Taken 6/26/07, I was about 260 pounds

Taken today, 193.0 pounds.

I can barely recognize the top picture but it has given me motivation to get on the bike right now, at 8:55 pm.  Even at 193 though, I’m still about 20 pounds overweight for my height of 6′ 1″.  Sorry about the scruff, I would have shaved but I was testing out my new camera and was shocked to see myself.

Though I MUCH prefer cycling over running, I was never really bad at it and have now added it to my routine to give my ass some time to recover from the bike and to burn calories a lot faster.

Using the Bodybugg (God, I hate that name) has been a real eye opener for me in terms of my caloric burn.  For example, you can clearly see that I burn significantly less calories on the bike (even while riding for hours at my lactate threshold) than I do while running (at a pace I can easily sustain for an hour).

 
At my LT, I’m burning approximately 10 calories per minute (2 rides here).

 
When running, I’m burning about 15.2 calories per minute.

While this isn’t surprising, I’ve learned that running can be a real help when trying to maintain a 1,000 – 1,500 calorie per day deficit.   I needed to take today off the bike so I went with Amy down to 24-Hour Fitness and ran on the treadmill for an hour (30 minutes at 165+ bpm) and it went pretty well.  I’m not really a gym person but finding flat roads to run on here is just about damn near impossible.  It’s not the uphill that kills, it’s the downhill.

So far, so good on the weight loss front.  After a two sketchy weeks, I’m finally starting to drop.  About a year ago, I was 269.5 and I checked in this morning at 217.0.  Goal weight is 180 by the last Sunday in July and 170 by the end of this year.  After that, I’ll just want to maintain and work on my power output (more on using a power meter this week) and getting back into racing next year.  My motivation is a little different than most peoples.  Instead of wanting to look good, fit into certain clothes or be healthy, I just want to go faster up hills.  I’ve already got decent power output and if I can change the "mass" part of the equation, I can be competitive again.

I logged in last night for the first time in about 40 days and cleared out all of my invites.  This is how many I’ve received in less than 24 hours and I only have 15 friends.  I used to think they were cool until I learned that people just send these invites to everyone which detracts from their value, at least for me.  When I learned that Scrabulous is a person to person game, I played.  Maybe social networks just aren’t for me.  Maybe I’m just not social enough.

Here’s the thing though, I feel guilty for not “accepting” the invites or not sending anything out in return.  Maybe I’m weird but the last people I want to bother are my friends (even though I don’t consider and invite a “bother” if that makes any sense).  I understand that Facebook just wants to make their site as sticky as possible but at some point, in become more of a hassle than a benefit when you have a bunch of friends.  When sending an invite to someone, the default should be to invite just a single person rather than your entire address book.  I want to use FB to keep tabs on what’s going on in my friends’ lives, not hassle them to death.

Ok, I admit it. I love and have loved for a long time, progressive vocal trance music. I’m hardcore and I take it seriously. I have a seperate NAS (Network Attached Storage) dedicated to this kind of music. I don’t advertise it and I hide it on my LAN like I would hide porn. Amy doesn’t even know how much I like it. But no more. I don’t dance to it but it’s really the only music that can make me completely lose myself and focus on something if I need to. But I have to be careful, it’s like a very powerful drug and has to be taken in moderation.

I had to write a very tight piece of code for work tonight and I remembered that trance keeps my ADHD at bay. So I loaded up a new directory of new tunes I’d recently downloaded and found an absolute gem that I’d forgotten about. My code got done, tested, and checked into SVN but I can’t get this track out of my head.

Check it out:

Burned with Desire by Armin Van Buuren

And don’t make fun of me

I was so exhausted tonight and had laid down but it was futile- this song gave me new life and I wanted to share.

On Thursday, May 31st, I bought a new scale and weighed myself. The reading: 269.5. I relcalibrated it and weighed myself two more times with the same result. That same night, I began an intensive exercise program and cut back on all soft drinks and most fast food. Over the next six months, I watch my weight fall an average of 8.5 pounds per month. On Friday October 19th, I weighed myself again. The result: 218.0. WOW! I’d lost 51.5 pounds!!

Or so I thought….

Back on May 2nd, I went in to see the doctor about another flare up of my acute insomnia. As a normal part of the check-in process, I was weighed but I knew I was the heaviest in my life so didn’t even look at the scale. I went back in today (for the insomnia again) and was weighed. Though I knew I’d gained about 1 1/2 pounds in the past couple of weeks, I was anxious to see how much I’d blew the old reading out of the water. The numbers showed 228.9. Hmm, about 5 pounds more than I expected but I still must have crushed it. I asked the nurse what I weighed the first time I came in. She said 218.2. Surely she was mistaken. I asked to see the chart. I told her their must be some error, the first reading was wrong. She checked and said no, that the scale they use is extremely accurate and is re-calibrated every single morning. She casually said that I’d gained 11.7 pounds in the past 6 months. I sank in my chair.

In the past 6 months, I’d averaged 1,038 miles on the bike per month (approximately 280,000 calories alone), walked several hundred miles with Amy and the dogs, cut out all soda, watched what I ate and GAINED 11.7 pounds. IN THE SUMMER. Before starting to exercise, I was working on the road, completely sedentary and eating fast food for every meal.

Amy thought that there must have been some mistake. Either their scale was wrong the first time or it was today. I called their office back and was assured by a different person that the scale is in fact calibrated every day and that it was a $8,000 scale and extremely accurate. How is that possible? How could I have gained all that weight with all that activity? Was the (rather expensive) $130 scale I purchased in May lying to me the whole time? I don’t know what it is but it has certainly destroyed my motivation.

I guess I’ll have to double everything. A 2 hour ride on the trainer will now have to be a 4 hour ride and 4 days off a month becomes 2. I’ll also have to pick up running. Crap.