306

306 this week.  It's really not that bad considering that I haven't been able to run for the last week because of the weather and the pain in my ankle.  Really I was expecting to go up in weight instead of down.  The really good news is that in 3 days will be the shortest day of the year and soon I won't have to run in the dark anymore.  I'm really looking forward to it.

307

Yes I'm down to 307 this week.  It really does feel good to be down, but at the same time I know that I could have been lower if my ankle hasn't been acting up like it has.  I went out for 3 runs in the last week and I have been in pain for the rest.   I really want this problem to go away.

Classes are over

Yes classes are over for the term.  I'm so happy this term is done.  I go one final left and then I only need 6 more classes to graduate!  I really hope the economy will be better by then. 

To celebrate, last night I went and saw the new muppet movie.  I loved the movie but the whole movie felt a little bit rushed.  It seemed like there was so many scenes that flashed by so fast, that I didn't have a chance to digest it.  And then there were the celeberties that most just appear, say a word or two and then you never see them again.  The whole thing was just weird.  I think a blogger said it best when he said "I want the lord of the rings version dvd."  I can't agree more.

Finally running again

In case you were wondering, I finally got back into running after taking a couple weeks off due to spending some time with my family for Thanksgiving and this last week studying for the end of the school term.

It really does feel great to be running again even though it's hard to go out in the cold and dark.  The other day I went to a running store to buy some more cold weather gear.  I have discovered that if I wear something over my face, that the warm air allows me to run farther.  I guess my body was wasting too much energy keeping my body warm for the first mile that I'm tired out by the third.

The dark on the other hand is another problem.  I really hate running in the dark, but for this time of year, I have to choose, either the darkness or do what I did last year and take a 2 1/2 month break.  Right now after taking 2 1/2 months off due to my ankle injury, I would rather run.  I really want to be under 300 pounds soon.

309 again

Yes my weight is still at 309.  I can give a bunch of excuses but that just what they are.  This weekend I should have the time to run.

Almost to Disneyland

Something arrived in my email today that I really wasn't expecting.  I got an email announcing a major airfare sale, $40 each way plus tax from Seattle to LA.  That means I could go to Disneyland for about $100 round trip.

I was struggling all day trying to decide if I should go, but then I thought about my weight loss and how I said that I wouldn't go back to Disneyland until I loose another 50 pounds.  Right now I am nowhere near that so I will be passing on that great deal.  It's time to get back to loosing weight.

309

Sorry about being late on the weigh in reporting.  I just got back from visiting my family.  I had a great weekend, but I spent the whole time sitting and talking.  That's the problem with the holidays, it's a lot of fun but I know that I will end up gaining weight.

Big week.

So it's a big week this week.  First it's short week because I'm taking some time off for the American Thanksgiving.  I'm leaving on Wednesday night to go to my parents and will blow my diet on turkey.  I should have known that I wouldn't make it under 300 this week.  To celebrate, my employer threw a bunch of work on me that usually takes a week to complete and told me that it must be completed before I leave.  Yeah!  and the person I work with went home sick today so I'm just swampped.  Lets see how bad my weigh-in is on Friday.

305 and dropping

Good News! I happy enough about the amount I dropped this week that I'm actually posting on weigh-in day!  Now I know it would take a lot of work, but I would love to be under 300 pounds by next Friday.  It would be the first time since 2006.  Let's see what I can do.

Christmas season is here!

So the Christmas season is here!  I don't know what the deal is, someyears I really don't care about Christmas, but this year I'm really getting into the mood.  Today I was actually listening to Muppet Christmas music.  Pretty soon I might start buying presents.

Which by the way reminds me that my last trip to Disneyland was almost a year ago (I did all my Christmas shopping at Disneyland last year).  I miss that place, but I have said that I won't go again until my weight falls below 250 pounds.  Which by the way I am down so far this week.

So I'm also thinking about last year when I quit running due to the cold and dark.  I'm struggling to run just as much as last year at this time.  I am temped to stop running and just focus on my diet, but I don't want to give up this time.  I guess I'm just lost as to what to do.  It is something I just have to figure out soon.

I feel better today.

So the other day I felt completely hopeless with my weight loss.  I just want to say that it wasn't the first time that I have felt that way and I know it will happen again.  I feel a lot better today and I am trying to get back on track.  I know Friday is my weigh in day but I did weigh in on Sunday at 308 and I am really hoping this week I'm going to end up down a few pounds.

