Thursday, August 15, 2019

Year 60; week 9

Damn!
No progress on the weight loss.
I have been walking. I said I'd walk 5 days per week. I figure Sunday will always be a day off because the mornings are pretty full. Last week I took Friday as my second day. This week I took Tuesday because I was feeling an occasional twinge of pain in my left knee. I'm not sure what was causing it (other than the fat guy putting too much stress on it!) but I figured the day off to be a good thing.
The walking pace is coming back, but I'm just going to work on the distance and not worry about the time for the next week or so.

I have not been faithfully tracking food intake and probably need to. I've thought about a mini-fast or something to jump start the weight loss, but I'm not sure that's the route I want to go. I'm really more interested in a maintainable way of life. I'm not sure if not-eating-so-much-food is something that's maintainable after a lifetime of overindulgence, but that's what I'm faced with.

With two months of the year in the books, I'm now at needing to lose 6 pounds/month. Still easily attainable, but it's time to get serious.

John
Note: I realized that this is actually year 60; week 9, and so I went back and changed the title of the previous posts.

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Year 60, Week 8

Ugh!
I know it's my first weigh-in in a few weeks. It's not good.
258
That means I'm nearly back to where I started. The -60 by 60 goal is still intact and I think I've finally got my head into it, so I should be seeing some positive results in the coming weeks. I'm back to walking and working on adding a little running to my walks. I'm also trying to get back in the habit of logging foods.

Yesterday was day 3 of walking. I thought I was going to give myself an easy day since I had just finished mowing the lawn and already had a good share of my steps in for the day. Instead, I felt pretty good and added a little bit of light running into the walk.
To be fair, by light running I mean really light running. My light run now isn't much faster than my brisk walk of 5 years ago. In any case, I was down to 53 minutes at the 3 mile mark.



Today will be an easy day. I'll get my distance in, but not worry about the time. Tomorrow will be a day off since I've got a few things scheduled in the morning. It is supposed to rain on and off all day today. I walked about a quarter mile in the rain yesterday. I don't think it will be a problem.

Other than just being too damn fat, I don't feel bad. I've never had a problem with cholesterol, high blood pressure, or other typical overweight maladies. I definitely feel the extra weight in my knees and ankles, and I'm either going to have to lose the weight or start buying fat clothes for the winter months.

I'm looking forward to a better update for Week 9.

Be well,
John

Monday, August 5, 2019

Keeping it real

So I've missed a couple of weeks with updates and it's not quite to Thursday for a week 8 update, but here is where I am.

I've been doing a pretty crappy job of working towards the -60 by 60 goal. I have been eating a little better but still tend to overindulge in sweets. I haven't done anything in the way of regular exercise.

Being around some of the healthy people in my family this past weekend has inspired me (and shamed me) into doing better.
This morning I took my first long walk in quite some time. I walked 3.1 miles (5K) in 56 minutes, 46 seconds. I was at 55:06 at the 3 mile mark. I'm going to use this as my baseline and set a couple of goals. The first is 3 miles in 45 minutes. Realistically, that means I'm going to have to start mixing in some running with the walking. Then I'll increase the running part until I'm at 3 miles in 30 minutes.



I know I should put a time frame for each step, but I really have no idea how well I'll respond to the activity. Past experience tells me to go slowly or risk some knee/ankle pain. My plan to start is 5 days/week and just look at getting a little better each time out. I should be able to reach the first goal by September without trouble. I should have a better idea of timelines for the rest of it by then.

John <><