For the last two days I have felt FAT FAT FAT. I know I have been exercising and taking charge of my food intake and my weight should be dropping, I just feel FAT. I wish I didn't. I don't look any fatter and my clothing is getting a bit looser but I feel like I weigh 300 pounds again. The struggle is feeling FAT is a big discouragement and if I am not careful I can give into it. So I am trying to focus on sticking to my plan and waiting for the FAT feeling to leave.
January 2005 Archives
A big number today. This weekend i wrote my 250th blog post since starting onetongorilla over a year ago. Obviously I am not writing one a day but I am certainly not at a loss for words.
Also of good note is Apple just passed over 250 million song downloads on iTunes So this is the week of 250s.
A week ago, someone put up my coveted pinball game on Ebay. The Cyclone by Williams. Bids started at $500. I really have absolutely no money to spend on such frivolous items right now but in playing out my dream i decided to bid on it. I didn't bid much and figured I would be outbid pretty quickly. Considering the pinball game usually costs about $2300, If for some reason I had won it for $500 I suppose it would have been a great deal. Needless to say it finally sold today for $1499.
Such is Life.
I did buy something on Ebay, I took $20 from my Christmas money and I bought a piece of Cyclone History. I was high bidder on an auction of promo flyers and plastic play field pieces Williams sent out to dealers to advertise the Cyclone. So this is the first piece of my pinball collection.
In reading up on Pinball games, I also found Indiana Jones and Monopoly which look like games I would love to add to my 'virtual' collection. Perhaps I found myself a new hobby.
4853+505=5358 232.96ad 274g
Good bit of snow today. Counted about 6-7 inches of snow on our picnic table on the back deck. Took the kids out sledding. The snow was a bit dry so it took a few runs to get our hill behind the barn useable. We bundled up Ruth and took her out to check out the snow. She took a sled ride down the hill with me and then we pulled her while she sat on the sled. She eventually toppled off and landed face first in the snow. No crying from her, she looked a bit dazed I wiped the snow off and took her inside. Made everyone Hot Cocoa and heated up some Chicken Corn Noodle Soup. Then we sat down and played a few games. A nice snow day.
4203+650=4853 220.59ad 274g
Ruth's favorite TV show currently is Sesame Street. It only entertains her for a few minutes but it is the only show on TV that captures her attention. Her favorite part is the beginning, the song and credits suck her into a trance like state. She will walk to the TV and sit down and stare until a few minutes after the music is over. Then she goes about her business. The other part of the show that grabs her is Count and his pipe organ, when he starts counting to the number of the day Ruth watches intently. Today she was watching and repeated the numbers 3 and 7 when Count said them. I thought I was crazy but I turned to Shelly and said did she just? Yes she did, she did, our 9 month old just said the numbers 3 and 7 as clear as a bell. Funny little girl.
3878+325=4203 200.14ad 274g
I do not like not knowing. It is not who I am. What are we having for supper? Where are we going? Why did you do that? Who is gonna be there? and the list goes on. I needed to know the sex of our children before they were born. I always know what I am getting for Christmas(I know you thought you surprised me, but you didn't.). And I have never had a surprise party thrown for me that was a true surprise.
So with that in mind, I am telling you one of the most awful things I have done recently was deciding to not use the scale for 40 days. I am dying to hop on that sucker and see if I have lost weight. I have become so used to stepping on the scale anytime I am in the bathroom and checking my weight that it blows my mind to walk past it. This is somewhat torture, but I am trying to remember to keep my focus as to why I am not weighing myself.
3167+711=3878 193.90ad 274g
The last few days I have been on a retreat with Creative Ministries. I was a good retreat. A few things that I will not forget. Tim Cardascia giving us a clogging demonstration, Tim's editing of Napoleon Dynamite dancing to a Phredd Song, and Speed Bowling were among my unforgettable moments.
Last night we went bowling and trying to be a good sport(i stink at bowling) I worked at having a good time. So as the game progressed I realized that I was not going to win(I never had a chance), so i needed to make a new goal for myself. Well it just so happened that the computers at the Bowling Alley could measure the speed of the Bowling Ball as it rolled down the lane. So I decided it would be amusing to see how fast we could roll the balls down the alley. By the end of the game I had rolled the ball the fastest I could and cheered for fun at my accomplishment.
When the game was over I took my shoes back to the desk, but the guy who was behind the counter stopped me and told me to put my shoes back on. When I asked why, he said he heard me cheering over my fast ball and told me that he wanted to challenge me to a bowl off. So along with Chris Strayer (who also rolled some fast ones). We had a bowl off. At the end the bowling Alley dude came in first place bowling almost 25mph., I came in second with just under 22mph. and Chris came in third only due to the fact he couldn't keep his ball out of the gutter.
