Indefinite Hiatus

My apologies to everyone, but I'm going on an indefinite hiatus while I work on getting my life back in order.  There are many things I need to take care of.  I still have a desire to get this off the ground, and to get back to the roots.  I will wait until I can do that in a quality manner, and consistently, before starting up again.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far.  I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

Update 10/24

Hey all!  Good news and unfortunate news on the weight-loss front.  The good news is that I've been following my ketosis diet for the past two days, and am getting closer to having my body go back into ketosis.  I explained what ketosis was in my other blog, but don't have the time this morning to explain again.  I'll make another article for that in the near future.

Long story short, I deprive my body of carbohydrates, and in turn, it adapts to making ketones as an energy source for my body.  One side affect is sometimes I get sugar withdrawal headaches, as well as feel sick for a couple days.  I'm currently going through that phase.  However, with having done this a couple times before, it should be short, and my body should be better adapted then it was before.  Total keto-adaption takes about 3 weeks.  I've never held my diet that long, so it may take around that much time for me to hit it still.

Bad news, I haven't been working out.  I've still not put into place processes to help ensure I go to bed on time, so I'm not running.  And my wife hasn't been feeling well this past week, so I usually falter with my willpower and just stay home as well.  Improving on both of those will be an endeavor for this next week.

Stumbling along

Hey all,

Thank you if you are still following me.  I'm having issues getting consistent with not only my weight-loss processes, but my blogging as well.  I'm going to try to start blogging every Friday morning as an update for the week.  I'll see how that's going from there.

As an update of where I'm at, I spent the last week not following my keto diet, and only ran Monday and Tuesday.  I didn't run this week yet, and have identified the problem with when I go to bed.  I'm going to have to start going to bed at 8 or 9, depending if I'm getting up with my wife.  I might even just say 8 o'clock all the time, so I have the morning to do other things.

We'll see.  I'm working on cleaning up my life.  I'd like to get back in stride as soon as possible, but I won't rush myself.

Week #2

So, it might have been the ridiculous amount of delicious food I ate yesterday, or the fact that I increased the difficulty of my run again (I think a combination of the two), I wasn't able to complete my workout this morning.  I only managed to get in 3 cycles of 3 minutes jogging/2 minutes walking before my shins were crying out in pain.  I won't take this as a negative though.  Tomorrow, I'll go back and try for at least 4 cycles.

Other than that, I'm proud that I made it to the gym before work again.  This is week 2!  I've gotten this far and haven't given up yet.  At this rate, I'll have no problem making it through the Tough Mudder next year!

Day #5

It was hard, but I made it!  I almost slept in today.  But at 4:30 (I normally get up at 5), I woke up to the apartment actually being warm (Our heater has been off, and it's been freezing).  I don't know why something as nice as this didn't make me complacent enough to go back to bed, but I realized that if I didn't get up, I wouldn't run.

If I didn't run, it would be the first time I broke this new cycle.  Once I do that, I have to go back to the beginning.  I didn't do that!

And it was worth it!  I succeeded in my running regiment, so on Monday I get to level up!

Day #4!

I stumbled a bit the last two nights with my diet.  But I'm recovering.  I won't dwell on it, just trying to move forward.

On the less than positive note with regard to my diet... I leveled up in running!  I'm now up to alternating walking two minutes, jogging 2.5 minutes.  Surprisingly, physically, it seemed only as difficult as Monday/Tuesday felt.  However, mentally, I was a bit more fortified.  I only began wanting to quit after the fourth out of the 6 walk/jog pairs.

Here's my plan, so people know what I'm up to:

I'm going to run, before work, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.  My starting point was, for 30 minutes, alternating walking and jogging for 2-minutes each.  After each 2-day pair that I continue for the whole 30 minutes, I'm going to increase the time I jog by 30 seconds each cycle, until I'm jogging for 5 minutes and walking for 2 minutes.  Then, I'll start dropping my walking time by 30 seconds each cycle until I'm running for the full 30 minutes.

That's the goal.  We'll see how it goes!

