One of those days…

So we’ll get back to the back-posts soon enough.  Trust me there’s more to catch you up on.

At any rate, things have been going well.  I finished the bet and did well will the weight loss – 25 lbs in 4 months.  I want to lose another 13-15 lbs and these are going to be the really hard ones as I get closer and closer to the goal.

I've been running at the indoor track at Bally’s lately and been feeling pretty good about how I’ve been doing.  My speed has been good and my distance has also been good.  Or has it….

Come to find out the track at Bally’s isn’t exactly an eighth mile track.  Apparently it’s a ninth mile track.  So I’ve been miscounting my laps by one for every “mile” I thought I ran.  That means my stellar 7:45/mile 2 mile run is only an 8:44/mile for 1.78 miles, and the 3 mile run is merely a 9:30/mile run for 2.67 miles.  And my beyond excitement single mile at 6:44 today?  Simply a 7:34/mile pace for 0.89 miles.

Now granted, those are still pretty good times all things considered, but when you think you do a lot better, it’s a bit of a let down.

Oh and that mile I did today?  I was trying to change things up and really push it on a single mile and go back to a longer distance tomorrow or Thursday.  Yeah… not the best idea.  I might have pushed the legs a bit too hard.  We’ll see tomorrow.

Leaving the gym I left to go to Trader Joe’s to pick up some of the Greek yogurt that Dani turned me on to.  It’s quite good, even plain.  I like it with cinnamon.  Well I get to Trader’s at 9:05 only to find out they close at 9:00.

Finally, I got my new laptop today at work and it ended up having a faulty touch screen.  There was a dead zone about an inch square in the upper right corner.  Now I have to wait two days for the repair depot shipping box to arrive, ship it back, wait another 5 days or so for them to repair it and then a few more days for it to come back.

So yeah… it’s been one of those days.

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The Bet: After

So I realized I never said if I won or lost in my last post.  As it turned out, I “lost”.  I use quotes because I lost the bet, but I also lost 25 lbs, so I really can’t be too upset.  As I told Dani, $100 is the cheapest personal trainer for 4 months of training ever.

So these are initial after pictures.  I’ll post more as I get them.  I’m hoping I’ll have some good candid shots from events over the rest of the summer (and as I continue losing more weight).

First off, on MSN they had an article about how betting on losing weight makes you more likely to succeed.  So go all-in on your health.

And now, the after pictures and more notes.

 

Now this picture shows two shots of me.  Me on the left in red is now.  On the right is a totally different “before” picture.  Dani sent me this picture that she took back in 2005 when we first met.  From my calculations I was about 186 when we met and this picture was motivation to get back to that size. 

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The Bet: The Story and Before Pictures

We interrupt the backlog of posts to bring you some current news.
So, some of you are aware that I’ve been in a weight loss bet with my friend Dani.  Dani has been going to the gym and doing kickboxing since last November and has really enjoyed it.  At about March, after losing about 10 lbs, she made me an offer I just couldn’t refuse.  She said that she needed some motivation to keep going further along than the 10 lbs, and she figured I needed motivation to finally get it in gear and get to the gym.  What resulted for a series of conversations around that topic was that

1. We were going to have a joint birthday party with a Toga theme
2. We were going to have a weight loss bet to May 1 (the day of our party) to lose 15 lbs each.

To speed through some of the story, we ended up having the party mid-April and we changed the terms (balanced the weight loss goals between me and Dani – about 1 lb a week for her and 2 lbs for me) of the bet and extended it through July 1.

On March 1, I weighed in at 213.  That pretty much is the high point of weight for me since I started keeping track back in 2004.  The lowest recorded weight I have was 181 on April 10, 2004.  One final weight reference point is that when I met Dani in March 2005, I was close to 186.

Additional measurements I take are waist, stomach and chest.  On 2/22/2010, right before the bet, I was 39, 42 and 40.5 inches respectively.

I will now take a cue from Dani’s recent posts (before, after) at this point show some of the least flattering pictures of me I can find.  Tomorrow I’ll post some after photos.

My 30th Birthday Party (March, 2009)

Missa Gaia Trip with Glee Club (October 2009)

 

AXP Thanksgiving (November 2009)

Fraternity Composite Photo (December 2009)

Horribly unflattering “before” picture #1 (April 2009)

Horribly unflattering “before” picture #2 (April 2009)

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