Week Two, aka: The week of being really sore

So, I just finished my first full week of working out.  I worked out 6 days this week, and every day I worked out I worked out for at least one hour, so I'm really proud of myself.  I can already hold up a several ton boulder as you can see below :)

I also did a good job at eating healthy foods. I'm eating a little more protein, a little less carbohydrates, a little less fat, and a lot more fruits and veggies.  I feel pretty good about it.  I'm also drinking a LOT of water, no soda, and basically no juice, which seems to help as well.  I have a hard time not eating lots of treats, cause I love treats, but I've given myself a free day once per week on Saturdays to eat basically whatever I want. Although I've found that after eating healthy for a whole week, I don't find myself wanting to pig out, even on my free day, so that was a nice change in my psychology :)

As far as working out, I worked out really hard every day this week, and didn't mess around.  When I go to a gym, it's really hard for me to work hard and I usually have a really low intensity workout, and then feel bad about myself cause I spent the hour there, but didn't do anything.  p90x has really fixed that problem for me.  The workout program pushes me really hard, and I do it, cause other people are doing it to. It makes it nice!  My favorite workouts so far are the Yoga workout and an Kenpo karate workout.

Anyway, here are the stats for this week.

Starting weight: 195

Week 1 weight: 192.5

This weeks weight: 192

Weight lost total: 3 lbs.

Now, regularly, I'd be a little bit bummed about losing half a pound in a week, but I worked out really hard all week, and I can tell that things are already starting to tighten up and that I am losing fat and gaining muscle.  So, as long as that is happening, weight loss is irrelevant.  In all honesty I could probably stay around 190 lbs. if it was mostly muscle, and look pretty darn good, so we'll see what happens. :)

I still want to be in the 170's, but I've never been in really good shape either, so I don't know how my body will respond, and maybe my ideal weight will be higher. I'll keep ya'll informed!

Lanny out

Week One or... One down and 20 more to go!

Hey ya'll, welcome to my first week results post! :)  

First of all, I'm not going to measure myself again for a little bit longer, for now I'm just going to post my weight loss, and then every month or so I'll post my measurements to see what I've done there!  So how did I do my first week you might ask? Well, I am now 192.5 lbs, down from 195, so I've lost 2.5 lbs which I feel pretty good about.  My body is also pretty sore from working out, but a good sore.  The kind of sore that you can tell is going to turn into muscles some day! Woo!

I think from now on I am actually going to post my progress on Sundays, as Sundays are kind of my day off from working out during the week and everything else.  Plus, it's a nice Sunday activity to blog about stuff.

So, I also set a goal in my last post to work out at least 4 days per week.  Well, it turns out that I am actually now working out 6 days a week, thanks to this item below. p90x.

I have NEVER bought anything off of television my entire life. But I watched an informercial for this product, and decided to go for it.  I started the workouts a few days ago, and they are TOUGH.  What I really like about it is that it gives me a workout that I have to do, and it really pushes me.  I've always had a problem with going to the gym for an hour, and while I'm there not really doing anything. Just putting in a little bit of cardio, lifting a little bit maybe, maybe taking a class, but never really having a focus.  

I decided though that if I'm going to spend an hour of my precious time (and an hour is a lot between grad school and having a family) that I needed to start making the most of it and actually doing something.  Anyway, so far p90x has seriously delivered.  I feel REALLY good about the hour of working out I am putting in, and know that in keeping up with it, I will definitely see results cause it is freaking hard.  

I still plan on running, even though I am doing this program, as I still want to be able to run a 10k, so I'm going to still run on our treadmill and work my way up to a 50 minute 10k like I wanted to before.  I also have to take some Yoga as part of my MFA program, so that will be in addition as well. But, I think the extra Yoga will actually help a lot, as it keeps me limber, and less likely to be injured for this intense workout program.  

So, that is all. I am way excited to keep going with this program.  It's amazingly simple to find one spare hour for your day to work out when you really put your mind to it.  I just spend a little less time on facebook, or watching tv, etc... Yay!  More to come later. Hang in there everybody! (including me!)

