Way to go everyone.

I went to a Ju Jitsu class tonight with a friend. Barely survived the first 15 minutes of "warm up". Learned some cool techniques and held my own on the ground. Really need to work on the conditioning though.

With what I sweated off tonight, I should be OK for my weigh in tomorrow. If I can get out of bed that is.

:-)
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Well, I guess the pain is worth it. I hurt this AM, but manged to get up.

I dropped 2.4 for an even 237, and a total drop of 12.2 lbs.

So, I'm back to familiar territory (I usually weigh ~236). Now I have to keep this momentum going and see if I can get below 230.

More climbing this evening.

Hmmm...
Breakfast = ???
Lunch = Wor Wonton soup
Supper = ???
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Congrats, Ian! Way to go. Seems that we are all getting somewhere lately.
This no meat or dairy thing is harder than I thought. I brought along some granola bars for lunch, and when I look at the ingredients, it has dehydrated milk in it.:-)

I guess I'll just stick to my sunflower seeds. Nothing but seeds so far today. I'll have to eat a killer supper to make up for it.
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Went overboard at the Mexican restaraunt last night. Ate two bowls full of chips and salsa to myself, and then overdid it on the vegetarian fajitas. I went home stuffed to the gills. At least it was all vegetables. My friend is having a pig-pickin' this Saturday. I'm very, very, very tempted to eat there. I told him I was getting a to-go plate so I could eat it on Sunday though. Temptation's a b!tch!:-)

No exercise this week yet. That cold made me lazy and I don't want to start back. Gotta get back on track w/ the exercise.:-)
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I am back up to 261.027 due to a long weekend (carnival) with a lot of food/beer. The weather is almost good enough to jog in the morning. I want to try to run twice next week between 5 and 6 am for 30min.
I will start with my drivers license classes next week and that will cost two of my usual work out days... :-) .
I am going to add a couple of new workout/lifting goals next week.
I hope that the rest of you is having a better week than i had...
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We all have bad weeks. Don't get discouraged. Carnival is a good excuse for a bad week. Sometimes it's worth it to indulge.
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Still at 202 today. No up or down. Looking for a better week next week. I desperately want to break the 200 mark.
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Let's keep the faith gentlemen. It will be hard at times (like the Chinese buffet I was at last night) but we can do it. We may even have setbacks, but we have to jump back on that horse again and keep striving for the goal.

Ceral for Breakfast
Sandwich for lunch
supper is open at the moment.

Exercise = some shoveling and maybe some crunches, pushups and squats.
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Can I jump in on this? I guess I need to know the premise...but 17 pages is a lot to read through.

I guess to start, I was at 257 lbs on July 12 2008. My heaviest ever. That was even after running 5 km a night for over 2 years.

So, I joined a gym that was more expensive that I wanted to afford. It helped me stay motivated (nothing like motivating a cheap bastage by making him pay first and create his own results second).

At this morning, I was down to 219.8 lbs. I was at this weight also just before Christmas, but then bobbed up to 225 during/after the holidays especially with lots of military out-of-town taskings and moonlighting work keeping me from the gym. But I am back this morning to the lowest I have weighed in close to 8-9 years.

My goal is 208. That is the lowest weight I have been in my adult life. Should have me pretty ripped.

I guess my successes have come from a change of focus away from weight and towards "performance". Instead of weighing myself frequently (maybe once a week), I focus on various other numbers. For instance, my fastest mile-and-a-half run (on treadmill) has been 8 min 52 seconds. It took months of slowly squeeking down the number on a daily basis. Each workout at 05:30 would have various time trials (on treadmill), weight machines and core exercise, working up to a peak at about 06:-)0 and then cooling down. At the peak, is a 1.5 mile sprint starting at some speed above 8.5 mph and working up to 10 to 11 mph for a various time. That top day I went straight to 10, and climbed from there. I deemed that was the fastest I would ever get, so I had to change my goal or face injury. So, now I aim at duration of run at 10 mph. So far, this morning I bested myself at 13 minutes 16 seconds at 10 mph before I felt I had to stop or immediately injure myself.

