Struggling

     I've made a few changes recently and one or a combination of them is wreaking havoc.  I have been eating lots of things I probably shouldn't.  (Including sugar and salt).  I haven't been drinking enough water or taking my fish oil pills.  I stopped taking my allergy meds, my diabetic meds and halved the dosage of my bp meds (at doc's direction).  My legs and feet have felt like lead lately.  I have had a hard time making it through workouts I have already done with ease and my joints are stiff.  I need to get this figured out.
     I have also had pain in the arch and top of my foot.  Waiting on custom inserts to arrive at the podiatrist office.  I keep pushing through.  Weight has yo-yo effect lately, but I am down more this week.  Down to 207.6 at home.  That is my lowest to date.

Personal Win

Yesterday the doctor took me off the blood sugar medication I was taking! I am so happy.  I still have weight to lose and fitness to gain, but things are falling into place.

Celebration

     Not only did I have a birthday a few days ago, but as of this morning, I have officially lost 25.5 pounds since the beginning of my weight loss/ health journey.  I skipped a weigh-in at work last week because we were out of town on vacation.  I thought for sure since we ate out almost every day that things were going to be questionable.  I managed to get in enough activity, watch my portion sizes and make decent choices.
When I got on the scale at work today, I was down 4 pounds from 2 weeks ago! 
     This morning I got back into the gym.  It was rough, but I got back into the swing of my weight lifting routine.  One of my legs was protesting having to do lunges, but I pushed through.

Catching up and taking Vacation

     If anyone is still following my blog, I thought I'd let you know how things were going.  I am sorry I fell off the grid.  During the finale event, the UNC Wellness Center offered us another 6 months of free membership in return for participating in a study.  The study's requirements were to work out 8 times a month minimum at the Wellness Center, weigh in once a week, continue to take advantage of coaching and fill out any surveys they sent out.  After much thought, my wife and I decided to pass on the offer.  It really is a great opportunity and some might think we were crazy for passing it up.  For us though, there were lots of factors involved.  We were spending 50+ dollars a week in gas driving to the Wellness Center, it took 40-60 minutes round trip in travel time plus the hour workout was a serious time commitment (especially when you factor in that we were already paying for memberships at a gym 5 minutes from the house).
     So I had Paula introduce me to a co-worker who also does training at my gym.  I met with her and she did her own assessment and set up a program for me to following as well as some goals.  I have continued going to the gym every day except for last Thursday and Friday when I was getting ready for vacation.  My wife and I drove down to Hilton Head Island with our travel trailer and we are staying in one of the most posh RV parks we have ever seen.  It has a gym, 2 pools, 2 tennis courts, a kids park, a little store, fishing pier,  laundry facilities and all the standard hookups.
     The kids have gotten to go to the beach yesterday and the pool today.  I realized as I climbed the ladder to get out of the deep end of the pool, that I had tried to do that very thing when we had gone to a pool at a resort near Myrtle Beach and couldn't make it up the last few rungs of the ladder.  The workouts are definitely making me stronger.  I also tell when I hefted the pack-n-play around and it didn't make my arms tired.  Still losing weight, but I'm much more excited now about the health and fitness benefits.
     My wife and I have both been training for a 5K as well.  I'm in week 3 of a couch -to-5K training program.  I wouldn't recommend that someone literally go from the couch and try one of those programs, but it is very much the way to go if you aren't a runner and you want to get into (or back into)  shape for a race.

I Have Been Weighed, I Have Been Measured.

     So, as expected, I was a little heavier late in the day when I went in to get the final measurements taken.  Here are the results:

• Weight - 213.3
• BP - 138/82
• Chest 41.5 inches
• Waist 41 inches
• Abs 43 inches
• Hips 43 inches
• Right Bicep 13.25 inches
• Right Thigh 22 inches
• Percentage Body Fat 28.4
• BMI 32.4

     They will give us printouts tonight that explain what the measurements were to start with and how we've improved. 
     I started working out at the gym by the house this morning.   I've been doing a lot of walking on the treadmill lately for that extra boost of cardio in the last few days before the final weigh in.  Both trainers said that walking without holding on (even just a little for balance) is a much better workout.  They said that I should concentrate on trying to walk at a 3.0 with no incline and strive for comfort walking with swinging arms.  That speed is uncomfortable for me, and it is starting to cause pain on the top of my right ankle which causes me to walk funny and lose balance.  This morning I had to drop the speed to 2.5 because of it, but I did the whole time without holding on.  I am going to ask someone about stretches or therapy to push through this.  The top of my ankle was pretty inflamed yesterday and hurt all afternoon.

Last workout before final weigh-in

     I went to the gym this morning (Sunday) for a last minute push.  Afterwards I weighed on the scale that I've been using every Monday morning.  I wanted to have a way to compare what they told me tonight so that I knew what my actual numbers were.  I know that tonight it will be slightly more than what it was this morning because as I drink water throughout the day, my body retains fluids and I am always heavier at night.  Since I have been regularly weighing in the morning, I wanted to have a good baseline.  I weighed in at 211.5!  That's down 3 pounds from last week.  According to my calculations, I've lost 17.7 pounds which is 7.72%.  I know it is silly, but my favorite thing about this whole thing is that I'm under the red line.  I exceeded my goal of 2 pounds a week!

     This past week I have done a lot of extra cardio to get this result.  We had a boot camp on Thursday morning.  We had a few guests join us from another team.  It was nice to see them and find out that one of them reads this blog!  I followed the Boot Camp up with a visit to Massage Envy on Friday night to help recover enough so that I could continue my cardio workouts over the weekend.
     This week I did a few things to keep myself going after the finale on Monday.  I joined the Biggest Loser Competition at work.  (I'll keep you posted on that.)  And then, Thursday at lunch, I went to a local gym near the house and met with a trainer I will work with going forward.  I will miss Paula, but I think this will work out better because it is much closer to the house.  Paula suggested that I begin training for a 5k race in the fall.  Paula, my new trainer, Kari as well as a few runners at work have said that it is definitely possible to be ready in time.  My wife is going to try to train for the race along with me.  There are a few runners on my team.  Maybe I can get them to run with us as well.  Paula doesn't want us to lose touch with the team members and said she had some ideas that might allow us to get back together periodically to work out together.  I'm looking forward to that and to seeing how everyone is doing on Monday night.

Week 7 weigh-in

     Down a half a pound.  Not stellar by any means, but still down.  I think this may have to do with the fact that we ate out on Friday night.  We had taco salad which isn't horrible, but it is higher in sodium, has beef which sits pretty heavy on my stomach and I ate the fried shell.  I think I have one more weigh-in, so this week, I plan to do extra cardio to really make the last one count!