Well today is the first day of 2010 (Happy New Year!) and we start fresh… a clean slate (and plate)  So today I set my 6 habits that I will create in 2010 and I am using this forum as a place to publicly declare them.  I have also created a facebook group for this so if you are on facebook check it out HERE
Change 1: Walk Daily (trigger: Wake up/get home from work)

Week 1: walk 1 minute
Week 2: walk 3 minutes
Week 3: walk 5 minutes
Week 4: walk 10 minutes
Week 5: walk 15 minutes
Week 6: walk 20 minutes
Week 7: walk 25 minutes
Week 8: walk 30 minutes

Change 2: Healthier daily eating
Change 3: Expand Home Web Design Business
Change 4: Meditate
Change 5: Time for self, family and friends
Change 6: Remove Clutter from life

I will be adjusting and breaking down the next 5 habits as they get closer.  I encourage anyone interested in making changes in their life to commit now and try the system.. Please comment so we know you are there!

Recently I found a new website by the author of a blog that I like Zen Habits… this new site is 6 Changes… while the tag line states “It’s the antidote to the failure of New Year’s Resolutions.” I think it is more than that. 

Basically you choose 6 habits that you wanty to create in your life in 2010 and Leo (the author) shows you a system that (if followed) will help make them a natural part of your life.  So while this post isn’t completely about weight loss, these new habits can include things that will help you get healthy… you could want to exercise more often or eat more healthy… or they could be completley unreated to your health like doing something creative each day or cleaning/decluttering one thing every day… whatever you want to set as your habits is fine.

One big portion of this system (which is free) is committing as publicly as possible, so I intend to use this blog, facebook and twitter to announce my choices, and my progress to anyone who wants to read it… and I am creating a facebook group to help with moral support.. that group is here

So go now and read about 6 Changes and get ready to join us make 2010 the best year ever!

 Week #1 is over on my new 2 week goals and it went well…

First, I lost 6.2 pounds out of the 16 I am trying to lose in 2 weeks… not quite half but a good start… As for the Cardio and blogging everyday goals, I rode the bike for 30 minutes and blogged the first 3 days, then tried the Couch to 5K run on day 4 and blogged, rode the bike again and blogged on the 5th day… but I went to sleep early on day 6 and didn’t exercise or blog.  I was trying to decide if I should take a day off exercise since my shins were still in massive pain from the run.. then I fell asleep and that made the decision for me.  The blogging I planned on doing but it was missed because I went to sleep early.  On day 7 I planned to bike and blog, but ended up having massive computer issues that took all evening to correct… after that I had to make a choice of blogging/exercising/showering/winding down before sleep or sleep… I chose to skip both and sleep.  Looking back this was the right decision, but I really wanted to do these everyday.

I didn’t weight train at all and I didn’t meditate either. No real reason other than I just didn’t do it.  I will make more of an effort this half of the goals.

The food part was pretty easy… I followed the LightenUp program and charted all my food exchanges… stayed pretty close to the limits and it worked.  I did make 2 new recipes… Cajun Chicken Breasts and Chicken Pasta Salad.  They were both from RichardSimmons.com and were good, the chicken breasts was really good.  Next on the list is a Mediterranean Frittata.

I have decided to modify one goal and stick with the rest… The goal that I am modifying is to change the Couch to 5K runs each week goal to a modified Couch to 5K on the elliptical (same program, just not running in the street).  This should allow me to get the exercise and not hurt myself so I have to take days off to recover again… after a few weeks of the elliptical then I can try the running version again and see how I do.

Here are the revised goals:
● Lose Weight – Goal weight is 354.2 (16 pounds)by 9/2/09

Weekly (starting 8/27/09)
● Elliptical – Twice per week Use the Couch to 5K audio tracks on the Elliptical instead of running.
● Weight Training – Twice per week
● New Recipe – Once per week make a new recipe from the diet recipies I have.
● Meditate – Once per week using Meditation CD 

Daily (starting 8/20/09)
● Cardio – Everyday do some form of cardio. Bike, Elliptical, jump rope, run, etc.
● LightenUp Food Plan – Everyday chart all food intake.
● Blog – Everyday post a new blog post

The adjustments she made were: Chicken instead of beef, fat free refried beans, low fat sour cream.. she even cooked me my very own fried potatoes fried in only a little butter  I was very touched and happy that she was so thoughtful.  The best part of the evening was when she showed us that she had Hidden Valley Fat Free Ranch in the fridge… that was a huge step for her to take in buying the fat free ranch… something she had been against for so long… then she showed us the low fat cottage cheese that she had… and we discussed the yoga DVD workouts she has been doing… to me it shows how much she is growing as a person and working toward improving her health. I was very happy!