BTW-
Other than these things which all cracked me up, there was some good things that i learned in our sessions the one that has stuck with me was a quote, 'It is easier to try to be God than to serve God."
A very challenging word to me, I often try to control my life and my actions myself, I instead need to hand over control to Him. Something I will probably be working on till I die.
2827+340=3167 166.68ad 274g
As part of our Sunday Night Youth Group we are fasting form something in our lives for 40 days. We have been trying to pick something that might be interfering with our relationship with God in some way. (taking too much time, cause us to loose focus,etc.) Each of us have chosen something different.
I have given this a bunch of thought and have come up with a an interesting fast, but one that means a lot to me. I am fasting from my scale for 40 days. I will not weigh myself or obsess about my weight for 40 days. Since I normally weigh myself a few times a day(the scale stares me down when i am in the bathroom) not weighing myself for 40 days will allow me to concentrate on God more and not myself.
So call me crazy, but no scale for me for 40 days.
1615+515=2130jj 133.13ad 274g
On my run today I found the rest of the CSI MIAMI DVD's all look in good working order, 1 is cracked.
I found them on the opposite side of the road about 3 more telephone poles down form the others.
What am i gonna do with them? perhaps I will watch my first CSI ever, perhaps. But not until i run out of ALIAS.
1.75m 22m -116.15t 34/34 cold
1060+555=1615jj 107.6ad 274g
Spent the morning and part of the afternoon in Lancaster at the office. Went in for what I thought was a meeting with Barcode Integration to hand over our new scanners. It ended up being a wait and stare at the ceiling day. There was some glitch in the firewall on the Windows XP laptop which held things up for hours. So we ended up coming home before the software was installed.
We did play with the handheld scanners for a few minutes and it was pretty cool. We crumbled up the barcodes ran them under water and ripped them in half. And we still had a scan! This was impressive and fun. I will still have to print them out on inkjet printers and some other things and see what happens.
This is all the final stages of a pretty big project, I had written a ticketing system to generate a barcode for print at home tickets. This way customers to our website could buy tickets online and print them out. No more mailing tickets. So it was a fun and challenging project to find a barcode that would work, come up with a ticketing scheme and serial numbers and what information we needed to encrypt into a barcode. Then I had to find a company that sold handheld wireless scanners and had the ability to network them together.
I also needed to think through how people would abuse the system. Like trying to make multiple copies of the same ticket. Forging tickets, etc. I can not tell you how I made sure these things couldn't happen incase someone wants to rip us off, I do not want them reading my blog for clues.
Needless to say the ticket portion of our code has over 790,000,000 different ticketing combinations. Which are matched back to the original event and encoded. Which gives us 33,180,000,000 (33 Billion) to 1 odds that someone can forge a ticket and get into the concert for free. If they manage to forge a ticket, our scanners also record every ticket that is scanned and if there are duplicates it will reject any duplicates. Anyway all of this is to say ticket forging is gonna be hard to do.
So it is a good feeling to see something that is in your head work out even a small project like ticket scanning. Nw to finish some small details and role it out for testing.
Tonight was also Caleb's Birthday party. His real birthday is December 27, but we celebrate in January to give him his own day. Caleb got a ton of tools and toolboxes(he will soon have more than me). He also got a K'nex Big Air Ball Tower. A project we will have to spend a few days working on.
560+500=1060 jj
Today was a better run, I almost~ doubled the distance of my run and didn't have near as much problems breathing. So yeah, yippee. I also found 1 CD and two DVD's on my run. Just the discs nothing else.
They were as follows:
Out of Reach DVD--looks like a Steven Segal movie
CSI Miami The First Season, Disc 2
Take up thy Cross CD
They were scattered over about 1000 feet of road all on the same side. Wonder how they ended up there?
1.5m 19m -114.4t 28/28 foggy
250+310=560jj
Tonight was the finale for THE BIGGEST LOSER, just to let you know I am a sucker for weight loss shows. I watch stomach stapling, diet success stories, I lost it(the show), I have watched the Discovery Health Body Challenge, Oprah, etc. If it talks about weight loss success and people who struggle to succeed I am there. I have never shed a tear while watching any of them but I have come close. I definately can feel waves of emotion during any given program as I watch people struggle, fail, have success, and make choices. For me it makes for must see TV. I suppose I can relate way too well.
Ok, onto the Biggest Loser. Great show, I actually had thought about signing up. Both for season one and now season two(since i am on the lifestyle kick again). The chances of me being picked are one in a million, but let me tell you (at least in my daydreams) I would have won. Taking my initial weight loss from last year and comparing it to the winner's weight loss. I would have cleaned his clock!
