It’s been about a month since I’ve dropped in to update my blog. It’s a busy time of year in Athletics with all the fall and winter sports overlapping with each other as some come to and end and other are beginning.

Nevertheless, I love this time of year. I think Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s can be summed up by these 4 F’s:  Food, family, friends, and football. I can pretty much guarantee that on each of these three days I will be eating great food with friends and family and there will most certainly be football on the TV.

I think it can go without saying, but the holidays can be a very difficult time for someone who’s dieting. I guess I haven’t paid much attention in the past, but it seems like every news report this year talked about how the average Thanksgiving meal has about 3,000 calories in it… Wow! According to the American Council on Exercise, “A 160 lb. person would have to run at a moderate pace for four hours, swim for five hours or walk 30 miles to burn off a 3,000-calorie Thanksgiving Day meal.”

Seeing as how I’ve never done any strenuous exercise after a Thanksgiving meal (and probably consumed more than 3,000 calories at a time as well), the holidays have always been a downfall of mine.

One thing my doctor and I talked about heading into the Thanksgiving break was to have a plan when it comes to eating on Thanksgiving and Christmas. My intention heading to Sulphur Springs for Thanksgiving was to make my own salad I knew I would enjoy so I could eat a larger portion of that instead of a plate-full of dressing. That didn’t happen, though. In the mad rush to finish work at the office, pack, and leave town, preparing a salad did not get checked off the to-do list.

I still had a plan, though. Since I’ve started my diet, I’ve picked up a general knowledge of which foods are higher-calorie than others, so after seeing the spread laid out across 3 different tables, I began making a mental tally of what and how much I could eat.

I definitely stayed away from sweets. Although, that’s not terribly difficult as I’ve never been big on sweets. I did, however, load up on veggies, got a decent portion of turkey, and just a little dressing.

One thing that helped me this Thanksgiving was I had to leave Sulphur Springs right after I ate to come back to College Station for the A&M/Texas football game that evening. While it stunk having to cut family time short, I was able to pull myself away from all the food, which kept me from continuously snacking through the afternoon.

***

As far as exercise goes this past month, I haven’t been as consistent as I would have liked. I can make a hundred excuses, but I just haven’t been getting the exercise I need lately. It’s been pretty cold lately, so when I do workout, I typically go run at the Rec Center.

One thing I really like running on a treadmill, my speed, distance, etc. is all laid out right in front of me. This may not be the case for everyone, but this has given me extra motivation to pick up my pace as I run… I’ve been able to knock my mile time down from ~12min/mi to ~10:30/mi.

***

All-in-all, I’m happy so far with the holidays. I love seeing family and friends, eating great food, and watching football. All of which I accomplished on Thanksgiving. Christmas and New Year’s will still present their challenges. I imagine they will for the rest of my life… I don’t ever see this being easy.

So for any of y’all reading this that I happen to be around on Christmas, feel free to slap my hand as I reach for that second Sister Schubert’s dinner roll.

199lbs to be exact!

Well that’s all I’ve got for today… going to be a busy one as I try to wrap up everything so Laura and I can get up to Sulphur Springs tonight! Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

Today marks the 10th anniversary of the tragic bonfire collapse that killed 12 Texas A&M students.

I had the honor of attending the candlelight service held this morning at 2:42am. It was freezing, it was late (or early, depending how you look at it), but that didn’t keep the Aggie spirit away. Thousands of students and former students came out to the Bonfire Memorial site last night to pay their respects for those who lost their lives.

2009 Candlelight Service honoring the 12 students who died on the stack 10 years ago today. Photo by Doug Klembara.

The service was very touching. One of the mom’s of the fallen students orchestrated the events… leading us through prayer, song, and times of silence.

I know it’s small, but on the Aggie Athletics site, I switched out our traditional “aTm” logo with the bonfire remembrance logo. I like to think that’s our small way of remembering the students who gave their lives for Bonfire. The new logo will stay up through Thanksgiving day after we BTHO tu.

On a bigger scale, our 12th Man Productions team produced a wonderful documentary DVD that takes a very intimate into the 1999 Texas/Texas A&M football game and all the events that surrounded that game.

