Staying on Track

How many people do you know who, at some point in their lives, said they were going to lose weight? Ten? Twenty? Fifty? Out of them, how many succeeded in losing their goal amount? 5% 10%? Out of them how many managed to keep that weight off for a year or more?

My point here is that most people have a hard time losing weight at all, an even harder time losing as much as they want, and yet even more difficulty in staying at that lower weight.

Despite the difficulty, I intend to be one of them.

Like most successful projects, it's about having a decent plan followed by solid execution (and perhaps a few adjustments along the way). For me, accountability is also a big factor. I need to have someone who I tell about my successes and failures. Having to tell someone that I knew what I needed to do but didn't do it goes a long way.

This blog has helped at that. My friends on Traineo.com have been a huge help too. Now, I've come up with a way to track everything I'm doing and be able to report on it.

As I've written before, my major goal for next year is to get my 40K (24.8 mile) time trial time under an hour (59:59 is just fine). I also want to get my weight down about 15 pounds over the next 6 months (which is well under a pound a week).

In order to meet these goals, I came up with a list of daily and weekly tasks that I need to do. I broke those tasks into weight-loss related and fitness-related. Let's face it: it's totally possible that I could increase my threshold power by 10% but not lose a pound. Or I could lose all the weight but gain no power at all.

I then weighted them so that ones that are more important get a little more emphasis. While I want to spend at least 1 of my trainer days each week on the time trial bike, it's more important that I at least got on the trainer to begin with. I also added bonus and penalty items that might help (or hurt) on a given target. Taken together, they will give me a score for the week.

I'm not off to a great start this week, partially since I did not plan to start this seriously for another couple weeks. Still, my weight loss has been on target. I'm down to 185.0 now (from 187.0 two weeks ago).

This is the chart that I came up with and the first week's results (click on it to enlarge it enough to read):

It's not perfect, but I'm sure I'll improve it with time!

Stowe Away

We spent the last week in Stowe, VT. I've linked a lot of the places we went in case anyone else ever goes and wants to recommendations.

Monday was an 11 hour train ride from Philly to Waterbury, VT. It was a beautiful ride with the trees mostly starting to change colors. It went by pretty quickly, with both of us reading and taking photos out the window for most of the trip.

The train was about an hour late, so we didn't get to the hotel until 9:30 at night. By that time, most of Stowe ha shut down for the night. Luckily we managed to make last call at the hotel restaurant and get some appetizers.

We stayed at the Green Mountain Inn, which was absolutely great. The room was huge, with a king size bed, a hot tub, and a gas fireplace. The inn was right in the middle of historic Stowe, which is a cute little town which does not allow major chains. As a result, all the restaurants, chocolates, drug stores, and hotels are locally owned an operated. It was great to have so many options of so many great things.


Stowe Mercantile is their amazing everything store. It's got clothing, candy, syrup, books, and a little cafe. We got some of their butter cream fudge that was completely addictive (we ate over a pound of it in four days).

We toured the factory where they make Ben & Jerry's ice cream and ate lots of Cabot cheese at the Cabot Annex store.

The leaves were changing colors, with some leaves having red, yellow, and green all together. Their leaves turn a bright fiery orange or yellow, which made for some great photos.

We got to see a couple of great glass blowing studio, Little River Hotglass Studio. While we'd seen glass blowers at the Renaissance Faire before, this was dramatically better. The work was just gorgeous (and of course, we had to get a couple).

We saw lots of local artists with paintings and etchings that were way out of our price range, but at least we got a calendar with some of the art on it. We also bought some of the most beautiful sounding wind chimes that I've ever heard.

I'd be remiss if I did not mention Jack at Blazer Transportation. He got us around for the whole week and we would not have seen half the stuff that we did if he had not told us about it. Perhaps the highlight was the artist who made wood wild life sculptures... with a chainsaw.

Now we're back home, sifting through the 850 pictures from the wedding (we have to pick 36 for our album an 20 each for our parents...) and 450 pictures from the honeymoon.

On a fitness note...

I did not ride or lift at all for the last 10 days. I have completely spent that time focused on the wedding and reception and honeymoon. We slept about 9 to 10 hours a night and only went on relatively short walks (no more than an hour at a time). I'm pretty well rested now. I'm also well fed.

I've managed to gain 3 pounds in 10 days. I fully admit that I ate everything in sight, from the semi-bachelor party to the rehearsal dinner to the wedding reception to our private wedding dinner to lunch with our parents to all the places we ate in Vermont. I'm not surprised :-) My weight this morning was 187 pounds and 22.7% body fat. That's OK. It was totally worth it to have some great food and to hit the new 2012 training season (which starts tomorrow) well rested!

Shelli

Shelli is so lovable and adorable for so many reasons...

• She dances with me in the living room for no reason with no music.
• When she sees something she wants, she cries out "Mine Mine!"
• She bought me a set of Justice League drinking glasses. She gets upset when she doen't get to drink from the Batman one.
• She came to all 14 bike races that I was in this year and took pictures at every one. The pictures were great and I think my teammates are happier to see her than they are me.
• She just might be more into watching the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France than I am.
• She gets excited when I get new comics (mostly Batman and Justice League).
• She gets REALLY excited when she gets to read them before I do.
• She has the cutest frown I've ever seen. She actually looks like a frownie :-(
• She always smiles at me when I get home from work or a long ride.
• She encourages me to buy new cycling gear, especially when it looks cool.
• She plays peek-a-boo with me around the corner of the living room or around the kitchen wall.
• She emails me every day at work to say "hi".
• She sends me emails full of smileys (which we have come to call "smiley storms")
• When she's having a bad day, she sends Frowney storms.
• She loves going to the firing range with me.
• Her favorites are the .45 1911, the .357 revolver, and the 9mm rifle they used on Battlestar Galactica.
• She claps when she's happy or excited.
• She gets excited over little things.
• She does a little dance when she's happy.
• She loves to go for walks along the river or in the park with me.
• She insists that the little noises our cat makes are an attempt to say "mama."
• She frowns whenever I get up to leave the room without kissing her.
• She has lunch waiting for me when I get home from a long training ride.
• When she contradicts me, I trust her enough that I assume that I'm the one who's wrong.
• She makes dinner almost every night and it's always healthy and wonderful.
• I'm sure there are dozens of things that I have not listed since it seems there are more every day

... and most of all, tomorrow she is marrying me!!