a good day

Today i am on plan, though i used up all of my points for the day. I have kept my food log, and even posted here. All in all, counts as a good day.


Now, if I can only do this a couple hundred days in a row, I might be getting somewhere.

long overdue

So life has gotten very busy for me this month. We're down to less than three months until the baby is due, and haven't accomplished a third of the things that need doing before then.


So, a general update to get April started off on the right foot...


Diet specific:


I weighed in today at an abysmal 379.3. Some people need to pull themselves away from the scale, to let nature take its course when they're trying to lose weight. I definitely am not one of those people. If I let myself go even a few weeks without a weigh-in, things get bad really fast. I need the concrete reminder of both success and failure.

Exercising has been hit or miss. I got myself back into a rotation of morning workouts for a while, but haven't done that the past several days. My treadmill is surrounded by roaming gangs of misplaced furniture (see house remodeling, below) and as a result is mia. It is starting to warm up enough for outside walks though, which I've been trying to do when I get a chance. Mostly though I'm getting most of my physical activity through painting and other house projects.

As to counting my points, i'd say I'm at about 25% at best.

It seems like every time I log in here I'm touting my new resolution and plan. and then I quickly fall out of the plan and go two weeks hiding from my blog in shame. Well, this time lets just take this one step at a time.


Other Stuff:


Liz and the baby are healthy and on course as far as we know. No news is kind of good news on that front i guess.


The house is so not going to be ready when the kid is born though. We've got about 2/3 of the wallpaper removed (and I think all of the wallpaper that had mold on it), but I've only started painting one room. Every step I begin on this project takes at least a week longer than I think it will, and it is has really taken a toll on my stress levels. It will be worth it in the end, I'm sure, and I am happy with the quality of my results to date if not the quantity.

The little gray kitten I mentioned in my last post has become a member of our family. His name is Harold (after the owner of the Purple Crayon). He's about six months old now, and the vet gave him a clean bill of health. Our older male cat (about 3 yrs old) has taken to him as a big brother to kid brother, but our female (about 7) is expressing an excessive amount of displeasure, so we're having to keep them separate for the time being.


I guess that's all that's going on here. Here's hoping i'll be back again soon.

It's snowing cats and dogs.... well cats anyway

So I am proving yet again that I'm no good at this blogging thing :) Though on the bright side things have been going fairly well for me the past couple of weeks... I just haven't had anything to say.

I've tried in the past to make this blog too content specific, I think. By that I mean I've only posted news, comments, whatnot that were specifically related to my weight loss struggles. I'm going to try relaxing on that rule a bit, in part because I've had several moments of late when I wanted to write in a more general interest/thoughts sort of blog. So, I think I will be using this outlet for more of that as I go forward.

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This has been an unusual winter for us in Southern Ohio. Twice in the past month it has been 60 degrees or more one day, and then snowing and in the mid twenties the next. This past weekend was one of those, with nearly t-shirt weather on Thursday and then a honest to god blizzard starting Friday and ending Saturday. Nobody I know was in any traffic accidents or the like, which is somewhat amazing to be honest. Liz decided to stay in Columbus for the weekend rather than risking the round trip (its about an hour and a half each way in good weather). And then today it was back up over 50 again. The rivers around here already were on the point of flooding last week, I am a bit worried about what will happen if all this snow melts too fast (especially if we get the rain they're predicting for tomorrow. Here in town we're safe enough (Chillicothe installed pretty impressive floodwalls after the last time the river flooded the town, umpteen years ago) but some of the areas just downriver from town already have swamps where their back yards used to be.


And we may be adopting yet another cat. I came home from work and found Liz with this very friendly little kitten (prob. 4 months old or so).






We've done everything we can think of to get the word out incase anyone is missing him, and canvased a block or so around our house. So if nobody shows up looking for him we will probably be adding him to our household in a few weeks. In the mean time we've set up a temporary shelter for him in our sunporch, and he seems to be pretty happy back there. Our older cat is going to have a rough year though... she didn't like it at all when we brought home a new kitten last time it happened, and this time she'll probably just be getting used to that change when our baby will be born. The weird thing is that he really looks like a younger version of our newer cat (Oscar), who we also took in as a stray when he was a kitten. It's entirely possible that he's a great-great nephew or something. He's gray where as Oscar is brown, but they have the same striping pattern, and vary similar faces. And some very similar personality traits as well (both are climbers rather than jumpers, that sort of thing.) Obviously we'll never know for sure that they're related, but it seems likely enough. They did both show up on our doorstep after all ... just a few years apart ;)

difficult day

So today I was way under on points, but not entirely by choice. We went to Z-ville to hang out with Liz's parents who were in town for the weekend, which usually is a bad sign for over-eating. But today I had a very healthy breakfast before leaving the house (Kashi crunch cereal with yogurt instead of milk, and a banana) at 8:30... which is very good for me, as I skip breakfast far too often. But then I didn't have anything else to eat until about 5 pm, which is very bad. So while I didn't go over on calories for the day, I did a lousy job of balancing out my day, which is vital to my being able to stick it out for the long run.

But now I'm home again, so tomorrow I have power over what I choose to do. I am going to choose to have breakfast (maybe another bowl of Kashi... that was very good this morning), and a healthy lunch, and a healthy dinner.

All in all I'd say a A for intentions today but a B- in execution.

Sometimes I think it'd be easier if we could just have do-overs ;)

day two

Ok, so really can't think of anything to say today, just want to get into the habit of posting again :)

Day one take 2

Ok, so i've lost track of what week i'm on. And i've lost track of how many times I've though I was going to be back on track and end up fizzling out after a day of good effort.

So I'm not getting back on track.

I'm starting over.


Today has been a good day and a bad day. The good - I've kept my food journal, I've written in the blog, and I used the treadmill. The bad - my food journal is not the shining example of virtue that I need it to be.


Using the treadmill was something of an accomplishment. I mean, I think i've mentioned several times that my wife and I are stripping all the wallpaper from the house in order to repaint in preperation for the baby in June. So that means that furniture is everywhere, and not at all where it should be. And the treadmill kind of got burried in all the moving around. Now its not.

Tomorrow morning - I am getting up and using the treadmill before work. And I am keeping my food journal.

I was in some ways overly harsh with myself in the past couple of months, but in other ways overly easy. I felt sorry for myself and that I would never get back on plan. But I kept thinking of my down time as just that - down time. Well, it wasn't. I wasn't taking a break, I had completely given up. That attempt is over. Now a new one begins.

Day 1.

getting my whole life in shape

Usually if your computer won't boot up properly, its a problem with the hardware or the operating system. Occasionally though, its the keyboard cable. I've spent a lot of time asking myself why I'm failing at this diet thing. Why i'm breaking all the rules.

I've had a good week this week. And a lot of time to think. And I got to thinking that perhaps the problem wasn't so obvious. Maybe all the other stuff that was wrong with my life lately was a cause, not just a symptom.

So i've focused some time an attention to getting things under control at work... And after a lot of effort and some very long days, i'm more on top of my paperwork and organization than I have been in at least a year. This week was also an annual review for me, and it was more positive than I expected. So I'm more happy and less stressed out at work.

More importantly, though less in my control, we had a positive ultrasound on Tuesday. I can admit to myself now that I was extremely worried about that. But everything is good on that front as well.


So now I have more headspace to refocus my efforts on my diet/exercise. I had a workout at the gym this evening (my first in longer than I want to think about), and while I'm feeling extra beat, I'm proud of myself for just getting out there. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm feeling optimistic, but perhaps just a bit hopeful and excited to get back on the horse at long last.

I think my keyboard is plugged in properly now. Let's try rebooting.