Quick post

Just a quickie this morning before a road trip. I'm on my way out to Carson City, NV and will be bring my bike. So here's the question - anyone know some good rides in the area? I don't have a MTB, but will be grabbing some knobbies for my Long Haul Trucker, so mild trails are fine, but I'm thinking more fire-road than single track. Any thoughts are welcome.

I do plan to spend at least part of the weekend in the area, so rides over a wider geography would be great.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 6

I'm traveling again, so the weigh-in this week will be mostly historical data. First, the graph.


My biggest issue is the grand flatness that is emerging. I've plateaued pretty badly, and it's my own fault. I've been lax with following the fast - basically I've had a number of days where I didn't have the correct number of supplements leading to extreme hunger at the end of the day, leading to me eating. I also haven't been at all diligent with exercising, so the excess intake from eating actual food isn't offset by increased burning.

All that being said, I've gotten back into the swing of the fast, before I left for my trip I got rid of the last remaining food components (things like peanut butter), and have some definite plans for exercising. The downside is that this week and next week involve a lot of travel, so my hope to begin biking to/from work a few days a week will be disrupted. On the upside, the hotel I'm in now has a nice gym and since I don't have to worry about getting dinner I'll have plenty of time tonight to "enjoy" it.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 5

This is just a quick note, and the full post will be up later today. I'm out of town for work today, and neglected to bring my little sheet with all my weigh-ins. Last week I had a last-minute trip to Seattle that messed up my timing.

The short version of the news is that things have slowed down. I'm at just over 20 pounds total loss, but haven't lost much in the last couple of weeks. My crazy work schedule has prevented me from working out, although I have plans for that.

Look for a full update tonight.

International Win For Susan Day

I've written about Elden and Susan more than once, and won't repeat. Head to his blog, check him out. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, David Schloss over at Bike Hugger declared Sunday 23 Aug "International Win For Susan Day" and encouraged all supporters to get out and have a ride in their Fatty gear, upload it to Twitter, and donate to LAF.

Since I don't tweet, I'm doing it here.
No, I wasn't having a bad day. I was just trying to catch a quick pic of myself as we were heading out after grabbing coffee at the halfway point in the ride.

The picture was taken on my first ride with the Cherry City Cyclists, a local club. It was my first club ride, with this club or any. It was a mellow ride, which I used to work on my cadence training rather than anything else. It was different for me to ride at someone else's pace for that long. The last time I did group rides it was with a group of friends who would stop periodically and regroup, but other than that we broke up and rode in smaller groups. Something new to get used to.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 3

Another week down, this one not quite as good.

Don't get me wrong, it's still going in the right direction, but I was hoping I'd be able to get into the gym more this week and get the pace to pick up a bit. I did see the training last Thursday, but the Friday was working and driving up to northern CA to see a friend. Saturday was spent at a county fair (so lots of walking but not too strenuous), a couple of hours hiking Sunday before the drive home (oh, and couch moving once I got home) and the first few days this week had no real activity.

My work load has gone through the roof, and will stay there for the next week or so. Hopefully I'll be able to get some things organized and spread the tasks to other people, but until then I'll be pulling 12 hours days to get it all done.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 2

A little late getting it up, but today is still Wednesday...

I was a little concerned about what the trip to the group was going to show. I'll be quite honest here and say that I haven't stuck to the fast as rigorously as I should, as in I've had real food a couple of times, and my exercise hasn't kicked in full-bore yet. Also, I had no clue what the difference between my scale and the program scale was.

All that lead up, and it was good news. I'm down 11.8 pounds total (2 weeks) which is slightly above the average of 5lbs/week. I also learned (by checking) that my scale is within a few tenths of the program scale, so no more worries there. Once I get into a regular exercise schedule I should see the weight start falling more rapidly, but at this rate (5.9 lbs/week) I'll hit my goal in 11 more weeks, right in line with the 14-16 I thought it would take. I rode earlier in the week, and have an appointment with the trainer tomorrow afternoon. Next week I'll be starting a couple of classes at the gym, which will get me over there regularly (and whoop my @$$), which I need if I want to speed up the loss.

There's still a difference of a couple of pounds (about 3) between my scale weight and what the PhysicsDiet graph is coming up with. My guess is that this is because my loss isn't all that great compared to my total weight, and that the longer I keep up the same rate of loss the closer their average will get to my actual weight. This time around it's also a lot easier to see the benefit of the smoothing that the rolling average of their system puts into place. I didn't go above the average (all green points) but the spike where I was out of town and not weighing or exercising didn't really impact the overall trend. I also have a feeling that I pulled a Homer Simpson ("Dad, towel rack") on 9 Aug, there's really no good reason why I would have dropped two pounds and then have it show right back up and begin tracking slowly down from there. Had it been an up-tick it would make more sense. Oh well, it all comes out in the wash.

A newly discovered treasure

Tonight I needed a ride. Work is moving back into being stressful and it's been a few weeks since I've been on the bike, so I decided to check out Oyster Point Regional Shoreline. It's a smallish park only a short distance from my house. The downside - getting into the park means going past the "Davis Street Station for Material Recycling and Transfer" aka a non-permanent dump site. Oh, and the San Leandro Rifle and Pistol Range.

