Mission 44

Yesterday I won Mindblown, phase two of Mission 44. Below are the phase one (Project 43) and phase two charts side by side: I meant to create a post about this yesterday but ran out of time before we left the house. It was the first day of Spring Break for my wife and our little one and they decided that they wanted to spend the day at Animal Kingdom, so off we went. It was a nice day and the park was not overly crowded, and we got to ride on the Kilimanjaro Safari, Primeval Whirl, and both of the rides in Pandora. The Safari was special because it was the third day that the new baby giraffe was in the open and my wife got a great picture of him with his family. The most rewarding part of the day, even more than the satisfaction of achieving the goal (which I had already accomplished the day before), was riding Avatar Flight of Passage. We have tried for Fast Passes for this ride ever since it opened and never have any luck. Yesterday we decided we would brave the line and ride...

Maybe I shouldn't say bad news. It's more like anticlimactic news. If you've been watching the national weather reports, you've probably seen this: Photo credit: GOES-East/NOAA The "eye" of this bomb cyclone is over Denver in this image. That is where my doctor is located right now . I didn't know this when creating the last post , where I wrote about going to my yearly physical tomorrow and blowing his mind with my progress. I'm concerned for his safety over anything. I would never want my doctor (or anyone else) to attempt to travel during a weather event like this. I've lived the last 25 years in an area that gets rolled by hurricanes on a regular basis and it's best to stay put during severe weather. I'm happy to report that his office called and told me he is doing just that. My appointment has been rescheduled to April 8th and I'll will report on the results as soon as it's done. In the meantime, I want to share thi...

As I write this, I am in the 43rd hour of a 48-hour fast. I have attempted this feat a few other times during Mission 44 but I have never made it to the end of the journey. I am determined to get there this time. Fasting is not something that I use as a quick-fix to lose a bunch of weight. It's an important tool that's meant to help rid my cells of the glucose or glycogen or whatever garbage is saturating them and causing symptoms of type 2 diabetes. Dr. Jason Fung presents intermittent fasting in The Diabetes Code , the book I'm using to guide my weight-loss during Mission 44. While I was completing Project 43 I would fast from about 7 pm to 11 am the next day, every day, and I've maintained a similar schedule during Mindblown. I didn't think that I would ever want to try one of the 48-hour fasts Dr. Fung recommends. I didn't really think I would need to, either, and I saw it as more of a nuclear option than anything else. At the end of Project 43 I sudden...

It's getting late and I don't have a lot of time, so it will be a quick post to share that my second DietBet game was finalized today and I won $17.16. My wife and I were at brunch when we found out. I don't usually take food pictures but she documents everything for posterity on Facebook. This was my reward for winning the second DietBet game so the notification was perfectly timed. Really I won $7.16. The initial investment was a ten-dollar bet that I got back as part of the prize. That $7.16 profit was a million bucks in my eyes, though. Losing 4% of my body weight in a month isn't an easy task and this success is incredibly valuable. There were a lot of times during February that I wasn't sure I would make the goal, mainly because of plateaus. The key to getting through was accountability. I want to get into this topic in some depth, so I am going to write longer posts tomorrow and the next day. Until then, I used my winnings to join the newest game hos...

Sorry, friends. I didn't think I would ever go three weeks between posts. What am I saying? I went almost five years between posts before resuming this blog in January! This was a big month, and it required all of my extra time. Here's what happened: My daughter finished building a very ambitious science fair project. If you're a parent with a kid who loves to enter the science fair, then you already know how much of your time their project takes up. The result was awesome, though: second place in all of Orange County for middle school engineering. The only project that beat hers was named the Best-in-Fair. The same overachieving child from above decided she wanted to set a new personal record for selling Girl Scout cookies. Again: her project, my time. (Please note: I loved all of the time I spent with her on both of these things, I just didn't realize how much of it they would take. Going forward, my February calendar will always be clear to allow for these two...

Yesterday was the last official day of my second DietBet game of this year. Today was the beginning of the "weigh-out," which is the two day period following the end of any DietBet game. If you wake up at the end of the game and find that you're not quite at goal when you were expecting to be, you still have a second/final day to fast or walk six miles or whatever. Here's where I was this morning: I was a little nervous about making the goal this time. First, I started the game late by almost a full week. This Kickstarter game was four weeks long, which meant I had only three weeks to lose 4% of my body weight. DietBet even warned me that it would be harder when I was registering, but I went for it anyway. I knew I was going to use my winnings from the first DietBet to pay the bet and as soon as I saw them hit my account I joined the game. Second, I wasn't as active in the community as I was in the first bet. Accountability is important, and I've noticed...