It's alive!!! but I ain't got no bolts in my neck.

Its been a while where I find myself with some time to sit down and write a post so since I had a couple minutes I thought it was time for an update. Point blank I have been struggling since June 2011, a personal tragedy is making things hard on me and focusing has not been easy so we get what we have here, some weight gain. I hit a point where I started remembering some of the struggles of being 534 pounds and with a lot of thought ie: Jedi mind tricks on myself, I have been on a roll for about a month now again where I am doing everything right.

To say that weight loss is a mental game would pretty much sum it up because if you are defeated mentally I doubt many people would be able to keep it together when it comes to something as difficult as staying focused in the face of stress. Losing weight is not easy for any person and someone who says that its easy is just plain lying to you, its a simple thing but easy it is not and there in lies the problem. I have come from 534 pounds down to as low as 305 in the last four years, I am currently as of this morning at a rotund 363.0 pounds but am riding my bikes almost every day now along with the most basic item in my bag of tricks which is a simple walk every day.

I won't complain or whine about things that make it hard because we all have them but shit just ain't easy sometimes and I won't get into it more than that as focusing on the negative never helped anyone. Instead I chose to focus my energy on a couple things that are possible causes for an issue and I have seemingly come up with a solution as I am again able to stay focused and the weight is coming down again but then again when someone walks a few miles per day and then rides a few more it tends to help in that department so who knows.

Short and sweet is this post so I will end it here, I will also try to get a post up more often because when i start getting emails asking if I am alive obviously someone out there still follows.

Thanks for all of the support over the last couple years its been invaluable.

As ever
Me

An update of sorts and some vintage steel for your morning Joe.

I cross posted this with my cycling blog so you can check it out there if you haven't seen it, My weight has how do they say? plateaued? lately, I can't figure it out because I am eating ok, exercise has been coming more often with the weather I have been taking the little one out on rides on the Adams trail a bike but the weight loss has stalled. I am not going to worry about it but will keep on doing what I am doing and call it a slow time because if I let it get in the way I will undoubtedly gain weight in the long run and I ain't down for that. I mentioned the weather warming up and its got me in a bike kind of mood, like I said me and my eldest daughter have been going on rides out on the lake with the trail a bike and I started working on the old Motobecane again, we're getting close on that bike I tell ya! soon enough I will have a new ride in the stable even if its short lived as I am unsure I am a roda bike kind of guy but we will see.

I needed some down time so I headed off to work with the Motobecane yesterday for a couple hours and finished up cleaning the rear derailleur, the shifters and I got the cables/housings installed. I am still not done by a long shot and there is still a lot to do before the bike is done I did make some good solid progress on the bike last night. I chose Jagwire platinum braided cable housings to blend in with the frame a bit and I really like how they look on the bike! I did make a couple decisions on just how closely I was going to polish things up, I was thinking about the fact that I am planning to ride this bike and polishing everything to a mirror finish didn't make a lot of sense because of that fact, I mean if its going to get grimy anyways why make it shinier than when it was new?

With that said, I did not skimp on the polishing! I think that the bike is starting to look pretty nice even if this shot makes my basement look like a dungeon! who am I kidding.. it IS a dungeon! I still have to completely do the wheels (I just tossed them on to see how the bike looked) as I have not touched them other than a small test spot where I polished the rust off of the chrome and I do believe that the wheels will look pretty good after some elbow grease. You can see that I laid the rack on there just for a look at how it would play out and I think that I like it and will stick to the original plan of doing fenders and rack on this bike.

Above is a closer shot of the braided cables installed on the shifters, I think they compliment the silver frame pretty nicely! I am still on the fence with what color I should do the tape/hoods/saddle in but I am sure that it will come to me... eventually. I originally wanted to do the bars and saddle in brown/honey but that is more expensive than the other options and since I am not 100% on whether I will keep this bike in the long run I keep going back to just do the bars red, black saddle and brown or black hoods, I am very on the fence with the whole thing. I don't really ride road bikes let alone vintage road bikes! and that is why I am unsure about whether this will become a permanent ride in my ever growing fleet of bicycles even though I have put a good amount of thought and time into this bike.

