Travis' Weight Loss Blog

Almost missed one

2011-02-13T21:44:00.000-08:00

Today was not one of my better days. I didn't eat that well all day. I went out to a local restaurant and had some white pasta. I normally wouldn't do this, but it was that or a salad. I had light cheese on it though. Around 600 calories total, which is of course high.

I came hope and sat down in front of the TV. I knew I said to get my workout in and then go downstairs and work out. By the time I got to work it was..5pm! Oops.

I got to work and had dinner and then at 11:55pm I did my workout. I had dinner at 7pm. Why on earth didn't I get a workout right after that?

I guess I feel guilty for some odd reason skipping my work to do a workout. Something seriously wrong with my thinking there.

What also screwed me up is that I had a sugary coffee drink today. It didn't have a ton of sugar, but enough to be close to being "bad". Maybe 30g of sugar? Around 6pm I was feeling terribly negative and not right. I NEVER feel this way and I think it was all due to the highly process carbs and junk I had today.

I ate something healthy and immediately felt a lot better.

I didn't get a lot of work done today and only 50% of Monday's work done.

The good news is that I didn't skip my workout. I will NEVER do this. Not anymore. I learned my lesson before and it just leads me to stop working out entirely. I also in just 1 month made more gains in the amount of weight I can lift than I did the last time I was working out (late 2009).

I'm also listening to my favorite headphones while exercising. I use a Koss Pro DJ 100 plus an Ipod Touch 2G and a Fiio E5 amp. They're my favorite headphones under $200 and I've tried a lot. Best of all, they only cost me $80. Koss is a lesser know brand, but they make some good budget headphones.

Monday will be a good day. I just need to eat properly and take regular breaks and drink a lot of water.

2011-02-11T19:55:00.001-08:00

I've been now lifting weights and eating healthy for 1 full month. I'm glad to say that I haven't missed a single day or have eaten any bad food. No free days at all to eat whatever I want. I did have one day where my workout was only two exercises, but this was only because my body was too sore.

This time around it's more of a success because I'm not recovering much quicker. I work out every other day with ZERO cardio. First my lower body and then my lower body the day after. It takes me about 2-3 days to fully recover.

I'm now feeling just like I did back when I was working out all the time. I have lots of energy at all times. My diet is as basic as possible. Lots of simple foods without many highly processed foods. I probably limit myself to less then a dozen types of foods.

No sugary food, no fried food, no highly processed food. I also cut out diet pop and fruit juice. It's all water or unsweetened tea. Giving up Diet Pepsi is the best thing i've ever done. I actually did it to save my teeth and money. I got to the point where I was drinking a 2liter a day!

Luckily I now never have a craving for junk food. I think this is due to the protein stopped my cravings a bit. Maybe not. My goal is to go for 1g of protein per LB of lean body mass.

I also don't weigh myself at all. As long as I keep at this, i'll lose weight. I want to gain some muscle and still lose fat. My clothes feel a lot looser already, but no drop in pant size yet, but maybe soon!

My mood has also changed a lot. It seems like when I'm in a bad mood or think to myself "I don't want to work out", it's early in the money and when I am hungry. I've tried my best to say positive at all times. What makes it tougher is my business isn't going too well.

What's also nice is that in less than a month the amount of weight I can lift is much greater than before. Still nothing special, but I'm getting there.

Back on track

2011-01-26T16:40:00.000-08:00

I started weight lifting and eating healthy again on January 10th. In late 2009 after I reached my goal I had gotten way off track. I don't know how it happened. I think at one point I got sick and could not work out for nearly a week. This got me into the habit of skipping workouts. I also was not recovering past enough somehow.

Unfortunately I also got into the habit of eating junk food without any exercise. I'd eat Pizza every weekend and would eat garbage too much. For example, when I went to Subway a few times a week, I'd always get two cookies. My job of sitting down all day didn't help. I really have no excuse and gained most of what I lost back. It really hurts to start from scratch.

My goals are the following:

Try to avoid too much fat. Some fat is obviously OK. I'm going to cut out nuts, Peanut Butter and fried foods. I know some of these are OK.

No sugary food. No Protein Bars with lots of Sugar.

Drink a ton of water. Probably a gallon or more a day.

Eat lots of vegetables. I'm going to try going for 175-200g of Protein a day.

I won't count calories. I've had good results when not doing this.

NO MORE FREE DAYS to eat whatever I want.

My main priority is to eat foods that are not highly processed.

I'm not going to cut out ALL "bad" carbs. For example, I think a white potatoe plain once in awhile is OK. Same with white rice, but not too much. I'll limit bread, but if I do eat bread it will be the really heavy wheat bread.

Very little (if any) foods in a box! I want to keep it all simple.

Take a vitamin every day.

BTW I've found that when I don't want to work out I just ignore that thought and just go do it. I try to remain positive and just get it over with.

The main positive about skipping almost a year of exercise is that SOMEHOW I still had a ton of energy. Strange huh?!

2009-11-25T22:08:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday night for some reason I was so extremely tired. At around 7:30pm I was wondering how on earth I was going to get a workout in. I wanted to just go to sleep. This was mainly due to not getting enough sleep the night before and it wasn't due to lack of proper eating.

I remembered I had bought a low carb Monster Energy drink the night before and didn't drink it. I absolutely hate most energy drinks and think they're a waste of money normally. Somehow I just needed to buy one the previous night but forgot about it. I drank it all really fast and within what seemed like a few minutes I had a ton of energy. I went upstairs and had this stupid song in my head and it made me laugh. Somehow that put me in a good mood and I had the best workout i've had in a very long time. I lifted weights that were so heavy that I previously couldn't lift them. When I was done my muscles were shaking. Probably from the heavy weights, needing more food and the caffeine.

After my workout I went and got some food and took a break. I was finding it hard to believe I was about ready to fall asleep a bit earlier. I now felt really good.

On Wednesday morning I got up and immediately ate breakfast. I had some oatmeal. The really good kind and not that junk in the individual packages that's loaded with sugar. I'll admit I put a bit of sugar on it, but not much. I had so much energy. I couldn't believe it. I immediately got ready and went out to try to get a haircut. I had lots of energy until about 3pm (woke up at 11). Ate a late lunch and came home and did some work for awhile.

It seems like the best days for me are the ones the day after a good workout. I'm back on track and have immediately noticed the difference when I workout and when I don't. I think i'll make sure to get in every single workout without any excuses. I don't care if i'm sore.

Tomorrow is thanksgiving. I'll try to eat healthy, but it might be hard. I don't want to use it as my free day. I won't eat desert though. I just don't want to remember what sugary food tastes like. If i'll eat something like Pumpkin Pie I might be tempted to eat junk food later.

2009-11-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

I ate poorly one day of the weekend. Yes, I ordered a pizza, I admit it. I also overate some of it, but it was worth it, almost.

The next day I got a lot done and had a very productive day.

On Monday I worked from about noon until 5am. I pretty much did two days worth of my work in one day. I don't think it was worth it since i'm feeling not good at all right now.

I went out for some soup and salad today at 3:30pm with my mom and came back and i'm just so tired. I went to bed at 6am last night but I had major problems sleeping. When I woke up I felt fine at first.

Today in the morning I weighed myself and I lost 3 1/2 pounds!! That really made my day. The hard part right now is how i'm so extremely sleepy and need to still get a workout in. A part of me wants to skip it, but i'm going to force myself to do it no matter what. I could take the easy way out and just do cardio, but I don't want to do that.

Hopefully I can fit into a smaller pant size soon. It makes me mad and a bit frustrated that i've been try to drop a pant size all month and couldn't do it, yet I lose weight on the scale.

I just have to keep doing my workouts and not skip any of them no matter what!

Having problems

2009-11-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

I've been having major problems getting my workouts in. I made the mistake of splitting up my workouts and it just isn't working out for me. I need to figure out a new workout plan FAST and stick with it.

Things have been just so bad lately. My business is doing terrible and I had a death in the family and it really hurts to even think about. The day after the funeral I just wanted to stay in bed all day and not do a thing. I had no motivation at all.

On Friday it was going to start out badly, but I changed that as fast as I could. I called my mom up and asked her if she wanted to go out to lunch and then go to the mall and bookstore. We ended up using my free day and got a pizza. I didn't overeat luckily. I did some walking at the mall and stupid me got a ice vanilla late. They're not exactly the best thing to drink, but it's something I avoid due to the sugar. It wasn't even worth it.

I immediately came home and did my workout. I used my new Koss PortaPro headphones to test out and I went really slow this time and did some new exercises. Instead of the barbell bench press I used some dumbbells. It seemed to work even better since my machine doesn't work very well for a barbell bench press.

I also did something different and did some Tricep Kickbacks. I found those actually quite difficult. Instead of my barbell Military Press I tried using just some dumbbells instead. Overall I had a very good workout.

After that I spent around 4 hours cleaning my basement and getting ready to do some painting in my spare bedroom.

For dinner I went out and got a plain black bean, rice and veggie burrito. Nothing too bad and no cheese or anything bad on it. A lot of calories though.

I just hate how I have been able to fit into a size smaller pants in over a month. I guess I need to try harder. There's a few small items I can leave off my diet to help with this. Lately I've been a lot hungrier then normal. I don't know why this is.

This month i've skipped more workout days then I did during the entire first 6 months. Not good. Maybe on my off days I will do some more cardio.

2009-11-16T07:59:00.000-08:00

Things are going ok still. I did miss one other day. On my off day my muscles were so extremely store and I did some major raking of the leaves in my yard. I did a world record of leaf removal and that didn't help my muscle recovery. I have 4 or 5 trees in my yard so it was hard work.

The next day my entire body was hurting somehow (due to lack of proper recovery) so I took the day off and skipped my workout. Sure it's a lame excuse. The next day I got in my workout though.

I've lost some more weight but I need to make sure I write down my weight and the date on a piece of paper every week to keep track of my weight loss.

Ok, off to work!

Goal reached. Kind of.

2009-11-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

On July 15th 2009 I gave up eating junk food and started lifting weights with a smith machine and free weights every other day. I did no cardio on my off days. My goal was to get down to my old weight by November when the NBA season started up. To celebrate this I would go to my first ever Detroit Pistons game.

I did not reach my goal of my old weight, but it would have been virtually impossible. Let's just say that to do that i'd have to live on like egg whites, tuna fish and water for 3 months. No thanks. To say the least, I was more overweight then I thought. So much so that I don't even want to mention it.

In total i've lost 3 pant sizes. From a 46 down to a 40. I can get into a size 38 now, but I can't breath. They're loose in the all areas mostly, except for the waist. I should be able to fit into them well in a few weeks. I think I think that two weeks ago. I'm trying!

Up until my goal things went well. There were a few times where I had to skip some days. HAD to because of severe pain. Up to november I don't think I ever skipped more then two days in a row. In total my guess is that I skipped about 3 workouts from July to November. It's not good, but once or twice this was due to severe muscle pain and not recovery fast enough.

90% of the time to start back up I did 3 sets. I've found this obviously isn't enough. I went to failure on each set and wonder why i'm not extremely sore the next day. When I switched to four I noticed a huge difference. With four sets i'm almost always sore the next day now.

I've learned a few things and now I know what needs to change with my routine. I need to now split up upper body and lower body, do crunches and do 4 sets minimum on each exercise.

I've also found the weight i've been able to lift hasn't went up that much. It's really disappointing. On some exercises it has. My bench press definitely has NOT. A little, but not enough. The hugest increase has been in how much I can lift for the Military Press.

I think the problem is that one day isn't enough for ME for proper recovery. That's why I need to split it up more. Sometimes on my day of working out I feel like i've healed properly and am not sore, but I'm still not able to increase the weight I lift. Maybe I need to eat more calories and protein. I'm pretty much set at the correct amount of calories, but maybe I should try going for more protein.

I'm sticking with plain Protein powder now. No more wasting my money on Myoplex. I don't think there is really any huge difference. Another thing I need to do is drink much more water.

In total my guess is that i've lost about 40-45 pounds. I can look in the mirror now and I actually LOOK different. I can see areas where i've gained muscle. I still have a very long way to go. A VERY long way to go. What's strange is that i've lost a lot of fat, but I think I also gained a lot of muscle. However that worked out. My face looks skinnier and even my stomach is smaller. I think when I'm at my final weight i'll be like 230-240 at 8-12 or whatever body fat percentage. In the past I got down to 196 and looked WAY too skinny, but had I still had some fat on me. I don't like how that was.

The Bowflex I used in the past was a good piece of equipment, but free weights are WAY better in almost any way. I definitely don't regret using my Bowflex when I still had one five years ago. It was just not good for gaining muscle.

So my goal came and sadly, I screwed up and things well apart for an entire week. I tried to figure out why and I definitely know why, but will not use stupid excuses and just need to get back on track.

Things just got so extremely busy all of a sudden right around when I finished my goal. Again, not an excuse, but I should have tried harder to get in my workouts. I also started doing 4 sets and putting in an extra effort at each workout. This caused me to be sore on my next workout. Then what did I do? I somehow skipped that day and the next.

When my goal day came I was supposed to workout before I went to my first live NBA game in Detroit. Did I do that? Lazy me did not. So stupid! Not even on the actual day! I screwed up so bad and feel guilty. It felt like all the work was going to waste.

Then on Tuesday I took my free day early and went out for Pizza. I only had a few pieces, but on the way to the game we were extremely late. I ate my second BAD item. Only the second bad food item since July 15th isn't too bad, but it is to me. I hate some French Fries at McDonalds. I was just frustrated at how lost we got on the way and had to cram down some food real fast. Big mistake. Luckily nothing else bad that day.

I came home after the game and in the morning I was the same weight as the week before. No change.

Today is Thursday and i'm now back on track and did my workout yesterday. I need to set a NEW goal to stay back on track. Here's what i'm going to do from now on:

I will alternate between upper body and lower body workouts. I will also add in some crunches. I need to focus on parts that are falling behind and are rarely sore. I need to do four sets each and every day or until I can't possibly lift another pound.

For each routine I will add in new exercises so i'm working out for 40-60 minutes.

I woke up today and somehow I had lost 4lbs. Pretty amazing considering I skipped an entire week thanks to being stupid. I'd like to say "I just needed a week long vacation", but that's dumb.

I'm also going to be making better charts of my progress. If i'm not making any gains in the amount I can lift, something is seriously wrong.

Anyway. I went to my first ever Pistons Game. We left at 3:30pm and the game was at 7:30pm. We got so extremely lost thanks to worthless Google Maps directions. We ended up getting there into the second quarter! It was all worth it though because of the win. We say the Magic vs Pistons game.

Coming home took us about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Not too bad, but it was really bad due to how tired we were. Luckily we made no wrong turns coming home.