Yesterday was day 4 of my new goals and all went well… with the exception of my first attempt of the couch to 5K workout (many sites around about this, but I downloaded the podcasts from www.kissmyblackass.org since the music was pretty good) … it sounded so simple… 30 minutes.. Warm-up walk for 5 minutes then run for 60 second… just 60 seconds.. then recover with a 90 second brisk walk… repeat the 60 second run and the 90 second walk for a total of eight 60 second runs… finish with a 5 minute cool down walk… done.

I know I am in horrible shape, but I can do 10 miles on the exercise bike on level 4 in 30 minutes, surely I can do this workout…

I was a perfect evening… just dark and wonderful outside.. the 5 minute walk was okay.. I kept the pace up to a just uncomfortable level, then came the first run… did a nice easy jog… my legs were hurting already. The 60 seconds went by and I did the first 90 second recovery walk.. that 90 seconds really went by fast… second run/jog and my shins started aching.. another 90 seconds that seemed like 20 and back to the 60 second run… when the 4th run came up I decided that I would skip one run and just keep up the brisk walk… then the 5th one came and I again needed to just walk… as well as the 6th and 7th runs… I was pushing myself as best I could and when the final run came I ran… as best as I could for the 60 seconds… then the final 5 minute walk was cut short by about 3 minutes… Very disappointing to me that I couldn’t do this yet.. only did half of the running… but it did give me a good goal to work on… the biggest problem for me was the pain in my feet and shins while I was running… I an reevaluating the goal of doing this twice per week and am considering doing it on the elliptical 2-3 times per week instead.

So now I am taking my aching body (I am really sore from the walk/run) and going to ride the exercise bike for 30 minute to get my cardio in.

Is it eating right, being active, getting enough sleep?  Everyone has their difficult habits to break.

For me it has been being active.  I do pretty well with the food part, I mean I have my moments where I lose my mind, but in general I would say that if I could just be active that would solve a lot of my weight/fittness issues. 

An interesting article I read recently in Time magazine (Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin?) was talking about how going to the gym and doing an hour of execrise doesn’t replace the activity that we use to have in our everyday lives.  “Many obesity researchers now believe that very frequent, low-level physical activity — the kind humans did for tens of thousands of years before the leaf blower was invented”.  The main point of the article is that exercising may actually hurt your weight loss results… interesting concept and there are some facts there that appear to back that up… it is summed up as “it’s what you eat, not how hard you try to work it off, that matters more in losing weight”

While I understand what they are saying I just can’t agree fully with this (for myself anyway).  I know that I am not active enough and I am trying my best to correct that… but even if I eat right and watch my portions I have found that without activity increasing I simply don’t lose weight.  In fact when I was 18 years old and lost 73 pounds in a year the amount of activity I was doing was the main factor in that loss… I was working out and running every night no matter what.  I was dieting too but that alone would not have been enough.

Let’s go get active!

A message today and an event last night made me realize how badly I have taught my children. First, last night… without going into too much embarrassing detail one of my kids used our new scale yesterday and told my wife what they weighed… it has been obvious lately that this child has been putting on weight. The weight they told my wife was way under what we expected it to be (as it turns out about 50 pounds less than the real weight). After some discussion it was realized that the scale wasn’t being used right… I know… stand on the scale and read the weight… but not this scale… you have to touch it with your foot… and then wait to get on until the zeros show up… if you just stand on it it can show you the last weight taken since it has a bunch of features to show your weight loss progress. So this child did what most would do and just stepped up onto the scale and saw the weight.. but that was the last weight from someone else that was about 50 pounds lighter than the child’s real weight… which puts them in the ’severely obese’ category and also put them at a weight that I didn’t break until after my second marriage. Then I gave a short talk about how important it is for them to get active and lose the weight and the response was what I expected since here I am, still 150 pounds overweight, telling a child that they are at risk and need to be more active and eat right…

Then this morning I get this tweet from Richard Simmons (www.twitter.com/theweightsaint) “Your children will want to do what they see you do! What are you “training” your children to do?”