Once into the park it was easy to forget I was only 10 minutes from home. Well, except for the airplanes landing just across the slough.

All in all it was a great place to ride and will probably become my new training site. It has paved flat stretches running around the perimeter and a number of fairly wide dirt trails running over and across the hilly interior, providing opportunity for some speed training and for some mild climbing (since I'm not ready for serious climbing yet). Since it's only a short distance from the house it's not a problem for me to head over after work, get an hour or so in, and get home before it's too dark.
On top of all that it was just nice to be out on the bike after a long day at work.

A fight well-fought

I have written about Elden "Fatty" Nelson a number of times before. Today I'm borrowing his post in case there are some of my readers who haven't been to his site.

Don’t Say She Lost

08.5.2009 | 8:40 pm

Susan died tonight (August 5) at 7:25pm. It was a hard, long day, and Susan fought right to the end, for much longer than anyone would have thought she could.

My mom, my sisters Kellene and Jodi, and my Brother-in-Law Rocky were all here to support my family as Susan passed away.

I’ll have more to say soon, but consider this. Susan inspired me to expand the focus of my blog from nothing but bike-related jokes to a serious and pitched fight against cancer.

Then she inspired 500+ of you to join Team Fatty, the largest LiveStrong Challenge Team there has ever been.

And Team Fatty has raised close to more than $500,000 — a record amount.

Susan’s part in the battle is over, but she didn’t lose. She led the charge. She showed the rest of us how to fight: with determination, focus, creativity, and outrageous endurance.

Now it’s up to the rest of us to Fight Like Susan.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 1

I'm a week into my diet program and it's working about as well as I'd expect. I don't have an "official" weight since I'm on the road for work this week and missed my group session. Also, there is a significant difference between the program scale and mine, with mine weighing almost 10 pounds lighter. Next week I'll adjust my scale (if I can - haven't looked to see how yet) but I want to do it by weighing for the group, then coming home and weighing right then in the same clothes/condition, then making any adjustments. Either way, I figure it will still be good for tracking the direction/degree of weight change, which so far is all the right way.

If you're unfamiliar with PhysicsDiet, it's a free tool for tracking weight change. It's a little different, in that you're supposed to weigh daily for their system to work. I won't get into the details, but it involves a sliding exponential average of your weight and all sorts of other fancy math. The idea is to generate a trend line (blue on the graph above) and then show the daily weights as either green or red (losing/gaining, respectively) compared to the trend line. The end result is you get a better feel for the total direction of your progress even if you hit a plateau or have some "noise". There is also a "best fit line" (black), but I'm not all that sure about why you need to know it, and the site says that if your weight is going down (mine is, that's why there's lots of green - the shaded area is the difference between my reported weight and the mathematical average) all you need to watch is the average.

Something that I have also done, beyond the nutrition program, is join the gym near my work. They have a lot of classes, including a spin/TRX program I'm interested in and Masters swimming. My goal is to be there all five work days for some combination of classes and showering after a bike to work.

Wednesday weigh-in: Week 0

I've been away for a while, and have been itching to get back at it. The time off has been good, and helped me move away from being so annoyed by some of the more strident "cars and the people who drive them are evil" writing that I was seeing and get back to just enjoying riding.

One of the things I had always wanted to use this blog for was to shame myself into losing weight. More specifically, to declare in a very public (and yet anonymous) forum the things I was doing to lose weight. And now is the time for that. Last night I began a very severe weight loss program that involves a medically-monitored fast. If my estimates are correct, I should be on it for between three and four months in order to make weight. Some background about me, courtesy of ActiveBody.org:

note - the only reason there is no body fat % is that I'm using the official weight from the program weigh in last night.

My intent is to post either a picture like that, or a graph of my progress to date every Wednesday, along with a running total of my progress at the very start of the post. Since this is the first one, and I have no progress, I'll stick to background.

I am, as the picture indicates, 5'9.5" and currently weigh 292.2 pounds. That gives a BMI (if you're the sort who thinks there's any validity to BMI - I'm not) of 42.5, which is well past "obese" My issue with BMI is that even if I hit my goal weight - 215, which would be around 15% BF - I will have a BMI of 31.5, still obese, although I don't think anyone would consider 15% BF "obese".

I got into this predicament through a couple of things:

• Bad meds - I'm epileptic and the med I take to control it leads to weight gain. Since I started on the meds, about the time I graduated college, I went from 220 to 290. I give this about 7% of the responsibility.
• Bad timing - I tend to miss lunch, often breakfast and lunch, and that leads to super-hunger at the end of the day. Too much food all at one time leads to more storage as fat. I give this another 7% of the blame.
• Bad habits - Not only do I tend to skip meals, but I've gotten really lazy about preparing food. That would be why I miss lunch most of the time. More often than not (let's say 95% of the time) I just pick up something on the way home form work, as opposed to cooking. I give this 80% of the blame.
• Who knows - Math majors will notice that my blame adds up to 95%. That's because I don't feel like counting out all of the tiny little things I do.
• Me - At the end of the day, all of this comes down to ME. I knew there was research showing that my meds complicated weight loss (it's only more-recent studies that go so far as to call them a causative agent), I knew skipping meals was bad, and I knew not cooking was dumb.

Hopefully I'll learn my lesson this time.