BTW here's some notes of what I like to eat and don't eat. Just a note to myself. I'm also a vegetarian so it's even harder to get enough protein.

Lots of whole grains, but I rarely eat and buy bread.
For cereal it's usually shredded wheat, 1% milk or any kind of low sugar cereal such as Cheerios.
I actually eat out a LOT, but I stick to only 3 basic items. I'm a huge fan of the veggie patties at Subway. I get them without oil or Mayo. Just a 6".

I also eat a lot of veggies and whole wheat pasta.
For snacks I eat fruit such as Apples or those packages of food already cut up. That's one thing i've decided not to give up. My absolute favorite snack is any kind of melon. Sure, it's not the best fruit item to eat. I stopped eating raisins because they just make me feel strange.
I love any kind of veggie burger. Even Burger King has them and you can get them plain, but I don't like white bread much.
I drink a lot of milk. Usually 1% organic. Organic milk seems to taste better, but it's probably just my imagination. I'm usually too cheap to buy all organic food. Sorry!
I take two vitamins a day. GNC Mega Men. The kind that turns your pee neon yellow!
I like to make a burrito with rice, black beans, grilled veggies and Salsa. It has a lot of calories though. I'll admit that I add about a teaspoon of cheese.
I'm a Diet Pepsi addict, but I try to limit myself to not buying them for drinking at home.
94% fat free popcorn I will sometimes eat, but there is better snack choices I think.

I avoid:
Regular Mayo
Nuts (sure a handful can be healthy, but I can never eat a handful, so I avoid them)
Yogurt (it's too tempting to eat more then one for me. My favorite kind nobody sells. It's plain "Greek" style. Whatever that means)
white bread, whenever I can. I'm ok with a white flour burrito.
The thing I avoid the most out of anything other then fat is highly processed carbs such as crackers.
I usually shop on the outside lanes at a grocery store, almost always.
I don't buy canned foods. Fresh or Frozen is best.
I don't eat soup. It just doesn't do anything for me and i'm hungry an hour later.
No peanut butter. Making a sandwich with only 1 tsp is impossible for me.
Candy, Sugary junk food of course. Sugar is the #1 reason I got fat I think. And lack of exercise.
Fried foods. I will sometimes eat Eggplant that's fried, but that's about it.
Any cereal with added sugar. The more plain the better for me.
I try to avoid overdoing the salt, but I don't monitor my salt as well as I should.
No ice cream AT ALL. I miss Ben and Jerry.
No fish or meat for me (I'm a vegetarian but drink milk and my Vitamins have fish oil in them I think)
I don't eat baked potatoes because they make me sleepy.

When I eat food I try to monitor how certain foods make me feel. If they make me feel like crap and just want to put me to sleep, i'll avoid them. Potatoes and pasta does this to me. Wheat Pasta never does. White bread has the worst effect on me for some reason. Same with Raisins, I don't know why.

Overall I just try to eat as simple as possible. The less processed the foot item is, the better in most cases.

Got off track

2009-10-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

I got way off track on my diet and exercise thing. Officially the worst by far yet. On Monday I was supposed to do a workout. My lame excuse is that my muscles still hurt. Boo Hoo. I could have still done it. I think my main mistake is way until later at night to even think about doing it. My schedule is all messed up and i've been waking up way too later. It doesn't help that my computer has been COMPLETELY messed up and i've been trying to fix it for 3 days straight AND work crazy hours. Luckily my computer is now running fine, but I fell behind in my regular work.

Ok, so Tuesday I was supposed to get a workout in. I skipped it and I didn't even feel guilty about it. I remember thinking though for a moment that this could be the start of someone stopping for good. That's how it all starts. To make matter really worse I needed some serious food at 4am just when my work was getting finished. I went to IHOP and got a Spinach & Mushroom omlette and a side of two pancakes. I ate half the omlette and BOTH of the pancackes. Both with Syrup. I confessed to my mom about this and her reply was "Big Deal!". It IS a big deal. The omlette had a lot of cheese in it and it came with some unhealthy sauce. I bet it was 800 calories and 40g of fat in one sitting.

At least i'm now getting back on schedule. I went to bed early on Tuesday night and woke up early. Went to lunch and had some healthy noodles, but later found out they just made me sleepy. Stupid Rice noodles. Strike that off my list of foods to eat. Wheat noodles is the only way to go. I went shopping at the mall and got some exercise just walking around, but on the way home I was so extremely sleepy.

I came home and immediately did a workout. It lasted about an hour and I got dinner after that.

It's 2:37am now, but I need to go to bed and wake up early. I need to be up for the Fedex truck. They are deliverying some memory for my computer. I had 4 1gb sticks in my computer and somehow the latest two were causing problems yet they were the exact same type, model and brand. My hard drive ended up being bad also.

So i'm now back on track and will stay there no matter what. Two days off is not good.

Windows 7 problems fixed?

2009-10-25T18:25:00.000-07:00

It turns out the crashes i've been having might not be software related at all. It was really hard to recreate the crashes and they just happened at random. When one crash came, I could then right click my desk and explorer would crash and need to be restarted. It seemed like it only occured after I was using my computer for a long time and when I finally thought it was fixed. It was not overheating. My heatsink on my video card never gets hot and the inside of my case stays fairly cool. Turns out the voltage increase doesn't really matter after all.

I swapped out all 4gb of my OCZ memory for some Corsair memory. The Windows experience memory scored a 5.5 with 4gb of OCZ ram. Immediately when I put in the 4gb of Corsair it shot up to 7.1! Exactly the same specs. Something funny was going on, yet all ram tests passed previously. My memory just starting dying out. However that happens.

The ram was $155 at Best Buy. 4gb Dual Channel (2gbx2) of DDR2 800. I checked online and I could get it for $90, but shipping for next day is $22. I don't mind paying $50 more to have it TODAY. If I only get the free or 3day shipping i'd have to go without a computer for 3-5 days. No thanks. Best Buy's memory is quite expensive.

So this Windows 7 upgrade was not pain free. My memory was bad or just acting up. I'm hoping I don't have any more crashing. I'm really getting tired of it. I've wasted three days trying to fix this. It's just almost impossible to have Windows crashing this much. Not even software issues really cause this bad of a problem..usually.

Almost skipped another workout

2009-10-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

I was so close to skipping my 2nd day in a row of my workout. I've just been so frustrated with getting my computer back up and running and I had a list a mile long of things to do. That's no excuse. It's not going to kill me to workout.

I needed a break from all this computer repair that I just went upstairs and did my workout. I was extremely surprised to see I could lift more weight then I could previously. Maybe that's my body telling me I need to split my workout up a little more. Perhaps my upper body needs more recovery time. I need to come up with a better workout plan so that I still do a workout every other day.

Anyway, I just ran Prime95 on my computer as a "stress test" to see if it's going to crash. Zero problems so far and that's very good news.

Now back to work!

Windows 7 very frustrating

2009-10-23T20:16:00.000-07:00

What a pain this has been. Windows 7 has been crashing non-stop. Sometimes I feel like it hasn't gone 10 minutes without a crash. It's something new every time. Here's what i've tried.

Scanned hard drive and memory for errors.
Updated all drivers, even if they "looked" ok.

Flash would crash Youtube videos in ANY browser. I fixed that problem somehow after using the latest Microsoft updates. It seemed to work after that.

Removed any connected hardware just to be safe.

I did some research and someone suggested increasing the default Northbridge voltage by just one notch. I did that and ran a prgram that caused my problems and it didn't crash. I don't know if this fixed it, but maybe. So far, Windows 7 has just been so unstable. It works perfectly on my laptop.

My power supply is good and my video card is a recent one. All hardware seems to be working fine. This also is a clean install. Hopefully I won't see any more errors. Unfortunately all these problems have ruined my day. I wasted a day trying to get back up and running. This was my day to get back to work.

If this doesn't fix it, I may swap out the video card and soundcard and see what happens next.

Windows 7 Installed

2009-10-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to two stores and nobody had Windows 7 for sale early. I instead went home and bought it off Microsoft's website for download. It feels funny paying so much for a download that's all in one 3gb file. Luckily it's an ISO file and I will back it up. I was too impatient to wait to get it in a store.

I went with Windows 7 Professional Upgrade since I never got any earlier version of Vista to work with my Raid 1 setup that were listed as 'dynamic disks'. Vista Home Premium would only list them as 'invalid', but under Vista business they were working fine.

Install loaded and sat there for like 5 minutes without it doing anything. A prompt finally came up and even on my 3ghz Quad Core it seemed to take forever to install. It almost felt like something was wrong with my hard drive. It's a 640gb 7200rpm WD drive. I don't use my computer enough to NEED an SSD drive at the moment, but it's tempting.

I did a clean install and thankfully Windows moved my Program Files directory and other old stuff to Windows.old. I would have really not wanted them to be kept there to interfere with the new Windows install.

The only thing out of the box it did not support was my Creative X-Fi card. I had to download some drivers and it worked fine.

The only major problem I had is that when I tried to check into my printer drivers, Explorer would crash. It took me awhile to get it working. It's a Brother HL-5140 laser printer from abotu 4 years ago. It still lists a duplicate "HL-5140" printer that I can't remove.

The worst problem by far was trying to get WinDVD 7.0 working. The setup can't even be run it's so old. I paid for this program about 3 years ago and I guess it's just not going to work. I found a link on Microsoft's website and upgraded to version 10 for half price. Around $50. I just prefer WinDVD over PowerDVD somehow. WinDVD is so bloated and it's just the most annoying program ever to install, remove etc. It's getting to be like Nero.

So I went to install WinDVD 10 and when it asks me to install Quicktime the program freezes up and I have to close the installer. I try to install it again and it says it's already installed!! It's not listed in Add/Remove programs and there is no uninstaller to be found. I had to manually remove all of the Corel/WinDVD directories and about 500 entries in the registry. Had to search for 'WinDVD' and 'Corel'. What a pain. After that the installer worked.

While I was having so many problems my mouse stopped working. I tried 4 different batteries and still nothing. I tried a 5th battery and it started working. I guess it needed one that was 100% full.

So far I've had a few crashes in windows 7. Explorer crashed about half a dozen times total. Once I even got Task Manager to lock up. I did a log off somehow and then it froze. I rebooted and my mouse again wouldn't work and then my Wallpaper was gone. Strange.

Everything seems to be working fine right now. Maybe I shouldn't have gone with the 64-bit version. Who knows. I'm surprised Dreamweaver 8 and Quicken 2007 worked ok. Dreamweaver would crash a lot under Vista, hopefully it doesn't in Windows 7.

So far it's a LOT faster then Vista. Almost feels like I just got a faster computer.

free day (Sunday)

2009-10-19T00:07:00.000-07:00

On Friday night I made a HUGE mistake of staying up all night. I was so engrossed in this new video game that I couldn't put it down. Eventually I started seeing light outside and the sound of birds. Oops! I finally went to sleep and had a hard time getting going when I woke up.

At 8pm I watched the Yankees game and that got over at like 1:00am or 1:30am. I can't remember. After that I did my workout and it was already 3:30am!! I didn't want to stay up forever again so I took a Tylenol PM. A workout and Tylenol PM can't be a good combination. I ended up getting enough sleep and Sunday was my free day!

I got on the scale on Sunday morning and I lost 4 1/2 pounds!! This is the most i've ever lost in three months of working out. I must have not eaten enough or worked out extra hard. That made my day and i'm so glad I didn't skip the workout at 2am the night before.

The only mistake I made this week is that at 8pm on one day I ate way too many chips & salsa. I just felt really guilty afterwars. It's only the 3rd bad thing i've done in 3 months, so i'm not going to beat myself up over it and get back on track.

Sunday was my free day and I should have skipped it, but I really did need it. We had pizza and after that I walked around at the mall for a long time just shopping. At the bookstore I was tempted for a few seconds to get a latte or a scone, but passed on it. A latte with sugar free syrup is the worst thing in the world to me.

I also calculated how much protein I really need for my lean body mass. I need about 200g per day. That's a heck of a lot. It's not too bad if I split it up into 5 meals. I may just go down lower just to be safe. I don't want to overdo my protein intake. I read somewhere that the body can't really use more then 50g all at one meal. Not sure if this is true or not. 300g a day sounds really bad on the body. I don't want to overdo the protein since I still have a lot of body fat to lose.

I tried on my size 38 pair of pants again. They felt a lot more lose then they previously were. If I keep it up I may get into them by November. I think for every pant size I drop I might buy ONE sugary food item. I want to forget what sugary food tastes like, but it might be a nice thing to reward myself with. I just want to devour some massive chocolate chip cookie. The ones at Barnes & Noble are perfect. That's like one bad thing every few months. I'll end up just skipping this reward anyway probably, but it'd be nice. I'm just glad I forget what junk food tastes like.

Time flies

2009-10-14T19:59:00.000-07:00

I've been doing really well with my weight loss. Today i'm taking a day off of my weight training due to muscle soreness. I really need it.

Today I ate ok, but I didn't eat enough protein during the day and forgot to take my vitamins. My nose is runny all of a sudden too. I need to stay warm and don't do something stupid like run down to the store without a coat!

I went outside today twice without a coat and then ran down to Subway for some food without a coat. Ever since I got back my nose has been runny. Not good!

I also cleaned my house today and bought Uncharted 2 for my PS3. I lost another few pounds on the scale this morning but I still can't fit into my size 38 pants. Maybe soon.

Starting last week i've been having a ton of energy ALL day. Not FAKE energy from eating certain foods or pop. It usually lasts me all day and I just need to make sure to keep eating regularly.

I've been trying to remember which foods make me feel like crap and which ones give me energy and actually make me feel good. I've found that most highly processed foods make me feel sluggish and just tired. I ate some simple whole wheat crackers yesterday and they made me feel really tired all of a sudden. The same thing happens when I eat any kind of past made with white flour. Or really sugary cereal. Currently my favorite thing for breakfast is shredded wheat with 1 packet of raw sugar and some 1% milk. It's not a sugar overdose and it gives me a lot of energy as long as I don't put a lot of milk on it.

Yesterday I had so much energy that I worked 12 hours! When it was time for bed nearly 19 hours later I still wasn't feeling super sleepy like I usually do. I've been staying up way too late lately and it's got to stop!

I now notice a huge increase in how I feel when doing certain things.

When i'm cleaning my house for a long time I don't get as tired as quickly as I would in the past.
When i'm shopping I feel as if I can walk around the mall non-stop all day without getting tired. When I was overweight and out of shape i'd seriously get tired after walkings the length of the fall from start to end and back. Not that tired, but you know what I mean. Pretty sad really.
I used the threadmill the other day for the first time in years and I was amazed and how long I could run. I usually started gasping for breath when it gets really tough, but what stopped my running is that my calves felt like they were going to explode. It was even tough to walk up the stairs after that. Strangely they didn't hurt the next day.