< WARNING SELF INDULGENT MOMENT(S) TO FOLLOW>
Ok so from my memory according to his last LIVE weigh-in in 6 months he took off a combines total of 55 points (adding body fat percent lost and percent of weight loss). My points for my first six months of weight loss were 34% weight and 23% fat making my total points 57. (ALL WITHOUT A BUTT KICKING TRAINER) Anyway, perhaps I could have been the biggest loser. Given my attitude and personality I might have never made it to the final 3, but you never know.
I never applied(to any reality show) because it is totally selfish. There is no way I could leave my wife and kids for a few months for any amount of adventure or money or weight loss. Although let me tell you as I ran last year I thought about a diet reality show and winning. I day dreamed about what it would be like and what I would do if i won. For a few weeks I imagined myself competing against the Body Challenge people on TV. Anyway it is amazing the things my mind thinks. The good news is my mind kept me busy while I ran and the fun thoughts of a winning prize at the end of my weight loss was a fun pretend motivation.
So what would I do with my Biggest Loser Prize Money?
I am glad you asked, cause you know, I have given it some thought ;)
not that these things add up to any specific dollar amount, just come along with me.
1. An in ground heated swimming pool with deck & pavilion for outside entertaining. This would be my wife's prize for being there for me. Don't kid yourself I would also selfishly use it for exercise to keep off the pounds
2. A few thank you gifts for about a dozen friends & family who really have helped and encouraged me when i needed it. I would have also written them a nice note, but a nice gift would make sure they knew how much i appreciated them. I probably would have thrown them a thank you party and had some fun with that. perhaps at my wife's new pool.
3. For my kids, I would redo the fence border around our property and move it in a few feet and run an asphalt walkway(similar to a golf cart path) around our whole property for them to ride bikes, skate boards, rollerblade, etc. Plus I would get them a go cart of some sort so they could ride that around too. This would be good for family exercise. (the roads near my house are awful to do anything on, traffic is bad)
4. Add a family room with flat screen HDTV(one of those 6 footers from LG) entertainment center and extra bedroom to our house for more room.
5. Also add a game & exercise room with equipment to keep up my physical activity to help me keep the weight off. I would also splurge on the cyclone pinball game from williams I always wanted and perhaps the Indiana Jones and Donkey Kong Video Game to. This would be for ME :)
6. If there is any money left over(and since this is just a dream, there is) I would take my family on a long vacation. somewhere where we could have fun relax and not worry about anything for at least two weeks. Cause it takes a week just to start to chill out
Okay did I just blow all my prize money? probably. but anyway since this exists in my mind I can take it all back and start from scratch. Perhaps next time I will concentrate on paying off my mortgage and putting money aside for college.
< /WARNING SELF INDULGENT MOMENT(S) TO FOLLOW>
I apologize from my selfish rambling, but since I am in an odd mood I thought I would share. It isn't often I let you into my crazy old brain.
ok, so today i did my first jog/run/walk of the year. Just incase you can hear, that is me wheezing. Wow, what a push. I probably covered just less than a mile in distance. I jogged about 2/3 of the time and walked the rest. By the time I was done I was wheezing like a pack a day smoker and my legs hurt. What a change from just 5 months ago when i was regularly doing over 3 1/2 miles at a time. OK, so I got some work to do. and next time, perhaps i will use my inhaler.
.8m 9m -111.9t 9/15
Counting is fun when you are counting how many steps your just-starting-to-walk toddler is taking. Ruth had taken a few step already in December, but to no degree of regularity. (she was already standing alone and cruising around things by 7 months) Today Ruth blossomed in the 'walking without holding on' category. She is just leaving go and slowly taking steps all over the place. Eventually she plops down to a sitting position when she looses balance, but for a just turned 9 month old, this baby is walking!
Reading this book by David Nasser with the kids in our Youth Bible Study that meets at our house on Sundays. Some good strong words geared towards young people and adults for that matter. I have high expectations for this book and everyone that is reading and working through it. Even though we are not their parents, I truely do love and care for everyone that comes to our house on Sundays.
The book calls us to die to things in our lives that are standing in our way and also causes us to take a very close inspection of our lives. This is very uncomfortable cause it causes us to deal with things that we would rather not even admit exist. I am wondering how far we can get in this process. Cause i believe in order to deal with things you need to admit them to yourself and to God at minimum and even better you need to find someone to give you some accountability in these areas to keep you on track. This means admitting you have flaws and issues in your life, this is never easy and only will come with tons of time in prayer invested.
