The fact that I have to start the shower 10 minutes before I get in, just so that the mirror's are steamed so I don't have to see myself, should be an indicator that I haven't been following my good eating habits very well.
So I guess it's time to hit it again hard.  It's always inconvenient to do the healthy eating thing during the summer because there are so many summer bbq's and get togethers that I don't get to enjoy fully.  But really, when is there a convenient time to try to eat healthy? We have once again gotten rid of all of the bad foods.  Here we go........

I promise I'm still alive

Now that everyone has forgotten about this blog, I can just use it to put personal notes in here and grocery lists and stuff cause it doesn't matter anymore....I hadn't intentionally quit updating this thing. I just had taken a couple of weeks off for the holidays and then I'd think about it and just not do it.  I would occasionally think of something that I should put in here but then I then I'd have to catch up what else had been going on and as the length of time got longer and longer, the harder it was to put something in here. Kind of like when you let the housework get behind and then you don't want to start.
So I'm going to briefly kind of catch up what's been going on and then I can start putting updates as they occur instead of semi-annually.  So here it is:
I lost a ton of weight and got really strong.  So there  you go.  I'm caught up! Ok, so maybe that didn't happen. I might have had a few hiccups. One of which was called "the holidays".  I basically didn't think about eating good during that entire time.  And even though I was still going to the gym, I was getting out of shape.  My back also went out a couple of times and at first  I just figured that it was bad luck and arthritis, but I do believe that a lot of it has to do with the foods I'm eating and whether or not I control the inflammation in my back. So I'm back on the good eating plan.
Another reason why I had quit writing was because I hadn't hit the goals I had wanted to and decided I'd failed.  But, then I have to realize that I have still maintained my goal of putting off being in a wheelchair as long as possible.  Also, I have to keep reminding myself that getting in shape is a long race and not a sprint.  Most people who lose gobs of weight quickly gain it all back anyway so maybe I'm just smart for taking so long to lose the weight that I want to.
So nothing that exciting in the past several months anyway.  As I mentioned, my back went out in December and again in February and I was relegated to a cane for a few days both times. Also, because I always sleep with my hands curled up in a ball, my hands had started going numb and I ended up having to get carpal tunnel.  I know it sounds like I'm hypochondriac but I really don't get sick that much.  I guess instead, when something does happen, I like to go big. So anyway.  I'm going to try to start writing a little more often than every 6 months because I know when I'm at least recording how my weeks going, I try to do better with eating and exercising.  So I'm back kind of but at least now, when I think of something to write, I can actually record it hear without having to go back and explain the past 6 months.

This is just a quick post because the Mayans said the world is supposed to end today and so I don't want to put much into it if no one is going to read it. (Who am I kidding, no one reads it anymore anyway.) I went to the do the workout today just in case the world doesn't end. The main part  was 4 minutes of burpee box jumps, then 2 minutes of the bear complex (Clean,Front squat, thruster, back squat, thruster) as many of those as you could in the two minutes. Then we had to do 2 more minutes of burpees. Although this was a short workout, I now can't reach above my head or squat down on the ground at the moment. That's going to be kind of inconvenient because rumor has it that Santa might be bringing us a TV he's going to need to be able to reach above his head to mount on the wall.
Anyway, I am going to be very ticked if the world ends and the evening classes got to get out of all of those burpees.  Even if we all die in some horrible painful death, when we all get to heaven, I'm going to be holding a grudge for my evening class friends and the grudge will be so bad that I'll probably end up going to hell, assuming I wasn't sent there in the first place. So I'm kind of hoping that the world doesn't end today.
The other reason that I don't want it to end right now is because the last song that I just heard was that Diamonds song by Rhianna and it's stuck in my head and I'd rather not have it stuck in my head for eternity......Shines bright like a diamond....Shines bright like a diamond....Shines bright............

So I'm continuing to get stronger and able to do more things but there's one thing that I still loathe and probably always will.  That's running.  I still hate it. I'm used to coming in last still but on days where there's running involved, I'm usually finishing around when the next class is finishing. I have decided though, that it takes me that long because I'm more efficient. Kind of like one of my heroes, "Cliff Young".
If you've never heard of Cliff Young, I'll give you some background. First off, I think running a marathon sounds like an absolutely horrible idea.  An "Ultra" marathon is anything from a double marathon to just running for weeks.  Well in Australia, they used to have one that was 875 K. (I one time in my life ran a 10 k and thought I was going to die.) 875 K is basically 543 FREAKIN MILES!  So when I say an "Ultra" marathon, this was an ULTRA marathon, that took the runners a week to run.  These were the top endurance athletes in the world that would try these and most of them couldn't finish.  So anyway, in 1983 they had the inaugural Westfield Australian 875 K Ultra-marathon. It would basically be like running from Salt Lake city to Denver Colorado. The competitors run for 18 hours a day and only rest for about 6 hours.  There was a $10,000 prize so the best Ultra Marathoners in the world showed up for this race. Amongst them was a 61 year old potato farmer, who was in rain boots and coveralls, named Cliff Young.  The other runners realized that he was actually part of the race and obviously didn't think anything about it.
Most people thought he was crazy and tried to talk him out of it because they said he would die. He said that it wasn't a big deal because when he was a kid he used to herd sheep and run around the mountain for two or three days at a time with little sleep. So obviously, at the first of the race, all of the younger runners left him in there dust and he started with a slow steady shuffle.  Because of this, he was not even close by the time they all stopped 18 hours later for their 6 hours of sleep.  The only thing was, he didn't know about that the standard protocol was to sleep for 6 hours so he slept for about 2 hours and then just kept going.  When he said that he used to chase sheep around for 2 or 3 days, HE LITERALLY CHASED THEM AROUND FOR 2 OR 3 DAYS STRAIGHT!
So you have probably figured out where this is headed. This really is a tortoise and hare scenario.  These elite young athletes in the state of the art running gear were so far ahead by that first night but little by little, he got closer as they were sleeping until he finally passed up the others and kept going. He shuffled along for five days, fifteen hours, and four minutes.  By the last day he had basically become a celebrity. Not only did he pass up the rest of the field and win the race but he broke the record pace by ALMOST 2 DAYS! Here's a clip about the dude.