Finally a shot of what I started with compared to where I brought it, I think there is a big difference and when I am done I think it will be even bigger! Next on the list of things to do will be the tape and saddle and I am very anxious to see how it looks with a bit more of a finished feel to it. Now the decision must be made on the tape, once that happens I can choose a saddle and finally hood color, some new tires and we will be off for a ride to snap a couple photos in a nicer setting than my dungeon... er I mean basement!

Over all I am on the right road and with the spring right around the corner I am expecting the biking to pick up some which will hopefully help tear away some of my winter jelly that I have packed on during the hibernation. I will never stop striving to get to my goal and some day I will be able to say that I weigh 250 lbs, it may not be in a week, or a month but the day is coming because I will not let weight control who I am or what I do in life and that's that!

Until next we meet, keep on pedaling!

As Ever
Me

Determined... nuff said.

Keeping up with where I need to be has come pretty easy lately but something that I am noticing is that without the exercise the weight comes off so slow. My back is still tender so I am taking it easier than I really want to in the riding the trainer department but it is what it is because if I jump back into it too soon it could set me back that much further. This morning my back felt decent so I may attempt a short ride just to feel things out, I need to get my legs in order before the weather comes around because I do not want to waste a single day when it warms back up when I could be on the bike.

My calories have been pretty perfect and drinking enough has never been an issue for me, my weight is stable or dropping and I haven;t seen what I would call a rise in the number in a while so that's got me in a positive place where this whole program is concerned. My calories last year were 1700 per day and I found at that amount I do lose weight but I also find that I am hungry now and again, since upping my intake number to 2200 calories per day I have been losing weight and literally have found that I come up short a lot of days.

Evolving from a 534 pound man that had no idea of whether his plan to lose weight would work to where I am currently has been a huge learning experience for me, learning that I need to do for me in order to get what I want was a hurdle but now that I am here, whats next? I have dropped a lot of weight in the last few years, kept most of it off but keep hitting a barrier, that barrier is that 300 pound mark and I am now again a bit away from there but I fear that when I get there again I will hit the wall again. How do I get past that? you know, that mental barrier, the weight is merely a number and my body knows not what 299 pounds Vs 305 is, it's what is suspended in the gray matter that is holding me back there.

Sixty pounds is the hill that I need to climb to get back down to the 300 pound barrier, honestly this 60 pounds feels harder to achieve than the more than 170 pounds that I have already lost! why? this is a road already blazed, I have been down and back this road in the not so distant past so why does it feel like its an impossible feat? My mental is where this game is right now, I know this and I know how to eat, exercise and sleep to get there and I will! but it seems like more of a struggle like I said than the already lost weight which is 3 times what I need to drop to get back to where I was.

My weight, my life, my struggle and I will beat it down out of my way, not because I want to, even though I do want to but because I need to, for more reasons than I can count.....

It shall be so..

As Ever
Me

Some compare pictures, a weigh in and a good drop!

Friday has come so it shall be that time to step upon the cold weight telling contraption made from glass plastic and Chinese circuitry again. This morning I did not know what to expect because I have stayed off of the scale for a few days, no reason other than the mornings have been hectic lately so it was business as usual and straight to the scale before my date with Joe. The last time that I weighed in for the blog the number was 364.8, then Evacgutpocolypse happened and I was up in weight which was odd because I had done nothing but evacuate my innards so I did not weigh in last Friday. This week I got back on task with the eating and even though I did zero exercise because of letting my back ease back into every day life the scale did show a loss, I came in at 362.6 which is of course a 2.2 pound loss and I am happy with that.

This old Triumph bike weighs 362 pounds just like I do, and I used this image inTHIS POSTback in 2009 when I weighed exactly what I weigh today.

