Back to Basics

I was told this morning that I hadn't blogged about working out/losing weight in quite a while. There's a reason that this is the case, and it's mainly because I was feeling a little narcissistic about always detailing how I'm trying to change myself and look better. It was beginning to feel like one of those crappy reality shows where some 'celebutant' is trying to better herself and expecting us all to enjoy watching/reading about it.

I will say though that I've gotten down to 250 lbs. as of this morning. That seems crazy to me. 250 lbs! It's taken a bit longer than I would have expected a year ago today, if you had asked me then I'd have told you that by now I'd be at around 200 pounds. Things change and the process has gotten a lot harder than it was at the beginning. I'm still trying to tighten up my eating routine, trying to find new and more fun ways of working out (riding my bike, playing basketball, playing ultimate frisbee), and trying to be open in this whole process.

Nighttime eating is still my biggest problem. I try and have my big meal at breakfast, usually about 400 calories after a workout, with black coffee, or around 300 calories if I don't workout one morning, with black coffee. Then snack--lunch--snack--dinner--snack. It's that last three that really start to throw me off. I love carbs and sugar, and comfort foods (which typically involve lots of thsoe three things!). Danny has agreed to loan me his Zone Diet book. From my knowledge this is the diet they put olympic athletes on, and we've all seen how cut up they are. well... that's sort of my goal, but not entirely.

I'll keep you posted early next week when I've started on the Zone with a few earlys thoughts about what it's like.

Plus the Aggies lost, and that sucks.

Admissions

Quick update, for those of you who care, and for those of you who don't.

After I failed to flip the big tire 10 times last week, it ate at me inside from Tuesday until Saturday. I convinced Justin to join me on Saturday morning in trying to flip that tire the elusive 10 times.

After a quick bike ride to the Tillery's backyard, and five minutes or so of warming up, it happened. I flipped that baby 10 times in 3 minutes 24 seconds. [EDIT: Time correction.]

It feels pretty good to have finally joined this club!

A Part of the Club

I've been reading about the Explorers Club lately. Seems that these guys are the most intense people out there who have gone the farthest and studied the most. The list of members includes people like Sir Edmund Hillary (Honorary Chair), John Glenn, and some others, including a guy (his name escapes me at the moment, who sailed nearly 5,000 miles on a bamboo raft--just to prove he could. I would love to become a member of a group like this. Sadly though the chances of that happening are slim. You have to do something really cool to get invited to join, and the membership dues are probably steep to say the least. Being a part of an elite group has always been a goal that I'd like to achieve and I'm not picky about which one I want to be a part of.

A couple of weeks ago Brad picked up two massive tires from an old tire depot (I'm not really sure where, but I'm sure there are these 'depots' everywhere, since you see tires all over the place if you look hard enough). One weighs in at an estimated 500 pounds. Large, but small in comparison to the other behemoth that he picked up, the 1000 pound monster. That's not its official name, but for this story it will suffice. Pictured below is a shot of me flipping the smaller of the two, a task in itself, but not entirely grueling to get it flipped over. The monster on the other hand, offers much more of a challenge.

Monday night Brad got together what we'll call, The Brain Trust (Hankins, Morchat, myself, and Tillery), to hold the first-annual-monthly-tire-flip-off (again this name isn't official, rather what I propose we call it). The goal of the FAMTFO, 10 flips of the 1000 lb. tire in 5 minutes.

Rain made the ground that evening quite slick, so doing it either on the grass, or concrete was out of the question. This was a problem since both of those surfaces offered the most grip available, but neither were in any condition to be lifting hefty objects on. So, we made due and used the gravel parking spaces in the Tillery backyard. Not ideal, since rocks tend to slip and move when pressure is applied, but still doable. The tire was rolled into position, and the contest was begun (hopefully Danny will finish uploading the video so we can get going on that stuff soon).

Brad made quick work on the ten flips he proposed to do, finishing in about 2.5 minutes. Jeff also finished 10 flips without much trouble in something like 3:40, Danny being the uber-man-freak he is, got it done in an unbelievable 2:13 or something like that. Woah.

