Far From Perfect Push-Ups

I've been a little lax the past couple of months about exercising and staying healthy. Okay, that's a bit of an understatement. I haven't done any regular exercise since my last 5k race. Shame on me. I'm trying to do better. In an effort to exercise more, I started doing push-ups yesterday.

This past summer I worked my way up to doing roughly one-hundred push-ups a day. Not all at once though. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that. I was doing sets of 15 throughout the day in order to get stronger. I was feeling pretty good about myself. Then for no reason at all, I stopped. I haven't done a push-up since, until yesterday.

I only did about 3o push-up yesterday, but I am totally feeling it today. My chest hasn't been sore like this in a long time. I tried to do more push-ups this morning before work. I managed to squeeze out 5 before my body started shaking like a leaf and my eyes began to water. I managed a total of 10 before my body gave out on me. It's kind of depressing to remember how far along I was and how far I have to go to get back there. All I can do is take it one day at a time.

I Got On The Scale And What Did I See?

I've been working on my weight loss for quite a few months now. The other day I got on the bathroom scale and was pleasantly surprised to see my weight. It wasn't something that I was expecting, yet I became very excited about it. The scale said that I was not longer over weight. Yes, that's exactly what it said. In a loud booming voice the scale bellowed "Congratulations! You Are No Longer An Unhealthy Mass Of Flab."

Okay, that maybe a bit of an exaggeration. There is no talking scale in my bathroom. Although if there was a talking scale, I doubt it would be so articulate. I did get on the scale though and was surprised that I've met and surpassed my target weight. I was so excited that I immediately took this picture and texted a couple of friends about my happy accomplishment.

I know the picture is somewhat grainy, but just in case you're wondering, the scale says 177.5. As in 177.5 pounds. That's 7.5 pounds below my target weight of 185 pounds. This is close the my weight when I came home from my mission! That was 10 years ago!

I know that I'm a big dork for being so excited about this and then posting it on my blog. But hey, if you can't share it with the whole world wide web, then who can you share it with? I'm feeling really good about myself and in addition to a crazy, yet wonderful, weekend, this was just icing on the cake. Except I don't really eat cake anymore. I mean I do eat some sweets, but...well you know what I mean.

My Own Before & After Photos

Last night there was a surprise birthday party for my roommate and my friend Danny at my house. It wasn't Paul's birthday, but it was Danny's. The point is that the people that planned the party brought pictures of Paul to hang up with the decorations. That's when I saw this picture. Holy crap!! How did I let myself get that big? Why in the world would I let pictures of myself be taken when I looked like that? Then I started checking out Facebook and found thisI don't remember that sweater looking that tight and form fitting when I was wearing it. I know that it sounds vain when I talk about the way I look. But mostly I look at these two pictures of myself and realize how unhealthy I had become. Not good. Not good at all.

I've been on my no sugar diet for about 5 months now. No processed or refined sugar and making sure not to stuff myself full when eating. Exercise has also helped a lot too. Not only do I feel better about my self image, I just feel better. I can run and play sports and not feel like I'm going to die after 2 minutes. I can go hiking. I don't know why I ever stopped being active or started being so lazy, but I am happy that I am on my way to a more active and healthy lifestyle.

Here are a couple of pictures that were taken of me yesterday. So these are my most recent pictures.

So I think that I'm looking better. I'm not down to my target weight yet, but it feels good to have lost about 30 pounds. I never realized how much 30 pounds really is. There are some toddlers that weight about 30 pounds. I've lost the equivalent of small child without having to give birth. I'll keep you posted when I finally get down to my target weight.

...And I Ran, I Ran So Far Away

Today was my 5K run. I have to say that I was not excited. I had weird dreams the night before about not being able to run and having rubber legs that I had no control over. So needless to say when it was time to go to the race, I was a little nervous. Andrea and I got there about 10 minutes before the race started and made our way to the registration table. They looked me up on the registration sheet, and my free T-shirt and race number was not there. I had to re-sign in so that I could get a new race number. Luckily they didn't charge me again.

As we were lining up to start the race, I heard one of the ladies who was some sort of an official say that there were about 600 people there. That's a lot of people. Here I was thinking this was going to be some small thing with maybe 80 people max. It was huge. There was even a band. I don't remember hearing them play anything, but they were still there set up and ready to play.