This here 97 street magic II weighs in at 172 pounds which of course is what I have lost so far, and was also used in that old post!

The plan for this week is to get back on the trainer regular like and see what I can do by next Friday, I have been sort of on a buying streak with bike stuff because of the being all laid up and taking it easy so hopefully getting some exercise into my days again will cease that behavior. I have changed a few things in the way that I am eating the last few days and am feeling good about it, hopefully the coming weeks proves that its the right move for me. Eating heavier in the afternoon and a light dinner is new to me but its what I am doing, normally and all through my weight loss I did not pay too much attention to when I ate as long as my calories were within my limits but I think that eating heavier earlier is leaving me less hungry later in the day.

Over all things are back to normal-ish since Evacgutpocolypse so getting back on track with my program should happen and hopefully it will equate to dropping numbers on the scale. I am at this point needing to drop an average of 3.84 pounds per week to make my May goal, it is higher than it was when I began down this path that will lead to 305 pounds because of getting sick and hurting my back but I still believe that it is a reachable number so I am still aiming for 305.

The weather will surely warm up and that means that I will be able to get out for more rides on the bikes which in turn hopefully mean that the pounds will drop faster as the weather gets warmer and i think it will be enough to get to my goal. If I don't make that goal date it I will push through until I surpass that number and grind right on down to 265 pounds which was my original and end game goal, now of course I won't stop trying once I get to 265 but giving my 6'4'' large frame plus any extra skin that I will have at that point? I think 265 is a good place to aim for initially.

Things are going in the right direction and I have my game face on where my health is the subject so the only thing that will get in my way is my own self....

Not gonna happen.

That's all I got for today.

As ever

Me

Evac! Evac! find the nearest exit and get out now!

This week has been how do they say? a nightmare! Last Friday my weigh in was a slight up and I was ok with that and by Sunday morning I was down 2 pounds from that number so Friday was looking like just an off day to weigh in. Then Sunday our daughter woke up with a stomach bug and threw up, one time but she was in obvious need of some lovin' so I woke up and was comforting her before my back had a chance to warm up and then add that to the fact that i was helping to set up a surprise party for a family member all afternoon and well I woke up Monday morning with a very sore back. If the back was not enough lets add the explosive evacuation of my guts, and I mean stuff was exiting from every and any place that it could find, so now I can't walk without assistance and I am heaving uncontrollably on the toilet while holding a giant bowl for what was coming out of the top end, and now that I have forced you to put down your breakfast bowl, yeah it's been like that.

The long short of it, I went to the doc for some pain meds for the back and I am standing upright once again but still tender, the evacuation of my innards has ceased but there is still rumbling within and I pretty much have not left the house in a week besides a short walk and the ride to the doc. This week has been a horror show all the way around between the baby getting the full on bug along with myself and my other daughter so there has been lots of the same for me and the girls. Wify fortunately did not get sick and my son faked for a day so that he could get some attention from Mom but I am happy that it wasn't the whole gang because this bug was freekin serious! I am glad that we are in the tail end of it.

Ok onto what the blog is about, weight loss and healthy living, my weight was down as low as 359 during this mess (the one time I checked in the middle of the week) and as high as 370 (yesterday mid day) so I have no clue where I am weight wise as I did not check this morning. I have not eaten hardly anything all week so I know that my weight is merely a result to being dehydrated, sick, swollen and on pain meds so I will not record a weight on the blog this week. This morning I am trying to get back to the program where my intake is the subject and I started it off like I would any other morning and I am hoping that my stomach will agree to these terms. Exercise will be limited until I am sure that my back can take it, the weather has been decent around here so I may try to go for a walk later in the afternoon just to test out my endurance as far as my back goes but am looking forward to getting back on the trainer as soon as possible.

My daughter is home from school today just to make sure that we don't pass this wonderful bug to any other unsuspecting humans so I will keep this post short and sweet, I will attempt to post up this weekend at some point, perhaps even both days just to get back into the swing of things.

