YoKendog's Million Pound Match-Up

It's that time of the year where Tax Season is slowing down (for the next 2-3 weeks anyway before it kicks in again towards the deadline).  This means that I should have no excuse when it comes to getting in more activity.  I adjusted my work schedule so for the month of March I will only be working 40 hours a week but I will also have 2 days off each week, which sounds great to me considering I have only had 5 days off since January 1st!

 

I did go for a walk last night, not much of one, but it was 1/2 mile still.  That is 1 lap around my neighborhood. That lap has 3 places with different size inclines as well.  Each of these I can feel in my legs when I am walking but the 3rd one is the biggest.  These would probably be nothing to most people but right now for this fat dude, its a good workout.  I also got up this morning and did 2 more laps, so thats 1 1/2 miles in the past 10 hours.  A good start but something I know that I have to keep up daily, or at the very least, almost daily.  I am very sore right now, but not as much as I thought I would so... so far any way.  So that is my plan... walk this weight off!  I have heard people say that when they started walking the weight just melted off them... let the melting begin!  I had a goal for myself of losing 50 pounds by 3/31/2008, which is Mariners Opening Day.  I always go to Opening Day and what better of a day to set my first goal for.  After losing 21 pounds my first week I though that I would be at 100 by then, boy was I mistaken!!  Truth is that it's a lot harder than that, obviously, huh?  I can usually do great Monday-Friday, but the weekends get me and it makes no sense!  It makes no sense cause I work weekends too!  It's not like I am home on those days.  As I said before I have only had 5 days off since January 1st, so that's not my problem.  I could come up with excuse after excuse if I wanted to really.  I mean, I like going out with the guys occasionally and having a few beers, I was invited to a bachlor party a couple weekends ago... with lots of beer! My wife does the cooking most of the time, God Bless her for that, but when she don't feel up to it and I don't feel like filling in, it's a free for all at that point (example: I got KFC one night on the way home from work.  It's chicken, right? How bad can that be?!?  We found out that in 5 of those boneless buffalo wings there is something like 2100 mg's of sodium! Holy Crap! I swelled up like a blowfish and I'm not talkin about Hootie!).  Truth is, excuses are why we are fat.  We always have a reason to eat and an excuse to cover it up and make it seem like its justifiable. It's time to break that trend. 

 

While I am at it let me come clean about Valentines day.  On my way home from work on 2/13 I stopped at Walgreens to get some sugar free chocolates for my mom and cards for her and my wife.  There were those awesome peanut butter filled chocolate hearts... "had" to have a couple of those.  I honestly thought nothing of it cause "I'm doing good, I can splurge", but the truth is that it was the start of a downfall for me.  the next day I actually had off work, so I took my mom to get her hair done and was going to suprise my wife with her VDay gift at work (VIP Rascal Flatts tickets for Tacoma on 4/5/08 and dinner reservations).  So I decided I would get her a fruit smoothly to go with it and I "had" to have one myself.  When mom was done, I took her to get a latte... we went to Starbucks, "had" to have one myself... it's VDay, it's a holiday, it's ok... right?!?!  Well as the next few days played out I went to meet the guys for a couple beers at a Mexican restaurant, had dinner as well (though I still feel I did good there, not great, but good) and I actually forgot to take my water pills (which I take to regulate my blood pressure) for a few days, like 4, and bingo bango I hit the scale that week... UP 10 POUNDS!  I knew in my heart that most of that was just water weight from missing those water pills and sure enough the following week I went down 8 pounds and then the next week, last week, I was down another 7 pounds.  I guess my point is that the "It's a holiday" excuse cost me atleast 2 weeks weight loss!  That really bugs me... but now that I have come clean about it, I am gonna move past it and focus on the future.

 

So, moving forward... It's a Holiday thing again... lol... but St. Patty's day is coming up and I have that day off!