I know the guys at 12th Man Productions worked very hard, and the few clips I’ve seen of the DVD are moving in themselves and I can’t wait to get a copy for Laura and I.

I closed out my blog last night saying I was hoping to get to bed early, rest, and hit the gym again today… that didn’t happen. After watching the Bonfire Memorial Service online that took place at Reed Arena last night, I felt like I should go to the memorial that night.

I got home about 5 minutes before 4 this morning. So, needless to say, I am quite tired today. Today has been quite busy… between a press conference, building the Burning Desire page for the website, and Aggie Basketball tonight (where I’m writing this from), I haven’t had a chance to stop and think until now.

If you haven’t figured it out, I didn’t/won’t make it to the gym today. I really am going to get in bed at a decent time tonight and get back in the routine in the morning.

Well, I’d better wrap this up… there’s 2 minutes left in the game and I’ve got to pack up and head down to the post game press conference room.

Watching the scale move from 212lbs to 204lbs in a week provides some great motivation!

I’ve been getting frustrated the past couple of weeks with my weight loss… Actually, weight stalemate may be a better term to describe my weight loss over the last month.
This week, I decided this week to buckle down, restrict my diet, and hit the gym EVERY day.

It wasn’t easy… It reminded me a lot of when I first started this diet: The urges were there, the hunger was there, but, just like the first time around, after the first two day, the urges and pains faded away.

I reduced my caloric intake back down to 600-700 calories/day and decided to drink my shakes on a more regular basis… about 2-3 times per day.

For my regular meals, my diet usually consisted of 3-4oz of chicken breast and some veggies. It takes a lot for me to get tired of something if I like it, so that’s all I’ve pretty much eaten for the last week (I’ve had a few days of variation).

As far as exercise is concerned, I decided to fight it out with the students and go back to the Rec Center.

The weather’s been so inconsistent here lately, I decided to start running on the treadmills at the Rec… I’ve never really run on a treadmill for any length of time before, but I wanted to incorporate weights back into my daily exercise, and it’s a lot easier to do that when they’re 20 feet away instead of 2 miles away.

I learned two things very quickly about running on a treadmill:

1. If you listen to the TV while running, don’t listen to comedy: I learned that I’m not nearly coordinated enough to laugh and run at the same time. The difference on the treadmill opposed to running outside is if my legs stop running, the ground still keeps moving… not a good equation.

2. When running on the treadmill, don’t get too wrapped up in football: I may be the only person that does this, but I found myself watching football on TV and I would gradually run to the left or right in the same direction the person with the ball was running… obviously, I’m only working with a foot of distance on either side of me and not an entire football field, so it doesn’t take long for me to step on the side of the treadmill and stumble all over myself… only to have everyone turn around and look at me because I just made a huge racket.

Overall, my typical day in the gym this past week was about a 30-35 minute run and about 20 minutes with the weights.

It was good to see all my hard work pay off this week… I weighed in yesterday at 204 pounds, for a total of 8 pounds lost!

I’ve set a goal for myself to get down to 200 pounds by Thanksgiving… hopefully that’ll happen. I’m actually taking today off from the Rec because I am completely worn out… my plan is to get in bed early and pick everything back up tomorrow.

You might have noticed a new tab at the top of the site called “Favorite Things.” You’re more than welcome to click around, but there’s nothing really in there right now… I’m still working on my lists. Definitely feel free to email me with suggestions for the pages.

I guess that’s about all I’ve got for right now. I’ll try to update again either later this week or this weekend.

I don’t know about y’all, but I seem to have forgotten about my blog. Not totally, though… I’ve thought about it off and on over the past couple of weeks, but it just seems like I never think about it when I have time to update.

I’ll be honest, too… I’ve been very frustrated with my weight-loss lately, and that’s part of the reason I haven’t been overly-enthusiastic about updating y’all with my craptastic results.

I can make excuse after excuse, but when it comes down to it, my eating and exercise habits over the last couple weeks haven’t been the best… and the scale has reflected my efforts. I’ve actually managed to gain and lose a couple pounds, so I’m still sitting at 212lbs as of this morning.

