Your cheatin' heart...

Back in January, I started out on this whole thing with weight loss first and foremost in my mind.  I was fat.  Really really fat.  I still am for that matter, but not in the same league that I was at the start of the year.  XXL shirts wouldn't fit unless I went through an elaborate stretching procedure with them, my elastic waist "fat pants" were on the verge of not fitting, and my body was just plain running out of places to put the fat that I was continuing to pile on.

However, as the pounds came off, and as the months went on, this mindset shifted a bit.  Weight loss is still important, but overall fitness has been what I'm feeling the best about as of late.  To anyone who's been reading my latest posts (which I suspect is a very small, albeit elite and obviously highly intelligent sect of the human population), you've surely noticed this trend.  Talk of what and how much to eat, pounds lost, and so on have taken a back seat to talk of accomplishments mostly consisting of my foray into running.

I think this is mostly a good thing.  After all, healthy and fit is what we're going for here - right?  However, I think I need to re-focus a bit.  See, a problem I've had in the past with all of my weight loss attempts is to "rest on my laurels", and this eventually leads into a full-on "off the wagon" slip.  And when I go off the wagon, I go OFF that motherfucker.  I actually chop the wagon up, start a fire, and use it to cook and eat the horse.

I'm starting to get a lot of positive feedback from people.  I'm down 82 pounds at this point, and people are definitely noticing.  I'm getting a lot of compliments and encouragement, and it does feel great, but I know myself - and this is where something in my brain starts to say "Yeah - you ARE awesome!!  Let's get McDonald's on the way home and chase it with a birthday cake."

There's some warning signs starting to surface, too.  I'm still drinking water, but I've been starting to cheat back to diet soda every now and again.  Also - there are a few times in the last couple of months where I've eaten some of my calories for the next day the night before.  If there is something that will do me in here, it's eating at night - I just CAN'T CAN'T CAN'T do it.  I think I've got to think of myself like an addict with this one - zero allowance.

And here's the big one - I opened up the door to cheating on my daily calorie allowance about three months ago.  My son and I love to eat at this Brazilian grill place.  It's expensive, so we only do it about once a year when the right Groupon comes along.  Servers come to your table with different spits of meat, all you can eat, and they're all tasty.  I figured if I was going to pay an arm and a leg for this, I really didn't want to restrict myself, so off I went.

That single "cheat day" doesn't bother me too much, what does bother me is that I've had two or three cheat days since for no reason whatsoever.  People will say that regularly scheduled cheat days can actually be a good thing, but I don't think it's a place I should be going right now.

You can also see it's made my weight loss more erratic.  Look at my weigh in data before any cheat days:

Now look at the trend line that has three or four cheat days in it:

You can definitely see a difference.

So - here we go - keep focused - stay vigilant.

Running evolution (part 2)...

All right - the last post ended with my running the Color Run - great experience, great first race, and everything I had hoped it would be.  So here's some of the run-centered highlights since:

c210k
After the Color Run, I decided to attempt to "level up".  The same outfit that made the c25k app that I used also makes a c210k app, so I commenced download.  Since I was still riding the high of finising c25k as well as the Color Run, the increasingly long runs (peaking at 60 minutes with no walking) didn't seem completely daunting.  Off I went, and after a few runs I came face to face with my first running related (I guess we can call it an) injury:

Nipple
After I came in from one of my runs, I was sitting out on the deck, cooling off.  My wife came out to chat, and upon seeing me, started laughing hysterically.  We snapped a pic for posterity:

Yes, yes it is - that is my nipple bleeding through my shirt.  After doing a bit of Google research (which had a fairly shocking start due to my admittedly poorly chosen search string "bloody nipple"), I found out that this is somewhat of a common running issue, especially with men.  It turned out to be fairly easy to remedy - I gave the nipple a few days of hard earned rest, and then busted out the next few runs wearing band-aids (which is an awesome look for me.  No photos of that one - you're welcome).

The long term solution for my pink little buddies is to apply a product I found from Gold Bond before each run that goes on like a stick of deodorant.  It's called (and I've decided that this will also be my name if/when I become a superhero) "FRICTION DEFENDER"!!

The next 5k
I found that I really liked having a race "out there" that I was training for.  I'm not sure exactly why, but I find it motivating, so I signed up for another local 5k that was a few weeks away.  Come race day, this one was a different experience, but also fun.  I ran it alone, since my daughter has a bunch on things on her plate this summer.

This race was a bit more competitive.  (Well, for some people, that is.  The only things I was competing against were myself and common sense.)  Unlike the Color Run, this one was timed via a chip you tie to your shoe, and to my surprise they announce your name and snap a picture of you as you cross the finish line:

Even though the Color Run wan't officially timed, I knew how long it took me to run via my fancy-dancy GPS watch.  To my surprise, I beat that time by four minutes on this run.  It's true what they say about race day adrenaline.

Thank you sir may I have another
By now, I'm well into the c210k program (I've got two more runs until I "graduate").  While I didn't feel comfortable signing up for a 10k (my 60 minute runs are only taking me about 8k, not the 10k pace the app expects you to run), I wanted to have a race out there on my horizon, so I signed up for another local 5k.

Once again, I beat my previous time (by three minutes this time), and it was a complete blast.  Here's the requisite finish line photo they took:

With this race, however, I think I've come to an epiphany.  There were two races run here on this day:  the 5k, and a half-marathon (13.1 miles/21k).  We all started and finished from the same spot.  In watching everyone mill around at the starting line, and watching some of the half-marathoners finish, I've come to the conclusion that I think I want to run this half next year.

I really think I can do it - and I'm going to make it a goal.  I've run my last race for this season, but I'm going to continue training throughout the winter (I'm not quite sure how that is going to work yet, but...yeah.), and I'm trying to put a race schedule together for myself that culminates with this half-marathon at the end of next summer.

In other news, inches are still disappearing, but as you may notice in my weigh-ins to the right, the pounds are coming off ever so slowly.  I'll address this in my next post.

Running evolution (part 1)...

First of all, when I do it, I'm pretty sure it's called jogging (at best).  But fuck it - I'm going to call it running because it sounds cooler.

So, there have been a few developments with where running fits into my fitness plan since I first started the c25k program almost three months ago.  I can't really say that I hate running now.  That said, I can't really say that I love it either.  I guess you could say that I love that I don't hate it.  I get a huge sense of accomplishment when I finish a run, and I'm almost always (pretty much) looking forward to the next run.  The only time my mind really goes to a dark place is when I'm about ten minutes into the run, I have a moment of clarity and say to myself "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING??!!"

Anyway, here's some of the highlights from the past several months:

w5d3
This stands for "week 5 day 3" in the c25k program, and it was kind of a turning point for me.  I wrote a previous post about it.  Once I did that run, I realized that even longer runs were actually possible.

