Wednesday weigh-in: Week 15

In addition to the update on my weight (still going down, slower than I'd like) I want to talk about weather. In this case, the difference between cycling and running weather.

I really like to ride. It's one the of the most enjoyable activities I do. What I don't especially like is riding when it's chilly. Not cold, mind you, just chilly. Weather right now in the Bay Area is mid 50s and 60s which isn't bad for riding but for some reason I just can't get myself to ride in this sort of weather.

Running on the other hand...

I love running in this weather - the colder (down to 20s) the better. I head out in my shorts and sweatshirt and pound for an hour or so and I'm happy as can be. So why not with riding?

(and yes, that parenthetical in the first line is the weight update for this week)

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 14

Okay, so it's not Wednesday and I've been slipping more often than not on the "weekly" part. After a great week of working out I've had a week and a half of bad. Basically, I missed most of last week, was gone over the weekend (did a lot of hiking but no true workouts), and have been feeling a little meh this week. I will be back in the gym today to get back on the horse, but have a lot of ground to make up.As you can see from the graph I'm still trending down, although with some deviations. As I get back into working out regularly I hope to get that trend a little more solid.

I have registered for the Turkey Tri at Bonnelli Park in the LA area, the Sunday following Thanksgiving, so if any of you are in the are come by and laugh.

A rideless weekend

I spent last weekend in Mammoth Lakes, CA and intended to do some riding. I loaded my bike and all of my gear into the truck, and that's where it stayed for the length of the trip. Two things caught me short - the altitude and the hills. I fully expected both, but wasn't ready for just how much they would whoop me. I had a hard enough time hiking around and don't want to think about what would have happened if I'd tried to ride anywhere.

Below is a shot of McLeod Lake, a short hike from where I stayed. I also tromped around Convict Lake and a bit in Yosemite. This is will certainly go on my list of trips to repeat, especially in the spring/summer/fall while 120 through Tioga Pass is open.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 12

I am a giant ball of muscle pain.

Monday I started a new workout routine, pinched from an old issue of Outside (I don't know which, except that it was in 2008). I had pulled the article out, probably because it's a triathlon-specific program, and stuck it in a pile of papers. I found it again about a week ago and decided to jump in. It's a 12-week program, with swim/bike/run and gym workouts. I'm two days into it and ... ow.

I'll add the screen-cap from Active Body (where I track my workouts) in a week or so, when there are enough of them to make sense of the pattern. For now, the weight loss graph.

1 - Last 30 days

The good news is that the weight keeps going down, and I seem to be getting back up to speed. I'm now down 32 pounds, and have cracked the 25-pound barrier with the Physics Diet calculated average.

2 - Total progress

A funny/sad side note on my fitness. I've been tracking both my weight and body fat % with Physics Diet, and while my body fat % hasn't changed much (which should shift with the workout routine being added) my BMI just seemed off. I knew I was fat, but I was coming in with a BMI of ~ 57, which as I understand it is essentially "Why Aren't You Dead?" level. Then I took another look at my profile and realized that I had listed myself as 5'0" instead of 5'10", oops. Added the "1" in and my BMI plummeted to 37, not a bad change in less than thirty seconds.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 11

Catching up again. I missed the last couple of weeks because we were activated to support a team that went to American Samoa to provide assistance after the recent earthquake and tsunami. That meant a week + of straight 12 hour days, staring with a 17 hour day. Needless to say, I didn't get much exercise in.

The chart:

This is for the whole length of the weight loss, and the key thing I am seeing here is that I've crossed the 25 pound line. My "average" weight as calculated by Physics Diet is now 266.01, and I started at 292.2 just under three months ago. That's the good news.

The bad news is that next week is the last week of the first round of the program, and looking back at my initial goal I hoped to be done at this point. Instead I'm only a little over 1/3 of the way there. I should have been losing about 5 pounds a week, I've been losing about half that. The main culprit is that I haven't worked out, almost at all. Work is the easiest excuse, but that's all it is, an excuse.

I have put some money out for the gym, I go rarely. I've now dropped some additional money for a trainer, which will get me over there at least one day a week, and the rest will be up to me. I've shifted my goal to New Year's and should be able to make it. At my current rate of ~2.5 pounds a week I should lose another 25+ pounds by then, which would put me at about 230 and I should have a better idea if my original goal of 225 was accurate (as in, do I still look fat at that weight) or if I've got more to go.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 8

I've broken through a wall that has been a problem for a while now - I'm dropped below 270 and held it for a couple of days. I've also made it back below the "best fit line" on the overall Physics Diet graph (red circle below).This is more significant that it might seem initially. What little graphing I remember from my time in math courses tells me that the "BFL" the is straight line that runs through or closest to most of your data points. If you look at the early days on the diet, my actual weight (green dots at the bottom of the graph, hanging down like stalactites) and the average weight calculated by the algorithm were far below the BFL, which indicates that I was losing weight rapidly enough to "confuse" the graph a bit. They we get to the last few weeks where it flips, and I'm above the BFL because I had pretty much stopped losing weight, excluding some daily fluctuations, and the BFL caught up with me. Now, it looks like I'm moving forward again and will hopefully start dropping like I was before.This second graph is only for September, and you can see the slight decline in the BFL, with the more significant drop in the green measured weight over the last couple of days.

Breaking 270 is significant for me, because that has been my floor of weight loss over the last few years, so getting past that is a great thing personally.

An almost fully-loaded commute

I have avoided commuting to work on Mondays because I usually have my laptop and a big heap of papers that I've brought home to work on over the weekend. This week was no different, except that the heap was closer to two heaps because of the (work-related) trip to Carson City last week. But I also did some riding there that both 1) reminded me how much I luv my bike and 2) demonstrated conclusively (and emasculating-ly) how much more I need to be on it. So I loaded up last night to make sure I would ride this morning. The result:


The back end is my Two Wheel Gear garment pannier (that I luv almost as much as my bike) and the front end, strapped to the top of my Nice Rack is my backpack with many heaps of papers and my laptop. I'm not a fan of a high load like that, the front was a bit wobbly, which reinforces the need to get some normal panniers that will mount on the sides (and low, an advantage of the Nice Racks) in the near future.

I will post about the rides in Carson. One was on dirt and really fueled my desire to get my hands on a twenty-niner, the other was a solo trek around town. Both were great and both hurt (see note above on emasculation) in that good "this ride kicked my sorry @$$" way. But more on that soon.