My Life In Progress

My Life In Progress

Sending out a quick update on a number of things:

Running: Completely dead. I've been working on my Physical Therapy: twice a week sessions with a therapist involving extremely painful "trigger rolls", ultrasound, and then equally painful ice massage. I've tried to run for a minute or two on the treadmill but the ankle pain starts to flare up again. So my routine has gone from 20+ miles a week to 2 days/week swimming and 2 days/week elliptical/stationary bike/stair climber. So much for my goal of 1000 miles running in 2008.

Swimming: I'm progressing. I'm learned a ton about what not to do but I'm still struggling trying to complete several laps in progression. Even the easiest triathlon I know about requires 400 meters of swimming which is the equivalent of 8 laps in the pool (8 out and 8 back). I'm going to sign up for another month.

Diet: Well as of today I'm down to 211 from 217. My weight's been fluctating all over the place but today was the first day I've seen 211 so I think something's working so far. 11 lbs to go before Thanksgiving (about 9 weeks--doable but not that easy). I think the swimming has been helping because afterwards I feel warm for a few hours.

Writing: As you can tell, I got nothing. BUT! NaNoWriMo is just 6 weeks away, when my blog is suddenly taken over by a bunch of maniacal secret agents. Between now and then I'm hoping to get some Dawn's Rise work in, but I think I'm going to be more focussed on 30 Days by the end of the October.

Aging: Well there's been some progress, at least on the clutter side. We've spent the last couple of months really working on cleaning, and now I think the balance has swung back to the "clean" side for a change. We still have a lot of clutter, including 3 rooms so full of boxes you can't walk through them, but now I feel like we have a chance. We've moved back to the repaired bedroom, and now we can work on getting the kids' rooms refloored. Our plan is to take out the carpets and replace them with some kind of wood floor with area rugs. Much easier to keep clean and the rugs can be replaced a lot easier. 

So that's about it. Just trying to get through each day.

Training like Michael Phelps

Training like Michael Phelps

But not really. He eats something like 12,000 calories a day.

So a couple things have happened: My ankle is too sore for running, and I've been gaining weight. I had been running 20+ miles a week, which burns about 3000+ calories at my weight. Note that a pound of fat roughly equals 3500 calories. So even though I'm getting in some exercise in the form of elliptical, stairs, and cycling machines, I'm probably burning only 1000 calories with that effort. So needless to say I need to do something to make up for both the loss of calorie burning activity and the gain of weight.

My new goal is to start losing 1lb a week. This morning I weighed in at 217, above my "official" doctor recommended maximum weight of 210 and my personal goal of sub-200. I start physical therapy next week on my ankle after giving it a couple weeks of rest/ice therapy. My goal is to get to 200lbs by Thanksgiving. That's 17lbs in 13 weeks (maybe I should shoot for xmas instead).

First for diet. Unfortunately (dietwise) I work at a place that supplies free food and snacks. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are all gourmet catered meals. It's become known as the "______ Fifteen", after the weight you gain after you start working here. The food is healthy and organic, but I eat way too much of it. I also have fallen in love with a local beer store/bar and I've been drinking way to much of thick, rich, alcoholic brews. I want to reduce my consumption by at least 500 calories a day (500 x 7 = 3500, the amount of calories in a pound of fat).  That's a pretty significant reduction. There's about 200 calories in 12oz of beer, so by having 2 fewer beers a day I'm almost there. (I don't drink 2 a day but I could cut out a few here and there)

I need to be better disciplined at work and at home. I eat way too much fruit and nuts. I also need to consider reducing the amount of caffeine I drink since that also messes with your fat storage system.

So now on to the exercise part. I can't run right now without pain. (Note that I often run with discomfort. It's a given. But pain is different because I can't run with a limp.) And I also think maybe I've been too focused on running. So starting tomorrow I've signed up for a group swimming course. I'll be swimming every Mon/Wed at 8-8:30 am. Hopefully I won't be so sleepy I drown. I'm also going to look at a spin class (biking on a stationary bike in a group). So I figure within a week or two I'll be swimming like Michael Phelps (or at least not drowning).

If this all goes according to plan, and I recover my running ability, this leads to something interesting: If I learn how to swim, and get more into biking, we could be looking at a triathlon somewhere down the road. It's been the swimming part that's held me up from trying in the past (and my crappy 15yo bike). It will at least be a good workout.