Goals and 1st day weigh-in and measurements

I'm really glad I saw Richie doing this, it's a great idea.  I watched "The Biggest Loser" last night too, and so I am extra pumped to get going.  For those of you who watch "The Biggest Loser", it was a sad night on the show, and it sucked that BOTH Jerry and Daniel fell below the yellow line as they were my two of my favorites :(

Anyway! Here we go.

The reason I want to lose weight:

Besides being skinny like pretty much every kid is at the ages of 0 to 8 (at least 20 years ago when kids played outside a lot), I've been overweight pretty much my entire life.  As a middle schooler, I weighed over 200 lbs, and although I wasn't what I would consider obese, I was still big enough to not have any confidence, was REALLY lazy as I'd started playing a lot of video games, and just generally unhappy with the way I looked.  This carried over into most of my High School days, until my Junior year when I started spending my lunch money on cigarettes instead of lunch.  I lost about 25 lbs and was down in the 180's between about 17 and 19.  Obviously, that wasn't a good way to lose weight though, as I was replacing foods with nicotene, and I still never worked out.  When I stopped smoking at 19, I gained a lot of my weight back, but had recently started college and as I wanted to date girls, I joined a gym and started working out and eating right.  At around the age of 20 I got down to 170 lbs and was actually in pretty good shape too.  I stayed relatively healthy until I moved from Dixie State College to Utah State in 2002 at the age of 23.  I slowly started gaining weight back, and although I had ups and downs, it was always steadily up.  In 2005, I was married, and at the time weighed 195.  In 2006, my wife got pregnant with our daughter Adah, and I gained what I like to call "sympathy" weight with her, and got up to 230 lbs, the heaviest I'd ever been.  I kept that weight on me until last year when I found out I was going to be in an MFA Acting program at the University of Idaho.  I didn't want to come looking like a fat slob, so I lost a little weight, and got down to 215, far from my goal.  My first semester at U of I, I was cast in a leading role, and decided I wanted to lose even more weight, and I did a pretty good job. I started doing Yoga, running on our treadmill, and eating more healthy.  I dropped down to 189 lbs in December of 2008, which I felt pretty good about, but still not good enough.  Over Christmas break, I wanted to work out and continue to lose, but instead gained 6 lbs of it back, which brings me to today, January 14th, 2009.  I currently weigh 195 again!  

I feel pretty good, but know I can be in better shape.  I want to be able to be active with my daughter, and also help her be active as she has some "fat" DNA in her blood from my side of the family as we have a lot of overweight issues.  I also want to be a good husband to my wife, and support her as she is also trying to lose weight.  As I'm in an MFA Acting program, I also know that getting into good shape will help my acting career and castability, as well as just feeling good about my physical appearance for the first time in my life.

Goals:

My goal is to lose 25 lbs, and get down to 170lbs.  The date I am setting for myself to do this is June 5, 2009, which will be my 30th birthday! What better 30th birthday present to give myself than to be in the best shape of my life.  And what better present to give my daughter and wife! :)

My goals for working out are to work out at least 4 days per week with a combination of cardio and weights.  Minimum workout time will be 30 minutes per day, but I will try for one hour.

By the time June rolls around, I would also like to be able to run a 10k in under 50 minutes, and be able to do at least 50 pushups without stopping.

I may add more goals later, but these are my two main goals for now.

The Pictures:

I'm really nervous about these, but here they are. I'll list measurements after. I made a sad face on purpose so I can look really happy when I look good :)

Stats:

Weight: 195

BMI: 28 (which according to the BMI index is "overweight" and borderline "obese"!)

Body fat percentage: around 22%

Waist at Hips: 37.5

Belly Button: 39

Pant size: 36

Biceps: L-13.5, R- 13.5

Chest: 40.5

Thighs: L-23, R-22.5

Calves: L-15, R 15.5

Inspiration

My friend Richie inspired me to start this blog, and I'm gonna try to get others on the bandwagon too who are wanting to lose weight so we can all keep each other accountable.

I've been overweight pretty much my entire life except for about a 1 year period when I was around 20 when I weighed 170lbs and was in good physical and aerobic shape.  Anyway, if you see this blog, I invite you to start your own if your goal is to lose weight this year. In my next post I'll put pictures as well as other info and goals that I have that I want you to keep me accountable to.

So feel free to post any supportive comments, angry comments, hazing, etc... Whatever you think I need :)