Buying shit
I always do this - I get all jazzed up about something, and I find a bunch of shit related to it that I all of a sudden feel the need to purchase.  My wife (understandably) hates that about me.  With running, it started out with shoes.  I didn't feel too bad about that purchase, since my feet were starting to hurt on off days, and one of the first pieces of advice you read regarding beginners and running is to get yourself fitted for a good pair of running shoes.  And the advice rings true - the foot pain went away after I started running in them.

Next came the running shirts.  I had one "tech" type shirt that I realized was extremely comfortable to run in - it was light and wicked the sweat away nicely.  So off I went looking for running shirts.  I didn't go crazy (you certainly can), and got a few generic-type ones from Target.  They actually turned out to be a fortuitous purchase, as you'll see in the "nipple" entry in my next post.  (I know - quite the teaser.)

The latest purchase was this:

a gps running watch.  As I was clicking the "Buy it now" on Amazon, I'm thinking to myself "Why the fuck do I need this???"  In my defense (and there really isn't much of one), it was one of the cheapest ones out there.  I just kind of got tired of driving my latest route in the car to figure out the distance, and pretty much guessing at my pace.  Strangely, the purchase has been kind of motivating.  I know that if I stop running, I'm going to hate myself every time I look at the damn thing.

Color run
By the time the Color Run rolled around I was feeling mostly confident.  I say mostly because my latest training runs hadn't been quite a full 5k yet.  I was running slower than the c25k program assumed you would go, so my 30 minute run only took me about 4k.

My neighbor, who is an honest to goodness "for real" runner told me not to sweat it, and that I'd have it in the bag come race day.  She was right - adrenaline took care of that last one k.  The run itself was amazing - the atmosphere was great, and (unbenounced to us), my wife had made "congratulations" signs for my daughter and I at the finish line.  Coming around the last corner and seeing her there screaming her head off for us was a priceless moment.

All right, this post is getting long enough, so tune in next post for "part 2".

Don't call it a comeback...

And, we're back.  Things are good, albeit slow-ish.  Well, not necessarily slow, but plodding.  I'm making progress, continuing to lose weight, but sometimes it feels like an endless plodding.  Are you old enough to remember that Dunkin Donuts commercial with the "...time to make the donuts" guy?

It kind of feels like that from time to time.  Constant monitoring of calories, continuous exercise, daily weigh-ins, and all the mental energy expended focusing on this.  It's easy to be all gung-ho at the start of something like this.  You know, when you're finally ready to commit yourself to it, you are starting to see results, and you start to realize "Hey - I can do this!"  But by this point we are well beyond the newness and the "honeymoon" stage, now is where the rubber meets the road.  (I was never really sure what that exactly means, but what the hell - I'm throwing it in anyway.)

In the last post before my hiatus, I posed some questions to be answered upon my return, so here we go:

The Color Run is done by now.  How did you do?  Have you kept up with running?  Any plans for future races?  When you started the C25K program, you professed your continued hatred for running.  Is that still the case?

The Color Run was indeed awesome, and I am still running.  I'll stop with this question here since my next post will focus on where I am with this whole running thing.

Still working out with the kettlebell?  You've been thinking about adding some more exercises to the routine you do, or increasing the work interval times and decreasing the rest times.  Have you?

I am still working out with the kettlebell.  I haven't added any exercises to the routine, but I did increase the work interval times and decreased the rest times.  However, my main focus has been on running as of late, so the kettlebell has taken a bit of a backseat.

The amount of weight you are losing each week has started to slow a bit, which we were expecting.  You told yourself you wouldn't let this discourage you.  Is that still the case?

The pace has slowed to about 2lbs a week, and sometimes less.  I'm not discouraged, but I will say that it does register a bit on the piss-off meter.

Hopefully, you're in the low 230's now.

I am!  Holy shit how did you know that??

Does your wedding ring fit yet?

No it does not.  Fuckballs.  I'm really not sure what the hell is going on here.  If anything, it seems like it fits tighter.  Color me baffled.

How about those 38" waist pants that you've been keeping in your closet for fucking ever?

As a matter of fact, I just tried them on tonight and they fit.  And I'm talking a legit fit, with only a smidgen of muffin-top.

I'm assuming you're still logging everything.  Do you still feel good with your calorie target at about 1800/day?

Yep, the log is still a cornerstone of my plan.  Calorie count is still hovering around 1800/day.  I have dabbled with planned and not so planned cheat days here and there, which I'll talk about in a future post as well.

Turning a corner...

The 20 minute run is done - book it.  My daughter and I kicked it out on Sunday.  For the first time since I started this C25K program, I really think I can run this upcoming 5K.

Mind you - the pace was a slow plod (about 12 min/mile), but hey - I'll take it.  I'm trying to think of the last time I ran 20 minutes straight through, and the year I'm coming up with is 1987.  Holy shit, that was 26 years and 83 pounds ago.

My job duties are transitioning right now, so I'll be taking a "blog break" until mid July.  Here are some notes for future me to consider and reflect upon when I return:

Running:
The Color Run is done by now.  How did you do?  Have you kept up with running?  Any plans for future races?  When you started the C25K program, you professed your continued hatred for running.  Is that still the case?

Other exercise:
Still working out with the kettlebell?  You've been thinking about adding some more exercises to the routine you do, or increasing the work interval times and decreasing the rest times.  Have you?

Weight:
The amount of weight you are losing each week has started to slow a bit, which we were expecting.  You told yourself you wouldn't let this discourage you.  Is that still the case?  Hopefully, you're in the low 230's now.  Does your wedding ring fit yet?  How about those 38" waist pants that you've been keeping in your closet for fucking ever?

Diet:
I'm assuming you're still logging everything.  Do you still feel good with your calorie target at about 1800/day?

Good luck, and see you in about a month and a half!

Fear of the unknown...

I mentioned in a previous post that our family took a trip to Disney a few years ago.  My son, who was about seven at the time, was apprehensive about some of the "scarier" rides.  Roller coasters were on his immediate veto list.  For some reason, they scared the shit out of him.  Anything that he remotely perceived as a roller coaster was a no, so "Mt. Everest" and the unfortunately titled "Rock 'n Roll Roller Coaster" were out.  I was surprised "Space Mountain" didn't hit his fear factor radar, and figured I may be able to coax him into it, but that's a story for a different post.

Imagine my surprise when he proclaimed that "Tower of Terror" was the ride he was most looking forward to:

arguably the scariest ride in the park.  It was all I could do to not say, "Really dude??  I mean - c'mon - it's got the word 'terror' in its name."