I didn't have to work today until 3pm, so my wife and I decided to go take part in our states Democratic Caucus.  This was the first time I have really done anything other than just voting and I was very excited that we went.  I had such a great time getting to discuss the issues with other like-minded people, even if they were pulling more for Obama than Clinton (like myself, though my wife is in Obama's corner).  Was a great experience to see how these things are run and to have our voices heard.  My wife is a delegate from our precinct for the county caucus, which will be held on March 8th, I am an alternate.  Looking forward in seeing how our state as a whole ends up tonight.  I know that our precinct was 2-1 in favor of Obama.  My mother-in-law informed us taht in her precinct it was 3-2 in favor of Clinton, so it looks like nothing is new as of right now, its pretty evenly split.

 

I strongly suggest that everyone reading this takes part in either your state Caucus or Primary... no matter what side of the fence you are on... its the American thing to do.

I know its been a while since I have blogged, but that is the nature of Tax Season and as an Office Manager for Jackson Hewitt, I have been putting in 60+ hour weeks, so that really leaves not much time for anything else but a few short hours of sleep, a shower and time to head to and from work.  With that said, I have been doing pretty good. I mean 31 pounds in 4 weeks! What is strange is that even when I have done "Weight Watchers" in the past I was never able to lose that amount.  What makes this time different I keep asking myself?  Am I just that much more dedicated?  I like to think so... but... if I am, why do I sabotage myself so much?!?!  What I mean by that is that I have a good week, 4 pounds lost, and for some reason I think that gives me the right to splurge a little!  Ya know, like a pat on the back or something. To put this in perspective, if you have read my other entries, where I work we have this amazing pizza place right around the corner called Vic's.  They sell by the slice and its so easy to just walk over there and get a slice or two so thats what I did last Friday when my wife came by to visit.  I honestly felt that I had a great previous week and was doing good that week that I "deserved it".  What kinda crap is that?!?  Why do we do this?  I mean I am smart enough to realize that its not helping me and its causing me to lose my weight slower.  Its not like I feel that I have trapped myself to this "diet" like I was schackled to a boulder or something and couldnt do what I wanted to.  However, in my mind, if I do that once a week as a "treat" and I am still losing 3-4 pounds a week, whats wrong with it?  Let's also talk about Super Bowl Sunday... how many of you found this to be a "Holiday" that your diet was just "Immune" to?  I honestly didnt do too badly on Sunday, but it was a full weekend thing for me.  It started on Friday with 2 slices of Vics with my wife, then it was bring home 2 large pizzas (Vics again) on Saturday night so we can have it for Sunday, a buddy brought over some hot wings and beer.  For the day I had 2 slices of pizza, 5 hot wings and 4 Bud Lights.  Not too bad, and I did lose 4 pounds this week, but what would I have if I hadnt done that?  I know I could have found a healthy alternative to those things if I had just taken the time.  So maybe the problem is being lazy.  I havent even started exercising either, again its Tax Season so I dont have much time to do that right now until it slows back down.

 

So my goal starting this week is to not sabotage myself.  To allow myself to be great.  To alow myself to lose the weight I know that I can lose.

So it's Tuesday and that means that we had our official weigh-in this morning.  It was good to see some results.  A way to keep going and to know that what we are doing is working. 

Yvonne - When we weighed in last week she had been sick for a few days and hadn't been keeping anything down at all.  Now that she is, she actually saw her weight go up 3 pounds this week.  I told her last week to just try it and if we had to readjust cause of her having that bug, then we would, and we did.  So her weight is currently 350, which is what we will call her starting weight due to being sick the previous week.

 

Shirley - Another member of our weight loss team is my Mom.  She started last week with a weight of 304 and today she weighed in at 298. She lost 6 pounds which is 1.97%.

 

Ken - While this wasn't the greatest of weeks and I understand that what I lost, or a good majority of it any way, was water... I lost 21 pounds.  Thats 3.51%.  Not too shabby of a start.  I actually grabbed 2 8 pound hand weights and a 5 pounder (21 total pounds) to realize just how heavy that actually is.  All water or not, that's heavy and I am glad to have that off my body!

 

My goal this week is 3-5 pounds.  I think I would be very happy with that.  So we shall see next week if I was able to meet that :)