WMBO-Fitness Update-Week Nine

No snow this time!



It's been raining a lot!




Potholes...an Indiana tradition!




Daffodils rising....there's hope on the horizon!

It was an up and down week for my fitness challenge.  I took a really long walk last Sunday...over 5 miles, but I didn't walk again until Wednesday...2.4 miles to dinner and back to my hotel.  Then, I didn't walk again until Saturday.  On top of that, my eating habits were sometimes pretty good, and a few times really bad...like Thursday at lunch when I had a stromboli at a pizza joint on highway 41 south of Henderson, Kentucky.  Boy, did it taste good, but boy was it BAAAAAADDDDD for me. 

So, when I stepping on the scales on Saturday morning for my weekly official weigh-in, I was a tad bit apprehensive.  Did the stromboli stick to my waste like an old sock to velcro?  Or, did the 1 1/2 hours of basketball I played on Friday night burn it off?  Would I be disappointed?  Or, would I be unexpectantly encouraged?

Weight:  255.0 lbs

Oh, yeah!  Down 1.4 lbs over the previous week!

Makes absolutely no sense to me, but I'll take it.  I'm now down 15 lbs from the start of this endeavor.  Only 40 more to my goal.

If I can lose 1.4 lbs on a week when I'm far from on the ball with both exercise and diet, what could happen if I had a really good week, and what would a really good week look like?

Here's my ideal program week:
1.  Drink a lot of water.  My goal would be 64 ounces a day, but I might not be able to drive my car far enough without a bathroom to reasonably do my job.  So, let's just say a much larger amount of water on a daily basis.
2.  Stay away from starches (no potatoes, rice, pasta, or breads) except for a touch at breakfast each day.
3.  Some walking/running/cycling 5 out of 7 days with one day being a BIG distance day.
4.  Get 8 hours of sleep each night.  (That was another weakness this last week.)
5.  Eat lower fat proteins like fish and chicken for each of my evening meals.

Hmmmm.  Maybe, I'll give it a try this week.  "Try" might be the operative word.  There's been a bit too much travel in my schedule lately, and it is really hard to stay on task when the routine is so messed up.

I have to say that the weight loss this week was really good for my morale.  I actually had a few random thoughts of quietly dropping this thing this past week.  They weren't really "loud" thoughts, if you know what I mean, but they were there.  I guess the slight increase from the previous week discouraged me a bit.

As my old friend Sheridan Wright used to say:  "Keep on keepin' on."  I'm going to do that.  I'm going to keep on with the goal, the program, the targets.  I'll keep posting.  I'm hoping that my journey with this is at least a little bit encouraging to someone else that may run across it.  (If it is, I'd love to hear from you.)

Here's the balance of my update numbers:

Mileage Goal:  2011 miles
Miles Completed:  82 miles -- 4.08% of the goal.  I have actually walked 82 miles since January 1st.  Tracking the distance is kind of cool.

One last note, if you looked at my pictures above, you will have seen the one I labeled "Daffodils Rising."  This means that my bike will be coming out of the garage soon.  When it does, you're gonna see the number of miles completed skyrocket.  Oh yeah, spring is on the horizon!

See you on the road.
Mike