In my previous post, I mentioned how he had a horrible experience on the dinosaur ride he was so excited about.  It was one of the first rides we went on, and I was worried that it might have soured him for the rest of the trip.  However, we explained to him that there was a place at each ride just before you get into the car where you can choose to leave the ride if you don't feel comfortable.  (Everyone calls this the "chicken-out line", but we of course didn't present it to him this way.)  He seemed cool with that, so off we went to "Tower of Terror".

I'm not sure if you've had the opportunity to experience a ride in a Disney park, but one of the things they love to do, especially for their scarier rides, is to try and scare the shit out of you while you are standing in line waiting for the actual ride.

By the time we were ready to belt ourselves into the ride car, we had been given a "tour" of the hotel, whereas it was explained to us that the hotel was really really old, lots of shit was falling apart, a bunch of people had stayed here and had never been heard from again, and now we're going to take an elevator up to the top floor where we can maybe start to figure out why this place is so fucked up.

So just before we belt in, I was positive we were about to exit via the chicken-out line.  My wife gives him one last "Are you sure you still want to go?", and he simply responds with a silent, wide-eyed, slow nod.

Belt in, and up the "elevator" we go.  As we reach the top, you can see that there are some doors that have been opened to the outside, and all you can see is blue sky as we slowly roll towards them.  Just as we are about to reach the doors, he looks over at my wife and I and says, "I want to get off."  I tell him it's too late, that we had to get off before we belted in, and he says "You lied to me!"  At that exact moment, the car jerks to a stop, we're outside the top floor of the hotel, and the bottom drops out.  Free fall.

Well, he loved it.  We ended up going on that thing a bunch more times, and he was quite proud of himself.  When I think back on all of this, I realize his fear stemmed from "the unknown".  In less than a minute, he went from "HOLY SHIT GET ME OFF THIS THING!!!" to "Let's go again!", and it was all because it transformed from an unknown to a known experience for him.

So what does this have to do with anything?  Well, I'm on week five of CT5K, and the third run this week is a 20 minute run, with no walking.  No lie - I'm actually losing sleep over thinking about this run.  Up to this point in the program, the longest I've run with no walk break is five minutes, and that was this week.  I can't believe how anxious I am over this.

But I've got to realize that my fear of this stems mostly from the fear of the unknown.  I was apprehensive about running at three and five minute intervals this week, for a total of 16 minutes per run, and now it seems like a perfectly fine run session.  I've been reading a lot of posts about running where people say it's a lot of "mind over matter", and I'm starting to believe it.

Tune in next week for the result - wish me luck!

Hunger games...

I'm sure this sounds painfully obvious, but I think that how I manage and think about my hunger through all of this is key to my success or failure.  Like I said, obvious, but as I look deeper into the "hunger issue", I believe that it's more than just "I'm hungry now - MUST EAT!", and "not hungry".

When I started this back in January, hunger was my main concern, and the thing that would almost always end up derailing previous efforts; specifically, being hungry at night.  With previous attempts, I would have all my calories for the day, everyone else would go to bed, and I'd stay up a little later.  The pantry and refrigerator would just call my name.  I'd give in and eat, well, whatever we had - leftovers from dinner, peanut butter, ice cream from the tub, chips/nuts/you name it, and boom - I'm 1500 to 2000 calories over my daily budget.  I'd go to bed feeling like a fat loser, promising myself "Ok - we'll start tomorrow".

So, getting through that first week was the hurdle I needed to keep building on.  It's almost like I went through some "stages of hunger", especially with the hunger at night thing.  At first it was just me sitting in a chair and willing myself not to go to the fridge or pantry to get something, but fuckballs, I really wanted to.  Next, it was realizing that I'm hungry, but there's no point in obsessing over it, since the part of my mind that was committed to staying on plan had made the other part who wanted two double cheeseburgers its bitch.  After that, it gets a little hard to explain - it's like I would be hungry, but I really didn't care, being a little bit hungry every now and then seemed almost irrelevant.

That's about where I am now with things - I'm a little hungry every now and again, but it's not like that hunger feeling pushes itself up to the top of my thoughts and says "PAY ATTENTION TO ME FATTY!!!"  Now that's not to say there aren't times when I'm extremely glad it's time to eat, or that I wouldn't slip back into my old eating habits if I fell off the wagon.  But all I can do is take things day by day and adjust if needed.

I think one thing that has helped me keep everything on track is the fact that I'm allowing myself to eat anything I want - I just have to keep to my daily calorie target (about 1850).  So, if I want to consume my entire day's allotment in maple syrup (hold on let me see how much that would be - 1.5 pounds - holy shit), I can.  I just have to accept the hunger and craving consequences that come with it.  For this reason, I've noticed I'm eating a lot more vegetables and "filler" type foods, vs. just the low-volume, high calorie stuff.

Something happened the other day that made me think I've got my mind on the right track.  I was doing the weekly grocery shopping, and came to the candy at the checkout line.  Snickers, Reese's, and Hershey's, oh my.  I though to myself, "Wow, it would take me like forever to eat all of this".  Well, of course it wouldn't take me much actual time at all, I'm fairly certain I could set some sort of speed record that would stand for quite some time.  But my initial thought was about how long it would take me to consume all of those calories based on my daily budget.  It may seem trivial, but I was kind of proud my thought process went there instead of "I WANT THAT FUCKING CANDY!!!!!"

Another thing that has helped is this:

It's a digital kitchen scale that I got off Amazon for around $30.

Whenever I was working on a plan where I'm counting calories, I would often struggle with what I call "calorie creep", where I would either over or underestimate the calories for something I was eating.  Each of these has their own pitfalls.  The problem with underestimating is obvious, but I would often overestimate my items, so I would make sure not to go over budget.  This would lead to me thinking "Well, I'm really hungry now, and that sandwich I made was really closer to 200 than 300, so I'll have a little snack now and call it even".  Quite the slippery slope.  With the scale, I can be confident of the calorie content of everything I eat, and the number is the number, no bullshitting.

I'm down another 3 lbs this week, with another inch off my waist.  As long as I don't try anything stupid like the above mentioned maple syrup experiment, things should keep progressing well.

The only easy day was yesterday...

Well, it's official, I've signed my daughter and I up for the color run.  I was going to wait a few weeks just to make sure that I don't "wash out" of the CT5K program, but I saw that some of the runs in some cities were selling out, so in a moment of insanity I signed us up.

I guess I'm not as worried as I was about washing out.  Some type of injury is what worries me the most.  I'm a little concerned that I started doing this thing while I'm still too heavy, and that's going to put too much stress on my knees and ankles over the next eight weeks.  So far so good, though.  Also, I'm losing at a good rate (down another 4 lbs this week), so the downward trend in weight can only help.