So now I sit here pondering what a bad example I have set over the years for my kids and how it will affect them for their lifetimes… for a long time I have thought about work etthic and how it goes (or doesn’t go) from parent to child.. I don’t recal my mother or father telling me about being a reliable employee.. going to work even when you don’t want to or don’t feel good… but that is what I do.. and that is what my mother and father did. So did I just ‘learn’ that from them because that is what they did and that is what I saw? I believe so. Do I hope that my kids will learn about good relationships by seeing my wife and I together.. of course I do. So why would it hit me so hard that my battle with weight, which at times seems to be a losing battle, would be learned by them also?

As a parent I tend to enjoy my children’s successes and feel at some level a bit success for guiding them toward that success… but I also take their non-successes personally too, probably more so than the successes, and feel partially responsible for them… almost like failing to teach them properly… I know that they are the ones ultimately responsible for their own successes and failures, but I still have that pride/shame thing going on.

So over the years of my children’s lives they have seen me go from a relatively normal 235 pounds up to an enormous 406 pounds and everywhere in between… I have been irresponsible in my eating habits and they have seen that… I have been lazy in my exercise habits and they have seen that.. what they have never seen is me eating right and working hard to lose and keep off the weight!

I know that even if they see that from this point on that may or may not change their own habits, but I have to do this for them as well as me. If I can motivate myself to do the right thing and eat proper portions of a balanced diet and exercise regularly to get healthy, lose the weight and then maintain it so they see that, perhaps it will be the motivation them to do the same.

The last thing in the world that I want is for any of my kids to suffer. I know from my own experiences that being overweight does make you suffer.

So now I must do this and make sure they see how it changes me physically and mentally.

#10 - Cut Portion sizes:
I can eat huge amounts of food… that doesn’t mean I ’should’ eat huge amounts of food.

#9 – Track All Food:
Every bite that I take needs to be accounted for on my food chart

#8 – Be More Active:
Walk more. Choose to do more active things instead of watching TV or playing on the computer.

#7 - More Vegetables and Fruits:
Make the main portion of each man vegetables and fruits. Salads, side dishes even entrees that have little or no meat.

#6 - Blog Frequenntly:
Use my blog to help stay focused and to make myself accountable for my choices.

#5 - More Cardio:
Get some form of Cardio exercise everyday. Walking, running, biking, eliptical(ing)

#4 - Get Motivated:
Be motivated. And if I am not motivated just suck it up and do it anyway!

#3 - Stay Motivated:
Once I get there do whatever it takes to stay there, through good times and not so good times.

#2 - Have Specific Goals:
“A goal without a date is only a dream” Write specific goals with dates. Keep them current and in focus.

#1 - Stop Being Lazy!
When I think “I should (fill-in physical activity here)…” I need to do it instead of ignoring it.

Great goal right?  Wrong.  First I neglected one of my favorite sayings.. ‘A goal without a date is just a dream’ (American psychiatrist Milton Hyland Erickson)  When do I want to reach this weight?  Well tomorrow would be great, but then that would be a fantasy not a dream or a goal… and if I look at what the ‘experts’ say then I am looking at about 16 months (best case scenario of 3 pounds per week, every week) 

What I needed to do was to set small attainable goals (with dates) and action items for how to attain them.  That way I have something tangible to shoot for, to be motivated to accomplish and to have some success when I do accomplish them instead of dreaming of this goal weight at least 16 months away. 

I want these goals to be realistic, but also very aggressive so I actually feel like I accomplished something.  If I set the goal as ‘lose 3 pounds this week’ that may be realistic, but I just won’t feel like it did much when I get there.

So I started with a 2 week goal on my weight loss.  I decided that I will lose 8 pounds each week for a loss of 16 pounds by 9/3/09… that may seem like a lot to lose (and it is) but I have a lot to lose.. Right now I have 142.2 pounds to my goal weight and 16 pounds is only 4% of my body weight.

Goal #1 (on 9/20/09) – Lose 16 pounds by 9/3/09 (354.2 pounds goal weight)

Before I get into the action items for that goal I wanted to set another goal related to my weight loss but not really a necessary step to achieving it. so I thought about food (like I’m not always thinking about food) and thought about all the recipes that I have printed out (mainly from Richard Simmons website) that I have in a binder that I haven’t made yet.  I printed these out because they sounded great and would be a healthy meal that would help my diet.

