GOOOOOOOOOALLLLLL!

Almost 50 weeks and 58lbs later, I finally beat my weight loss goal this morning. At 209.2lbs, I am the same weight that I was in the mid-80s. That equates to 5" off my chest, 3½" off my hips, 2" off my neck and 7½" off my waist.

I've been battling weight issues for most of my life and this is another victory for me. :) But it didn't come without some help. I owe thanks to...

  • Xbox 360 & Kinect for getting me motivated. It put fun into exercise. Seriously.
  • Ubisoft's Your Shape Fitness Evolved game (despite bugs that still aren't fixed... hint hint)
  • LiveStrong.com for helping me track calorie intake. Being more aware of what goes into me was important.
  • My tape measure. When the pounds stopped dropping, seeing the inches continue to come off helped keep me going.
  • My addiction to cycling this past summer. What else can I say? It's fun.
  • My brain for not letting me stray too far. Too many plateaus to mention, but I knew this day would eventually arrive.
  • My T-shirt hording tendency. Nothing motivates you more than seeing a "One day it's gonna fit me!" T-shirt finally fit.
  • Successfully beating nicotine addiction almost 3 years ago. I knew if I could beat that addiction, I could lose weight.
  • My family and friends for the support. Even when they told me to stop because "You don't need to lose anyone." :)

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Part of me would still like to make it to 200lbs, as I had originally planned, so I'm still going to try and continue with my current progress. However, I won't be as concerned about small fluctuations with my weight.

 

Nearing 1 Year

It's been almost 1 year since I began my quest to lose weight and I still haven't reached my goal. I am so close. The last two weeks have been terrible, resulting in a small, yet still manageable gain. I was 215.8 lbs this morning.  My lowest to date was 211.4 lbs in the first week of October. I could have easily reached 210 lbs by cutting my food intake in half for a day or two, but I guess there really wouldn't have been any point to that because I would likely have gained it back in a day.

The indoor cycling, or lack of it, has played a role I'm sure, although to be honest it doesn't appear to help with losing as much as it does with maintaining. It's more difficult to motivate myself to cycle indoors than I thought it would be. It's not only boring, but I'm having to make time for it, unlike when I cycled to and from work. Or maybe I've hit another plateau.

I would love to reach my goal before November, or at least before my first recorded weight on November 14th.

I need to focus. I'm going to do this. Dammit.

New weight goal

On Saturday morning I weighed 215.4 lbs, my new lowest-to-date weight. :)  I expected the usual weekend weight gain but for the most part I managed to keep it off and this morning I weight 215.7 lbs.

Friends and family are still telling me to stop losing, despite my "ideal weight" being in the 200 range. My doc says 190, but that's based on his assistant saying that I'm 6'2" tall. My wife measured me recently and I'm just under 6'3"; the height I have always thought I was.

Anyway, I've decided to set my goal at 210 lbs for the time being. When I reach that weight, I'll reevaluate and decide of I should continue to 210. Or maybe I'll wait for my annual physical exam and see what my doctor says. I'm hoping that when that time comes, he'll let me discontinue my hydrocholorathiazide prescription since I'm fairly certain that my blood pressure has dropped significantly since the weight loss. When I first started taking them 8 or 9 years ago, my then-doctor said it was a lifetime thing, unless I "made some drastic lifestyle changes". I think losing almost 60 lbs is pretty drastic. Anyway, I'll cross that road when the time comes.

Once I reach my goal, going into "maintenance mode" makes me a little nervous. I'm sure most of my routine will remain the same: count calories, weigh myself and workout. But when winter hits, my cycling time will also be reduced. I'm not going to be a crazy cyclist and ride in the snow, so instead of 2 hrs of cycling to and from work most days, it'll be 1 hr per day after work with my bike on the trainer. Maybe it'll balance out if I make a point of cycling every day, unlike during warmer weather when I skip it on rainy days.

Speaking of the bike trainer. I had originally planned on buying one. I did a little research and the one I wanted, the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, was around $400. A couple of weekends ago we helped some friends move into our neighbourhood. While we were unloading his car, my friend picked up a box from the trunk and said something like "Here, a gift for you..." and handed me the box. I was a Schwinn Magnetic Bike Trainer. I wasn't sure if he was serious or joking and didn't know what to say. My wife said "Are you serious?" He said he was. Apparently he had bought it a while ago, but never got around to using it. He heard through the grapvine that I was looking for one, so he gave it to me. :) It's not a fluid trainer that I had planned on getting, but a free mag trainer is perfect. Free is always good. I tried it out one day and I think it'll work fine.

Mr. Baggy Pants

Last night Sandra and I went through our closet — or rather Sandra went through the closet — and picked out stuff that I haven't worn in ages because it was either worn out or too big, or both. There were old jeans, hoodies, and track pants.

A couple of the pairs of jeans were really old. Size 42" waist old. I haven't been that size in 6 or 7 years. I kept them because I would wear track pants underneath them to go snow shoeing.

I decided to try them on for fun and I got Kyle to take a couple of photos.

It's hard to believe that I was once this size. Of course, having my arms in the waist make them appear much larger than they are.

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When I started my recent weight loss, my jeans were a size 38" waist. They still are, but my new jeans fit me differently than the old 38s. Having said that, I may be able to wear a 36" soon.

It's strange how some things work

My recent plateau was frustrating and I had pretty much accepted that I may not get past it. I'm was actually pretty happy with the progress I made and my weight doesn't really bother me now.

This morning I weighed myself and saw that I had pushed past it, despite not being too careful about what I ate this week.

