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.
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.
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 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.
Friday, September 9, 2011
(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.
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."
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.
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.