I'm not as worried about the endurance factor of getting through the program, but I've got to admit, this running shit is tough for me.  We've just finished week two, which was alternating between 90 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking.  Week three incorporates intervals of three minutes of jogging.  Oh the humanity.  The three minutes should be doable, though.  During the running intervals today, I thought to myself "Would I be able to keep going for another 90 seconds?", and I'm pretty sure the answer was yes.  It will be tough, but not impossible.

I'm still not close to saying that I "love running", or even like it.  However, my attitude is changing ever so slowly.  I guess you could say that I've moved from "Holy shit does this fucking suck" to "meh".  Each run has sucked a little less than the previous run.

I don't want to misrepresent things here, there are some things I really do like about this whole endeavor so far, such as:

• Exercising outside is pretty cool.   Fresh air, nice weather - it definitely beats staring at a wall for 30 minutes on the elliptical.  Now, if actual running felt like "running" on the elliptical, that would really be something.
• I really like having the 5K out there as the ultimate goal.  Goals like losing a certain amount of weight, fitting into this shirt or those pants are fine, but this feels like (I won't say "better"), but different.
• I absolutely love doing this with my daughter, it's become something really cool for us to share.

So, onward and upward!

Potpourri...

I've got no specific focus this week, so here is a smattering of thoughts I've had recently:

Literally
I'm aware of (and agree with) a current movement regarding the word literally.  People are using it without regard to the actual definition of the word, and just throwing it in a sentence to emphasize a point.  We need to all make an effort not to say things like "That story was so funny, I literally pissed myself!!", unless you actually sealed the deal.

So, that said, my daughter could literally run circles around me while we jog.  We have both started doing the "Couch to 5K" program, and have completed week one.  She is a fit, healthy teenager, and while not a runner by any means, is kicking her Dad's ass six ways to Sunday.

The program has you alternate between walking and running, and when it is time for us to take off running, she zips out in front and has to fall back to stay with me.  It wouldn't be that hard for her to just do a lazy loop around me during the run time.

On our last run though, she made me feel so good.  We had just finished our last stint of running and were cooling down with a five minute walk.  We both took our earbuds out and she said "You're doing a great job, Dad.  I know you feel slow and everything, but I'm so proud of you."  She's such an old soul - god she is so fucking awesome.

Back in the day
In my last post I mentioned that "back in the day" when I would work out, that meant running one mile and calling it all good.  I've done a little mental tallying, and have come to the conclusion that it's been 19 years since I last did any jogging.  Holy shitballs, that's a long time ago, here's a Time magazine cover from that year:

Now, I realize that I've got no right to go all word police here, but since I weighed in about "literally", what the hell.  I recently heard someone refer to something that happened in 2005 as "back in the day".  I propose that if you use "back in the day" to refer to anything that happened in the 2000's, you don't get to say it anymore.  Let's make it a rule.

The numbers game
I'm over 100 days in completely on plan now.  I'm not sure why that number is significant to me, but it just feels like it is.  It's weird how we put these numbers out there as milestones for different things.  With my 2 lb loss this week, I'm poised to dip below 250 in the next week or two, which means I'll be closer to 200 than I am to 300.  I'm not sure why that is overly significant, but I'm looking forward to that milestone nonetheless.  Our brains must be hardwired for mathematics in some way.  There seem to be a lot of things we humans put numbers on to label accomplishments in our endeavors:  the four minute mile, batting .400, a golfer shooting a round of 59, bench pressing 300 lbs, getting through an entire round of "99 bottles of beer"...

Running, I guess...

I've never enjoyed running.  Mind you - I (usually) enjoy exercising, and if I'm participating in an athletic activity that happens to incorporate running (for instance racquetball), I've got no problem with that, but I've never enjoyed running for running's sake.

With regards to the sports I participated in during high school, running during practice was something that was endured (and quite often dreaded) in order to build stamina and speed.  In football, we would run a number of 40 yard sprints at the end of practice before heading in (usually 15 or 20 of them).  Sometimes only 10 if it was the day before a game, but if we had not practiced well, it could be as many as 20 or 30.  Wrestling practice meant running stairs, and not just at the end of practice, but also at the halfway point.  Off the cafeteria (where we would roll out the mats for practice), there was a 2-flight stairwell.  We would usually run up and down that bitch 25 times in the middle of practice, and then again at the end.

So I came to see running as a "necessary evil" if I wanted to get or stay in shape.  Way back in the day (and we're talking late 80's/early 90's here), if I was going to "work out", that basically consisted of my running a mile and timing myself to gauge my progress.  It would take anywhere from 7 to 10 minutes depending upon what kind of shape I was in, and I'd call it a day.  (Wow - 10 minute workout there big guy, I'm baffled as to how you managed to balloon up to over 300 lbs.)

Well, I saw that a color run is coming to our area in a couple of months, and I'm not sure what got into me, but I somehow thought this might be a cool challenge to put out there for myself.  I've read a number of posts where people talk about going through a "Couch to 5K" program, that takes you from a non-runner to running a 5K in about 8 weeks.  Of course, there's a (free) iPod app for it as well:

My daughter became interested in the color run when I mentioned it, so today we both did "week 1, day 1" on the app.

Look how easy day one is supposed to be - alternating between 1 minute of running and 90 seconds of walking, but son of a mother did it suck.  "Running" on the elliptical is one thing, but with today, I was made keenly aware of how much more energy it takes to jog my 256 lb fat self on actual roads.

It wasn't so much the energy expenditure, as it was the motion that really upped the suck factor.  Our family went to Disney World a few years ago.  My son was about 6 or 7 years old, and was a bit tentative about the "scarier" rides.  We had gotten a book that previewed all of the rides, and there was a dinosaur "safari" type ride that he had deemed not too scary, and really wanted to go on.  Well, after we all belted in and set off, I could tell it was going to take a turn for the worse for him.  He hated it, and it took quite a bit of let's say, "creative" convincing later on the trip to give "Space Mountain" and "Tower of Terror" a shot (but that's a story for another post).

The funny thing about the dinosaur ride that freaked him out was that it wasn't the Jurassic Park-esque point in the ride where the T-Rex gets right in your face and roars at you because he thinks you ate the goat that he had been saving for himself,

but the bumpy, jarring motion that you felt the entire ride.  This is what running felt like - that constant bumpy jarring motion.

Often times, this is the point in the post where the author writes "...but I didn't hate it, I'm becoming a runner!"

Yeah, no, put me down for "I still fucking hate it".  But we're going to see this thing through until the color run and see where that takes us.

The seating dilemma...

