message about it. From there you’ll likely get a confirmation text message based on your selections, and that’s it!
https://www.wirelessamberalerts.org
The service is completely free – the carriers involved are eating the costs of all text messages sent via the program, so there’s really no reason not to take a moment to register your own phone, not to mention tell all of your friends and neighbors to go do the same. Kind of like insurance or 9-1-1, it’s one of those services that you really hope you’ll never have to use, but it can make all the difference in the world when tragedy strikes. The entire sign-up process took me less than five minutes Friday afternoon – I hope everyone who reads this will do the same.
Ouch. Feet. Hurting.
So Sara and I decided to do something a little different last night and went for “a little walk” instead of our usual exercise routines. It was meant to be just a leisurely walk through the neighborhood to see some of the areas that we haven’t yet, to be followed by a relaxing dinner & a movie to lead into bedtime. Instead, you might say that I sort of underestimated the distances from A to B … to C and back, and we ended up walking a lot longer than planned.
Just how long, you ask?
We left the house at about 7:45pm.
We returned sometime around 10:30pm.
Yeah…so our feets are very tired today!
Now we’ve both got blisters on our blisters, and I’ve proven without a doubt that my current “new” sandals just have got to go, but it was still some good exercise and a nice chance to spend some time together after a pretty stressful week. Of course, next time we bring a pedometer so we’ll know exactly how far we’ve traveled (we’re guessing about 5-6 miles for last night), and actual shoes are definitely a must as opposed to sandals, but it was still a good time.
Mind you, the only exercise I stand a chance of getting today is going to have to be down at the pool, but all’s well that ends well!
keep the old…on MySpace
So I got sidetracked while I was putting together the comic tonight and did some wandering around friends pages on MySpace. One hop to another lead to finding a lot more people from high school than I would’ve expected, and it was kind of neat to find that MySpace is actually good for something! Interesting finds, too – some folks are married, and more than I would’ve expected with children; a couple more, including one that I briefly dated, are pregnant; I even found the guy who had a locker next to me Freshmen year that always used to shove me around – and he still looks like a jerk, go figure! A few people fled to the far reaches of the country like myself, while a surprising number now live downstate still in Michigan (most that got married), and of course there’s a few that are still bumming around Gaylord for whatever reason. One girl’s even a stripper, or maybe a model, but judging from the pictures I’m leaning more towards stripper – interesting, indeed…
Also, a good portion of the ones still living in Gaylord had lots of drunk pictures on their profiles – not sure if there’s some sort of corolation there or what.
Anyways, now I don’t actually have a MySpace page of my own – I pretty much just use the L7 one that Lori setup and check out people’s pictures through that, but I’m actually thinking about creating one now because like it or not, it actually seems to be a fairly good way to keep track of the people I went to high school with and a select few from beyond the classroom. Of course, then on the other hand is my dilema of not having any time to keep up with most of these people anyways, but maybe that really doesn’t matter. It’s not like many of us are going to become the best of friends again, but it is nice to be able to check back with people from time to time to see how they’re doing – I did spend some thirteen years of my life around these people, you know! Some of these people I haven’t seen since I graduated seven years ago – one of the people I found was a girl that I met in pre-school … we used to hunt for easter eggs in my house when we were little … and I hardly recognized her!
So maybe, just maybe, you might see me breakdown and actually setup one of these here MySpace accounts because I guess it would be easier to keep my friends separate from all of the friends of the comic, not that those people aren’t my friends, too! Kind of like friending a band, and then also your buddies in the band – yeah, that’s the ticket! One question for you MySpace regulars, though – can it be setup to e-mail me notifications on friends requests and messages and whatnot? Because even though I may initially set an account up, I probably won’t remember to check it often and would be better off just getting told when something changes.
Hook a brother up with some knowledge and maybe I’ll waste a few hours this weekend getting into MySpace! Lord knows I’ve already got dozens of people from high school just waiting to not really want to talk to me when I get there – it’s just like Dungeons and Dragons club all over again… 😛
the weekend blog…
Lazy Sunday (+Friday & Saturday)
Ok, so we pretty much did absolutely nothing this weekend, which neither of us really feel all that bad about because it was ever so long overdue. It feels like we’ve just been going nonstop all summer with either flying here or there on vacation, or even just running around frantically on the weekends … as short as they are … so it was really, really nice to just be able to lay around the house doing as we pleased. I don’t think I took my shower until about 6pm yesterday and didn’t take one at all today (hey, the pool counts, right?!), and pretty much the whole duration was spent laying around in our pajamas, or at least the Floridian equivalent as such. Sara spent what seemed like a good ten hours each day playing A Link to the Past on the SNES, I had some time to breathe and work on other little thing here and there, and at this point I’m only jealous that she gets tomorrow off, too, and I don’t!