309 - Some troubles

I put off writing this post for a couple days now because I know that I have gained a pound.  I have trouble trying to run in this weather with it getting dark before I even get home from work.  I don't know what to do.  I feel like giving up but this weight loss has been an important thing in my life for the last year and a half.  I did go for a run today, but I spent all day yesterday watching the rain and eating.

I'm sorry for writing a jumble of thoughts here but I just needed to get it out.  Here is hoping for an improvement by next week.

MUPPETS!

So today in class Art brought up a Kermit the Frog quote and challenged us to add a Kermit quote to our blogs.  Little did he know that I am a huge muppet fan.  How much am I a fan?  I could say here, but Walter thinks the same as me so I will let him talk  (skip ahead to 45 seconds...)

 

I have even meet one of the muppets last May.  I saw Elmo at the Seattle Film Festival last May when he was promoting his new movie "Being Elmo" along with his best friend Kevin Clash.

So right now my favorite muppet has to be the Swedish Chef (bork bork bork).  The guy is just crazy, here check this out...

So anyways the challenge was to somehow include a Kermit quote.  The problem with Kermit is that he is the glue that holds together all the crazies on the show so there aren't very many good one line quotes from him.  I can give you my favorite muppet joke that involves Kermit

Pops:  Hey how are you guys fixing to pay?
Kermit:  What are our choices?
Pops:  A, Credit card.  B, Cash.  C, Sneak out in the middle of the night.
Fozzie: We'll take C.
Pops: Very popular choice.



So far I have wrote a little about the Muppet Show, and Sesame Street, what about Fraggle Rock?  My favorite song from that show is from the very first episode...

But the challange was a Kermit quote which like I said is tough.  I bet if Kermit was writing this he would have said, "I could have solved this whole thing months ago, but who listens to a frog?"




How else should I end this post?  With a song...

308

I know, I went up a pound, but I wasn't running for the last week and a half because of the pain.  The good news is that I did run today and it felt great.  I hope to run again tomorrow.

How could it get worse?

So I did something really stupid yesterday.  I have had issues with my right ankle hurting when I run and sometimes when I walk.  I made things worse yesterday by stubbing my toe on my left foot.  I was in so much pain yesterday when ever I tried to walk.  The good news is I think my left foot was just brused because the pain is almost gone today.  I just thought it was funny so I wrote it on here.

307 (A little loss this week)

So I weighed in and I somehow happened to loose 1 pound without running all week.  I tried to run this morning but the pain was too much so I'm going another day without a run.  Maybe tomorrow I will finally be able to run again.

A little setback

 

Just a quick update.  I haven't gone for a run since Friday because the pain in my ankle has returned.  I hope to go for a run tomorrow.  One thing I do know is that I won't make it down to 304 by Friday.

308 Not quite 10 pounds

So I ran another 5k distance today.  I felt very tired afterwords but the good news is that I weighed myself afterwords and I came in at 308 pounds.  It's not quite the 10 pounds that I was predicting last week but I'm not upset.  In the past when I got into running I was loosing about 1 pound a week so a 7 pound loss is actually pretty good.  I'm guessing I will loose another 5 pounds by next friday and I will be under 300 pounds in about 3 weeks.

New Clothing

Two things I got to tell you about this week.  First and most important is that I was able to run a 5k distance today!!!  It's the first time I ran that far since I got hurt in August and I feel great.  I ran it about 3 minutes slower than 2 months ago but I'm sure I will get that time down soon.  I'm just proud that I was able to make it the whole distance.

The other thing I wanted to write about relates to the picture up above.  I remember reading "One Fat Summer" when I was around 11 years old.  I loved the book, but there was one section remember really well when the main character, Bobby has to go shopping for new clothes and ends up in a section of the department store called "Husky Town" and hating the entire experience.

Well the last few times I had to buy new clothes, I had to go to the big and tall section in order to find pants in my size.  I hated the experience also.  All the mannequins were all plump size and the people shopping there always reminded me how much I hated my weight problem.  The thing I hated most about the big and tall section is that all the clothing in there was exactly the same as the men's section except with a higher price and these clothing were never on sale.

I got great news this week.  I have been needing new pants for a while now and on a whim, I didn't walk to the big and tall section but instead, I headed over to the Men's section and found the biggest jeans they had and tried them on.  Guess what?  They fit, with room to spare!  I NEVER HAVE TO SHOP IN THE BIG AND TALL SECTION AGAIN.  I was so excited by this discovery that I immediately ran to the checkout to buy the pants and they have been so comfortable.