I'm also sleeping much better and I don't have any back pain in the morning. I think the back exercises have helped.

The newest thing i'm doing is Military Presses without the machine. This helps a lot. If I lift too much weight it makes me feel like i want to pass out. Not really, but it's just hard to describe. I'm not sure why this is the only exercise that makes me feel this way. Military Presses while standing up feels as if it's working out my entire upper body. I can feel it in at least 3 different areas of my body. I need to try to do more exercises that work a lot of different areas of my body. Maybe deadlifts or something like that. I first need to get another barbbell for that. The one I got is just junk. It's curved in the middle and just is a pain to use.

My goal was November 3rd I think to get back into decent shape and back to my old weight. Getting back to my original weight that soon was an impossible goal, but I set it for that anyway. I just need to keep working out as hard as I can. My last workout somehow took me 1 1/2 hours. Oops! No wonder i'm sore 2 days later! I try to go for 40-60 minutes every other day. I use a smith machine and regular free weights.

Wow, it's been a week already?!

2009-10-04T21:59:00.000-07:00

Time flies. It seems like it's only been a few days.
I took my free day this week on Friday instead of Sunday. My mom and I invited our brother, wife and kids out to Pizza, but they couldn't make it. Since we were really looking forward to getting pizza anyway, we went without them. The problem is, is that it was the least healthy pizza we could have possibly gotten. It had a ridiculous amount of cheese on it and the crust was very thick. Luckily it was whole wheat crust. It was an ok pizza. What's stupid is that it cost $16.99 as the base price and each topping was $1.89 and we got four. I like paying extra for good pizza, but that's overpriced. Luckily the service was good despite them being extremely busy.

It's getting hold outside now. I haven't turned on my heat yet, but I should. I instead, heat only the rooms i'm in with a space heater. I found a really good one. It's a long space heater that has a remote. It's completely silent and only cost me $50. I was so impressed with it that I purchased a second for upstairs. In the morning it was 61 degrees in my house and I had slept with an electric blanket so I didn't feel cold.

Getting into working out was a pain. I had to wear some shorts in the freezing cold, but once I got going I was fine.

This week I lost another 2 1/2 pounds! Can't wait to fit into a size 38 pair of pants. The ones i'm wearing now are very lose and my current shirt size feels too big.

Didn't eat many bad things this week at all. I bought a "Protein Bar" that looked healthy and had a lot of protein in it. I ate it and it was loaded with sugar. I felt like I was eating a candy bar. It only had 15g of sugar, but it felt like it had triple that. Some Special-K bar. I also had a pretzel at the movie theater without cheese. They coat it with oil I think to make the salt stick. Out of everything they have it's the best thing I could have eaten there..maybe.

Hard to get going today

2009-09-28T20:42:00.000-07:00

This morning I felt fine, but woke up a bit late. Instead of having breakfast I instead went out to lunch with my mom. I had some whole wheat noodles along with a cucumber/tomato salad. After about two hours later I felt really tired for some reason. I had work to do and just could not get into it for some reason. So at 7pm here I was not even having done any work (I work at home) and i'm falling asleep and still need to do my workout.

I went out for some food (2nd time in one day, which is rare!) and then picked up a few things at the store and felt fine. I immediately came home and did my workout. I swear I am absolutely never ever going to skip another workout.

I also picked up a size 38 pair of pants. They don't fit yet, but maybe they will soon? If I lose another half an inch I think they will fit fine. So far i've gone from a size 46 to a 40. Not bad.

skipped another day (my 2nd)

2009-09-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

My back was in a lot of pain and i'm not sure why. It could be due to one of the exercises I was doing or sleeping funny on my bed. I just know that it hurt to reach down and get up from a seated position. I could have done a workout but just decided to rest my back.

This week I did eat something bad. I overate for the first time ever in 2 months. I went down to the store and got some chips and salsa for a snack. My goal was to just eat a handful of chips and be done.

I got the baked tortilla chips and they were really nasty. I ended up eating way more then a handful and felt really guilty afterwards. What's even worse is that this replaced an entire meal. That was a mistake.

This week I probably lost about 2 1/2 lbs. I got on the scale today and was down 1.5lbs. Earlier in the week I was down a little bit as well. Maybe it's time for me to buy some size 38 jeans! So far i've never been able to wear size 36 jeans before. 38 is pretty good for only two months! Two months and 10 days so far!

Unfortunately i'm not making any huge gains in the amount of weight I can lift. I need to figure out a good strategy to increase the weight I lift. whatever i'm doing isn't working all that well.

Tomorrow is my free day and i'll take it. I need it.

Oh yeah since I skipped my 2nd day I got up very early the next morning and immediately worked out. I ate breakfast beforehand and it just made me feel so sleepy FAST. I ate some 1% milk with shredded wheat (plain). I don't know why this happened. I did have 2 small packets of raw sugar on it and maybe that's why. In total it was about 10g of sugar added. With the milk maybe 20g total. Today I just bought some oatmeal instead and will switch to that instead of cereal maybe.

2009-09-21T20:43:00.000-07:00

Last night something woke me up at 6:30am. It was a Raccoon trying to open my screen deck door. It kept banging against the inside door. I went out there and as fast as I could I pulled the door open and he took off running. I went to get some food from the fridge and within 3 minutes there he was again. I again opened the door being as loud as I could and I banged against the side of the door with my hand to scare him even more. Luckily he did not come back that morning.

Despite this, I got a good night's sleep. Somehow it was extremely hot all night. I don't know why. I woke up and went out and had a good breakfast and came home to work. I'm still not done, but it takes me several days to finish it all. I ate healthy all day. I had an ISOPure 40g protein drink and i'm feeling extremely tired right now. I probably just need more food.

At about 7pm I finished enough work to take a break. My plan was to go out and get some healthy food and come back and get a workout in. I was very hungry and wondered how I'd get a workout in. I just knew that once I ate something i'd be fine. I went about a half hour longer without food then I should have. Lately the 6" Veggie Patty subs have not been filling me up lately. I'm usually hungry an hour later. Not sure why this is all of a sudden.

Today my calves were in a lot of pain. It just felt funny to walk and stand up after sitting down for a long time. They're feeling fine now though luckily.

More progress

2009-09-19T14:50:00.001-07:00

Working out last time at 2am was a huge mistake. I have absolutely NO excuse for delaying my workout until then. I need to just go in there and do it no matter what.

On my next scheduled workout I took the day off. I did not feel like I had skipped a day since i've been considering working out 3 days a week instead of 4. Why? It seems like I lose more weight this way since I have more time to recover. I probably won't do this. I might makes some changes so that i'm doing my upper body on one day and then the lower body the next day.

Something else strange happened last night. I ended up going to bed at 3am or somewhere around there. At 10am I got a phone call and missed it. I immediately went right back to bed and my mom called to see if I wanted to go to the store with her. Guess what time it was? 2:30pm! I had slept from 3am until 2:30PM!!

I've had this occur in the past when I was working really long hours at work AND weight training. It's rare buy once in awhile when i'm really involved with weight training I sleep 12 hours without waking up once! This is usually when I know I don't need to work in the morning.

After I got back I downloaded a few new albums off of Itunes. It was tempting to just let them download and sit around. I instead just got up and listened to my old music instead of waiting.

My progress has been going very well. For a couple weeks it felt like I wasn't losing anything on the scale, but I was still losing fat. So far i'm down THREE PANT SIZES in 2 months and 4 days!

I purchased a smaller then normal size pair of pants a few weeks ago and they were so tight that I could barely button them. Obviously I didn't wear them and said to myself "How am I going to ever fit in these?!". Well a few days ago I finally could! They were a little tight, but perfectly good enough to wear.

My workout today went very well. It was the hardest one i've had in awhile. Instead of squats, this time I did some calf raises. I couldn't go past 20 reps on each set and my calves were burning. Hopefully I can walk tomorrow! I need to focus on my biceps and calves the most right now. Maybe add in some ab crunches.

My diet over the past 2 months has been basically the same every day. I don't count calories at all. I eat when i'm hungry and always try to eat a protein with a carb. Here's a few general things I like to do:

1) Never go without food or skip meals. I don't like the idea of eating 6 meals a day. I think about that and it sounds 10x worse then it really does. I just like to think of it as 3 meals a day and 2-3 small snacks. My meals are fairly small. At every meal I eat a protein with a carb and also eat a ton of vegetables.

2) I avoid as many highly processed foods as I can. If I do eat pasta for some reason it's always the whole wheat variety. I also tend to not eat a lot of bread. If I do eat bread, the heavier it is the better in most cases. Most wheat bread seems to be just white bread in disguise.

3) I don't eat any cheese of any kind or even nuts. Why? No reason and i'm sure it's perfectly ok and healthy to eat a handful of nuts daily. I don't.

4) Oatmeal (steel cut is the best type) is the best, but if I eat cereal it's usually the kind that has a lot of fiber and protein without a lot of sugar.

5) I don't eat yogurt at all. With me, if I eat one, I'm instantly craving another. The plain kind doesn't do this to me.

6) On some cereal that does taste bad I do sometimes put one package of Raw sugar on it. I'm not going to beat myself up over 5g of sugar.

7) Unfortunately I do drink a lot of beverages with fake sugar. I need to stop really. Maybe removing them from a diet will actually help with fat loss? Makes me wonder.

8) Lots of fruit and veggies. In the past I skipped out on 90% of fruit due to the sugar. This time around it's one thing I will NEVER give up. I buy a lot of those pre-cut fruit packages they sell at stores. I love melon and my 2nd favorite is Ugli Fruit! I limit myself to 1 portion of fruit a day. 2 if it's an Apple.

9) My most consumed item is a...veggie patty. I know i'm weird, but they taste good to me and I don't eat meat. I often get a 6" veggie patty at Subway on wheat without oil or cheese. It's pretty healthy. Burger King also has them, but they add Mayo.

10) I still eat out a lot, but it's all healthy. I stick with three types of foods when I eat out. Veggie Burritos with black beans and rice, fake meat products and whole wheat noodles. I just realized that the Veggie Burritos I eat have white flour tortillas. Not a big deal I guess.

11) I take ONE free day a week to eat whatever I want at ONE meal. I avoid sugary foods on my free day because they're empty calories and I just want to forget what they taste like. On my free day I eat 3-4 pieces of Pizza and have no regrets about doing this. I REALLY look forward to this day and it keeps me on track. I once disliked the ideas of free days, but as long as it's one meal, it's ok with me.

12) I drink a protein shake or eat cottage cheese before going to bed. I prefer the ready to drink Myoplex shakes, but they're very expensive. They're not really good for drinking before going to bed, but they don't keep me awake. I think cottage cheese is the absolute best thing to eat before bed if working out.

13) I now take vitamins daily. I like the GNC "Mega Men" vitamins.

14) My late night snack is veggies, fruit or even 98% fat free popcorn. I avoid all those expensive protein bars as much as I can. My favorite is the Nature's Path "Goji Moji" bar found at nearly every Wal-Mart. It's not really a protein bar, but it just mostly fruit and nuts. They look disgusting, but they taste really good!

15) I don't eat any meat, but maybe a few times a month i'll eat eggs. I do drink milk though. A few years back when I was losing weight I limited myself to skinless Chicken Breast. I was never much of a beef or fish eat. Maybe Tuna Fish, Mahi Mahi and lean Hamburger.

16) I avoid pretty much ALL fried foods. A couple times a month I'll have some eggs (usually without the yolk) and some chips and Salsa. I sure do miss Onion Rings!

17) Overall, the thing I avoid the most is white flour. It just makes me sleepy so fast. I don't know why. Second would be sugary foods unless it's fruit.

18) I try to avoid any salad dressing that is not fat free. The "Lite Italian" has like 15g of fat sometimes!

More progress

2009-09-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

Last night at about 6pm I was so extremely sleepy. I tried to eat some food to keep me going, but I was so tired that I laid down on my bed and fell asleep. What's strange is that I don't even know for sure if I actually fell asleep or not. I ended up getting up and looking at the clock and it was 11:30pm!! I had to still do my workout!

So here I am half asleep and I get ready for my workout. I sit down "real quick" to find some good music to listen to on my new ipod touch. I browse around and get up finally and look at the clock. 2am! There's NO WAY i could have sat there for that long.

So here I was working out at 2am! I get done at 3am and go shopping! I picked up a few things at the store and fall asleep when I get home.

It was that ONE day a week where I just felt like all energy was gone. I was just so extremely drained of energy. My mistake was that earlier in the day I only had soup and salad for lunch. That was not enough for me.

I also lost another 2 1/2 pounds this week!

Today I tried on new pants and guess what? They fit and I could actually wear them! It's now been 2 months and 2 days and i'm down THREE pant sizes!

new Ipod Touch

2009-09-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

My mom bought my an Ipod Touch this week as a gift since my weight loss/training is going so well.

Apple released the new 3rd gen version this week and I went to Best Buy to see if they had any. It turns out they had the old 2nd gen on sale. The 16gb version was $216 and the 32gb was out of stock. I went with the 16gb and eventually took it back and went to another Best Buy store and ended up getting the 32gb version for only $27 more. The Ipod Touch 32gb 2nd gen version ended up only costing about $247 or so. Not bad considering Sam's is still selling them for $399!

I did a lot of research before deciding why I should go with the 2nd gen over the 3rd gen version:

a) I don't really need the upgraded CPU. I only plan on playing movies, music and an occasional game.
b) The 2nd gen version has better battery life
c) It's on sale!
d) The new firmware can be purchased

Obviously, if the 2nd gen is not on sale, the 3rd gen is best for most people. It's too bad they didn't drop the 8gb in the lineup and start with 16gb. Discontinuing the 16gb version was a mistake I think.

I also picked up some blue-tooth headphones for it. I was actually surprised that the sound quality was pretty decent. The only problem is that the bass is overpowering, so I had to use the "Bass Reducer" setting. I guess these days, more bass is always better. Not to me! I tested them and could walk about 30-35 feet before the sound cut out. In the hour i've used them so far I haven't had any cutoffs. They're the Motorola S9-HD headphones. There is a previous version that's less expensive, but I think this are probably much better. You can get them online for about $65. I just bought them locally to save on shipping.

It's too bad that the Ipod touch doesn't allow the headphones to skip tracks. Not a big deal though.

free day

2009-09-13T12:55:00.000-07:00

Still no missed days after that last one and still no bad food luckily, except for on my 1 free day a week. Every Sunday my mom and I go to Pizza Hut and I usually get a few pieces of Pizza. This week we made the mistake of getting the pan pizza. It's good, but for someone trying to lose weight it has too much carbs and fat of course. It's too bad they got rid of their multigrain crust. We always liked that. I'm not a fan of plain white flour and avoid it when I can. When eating bread, the heavier it is, the better! It's amazing how many types of wheat bread are out there, but are really just white bread in disguise.