After the Star Spangled Banner, the race started. I felt pretty good as the race started. Especially after not keeping up on my training like I should have. I made sure to keep a nice steady pace so that I wouldn't poop out at the end. I didn't really think about much during the race, mostly just putting one foot in front of the other and reciting in my head the words of songs playing on my ipod. I was pretty happy when I came to the 1 mile marker. I had run a mile, and I wasn't even tired. I felt really good. That all changed by the 2 mile marker. There were people out there handing out cups of water to the runners. Just like you see on TV when you watch a marathon. I was still feeling pretty okay, not great, but okay. So I took some water. Drinking while running is an interesting experience. The water got up my nose. The water that I got in my mouth wasn't cold and trying to swallow was hard. In fact it made me feel kind of nauseous. So I quickly threw the cup away. I ended up surprising myself by how far I was able to go without walking. I went just over 2 miles before my body needed a break. So I decided to walk. Oh, did it feel good. I had only walked for maybe 2 or 3 blocks when I came to the 2 1/2 mile marker. The girls at the checkpoint were really encouraging and said that there was only half a mile left. I thought to myself, I can pick up the pace and almost sprint the last half mile. Big mistake! Although my mind said to sprint the last half mile, my body disagreed. I made it maybe a quarter mile while sprinting and then I just felt sick. I have never ever felt that bad before from running. I looked up and there was Andrea cheering me along. Just then, some 10 year old kid passed me with no problem. I was a little jealous of his endurance and energy that he had. Anyway, I gave up trying to sprint to the end and just decided to slow my pace back down to what I was doing before.

I managed to finish the race in a time of 31 minutes and 41 seconds. Not phenomenally fast, but about 10 minutes faster than I thought I was going to finish. I was feeling really good about myself and my performance. Not that I want to run another one tomorrow or anything. But I would like to run another 5k again. My friend Danny mentioned to me that there is another 5k race on Labor Day. So I guess I should keep up with the running so that I can do that race. Maybe I'll even get a better time.

5K Training

The 5K race that I signed up for is coming up this Saturday. I have to say that I'm not really excited about it. I've slacked off on running the last couple of weeks, so I've lost a good deal of running endurance that I had built up. I decided to start running again so I can be marginally ready for the race. I went running last Saturday morning to kind of check my progress. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't fun. It was much better than I thought it would be though, so that was a positive.

I went out and I had no desire to even be running. Just to let you know, I absolutely loathe running. Running for the sake of running is just hard. Running while I'm playing a game is easy, because there is a point to it. Chasing down a Frisbee or running with a football is so much more enjoyable for me. But I know that running is important for me to get in shape and lose some weight. So I run.

The nice thing about this running exercising not eating sugar diet thing is that I have lost weight. I've only have about 10 pounds to go until I reach my target weight. And it feels awesome to fit into some of the clothes that I had "out grown". My pants are way more baggy and I feel like I'm drowning in some of the other clothes that I have. I'm going to have to get an new wardrobe so I can have clothes that fit again. But I'll worry about that later.

Anyway, back to talking about the 5K race on Saturday. It starts at 8 am at City Park in Fort Collins. It's called the Run For Hope. It's race to raise awareness about carcinoid cancer. The race is for a good cause and I would invite anyone out to come out and support this organization in their cause. If you want to race, they are accepting entrants up until race day. You can get more information about the race at www.runforhope.net I'll keep you posted on how I do and let you know my race time.

The First Time

So I don't really know what I'm doing here. I guess I just wanted to start a blog about my life and some of my thoughts. Instead of sharing my life story, I'll just share my current thoughts and eventually I'll talk about things from the past that will give a better idea as to who I am.

At the beginning of the summer, I decided that I needed to be more active in my lifestyle. Less sitting around and more physical activities. I decided to do this for a few reasons. First, I love to play sports and games, but I would just get tired running around after about two minutes. Seconds, I kind of freaked out when I saw stretch marks from gaining so much weight. And third, I think I just wanted to feel better about myself.

So I decided that I should start running. Although when I started, I don't think I would have called it running. More like walking with occasional short bursts of speed. I figured that if I really wanted to lose some weight that I should buy a scale so I could measure my progress. I went and got a relatively inexpensive scale and weighed myself. I got on and I thought I had bought a defective scale. I had no idea I weighed that much. Talk about depressing. I was looking for things around the house that I knew the weight of so I could put them on the scale to see if it was really wrong. Turns out it wasn't. I was about 30 pounds heavier than I thought. That's when I decided that I needed to do something about it.

I decided that I'm not eating any more refined sugars. No more cookies, cakes, pop, candy, anything. Anything with high fructose corn syrup or anything else refined was out. I quit it all, cold turkey. Natural sugars like honey and fruit are okay. Then I realized that I needed to stop eating until I was uncomfortably full. Learning to eat only until I am satisfied has been interesting. I've worked hard to make meals with smaller portions. And when I'm not hungry anymore, I stop. Then I set a goal of being able to run a 5K race. Not fast, just to be able to finish it. That's coming up on July 26. We'll see how it goes. I've been at this for about 2 and a half months now and so far I've lost 20 pounds. Hopefully I'll be able to keep losing weight and get down to my target. I'll keep you posted.