I do have to keep reminding myself that I’ve lost almost 110lbs since March, but it’s still disheartening to not see the scale move the way I want it to.

ANYWAYS… on to some good news

I’ve kept up with my running. I’ve tried to get out there at least 3 times/week, and have done fairly decent.

I did set a new personal running record last Tuesday – 9.11 miles.

I’m not going to lie, it sucked. A little less than halfway into it, I started questioning what the heck I was doing… You can see in the map of my route below, I was out in the middle of nowhere on HWY 30 between HWY 6 & 158.

I was very tempted to cut across by the yet to be finished Adams building and take a couple miles off, but decided to stick it out.

Unfortunately, there were times I had to slow down to a walk. Overall, though, I’m happy I did it… even if I didn’t run 100% of the time. It’s still a distance record, and I’d been wanting to get out on a long run for a while, but had been putting it off.

Well that’s about all I’ve got for today… I’m starting back on my strict diet and exercise routine today. I’ve got to reset and forget all I’ve done in the past and start from day 0. It’s all about what I do on a daily basis to get me to my ultimate goal.

If any of y’all are going to the Rec tonight, I’ll be there… Say “Hey!”

P.s. I’ve disabled comments due to the overwhelming amount of spam I’ve been receiving. I’ll turn it back on when I have time to dig into a solution for that problem. This is fixed

Swine flu sucks. There’s no simpler way to put it. It took me a good week and a half to fully get over it, but I finally did on Wednesday.

I only ran once this week… on Friday. I’m still hurting from my strained groin muscle, but decided to head out anyways since the weather was so beautiful. This was definitely a run I won’t soon forget…

(Let me preface this next part by saying we got out of work at noon on Friday because President Obama was coming to speak at Rudder Auditorium and traffic would be a nightmare)

About 2, I decided to head out and take a different route because I’m getting tired of smelling all the food when I run down Texas Ave and University… Basically a big circle from George Bush/Texas Ave -> Southwest Parkway -> Wellborn -> George Bush/Texas Ave.

As I’m running down Wellborn, I noticed traffic is completely backed up and people are getting out of their cars to see what’s going on. I figured what everyone else must have thought as well – Obama’s here.

I get to the intersection of George Bush/Wellborn and the Police have blocked all traffic on George Bush and Wellborn Road. People are getting out of their vehicles, leaving them parked in the middle of the road and come out the side of the street in hopes that they’ll see Obama as he rides in his motorcade down George Bush.

President Obama’s Motorcade
Click for larger image

I end up waiting about 15 minutes, and we finally see Obama’s helicopters (about 4-5 of them) fly over on their way to Easterwood. Not long afterward, we see the College Station Motorcycle Police headed down George Bush from Easterwood, followed by what must have been 20-30 vehicles in the entire motorcade… I felt like I was in a movie.

Luckily, the way we were facing and the way the sun was shining through the darkly-tinted windows, we were all able to see President Obama in his black Suburban as he rode past. I know it’s not much, but it was pretty neat nonetheless.

It doesn’t really matter what your views of the President are, anytime you get to see a sitting President in person, it is really something special.

So about as quickly as they came, they were all gone and on campus for his speech at Rudder Auditorium.

I continued my run down George Bush back home passing people all along the way carrying signs protesting President Obama… most of which had Russian or German flags on them attempting to compare Obama to a Socialist, Communist, and many other “ists.”

I got home just in time to turn on the TV as he began speaking. I will give Obama credit… he is a very talented public speaker. Luckily, his visit was not political, but instead focused on public service, so I actually quite enjoyed it and enjoyed the fact that he was speaking on our Campus.

Fast forward to today… I’m unbelievably sore.

Last night I went over to a coworker’s house to watch the Aggie Football game. I’m sure most of y’all reading this know how that game turned out. So, needless to say, we found other things to do rather than watch the game.

Most of the evening was spent playing full-contact football in their backyard. I think I ran harder last night than I ever have… which is actually kind of sad because I was playing against children. It was still a blast, though.

