Day 23: 12/27/2008

Haven't been blogging for awhile - holidays you know... I've been trying to stick to my diet, and even though I sometimes skipped a meal, I still did good on eating my breakfasts and not eating too late. I think I managed to go to gym at least 3 times a week - not much, but it's more then I did without the challenge :) This morning I was 173.5lb - which makes me 10.5lb lighter then 21 days ago :)

 

That's it. I'm off to the gym in a bit to burn some of the calories. Hey, BTW, I released my firs WordPress plugin today - check it out! It allows in an easy way to create and manage custom sidebar navigation. Give it a try and let me know what you think ;)

 

Day 9: 12/13/2008

Yesterday I had a break for my oatmeal breakfast diet - had 2 boiled running eggs with a toast and creamchese (yeh-yeh I know). This morning - back on the oatmeal. Kinda tired of it :)

Today my morning weight was 177.5lb - that's 6.5lb less than on the first day of the Challenge. It's not much - only 2.94 kilos, but I can't remember when last time I was below 180lb - not in the last 2 years that's for sure.

Yesterday after my evening workout I spent 20 minutes on the Internet figuring out my BMI and body fat %. So, my BMI is 27, which puts me into the category of overweight people (never though I would be in this one since only 8 years ago I was 145lb and had a hard time gaining weight). And my body fat is 22.7%, which is acceptable according to The American Council on Exercise (not Obese). So, to be in the category "Fit" I have to lower my body fat to 14-17%, which I'm not sure is a really positive goal...because that means I have to weigh way below 145lb. Why would I even want that?

 

Day 8: 12/12/2008

I'm trying to go to gym every other day since the Challenge began, but some thing are not just up to me. To make the story short - I had skip a day. But I still watch my diet - the biggest thing for me is to keep eating my breakfasts in the morning and suppers no later than 8pm (and make the suppers light which is though).

One positive thing I already noticed that even though I'm eating my breakfasts now - at about 11am I start staring at my clock, cause I'm feeling really hungry. That wasn't happening to me for the last 2 years at least... I could go without breakfast and lunch till the end of the day, and then, of course, I would eat an "elephant" at about 10pm and kept drinking my beer followed by ice-cream till I go to bed. So, I think my metabolism is waking up which is a really good thing :)

As far as my weight - it's been quite stable +/- 0.5lb. Right now I want to push my cardio for another week and then may add some weight lifting for my arms and chest. Gotta take advantage of some of the fat that left to rebuild muscle ;)

This evening I was back on an elliptical machine doing the regular cycle 1 hour and 5 minutes. It went very smooth and I burnt 925 calories. When the cycle was finished I even felt disappointed since I felt I could do this for another half hour at least. May be I'm getting comfortable with it and now there is a chance of adding weight lifting after I do my usual elliptical cycle... this will probably stretch my exercise time up to 1.5-2hrs.

 

Day 5: 12/09/2008

I spend about 1 hour and 20 minutes using treadmill and elliptical machine this evening, and according to the machines I lost over 1,140 calories in total. And btw, my scale shows about 177.5-178lb which is 2-2.5lb less than this morning. It might be just water, but I hope not only. A funny thing -the whole time I was in gym I was watching "The Biggset Loser" on TV :)

Craving for a beer.

 

Day 4: 12/08/2008

It looks like my weight doesn't drop as fast as on the first day anymore... oh well, I still got almost 2 months to push it that way :) 180lb this morning and my belft is one hole tighter in my jeans ;) Gotta go eat my oatmeal.

 

Day 3: 12/07/2008

I'm definitely not blogging every day... But for the weekend I'll make an exception.

This is about 5th day in a row that I'm eating healthy breakfast. For the last 3 days I had oatmeal :) Love it. At lunch I had a meatball soup with rice and for dinner I think I'll have some catfish baked with potatoes and carrots, and a small glass of Rodney Strong Cabernet Sauvignon.

I worked out again on the elliptical machine for 1:05hrs and burned 932 calories. I should admit, I'm pretty exhausted, but not as bad as on the first day :)hehe

Day2: 12/06/2008

 

Today is a long day - I gotta work alot from home and I'm planning on taking an hour long hike on the Lookout Mountain. And btw, I lost 3.5lb since day1 of the challenge :)

Kicking butt! :)

Worked from home the hole day, even didn't have an hour to walk around the mountain. Oh well... I helped my wife to cook a few nice meals for the day (we're both extremely busy lately, so we try to cook for a week - I love leftovers at work for lunch :)).

Oh btw... I sinned (a bit) at the end of the day - I had pasta with meet sauce and 2 bottles of Winter Bock from Gordon Biersch :p

Check this out:

As always Irina's great salad (of course I had to make it not so healthy with a milky dressing :))

Catfish baked with carrots and potatoes.

This is Irina's meatball and rice soup - I had it for lunch. Pretty healthy stuff :)

 

Not so healthy meat sauce (we used ground turkey to make it healthier) - it was awesome!

 

Day 1: 12/05/2008

 

I've been trying to get back on track with my work outs, but there is always something "more important", so this challenge is great motivation for me and for good cause all together. And btw (completely forgot), my boss (Matt Pellerin - @MattPellerin) wanted to take a part in the challenge, but he didn't think he could commit to 2 months of exercising, so he decided to sponsor me instead, since I really wanted to participate anyway. Thank you Matt! :)

 

About 8 years ago I was 145lb, and since than I hit 190 once and now got down to 184lb (as of this morning). I eat pretty healthy - chicken, turkey and fish - field trips to fast food places happen on average 2-4 times a month only. I don't drink coke, I don't drink any soda at all... but I drink a lot of beer (I'm a big fan), and I don't drink just anything, I'm buying European styles of beer - a lot of ales ales and stouts. I don't usually eat sweets, but I drink my coffee and tea with sugar and we have a half gallon of ice-cream at home - I can it half of it in one scoop after I finish my 6-pack. That's enough for the introduction into my daily diet :)

 

On my Day-1 in the morning I was 184lb

 

This is my breakfast of champions - I need to start eating breakfasts to get my metabolism going.

 

I sinned at lunch - Matt took me out for a tasty Phili Cheese steak Delux sandwitch :p

But I worked really hard in the gym for 1 hour and 5 minutes on an elliptical machine - burned 894.4 calories :) And when I got back on the scale, I was 4lb lighter :)

 

Hey, check out Irina's (wife) salad - looked really beautiful and healthy, so I wanted to share ;)