I also checked my weight on Saturday and I was down another 3.5lbs!! I still haven't been able to fit into my pants that are 3 sizes lower then when I started, but maybe soon. If I dropped 3 pants sizes in two months that'll be pretty impressive to me. In total, my guess is that i've lost 25-30lbs so far. Sadly, I only have a guess as to what I started at. Who cares when i've dropped almost 3 pant sizes!

first missed day

2009-09-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

I have to admit it. I skipped my first workout day. Previously I had missed a few days, but it was due to severe pain. On Monday I felt a bit sore, but could have worked out. I was so tired that I went to bed at 9am. I couldn't sleep so I woke up at 10:40pm and ate some food and watched some TV. I really felt so bad about skipping my workout. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

On Tuesday I went out to Breakfast/lunch and immediately came home and did my workout. I managed to add another 10lbs to the squats. It's not a big deal, but it felt like I was lifting a car 7 times. I couldn't do it a dozen times, but I wanted to. Something told me that I should stop at 7 and if I tried any more, you'd be sorry. I pretty much was nearly positive I could not do a 8th rep anyway.

Today I also had a thought pop up in my head. Something reall small like how skipping workouts is how people just stop working out, get off track and never finish trying to lose weight/fat. I don't want that, so i'll be sure to never skip any more workouts unless i'm in severe pain.

I think I need to make a new routine to do upper body on one day and lower on the next day.

2 1/2 lbs down (no muscle loss hopefully)

2009-09-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I was so extremely tired for some reason. It was one of those days of the week where I was pretty much drained of all energy and tired. I get one of those a week no matter what it seems. It's usually during the weekend.

I was falling asleep almost at 4pm and got a call asking if I wanted to go out and eat. I went to Ihop and got something somewhat healthy. Yes, IHOP now has some healthy food. I got the Grain and Nut Healthy Combo with sugar free syrup. After this I felt a bit better although I came home a few hours later and put off my workout forever.

Half asleep I finally did my workout at midnight. NOT good! After that I had a meal replacement drink and something else. I tried to go to bed and it was extremely difficult. I ended up waking up at 6am and turned on my fan and somehow fell asleep until 11:20am! In total I slept about 10 1/2 hours!! Before going to bed I had about 60g of protein. That's a bit too much to say the least!

Strangely in the morning I was extremely sore. I usually don't get this sore until my 2nd day of recovery. I have a feeling that maybe it's my body trying to recover faster then normal. Who knows.

I got on the scale in the morning and guess what? Down another 2 1/2 lbs!! I used the Sunday for a free day and had some pizza. I work really hard for that all week. After dinner I went to see the movie "Food Inc". It's not bad, but really didn't learn much new since i've seen "King Korn", "The Real Dirt on Farmer John" and similar movies. "King Korn" was by far my favorite of all three.

I also tried a pair of pants that were three sizes down from my original size. They fit but are extremely tight and of course I don't wear them! It's hard to believe that in a few weeks i'll be wearing them and they'll fit perfectly! Yes, i'm weird and buy clothes before they actually fit!

good day

2009-09-04T21:37:00.001-07:00

Overall, today was a good day. It felt like it wouldn't end though for some reason.

I woke up again right around 10:50am. That's not too bad considering I stay up pretty late. I immediately got ready and drove to get my haircut. I again when to two places and each place had about 5 or 6 people ahead of me! I went to the mall and got a haircut and not one person was in line, but they had like 6 people cutting hair. It's too bad it cost like $26 for a stupid haircut. I guess i'm cheap. They normally cost me like $15 or so.

After that I stopped off at my mom's house to see if she wanted to go out to lunch. Went out to lunch and made a few stops at some stores and came home. I immediately started my work at about 2pm and worked non-stop until about 10pm. I did take a quick lunch though. At 10pm I had to drop off some things at the post office and noticed online that District 9 was playing. Since I needed a break I went to the movie. I got there 20 minutes late, but I had already seen the movie twice, so it was no big deal. I only missed maybe 5 minutes. It's still just as good the 3rd time as it was the first.

I'm recovering from my workout yesterday and no soreness at the moment. Hopefully in the morning i'm fully healed and can start back up with my workout.

Ok, off to bed!

The Human Condition Criterion DVD

2009-09-03T21:28:00.000-07:00

today just seemed like a long day of work and I didn't work. It seemed like I did a ton of things today though.

I woke up at 10:50am and had the best sleep i've had in several weeks. I ate some fiber one cereal for breakfast and after that went down to my computer and did some work for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. I suddenly just felt extremely sleepy. I don't know if it was the cereal and it having too much sugar or what. I only had a cup and a half maybe with some skim milk. I don't think it was because I didn't eat enough.

I actually then went into my bedroom and took a nap for a half hour! NOT good. I was a bit sore still from the workout previously on Tuesday. I didn't actually fall asleep but had to convince myself to get going.

It seemed like I had a list a mile long of things I had to do that day. I got up and had something to give me a bit more energy and did my workout. It took about 40 minutes. On squats I did about 40lbs more then I normally do, but I only manage to do 2 sets of 8 reps. I'll do better next time.

After this I took a shower and left my house. Tried to go get a haircut, but the two places I tried had about four people waiting. I guess 4pm is a bad time. I'll try again on Friday.

I then went to my mom's house and we went to Meijer for a few things and then to the bookstore and mall in Battle Creek. I picked up my favorite movie of all time.. "The Human Condition" Criterion DVD. I was planning on pre-ordering it, but I was shocked to see it sitting there on the shelf and it doesn't even come out until the 8th of September! Lucky me. It's a 9 1/2 hour Japanese movie. I last saw it maybe 10 years ago and have been trying to find it since then. They had it on DVD for awhile, but eventually they were so hard to find that each one was selling for $150+ on amazon marketplace etc. It cost me $80 (it's basically like 3 movies in one), but it's going to be worth every penny.

Back on track finally

2009-09-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

This was not NOT good and it really hurt to skip so many days, but I absolutely had to.
So on Friday I screwed myself up when weight lifting. I had to take off Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. On Monday I was about 90% healed, but wanted to be 100% when doing my next workout.

The good news is that when I had finally checked my scale I was down 3.5lbs!!! Not only that but my my pants were loose. I had lost the two pant sizes and now need to go back down another size I think! Unfortunately my shirt size is the same. I can't wait until I can wear a Large shirt again.

On Friday I was sore, but on each additional day I kept getting more sore, yet I was taking in a lot of healthy food, protein and a ton of water.

On Saturday I went to GNC and picked up some vitamins and Myoplex. To be honest I hate the taste of it, but it's drinkable. I always prefer the "Ready to Drink" kind, but it's twice as expensive.

After work today I did my first workout after having to take off a few days due to extreme pain. It went really well and I was able to lift the same amounts I previously could. No gains yet from the last workout, but that's ok.

It hasn't even been 2 months and I may have already lost 3 pant sizes. Pretty good to me. Strangely there is not a huge loss on the scale every week, so I think i'm gaining muscles also.

disappointed (can't workout)

2009-08-28T20:39:00.000-07:00

Something strange is going on. On one workout day I made some HUGE gains in the amount of weight I could lift. I took a rest day and got right to work on my next workout. As mentioned before earlier on this workout I could not lift my regular weight. I didn't feel sore at all, so I don't know why this was. Maybe I was after all and my body obviously had not fully recovered.

On my rest day after that workout I was really sore. Today I'm in some really bad pain. My entire upper body is extremely sore and it aches so bad. My entire upper body. Every single area. The most pain is in my neck and shoulder. It hurts really bad when I look right or left and even move my head. It's not extreme pain, but just enough to know that it'd be extremely stupid for me to workout. I woke up and something was all wrong. I couldn't be in THAT much pain.

I workout every other day without taking off more then one day. It's 4 days a week for about an hour. Sometimes I can get done in 30-40 minutes. Maybe I need to make some changes and split the workout up so i'm only do my upper body on one workout and the lower the next. Maybe 3 days a week is required instead of four.

Luckily in 45 days this is the only the second time i've been in so much pain that i've had to skip a workout. I'd like to force myself to do it, but that will be just plain stupid and asking for major trouble.

do the workout FIRST, not later

2009-08-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

I'm so mad at myself tonight. I had the night off and made the mistake of sitting at my computer forever and ignoring my workout. First 10pm, came and then 11 and then 12. At 12:30am I said to myself "How am I ever going to get through this". As if THAT was any major challenge. It's just that I was tired and my energy from my previous meal wore off.

I ate a little food and went to workout. I was shocked to find out that I could only do 4 reps of the weight I could do a whole 12 on for my last workout. I was thinking to myself..is it that my body is still sore and that my muscles still need time to recover? I don't know. It's not due to lack of energy. I was just in disbelief. I tried again and couldn't even do another 4. I lowered it by 10lbs and couldn't even manage a set of 12. Something was going on and I don't know what.

I did the french press and had problems even getting that to 12 reps as well. Same with the military press. This has NEVER EVER happened before and my body didn't feel sore really.

Strangely after my first exercise my arms were burning and felt like jello. Maybe I need more recovery time. I did make huge gains on my last workout day.

For about 5 seconds I had the urge to skip squats. I did not and would not, but the idea came up. I started higher then usual and manage to do 12 full reps! 10 more lbs then I could previously lift. It was tough, but I did a whole 12 reps. Whenever I do squats I immediately need to sit down and catch my breath. Those and Military Presses are the exercises I find the hardest. I tried a second set of the same weight and couldn't even do 6 reps. I felt my muscles about ready to go and I just barely got the weight back up before falling.

I did not do bicep curls though. Most likely I wouldn't be able to lift a single 25lb barbell I was so weak from the previous exercises!

Later on I had a side salad from Burger King. You know what doesn't make sense to me is how a fast food place can offer healthy items like Garden Burgers, Apples and Salad and then for dressing NOT even offer low calorie or FAT FREE dressing! The dressing they gave me had 25g of FAT!! No thanks! This was something "Lite". Lite how?

I mentioned this earlier but the new pants I got a week ago are getting loose already. I need to buy one more lower pant size I guess! I got on the scale today and I was down a half a pound. It said my body fat percentage was down also.

Slow weight loss

2009-08-24T12:17:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit frustrated lately about my slow weight loss on the SCALE. In two weeks I haven't seen anything change on the scale. Maybe I need a new scale or maybe i'm gaining muscle so fat. I know for sure that i'm eating well. As I mentioned in my previous post I will use a measuring tape in addition to checking the scale. This will keep me going. My goal is to gain muscle AND lost fat.

I did get on the scale today in the morning and lost 1.5LBS since last week after all. I probably gained some muscle as well, so i'm not sure what's going on. 1.5LBS is low, but better then nothing. I can actually SEE my muscle gains, so that alone is good enough. I'm putting in a huge effort when I workout and each and every day i'm getting stronger and can lift more.

Early

2009-08-22T14:12:00.001-07:00

Today I did my workout early instead of waiting around all day and perhaps running out of energy and not wanting to do it later. I think it takes me about 40 minutes to do the workout, but I think it might take as long as an hour. I've made a lot of gains in the amount of weight I can lift now.

I'm worried about FAT loss though. I'm dropping pant sizes but not much is changing on the scale. I'm not eating a ton of food, but enough to gain muscle and maybe lose some FAT.

I think what I need to do is stop drinking Diet Pop and drink a ton of water. That should help a lot.

Starting tomorrow I will keep a notebook and take measurements of the following with a fabric measuring tape:

2" above navel
at navel
2" below
Left and Right Thigh
Left and Right Bicep
Chest

I did this before in the past and it really helps me keep going when i've not lost anything on the scale but lost something off the tape measure.

I think everything is going fine. I'm 100% positive i'm gaining muscle, so that will eventually help me burn off fat. I can't think of a ton of things I can improve on. Perhaps drink more water and be absolute sure to not eat too much fat. A couple of the meals i've had this week had 16g of FAT in them. Nothing too terrible, but I just need to check every single label if I use any boxed food. I mostly like to eat plainly as possible when I can.

Mistakes

2009-08-21T14:51:00.001-07:00

Yesterday my whole body was sore due to a workout from 2 days before. I decided to wait awhile and let myself rest before starting up again. Well this was a mistake because I got too involved with what I was doing and didn't get finished with it until 11pm. At about that time I decided to get back on the computer "really quick" and it took until midnight. I didn't want to work out but I knew I would do it no matter what.

Started my workout at midnight and yet again it felt like the hardest workout I did yet. Each and every exercise except for one I added more weight. I did not add any more plates to the French Press. I tried, but failed it even do one rep!!

I read yesterday somewhere that Chocolate Milk was one of the best cheap after workout drinks. I think i'll stick with my Protein Powder and some Milk. Unfortunately I can't stomache drinking Protein Power with water. I may try it with some water and heavy cream (for the fat).

I didn't have enough to eat last night, so in the morning I felt like I was completely drained of all energy. I ran out of pretty much all my regular foods and had to go grocery shopping.

November is getting closer and closer. I don't know if my goal is possible, but I don't even care. I'm going to lose as much fat as I can by November 2nd. If i'm only halfway to my goal, that's still pretty good. My goal was set way to high to be honest.

2009-08-19T22:01:00.000-07:00

My new size of pants are getting loose already. That's very good news. I got on the scale after having no weight loss on sunday after a week (on the scale) and it showed that I had lost 2lbs. I don't care about weight loss on the scale. Sometimes it lies.

So far i've had no missed days still. Strangely it seems that each new workout is tougher then the previous. My last workout on Tuesday was the hardest one yet. I'm increasing my weight on each set by a lot. I've finally accidently dropped the bar for the first time ever. It was when doing squats and luckily it was behind me and the smith machine caught it so it didn't come crashing down on something.

The biggest gain i've made is on the military press. I've been able to increase the weight a lot. Not so much on the biceps curl though. I feel that the hardest exercises are by far the military press and squats. The squats make me want to pass out and after each set i'm out of breath and need to sit down immediately.

So far it's been 1 month and five days since I started eating better and working out. I can keep this up for sure.

no loss on scale today

2009-08-16T07:36:00.000-07:00

Did not lose any weight on the scale today after a week. I'm NOT at all worried and have seen this before. Back when I lost a ton of weight years ago i've seen a lot of days like this. I'd lose no weight on the scale, but on the fabric measuring tape I would notice a loss. I always figured I was gaining muscle, but it's hard to know for sure sometimes.

I was thinking for a second if there was something bad this week I ate. Not really. Nothing I feel really guilty about. I did have a pretzel at the theater last night and once this week I had a veggie burrito at Pancheros. Those things are probably 600 calories but I didn't eat it all. It's basically veggies, rice and beans. I've had a few microwavable dinners this week that had around 16g of fat in them, but that's about it. I've also eaten a bit more wheat bread then I normally do.

