This week also happens to be the last weigh-in of 2007. The New Year makes for a great time of reflection so I’ll take a moment to review where I’ve been with my weight. I actually started 2007 with the intention of losing weight before a close friend’s wedding in September. The first weigh-in I have recorded for the year was 262 pounds on January 8. Instead of losing weight for the wedding, I gained weight and that brought me to the start of this website, when I weighed in at 266 pounds in September. Yikes!

I am happy to report today that I weigh 251.6 pounds, 14.4 pounds less than when I started this website and 10.4 pounds less than when I started the year. I’m happy that I have a weight loss to report (rather than a gain), but I also have to look back at a lot of wasted time in 2007 that I could have used to work on my weight. Who knows how much better off I could be today. No sense in crying over the past though. I recognize that I wasted time and missed opportunities this year, but I will use that as motivation to do better in 2008.

Back in September I set a goal of weighing 250 pounds by December 1. As you can see, I missed that goal by at least one month now. I wish I could have done better, but I can’t complain about losing 14 pounds either. Again, I can look back at wasted time and opportunities and I must commit to working harder next year to reach my goals. 205 pounds by September 1 is not going to be easy. In fact, it hardly seems possible today given my recent history, but I am going to stick with it and see what I can do. I believe it is possible, but I know it won’t be easy.

Best of luck to everyone in the New Year with whatever goals you are trying to achieve. I am very busy battling both my debt and my weight, so look for a lot more content to come as I work my way through these problems. I will be documenting everything I do to find success (and talking about my failures) so be sure to follow along if you are fighting one or both of these same battles in 2008.

Okay, it may be Wednesday afternoon as I finally write this, but I did take the time to weigh in on Monday morning. I had a busy Christmas and enjoyed a break from my computer for a few days. That was a pleasant change of pace and I’m now back feeling energized and refreshed and ready to resume writing on this site.

So…here is my exercise and weight update for the past week. I made a slight improvement in my weight, moving from 253.4 to 252.6, though that is less than 1 pound so not really worth mentioning. However, I am happy with the change since I went out to eat for about 6 meals over that week. I did my best to make smart choices, but it is always very difficult to control your calorie consumption when dining out so I’m happy my weight did not go up.

As for exercise, I did 4 of 5 planned days of cardio workouts and 0 of 1 planned weight lifting workouts. I actually injured my neck and shoulder area again- this time I have been in considerable pain for several days now. Almost enough to send me to Urgent Care to get it checked out, but I am finally feeling a bit better today so I think I’ll be okay to recover on my own. I’m the sort of person who doesn’t really visit the doctor until I fear I am near death or my wife is concerned enough to force me to go. This nagging injury problem has lead me to change my workout plan and hold off on doing any weight training for a while.

I chose an arbitrary goal of reaching 240 pounds strictly from cardio exercise and then resuming weight lifting. I actually like weight training and I definitely believe it is important for losing weight, but I can’t keep having these setbacks and I tend to be the kind of person who wants to push myself to work through an injury so I need to put some restrictions on what I do until I am sure that I have fully recovered. I have enough fat to lose that cardio only will be plenty to get me from 252 to 240 pounds. I think the loss of weight will help me to lift weights with less risk of injury as well.

Therefore, my new exercise plan is 6 days of cardio, with a minimum of 20 minutes per session. I will still be mixing in interval training with lower-intensity steady sessions. My goal is to follow this routine until I reach 240 pounds, then add weight lifting back to my plan.

This morning I’m launching my new weight loss report which now includes Body Fat percentage, BMI, and more. I purchased a new scale recently and it tracks all of these categories so I will now update that here each week. This will give me a better idea of the ‘whole picture’ as I work to get in shape and lose weight.

I don’t have a good weight number to report this week, but I feel optimistic since starting my new exercise plan on Friday. I also helped a friend move over the weekend, which turned out to be a lot of exercise. I sure didn’t feel like waking up at 4:45 this morning, but I got up and got on the treadmill for my interval training (high intensity) followed by some sit-ups. Until last Friday I hadn’t exercised at all last week so I am not surprised by my lack of progress. I’m looking forward to next Monday after a full week of exercise.