In one of my earlier posts, I wrote about the hate-hate relationship I have with restaurant booths.  Now, by no means have I tamed that dragon.  However, with a 4 lb loss this week, along with another 1/2" off my waist (which brings the running total to 45 lbs and 6.5 inches lost), this has made a noticeable impact on how I fit in a restaurant booth.  Of the few booths I've recently attempted to slide into (while thinking "pleasefitpleasefitpleasefit"), I've gotten in with relative ease.  Not only do I not hurt while sitting there because the table isn't pushing into my diaphragm, but there is actually (a little) space between the table and my stomach.

Restaurants can still be a bitch, even without a booth.  If we are at a table, I still usually have my chair pushed back way too far from the table so I feel I have enough room, which leads to waitstaff and customers bumping into you as they try to walk behind you to navigate through the tables.  And if someone is seated directly behind me, our chairs often bump into each other when one of us decides to get up from the table.  I always try to make sure I get a seat with my back facing a wall or a non-traffic area, a corner is the best.  Then again, no one puts baby in the corner (sorry - that was uncalled for).

Ugh...I can't fucking wait for this seating dilemma thing to start working out, though.  In nearly every public seating situation I can think of in recent memory, be it a movie theater,

baseball game,

airplane,

pretty much you name it - anything, I've got basically one move that allows me to not make the person next to me miserable and encroach on their space.  And that is to sit perfectly still with my arms crossed in front of my chest until the really really fun time we are all having is over.

I think it mostly has to do with (other than the obvious fact that I'm too fat) what I'm going to call "Tyrannosaurus Rex Tiny Arm Syndrome", or TRTAS (pronounced tert-ass).

Relative to my overall girth, my arms are fairly short, couple this with the fact that I basically have no lap, means I've got nowhere to put them unless I'm in a chair with nice big (non-shared) armrests, so all I can do is fold them in front of myself.

Anyway, it'll be nice to someday sit comfortably in seating designed for the average sized person.

Between worlds...

I think I'm mostly a positive person.  Losing weight and getting fit dominates quite a bit of my thought process lately, and through all of it, I notice my mind often goes to positive thoughts like "I'm feeling so healthy lately/My progress is really starting to show/I'll be able to fit into those pants/shirts/etc... before I know it", rather than "I wish I could eat that/This is going to take forever/I'm a fat tub of shit".

I do most of the grocery shopping for the family, and as I was loading the bags into the trunk a while back, I had a gallon of milk in my hand.  I thought to myself "I've lost this weight."  We go through about 4 gallons a week, and as I put each gallon in the trunk, I thought "I've lost this too!"  I actually snapped a picture of all 4 gallons since I was kind of amazed at how much it looked like all together:

 In fact, this was about 2 weeks ago, and with this week's loss of another 4 lbs, I'm up to 5 gallons lost.

So for the past couple of weeks, my mind has often gone to that image of those gallons of milk along with the thought of "Wow, most of that was fat on your body that you're not carrying around anymore, and you're still going strong!"

However, I find that while my mind most often lives in the world of the positive, every now and then something will send it right to negative land.

I caught an image of myself from an unexpected angle in a full-length mirror the other day.  And I'd just like to say, go fuck yourself full-length mirror.  As a matter of fact, all full-length mirrors - go fuck your collective selves.

Some people talk about an NSV happening when they catch a look of themselves in a mirror, and for a second, they don't recognize the reflection as their own since they look so different after losing so much weight.  Well, that's basically happened with me, but I didn't recognize myself as the still tragically fat guy from that angle in the mirror.

And just to make things extra-fun, I got another look at myself in a different full-length mirror, from an entirely different angle later that same day.  This time I actually recognized it was me, and thought "Ah yes - we look like complete shit from that angle as well."  Quite a kick to the berries.

So for the last few days, this has been the image that's been tattooed on my brain.  However, I've noticed that I'm already starting my journey back to Positiveville.  With golf season (hopefully) right around the corner, I was taking inventory of what shirts I had available to wear.  A bunch of them that didn't come close to fitting last season, and that I didn't think I'd be able to fit into until mid-summer, fit already.  Furthermore, my "goto" XXXL's went into the donation pile because they were comically large when I tried them on.

So, slowly but surely last week's fat guy in the mirror is morphing into this week's trimmer guy who is fitting into clothes that he had no hopes of wearing 3 months ago (at least in my mind's eye).

Weigh-in day pressure...

Since I started this thing back in January, I've been losing weight and inches at a pretty good pace.  Generally about 2 or 3 pounds per week, and 1/2" or so off my waist.  Indeed, this week I'm down another 2 lbs and also lost an inch around my waist.

However, up until about a month ago, I would consistently feel quite a bit of pressure when it came to "weigh-in day".  I was weighing in once a week - always on Saturday morning.  I found that I became increasingly obsessed during the week thinking about what number would show up on the scale come Saturday.  I even started doing crazy shit like eating a very small meal the night before (or sometimes even skipping dinner), and hardly drinking any water on Friday night, since I knew I would be stepping on that scale the next morning.

I think this mindset stems from some of the unhealthy, ridiculous shit we would do trying to cut weight on my high school wrestling team.  Coming off football season, I would weigh between 160 and 165, and would cut down to the 145 lb weight class for wrestling season.  Practices were brutal, and I'm sure we would burn a ton of calories, but cutting down to 145 was fairly tough, especially for those first couple of matches.

So when it got to a day or 2 before a match, here's a partial list of bat-shit crazy things we would regularly do:

• Eat next to nothing for a day if you knew you were going to be close to not making weight
• Drink next to nothing 12 hrs prior to your weigh-in if you knew it was going to be close
• Wear plastic sweats while running/jumping rope/or just sitting in a hot room trying to drop that last bit of water weight before weigh-in if you knew it was going to be close
• Continuing our dehydration theme (here's my favorite), carrying a can around with you and constantly spitting into it in an attempt to further lose water weight (I'm beginning to think this one may have had a negative impact on my social life)
• Having a huge cache of food and liquid to binge on after you made weight, because you had about an hour until your match actually started

Doesn't that sound like the perfect recipe for a lifetime of unhealthy eating and fucking up your metabolism?  Maybe even throw in an eating disorder, too.  Actually some guys would occasionally practice "binge and purge", but I never went there.

I think this past nuttiness definitely contributes to the increasing pressure I would feel before weigh in, so I decided to eliminate "weigh-in day" altogether (sort of).  Now, every day is weigh-in day.  I weigh myself first thing in the morning, and enter that number in my iPod using an app called "Weight Diary".  I considered going the other direction, weighing myself only once a month or so, but I think that would have just increased the pressure I was feeling with weekly weigh-ins.