Me on the other hand, I had a bit more, lets say, challenging time flipping the monster tire. My first flip worked a bit better than I had thought it would. The second and third came with reletive ease (there isn't much ease to be found when tire flipping, wow that sentence sounds like it should have come from the mouth of someone from West Virginia or something), and then the fourth flip too happened with only minor toughness. Flip five however never happend. Have I mentioned that tire flipping is really hard? It is. I got four flips, and then just couldn't deliever on the final push. I got the tire up a couple more times, resting the entire weight on my biceps (which are brusied pretty badly from the whole exercise), but as soon as I tried to push the tire over the top, like Stallone dominating every other trucker in the movie 'Over the Top', it just wouldn't move since my feet were slipping on the loose gravel.

Four flips. At the time I was glad that I had at least gotten the tire over a few times. But the more I thought about the event, the more I realized that I should have been able to do more, and probably been able to do the entire 10 flips, or at least half of them anyway. Especially when I started thinking of names like 'The 1000 lb. Club', or '1000 Pounders', both lame, but go with me here, to denote the fact that you had flipped that monster tire 10 times. It ate at me all day Tuesday, and into Wednesday morning. I worked out and then got 5 flips done, an improvement espescially since it was done after an hour of lifting weights, but still not the 10 I really wanted to accomplish.

Being a part of this elite group is the new goal that I'd like to achieve. And it'll happen. I still want to travel the world, but the chances that I'll ever be the first to scale a mountain, or step foot on Mars are nearly impossible. Thinking about all of this membership stuff has led me to the realization that some clubs might be out of reach, but this one, the '1000 Pounders', is a membership that one day soon, I'll be a part of.

The EPIC 700

Brad told us today that we were going to join the 700 club. Jared asked if Pat Roberts was going to be there or not. I suggested we all go and just donate money to police and firefighters, little did I know that I was just being a dork, Jared was right, the 100 Club is the thing with stickers on your car.

Workout though was intense. Brian Lee and I did the following rotation for time:
- 250 Squat @ 185 lb.
- 150 Row to Narrow Push Up @ 35 lb. each hand
- 300 Kettle Bell Sumo Squat @ 53 lb.
TIME 43:32

The goal was to finish in 45 mintues. I just barely made it, so needless to say I was relieved when it was finally over.

Last week was tough on eating. I've stayed around the same weight, between 256 and 259 for the past couple of weeks. This week I'm really going to be more careful about what I put into my body and when. I'm still having a tough time with eating carbs late at night. I know that I'm not supposed to do it, but for whatever reason I still seem to justify it in my head for just long enough to do it, and then regret sets in. This week, carbs past dinner will be cut out all together, and lunches will be watched much more closely.

Lets do this!

Workouts Workouts Everywhere

Just finished working out for the morning. It was tough, not as tough as many mornings, but in it's own way. I'm feeling inspired to write, and to commit myself to some better eating habits, so here we go.

To begin, I've started reading this blog by my Comrade Danny. He's a wonderful person who not only gets me fired up in the gym, but his infectious personality gets me fired up for life like not many people can do. He has been blogging his workout journey as well with some great results. He even has a picture up of himself last January and then one from May/June(?), he makes me wish I had good ideas like that. So, in the interst of stealing some good ideas, and making my little blogging experiment that much more interesting for myself and the three people who occasionally look at this thing, I'm gonna use some of those ideas.

The Plan:
- Take a picture of myself every Wednesday morning, to track the progress of my weight loss and muscle gain. (And to send to the soldiers fighting in Iraq, they need all the inspiration they can get.)
-Journal more of my workouts, not always for you, but for myself so I have some sort of record.
-Continue to eat a bit more healthy, that's really the overarching goal in this whole thing, so I'm really trying hard at this one inparticular.

Workout:
Last Night- swam 12 laps at the Sewells house, with 25 push ups, dips, squats in between each set, and 50 total rope pull ups from the water after it was all said and done. (TIME 24:38)

This Morning- Rep. challenge, 3 minutes a station going for highest total possible
1. Thrusters @ 95 lb.
2. Tricep Extensions with Blue Cable
3. Free Motion Squats @ 70 lb.
4. Hyperextensions
5. Chest Adduction @ 60 lb.
6. IndoBoard Push Ups
7. EZ Bar Curls @ 55 lb.
8. Kettle Bell Sumo Squat @ 53 lb.
(TOTAL 454 Reps.)
Squat Complex with 5 medicine balls ranging in weight from 15 pounds, to nearly nothing. Totals were 30, 40, 50, 60 and 80. No rest, push ups or Burpees if the person in front of you was taking too long. (TIME unknown)