Beyond that, I have slowly climbed up on benchpress and lats pulldown until I can stack the machines. Now I am slowly climbing on the number of reps I can do at top weight. A balance this with similar strategies vs the delts, biceps, triceps, traps, rhomboids...thats the majority of the big musles in the upper limbs. I generally have poor enough form that the other secondary muscles get a good work out too :-) .

This all has down great for me.

My resting heart rate is in the low 50's, my BP is 110/60 (any lower is probably not any better, even now I get dizzy if I jump up too fast without an adrenaline rush to help pump the pressure up).

But, I guess that is my intro into this club. Thanks for having me. I am guessing it will take me about 6 months to drop these last 12 lbs. Afterall, it was my son's birthday today so I have had 2 big macs, a piece of chocolate cake, a rum and coke, ice cream and that doesn't include the dinner party I am about to go to. Good thing I only weigh myself once a week and that it won't happen again until next weekend.

Cheers to you all, motivational thoughts for you all and lets banter it up.

Cyanide
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Welcome aboard, John. :-) And good luck too.
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Haven't updated in a while, but wanted to let you folks know that I'm still working at it. Down to 212 lbs, and going to make a few more modifications to my plan. Lack of gym is killing me (for weight training), but trying to make the best of it. Will have to admit, doing the fundamentals has been a good experience thus far. 15 good form push-ups takes a bit of effort compared to 7 when first starting out. Core stuff is proving to be the hardest part. Just can't seem to build up a "sense" of strenght in my core just yet.

A new wrinkle to my cardio is starting up the "Couch to 5k" jogging/running program. I found out the local college opens the track to the community and I can run/jog on it when it's no reserved so I'm going to start taking advantage of that.
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Changing my weigh-in day to Wednesday temporarily. I can eat meat on Sunday, so that will be my splurge day. I don't want to weigh-in the day after a high eating day. So I am moving my weigh-ins to Wednesday. Weighed in this morning at 243, up one pound. I had a feeling this would happen, and have been debating the weigh-in move for a week now. Today's pound gain assures me that Wednesday will be a much better day to begin the week.

After Easter, I'll probably move weigh-ins back to Monday.
So, no report today, hopefully will have good news on Wednesday.
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Glad you're still with it. Keep up the hard work.
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I'm finding Thursday a great day for weighing in. If I splurge on the weekend, I find it is easier to make up for it earlier in the week.

I have a lot of making up to do because I feel off the wagon hard this weekend.:-)
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I had a tough week last week. Traveled a bunch so I didn't eat or exercise well. Didn't go up in weight at all but the pants feel a little tight this morning. Hopefully, I will do better this week.

Great job Ian!!!
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For those with:
a) an ipod
b) a large potential to increase their motivation level through music

I have found the podcast:

podrunner

useful.

It is roughly 1 hour of a set pace that is mixed fresh each week. Its techno music, so, over time I have stopped using it because I like Metallica better. But, really, it is great stuff, no pauses between songs (its one long "song"), all the BPMs are the same and it is purpose-designed (for running, spin class etc).

Give it a try. I think it must be up to nearly 100 episodes by now.

Cheers

Cy
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I just found out about them (it's who I was referring to in my earlier post). I'm using their interval program, specifically the Today to 5K program, to start up for running. We'll see how it goes!
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Not looking good for tomorrow. :-)

Maybe it'll still turn around. This dietary change is taking some getting used to, and throwing my system off. It'll balance out and I'll be back on track shortly I hope.
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As an additional motivational factor, I have filled out the Mantracker Prey Application today. Think I will submit it once I have a suitable partner.

Cheers

Cy
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Tried the first week of the Podrunner Interval program. Considering I've done most of my intervals on a treadmill previous to this, it's a lot more tricky on a track/road. However, this is a good challenge and I look forward to continuing this!
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