Here's the graph of last month's daily weigh-ins from the app:

It feels like a huge weight has been lifted.  I now feel no pressure at all while thinking about the scale.  From the graph, I see that there are daily ups and downs, but the overall downward trend is very good.  Of course, I can rationally say I knew this was happening, but I guess it just helps to see it, too.

I don't know, the bell rang...

It feels different this time.  It feels like I'm in it for the long haul, and I'm really going to do it.  Of course, that's what I've said every single time in the past where I've made a "run" at this whole weight loss/fitness thing.

So, I'm not really comforted with the feeling I have that this time is "the" time.  In past attempts, I've thought to myself "Why this time?  Why am I sticking to my plan this time after so many false starts?"  The only answer I was ever able to give myself was that something just "clicked".

And this time, like the others, all I can say is that something clicked.  There was an internal bell that sounded, and off I went.  It made me think of the movie "A Christmas Story".  Remember that iconic scene where that kid sticks his tongue to the frozen pole on the playground?

The kid gets his tongue stuck, chaos starts to ensue, and as they're all trying to figure out what to do, the bell rings.  Ralphie starts to head inside, and his friend says "What are we going to do?  We can't just leave him here!", and Ralphie replies with "I don't know, the bell rang."  Both kids just kind of shrug and head inside, leaving their friend stuck to the pole.

As a side note, I find it amazing at how programmed we can be, especially as kids.  Nearly every kid obeys that playground bell like it's an irresistible force.  I remember once in 3rd grade, my buddy and I were building a snow fort.  It was going to be epic.  We had just gotten a shit-ton of snow, and it was packing perfectly.  We planned the fort the entire morning before recess with detailed schematics.  Once we were finally out there, we completely threw ourselves into our work.  We were so engrossed that we didn't even hear the bell when it rang.  At some point, we noticed an eerie stillness, looked up, and realized we were the only 2 souls still out on the playground.  My buddy said "What are we going to do now?"  Neither of us had an answer, we were completely in uncharted territory.  If we had heard the bell, I'm sure we would have dropped everything, and headed back into school like all the other good little zombies.  We came to the conclusion that we would head inside, put our stuff away, and just go sit in our desks like nothing was wrong.  Amazingly, it pretty much worked.  We got a double-take from the teacher, and a couple of kids saying "Didn't you hear the bell ring????", but no further repercussions.

So anyway, if this time is for real, I'm looking for some evidence that sets it apart from all my previous ventures.  Something that goes beyond just "the bell rang".  I'm doing a lot of things that I've done in the past - drinking lots of water, counting calories, exercising (both cardio and strength), keeping a food log...but there is one specific thing I can think of that is different this time.

The plate on the left is a meal that I recently put together for myself the other day:

It consisted of green beans with a little cheddar cheese, corn, and cottage cheese - about 480 calories.  The box on the right contains about the same calorie amount of some leftover boneless wings from BW3 that I had been saving to put on a salad I was planning on making later in the week.  It's not hard to imagine how the plate on the left is going to make me feel more full and satisfied for a much longer period of time.

In the past, I would almost never eat vegetables.  If I were counting calories, I would always choose to have a smaller amount of something really yummy (like the leftover wings) and just power through the hunger that came later.  This time, I'm making sure that I have a decent amount of some type of veggie with any main, sit-down meal I make for myself, and even though the veggies aren't blow-your-mind yummy, I have noticed that I would rather forgo that pleasure hit you get from eating something that tastes really good in order to stay feeling full longer.

I'm down another 2 lbs this week, with another 1/2" off my waist.

When this baby hits 88 mph, you're going to see some serious shit...

I love astronomy.  It's a hobby/passion of mine.  On a clear (and warm enough) night here in the Midwest, you'll more likely than not find me outside looking through a telescope.

Astronomical objects are so far away from us that our distance from them is usually not measured in millions or even billions of miles, but "light years".  Even though this sounds like a unit of time, it's really a distance - specifically the distance light travels in one year (which turns out to be about 6 trillion miles).

One of my favorite things to observe is other galaxies.  They are quite far away from us, pants-shittingly far.  The closest one that's not one of our little "satellites" is about 3 million light years away from us, and many more are billions of light years distant.

Here's one of my favorite galaxies to observe:

it's called "M51" or the "Whirpool Galaxy", and is about 20 million light years distant from us.

Even though the light year is often used as a distance unit, I like to think about the time aspect more often.  When I'm looking at M51, the light that is traveling through my telescope and hitting my eye took 20 million years to get here.  When that light started on its journey 20 million years ago, what was happening on earth?  What did this place that I'm sitting at right now look like then?  A telescope is in many ways a time machine that allows us to look into the past.

So what does this have to do with weight loss?  Well, I realized while looking at a spreadsheet that I use to keep track of my weight loss (and gains) over the years, is that as I'm getting thinner, in some ways (at least weight-wise), I'm taking my body back through time.

In a couple of months, I'll dip into the 240's.  I haven't been in the 240's since 2009, but the real time-jump will happen when I get below 200.  Except for a brief period in 2003, I haven't been below 200 since 1997 - a time travel of 16 "weight years".  Does that make my elliptical machine basically a Delorean?

I'll see if I can find the flux capacitor on it next time I work out.

I'm down 2 lbs this week, with another 1/2" off my waist.  260's are right around the corner!

Tools of the trade...

Well, I've been sticking with this thing for over 50 days now, completely on plan, balls-out, cheat-free.  (I'm not sure how adding the phrase "balls-out" adds legitimacy to my opening statement, but it just feels right.)  According to my log, this is as long as I've stuck with something in over 4 years.  Results continue to be positive.  I'm down another 5 lbs this week (holy shit, scale fairy).

With this post, I wanted to write about a few tools/techniques that I've found are helping me.

Now, I'm certain you've heard about Pandora, but it has become my go-to app for exercising:

For exercise tunes, in the past I would create a playlist on iTunes, listen to it until I got sick of it, and repeat the process.  With as much as I've been exercising lately, this is starting to get too repetitive.

So, enter Pandora.  If you drill down into some of the station menus, you eventually get to this:

a bunch of tailor-made workout mixes.

It also gives me an excuse in case I'm caught listening to a song that may be considered embarrassing in some social circles.  Witness a recent conversation between my wife and I:

Wife:  "I noticed you were rocking out pretty hard at the end of that workout."
Me:  "Yeah, good workout."
Wife:  "The song coming from your earbuds sounded like 'Flashdance...What a Feeling.'"
Me:  "Yeah, well that was just the 80's cardio mix on Pandora."
Wife:  "Ok, but I see that you also purchased the song on iTunes."
Me:  "Why don't you just shut the fu-"
Wife:  "Easy there, big fella."