*About these numbers- I intend to write complete descriptions of these categories, but until then here is the basic direction I am looking for.

• Weight - this should go down! 
• Body Fat - should also be going down. ‘Normal’ for my age is 8% - 19.9% so you can see how far off I am.
• Skeletal Muscle - more is better
• Visceral Fat - needs to come down - anything over 10 is ‘High’ and very bad. 
• Resting Metabolism - more is better, not critical.
• BMI - needs to come down - ‘Normal’ is 18.5 - 25

I have a lot of work to do!

Last Week: 252.4

This Week: 252.6

Loss: + 0.2

This decimal point precision on my weekly weigh-ins may be overkill, but I guess I’ll stick with it. 

So no notable change this week, I seem to be having a really hard time getting to 250.  I can only attribute that to lack of hard work and dedication. I seem to spend more time managing my money (which is going pretty well now) than I do on my weight. It’s great to be out of debt, but if I die because I don’t lose weight the debt freedom doesn’t really do me much good. 

I have made a lot of hard decisions with my money and I am getting pretty good at saying no to temptation and only buying things I need (mostly). That will power doesn’t seem to translate to my weight loss though. There are a few days each week that I eat well and exercise, but there are also a few bad days each week to destroy my progress on those good days. It’s time for that to change!

I have a new idea. Since I seem to like budgeting so much and it has clearly worked well for me with managing my money, I am going to make an exercise ‘budget’. Okay, probably more like an exercise plan, but I will try to set it up the same way I have my budget so it will hopefully make for easy tracking and help motivate me to stick with it. Managing my weekly exercise schedule in my head isn’t working. I need to schedule workouts, just like I schedule bills that need to be paid during the month. And I need to keep my appointments! Wish me luck and look for an update soon with my ‘exercise budget’ idea.

Last Week: 255

This Week: 252.4

Loss: -2.6 pounds

Looks like another late weight loss report. I had a good week, but I did fall short of my goal of 250 pounds by 12/1. That is unfortunate, but I will get there soon so I don’t feel too bad about it.

This was a crazy weekend with my 30th birthday followed by a death in the family of a close friend. I expect to get back to my normal posting schedule now. There was just too much to deal with over the weekend and I didn’t prepare any posts ahead of time.

You may notice my weight loss numbers now include a decimal point. That is because I bought a fancy new scale that measures body fat and much more, along with the precision weight count. I will be posting more about that scale later and I will start including all of the numbers, with all of the horrid details soon. 

Last Week: 254

This Week: 255

Loss: +1 pound

Sorry for the delay on this post. This has been a really crazy week. Not that I was excited to post the results either…gaining 1 pound isn’t really going to help me hit 250 by my next weigh in. With no change the previous week and now a 1 pound gain it doesn’t look like I’ll have much chance of achieving my first weight loss goal. I’m okay with that, because I did get fairly close, but I do need to take this setback seriously and commit to working harder this week.

I guess I can blame Thanksgiving for the weight gain, I definitely ate more than I should have, but one holiday shouldn’t be enough to slow me down that much. Honestly, I was lazy most of last week and just didn’t do enough to lose weight. I have to realize that making small, slow changes will only work if I do so consistently. I have very little margin for error. So, time to work harder this week and see how close I can get to my goal. I hope to have a better report next week!

Last Week: 254

This Week: 254

Loss: 0 pounds

This is a disappointing week on the weight loss report, but I am not surprised. I was really sore after working out last weekend and that kept me sidelined for about half of the week. That wasn’t my problem though, I could have started up again later in the week. I guess I got lazy, but now I’m looking at only two weeks to drop the remaining 4 pounds for my first goal of 250 by December 1st. It’s going to take a lot more effort than I have been putting in, but I have to get it done.

I am going to make a plan today and schedule some workouts on my calendar. I need to be extra careful with my calories and really try to focus for these two weeks. It’s going to be difficult with Thanksgiving coming up, but I feel driven to achieve this goal so I will do what it takes to get it done.