Spacegoat’s Portal

Good day.  Another week has come and gone and we’re 7 days closer to Spring.  Our little “warm up” last week was underwhelming and we’re back to sub zero temperatures.  The good news (for me anyway) is that I booked a flight to Phoenix next month.  Yep, I’m going to visit the parents for the week of February 23rd.  It will be great to see Mom and Dad, that’s why I’m going.  But I’m happy they live in a warm climate!  It will be great timing too.  I’ll get back on March 2nd, and while there’s still plenty of winter left in March, warming my bones in the sun will make those last weeks of cold weather more bearable.

OK, enough about me.  Let’s get to my weigh-in.  I have to say I haven’t been trying very hard this week.  My walks at work have been cut short because I’ve had to work more this week.  I have been tracking my food as closely as I should.  One day I spent the whole day without logging any of my food.  Interestingly though, when I entered my food that night, I found that I ate just enough.  It seems that I can eat what I should without even trying.  But I’m not going to give up on the food journaling just yet.  I’ve got a transition to maintenence coming up, and that’s going to be a whole new challenge.

Alright let’s get to it.  Today I weighed in at 208.6lbs for a loss of 2.4lbs this week.  I’m up to 156.4lbs lost.  I was shooting for about 209.5lbs but I’ll take it.  I am now officially under 10lbs away from my goal weight.   If I can keep this pace up, I will reach my goal weight in Phoenix.  Breaking 210lbs is a significant achievement for me since I’m kind of breaking new ground from here on out.  I  was at around this weight when I moved to Des Moines from Hawaii when I was 16.  I’m thinking I was at 209lbs then.  I don’t recall exactly, but it was definitely within this 10 pound range.

Now I need to figure out where to go from here.  My goal weight is arbitrary.  I intend to re-evaluate at that point,  but 10lbs isn’t going to make a big enough difference.  I can tell that I still have more work to do.   It would be a shame to come this far without finishing the job.

Just setting a weight goal at this point isn’t going to do the job.  So after my goal I’m going to focus more on body composition.  I think I’ll go on a maintenence plan with the diet and then focus on strength training.  I’ll probably see some weight gain but my body fat percentage will go down.  But no point getting ahead of myself.  I’m not there yet.

I’m off now.  I’m not doing much today.  It looks nice and sunny out today but it’s very cold, so I think I’ll stay in.  Do some house work and recreational pursuits.  Have a good week.

Holy crap, what a cold week it’s been!  I am really having trouble coping with this winter.  It just doesn’t seem to let up! I guess a lot of it is that I’m a lot more exposed to the elements since I moved from Eagan.  No more underground heated garage and fancy shmancy heated transit station.  I have to unbury my car whenever it snows and walk four blocks to the bus stop in the ice and snow.  Still, it’s been a really brutal winter hasn’t it?  The good news is it’s only 60 days until spring, and a month after that it’s jacket weather!  *sarcastic yay*

OK, enough whining.  This blog is about losing weight, so let me post my weigh-in then I will get back to the bitching and moaning.  After last week’s 3.6lb loss I will be pleased with any loss this week.  Those big losses have a tendency to come back to haunt you, I find.  But I’m not going to be disappointed this week.  I weighed in at 211lbs for a loss of 1.4lbs this week and 154lbs overall.  Well that’s a relief.  This validates last week’s loss and gives me a 5lb loss in two weeks.

I’ve been looking at the calendar and I mapped out a new schedule to try to keep to.  My old schedule was dependent on me averaging a 2 pound loss every week, but that got derailed last fall as my body composition changed.  I didn’t lose at the rates I was used to but I did see a huge difference in my appearance.  It just makes sense now that I have less fat to lose, that I will lose less fat every week.  So I’m targetting 1.5lbs every week, and that has me reaching my goal on “The Ides of March,” March 15th.  That’s about a month off target from my original expectation, but you know, it doesn’t really matter.  I’m in pretty good condition right now.  Any further weight I lose is just icing on the cake.

Well then, I think I’ll be going.  I want to enjoy my day off.  Work has been troublesome and I want to make the best use of my saw sharpening time.  Thanks for reading.

Hello, it’s been a good week for losing weight.  I speculate about things too much but I have to think that my little New Years “binge” might have jump started my metabolism.  Pizza and runzas, and a bottomless bowl of Chex Mix was a shock to my system. I didn’t go overboard fortunately, but I’m sure those rich foods were well received by a body that has been starved for most of the last 16 months.