Flora and More Flora
One of the things I focused on today was getting my plants back to health because I’ve pretty much ignored them since we got back from New York (over a month ago???). Some of them are positioned in a manner out on the balcony where they can get some rain during the daily thunderstorms right now, but a lot of them still didn’t and I did an awful lot of dead or dying leaf removal along the way. The majority of them, mind you, will be ok – I just need to start watering them more regularly again and get some plant food in them – but there are a couple that are being propped up by yardsticks right now and in not too good of shape. Ultimately there was only one that didn’t make it, and I guess that’s just a lesson that I need to spend just a little bit more time on them in the future. You wouldn’t think that twenty minutes here or there would be too hard to handle, but…
Funny Stuff
I’m inserting these now just in case Firefox crashes before my next post and I lose the links – funny stuff I found a la digg:
“I’ve Never Actually Read the Book Before…” Amazon.com Product Reviews
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A23664PX3VILKS/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-5626492-0754242?%5Fencoding=UTF8
Lady Calls 911 Over Incorrect Burger King Order
http://stupid-people-videos.blogspot.com/2006/09/lady-calls-911-over-wrong-burger-king.html
An Amazing New Offer from Taco Town
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEF-3PiQdq0
MOSI Plans
I still don’t know what’s going on here… We had originally planned on going this weekend to see BODIES because the exhibit is leaving on Tuesday, but it just really interferred with our plans of doing absolutely nothing this weekend and we didn’t end up going. And mind you, this is all on me because I decided that I wanted to go later instead so that we wouldn’t feel rushed, but even now the agreement is to go after I get out of work tomorrow night and I’m not really sure if I even care anymore. I still think it would be neat and when’s the next time I’ll get an opportunity to see the human body in such a raw form (no pun intended, and it’s really kind of gross, anyways…)? Sara’s already seen it, so it’s completely up to me – part of me keeps saying that I need to just bite the bullet and go because I’ll regret it later if we don’t, but we’ll see. Tomorrow’s going to be such a ridiculously lax day at work anyways that maybe I’ll be more up for an outing after work than normal – let’s hope that’s the case!
Next Update: exercise progress (or lack thereof), Disney reservations, and Scott’s latest rant about life in suburbia
my stomach is still intact!
So Busch Gardens yesterday was actually pretty fun, which surprised me because I’m just about as much of a “not a rollercoaster” person as one can get and that’s pretty much all we did while we were there. The storms on and off only gave us a couple of hours in the park while coasters were running and that’s what Sara’s cousin wanted to do, so that’s what we did. I’m actually pretty proud of myself because I ended up going on pretty much every single one that Sara went on – including Sheikra, which as a side note, is absolutely fucking insane. The view was pretty for about fifteen seconds until they let us drop, and out-of-towners should note that this is their new trademark coaster that pretty much drops you straight down while you’re facing straight down, so as far as I’m concerned, it was a miracle that I was able to contain my lunch for that one…
Wow.
But they did have some cool ones – I really liked the Python, although it could’ve stood to be about four or five times longer; whatever water ride we went on would’ve been great, had we actually planned on getting wet. The only one that I really didn’t care for at all was the wooden coaster (don’t remember its name) because the bumps were just too much for me. And here I was, just starting to get the hang of the speeds and dips and whatnot, and then they’ve got to go and take me back to the dirt roads of Northern Michigan to boot! I probably wouldn’t do that one again, but pretty much anything else is fair game … even the insane one that is Sheikra, assuming that my co-riders understand the concept of “you owe me one,” that is!
All in all, it was a fun way to spend a few hours and I look forward to going back in a few months when it’s a little cooler so that Sara and I can check out the animals and shows and all of that. Granted, I could certainly do without the smells of cigarette smoke and beer – the beer is usually fine by itself to me, but when people don’t heed to the signs and just smoke wherever they want, the two mixing together is gross. We also didn’t end up seeing The Hippo Lady and by God, we certainly did look! Maybe next time… Of course, ultimately I’m going to be a little rougher than normal because I’m spoiled by being a Disney kid through and through, but at the same time I can see how this could be a nice alternative if we don’t feel like driving over to Orlando or have guests in town who are looking for a little more than what Space Mountain can offer.
I’ll go back, so it couldn’t have been too bad!
two can play at this photo posty-ing game…
Is it the wind or does Lori just really need to buy a brush??? You decide!
(Here’s the entry that started “it all” – http://autumn-robots.livejournal.com/86023.html)
a pirate looks at twenty-six…
So I haven’t really had much time to write for a while – we’ve pretty much just been going non-stop since we got back from Michigan, but at least things are calming down a little now. In fact, I’m actually supposed to be making breakfast right now, but I’m “waiting for the pan to warm up” while I write this… 😛