With regards to food, I'm kind of lucky in the fact that I can eat the same thing for many days on end without getting sick of it.  I'm pretty sure that for every lunch between grades 3 and 5, I had the same bologna and cheese sandwich, packed in a "Space: 1999" lunchbox.

So every Sunday night, I make all of my breakfasts and lunches for the next 5 days.  Breakfasts are made from this layout:

Whole-wheat pitas, meat and cheese of choice (this week it's ham and swiss).  I bag 5 of them up, put them in the fridge, and boom - instant breakfast (450 calories).

One minute in the microwave before I'm out the door in the morning, and it's all good.

For lunch I bag up 500 calorie portions of nuts:

This week it's cinnamon almonds and cashews.  (By the way, I'm aware I have mentioned "balls-out" and "nut bags" in the same post.  I promise it ends here.)

One of the main things I'm focusing right now, if not the main thing, is "calories in".  Obviously, I'm monitoring other things as well - exercise, water, bad/good carbs...but what is really keeping me on plan and motivated is watching calories.  I originally started with a goal of at least 1600 and no more than 2000 calories per day, and I've got a streak of 50+ days going of hitting that target (Cal Ripken doesn't have anything to worry about yet, though).  Paging through my log, I see that I rarely get above 1900, and it looks like most days are averaging right around 1850.

I try to prepare a lot of food myself, so I can control the calories as well as the ingredients.  But when there's nothing on the label to help me, or I eat out at a restaurant, I use this:

It was one of the first (free) apps I found in the app store when I did a search for "calorie counting".  I think many people use and like some tools called "FitDay" and "MyFitnessPal", which I may check out in the future, but for now, this is all I need.

The adult sippy cup...

Well, I've made that seemingly inevitable right of passage that so many successful dieters seem to make at one time or another:  I'm drinking water - lots of water, ounces and ounces and ounces of water per day.  Holy pee, Batman.

So now I'm carrying this with me nearly everywhere I go:

It's like my own 32 oz. adult sippy cup.  I ordered it from Amazon about 2 weeks ago for less than $10 shipped.  My wife gave me the eye roll when it arrived, much like the one she gave me when I ordered my kettlebell.  I will say though, the eye roll was deserved.  I'm notoriously bad for trying to start on a "water kick", getting my special bottle/container/whatever, and then 5 weeks later it's sitting in the back seat of my car, half-filled with tepid tap water while I'm sucking down my 5th diet Pepsi of the day.

It's somewhat of an ironic twist that I now have my own sippy cup, because I was kind of anti-sippy cup when my kids were little.  I wouldn't say I was completely anti-sippy cup, I just don't get this constant obsession we seem to have of making sure that a kid is carrying around a container of liquid to drink from every waking minute.

Here's my crotchety old man take on the issue:  when I was a kid, we had this great system.  We would have cups next to the bathroom and kitchen faucets.  When you got thirsty, you made a trip to the faucet of your choice, filled the cup with water, and drank the water (repeat as needed).  I grew up in the country, so we also had a back-up system in case the faucet method should fail, called a hose.

In some of my more pessimistic moments, I sometimes think if I were to write a parenting book (and this is probably evidence that I should definitely not), the title would be:  "There's Water in the F#cking Faucet".

Anyway, the whole water thing was started in an attempt to get myself off the copious amounts of diet Pepsi I was drinking each day.  It was a lot, a real lot.  Here's the number (wait for it...):  8 cans a day.  And that's at least 8 cans a day, some days even more.  Just under a gallon of diet Pepsi every day.  Ugh.

I'm surprised at how much I don't miss it.  I was planning on allowing myself 2 cans a day - one in the morning and one at dinner.  But the 2 cans turned in to just one in the morning, which turned into "meh, I guess I don't feel like one right now".

Good progress this week - I'm down 2 lbs and another inch around my waist.  Even though the 2 lbs is a slower pace than my previous pace of 3 lbs/week, I had only been losing a quarter to a half inch around my waist each week until this one.  I'll take inches over pounds any day.

The doing things...

I'm not sure how much "Seinfeld" you've watched, but he does a bit I always liked about gym class.  I'm paraphrasing, but it goes something like, "Any day you had gym, things were a little bit off.  It starts out normal:  math, history, lunch, but then all of a sudden you're in shorts and a t-shirt, you're climbing ropes, other kids are throwing balls at you.  It's like you're suddenly in 'Lord of the Flies' for 50 minutes."

Ah yes, that childhood icon, the kick ball:

and the mother of all kick ball games of course - dodgeball.

In my school we called it "battleball".  I'm not sure why, maybe because it gave it that "Lord of the Flies" flavor the gym teachers were looking for.  We loved it, we begged to play it.

So fast forward to about 6 or so years ago.  My wife and some of her coworkers wanted to enter a dodgeball tournament (spouses welcome and needed).  I had no idea such things existed, and even though I was nothing close to fit, thought it would be fun.  I wasn't in very good shape, but I wasn't as far gone as I am now.  My goal was to basically not embarrass myself.

When we got to the "arena", we registered and went to check out some of the other teams who were warming up.  The teams were full of mostly 20-something "kids" who were ultra-organized, and could whip that ball.  I had no idea a kick ball could make that noise when it hit a human body.  My goal had changed from making sure I didn't embarrass myself to making sure I didn't lose a testicle.

Well, we got our asses summarily kicked, but boy was it fun.  As the years progressed, and my fitness/weight spiraled out of control, I never really felt like doing things like this anymore.  In fact, I felt more like this:

That is, until recently.  Over the past month and a half, working out has gone from something I would dread, to something I tolerate, to something that I'm finding myself actually kind of looking forward to.  In fact, the workout I had this past Friday was that workout.  The one where you feel like you're running on air right out of the gate, and you feel like you could go for hours.  When I was finished, that feeling lasted for the rest of the evening.

So, I'm kind of looking forward to doing "things" again.  My wife loves to bike, and in the past has had little, if any, success in getting me to accompany her on bike rides.  But now, it seems like that might be a lot of fun and a great way to get a workout in.  Both of us enjoy racquetball, and I find myself pricing summer memberships at local health clubs.  Another dodgeball tournament?  Count me in - it was kind of cool sporting those post-tournament welts.

The plan is moving along fine as ever.  I'm down another 3 lbs this week, and I'm averaging about 1800 cals/day with some hunger, but no real intense "craving".

Tell 'em what they've won...

Growing up, my brother, sister, and I were limited by the amount of TV we were allowed to watch during the week.  2 hours was the rule.  So once the weekend came, the 3 of us went into "binge mode".  On Friday night, we all crowded around the little black and white in my sister's room and settled in for the epic Friday night lineup of "Dukes of Hazzard", followed by "Love Boat", and capped off with "Fantasy Island".