That's all I got... well besides a sore back and a stomach bug, but you know what I mean....

Until next we meet.

As Ever
Me

CycleOps Fluid 2 Video, tire comparisons.

I wanted to get a compare video up between the Michelin Country Rock tire that my wife bought when she picked up the fluid trainer and the Bontrager SR1 that I replaced it with, I had a chance to set the camera up this morning when I rode so I thought I would pop the video up. The Michelin tire was just too loud for my purposes so it had to be replaced and the difference between that and the slick SR1 is incredible and it allows me to ride while my daughter takes her mid morning nap.

Now you know that you are diggin' on my blue light in the first trainer spot, and you can now see just how loud that Michelin was, I am sure that it would make a great road tire for a mountain bike but for trainer duty it will have to be saved as a back up tire. This trainer is working out good for me, when weather or the baby stop me from getting out for a real ride out comes the trainer and I can get a ride into my day, gotta love it. Here is a shot of the K2 in Trainer gear, it does not differ much from road duty when it wears WTB Graffiti SF 2.2 tires, it loses the bag on the top tube and gains a powerade bottle in the cage.

I hope you enjoyed the video, come spring I am sure that I will be posting up some ride videos as I do bring my Kodak ZX3 camera out with me on most rides. Over all I am on the right path and am hoping to hit my goal of being 305Lbs or less by May 25th, this trainer will certainly help me get there bu I can't wait for the weather to get a little better and days longer so that I can hit the rail trails again.

Soon enough it shall be so...

That's all I got for today.

As Ever
Me

Weigh in, and nada else.

The day got away from me and I literally just walked in the door 20 minutes ago but since I don't want to be called a liar on posting the weigh in here it is. This morning the scale said that I was up by .8 pounds, 364.8 pounds, it is what it is and it ain't no thang, next week shall be a loss.

That is all, hope everyone has an awesome weekend!

As Ever
Me

Another week gone another pound ... gained?

Tomorrow I will weigh in for the blog again, I am predicting a gain for the week which is kind of discouraging but it is what it is and since I am still trying to beat this cold or whatever it is I am not all that worried about a small gain. I was 364.0 last Friday and if I break even I will be happy because as of this morning I am up from that number by more than a pound which is a tad puzzling but at the same time, should it be? Losing weight is not a perfect thing, sometimes we lose sometimes we gain and sometimes it remains even no matter how diligent we are with our food intake or exercise. Making the right choices is how I roll these days, and I know that even with a gain I am doing what I need to do for my health, eating clean is somehow rewarding for me, knowing that I am fueling my body with the right stuff forces me to feel good, That concept keeps me going some days when I feel myself about to peek in the fridge for no reason.

I haven't ridden my trainer for a few days and this bothers me but my head is still clogged up and the first 10 minutes is literally torture because of it not to mention that 30 minutes afterwards the stuffy head is double what it was before I started. All of that sounds like an excuse to me! so after I hit publish I am setting up the trainer and going for a ride.

I don't have anything spectacular to write today other than I am feeling a tad bit discouraged because of the up while at the same time I understand these things happen. I have not worked on a bike in a while because a couple of nights ago I was installing fenders on a bikethat I was setting up for wet weather riding and I slipped trying to tighten a bolt... When I slipped a tily little washer that was in my hand somehow ended up slipping under my index finger nail and literally went in so deep that half of the washer was under my nail. The tip of my right index finger has been throbbing for two days, I am more bothered by the fact that the weekend is coming and I really wanted to do some work on the old Motobecane and I am unsure if this thumping finger will allow it.

Over all things are good, I am eating right, feeling awesome and for the most part am happy with how things are going here.

That's all I got.

As Ever
Me

Nothing mind blowing just an am post for those interested.