Not worried at all. I just need to stay on track. I also noticed a lot more muscle then normal. It just feels weird seeing so much new muscle. I'm not one that has always gained a lot of muscle. It'd be nice though. In the long run this muscle should help me burn off fat.

My pants are getting more loose, so that's good. I've lost 1 1/2 -2 pant sizes this week so that's perfectly good enough for me! Who can complain about that?

I'm still going to take my free reward day today. I didn't skip a workout at all this week. Not once since July 15th (ok I lied, one but I was injured and used the treadmill instead).

Down 2 pant sizes!

2009-08-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Wow, this is good news. On Monday I think it was I finally decided to get some new pants. I picked up some that were one pant size lower. I also figured id get some that were two sizes lower! I went home and tried the pants that were two sizes lower and they actually fit!! They were a bit tight, so I cant really wear them, but I just couldnt believe I could actually get them on!

Two pant sizes in one month. To me thats pretty impressive! I will keep it up since my scale still hurts to look at. I have such a looooong way to go.

This week has gone so fast. Pretty much worked every single day for long hours and just yesterday I got a small break.

2009-08-10T20:04:00.000-07:00

Can't believe how long I slept last night. I went to bed at about 3-4am and woke up at 10am. I turned on my fan since it was like 80+ in my house and went back to bed. I ended up waking up at 1pm somehow and got invited out to IHOP. Luckily they had some healthy meals. I had the "Grain & Nut Healthy Combo" or whatever it goes by. It's two pancakes (multi-grain? Doubt it) and egg substitute with some fruit. I ended up having it with sugar-free syrup. The fat content was a bit high, but that's alright. 20G isn't anything too terrible.

Came home and worked for awhile and what felt like an hour later it was already 8:21pm! Somehow I forgot to eat dinner and didn't even realize it!

Downstairs I was finally getting sleepy and that's what told me I had to eat something. Ate some food and did a workout. I was really not looking forward to working out. I knew i'd do it no matter what, but it's just that I wanted to focus on my work instead.

I did my workout and it took a long time to really get into it. I ended up getting some back pain after I did the Lat pulldowns. I did squats a few minutes later and could not finish them. I felt it would be incredibly stupid to finish them and that was like asking for problems. I'm worried how my back will feel tomorrow.

I'm going to do a few more hours of work and call it a day. I need to get up as early as possible to get a head start on my day.

2009-08-09T08:27:00.000-07:00

6lbs DOWN from last week!. I don't understand this. They say you can't lose more then 2lbs per week. I'm eating just fine and not starving myself. Probably at least 2000 calories a day. It might not just be fat. I don't think i'm losing muscle because I noticed i've gained a bit and get stronger each week.

Today is my free day. The only thing I did wrong recently is that last night before going to bed I had too much fruit and should have added some protein with it.

I think since July 15th ive lost about 15-20lbs. Still zero skipped days. Only one "bad" food on my non free day and that was a bag of M&Ms at the movie theater.

I think I can keep this up. My goal is 225 by October 27th or November 2nd. Can I do it?

2009-08-08T21:40:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been since wednesday that I posted last? I can't remember all that went on. I remember that on Thursday I was so busy that I somehow didn't start to do my workout until 10:40pm at night. Not good! Luckily I got it over with and went out for some healthy food after that since I was starving.

Saturday got here so far and it felt like I had worked out on Friday. Today I just could not believe it was already my day to do a workout! Doing it earlier in the day is so much better.

Today I did a workout before I sat down to take some time off to play video games. It was one of the hardest workouts i've done yet. I really put in a huge effort today. After that I played the new expansion of Fallout 3 called "Mothership Zeta".

Probably my least favorite Fallout 3 Expansion, but it's not that bad. Just really annoying for me to play it and I couldn't get into the story. My favorite by far was Point Lookout.

On Sunday I plan on taking a free day and eating my free day food. Pizza! Just a few pieces and that's all.

Oh yeah. On Friday night I went to a Birthday party. I passed on the Pizza, the birthday cake and beer. I ended up getting some take out food when I left. They had these veggie burgers made some local company called "Opes" or something like that. They were ok and that's about it.

need a break

2009-08-05T21:17:00.000-07:00

I really need to find some variety in what I eat. It's basically lots of cottage cheese, veggies, whole grain bread, fruit, tofu and veggie meat-less products such as garden burgers etc.

I'm not sure how on earth I stay full. Must be all the fiber I eat.

Woke up today and felt like all my energy was gone. My whole body was sore, but nothing too bad, just enough to know that I had worked out. I was so out of energy that I was almost too lazy to go make myself breakfast. I actually sat down for like a half hour after getting up. Maybe I need to eat a bit more before going to bed.

I got on the scale and lost 6lbs since I last checked!! Not bad! I don't want to make a big deal out of it since I have a long, long way to go. My pants also feel a lot more lose. I might need to drop a pant size by next week. I hope so! It takes some effort to keep my pants up with a belt! That's a good sign I need a different size. I hope it's just not my imagination.

My guess is that so far i've lost about 15-20lbs. I hope so. Every single day it feels as if my body is changing. All my muscles are just feeling strange. The goal of getting to my original weight seems too hard, but maybe it will work out today. I want to try and look again and imagine what that would be like. I only have until November 2nd. If I don't reach it, I will keep going.

I made another mistake recently. I bought some individual string cheese that was 3.5g of fat per serving. Well after my main course I ate like 3 of them that night. Not all at once. That was an extra 10.5g of fat I did NOT need. I ended up throwing them all out.

I also have been eating a lot of boxes of raisins. One per day. I think there are better options. For one box it's over 33g of carbs, pretty much all sugar. 30g of Sugar. Maybe I should just eat some other type of fruit. I need to find out how much sugar is in a bannana. Probably not much.

I'm so glad I don't eat that Subway Pizza now. It's 630 calories, but 100G of carbs!! I think that's too much for one meal. It's all white flour too I think. I guess 2 pieces would be ok on a free day.

I think from now on my free day is going to be 3 pieces of somewhat healthy pizza every weekend. Last week we got a multigrain veggie pizza at Pizza Hut. I really liked that and I could do much, much worse for a free meal as a reward. That will be something to look forward to.

I've been working non-stop all this week without a break. Like working and then going to bed. I NEED a break so bad. I'm looking forward to a day off to just sit around and play videos for several hours or watch some movies. Time away to do nothing. I haven't even gotten a chance to sit in my nice new recliner that I bought for more then a half hour.

2009-08-04T23:52:00.000-07:00

Got up monday morning and started working right away. Nothing special about monday, just work. Same thing as Tuesday pretty much.

On Tuesday I worked until 6:15pm and went out to get some food and came back and did a workout. It was the hardest workout ive done yet. I have a feeling im going to really sore tomorrow.

Have not eaten anything bad today.

I must confess

2009-08-02T22:47:00.001-07:00

I forgot to mention that on Friday I had something BAD. I did not care and I felt like it was ok. Once a week is ok and I can reward myself just a little, but I just need to stay on track.

At the movie theater I was in a hurry and went to the snack counter. What did I want? In a hurry I asked for some M&Ms. I ate an entire bag. In the car I was trying to decide what I wanted in there for a snack. I'm sure there was some low fat food I could have had. My plan was to get some tortilla chips without the nacho cheese. $4 for just chips? No thanks. I should not have gotten M&Ms. I wonder if a small popcorn without extra butter would have been better. Doubt it. I think "Twizzlers" would have been way better then M&Ms. I think they are low fat or close. Of course sometimes some fat is good to have in a carb.

I don't even crave junk food though so I can control what I eat. Maybe I needed something like this after doing well all week.

Luckily this is the only mistake i've made this week. I did not consider that my "reward" food I guess, but I cheated somewhat. On Sunday my "reward" was 3 small pieces of veggie pizza on multigrain bread. I even threw out the remaining pizza! To be honest, my body REALLY, REALLY needed this. I don't know why.

2009-08-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday did NOT go well. I woke up at 10:30am and went out to lunch at around 11:30am with my mom. Did some shopping and I came home and took a half hour nap. Got up and sat around for like a whole entire hour and a half!! What a waste of time.

I tried to get myself going. It was one of those days where I had very little motivation to workout. This is rare. I didn't once think "I don't want to workout!". It was nothing like that and I can usually avoid thinking that now.

I finally got into the weight room and did my routine but avoided working my triceps since they were still sore.

During some exercises I felt like I ran out of energy and my heart was beating so fast and I could feel it. I didn't put in a 110% effort, but I tried. Today I had a bit of a lack of energy yet I ate enough.

Something strange was going on with me today. I felt drained a bit. I drove to my mom's house and we went to Pizza Hut. I needed to reward myself again with something. Once a week. We ordered a medium veggie lover's pizza with multigrain crust. Stupid me forget to ask for light cheese. I did well and only ate 3 small pieces. When I got home I had soooooooo much energy. A TON. This is just what I needed to get myself going.

Know what I did after I came home? Cleaned my entire house upstairs!! I even slept the floor, organized all my shelves and even mopped with hard wood floors. About 90% of the way through mopping the floor I was sweating and just had to take a break since just about everything was done.

Took a break and checked Xbox live to see if the new expansion for Fallout 3 was released yet. I probably need to wait until tomorrow. Thanks a lot. Now I have to wait a week before I can play it. They should just automatically add them at midnight and not morning. Oh well.

I think my progress is going well. I FEEL like i'm gaining muscle and I sure hope so. I know for sure i'm getting stronger because I can now lift a bit more. I need to really keep track of my progress on the scale and use a measuring tape to check fat loss. A fabric measuring tape (and maybe fat calibers) is the only good way of telling if you've lost fat.

Forgot Saturday

2009-08-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

Where did Saturday go? Saturday was ok, but could have went a bit better...if only I had gotten a better night's sleep.

I went to bed at 4am(!) and forgot to set my alarm clock. The furniture delivery people were going to call in the morning when they were on the way? Guess what? My doorbell goes off at 8:45am. No call, no nothing. Luckily I got up and got the door in time.

This chair is really nice. I couldn't possibly ask for a chair more comfortable. It's an extra large La-Z-Boy "Reese" leather swivel, gliding Recliner. I went to the La-Z-Boy and they were able to price match Art Van, but they actually make you wait an entire week for delivery unlike Art-Van.

I must have sat in my new chair for several hours. Eventually I got up and went over to my mom's for lunch. I tried to buy lunch on my credit card, but I was declined. What makes me angry is that my bank will decline transactions if I don't verify large ones sometimes. It makes it difficult because they NEVER called me to verify anything. So i'm out shopping and get declined twice. Luckily I was able to take care of it. It's sometimes a good thing that they want to verify large transactions, but once they put a temporary hold on my account to verify.....US postal service transactions and $5 items at a grocery store. Give me a break. At one point they were blocking my card once per month. Chase is probably one of the worst banks there is when it comes to annoying customers. I can't even go to get money out of an ATM without an employee asking me about my card and then wanting me to upgrade. I had a card replaced and I actually had sales people calling me after that. I may switch to National City, but I have a ton of automated withdrawls for house payment etc.

Anyway, after lunch I saw "Spiderman 3". Pretty much did not like it at all and i'd give it a 2/4.

Came home, sat in my recliner and then took a nap. I usually never take naps, but I needed it after only getting a few hours of sleep. After that I woke up and went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. Then stupid me ended up staying up until 4am again.

Ok, off to do a workout.

2009-08-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

I'm still sore today from my workout on Friday! I have to workout while still sore I guess. I sure wish I knew why i'm not recovering as fast as I should be. I usually workout for 30-45 minutes every other day. Last night I was thinking that maybe I need to eat a bit more during the day in order to gain more muscle. At the same time I want to lose fat, so this may be a bit difficult.

I seriously forget when I last worked out. Pretty sure it was Friday! I really need to keep a log.

Mom's new TV and Blu-ray player

2009-07-31T17:19:00.000-07:00

Today I woke up early and went out to lunch with my mom at Mongolian BBQ. I don't like that place, but it's one of the few places that's somewhat healthy. SOMEHOW they removed the discount on vegetarian dishes. Is TOFU going up in price now or something? I don't think so. $12.06 for one bowl of grilled veggies and tofu along with a Diet Pepsi is a rip-off. Sure, I don't need to go there and I shouldn't. The service was slow today and that was a first. It was packed though, so it's not a big deal. I only gave a $1 tip. Is that mean of me? I don't think so. You should reward people for good service. If it's ever truly terrible service, why do some people even leave tips? I do know they get paid based on tips, but still. Then again, sometimes the poor service isn't always their fault but the owner or managers fault. They sometimes don't hire enough people.

I told my mom she needed to get a blu-ray player and that they're now cheap. I kind of told her i'd buy her one, but maybe she can donate a few dollars towards it. I ended up having her pitch in $20. I ended up getting her a Magnavox $98 Blu-ray player they had at Wal-Mart on sale. Took it home and hooked it up to her TV. Of course, 1080i over DVI was not possible due to stupid HDCP. What a joke.

Her TV was on it's way out pretty much and was about 5 years old. I convinced her to get a new TV. They were on sale at Sam's for $550 or so. 37" 1080p for $550. It's a Vizio, but i've had a lot of luck with Vizio. Very few problems. I have a 42" Sony Wega downstairs, a 32" Vizio LCD in the bedroom (720p) and just this december I bought a Vizio 37". Due to this, I told my mom she should get one too since i've had a lot of luck with it. No complaints at all with the 37" Vizion picture quality. It's great and almost as good as my Sony maybe. I still think Sony makes the most reliable televisions, but sometimes they're not always worth it especially as a secondary TV etc.

So we hooked up our $98 Blu-Ray player and it really failed to impress me at all. With Blu-ray you immediately noticed the improved picture quality. I put in a Japanese blu-ray title (i've seen before and known how the quality is) and it was all grainy and looked just plain terrible. About as good as DVD quality. Seriously. I ended up running to Best Buy real quick and getting her a Sony instead. I don't understand how Sony Blu-Ray players have not gone down in price. They're still $249 like they were during Christmas! You'd think they'd drop down $50 by now. Even as a backup player, I do not suggest the Magnavox $98 blu-Ray players at Wal-Mart. What did I expect for $98? Decent picture quality and we didn't really get it.

I went back and forth between two different Blu-Ray players at Best Buy forever. The Sony or a Samsung with Netflix capability. My mom would really like that, but I skipped it because I knew for sure the sony would be good.

Hooked it up and the difference in picture quality between the Sony and Magnavox was HUGE. I also calibrated the TV and matched it up with the settings from my Vizio at home. I also managed to pick up "Slumdog Millionaire" on Blu-Ray at Best Buy for $14. Last one in stock too.