Day #2

I started off the day better!  Even though I got up at 5:10 instead of 5:05, I started cooking breakfast by 5:30.  I finished eating (but fully prepared to go to work) by 6:00.  Out the door and at the gym, ready to run at 6:26 gave me time to stretch.  I was done by 6:30 and managed to get my 30 minutes of alternating two minutes of jogging with two minutes of walking.

It was difficult.  But 14 minutes, I was ready to quit.  But I would have been very embarrassed if I had to write that to everyone who reads this.  So I persevered.  I even ended up realizing that I felt the exact same a minute 24 that I did at minute 14.  I just had to overcome the comfortableness and keep going.  With that extra push I did, I should improve that much more!

I have some nuts that I can snack on around the 10:30 mark to help hold off hunger.  We'll see how that goes.

Tailoring my day

Until I get a daily routine going that fulfills all of my needs, I'm not going to be making the progress that I want.  Hunger, exhaustion, and loss of focus can all drive me to lose my resolve to do something.  In order to combat this, I sometimes write down notes about my day.  I tend to lose these notes, so I'm going to try and put them up on here.  This way, it's also documented for anyone interested what worked and didn't work for me.

Here's where I stand for the day:
5:05 - Woke up
5:40 - Prepare/begin making breakfast of 3 slices of bacon and 3 eggs
5:55 - Finish making everything, sit down to eat
6:03 - Leave apartment (Too late)
6:28 - Arrive at work
6:32 - Start running (2 minutes walking/2minutes jogging)
7:00 - Stop running, with 2 minutes left with intended
7:00 - Shower fast and get to work
9:15 - Finished First Water bottle of water
10:50 - Feeling peckish, drank 1/2 water bottle
11:37 - Grumbling Tummy.

----
To recap for now: I need to start breakfast sooner.  5:30 at the latest.  Also, I need for work by 5:55 if I want enough time to stretch and run my 30 minutes.

Other than that, I think I've got a solid base.  This knocks out my running early, so I don't have to worry about that willpower issue later, as well as gives me a breakfast that falls within my Keto diet.  My next thing to pay attention to is when I get hungry, and if I'm getting tired throughout the day.

Hello World!

Inside nerdy joke... We're always supposed to make the "Hello World" when we're learning a new programming language.

I've decided to create this blog to document my quest for fitness.  I'm a huge nerd, and avid reader of Steve over at Nerd Fitness.  One of the things I've learned from him is to relate more to video games.  Quests are great because you have an objective and you usually take journeys to get there.

So I don't lose sight of the main focus of my other blog, I'll move all fitness related content to this one.

Here is where I'm at, for those just joining me:
I've just turned 25, am happily married, and work as a software developer.  My wife is pretty much in shape.  Me... I'm a shape.  But that's not a problem, because it can be changed!  Over the past half, I've been slowly making changes in hopes to get more in shape.  I've only recently began implementing changes that are having noticeable effects.  In order to make better decisions and hopefully have other people learn from me, I'm going to document as often as I remember.

Stats:
I'm currently 205 pounds.  (About a month ago, I started a keto diet and have lost 11 pounds since then).  The scale puts me at about 27.1% body fat.  That's approximately 55.56 pounds of fat.  Around 194,000 calories.  Seems like a daunting number, but it will help keep me focused on my goals.

Along with dieting, running and some strength training will be my first phase of my fitness quest.  I can currently job 10 minutes, walk 3 minutes, then jog another 5 minutes @ 5mph.

Goals for Phase 1:
I want to get back down to 190 pounds, and be able to jog for 30 minutes straight.  Assuming I only lose fat, that puts me at 21% body fat.  I'd like to be able to do this in the next 6-8 weeks.

Goals for Phase 2:
I want to bulk up!  More muscle means more calories burned.  Also, it means I'm more anti-fragile.  I've got no idea where I'll end up for this phase, but I'd like it to be around 15% body fat.  I can no longer talk pounds, because I have no idea which way the scale will go.  In this phase I'll not worry about calories so much.  I'll also drop the keto diet.

Goals for Phase 3:
At some point, I'm going to switch to my last cutting phase.  The goal here is to get between 8-10% body fat.  This is quite far out there, so I'll not make plans for this until I get into phase 2.

That's it for now.  I'll post pictures soon, and try hard to keep you up to date.  My next post will outline my current plans forward.