Day 15 – Two Weeks Down, Eleven More To Go

And at this juncture, I’ve lost about 5 and a half pounds. I’d hoped for more, wanted to be among the big losers of the Power 90 users, but I’ll take what I can get. One big thing is that I may not be getting enough sleep. I like some time “alone” with Wendy after the kids go to bed, but sometimes, this doesn’t happen until late, especially these days when she’s going to some sort of therapist every day for an hour or more after work, and so we don’t get to bed until after 11:00.

Everywhere else, we’re doing pretty good. We’re exploring new foods and new ways to make old foods that don’t contain as much of the crap that we used to eat. For example, last night we made pizzas. Mine had a mix of mozarella made with 2% milk and fat free cheddar cheese (a 1/4 cup of each), along with turkey pepperoni (tastes almost the same, has significantly less fat and half the calories), but the big key was the “crust” which was a multi-grain flatbread from Flatout – 17g of carbs, 8g of fiber, 9g of protien and only 100 calories. I also used about 1/5th of a cup of Boboli pizza sauce (1/3 of a pouch). Total calories: 318, fat: 11g, carbs: 26g, fiber: 8g, protien 36g. And most importantly, it was yummy.

I’m getting stronger, too. I can crank out more of the pushups every time out, and I finally finished all the reps of the Ab Ripper 100 (two weeks ago, I barely finished half of them). I also seem to have more energy. Yesterday, on my “rest” day, I just needed to do something other than sit at my computer in the evening, so I went down to the stationary bike we have and rode that for 30 minutes at a pretty decent clip. I’m getting to the point where I’m actually thinking about doing stuff that’s physical. I sure hope I can drop enough by this summer to feel comfortable going to Wild Waves and participating in the “wet” portion of the activities.

Day 8

I’m starting the second week of Power 90 today, and I can’t wait for Wendy to get home so we can do the workout. Yesterday was a “day of rest”, meaning no workout, and while my body needed it, I sort of missed the exercise.

I’m anxious to see how far I can go with the pushups today. I’ve been doing more of them every session, and I can’t wait until I can do all of them, though that may take some time, especially when it comes to the 7/7/7’s… (three sets of 7 pushups right in a row with three different hand placements).

Another fun item of interest (or maybe not if you see me when I’m bending over), my pants won’t stay up without having my belt as tight as it will go. Progress is being made. Now I will need to get some sweats or some other type of pant that will fit my as I shrink without having to buy new pants every month.

Day Six Of Power 90

So here I am, coming to you from my iPod touch on day six of Power 90. After the first couple days, I was really sore, but now, I’m either getting used to the pain, or my body is starting to adjust to the workout. I can’t say that I’m looking forward to the yoga part of today’s workout, but I suspect I’ll complete more of it than I did last time.

The diet part (I hesitate to use that word as it has come to imply an unnatural restriction in food intake) has been a bit difficult for me as I’ve been struggling to get enough callories. I’m so used to high calorie garbage, even though the portions weren’t exsessive, changing to better foods has really made it hard to eat enough. I feel full pretty quickly.

Power 90

Wendy and I were lazing away one Sunday morning earlier this month when we saw an infomercial for P90X, a workout program that claimed to get you “ripped” in 90 days. It totally appealed to me. No silly dancers. No weak ass moves, just intense exercise and a solid diet based on real food.

Why did it appeal to me? I’m tired of being tired. Tired of running out of gas after 50 feet.

So we talked about it, and decided to order it. Of course, not until after I ordered did I find that there’s sort of a minimum fitness requirement in order to be able to do it well, and I certainly am not capable of meeting that requirement right now.

But I also found out that the same trainer has another program that’s been out for years called Power 90, which is meant to be a wight loss bootcamp. And it was half the price of P90X and didn’t require any more equipment than a couple of dumbbells or resistance bands. Can you say “ordered”?

We’ve already started to modify the food we’re taking in, trying to maximize the good stuff and limit the crap. I’m also trying to keep my calorie count down to about 1600 calories a day which should, were I to do nothing else, allow me to lose some weight over time, according to webmd, about a pound a week. But I want more than that. I’m not interested in taking more than a year to lose all the weight I need to lose, and besides, I don’t just want to be a skinny guy with no strength or stamina.

So I’m gonna bust it on P90, then move on to P90X and see what happens. We’re planning on getting season passes to Wild Waves this year, and I want to take advantage of them.

Oh, Hey, It’s 2009!

So, in addition to my other projects, I’ve added one more. Many years ago, I wrote a novel, one I have an attachment to, but never sold. I started another one, and put a little over 80,000 words into it before I stopped writing for one reason or another. Over the years since then, I’ve started a number of other books, none of which passed the 10,000 word mark. I’ve never really stopped coming up with stories to tell. I just never manage to get around to telling them completely.

So I’ve resolved this year to get one of them finished and dropped in the mail. I’m starting from an aborted NaNoWriMo entry from a couple years ago. I don’t have a whole lot of notes as to what was going to happen after the bit that I have, but that leaves me lots of room to maneuver. I had notes at one time, I’m sure of it, but it seems they’ve gone missing among the piles of files on various computers. I’m going to spend some time organizing those as well, in the hopes that I’ll come across those notes, but I will probably have passed the point where they are useful before I find them.

Motto for the year:

Don’t think. Do.

Besides, I Don’t Know What’s Good About My Crap, Anyway

One particular article of Dean Wesley Smith’s is this one where he discusses Heinlein’s Rules for writing. Specifically, the discussion of Rule #4 – Mail the story to an editor who will buy it.

He talks about a workshop where they had everyone bring what they thought was their best work, and their worst work, put it in a bin, and then make an anthology out of the works that are in the bin, and the participants were not allowed to use their own work. Read the article. The results are interesting, and have sparked some of this introspection about my work that’s going on right now.