This weekend I went on a mini-bender of sorts.  Had my fill of cookies after my wife returned home from grocery shopping.  Mind you, this wasn’t a “full force” eating festival.  More along the lines of returning to the cookie jar every so often.

Still, I was surprised when I weighed in this morning and found my weight unchanged from over the weekend.  I thought for sure, I would weigh at least a pound more than I have been.  I’m speculating that my weight didn’t increase because I am loading up on water.  One of my thirty day goals awhile back was to drink at least 64 ounces of water per day above and beyond what I would drink anyway.  I purposely bought a one liter water bottle that I fill up every night and stick in the frig for the next day.  During the course of the day - usually around noon - I would have finished that bottle and load up another liter worth of water.  Recently, though, I have been drinking three bottles of water each day.  That’s consistently drinking three bottles - over a hundred ounces of water - every day.  And hold on for this, there are some days when I am drinking four bottles a day.

My “theory” of why I didn’t gain weight this weekend is that I was too bloated from drinking water to properly stuff myself.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

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I did my 100 sit ups for the day. My 30 day goal for March 2007 is 100 sit ups per day. I knocked those out first thing this morning. It took my two sets of 50, but I did them. Once finished I thought to myself that this is too easy of a goal for the next thirty days. Then I thought of the bigger purpose - I want to establish healthy habits that continue beyond the 30 days. If I make a goal to hard to accomplish, it would be easy to give in when it gets tough and just bag the whole idea. I’m planning on making this a long term habit that will grow to a larger quantity of sit ups over time. By the end of this month, I should be able to do 100 sit ups consecutively, no breaks.

I also used the old analog scale along with the new scale today. Recall that I mentioned I have been losing weight even though I haven’t been doing much exercise recently? I suspect the weight loss is the result of my recent bout with the flu. I thought that the new scale might be out of whack - you would hope not since it is a brand new Taylor digital scale. I’m happy to report that the old and new scale gave similar results. Today I weighed 177.4 lbs. on the new scale and somewhere between 177 and 178 lbs. on the old analog scale. Yeah!

One area I need to improve on is the exercise. Last week I didn’t exercise at all because of being sick. Now I need to step back up the effort and exercise on a regular basis. Today is family Y night in our house. On Thursdays we all head over to the local YMCA. One of these times my wife and I are doing a yoga class. The kids usually either play basketball or racquetball.

It has been three months since I started this blog and the purpose of this blog is to get me to lose 23 pounds by the end of December 2007 - mainly through publicly stating my intentions and documenting my results. I weighed in at 190 pounds at the end of November 2006. At the end of December I weighed 186 pounds. December’s 30 day goal was to cut out candy bar snacks in the afternoon and no eating after dinner (this has probably been the biggest contributor to my weight loss to date). January I lost another 4 pounds and finished the month weighing 182 pounds. My 30 day goal for January 2007 was to exercise every day. I missed one day of exercising in January, while we were in Hood River Oregon for my brother’s wedding. February showed additional weight loss, almost 5 pounds, today I weigh in at 177.4 lbs. My 30 day goal was to drink 64 ounces of water every day. I missed doing this twice last month. At the beginning of the month, drinking that much water - in addition to whatever else I consumed during the day - was difficult, I felt bloated. Feeling bloated from drinking that much water is what I wanted to accomplish, that way I wouldn’t feel like eating too much. By the end of the month, if I wasn’t drinking that much water, then I felt thirsty. Funny how your body adapts to changes.

February’s results surprised me. I exercised less because of being sick. I actually gained some weight back in early February when I went on a cookie binge one weekend; I lost most of the weight in the last two weeks. So, is it the water drinking and the appetite suppressing effect that feeling bloated has that helped lose the weight? I don’t know, but I am planning on drinking at least 64 ounces of water every day.

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You know that my thirty day goal this month is to drink 64 oz of water every day (I guess it’s only 28 days this month). There have been a few adjustments issues, but all in all, I am settling into the routine.

What you also know is that I have no idea why this is a good idea, my only thought is that I will feel bloated and not feel like eating so much. This has been true so far.

And at this point, you should also realize that I am not a medical professional, and anything I say or do or recommend is really only for me. You choose to do what you will with the weight loss information provided here.

What I want for you to see is this great article I found on drinking water to lose weight. I also have no idea if these people know what they are talking about. Read the article and make up your own mind.