However, during the weekdays in the summer we had the opportunity to cheat a bit.  My Mom stayed home with us during the day, but when we were just old enough to be left alone without a babysitter for a few hours, she started taking an aerobics class.

Her car wasn't even to the end of the driveway before the TV was snapped on and we were ratcheting that dial (no remotes or push-buttons back then, mind you).  There wasn't a whole lot to offer in that mid-morning weekday lineup, but beggars couldn't be choosers.

For the amount of time she was gone, we were usually able to get in episodes of "Card Sharks", "Press Your Luck", "Diff'rent Strokes", and maybe even catch "Price is Right", before we had to hastily clean up the complete state of disaster we had put the house in during the few hours she had been gone.  It was kind of like "The Cat in the Hat", but without the cat and all of the other weird shit that happens.

Anyway, I was reminded of this the other day:

Recognize it?  It's a game from the "Price is Right" .  Contestants would try to guess the prices of products, and for each dollar they were off, the mountain climber goes up the hill, often reaching the end of the mountain and falling to his (apparently hilarious) death.

What made me think of it was a graph I've kept of my weight loss efforts over the years.  In my previous post, I wrote about a food/exercise log I've kept since 2008.  I've also kept a spreadsheet of data of my weight over time.

I actually started the spreadsheet in 2003, when I started Atkins.  From that data, some previous medical records, and memory, I was able to enter data for my weight losses and gains since I graduated high school.  Here it is:

Listening to someone's weight loss story, you often hear the phrase, "but then I ended up gaining even more weight than I'd lost".  Certainly true for me, but look at how predictable the "gained back" amount has been.  You can draw a fairly straight line through each of the peaks.

I remember looking at this graph back when I started Atkins.  I thought to myself, "Wow, I was well on my way to 300 lbs."  Well, I got there.  And from what you can see, 350 and 400 aren't weren't that far around the corner.  Scary.

Continued success with the eating plan, weigh-ins, and exercise.  I'm down another 3 lbs this week, which is a pace I'm extremely happy with.  I realize this pace will inevitably slow, but hey - I'll take it while I can get it.

I've also cut down my diet soda intake by 75%, and dramatically increased my water intake by not bringing any diet soda to work with me.  That's got to be a good thing, too.

Cue the Top Gun music...

Man, I am sticking to this plan like a boss.  I've been on it for 28 days, and every single one of them except for one, I've hit my calorie target.  The one day I did go over, (day #4), was because I ate at night, which has in the past been one of the toughest things for me to resist.  Furthermore, day #4 was the only day I've eaten something after dinner.  Exercise has been right on track, and I'm down another 3 lbs.

However, I'm reaching what I would call a "danger zone".  (There it is - anyone who is a child of the 80's just had a Kenny Loggins song start up in their head while envisioning Tom Cruise land on an aircraft carrier.  By the way, this song will haunt you for the next 7 to 10 days.  You're welcome.)

I feel I'm in a danger zone because even though I remain upbeat and hyped, I know the pounds are going to start coming off slower now.  Those first "honeymoon" weeks of lightening fast loss are past me, and now it's time to dig in for the (extremely) long haul.  Motivation may be in short supply at times.  I've got to be ready for this so I don't fall off the wagon.

I'm about to reach a somewhat significant milestone, though.  I know this because since 2008 I've used this:

to log all my food and exercise.  Well not all of it, only when I've been on a plan for a consecutive amount of days.  Sadly, it's more a log of my failures rather than my success.  However, from the log I do see that once I finish this week, it will be the longest I've been on plan since 2009.  In 2008 I was on plan for 130 days, and in 2009 I was on plan for 122 days.  Both of those streaks show a lot of cheating towards the end, so I'll really have to be aware of that when I near the 100 day mark this time.

It's interesting the things some find to be motivators while others find them to be just the opposite.  I really need to keep a log to feel like I'm in control of my plan.  I like paging back through it to see how well I'm doing,  or what adjustments I need to make to do better.  My wife absolutely hates to keep a log, and finds it tedious, depressing, and demotivational.  She actually does better and is happier when she tallies things in her head and doesn't keep a log.

By the way - a funnier title for this post would have been "Yee-ha, Jester's dead!", but I'm not sure how I could have related it to weight loss/fitness.

One ring to rule them all...

Do you know what an "NSV" is?  I'm guessing you do, especially if you've found your way here from another weight loss/fitness blog or forum.  I didn't until I started frequenting the "3 Fat Chicks on a Diet" forums in my list of links at the right.

In case you didn't know, it stands for "non-scale victory", and it's exactly what it sounds like - any small weight loss/fitness related "victory" that doesn't center on a number on a scale.  It could be fitting into that pair of pants you haven't worn since acid-wash was cool, running into someone who hasn't seen you in a while almost not recognizing you, or even the simple act of (see one of my earlier posts) comfortably fitting into a restaurant booth.

I know lots of times these happen spontaneously, which is kind of why it feels so awesome when they do, but I've got a number of them I'm looking forward to.  I've got the requisite pants and shirts hanging in my closet, waiting their turn.  I'm looking forward to the day a coworker looks at me with that semi-befuddled look and says "Are you losing weight?".  But here's the one I'm looking forward to almost more than any:

my wedding ring.

When my wife and I married (19 years ago), I was hovering just a bit above 200 lbs.  I felt embarrassingly fat at the wedding, and cringed when I saw the photos.  It's ironic that I'd kill to be back at that weight right now.

Anyway, my ring was sized to fit me at that weight.  A few years went by, I stepped on the scale one day and it said 215.  That was my first real attempt at losing a significant amount of weight.  I went the Slim Fast low calorie (less than 1200/day) route.  Over a period of 7 months, I lost 50 lbs.

Then one day, out of the blue, my ring just fell off my finger.  I had lost so much weight it wouldn't even stay on my finger if my hand was at my side.  I still remember the ping it made when it hit the floor.  Awesome non-scale victory.  I got it re-sized, and even kept the little piece of gold they took out of it.

However, like all of my weight loss attempts since then, all those pounds came back (and then some).  As I went up and up in weight, that baby was most definitely not going to fit.  I quit wearing it, and didn't have the heart to get it re-re-sized.  In the drawer it went.

Fast forward to our anniversary about 5 years ago.  My awesome, loving, understanding, caring gem of a wife took it to a jeweler and had him put the little piece of gold back in.  What an awesome anniversary gift, I was so touched.  I went to slide it on my finger, and could barely get it over the knuckle.  Non-scale fail.  Big, hefty, stinking non-scale fail.  (Seinfeld fans' ears just perked up at that obscure reference.)

I don't know at what weight I'll be able to get it back on and wear it comfortably, but I'm tellin' ya - it is going to happen.