A Simple Choice

I was sitting at a Royals game with my friend Jenny and chatting about her last road race. I was gabbing on about how I hated running, but I like biking and swimming as exercise. Jenny's eye sparkled and I could tell I possibly had just walked into a trap that was already strung around my neck. She smirked at me as she dipped another chip into nacho cheese, "So if the race was just swimming you'd do it."

I started to backpedal, "Well, it would depends on how long and if I had to do the front crawl, never."

Nodding Jenny crunched down on another chip, "500 meters and whatever stroke, it's open."

I narrowed my eyes in thought and quickly thought about the lengths of a pool that would notch up to be, and shrugged, 500m wasn't that long. I was a  strong swimmer even without practice.

At that point I knew I was promising to something that was a whole year away. How lucky for me to have all that time to ignore the need for practice and training!

Wherein I Spew Words and Such

Yes, I do realize it has been over a year since I blogged, thank you for noticing. If you did at all.

With the addition of twitter into my life I couldn't really find things to blog about without my blog turning into pictures of my cat (Who is doing fabulous, thank you for asking).

So instead I've decided I'm going to take you on a ride with me. Possibly a very, very, boring ride, but a ride nonetheless.

Yesterday I took off the afternoon at work to come home, pack and set myself towards St. Joseph to pick up Dany and see Brandi Carlile in Council Bluffs, IA. I took a quick shower because I felt like a slob and decided to change into something that was not a t-shirt of the university I work at so I would not be carded every two minutes during the concert.

So I opened up my closet.

Many of you know where this is going... the dreaded change of seasons when you pull out clothes that you wore in the past, but which are strangely tighter in the arms, or just don't look quite good around your waist/hips/chest.

I saw the lady cut graphic t-shirt of Superman stretching in areas that I hadn't seen before and Ole Blue was feeling strained and I flew into a full-on thirteen year old girl tantrum that resulted in my bed full of rejected outfits.

On the drive to St. Joseph I lamented to myself, while listening to country music, that I had finally reached the tipping point of 'when you finally realize you are out of shape'.

I knew that I had been struggling on stairs more than I should, but I didn't really care.

But it wasn't until Friday afternoon when I did the meltdown of maturity to see that I need to get back on the exercise horse.

So, I'm going to instead drift my blog into daily updates on my weight, exercise, and hopefully other entertaining things of the day.

Yes, I said daily.

Bold statement.

I'm sure I'll miss a day here and there due to lack of internet, but I'll still put it in the following days post.

I'm hoping to have a bit of an announcement tomorrow, but we'll wait on that one.

Tomorrow the weigh-in and initial "when she sucks wind" exercise re-start.

Ceasing Ramble.

The Poor Man's Weight Loss Challenge

I was talking to Beth today and she told me that she had been working out everyday.

You must understand hearing Beth say that is like hearing Fred Phelps say that he loves gays, a whale speaking perfect British English while drinking tea, or for me to say I dislike Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I was amazed.

I asked her how long she's been doing this and she said since Friday.

Multiple days. I was impressed.

After working out tonight I gave her a call and issued a challenge.

Beth and I might be penny pinchers.

For everyday we catch the other not working out, cardio or weights, at least 20 minutes of sweat.

I work out on the treadmill, Beth does crazy dance workouts as coregraphed... by Beth. To each his own.

But if we don't work out a penny is owed. If we don't work out two days in a row a nickel is owed. If we don't work out three days in a row the big money comes out and a quarter is owed.

So begins the poor man's weight loss challenge as coined by the new Richard Simmons.

Updates will be made when I owe Beth the big coin and I'll keep track of the running monies that I get from Suzanne Somers.

For my personal weight loss I'm hoping for a 10% weight loss of 18.8 pounds as a first goal. I had made some progress when Kris Kringle decided to leave me four pounds for Christmas (he really shouldn't have). When I reach this goal I'll be able to buy my new TV. After that hitting a goal weight of 169.2 I will then go for the next 10% loss of 16.9 pounds. When hitting that goal weight I'll be able to buy an XBox 360 with a weight of 152.3. I don't have a time goal to go with this and the updates won't be as frequent as my last blog because I know that no one is as interested in my workouts as I am. (The same goes for my own personal fiances).


So here's hoping that Beth and I can slim down to where we were in this picture.


Interesting where you can find yourself after four years when you're not paying attention to your own body.


Ceasing Ramble.

The Weigh We Fall

I came home from work today after a taxing afternoon of appointments and plopped down almost immediately in my computer chair. Chatted away while I played some American Idol - Karaoke Revolution and turned that off promptly so I could check out the Biggest Loser.

I changed into my comfy clothes and plopped back down to watch the show.

I thought about my first year of graduate school and how I was working six days a week at a movie rental place, walking around and doing stocking, a somewhat sedentary job (but with quite a bit of moving) and then I would come home and do my exercise.

Now, I have a full-time job that is eight hours of sitting. I come home and I sit.

I've become ridiculous.

So as it comes with seeing those that are worse off with me, I have a chance to not get to the point that they are... I know that part of it is from the move of the activity of the job and how I would rather do workouts at 3 pm, but it is not time to blame.

It is time to take charge.

I've weighed myself tonight.

183.3 pounds.

The heaviest I've ever been. I know that. I've known that I've gained weight, but I've ignored it.

Day by day I've ignored it.

Right now as I wrap up this post I am going to walk on the treadmill for an hour. I've been in fights with the treadmill before. I think one will be fought there tonight and the next day and the next.

Next Tuesday morning there will be an update to see who is winning.

Ceasing Ramble.

Update: 1 hr and 400 calories and I'm the victor! - - It was a tough battle and the treadmill almost won, but show tunes overpowered!