My weigh-in is on Friday, I'll update this blog then.

Update on my running

So to update everyone on my running situation, I have now ran twice with the longest distance yesterday coming in at 3.2km.  I would have ran today also, but my legs were just too sore from not using them for 6 weeks. 

I weighed in this week at 315pounds.  I've decided that I will start over in my weight loss goals because of this injury since it has been so long since I last ran.  So my goal is to be at or below 250 pounds by Christmas of next year.  That's about 1 pound a week loss and I am expecting to loose around 10 pounds in my first week of getting back into training based on past training startups.

I got to run again

Great News!  My Doctor has said that I can start running again!

 It really felt great to be back out there running again, it has been too long.  So it has been 6 weeks since I last ran so I didn't go very far, but my legs and ankles felt great.  I only had to stop because a little bit of sticky lungs and I'm hopeful that will go away after another run or two.

Big Week

So a lot has happened in the last week.  On Saturday I went to the Soccer game where my team won.  I had a lot fun that day.  What I found was odd when I was walking around downtown Vancouver, I saw a lot of Sounder jerseys, but I didn't see a single white caps jersey until I got to the stadium. 

Next on Wednesday I finally got into to see the Doctor about my ankle and he gave me a few exercise to do and then sent me off to physio therapy.  At physio I was given some more exercises and told to come back the following week. 

I have been doing the exercises and I hope it's doing something, but I wouldn't know until I start running again and I was told to wait one more week before starting again.

So I'm now looking forward to next week.

It's game day.

 

It's game day today!  I have been waiting for this game since the schedule came out in February.  It's the team from the city I live in now verses the city I'm from and I'm so excited that I really didn't sleep last night.  I feel like a 7 year old waiting to go to Disneyland for the first time.  It's a nationally televised game so look for me, I will be wearing green.

Some Bad News

So another week has gone by and nothing has really happend to me.  Aren't those the best blogs when the writer writes a post when there is nothing to say?  But it's true, nothing has happened this past week.

I was hoping to get back running again last week.  I stopped because I hurt my ankle and I was hoping that if I don't run for a month my foot will feel better. That month ended last week and my foot does feel a lot better, but I still a pain down there.  I have an appointment next week with a doctor and I hope he has a magic wand to make it go away.

The bad news is that I was going to run in a 5K on Sunday and I have decided that I won't be making it to that.

I'm talking about the present.

I have looked over the last couple post that I have made and it has bothered me that so far I haven't talked about what's happening to me today.  Isn't that what's a blog is all about?  So what's going on with me is that school has just started again.  Today I finally got to see what my second class is going to be like.  This term just had a weird start to it.  I have one class on Mondays and one class on Tuesdays.  Due to Labor Day this term started on a Tuesday so it has been almost a full week before I was about to take my second class.  The class is CMPT 441 Computational Biology and even thought I don't care about the subject at all, I got a teacher that will make this class fun.

Before for I go, a little update on my weight loss, It has been 3 weeks now since I was forced to stop running due to an ankle injury and the good news is that I haven't gained any weight.  The bad news is that I'm still waiting for my doctor to get back to me so that we can figure out a treatment.    I also want to say that my ankle feels a whole lot better today than it did 3 weeks ago although I'm afraid that if I try running again the pain will come back.  So I guess I just have to wait for the doctor.

(I'm at 1:11 wearing a scarf)

What Started this Weight Loss?

So what started this weight loss that I'm on?  Well there isn't one reason.  First there was the problem that in the first 3 years since moving to Vancouver I had gained 75 pounds.    I don't blame this city, I blame the job I have now.  Before moving here I worked some very physical jobs, but for the last 5 years my job has taken place at a desk and therefore I don't move around very much.

But that's not what got to start loosing weight.  At the end of 2008 I had a blood clot in my leg.  I wasn't even 30 yet and I was having a serious health problem.  This bugged me a lot but I was making the excuse that I was too busy with work and school to have the time to start running so I did almost nothing about my health.  Well I guess that's not completely true because I did try to eat less and a year later I weighted in 10 pounds lighter, but I know now that I could have done more.