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Two times a mile tonight. That’s 2 x 1600 meters for those of you who have joined the 21st century and are hip to the latest distances. First one was in 6:31 and the second was 6:37. My plan was to run the first one close to 7 minutes and the second one under 6:30. That obviously didn’t happen. Actually had a little hard time breathing on the second one - I was nervous for some silly reason, thinking that I might not be able to run the second interval as fast or faster than the first. Look what happened. Oh well.

Today is the second day I have weighed 183 pounds. I think the weekend cookie bing has kicked in. Seems I have a weakness for chocolate chip cookies. The best way I can think to fix this problem is to not have cookies in the house. Only one problem with that, I have a family.

I guess I am going to have to suck it up and realize that the world just doesn’t revolve around me. It would so much easier to not pig out if I didn’t have the opportunity. Put that’s not how it works, I have a family that likes chocolate cookies and can control their eating. I’m going to have to leave the cookies alone. Don’t touch the cookies. Still, what can I do to tame the beast inside me that decides to wolf down the cookies when they sit there on the counter oh so innocently?

Enough cookie talk, lets get back to the water issue. 64 ounces of water - in addition to whatever I drink - is a lot of drinking. I think I need to pace myself a little better, I start off with a bang in the morning trying to “bank” some water early so I can slow down later in the day. I pay the price. By the time late afternoon rolls around, I am not over productive, got to visit the restroom frequently. And the drive home - don’t get me started.

A better approach for drinking water to lose weight is to have a nice steady drinking pace throughout most of the day with a strong finish before the thirty minute drive home. If I can fill up with water on the ride home, dinner won’t be such a big event. By big event, I mean I won’t feel like stuffing myself. That’s the current drinking theory anyway.

That’s enough talking for one day. Eat less, drink more.

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The water is going down fine, exercise on the other hand …

Had a little set back on the road to weight loss yesterday. I was running yesterday and my Achilles heel started to hurt. I had a sharp pain in my right heel that has only slightly improved from yesterday. About half way through the run, the pain started.

This puts a bit of a damper on my running efforts. I am training for the Robie Creek half marathon that happens in April. Weekends are a key part of the effort to get fit for the race. Not sure what I will do today, I might see about talking a long walk and / or visit the YMCA for a session on the rowing machine.

Like I started this message with, the 64 oz per day water drinking goal I have for thirty days is going well. Drinking that much water, in addition to what I normally drink each day, is a bit of a stretch. I have to fill up a 1 liter container twice a day to make sure I am getting all of the water I want. Yes, I know that 2 liters is more than 64 oz (about 68 oz).

On a different note, I was watching TV yesterday and came across an infomercial for a program called P90X. I always wonder about these type of programs. I can’t think of a situation where these type of programs ever show or tell about the people that are unsuccessful with their program. And why would they? Who would buy their program if they said something like: “And 2 out of every 100 people who start our 90 day program actually complete it”. I’m not dissing this program, just letting you know that these type of programs don’t work for everyone because there is actual work involved!

To be fair, P90X never says that their program is easy (yeah, truth in advertising) and they do provide online support in the form of access to online fitness experts and peer support. That can go a long way to helping someone achieve success with their program. Why do you think I am doing all of this writing? I know that if I put my intentions in writing and let the whole world know what I am accomplishing, then I am much more likely to reach the results I am interested in. I am making a commitment and sticking to it using the web as a vehicle to document my efforts. I can at any time use the search function or simply go through the archives to check on my progress. If you go back to the first post made you will see that when this effort a little more than 2 months ago, I weighed 190 lbs, today I am down to 181 lbs.

If you are wondering why I was watching this informercial, it really was by chance. Remember my heel hurt after running for an hour. When I got home, I took a shower then plopped myself down by the TV for awhile and surfed around. This informercial was showing before and after pictures of successful participants in their program. The infomercial made some points that I agree with - muscle confusion - and I watched through to the end of the show.

That muscle confusion idea made me think that if I keep doing the same thing in an effort to lose 23 lbs in 13 months, then the effectiveness of my efforts will diminish. I think I will need to make changes to my weight loss effort as time goes on so I continue to lose weight instead of leveling off. I might need to purchase a system like the P90X system to get the results I want. I lost 8 pounds in the first two months, this is more weight loss than I need to average in that time frame to reach my goal by the end of December 2007. Realize that my rate of weight loss will decrease as time goes on - unless I do something along the lines of “muscle confusion”.

And finally, today is Super Bowl Sunday here in the United States, a day that lends itself well to weight gain and unhealthy eating and drinking. For those not interested in American football, this is a goldmine of a day to do or get things done that are typically busy - like go to the Y and use the almost always busy stair steppers.

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