All i know for sure is that if we really take what the book has to say to heart and allow the scripture it focuses on to work in our lives, things shall be very interesting.
ok, talk about an incredible find. Last year in February I wrote a blog entry about Oprah and a show she did on weight loss in 1988. To recap, this was a TV show that I watched over and over again on tape, it inspired me to lose weight the first time I ever really attempted to loose weight. I had not seen that tape or show for at least 10 years.
Well today I was cleaning out our video cupboard, there are tons of old relic video tapes that I have no idea why they have been kept for so long, except for the fact that I found my Oprah tape. It wasn't even labeled, I just happened to stick it in the VCR and on popped Oprah. Well I immediately watched the whole program, it brought back a bunch of memories from when I had watched it last. The guy on the program had lost 160lbs and ran a marathon to celebrate. Oprah herself was looking skinnier than she ever has, and there was a lady who had taken off the weight and kept it off. All inspiring. Finding the tape was kind of interesting timing considering I just jump started my lifestyle change efforts a few days ago.
So after the program was over I let the tape run for a few more minutes to see what else I had recorded. Another surprise, I had hooked that tape up to a camcorder and sat down in front of it and very quietly and humbly made my first declaration of wanting to loose weight. I do not remember doing this. But obviously I was moved to record, for the ages, my thoughts and feelings the night I decided to try to get control of my eating habits. No, I will not be showing you the tape anytime soon, so don't ask.(it is a bit scary and humiliating, perhaps some day I will share with you a few thoughts that I have had when I saw it) Anyway that tape and the VHS tapes of my wedding day survived the trash can. And I plan on watching them again.
I also found some video of my time at Lancaster Bible College and a few other things. Very interesting to remember the past and how people and things looked 15 years ago.
EXTRA: Found this image of Oprah on the internet while looking for info about that specific show. The image on the right is an image from the show that i found on tape.
ALIAS rocks, Ok so I am behind the times. Since I am hooked on LOST I decided to check out one of J.J. Abrams' other projects, ALIAS. Well I emailed karen and asked her if I could borrow her DVD's of past seasons to catch up before I delve into the newest season(now taping on my TIVO). However, I have been unable to wait and rented a few of the discs from Netflix. I was hooked from episode 1.
Too bad I don't have tons of time to get all consumed ;)
Well it is that time again. I started my leaner, meaner lifestyle change 15 months ago in October 2003. After 9 months I had successfully lost just under 180 lbs. and hovered in the 220's. In July of 2004 I had gall bladder issues and ended up having my gull bladder out. This is where my lifestyle change went funky. I found myself taking a break from exercise for recovery and having issues feeling right on my lifestyle diet. So by August I had gained a few pounds, but with a bunch of struggling I came back to my low weight by early September.
However I just couldn't beat whatever it was that was working in me. Perhaps it was the lack of a definite goal, perhaps it was the realization that most of my crazy ideas that i had in my head for my weight loss were in fact, crazy (weight loss celebration, new haircut, and others i have never mentioned). Perhaps it was the fact that my iPod broke and spent 2.5 months at apple being repaired(no music while exercising was a killer).
I also think that my lifestyle change had lost some focus. I believe I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, but somewhere along the line I began to take charge of my lifestyle change. Accepting the work & the glory as totally mine and ignoring where my true strength comes from.
So where did this all leave me? Well in the course of the last 6 moths I had gained back over 60lbs. OUCH! Mind you I was still down over 100lbs from my heaviest days but now that i know what weighing less feels like I was not a happy camper. My new clothing was also getting tighter and that was very depressing.
So in December i decided to get back on the road to health or at least take some preventative measures. So with two weeks to go before Christmas I started on the straight and narrow road. I did well and in two weeks I was already feeling better. However, Shelly & I decided that we were gonna eat whatever we wanted over Christmas. I went along with this cause last year I didn't eat anything bad over the holidays and there are a few things like deserts, including hot mince meat pie with ice cream, cookies, etc. That have not touched my lips in two years. So after two weeks of doing well and feeling better I dumped it all for some good Christmas Party Food.
It was all worth it, the bit of weight I lost before Christmas counter balanced the weight I gained back during the Holidays. So today I am no worse off than I was at the beginning of December. So here we go. The not-as-big-as-i-once-was brian is heading toward a new year with a new goal. I wanna get back in shape, start exercising again and end up back where I want to be.
I will keep you posted.
Time to start the new year. I have some goals in mind for the new year, I suppose you could call them resolutions. I am planning on continuing my weight loss lifestyle change (more on that later). I am also hoping to get our household budget under control after some wild emergency spending this past quarter(storm damage, septic tank issues, um, christmas etc.) Oh, and I hope to make time to write some more blogs.