So when I woke up this morning I weighed in at 213.4lbs.  That’s a loss of 2.6lbs.  But I’ve been going to the gym for a while now before my weigh-ins, trying to squeeze every last ounce from my system back when I was stuck on the scale.  Of course once you start doing that, you have to do it every week or it will be skewed.  Well this week I did well enough to break that cycle.  But I didn’t.  I got greedy, thinking I’ll take a good weigh-in when I can, because I’ll have bad weeks and none of it will make sense.  So I put 45 minutes in on the tread mill and elliptical trainer before coming home for my official weigh-in.

My official weight is 212.4lbs for a loss of 3.6lbs this week and a total of 152.6lbs lost so far. That’s a pretty good one.  I blew past my 215lb milestone like my 225lb milestone.  I’m finally past that 150lb hump!  It’s 3 weeks over due but that’s what it took.  215lbs was my last milestone before my goal weight of 199lbs.  I can smell it, it’s so close.  13.4lbs is a lot to lose still, so I’m not going to celebrate yet, but I can smell the victory!

Speaking of victories, I did something yesterday at the gym that I have never done before.  I ran a mile.  I’ve been adding short jogs to my tread mill sessions and short sprints to my elliptical sessions for a few weeks, but on my 5k session on the treadmill yesterday I decided to try to keep my pace up for a mile.  It wasn’t a very fast run.  5.2mph seems to be my comfort level but I varied my speed between 5 and 6mph to put in a mile in about 11 minutes.  It wasn’t a huge physical feat really.  I mean I wasn’t puking when I was done.  It’s just that 2 years ago I wouldn’t have walked a mile, and now I can run a mile. Sweet!

In other news, I stumbled upon Costco yesterday while I was out shopping.  I had to go to the hardware store because I blew a fuse by running my microwave and toaster oven at the same time, and I’m down to my last one.  I asked Jeff, the electrician, about bus style circuit breakers.  That is circuit breakers you can put in a fuse socket.  He directed me to Home Depot, and that’s where I found them sure enough.  I also found Costco right next to it so I thought what the hell, and got me a membership there.  I found some bargains.  Unfortunately, they don’t take major credit cards or my bank’s debit card, and I didn’t bring my check book.  So I just paid for my membership with cash and browsed around a bit.  They have Johnny Walker Black Label there for $23.  And there’s some other stuff that I would have totally snagged if my pockets were deep enough.  Alas I walked away empty handed.  But hopefully I can justify the membership fee by saving some benjamins there in the future.  So if any of yous in the cities need bulk pretzels or anything, I’ll set you up.

Costco does take Wells Fargo plastic which is fortunate since I opened an account there this week.  After my check card incident and nearly two weeks waiting for TCF to rectify the situation, I had enough with that predatory bank.  I don’t care if I work there, I deserve better!  So I opened an account online and I’m waiting for my packet in the mail before I set up an auto deposit, and start the transition.  I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my TCF account.  I’ve had to use it at work for testing in the past, so I may keep it open with a minium balance.  But then just having that account open carries a certain amount of risk of them charging me fees, or someone ripping me off again.  So I guess I’m not much for toeing the corporate line, but they don’t seem to care about it so why should I? ahem, I hope noTCF executives read this blog

Another one of the things I was shopping for yesterday was a paper shredder.  I’m taking this shit seriously now, and I’m not going to throw out anything that contains my name, address and such without shredding it first.  But gosh those things are kind of expensive.  The only one at Costco was $115.  They seem to range from $50 to $300.  But I’ve read reviews on some of the cheap ones and they break real easy.  I might go back out today and shop for one.  I got a $20 Best Buy certificate so that will ease the pain as long as they don’t mark it up by that much, like they often do.

I’m feeling kind of chatty today but I need to go.  I want to get some milestone pictures posted today but I need to clean myself and my apartment up first.  That reminds me, I finally got me a storage locker.  When I replaced my fuse this week, I found an empty one.  I’ve had all my moving boxes stuffed in my closet since October.  It will be great to get those out ofr there and to be able to use that closet for proper storing where you can not only put stuff in there, but also get it out wjen you need it.  Right now the closet is so over stuffed I need to move a bunch of stuff out before I can get at what I’m after.  Oh right, chatty… go… I’m outa here.  Have a happy Sunday, and a good week.