Keeping my calories within range is increasingly easier as the days tick by, I am back into a groove with the intake and now its time to get the exercise back up to par. Riding on my trainer has been sketchy at best as I have had a cold for about 2 weeks, actually its two colds with a 2 day break in between them and riding the trainer is not fun with a stuffed up head so I have been passing on it lately. We got about 5 inches of snow on Sunday and we did make it out for a walk with the kids which was nice and at least it was movement vs hanging out in the house for the day and I'll take that any day of the week!

My weight is doing something odd, what I mean is that I am up in weight from Friday which I can't understand, I mean I know there is fluctuation but there is no reason for it. I am eating perfectly, exercise is lacking but that has been the case since about Christmas with me riding the trainer only a handful of times and I had been dropping since then. I am not too worried about it as I have been here before while losing weight but that doesn't make it any less frustrating to see a plus on the scale in the morning, it is what it is I suppose. Friday will let me know how I did for the week as I don;t usually dwell on the number that I se eon the scale, I try and focus on the over all results because I do have a long way to go and letting fluctuations bother me would prove a losing battle and ultimately hurt the forward momentum.

On bike related news, The hardware for the Pletscher rack that I am going to put on that Motobecane that I am working on came in the mail yesterday so I will do a test fit later tonight with the rack. I did get down stairs for about 30 minutes worth of polishing on the crankset on that bike but its far from done so I didn't take any pictures of what I did for now.

Over all everything is on track and moving right along and I can't ask for more than that, the weather will be warm soon and back out on that trail I will go...... can't wait.

That's all I got for today kids.

I cross posted this post at Two Wheels and a Fat Guy for anybody interested.

New content on the fat fella, check it out here!

A good weekend was had, there was snow, working on that old bike, riding the trainer and a walk with the kiddos through said snow, all things that at my highest weight of 534 would not have been possible. Living this way now feels natural to me, my stumble with the stress and weight gain was such an off balance feeling and its not something that I noticed as much before I got my shit back together and I believe this may be part of the reason so many people struggle with weight. I enjoy eating the meals that I make that are healthy, they taste good, are not hard to prepare and the bonus of feeling awesome because of them is well... awesome!

A shot over the barely frozen lake now covered in snow.

Last night I had my wife take a picture of me in shorts and no shirt, I did this back when I started this blog as a reference for myself to see where I was and where I have gone, it was very effective in keeping me on track. I would take 2 images per month, one on the first and one some time on the middle of the month and I have a folder with all of these images dated and photoshopped together with the image from Jan 6 2008 so that I can see my progress. I will probably never share these images with anyone but my wife which is likely a better choice so that I don't scare the population or anyone that may stumble upon the images on the net but anyone that is trying to lose weight I would recommend doing this.

The Moto's new aluminum bars all nice and shiny.

Something else I would recommend to people trying to lose weight is finding something to be passionate about that is health related, you know, like bicycles! I think that my obsession... er I mean addiction... um still not right.. hobby, yes that's it Hobby, is a huge factor in keeping me interested in healthy living because its kind of hard to blast down a rail trail when you weigh 400 pounds. Bicycles have become very interesting to me once again, more so than when I was 10 years old riding around on my Huffy Santa fe' or when I was 14 with my Schwinn Super le tour, there is something about them that just speaks to me, I like riding them, I like fixing up the old broken ones and I have too many right now! The spring can't get here soon enough so that I can get my weekend rides back on the menu and I am planning on being back down to my fighting weight by then so I have a lot to look forward to with the spring coming around again.

Over all everything is on track, I am making time for myself even to tha point that I can post pretty regularly on this blog again! I even started a more cycling related blog not too long ago and there are more details on my bike projects there so anyone interested in that sort of thing please check it out at TWO WHEELS AND A FAT GUY, I would love to know that some of you followed me over there. The other blog is health/weight loss related but it is centered more on the cycling side of it because I wanted a place to post up my bike projects so that I would not bore the skin off of anyone that reads this blog for the weight loss side of it so again please check it out!

For today, that's all I got! everything is happening the way that I want it to and not by chance, I decided that beat the path into the ground where my feet will fall.

As Ever
Me