Mission 44

I've been back on track for the past few days. This morning I came home from my walk to discover this wonderful piece of news: After my post about backsliding I got my act together and everything started working. Exercise, diet, accountability, and commitment all fell into place and the data was moving in the right direction again. Today I measured the first "little goal" of Mindblown and crushed it. The goal was 315.6... seeing 313.2 was a very happy moment! A lot of my overall progress came thanks to an game called DietBet. At the beginning of the game I placed a $30 wager on myself to lose 4% of my body weight, and at the end of the game I won $44 for achieving my goal. I tried DietBet last year and failed, so I was skeptical about my ability to win a game this time. I looked at the games and wanted to join the biggest one but decided that the $30 would be too much to spend. My opinion changed when they emailed me a promo code for $5 off. I'm a sucker for a...

Time to own up to something: I've been backsliding, and it's starting to show up everywhere. It started on January 31st, my birthday and the last day of Project 43, and I had just crushed my first goal. That night I was tired after celebrating and I decided to not write a blog post. Maybe I felt entitled to a night off after 31 days of hard work...I don't know. So I created a placeholder post right before bed with the intent to come back the next morning and get back on track. I forgot. That left me trying to write two blog posts after 10 p.m. on February 1st. I finished the Day 31 post and was almost done with the Day 32 post but accidentally deleted it while previewing. Fortunately, I still had all of the data in the preview window so I didn't need to recreate anything. Unfortunately, you can't select and copy text from the preview window because it's an image, which meant I would have retype the whole thing. A lot of work had gone into that summary of...

I won! More to come in the edit.

Place held until I can catch up.

Yesterday was the official end of Project 43 and it was a success! I compiled a few statistics during this first phase of Mission 44, along with notes about each: Starting weight = 344.3 pounds At my December 2018 checkup, my weight was 349.9. I was wearing shoes and jeans on the scale so this really wasn't much of an improvement. Ending Weight = 316.3 pounds The goal was 319.3 pounds.  Weight Lost = 28.0 pounds This is three pounds more than my goal of 25 pounds! Miles Walked = 99 I'd had planned to walk three miles a day for a total of 93 miles during January. While I exceeded the goal, I'm disappointed that I didn't break the 100 mile mark. Days Stretched = 4 out of 31 I like to stretch before bed. Well, I say I like to, but I actually must not because I make every excuse to go to bed without stretching. I want flexibility to be part of my fitness plan but I may need a new approach. Days Journaled = 31 out of 31 Accountability is a cornerstone...

Project 43 is finished! I'm pleased to report that I lost 28 pounds in the 31 days of January and exceeded my 25 pound goal. Today is also my birthday, and it was a wonderful day to celebrate with my family. I had brunch with my daughter and went out to dinner with my wife and daughter. We wrapped up the night with dessert at Menchie's, which had a sugar-free German Chocolate and a low-carb butterscotch tonight. I had a little of both, 4 oz. total. One of the highlights of my day was introducing my little one to Back to the Future , one of my all-time favorite movies. It quickly turned into a double feature when, at the end, she asked if we could watch the rest of the trilogy. Part II wrapped tonight, Part III will come tomorrow. Today's my birthday. I'll blog more tomorrow, including a summary of Project 43, but I will leave you with a comprehensive picture for now: Mission 44 has seen a successful start. See you tomorrow for the beginning of phase two!

After the 42-hour fast ended yesterday I was certain that the results would be short lived. The plateau had been stubborn at 324.0 and to finally break through and get to 319.6 was a huge deal for me. This morning I woke up and nervously approached the scale in the hopes that maybe the number would only move up by a pound or two, leaving me with something to work with in these last two days of Project 43. What?!? Two more down ? It's hard to explain the joy I felt at seeing this morning's number. I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner after the fast and still made progress. One of the goals of Project 43 was to learn more about my body and find the most effective ways to lose weight. This result was not something I was expecting to see. Fasting was something I was going to begin experimenting with in phase two, and I'm going to continue to test it and possibly implement it on a regular basis, but to see what it did to my phase one plateau is intriguing. Aside from the s...