Here's the skinny: I've been near 300 lbs. for years and need to lose weight. I'm married to a wonderful lady, and we have a family. One of our boys often asks if I'll run with him. I've always had to tell him, "No." In August of '09, my wife learned about a couch-to-5k running program, and I agreed to try it with her. This blog chronicles our progress on that training program. I hope I'll soon be able to surprise my son by telling him, "Yes, I'll go running with you!"

Friday, March 2, 2012

8 lbs!

As of this morning, I'm officially down 8 lbs. That feels great! Im starting to make better choices a little easier, my pants are fitting just a tiny bit looser and it's not quite as hard to exercise.

I am finishing up week 6 today in the couch to 5k program. This starts the beginning of solid running with no walking breaks. I'm a tad bit nervous about it. It feels like eons ago that I ran for an hour or more at a time. I keep reminding myself though, I have done this before and I can do it again. That helped tremendously when it came time to do that dreaded week 5 20 minute run!

I do think it is helping that hubster and I are doing this together. It makes it much easier to be a lifestyle choice that way.

Keep on running
Mrs. F

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Pulling up after a steep dive

It's usually one of the more climactic moments in a movie.  The plane, for whatever reason, has taken a nose dive.  The pilot (or a stalwart passenger or staff member after the pilot is shot) grabs the stick and tries to pull up. As the ground zooms ever nearer, bringing certain doom, the would be pilot wrests the stick back as far as possible, forestalling an imminent disaster.

My weekend was like that.

It started Friday, going to lunch with friends from work.  I stuck to the "Garden Bar" as it is branded at Ruby Tuesday, and heaped on the veggies, added a small pinch of ham, and topped it off with about a tablespoon of a raspberry vinaigrette.  That wasn't bad, but I found myself very hungry a few hours later.

Let's just say that there was an incident in the break room, and it involved a couple of sweet rolls.  Bad Andrew. Bad Andrew

Dinner on Friday wasn't horrible, but wasn't great, either.  The family was having pork tenderloin and a choice of starches, so I opted for pork tenderloin and salad.  It was SOOOO tasty! I should have stuck to one serving of the pork. Or two...

Saturday was crazy, with the day spent at the individual sections wrestling meet, hosted at our local high school.  Then, for dinner, I had Mrs. F pick up some Papa Murphy's pizzas.  I kept myself to three pieces--far better than before, but still not great.

Then there was Sunday, meeting Mrs. F's cousin and her family at one of my all time favorite places, Davanni's.  Their Chicago style deep dish pizza is amazing.  Two slices there (almost 650 calories), and then two slices of their traditional crust.  Bad Andrew, once again.

I did finish up week one of the 100 pushup challenge over the weekend, and I spent some extra time on the treadmill during family movie night on Sunday evening.  Still, I was pretty sure I blew this weigh in.

This morning, I left for work extra early because we had snow moving in.  That gave me time to squeeze in some stairs (12 flights each way) before needing to weigh in.  Thankfully, all that movement prompted my GI system to help me rid myself of a bit of extra weight.

The end result? I lost 1.5 lbs. this week.  I'll take it! I certainly missed my 2+ lb. goal, but I didn't go back up, either.  Had I not let myself slide so much going into the weekend,  I'm pretty sure I could have had another massive week (around 5?). Oh, well! We'll have to see what happens this week.

I'm still standing at my desk, and I quite like it.  Unfortunately, I'm sitting in a class all week, so am getting neither my standing time, nor my daily laps.  I'll just watch my calories and keep moving.  I'm excited that I'm still making progress.  To date, I've lost 4% of my body weight in the BWL contest. 

I managed to pull up.  It wasn't too late.