To be honest, one small reason I wanted to get my mom a Blu-Ray player was so that I could loan her the Japanese film "Nabbie's Love". I love that so much and even want to see it a second time, just a day later. I hope they release it in the USA, but it'll probably never happen.

Came home and did a workout again. Zero missed days (1 due to injury though, but I ran on my treadmill instead) so far. I did this first thing when I got home so I didn't delay it and possibly skip it. For the past 2 hours though i've had a bad headache and I don't have any tylenol around. Luckily it's going away. I think what did it is either too much Tea today or too much nutra-sweet. I must have drank like 4 440z plain Teas today.

After my workout I got my living room ready for tomorrow. I'm having a new chair delivered. I wish I could take a picture of it. It looks really nice. Of course, I dislike the idea of leather, but oh well.

Yesterday I made the stupid mistake of going to the mall in Grand Rapids for "fun". It's about 1 hour away but ended up taking me 1 and a half to get there due to the main exit being closed. I had to backtrack and get off at 54th street. I ended up going to only about 4 different stores and stayed only about 1 1/2 hours. What a waste of time! I should have taken a break and gotten lunch somewhere in there or saw a movie. I did end up buying two shirts at Macy's though. They cost me only $88 each. Ok, i'm kidding! $30 each on sale and Macy's somehow carries my size and they fit well somehow. Macy's isn't as expensive as I thought it'd be. They carry the best pillows money can buy and they're cheap! Would you believe that Calvin Klein makes some of the best pillows? Yes, really! They only cost like $15 on Sale. Or they have some $200 Down Pillows, but i'll pass. I'm not crazy enough to buy a $200 pillow. I'm told down isn't painful for the birds to be removed, but I don't know if I believe that or not. I just don't like down pillows.

Right now I think my favorite stores are Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Macy's. Wal-Mart has some bad business practices, but I still can't resist shopping there. Sometimes when I need an item that's of a higher quality i'll go elsewhere. Some things I refuse to buy at Wal-mart. Like Furniture or say a new lamp. Sadly Wal-Mart doesn't sell as many american made items as they did back in the 90's. I'm not sure why this is. It seemed that back then everything they had was available in an American made version. Not so today. Perhaps certain people don't want to pay more if an item is american made and more expensive. I don't mind, but to a point. Unfortunately I don't check labels as much as I should. Some items just can't be found that are made in America.

This eating healthy and working out all the time thing is going well. I have a ton more energy and I get a lot more work done on the days I work. I think yesterday I was a little tired at one point, but it was due to not eating enough. Weight Lifting also seems to make me twice as hungry sometimes. I always make sure to eat enough food without overdoing it.

I was going to give myself a reward day today, but I'll probably skip it this week. Eating junk food again just doesn't interest me. It's hard to give up pizza, but i'll live without it. No sense in buying myself a whole pizza for $15-$20 just to eat two whole pieces.

Movie Night

2009-07-30T20:12:00.000-07:00

I started watching my DVDs and Blu-Ray movies I got in from Amazon.co.jp. I first put in "The Mourning Forest" and found it quite slow and not very interesting throughout the entire movie. This is coming from someone who rarely gets bored in ANY movie. During some scenes I felt the acting wasn't as good as it could have been and actually laughed at some of them where the main actress completely overacted. Pretty much during the first part of the movie it just seemed like the two actresses in the main acted a bit awkward. Sadly, I didn't feel much for the characters and in this type of movie it's kind of required.

By the end I was just kind of mad at having spent $45 on the DVD. It's the Region 2 Japanese import.

The next day I woke up and ate breakfast and watched "A Long Walk" starring Ken Ogata. The movie got me hooked right from the start and let's just say some of the scenes are painful to watch and even a bit disturbing. Half way through the movie I now knew it could be hard to come out with a happy ending, but expected more of a disaster. I was hoping so much that at the end they didn't take the easy way out and have someone die (like in so many Hong Kong dramas). Luckily the ending turned out ok but I had wished a little more had been told, but sometimes leaving something out can make an ending better in some ways. I haven't had a movie affect me so much in several years. Maybe not since Zhang Yimou's "To Live" or "The Human Condition".

After I had watched it I just could not get this movie out of my head. I don't know what I was thinking. It's one where I can think about scenes in my head and even that alone makes me sad. What's even worse is that things that occured in the movie happen every single day around the world and nothing is done about it or nobody even knows.

After being really impressed with this film I went online to check reviews and I later found out the actor, Ken Ogata died last year. He was pretty amazing in this movie to say the least. I think i'm going to try and check out all of his older movies such as "Ballad of Narayama".

I give "A Long Walk" 3.5/4 STARS (note: The Japanese R2 DVD has english subtitles!)

Can I possibly have my next movie be any better? I doubt it.

The next day I put in the newly released Blu-Ray movie "Nabbie's Love". Back several years I saw the director Yuji Nakae's "Hotel Hibiscus" and loved it. I liked it so much that i've seen it several times since. When it came out on Blu-Ray I even bought it again!

Since I really liked the director, I've alwayed wanted to check out his previous film "Nabbie's Love". The only problem is that until the 27th of this month, no version with english subtitles was available. I picked up the Japanese Blu-Ray version from amazon.

Let's just say I loved this movie. Pretty much every single thing about the movie was perfect. Ever see a movie that just seems to make you happy and put you in a good mood? Well this was definitely one of them. It makes absolutely no sense to me and it's a bit different to me, but I even liked the music in it.

Yuji Nakae's films deserve a US release! Along with Pan Nalin, he's one of the director who seems to be unheard of in the west. Their movies need a US DVD release.

Yuji Nakae has a new film coming out in Japan this month. It's called "A Midsummer Night's Dream". It's by far one of the most bizarre looking movies i've seen, but I want to see it really bad. Might be good.

Now all I have left to watch is my new blu-ray of "Hotel Hibiscus". Luckily I ordered some more expensive Japanese import DVDs. Picked up "One Million Yen Girl" and "Still Walking". Both look ok. I need to find more good Japanese movies made in the last 5 years.

2009-07-27T18:18:00.001-07:00

Last night I ended up finally playing "Killzone 2" on my Playstation 3. I moved my PS3 to my upstairs TV instead of the one downstairs. Maybe that's why I haven't played a game on my PS3 in years. Started the game up and it needed a 2gb partition?! That's funny, the box said it only required 50mb or so. I don't care, but I found that strange. Started playing at midnight and stopped at about 1:30am. I think it's safe to say I don't really like it at all..yet. The controls to me are just plain awful and slow. The graphics during regular levels are not all that impressive. There's jagged edges on pretty much everything. This even makes Fallout 3 look so much better. Of course i'm not that far into it.

So far i've hated this game as much as Call of Duty: World at War. I played that game for about 5 hours and haven't played it since. I really hate games that are very linear and everything is so scripted. I'd prefer being able to go off on my own and figure things out. I think my favorite FPS games are Half Life 2 and maybe BioShock. BioShock was alright, but when it was over, I was so glad. I played Half Life 2 immediately after that and was impressed more by that game despite how old it now is.

Right now though my favorite games in the last 5 years have been Fable 2 and Fallout 3. Fallout 3 is one of my favorite games of all time. You can easily spend 100 hours in that game. Not bad for just a $60 game!

Somehow I ended up going to bed at 4am and couldn't sleep. Probably ended up actually falling asleep at 5am. I set my alarm clock at 9am and actually woke up at that time somehow. My annoying cat kept meowing non-stop at my door while I was sleeping. I HATE that. I need to find a way to get him to stop waking me up everyone morning. Someone suggested a water bottle. That doesn't seem cruel or mean to do since it's only a spray of water and he hates water. Someone I know did this when the cats tried to get on their dinner table. It seemed to work.

So at 9am I waited around for a Fedex package. I ordered a bunch of movies from Amazon.co.jp. Two DVDs and Two Blu-rays for $180. Can you believe that? what a rip off! I'm sure they may be worth it though. I took a nap at 10:30 and ended up sleeping until 3pm. Doesn't make sense......

Woke up and couldn't decide if I could eat a meal before working out or not. I figured i'd eat and then workout since I could then put in a good effort. Ended up working out and it was the hardest workout i've had yet. I didn't skip any exercises but found that I needed low weight on some of them. I felt like such a weakling! I'll get better. It's too bad that barbell I had is not very good. It's one of those that are not straight and it's just more annoying then a regular barbell. I might return it. When I got done my body hurt. I don't want to know what tomorrow is going to feel like.

Later that night I went to the Olive Garden with my mom. I rewarded myself after having skipped my reward on Sunday. I ordered a pizza with the plan of only eating two pieces. I asked for light cheese and it was the regular amount. Oh well. No meat on this pizza, so it should be a bit lower in fat and calories. I skipped the breadsticks and the salad and ate two pieces of the pizza. About half, but it's not very large. I looked it up later and it's about 550 calories and I think 20g of fat. That seems kind of low. I ended up throwing the rest away.

Going to now work as long as I can tonight without overdoing it.

ok day

2009-07-25T21:57:00.000-07:00

Today did not go that well and could have been better. I went to bed last night and woke up at about 11am. I was so tired from not enough sleep and had to pull myself out of bed. This usually doesn't happen. It was a rare day where I was not looking forward to my workout. I delayed it by several hours and wish I didn't.

After going shopping with my mom and coming home I was really sleepy. I think it may be what I had for lunch. I skipped getting a regular pizza and only eating two slices for my "reward" and instead ate half a subway pizza.

Came home and slept from about 6 or 7 until 9pm! I got up and did my workout. I tried about 75% of this new routine I found online. I will do 100% of it when I get a new barbell. I must saw that Military Presses are hard!

At one point I overdid the weight on my bench press and could not even do a second rep on set 4. Oops!

I ended up getting an Olympic barbell and set of dumbbell handles for $37. I should have just gotten the regular Olympic 7' barbell they had for $55. I felt this smaller version will be better for starting out. The $55 barbell weighed a ton. Probably like 50lbs at least.

I could have eaten a bit better today. Too much bread! Two meals had white flour in it and i'm trying to avoid that.

After my workout I had so much energy and completely changed my day around. I ended up going shopping after that (at Wal-Mart i mentioned early). I ended up spending $140!! I bought 2 10lb plates for $8.50 each and 2 25lb plates. I think they were $24 which is about the cheapest price I've found unfortunately.

Came home took a shower and some tylenol PM. I'm now out for the night!

Most productive day in months

2009-07-24T20:17:00.000-07:00

Last night I tried to go to bed early. For me, early is like 1am. I ended up not being able to sleep well and ended up falling asleep around 3 or 4am. My alarm clock went off at 10am and I practically jumped out of bed. I don't know how that happened. Yet strangely I laid back down and feel asleep until 11am, yet I wasn't that tired.

I started my work and took a break about 3 hours later. Usually to finish a set of orders it takes me about 2-3 days. Today I got everything done in ONE day. Today I worked from 11am until 6:30pm. Took a half hour break in between that though. I came home at about 8 and worked until about 11pm. I got every single thing done I wanted to get done.

I ate really well the entire day. I should have eaten dinner much earlier then I did. I had a veggie sandwich at Panera bread. It's pretty nasty, but it's healthy and it's food. I guess i'm not a fan of hummus.

I think I might not completely give up pizza. I may give myself one Saturday to eat TWO pieces and two pizza only. The problem with that it that I want it to be GOOD pizza. Another problem is that delivery or pickup usually costs like $15 on average. I think my only option is to go with Papa Johns since I think they still offer wheat crust. I probably will skip the white flour crust if I can. Most places don't put enough veggies on their pizzas. The company that skimps on the toppings (just veggies) the most is Dominos. Little Caesars has a veggie pizza and they put a ton of vegetables on it. Jet's Pizza does too, but maybe overdoes it a little. I've also been a fan of Cottage Inn pizza lately. I had a slightly cold pizza once on a day they were EXTREMELY busy and they offered me a full refund.

Maybe I need to shop around for a really healthy pizza that tastes good. The worst pizza I ever had in my life was a veggie pizza without any cheese on it. I didn't realize it had no cheese until I bought it!

One very good pizza is the Frontera Foods roasted vegetable pizza. It's very expensive though at like $7.50 for such a tiny pizza. I may get one of those tomorrow. Somehow only D&W carries them and probably mark it up like $2-$3! I bet Wal-Mart will carry it eventually.

another good day

2009-07-23T21:26:00.000-07:00

I slept some VERY long hours last night I must have needed it. Immediately after I woke up I ate breakfast and then did a workout. I should have eaten something small and THEN got in a workout, but I don't care.

The workout went ok. I'm not really happy with it. I need to learn some new exercises and get some more weight plates and dumbbells. I was really limited today with what I could do. Not good. It doesn't help that my equipment didn't really come with any good manual. I basically just use a smith machine, dumbbells and free weights.

I took a quick break after that and felt extremely hungry. I had lunch with my mom and then went shopping. I looked at a sporting goods store and their dumbbell prices are much better then last year. I saw a kettleball for sale there for $69.99. $70, are you kidding me? What person would pay $70 for a stupid ball of metal. It wasn't even over 30lbs! The idea of it sounds fun, but i'll wait until they're cheaper.

I've priced them online, but shipping was $250. Ok, i'm kidding. People actually do buy weight plates online. I don't even want to know the shipping prices!

My muscles are sore today already a bit. I bet tomorrow they will be worse, but that's ok. As long as it's not as painful as the day after my first workout.

Well, it's 12:30am now. I need to try to get to bed EARLY today. I need to try and get up tomorrow morning as early as I can and work all day. I got in some large orders and I want to get them done before Saturday.

2009-07-22T19:23:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of tired today for some reason. I could have used another 3 hours of sleep. The air conditioner people came over at 2pm today and fixed my air conditioner. I had a bad capacitor and blown fuse. He said it was probably caused by a surge. The bill to repair it came up to about $266. Yesterday at 1:40pm my Computer Battery Backup software reported a blackout for a duration of 5 seconds. Strangely none of my lights went out, but flickered I think. I barely noticed them doing this, so it might have been my imagination.

My battery backup on my PC has been totally worth it. I'll definitely keep one connected from every computer I own from now on. The software even tells me how many watts i'm using. Right now it's only at 194watts. Without my ATI 4870 video card and just using an older one I can get it down to 110 watts. My old EEEPC could get down to 10 watts when on. That's like a light bulb!! CFL that is.

Since I was paid back on some money I loaned out I went back to Art-Van to check on some recliners. The one I liked the most was still there and I wanted it so bad. It was a gliding, swivel recliner made by Lay-Z-Boy. Unfortunately it's in leather, but i'll live. I went to the art van store and the stationary one alone was $300 more! Luckily I got them to price match and I got the gliding swivel recliner. I ended up returning my undelievered recliner from them I purchased a week ago for this one. It's very expensive but it will be worth it. I said to myself that I must be crazy paying this much for a chair. I won't regret it much when I sit in it I think. Actually I don't regret it at all as it is now. I deserve a nice chair to sit in on my days off! I can't wait until they deliver it!