Goal #2 (on 9/20/09) – Make one new recipe from my diet binder each week.

And while I am on the ‘bettering’ myself goals I have wanted to learn to meditate for a long time now… I have a book and a CD.. just have never tried it… so…

Goal #3 (on 9/20/09) – Meditate once per week using my meditation CD

I might as well do one that I have been saying I was going to do for a long time and just haven’t done it…

Goal #4 (on 9/20/09) – Blog every day

Even if it is just a small update I need to do this to document and reflect.

Now on to the action steps… Goal # 3 is simple.. I just need to force myself away from the computer with my iPod and meditate for 30 minutes once per week and write something in this blog everyday… period.  Goal #2 is pretty easy:

1)      find recipe for the week
2)      Shop for ingredients
3)      Make it 

Goal # 1 is the big one… the one that will require a lot of work and dedication.

1)      Run twice per week using the couch to 5K audio files I downloaded previously
2)      Weight train twice per week (either garage or gym)
3)      Cardio everyday for 20 minutes minimum (bike, elliptical, run, swim, etc.)
4)      Follow LightenUp food plan daily and chart all food that I eat.

 So for the next 14 days these are my focuses.. not that I can ‘unfocus’ on everything else I am doing for my health (64+ oz water each day, meat for only one meal, no beef, no more than 1 diet soda per day, 7-9 hours sleep per night)..  I will be using my food chart and this horrible photo of me from July 4^th 2009 that I now have printed and in with my notes that I carry with me to achieve these goals… then I will make new ones based on how realistic and effective these were.

 In a nutshell:
Goal #1 (on 9/20/09) – Lose 16 pounds by 9/3/09 (354.2 pounds goal weight)
1)      Run twice per week using the couch to 5K audio files I downloaded previously
2)      Weight train twice per week (either garage or gym)
3)      Cardio everyday for 20 minutes minimum (bike, elliptical, run, swim, etc.)
4)      Follow LightenUp food plan daily and chart all food that I eat.
Goal #2 (on 9/20/09) – Make one new recipe from my diet binder each week.
1)      find recipe for the week
2)      Shop for ingredients
3)      Make it
Goal #3 (on 9/20/09) – Meditate once per week using my meditation CD
Goal #4 (on 9/20/09) – Blog every day

1 Small Sweet Potato
1 teaspoon Olive Oil
Ground Cayenne Pepper
Garlic Powder
Sea Salt and Pepper to taste
——

Preheat oven to 350°. Peel sweet potato and slice in half across the middle (so you now have 2 pieces half a long as the original sweet potato) and then slice each half into 12 wedges. In a bowl place your sweet potato wedges and add olive oil.  Mix to coat the wedges. Add Sea Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder and Cayenne Pepper… mix well to coat all wedges with spices.

Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper and spread the wedges into a single layer on the paper.

Bake in oven uncovered for about 20 minutes… turn wedges after 10 minutes and watch that they don’t burn (ovens vary on this) cook until golden brown.
—-
Our rating from 1 (yuk!) to 10 (I’m really not cheating?): 8

Serving size: 1/2 Sweet Potato
Our estimated exchanges:
3 Starch
1/2 fat

NOTE: The size of Sweet Potatoes varies so much that the exchanges may be way off.. the best way to calculate is 1 starch for 1/3 cup serving.  Goes great with a side of Ketchup

My progress this week was good.. I stayed on the food portion of the program each day this week (M-F) and am focusing on a successful weekend also… my water intake hit the goal (at least 8×8 oz servings) and I only had one day that I had 2 diet sodas (only 1 every other day)… the only area I have been lacking in is the exercise.. and I mean completely lacking… I have not exercised at all… so my main focus this weekend is to break that habit for good!

In theme with the cyber cruise I am swimming tomorrow… I am going to the YMCA and swimming with my waterproof iPod shuffle… And then I am coming back home and having some pineapple juice and some sort of fresh berries… and in the afternoon I am going to exercise in my ‘cabin’ (home)… that is my cruise day 1

The scale hasn’t yet dropped below the 350 maximum although it seems that I am close to being there again… I know that the exercise will speed up the progress… I still really want to get to 330 so I can use the Wii Fit… and perhaps in the next year or two we can go on the real cruise!