Posts Tagged rec center

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

I decided to hit the pavement again today and go for a run around campus. My knees felt great… they definitely needed the day off.

I took off from Kyle Field over to West Campus down to the intramural fields. About a mile and half into my run I vividly remembered why I joined the Rec Center back in May… it was hot.

When I first started this diet, I began by mostly walking around the neighborhood park. Eventually I was able to pick up a decent pace (relatively speaking) while running, but as the end of April came around and Summer started to creep up, I noticed a sharp decline in my stamina. Putting my 2+ years of college education to use, I determined that I could run better where it’s cooler… so I joined the Rec – I was right.

Fast forward to this week, I don’t think it’s coincidental that I’ve been able to break my personal running records while the weather has been significantly cooler. Now that it’s back in the upper 80’s (thanks Texas weather), I may need to take it back indoors.

I’m not going to lie, I started to get very discouraged as I slowed down to a walk and looked at Run Keeper only to find out that I’d only run a little over a mile and a half.

I started thinking, though… 6 months ago, I couldn’t run 100 yards without falling over and dying. As a matter of fact, just 2 weeks ago, I thought the farthest I could run was a mile – indoors!

So all things considered, even though I had to walk a good portion of my route today, I still feel great about getting out there and running more today – in the heat – than I ever thought I could just weeks ago.

It’s been a few days since I’ve talked about diet…

Chick-fil-a has been a staple food group of mine since I started dieting back in March. Most people think I would get burned out on eating the same thing so many times each week… which, by the way, is a chargrilled chicken sandwich with mustard, no pickles, no tomatoes, and a Diet Dr. Pepper (only 260 calories).

I’m a creature of habit, though… one of the ways I got to be as heavy as I got was I used to eat Wings N More all the time. And, just like Chick-fil-a, I got the exact same thing each time (for the last 7 years): Chicken tenders with fries and hot sauce to dip everything in (and a regular Dr. Pepper).

I really should proposition Chick-fil-a to be their “Jared.”

I am trying to cook at home more, though. I’m trying out some different recipes with shrimp… which is an amazing healthy food if you’re trying to lose fat and build muscle.

I’ve tinkered with a few recipes here and there… bookmarked a few that I enjoy from Danny and Laura Stiller… and still digging around for more.

To end on a somewhat nerdy note, I just found a new App that could potentially replace Run Keeper to keep track of my running stats called Strands. It appears to have all the features of the $10 Pro version of Run Keeper, but for free. I’ll try to test it out this weekend.

Tomorrow’s Gameday! I’ll probably hit the Rec early like I did last Saturday. BTHO UAB!!

Here’s today’s route for those who are interested:

If you don’t already know, I’m a really big nerd.

Last night, I was digging through my box of electronic junk looking for something for Laura when I stumbled across my FM transmitter… it’s something I can plug into any headphone jack and it sends out the audio through a user-determined FM signal. It was like Christmas! I know I shouldn’t get as excited about it as I did, but I don’t care… I did! To be honest, I don’t even really remember why I originally got it a few years ago… obviously I didn’t need it because it was at the bottom of a huge box full of wires. Either way, now that I have an iPhone, the practicality of it just went through the roof.

I love Pandora radio. It may be one of the best inventions within the last 5 years. For those that don’t know, you tell Pandora an artist you like (say The Killers, for example), and it will play songs by The Killers as well as other artists that have similar musical styles. Pandora also has an iPhone app… hopefully you’re starting to see why I got as excited as I did.

Needless to say, I ran back into the kitchen from the storage room, dug up a couple of AAA batteries and ran out to my car to see if this thing still worked. And, as y’all can probably guess… it did… like a charm. So now I have my own free version of satellite radio

I want to take a second to thank Danny and Laura Stiller for letting me raid their online recipe database. I haven’t had too much time to look through it yet, but in the 5 minutes I took to skim through the recipes I found quite a few healthy and tasty looking meal options under the recommended Zone-Diet tags.

Thanks again Danny! (Follow the Stiller’s on Twitter @dstiller and @lstiller)

I decided to go to the Student Rec Center on campus today to workout (I might as well since I’m paying for it). I’ve only been once… maybe twice… in the last couple of months, and it painfully obvious.

My plan was to go hit up the elliptical machine for an hour and watch a webinar on iPhone video streaming (nerd alert!), then spend some time lifting weights. Well, that didn’t happen. Like I said, I’ve only been to the Rec a couple times in the last 2 months… I scan my ID to get in, go to my locker, then proceed to spend the next 5 minutes trying to remember my locker combination… with no luck. Embarrassed, I go up to the front desk to ask for my locker combination.

I finally got into my locker only to find out I didn’t have my towel card… a necessity as you have to have a towel to workout on the cardio equipment and lift weights. So after another embarrassing (and unsuccessful) trip to the front counter to see if they would let me just borrow a small towel just this once, I decided to head up to the 3rd floor and just go run on the track.

In my first blog post, I said I wanted to be able to run 3 miles at a time without stopping by December – Scratch that.

The track was busy (as I expected), but I started running. As I closed in on my first mile, I felt pretty good, so I decided to go for two. Well, as the second mile was coming to an end, I was getting decently tired, but figured I could keep going… 2 1/2 miles came and went, then 2 3/4, then 3! When it was all said and done, I ran just under 3 1/2 miles today!! By almost 3x, the furthest I’ve ever run at one time!

I know I have a lot of prayers and support out there… I could definitely feel them today – thank you.

So as far as my December goal goes, I’ve decided to change it to 7 miles… I’m going to try to add 1/2 mile every week up to that point.

Well I’m still at the office, so I’m heading home to get cleaned up and start doing some grocery shopping so I can start cooking some of these awesome recipes!