The scale read 221.6 lbs.

This means that I have now lost 45.4 lbs in total, again making it the lowest weight that I can recall in over 30 years.

I'm pretty sure my dental issue that forced me to eat less for a couple of days played a part in it. I've read that sometimes your body needs a bit of a "shock" to get past a plateau. Rather than limiting yourself to a set amount of calories per day, vary it once in a while. Exceed your calorie limit for a day or two, and then eat less than the limit for a day or two so that the average works out to what your limit is. That could very well be what happened.

Either way, I'm pleased with it.

WTF? No progress?

It would appear that I slipped, again, and didn't post an update on my fitness progress last weekend.

It's not intentional. I think I'm just too distracted with other stuff, like cycling mostly.

Maybe there's no point in posting a weekly progress anymore?  My weight loss has more or less come to a halt, despite my continued attempts and workouts. I still monitor my calorie intake, and it's mostly well under what it should be after deducting my workouts. I still weigh myself often and log my weight weekly.

I am extremely happy with my weight right now and plan to at least keep it where I'm at, which is somewhere between 225 and 229 lbs right now.

I'm going to continue to try and reach my goal of 200 lbs, but these final 25-30 lbs don't seem to want to come off without a fight. I have a feeling it's going to be a very slow process.

So, no more weekly updates. If I do happen to make some progress one week, I'll no doubt post something.

As mentioned, cycling is taking up a lot of my time. I cycle to work often. I cycle on the weekends often. I've even managed to get my wife to cycle with me on the weekend. We've been down to the By Ward Market to buy veggies and fruits on two Sundays in a row so far. The pace is slower than I usually ride, but it's still a lot of fun.

I challenged myself on Saturday. After my wife and I rode out to Petrie Island, I still wanted to continue to ride. So, I decided to see if I could make it to Pink Lake in Gatineau Park.

I made it, but not without some difficulty. The difficulty was following the marked trail, which ended up taking me deep into the woods around Pink Lake on unpaved and extremely rough, and weather-worn, paths. I ended up walking about 3 kms because the path was un-ridable on my bike.

Riding down from the lake was a blast. I managed to exceed 55 kph just coasting. Too much fun. :) The total ride was just over 50 kms. If I include the morning ride to Petrie Island, I rode over 80 kms in total on Saturday.

My next goal is to make it Meech Lake. That's about 36 kms, one way.

Speed bumps (again) — Week 32 progress

I was head out for a weekend of camping on Friday, and obviously that meant being gone for the weekend so I couldn't really post an update.

But I did weight myself on Friday morning... and I was up a few pounds. Not sure why. Well... yeh, I guess I do know why. I tend to indulge a little more when I work out more. In part because I'm not hungry, but I also feel like I somehow deserve a little more because of the extra effort put forth. So basically, I lose out on any of the benefits of the extra work out.

So that's that.

The cycling has definitely increased. If the weather is nice, I ride to work and home again. That's anywhere between 37 and 40 kms per day. Awesome.

I didn't get a chance to ride my new bike until Sunday afternoon, after we returned from a (wet) weekend of camping. It's awesome. I love it. I'm still tweaking the handlebar height and seat height. It feels better all the time. My average speed on the new bike has increase 2-3 kph.

Even though I'm off work this week, I rode it to work to drop something off. Later in the afternoon I took it out again for a ride downtown to the Rideau Canal Locks. I shot this with my GPSr's built-in camera, so the quality kinda sucks.

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I also started keeping a log of my cycling. I had to dig back a few weeks on what I entered for fitness @ Livestrong.com. So far, since I started riding in the spring, I've travelled 541.5 kms. :)

 

Accelerating — Week 31 progress & other stuff

My weigh-in on Thursday was 225 lbs, but Friday was about 225½ lbs. My Birthday was on on Thursday, so I over indulged a little. :)

That was a 5 lbs loss for less than a week. That's the most I've ever lost in a single week. The cycling to work and home no doubt made the difference. I did it three days last week and I plan on doing it again this week if the weather cooperates.

Last week my bike started making a weird grinding sound when I was pedalling, but only when I started pedalling — putting more force on the pedals. I figured it was either coming from the crankset or the rear axel. Perhaps a broken bearing? I made an unsuccessful attempt to disassemble the crankset yesterday, but I gave it another go this afternoon and was successful. The bearings were fine. I cleaned it all out, greased it up and reassembled it. Unfortunately, the gridinging continued when I took it for a test ride.

I then decided that it had to be the rear axel. I took it apart, cleaned it, greased it, and reassembled it. One of the bearing casings was inside the hyperglide and I couldn't remove it. I hoped that poking enough grease into it would suffice.

I took my bike for another test ride and the grinding continued.

I was stumped.

Knowing that it wasn't the crankset or the rear axel, I felt confident enough that I could at least continue to ride my bike without too much fear of someting going wrong. I put away all my tools and decided to take it out for a longer test ride.

About 20 minutes into the ride, the grinding stopped. I decided to continue riding. In fact, I rode just over 46 kms. 2 hrs and 20 minutes later I was back home and my bike was still silent.

I don't know what the problem was, but it seems to be gone, at least for now.

I am long overdue for a new bike, but I'm having difficulty finding a 22" XL frame. A 21" frame may do, if the seat post can go high enough, but I have yet to find one that feels right. I'd really like a bike with front shocks, since my current ride has no shocks. My bike is about 18 years old. :)

Here's my dusty ride after this afternoon's outing.

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BTW... the geek in me did in fact record the ride to work one day last week, but it's a pretty shaky video. I'm not sure if I'll post it or not.