Skip ahead to February 2010 and since I couldn't get tickets to the Olympic events that I wanted to go to, I decided to take the money I saved up and take a trip to Anaheim.  I was so excited, it was my first trip to Disneyland it 5 years and I had a lot of fun there except when on a few rides, I had trouble getting the safety restraints on.  Now I was able to get them on, on every ride, but there were a few times I struggled and almost was removed from the ride.  Space Mountain was the worst as the safety bar was squeezing my legs to the point where I was in pain for the whole 2 minutes of the ride.  This was a little scary for me.  If I was just a little larger I could be unable to ever go to Disneyland again and enjoy it.

So now I really felt that I needed to start running again, but I needed that last push to get started, and now when I look back at what finally got me to start loosing weight, I know it really wasn't much.  By that summer I read about a guy named Banks Lee who was removed from the new Harry Potter ride at Universal Studios because he was too big and so he started a weight loss blog.  I guess that I just felt if he could do it then I could too.  I set my goal easy at first,  to loose 25 pounds by December and If I do then I will go back to Disneyland.  I'm proud to say that I made my goal (just barley) and I had a wonderful time at Disneyland.  I did have an issue getting on Space Mountain, but it was no where as bad as before.

After my trip, I kept on loosing weight.  If you watched the video above, that was me running in my first and so far only 5k event.  I have lost 60 pounds from my 2008 max and I have set a new goal of loosing another 55 pounds by January 2013.  When I ran in that last 5k, I really wasn't ready to run the full distance, but I am now and I'm looking at running in another one soon.  I don't know which one because I have a little ankle injury right now, but I hope to figure this out soon.

Why Disney?

 

So why Disney?

You probably think I was too vague in my first post.  Well this is a blog not a novel.  I really could have written 20 pages on my first post, but then I would have nothing left for today. 

Disneyland is a huge motivation for me in my weight loss, so today I would like to talk about why I love Disney.  In 2002 I got a job working for an airline and I just had to try out the travel benefits I got with the job, but I had one problem, I didn't know where to go for my first trip.  Finally I decide that since I have always loved amusement parks and there really isn't any good amusement parks around here that I would fly down to California and spend the day at Disneyland.  I had so much fun on that trip that I got an annual pass and started to fly down every 2 to 3 months.  Sometimes I would go by myself, and other I would take friends and girls I was dating along with me and never did I have a bad trip.

All those times I went I never considered my self a fan of the park (also called a DF) until a couple years after I was laid off from that airline.  I started going through withdraws in 2007 after hearing the news that they brought back the Submarine Voyage ride.  This is one of the few rides I remember from my one trip as a child in 1987 and I always got sad every time I would walk by the lagoon and see the ride rusting away in the middle of the park. 

I really wanted to go back but at the time I didn't have the money to go so in order to get my Disney fix, I started off by reading the articles of the attractions from wikipedia.  I was shocked to see so much information on there from the history of the rides, to the little hidden objects that are placed in every ride.  Later after I had read every article I could think of or link to on Wikipedia and other websites I got the idea that I had seen a lot of people in Disneyland with video cameras, maybe I can get my fix by watching their videos on youtube. 

One day on youtube I found a promo for a video called "Patrick Hurd Trivia Walk."

 

I loved the promo so much that I had to buy it.

So now about two weeks later I was sitting at home watching the DVD when I started to wonder who is this guy.  At one point he did say he had a show so I did a little research and found the wonderful world of Disney podcasting which is what made me the DF I am.  I can't get enough of these podcasts, every day at work I'm always listing to them.  I also listen to them whenever I go running. Right now I got a 32gb Ipod touch and it's always full of these podcasts where I can hear about the history of the parks, current news about what's happening and sometimes there are whole shows of just the sounds of people walking through the parks. 

So my next post I think I will talk about how Disneyland and my weight loss is tied together and I am still trying to think of some simple one line sign off for this blog.  I guess it is something that will come out of a future post.

Wow My First Blog

Hello Nurse!

So this is my first blog ever  (hence the hello world heading).     I have been thinking about starting my own blog for a long time now, but I was always afraid that no one would read it.  Well now my CMPT 376W professor Dr Art Liestman is forcing all his students to write a blog so here is mine.

So who am I?  I am a part time computer science student at Simon Fraser University, I work full time to pay the bills, I'm a soccer fan and I am a Disney fan.  I will be talking more about those topics in the future.

I have decided the theme for this blog will be my weight loss journey.  I started about a year ago trying to loose weight after a trip to Disneyland where I was almost kicked off a couple rides because I couldn't fit on them.  Since then I have lost over 50 pounds and I would like to loose another 50 pounds before my next trip a year from now.

I hope you enjoy reading my blog.  I will be thinking about a better sign off for next time.