I ate well again today. Considering I didn't eat a ton of food I should be more hungry then I am.

For late breakfast I had a salad with lots of protein (again) and some fruit. For lunch it was plain whole wheat noodles and a cucumber tomato salad. My mistake here is no protein really. Oops.

Since that didn't help me any I ate a Subway sandwich a few hours later. As always, a Veggie patty on wheat with no mayo, oil or cheese. My guess is that they're around 300-350 calories total. I need maybe 30 grams of protein still today and my day should be complete. Sadly i'm out of my favorite healthy food..low fat cottage cheese (Michigan Brand).

Up at 9am today

2009-07-22T07:15:00.000-07:00

Went to bed last night at 3am and set my alarm for 11:30am. I wanted to go to bed much earlier, but it didn't work out as planned. Unfortunately my annoying cat woke me up at 8:40am. He kept meowing non-stop. I said "NO!" from my bedroom and usually that stops it. He kept doing it over and over. So annoying. It was definitely no emergency. He had water, a clean litter box and food, so what's the problem. I think he was just bored and needed attention.

One problem last night is that my Air conditioner died. It kept running forever and would not cool down the house. I tried everything to get it working without any luck. The unit outside doesn't turn on, but it sounds like it's on inside. I have them coming out to check into it. Hopefully it's not expensive.

This morning my whole body ached, but no major damage done luckily. I was so extremely thirsty though. Can't remember when I was ever this thirsty. I really need to get a new water purifier cartridge instead of just drinking bottled water.

For breakfast I had Cheerios and 1% milk. cheerios out of all the breakfast cereals seems to give me the most energy. It lasts for a long time. On Cheerios i'm usually not hungry for 3-4 hours.

At 10am I went to D&W and got a salad and some water. That place is in an expensive neighborhood and the prices are robbery. They wanted $5 for a single container of fruit when it's $3.19 elsewhere (not Wal-Mart, very few can compete with Wal-Mart I imagine). A bottle of smart water is $1.79 and $1 elsewhere. These tortilla chips I like are selling there for $5.79 and only $3.69 at World Market. On Amy's frozen dinners they're $3.99 elsewhere, but here the same thing is like $5.79. I refuse to pay that high of a mark-up.

Now that it's 10:23 i'm going to start work. Luckily my office area in my basement is fairly cool during the summer. I can stay down there without the air conditioner on. It's not that hot out today anyway.

So far things are going ok, but I could have used an extra 2 hours of sleep. I'm going to get my orders out today no matter what.

Wednesday July 22nd (what not to do)

2009-07-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today I saw that I could have gone back to the old me if I wasn't careful. For a few seconds I had this picture of me not working out anymore and not losing any more weight. I didn't want that so I told myself I had to get a workout in no matter what. I need to be 100% sure to remember the mistakes of this day and learn from them.

On Monday night I stayed up way too late. This would have been ok, but the problem is is that I went to bed at 7am on Tuesday morning and I got up at 11:30am. That's not enough sleep for someone that's exercising a lot.

I pick my mom up from the dealership for her car repair. That's the whole reason I got up early. I ate Subway (veggie patty with no mayo, oil, cheese) for lunch and came home and got in a few hours of work. The HUGE mistake I made is that I sat on the computer for several hours. I don't know how on earth I got so sidetracked. I should have been working. When I got off the computer it was 6am and I was in a somewhat bad mood due to not eating enough.

I went and got a salad and ate a lot of protein with it and had fat free dressing with it. I'd say that along with the other items I ate with it, it was a perfect meal. At 8pm I took a nap and when I woke up it was 11:30pm! Oops!

Here is where I felt like the old me. I had to work really bad (I work at home) but I knew I had to get a workout in and it was going on midnight. I decided to get a workout in and it was tough to really get going for some reason. My leg still hurt and I didn't want to injure my arm again. I did about 15-20 minutes only. After that I got on my treadmill and ran as long as I possibly could. I'm not even going to mention the duration since it's embarrassing. I guess i've got to start somewhere. By the end my legs were burning. A bit later I had a protein shake and here I am now. What seemed to help me a lot in my workouts is listening to some music to get me going. I have a small Sansa Fuze and some really nice Ultimate Ear Triple Fi 10's. Strangely, after my super short workout I felt really good and that's when I decided to get on the treadmill.

It's now 1am. I should work just a little, but I think it may be best to get a good night's sleep to get back on track. Too bad I had that 3 hour nap.

long hours of work

2009-07-21T09:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had a late start. I ended up working from 6pm until 3am. At 3am I took a break and went to Wal-Mart. I guess I needed some fresh air, so I came hope and worked another 1 1/2 hours! At Wal-Mart I ended up getting 2 sets of dumbbells. I almost went with 3, but I decided to go with 15 and 25lb ones to start. I wanted to get some lighter ones for certain exercises like lateral raises and tricep extensions etc.

I ate well that day, but I found that due to exercise I was much hungrier then I normally was. I ate a frozen Amy's dinner for lunch with something on the side and was hungry just an hour later. I finally tried some veggie lunch meant. It's not horrible, but not great. A bit dry, but that's ok.

The worst thing I had in the day was a veggie sub with light oil and mayo. I should have skipped those, but the sub (at Lenny's) would have been terrible. I'm going to skip this place from now on because I felt sleepy a half hour later. I think their wheat bread is just white in disguise.

Woke up today at 11am after having gone to sleep at 7am. My mom needed a ride from the car dealership. I got up to fast and pulled a leg muscle. It was my thigh all the way down to my knee. I haven't did that in over 2 years somehow and I felt it coming on, so I didn't get the full effects of it. I stood up and I felt dizzy and my ears started ringing really bad. I was a bit scared for a few seconds, but after about a minute I was ok. I think I pushed myself too hard yesterday and didn't get enough sleep.

Started working today after lunch and hope to get a lot done today. I'm going to get a workout in and go to bed early once work is done. I'm about 95% recovered now. I don't know what I did to hurt my arms so bad.

feeling better

2009-07-20T12:00:00.000-07:00

Today I work up and I was feeling a lot better. My arm hurt a little, but it's about 75% cleared up now. Last night I did eat something bad, but not really horrible.

I went to the store and purchased some milk, cottage cheese and other healthy items. One item I got that someone I thought was healthy was some chips. Duh..they're still potato chips! They were different chips made out of different vegetables. Carrots, Blue Potatoes and something else. Well, I ate way too many of them and they were too oily and salty. Not good. I ate so many that I felt sleepy. A little later I ate a small amount of protein and drank a lot of water.

When I woke up my body ached due to all the exercise. I got up for a few minutes and then laid back down for about another half an hour. I'm up now and ready to do some work.

For breakfast I had a small bowl of Kashi cereal with 1% milk and some fruit. I think from now on i'm going to switch to plain old Cherrios. No sugar dumped on it like last time! I'll also skip the fruit since I think it added too much sugar to my first meal along with the Kashi cereal. With the Kashi, milk and fruit I probably had an overdose of sugar. Oops.

Stil recovering

2009-07-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

Since I was "injured" and couldn't lift weights I did something else instead and use my treadmill. I used the "Fat Loss 1" setting and after 10 minutes realized how out of shape I was. In the past, it'd take me half way to break a sweat, not so this time. I started feeling the burn in my legs within 10 minutes. This program keeps changing speeds on you and will constantly change the incline from 1 to 6. I think 6 means 6", but i'm not sure. I wasn't even running and it was a pretty good workout. I'll get better each day for sure. The arm pain is a big set-back.

I ate well today again. Had a few temptations. The worst thing I had was a Smoothie at Barnes and Nobles. It had 260 calories, 5g of fat and 30g of sugar. Zero High Fructose Corn Syrup though and 15g of protein. The only problem is that it had about 50g of carbs I believe.

Overall my mom and I thought they tasted bad, but are fairly healthy and much, much better then eating ice cream or potato chips!

For lunch I had stir-fry with Tofu in it. It was alright, but nothing special. It amazes me that some restaurants can charge you $9 for ONE bowl of vegetables and tofu. It was not even a lot of food. It's one place I think is way overpriced so I don't go there often.

For dinner I had one of those Veggie Patty subs at Subway on wheat bread and no mayo, cheese or oil. No cookies to go with it either! Not even any chips. I HATE those baked lays. Usually if I need a desert I will get the apples they sell there.

After lunch though I was walking around Wal-mart and was looking at dumbells. Right then and there for about 15 seconds I felt really hot and like I was going to throw up. It went away fast and was very, very strange. I think the tea at the restaurant did it. Very strong tea messes with my stomache.

My arms were in a lot of pain today. I had to walk around with my hands in my pockets a lot because I could not fully extend my arms without extreme pain. That's not good.

I had a ton of water today. Before 3pm alone I had about a half gallon of water down. Later on I went through a 44oz water and another 20oz before that. To say the least, i'm getting enough water! This should speed up recovery. I'm also getting enough protein also.

I'm really hoping i'll be fully recovered tomorrow. If not, I have a small problem and will find it hard to work. Something obviously went wrong and I don't know what it was. I guess my body is not used to very heavy free weights.

Slow recovery

2009-07-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

Today is a bit frustrating for me, but i'm not going to let it get me down. I woke up and my arms were killing me. I felt like paralyzed or something and could not even fully extend them. I last did an arm workout on Friday so I should have recovered by now. Perhaps I need more water or protein.

Today is my day to workout next and this is disappointing. If I workout today on my arms, it's asking for major trouble and will only make things worse. My muscles are very sore but I also feel the pain in my joints. I was going to sweep my driveway today, but it hurts to even lift the broom. It's that bad. My mom says I overdid my arm workout, but I don't think so. I think it's just that I'm starting up weight training again and i'm just not used to it.

I'm going to get in some sort of workout in today. I will probably do the fat loss routine on my treadmill. It's only 20 minutes, but it changes the incline a lot and it's a very good workout for only 20 minutes.

I HATE to skip regular weight training workouts, but it'd just be crazy to do it today.

Right now I have some Ben-gay on my arm. So stupid that I actually need to do that. I picked up a gallon of water at wal-mart. One of those protein shaker bottles and some protein power. A 26 gram protein drink might help. It also has something else in it other then protein to aid in recovery. I'll try to drink as much water today as I possibly can.

Other then this, it's a good day so far. I'm staying positive and will now shut off my computer and get in that treadmill workout. It's better then not going any workout at all.

2009-07-18T22:22:00.000-07:00

Today was my day off, so no workout was required today. My mom woke me up to invite me to go out for breakfast at 9am. I would have, but I had went to sleep that morning at 6am! Somehow. I haven't had such deep sleep in over a month. I had this movie poster over my bed and when I woke up it was on the floor. It probably fell off the wall and hit me on the head and I didn't even realize it!

I ended up finally waking up after 8 hours of sleep and we went out for lunch. After this we went furniture shopping and I ended up buying a new recliner for my living room. I've always wanted one. I have a nice leather sofa (I won't buy leather now if I can avoid it!), but it's just not comfortable anymore to sit in for long periods of time. It was at first. I must have sat in every recliner they had and ended up going with one that was $429. The only reason I bought it was because someone today paid me back when they borrowed from me.

After shopping and picking out the one I wanted I also went to Art-van to see what they had. Their prices were better...as long as you went to the clearance section. Everything else was about the same as Lay-Z-Boy without the sale prices.

I sat down in perhaps the most comfortable chair out of every one I tried. It was a gliding rocker that rotated and reclined. The only problem is that it was leather and $999! I'll pass on the thousand dollar chairs. I'm going to use it for what...2 hours a day? I don't need to spend 1k on a chair. To begin with..I should be more active and sitting down less. I'm now convinced the one chair I purchased is the most comfortable for the price.

I think the best deals on a recliner is at Sam's Club. I don't know about the quality but I didn't have a truck to haul it to my house. The ones at Sam's were name brands. Same as what's sold at Art van. The recliner I saw at Sam's was $349. Not bad. I also don't know how they can sell a leather chair that's so huge for $399. I mean this thing was extra wide.

Today I again ate very healthy. Nothing too bad, but one small mistake during the day. For dinner I had a Salad with fat free dressing. I'm so stupid. No wonder I was starving 2 hours later. Thanks to that I went to Subway and got a veggie pizza. I figured that it was Subway Pizza and that it would be ok. I even asked for light cheese. Turns out this thing had 750 calories and 25 grams of fat. That's not terrible for a pizza really. I probably ate more of it then I should have! I ate the Pizza at 7pm and got hungry again at 1am. I went that long without eating and didn't even realize it. That pizza kept me going for awhile I guess.

My muscles don't really hurt today. I guess I need to work out harder on my next workout. What's stupid is that my dumbells broke. How do dumbbells even break? I have some of those overpriced Bowflex dumbbells where you rotate a dial to use them. I've had them for over 2 years and have now finally put a use to them. Well guess what? A plastic piece broken and I can't use them at the 10lb setting. I'll probably just get a bunch of super cheap ones at wal-mart. It's weight and they don't need to be anything fancy. I can probably pay like $6 for a 10lb dumbbell at wal-mart. I doubt any place else can beat that price. I bought all my Olympic plates from them and it was the best price out of anywhere in town. I think I paid like $13 for the 25lb plates, but I don't remember. I definitely need more plates so I don't need to swap them out.

I also need to pick up some protein powder. As a vegetarian it's going to help out a bit. I want to try to make sure to get some without sugar. The EAS brand has like 15g of sugar in it per scoop. Add that into milk and it's going to be like drinking Kool-aid. The way to do it is to mix the sugar free protein powder into water and then add a tablespoon of heavy cream. People do this to add in some type of fat (some fat is good) without adding in bad carbs (sugar). I don't need any of the overpriced Meal replacement stuff. I can get by fine with plain old food for now. EAS Myoplex was the best tasting brand, but I may need to go with the lite version. I'll probably aim for 2000 calories a day. I did 1500 in the past to lose 87lbs and that was crazy and maybe a bit dumb. Yet I felt fine all day...somehow. Back then I had no idea 1500 was waaaaay too low. Yet the bowflex manual suggested it for MEN! For women it was like 1200(!!).

Anyway, it's getting late. I did some work today, but this weekend will be mostly days off. Tomorrow afternoon I will do another workout. I mentioned my muscles are not sore, but my joints near my elbows are killing me! I can't fully extend my arms without pain.

Today was a very, very good day overall. No lack of energy at all today, other then for a few minutes about 2 hours after eating that salad. I felt like I was starving. I'm going to do my best to have a good day every single day no matter what. I'm not going to let bad things get to me. If things start going bad I think I can change that. I've found ways of turning a bad day around.