All that said, my feet hurt, my legs hurt, my arm and hand both hurt from throwing the ball. But I love it.

I never rarely played sports growing up, and I sure didn’t play in High School. I think I’m going to try to get on a city-league team sometime soon… whether that be football, baseball, or whatever, I really enjoy being active.

That last statement is somewhat ironic, because as soon as I put the computer down, I’m planning on taking a nap

Thanks for reading!

Here’s the map of my run from the Friday for those who care…

It’s obviously been a while since I’ve updated my blog. So, instead of writing a novel about the past 2 weeks, I thought I’d break it down into good news and bad news… I’ll start with good.

Good News: I’m down to 213lbs!

Bad News: I lost 4 of those pounds because I was sick all last week with the swine flu.

Good News: I’m getting better, but not at 100% quite yet.

Bad News: I haven’t run since Sept. 29

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Good news: I went to Dallas last weekend (Oct. 2-4) to go to the new Dallas Cowboys Stadium for the Southwest Classic.

Bad News: A&M got embarrassed on national television yet again.

Bad News: I’m pretty sure Dallas is where I picked up the swine flu.

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Good News: I was well enough to go to the Aggie football game against Oklahoma State this past weekend.

Bad News: We lost.

Good News: We hung in there with the #13 team in the nation.

Bad News: I wasn’t well enough to do the Run to the Chicken that morning… postponing my debut into the 5k world.

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Bad News: I though I gave myself a hernia a couple of weeks ago while I was running.

Good News: I went to the Doctor on Friday and found out it’s only a strained groin muscle.

Bad News: It still hurts.

Good News: Doc said I should be able to run again (if I’m completely over the swine flu) later this week.

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That’s about all I got for the last two weeks, here’s some good news to end on:

Good News: New House and Lie to Me on TV tonight.

Good News: Laura’s cooking dinner

Good News: I plan on being asleep by 9:30.

Good News: The next time I post this week, I plan on having running updates to go with it.

Today’s Laura’s birthday… she just got on the phone with her parents, so I figure I have time to do a quick update.

Today was a pretty good day… nothing spectacular going on at work, just getting ready to head up to Arlington for the Arkansas game this weekend.

I went with my mom this afternoon to go visit Laura at the school for her birthday. We brought her cupcakes and juice to share with her kids as well as some flowers to go on here desk

It’s like this, but red…

I decided to go back to the mall one last time to see if I could find Laura’s raincoat that she wanted… this trip was finally a success! I found the red raincoat in her size that she tried on a few weeks ago.

So I snagged up her raincoat, then headed back home to head out on my run for the day. Everything was going well… the weather was beautiful – a little warm, but very nice.

I got about a half mile away making it back to the house, and my allergies got to me and I let out a huge sneeze while running. Immediately I thought of this episode of Parks and Recreation, where the boss sneezes and gives himself a hernia. But, pretty much as quickly as I’d thought about it, I forgot it and kept running.

After I got home, I got in the shower and noticed a weird pressure “down there.”

I got out, dried off, then hopped on the computer to check symptoms for a hernia: from the best I can tell, it looks and feels like I have an inguinal hernia. I’m going to call Scott & White tomorrow morning to go get it checked out.

Needless to say, this might throw a wrench in my whole workout plan… I’ll be sure to keep y’all updated on what’s going on.

Laura’s off the phone now, so I’m getting off the computer now.

Here’s today’s route:

Today was a great day!

I started off the morning by weighing in on my trusty scale we have setup in our guest bedroom. I had a pretty good feeling that I’d see some positive movement on the scale… I was right!  Today is a milestone day as I have officially lost 100 pounds since starting my diet back in March!

Hitting that mark means I lost 3 pounds last week… not bad, I guess. I’d like to keep up that pace or a little better as I try to get down to the ~180lb line.

I decided to post these around the neighborhood today

Overall, I’ve lowered my BMI from 40 (which is, obviously, severely overweight) to 27.5 (still considered overweight, but A LOT closer to a “normal” BMI of 18.5-24.9).

I know I’ve had a lot of thoughts and prayers over the past 7 months… I honestly do appreciate all of them.

