So we've steam rolled past week 5 of the 10 Week Biggest Loser competition at the office, and I'm feelin' pretty good. I'm losing weight, inches off my waist, and still keeping up a fun and carefree lifestyle. On a minor note, I also purchased my first house with my wife the other week. Basically a footnote in my life compared to the huge pounds I'm droppin', but I figure I'd give it a mention since the blog was dry the last 2 weeks (more on house projects later). I used said move-in as a reason to kick back and take a break form my current low carb diet, and wolfed down some pizza along with a few beers; and by a few I mean as many as I could muster in the daylight and that evening. One little (or big) break didn't kill my progress though, and I was able to resume right after with a fresh conscience and revitalized attitude. I've been thinking the last few weeks about how my diet has changed, and how much of this I will be able to keep up afterwards. The biggest thing I've noticed about cutting out carbs like bread, pasta, and rice, is that f'in everything you eat has this stuff. 99% of food you order comes as a sandwich or with a side of rice. I've been eating a lot of salads lately, but that made me think, have I been eating a lot of salads? Was I just eating a lot of things between bread before? Maybe I was eating a lot of burgers and not enough salad, in which case I'm eating about the right amount now.
Is that 2 faces? Or a vase? Is it both at once? Even without the salads my other meals don't have bread, so I've essentially just been eating a chunk of meat and a side of veggies. When you think about it, this is usually under the entree list at a restaurant. Steak and steamed veggies, chicken with side salad; these are the 'nice' things on the menu; burgers and sandwiches have their own shunned corner, and it was a corner I visited often. Eating 'entrees' like this almost makes me feel fancy; more like proper and stuff, like a real adult. Sandwiches are for those lowly folk, those plebes. Fancy people like myself use a fork and knife to eat, not our filthy hands.
Any who, so its definitely changed my perspective a bit on what lunch or dinner consists of (breakfast is still as awesome as ever since I always loved eggs and meat). Its funny that I would think of a salad as such a diet food; a burger is a real meal. A man's meal. But when it comes down to it, I'm packing in more protein and nutrients eating salad than a 'regular' sandwich or burger meal could ever hope for. Isn't that better? More manly? Maybe manly is being a responsible mother fucker and not eating everything on the plate just cuz its there. And whats with these sides? Fries? Delicious they may be, but they are body killers. I feel like a king when I make a steak and have it with some roasted veggies. 'This is so nice' our dinner guests have said, but the truth is that steak tastes super good and is good for you. Chicken breast? Sign me up buddy! I buy chicken breast family packs like its my job. I should get more into cooking the whole bird, but that hasn't happened much yet. I still love pizza. I still love burgers. Juicy lucy? To die for. But I've come to appreciate a good salad, and I'm eating all these grown up 'entrees' as well. It feels like I've struck a really good balance.
So I'm eating a bit better (or different anyway), I have my cheat days every now and again, and I moved. More specifically I moved away from my super sweet local Snap gym, which means I'm working out sans gym. Thankfully the internet is chock full of body weight exercises, and one of our local parks (Lake Hiawatha) has a pullup bar and dip station. Say WHAT?! Yup! After looking around for monkey bars to use for weeks, I found the jackpot right next to a beautiful little lake. I was so excited I decided to jog down there this week and do another round of Cindy to see how we're doing. You remember that from the benchmarks, right? Well I tacked on almost another 2 rounds, so I hit 17 complete rounds and 10 extra reps in 20 minutes. Truthfully, I was hoping for a bit more, and I'm blaming my push ups for holding me back. Maybe I'm still using too much arm and back on the kips, but the push ups are bogging me down. But progress is progress, so I'll just focus on my push ups and hopefully I can make it past 20 rounds in week 10. I also did another long run the other week after cleaning our old place which ticked off 6 miles in just under 50 minutes. That's almost 2 miles farther than my previous Lake Harriet run, and at 8:10 miles that's 10 seconds faster per mile to boot! That I'm pretty happy with. I'll knock out the PFT next week to get those numbers, and then we'll have our midway numbers totally filled out. Speaking of numbers, lets get to the number that gets us paid; my weight. I tipped the ever-so-accurate digital office scale at exactly 187.0 lbs this week. For those of you that are not die hard followers, that's a sweet 12.5 pound loss in 5 weeks, which is more than my original 10 week goal. So that's pretty neat.
You know whats also neat? That means I'm no longer obese! Yah!! Yup, now I'm just overweight, hahaha. So my new goal is to keep this weight loss gravy trail rolling, and shoot for an average of 2 lbs each week. That would put us on the right side of 180 at 179.5 lbs by week 10. I truly cannot remember the last time I was under 180. Maybe right before I moved to Minneapolis, which would put us at 4 years. And that's a maybe. For sure I know I was about 175 in college, so now we're talking about a decade ago. That's some serious time. They say proof is in the pudding, so here I am in pudding. Okay, its just me in my classy TMNT boxers again.
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| WEEK 1 WEEK 5 |
I tried to make the same blank face. Sorry, no Mina this time, and the lighting is a bit better in my new house (new house!!). And here's the other one.
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| WEEK 1 WEEK 5 |
I know what you're thinking, and yes, that is a fantastic beard. And even though I'm laughing a bit in the second photo, there definitely seems to be a bit less roundness in the belly area. You can't see it from the photos, but I've also gone down a notch on all my belts, and my skinny jeans are now my comfortable jeans. At 12.5 lbs down, I'm at just over 6% weight loss. The first place guy is at a hair over 10% so I'm not exactly in the running, but I'm feeling great and who knows, 10 weeks is a long time so we'll see if we can all keep it together.
Now its time to relax, and enjoy the weekend. Take some time to set-up my garage, look for my Subaru replacement, look at paint color tags, put up curtain rods; its a fucking magical time. Take 'er easy.
