CKOHLER

Treating myself to some Italian this fine Friday evening. I’m looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend of video games, movies and being generally lazy.

It’s been just over a month since I began Operation: Get Thin and I’m glad to report that it’s “so far, so good”. While I haven’t met all of my original goals, I have been able to successfully incorporate the most important aspects into my regular routine.

Diet: SlimFast is now my staple for breakfast and several days of the week for lunch. Some weekdays, I will have a sandwich or a buffet for lunch instead. Dinners have been smaller portioned and smarter with more chicken and salads. As for beverages, I’m only drinking water and sugar-free tea. I’ve avoided all fast food with only one exception this past month. Where I have room for improvement is with my weekends where I often sleep in. Sleeping in causes me to miss breakfast and lunch, meaning I only have a single, large meal.

Exercise: I’ve been working out every weekday for 30 minutes each day. I did skip two weekdays for special occasions but no more. While I had originally planned on dedicating a full hour every day, 30 minutes 5 days a week seems more reasonable. As for the exercise itself, I’ve been taking very brisk walks on an incline treadmill. I think I’ll be ready to start jogging next month but I’m not ready just yet. Where I have room for improvement is in the types of exercise I’m doing. Power walking is just cardiovascular. While this has been hugely beneficial to my heart rate and stamina, I worry that the lack of strength training is holding back greater weight loss. Lastly, I’ve fallen into a pattern of not exercising on the weekends but I’m conflicted as if it’s really necessary. Most reports suggest that exercising just three days a week is usually enough and I’m already exceeding that.

All in all, I’m persevering in my efforts to loose weight by eating healthier and exercising regularly. As for actual weight loss, I don’t think I’ve lost much so far. I think I’m down a little more than 10 pounds from when I started but most of that is probably just water weight. I’ve always planned on loosing weight slowly over the long term, anyway. I’ll be more interested to see where I am at the beginning of March. Expect another update then.

Yeah yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Another “I’m gonna loose weight” New Year’s resolution. Well, this time I’m serious. No really, I’m totally f#*king serious. No messing around. I’ve got a plan and it’s simple and straightforward. It’s broken down into three concurrent parts which I will begin practicing tomorrow… religiously.

Part One: I will be exercising for no less than one hour every day. Every single day. There is absolutely no reason I can’t do this. I always have hours and hours of spare time after work every day of the week. Furthermore, I have access to free gym facilities at the university where I work, including a pool, so there is always someplace I can exercise. Preferably, I will want to mix 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise with 30 minutes of weight training however an hour of any type of exercise will be just fine as long it’s every day. This will be a massive improvement over the ZERO exercise I’ve been getting for the past several years of my waisted, sedentary lifestyle.

Part Two: I’m going to refine my diet. Along with continuing to only drink water, I’m going back to having Slim Fast for breakfast and lunch. I have done this in the past with great success. Unlike some people, I enjoy Slim Fast drinks both for their convenience and their taste. The big change is that I’m going to be eating smaller, better portions for my dinner. I usually pig out at dinner time but not any more. I need only train my metabolism to get full on smaller portions. I just have to stick with it.

Part Three: Incentive. I’ve come to realize that while it can be helpful to set goals to achieve, it’s far more important to make this a lifestyle change that I want to keep up indefinately. Encouragement helps, so I plan to make my efforts public by posting regular updates here on my blog for my friends and family to read. Knowing that they are out there following my progress gives me even more incentive to keep at it and make the transition to this new lifestyle easier.

So, where am I right now? As of this morning, I weigh 262 pounds! This is the most I’ve ever weighed in my entire life. In March, I have a doctor’s checkup and I know he’ll be expecting me to be thinner. As long as I transition to this new behavior, it shouldn’t be difficult to loose quite a bit in three months. However, that is only a short term goal. The only real goal I want to set for myself is to be able to look back one year from now and appreciate how much I’ve transformed my health for the better.

If ever my family or friends were to worry that I’m some shy, sad loner of a person I want them to know that is simply not the case. What I am is an introvert. To better explain, here’s what Wikipedia says:

Introverts tend to be quiet, low-key, deliberate, and relatively non-engaged in social situations. They take pleasure in solitary activities such as reading, writing, drawing, watching movies, listening to music, inventing, and designing. An introverted person is likely to enjoy time spent alone and find less reward in time spent with large groups of people (although they may enjoy one-to-one or one-to-few interactions with close friends). They prefer to concentrate on a single activity at a time and like to observe situations before they participate. Introversion is not the same as shyness, though introverts may also be shy. Introverts choose solitary over social activities by preference, whereas shy people avoid social encounters out of fear. An introvert is energized when alone. Introverts tend to “fade” when with people and can easily become overstimulated with too many others around. Introverts tend to think before speaking. When given the chance, an introvert will sit alone and think rather than talk with someone else.

That paragraph describes me to an absolute tee. Being introverted is just the way some of us are wired. So don’t always assume everyone wants to be outgoing and have a million friends. Introverts like me actually prefer the opposite.

I had been having bad, persistent chest pain on the left side of my chest for over a week. It was accompanied by numbing pain down my left arm, around my left shoulder and my neck. Of course. I’m thinking “Crap! My heart! I’m dying!” so taking no chances I went to the emergency room. They sent me home that night and my doctor eventually suggested that I might just be having acid reflux and sure enough taking an acid blocker and some Tums made the pain go away. None the less, he did a blood analysis and everything was normal. Even my cholesterol and blood pressure was normal which really surprised me since I’m a bit overweight and I don’t really eat the best foods.

So today as part of my follow up visit, I had to take a stress test to check my heart one last time to be absolutely sure. A stress test is where they make you run on a treadmill until you can run no more all while they have you hooked up to machines. Anyway, the doctor who performed the test said I was completely normal. All in all, I’ve learned that a) I now know what acid reflux feels like and b) apparently I’m way more healthy than I thought!