A lot of y’all have been very encouraging verbally as well, which has been a tremendous confidence and motivation booster throughout this process.

I’ve still got a ways to go… 40 pounds is still quite a bit of weight to drop, but I know (now more than ever) that it’s possible.

ANYWAYS…

On to today: my day was fairly normal… a little busier at work than it’s been recently, but not too bad. We had our weekly football press conference which ran through lunch… I had a mountain of work waiting for me after I got done with the presser, so I didn’t make it to lunch today. Luckily, my breakfast from Chick-fil-a held me over (along with lots of water).

I got home around 6:30, ate some leftover chicken and roasted red potatoes with Laura for dinner, watched the new episode of House, then took off for my evening run.

I decided to jog around campus this evening… I wasn’t exactly sure how far it would be (George Bush -> Wellborne Rd -> University Dr -> Texas Ave -> George Bush). It ended up being right at 4 miles.

The run tracking app I downloaded over the weekend and tried out for the first time yesterday seemed to cut out part of the beginning and end of my run, so it says I ran 3.8 miles, but I think it’s actually closer to 4 (if not just a tad over). I think I’ll switch back to RunKeeper tomorrow.

Overall, I did pretty well… Aside from a few mandatory stops at traffic intersections, I didn’t slow down at all tonight.

I’m going to keep trucking along… I picked up a supplement called TriFlex from GNC yesterday that I’ve started taking to help my joints (specifically my knees) when I run. Combine that with icing my knees after the run and new shoes, my knees feel pretty good after two consecutive days of running.

Alright well I’m headed to bed… it’s Laura’s birthday tomorrow and she wants me to wake up with her at the crack of dawn to cook her breakfast

Here’s the route I took tonight if anyone cares…

Being that it’s almost 11pm, this is going to be a fairly short update. Which stinks, because I didn’t get a chance to update at all yesterday.

Yesterday, Laura and I slept in until 11 or so, which was wonderful! I’m glad to know I haven’t lost the ability to sleep in ridiculously late as I’ve gotten older. The unfortunate side of that was I pretty much only had time to get cleaned up, get some lunch, then head up to Kyle Field for the football game that evening.

That being said, I didn’t really exercise yesterday. If you want to count hours and hours of walking around the stadium/sidelines before and during the game, then I guess that counts for something… but no serious workouts yesterday.

Moving on to today, my day was a little more normal… Church in the morning, lunch with Laura and my mom, then out for a few errands during the afternoon…

I had to run to the mall because Tuesday is Laura’s birthday. She wants a “cute” raincoat… we found one at Macy’s a month or so ago, but I’ve gone back a couple times since then and they haven’t had it. I’ve been to at least 15 stores in B/CS… apparently no one carries raincoats. I may have to resort to an online store, but I’m still (for some odd reason) wary about buying clothes online… it seems like such a hassle (shipping back and forth if it doesn’t fit or if she doesn’t like it, etc.).

While I was at the mall, I decided to stop by a few different stores to look at running shoes… I’ve done a little bit of research online about running shoes, so keeping that in mind, I went store to store looking for raincoats and running shoes.

I finally found a pair I like at Finish Line… the Nike Run Avant+. I’d already tried on several pair, but when I put these on, they just seemed to be right ones.

After having luck with the shoes, but not the raincoat, I headed home, cooked dinner for Laura and I, and relaxed for a bit before I went out for my run to break my new shoes in.

I didn’t leave out until 8:30 or so, but I mapped out a run on the computer that was about 5 miles, so I took off on my journey.

Even though it was still fairly warm and humid out tonight, I was able to keep a pretty decent pace… out of my 59 minute run,(at most) I walked 1:30 seconds… the majority of which I took before I had to run up the giant hill on Dominik.

All-in-all, I ran 5.03 miles in just under 59 minutes. I found a new run tracking program by Run Balance/mapmyrun.com, so I gave it a try tonight. You’ll find the map of my route tonight embedded below.

I weigh-in tomorrow… I’ve got a positive feeling that I’ll see some movement (in the right direction) this week!

Thanks for reading!!