A New Start

2009-07-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

I've finally decided to start exercising and eating healthy again. For the last few years I kept saying to myself that I need to start working out. It'd be like this over and over again while I kept gaining weight. At times, you just do not realize you are actually gaining weight.

In the past I was really addicted to eating healthy and exercising. At one point in the past I was 287lbs and eventually got down to 196lbs!! From a size 46 pair of pants down to probably a 36 I think it was.

One reason I started working out back then is that I had just lost my job and needed something productive to do to keep me from being depressed. I had a Bowflex back then and had a goal of working out every other day for 30-40 minutes. Of course once I got into it I got up to an hour.

During this weight loss period, I got off course a bit and made a few small mistakes. I should have kept with what was working. One mistake I made was eating too few calories. It helped with fast loss, but I didn't gain as much muscle as I should have. The Bowflex is a good piece of equipment, but it's not the absolute best for muscle building I think. I don't ever regret using one and it made working out fun. These days I'd almost always suggest something getting a weight bench and some dumbells. Believe it or not, going for walks helps out a ton! Water is another thing that helped. I think I must have gone through a gallon of water a day.

Once my business took off I had very little free time. When I did have free time I made the mistake of getting into Final Fantasy XI/Online. Let me just tell you now that that game is like crack and once you play it and get into it, you will be hooked! Most people watch TV after work, but I would play FFXI. As you can imagine, sitting down all day at work and then playing video games is not a good combination. I probably could say that I was addicted to that game, but I never let it eat up the time working on my business. Maybe a few times.

The good thing about this is that I was saving up every penny I had. My goal was to buy a house. Something bad happened after the first year of saving and every single penny I had saved had to be spent. I kept at it and after 2 years I got enough saved to put a huge downpayment on a house.

So here I was with a new house and the same long hours of work. I never felt like I had a lack of energy, but I could have a lot more still. About a year and a half ago I gave up meat and became a vegetarian. I guess i'm not a true vegetarian, because I still eat eggs once in awhile and do eat cheese and drink milk. I guess the cheese and milk would be ok. Some things i'm not willing to go without. Haven't eaten a single meat product in a year and a half and don't really crave it. I was never a big meat eater anyway. Just maybe hamburgers and whenever I ate a Sandwich.

Sadly, I gained a lot of the weight I lost back. The reason for this is due to inactivity and having a job where I sit for 8-10 hours a day. That combined with not eating healthy is where it all started. I don't feel that I ever ate very poorly. My problem is that I would order Pizza too much and that i'd always have the habit of eating snacks. Whenever I went to Subway i'd always get a cookie to go with it. What's the point of eating at Subway if you're going to get cookies with it? I also had a bad habit of eating ice cream more than I should. Theres probably only 3 or 4 really bad foods that I ate. I think the problem is too much sugar and too much sitting on my butt all day.

On Wednesday I had the entire day off. I went to the bookstore and read for a bit and then came home. I ended up doing a lot of yard work and then even cleaned my house up a bit. After all that I took a rest on my bed for about 15 minutes and then guess what I did? Worked out for over a half hour! The first time in years.

I have no excuse really to not work out. Some people go to college AND work several jobs. I work a ton of hours, but I can easily give up several things to make time. There are 24 hours in a day and people can't come up with 30 minutes a day to exercise?! Not having time to work out is just an excuse. One i've used a lot! I don't know what else there was keeping me from working out again. Maybe I just liked how everything was so set and I didn't want anything to change. I also was a bit worried about weight training and being a vegetarian. It might get a little tricky for me.

There are several reasons I wanted to get back into shape. When I exercise I work really hard on my business and it creates more sales. I love the feeling of waking up in the morning after a hard workout and thinking about what I could accomplish. I rarely got that when I wasn't weight lifting.

I also miss having so much energy all day. I remember in the past waking up and having energy all day until night time. Sometimes I had so much energy that it was even hard to sleep. Of course this was after months and months of exercising.

I also miss being able to go into a clothing store and never ever having a problem with finding the right size. These days it's more difficult to find my size of clothing and theres not much variety.

I've been having problems sleeping lately and always blame it on my bed. Perhaps it's because I've gained so much weight? I don't know.

There's just a combination of small things that made me want to work out again I guess. After the first day of working out I got back all the memories i've had before of eating healthy and exercising. Once I start something I usually stick to it. I remember back when I was first exercising I only ate one "BAD" thing in that entire year. Want to know what it was? A Pop-Tart. No lie! I also did not treat myself to "rewards" such as junk food days etc.

At one point I gave myself a reward day to eat whatever I wanted at one sitting, without overdoing it of course. I myself do NOT like this and it did not work for me. I want to just forget what sugary food and other junk food tastes like. Once you've quit junk food for good, you often forget what it tastes like. One thing I might do is occasionally reward myself each Saturday with one or two slices of pizza, but that's it! I don't even want to know how much I could save by NOT eating pizza each year! Pizza is such a rip off. Pizza is not worth $26! Good pizza is worth paying for, but not for $26.

My first workout went ok. The main problem is that I had a hard time remembering all my exercises. I missed a lot of body parts the first time, but I will only get better. I skipped the abs and shoulders on the first day, but I worked out for about 45 minutes I think. I've got my very own exercise room so that's another reason I NEED to workout. Some people would love to have exercise equipment and can't afford it. There's some people out there that work out just using milk jugs filled with rocks! I've got a nice set of exercise equipment, so put it to use!

My goal now is to figure out an exercise plan. I don't want to overdo anything and want to make it easy to stick to my goals. I will only work out every other day for 45 minutes to an hour. I have not yet decided to do cardio on my off days. I may just ride a bike or take a walk instead. did you know what when I lost over 100lbs I did zero cardio for the first 6 months? Yes, it's true!

After my first day my muscles hurt, but nothing too bad since it was only a first day. Today I work up and ate a good breakfast. They say you shouldn't workout after a meal, but I did anyway.

For Breakfast I had:

Kashi Cereal with 1% Milk
1 Fiber One Yogurt (50 calories)
Water

I need more protein in there of course, but I think the cereal has protein in it. I think I had an overdose of Fiber though! Luckily this Kashi cereal doesn't taste like cardboard like the last kind I had. You know what cereal also gives me a lot of enery? Plain Cheerios! I think tomorrow I will eat some Steel cut Oatmeal I bought.

Yesterday I went grocery shopping and spent $97 on ALL healthy foods. The only "bad" food I bought was chips and salsa. The chips were salt free though and looked fairly healthy despite being fried. I'll only eat a handful for a snack.

I'm going to try to eat several small meals a day. That's the best way to do it. It's best for me to consider two of them just snacks I guess since eating 5-6 small meals a day makes it sound so much worse!

Here's my goal so far:

Workout every other day for 45m - 1hr
No fried foods
No Sugary foods
Limit foods with white-flour and no highly processed foods
Try to get more exercising in by walking etc on off days
Try to work regular hours and don't stay up until 3am! (this is hard)
Don't go without food (puts me into a bad mood very fast)
Take measurements of progress with fabric measuring tape weekly (this is extremely important!!)
Check scale each week and write it down
Lots of fiber and whole grains
Drink more water give up Diet Pepsi (this will be easy)
Write down what is eaten each day (this is going to be hard)
Limit fat, eat lots of protein
No Pizza! (maybe two slices once per week)
Eat out less or never (going to be the hardest thing for me)
Cook at home more. Actually learn how to cook better.

I'm going to update this blog as often as I can. I was going to get my own domain name and update that, but I want to save my money.

Lazy

2009-02-18T19:48:00.000-08:00

Today I did not do much at all. I went to bed at about 3am and woke up and my back was killing me. I don't know what caused this! About a week ago I used a warranty for my old bed and got a replacement. I'm thinking that I fell asleep in an awkward position or that my boxspring is broken. Another reason my back hurt is that it could be that I used a new pillow and that caused problems.

I moved my bed to another area of room and fell back asleep. Somehow I ended up sleeping until noon! I checked my email and drove to the post office for a package and bought a new Memory Foam pillow at Bed Bath and beyond.

Went back home and at 4am my mom called and invited me to go out for pizza. After this we shopped at Target for a bit and I went home. Luckily at Target I only ended up spending about $8. I've made a goal this year to try to save up $30,000. It may be difficult, but I think I can do it! No more buying junk I do not really need. I might treat myself to a small $200-$300 item every 3 months or so. These days there's nothing I really want anyway. I do need a new dining room table for my house though and they're not cheap.

Right now i've decided to skip doing any work for the day and just sit around and watch TV. I should be working. All day I think I only did about 1 hour of work.

As i'm typing this i'm watching the Lakers vs Warriors. I plan on installing Ubuntu Linux on my laptop in a few minutes. It's too bad I can't get DVD playback working all that well under Linux. The playback just isn't that smooth.

I plan on using it just for browing the web and that's about it. I might also see if I can encrypt my entire drive with Truecrypt in case my laptop is ever stolen. It'll probably slow down my drive by a lot, but I don't care. As long as I get at least 40mb/sec i'll be ok. The drive in the computer isn't even a 7200rpm drive. It's my Macbook's old drive. I ended up upgrading my new Macbooks drive to a 500gb WD drive. Kind of pointless since a 7200rpm drive would have been better.

I'd like to upgrade to a Apple desktop computer, but I don't like the Mac Mini and it's limited upgrade capabilities. I also hate the idea of a $1000 computer built into an LCD display.

I hate snow

2008-01-03T14:32:00.000-08:00

My car has been stuck in the snow for days. The main problem I have is that my driveway slopes down a bit. If I park my car at the bottom of the driveway near the garage I can't get back up it! I had about a foot of snow on top of my car and the driveway itself was even worse. I actually had to make a path from my garage to my curb just for trash pickup.

I could just hire someone to remove the show with a truck, but the problem is that I rented a huge dumpster for some construction work. That's another problem. How are they going to pick that dumpster up and remove it when there is a foot of snow in the driveway? Also, how is a truck going to plow my driveway with a dumpster in the way?

The last few days i've been in about four different stores. Not one of them had any Snow Blowers. Home Depot had one for $299 but it was so small and looked about half the size of a push lawn mower. I then went to Lowes and nothing in stock there as well.

Check at walmart.com and they had a total of 1 in stock at a store 10 miles away. I should have picked it up. It was "only" $450. I checked the next day and it was sold out. Figures. I did some research and found a company in Kalamazoo that sold Snower Blowers. They also delivered for $35. That's what I really needed since I had no way to get it from the store.

I ended up going with the Ariens ST624E. It cost me about $749. Waaay more than I wanted to spend. I wanted to really get out the door for under $700, but it was the cheapest they had. I later checked online and it got good reviews. I also noticed another place selling it for a hundred dollars more. Paying $750 for a Snow Blower really hurts. I bet if I went with a $450 one from Wal-mart or some store i'd probably regret it.

So they delivered it and I cleared out my entire driveway. It's a start. Too bad I couldn't get up the driveway. It's all that ice. I put some salt on it and it should get better. My 1993 Honda Civic is TERRIBLE in the winter. I need some new tires or a dirt cheap truck to get me by.

I'm really far behind with my work and hopefully I can finish up part of it tonight. I'm pretty close. Tomorrow I think i'll start using my new piece of exercise equipment.

It's freezing in my house right now. The upstairs is hot but downstairs in the basement where I work, it's cold. I have a heater going in the basement so that should help soon. When the heat is set to 68 degrees upstairs the basement is usually around 61 without a heater. I even winterized the basement but it's still cold! The two doors downstairs don't help, even though I made sure no air is getting through them.

I've been having bad luck with my electronics lately. My AV receiver downstairs just died a couple weeks ago. It turns out, but has no sound. I spent an hour trying to fix it so I had to buy a new one.

A couple days ago I watched a basketball game upstairs using my DirecTV HD receiver. The next day I turned it on and nothing. No signal at all from the receiver to the TV. I tried new HDMI cables and everything I could think of. Looks like it's a dead receiver. I have a surge suppressor too, so that couldn't be the problem. Hopefully it's not the wiring in my house.

I did notice once that if I turn on lots of equipment downstairs and then go upstairs to use my 1000 watt microwave my power in my house will shut up and I have to go downstairs and flip a switch.

I have a 1500 watt heater and that doesn't cause problems. What's strange is that I can tap the heater and my lights flicker. It's barely noticeable at all. It's a home from the 1950's. The upstairs outlets are not grounded, but the ones downstairs are. I have 100 amp service, but i've been quoted around $1000 to upgrade it to 200 amp.

New house

2007-07-17T22:14:00.000-07:00

On Friday I got the keys for my very first home. Did the walk-through the day before and was pretty depressed for some reason. It doesn't help that the people who lived there previously didn't even bother to clean the place!

You walk in and and the kitchen is old (and very ugly) and it has a bit of an old house smell which is very annoying. It's a home from the 50's. It's hard to be happy about a house that needs so much work. One day I like it and the other day I don't. Lately i've been out driving and I guess I take things for granted. I should be thankful I have a house. Any house. Many people don't. I also have a large house with a ton of room. I should be thankful.

On Friday I went to Bestbuy and got a good deal on some appliances. The ones in the house are so ancient. For less than $1500 I got a washer and dryer, Stainless Steel stove and dish washer. This is including the price for an install. It's $100 for the dishwasher and $76 for the gas dryer. I know nothing about installing those. They had a sale where you get 25% off if you buy 4 appliances.

On Saturday we went through and cleaned the house. Monday I moved in a few boxes and took measurements of everything. I couldn't figure out how to get the central air working so I figured it'd be a good idea to have the furance and central air serviced. For $160/year they will come out twice and do this. For the price they also give you a discount on repairs.

Today (tuesday) I had someone take measurements to get new title and carpet install. I sure hope it's not going to cost over $500 per room for carpet!

My friend and his wife came over and gave me some ideas for painting a few of the rooms. The previous owners painted the living room a lime green! Once all the rooms are painted and re-carpeted it should look a lot better.

Today I had to be at the house at 11pm. I sat around until noon and the carpet guy finally arrived. He apologized for being late so it was no big deal. I went to his warehouse in another city and got back to my empty house at 1pm. I waited around until 2:30pm for the furnace repair people to show up. Sitting in an empty house with only 1 chair and a newspaper all day is not fun!

When they left I was so glad. I left and went back to my apartment and my brother and I stopped off at Lowes and bought a new grill. It's a pretty good one and the nice thing about it is that it was fully assembled! That'll save me a lot of time and frustration. I hate putting together furniture, grills etc. After that I took out my mom, brother and his kids to dinner.

Came home and slept for a couple hours. It's 1:30am and I'm hoping to get some work done and then be at my home tomorrow at 9am for my appliance delivery.

I haven't worked more than 4 hours since Friday, so wednesday i'm going to do a work 'marathon' and work as many hours as I possibly can.