The cool thing is that 5 other runners finally finished the race and he decided to split the winnings and gave $2000 to each of the other finishers and didn't keep anything for himself.
Later when he was 76 years old, he tried to run raise money for orphans by running the entire circumference of Australia but had to drop out after he ran 6,520 K of the 16,000-K run because his only crew member (who was following along in a car) became sick so they had to quit.
Anyway, back to one of the many reasons that he's my hero, sports scientist have studied the "Young Shuffle" and found out that it's one of the most efficient ways to run an endurance race.  Several of the winners of that race in follow up years, won the same race by using the "Young Shuffle".
So I've decided that I'm really the most efficient runner in our class with my shuffling around the track.  The only problem is that the WODs are too short.  If they were to go for 5 days straight, I'd be the best one in class for sure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Young_%28athlete%29

Quick update. So I had finally started to resolve myself to the fact that I was becoming a regular Bro and getting used to the weight room workouts.  Then last week, I got a message from Lindsay that said that my Crossfit membership was actually paid until the end of the year.  So I'm not exactly what is happening there cause I'm pretty sure I haven't been paying extra. I've got it narrowed down to a few choices:
1-The lady in the cardio room got fed up with me taking her stationary bike so she paid my membership?
2- Some people in Crossfit were not liking the fact that they were coming in last place on the daily workouts so they paid Lindsay to have me in there so that I could take my place again on the bottom of the board.
3- Some of my Bros were afraid that their girlfriends were starting to fall in love with me.

I'm not sure what but I'm glad that I have another month to try to continue to hit my goals. It's too bad that I probably gained 10 lbs yesterday at Thanksgiving. So, I now have kind of a count down till January to continue to try to get healthy. Too bad it's also during the holidays but maybe that will motivate me to stay strong on the eating plan.

There are a couple of things that I learned in the Bro weight room. First is, the pull up bars are not made for kipping. Although I was never very good at that anyway, I keep feeling the bars rocking back and forth so I just did regular types of pull-ups.  The other thing I learned while doing pull ups in front of the mirror is that my belly was falling out of my shirt and probably grossing everyone out with my stretch marks and everything.  So I apologize for not having known that.  I know it grossed me out.  So now that I'm back in class, I make sure to try to tuck in my shirt if we are doing anything on the bars. I also notice that even though I was only away for a couple of weeks, I am paying for it because I'm sore all over again.  But, it is good to be back even though I question why I'm back the whole time I'm dying through the WOD.  (Today's was 60 freaking minutes!!!!).  But it really is good to be back. My callouses are coming back nicely and it was good to be able to write my name as the last place guy again. I hope my Bros can survive without me till January.  I'm going to try to do all I can to get a decent "after" picture for the before/after page.  5 weeks........

Ok, so it's been about a week since I have started to hang out with the Bros in the regular weight room. Some things are the same as the Crossfit area. They do supersets of exercises in the Bro room too but just a little differently.  For instance, in Crossfit you might do something like sets of thrusters while interspersing it with running a lap or rowing and then the next exercise and then run again.  In the weight room, you do something like a set of bench press (I've noticed that and curls are the favorite exercises) and then you intersperse it with flexing in front of the mirror. Then you do your next set and then flex some more.  Another good superset in the Bro room is to bench press and then check text my Bromies and then do some curls and then check your FB.  So really it's not all that much different.
I'm still in that in between awkward stage where I'm no longer a Crossfitter but I'm not quite a Bro yet. I'm in the Faux Braux part of my transition.  But, I'm going to go buy some white sunglasses that I can wear on the back of my head and maybe a Tapout tshirt so that will help a little.  I still don't have the proper all of the proper Brotocol down yet.  Like, I notice that a lot of the Brofessionals, take pictures of themselves in the restroom mirror so that they can text it to their girlfriends*. (*other Bros).  I'm still under the old school idea that it's kind of creepy to have a camera in a bathroom.
There are a couple of downsides into my transition into a Brochacho. Just like any type of exercise, there are some bumps in the road with my new found I thought it would be great to get back into Saved By the Bell but instead they are now playing Home Improvement?!!!  So don't tell me that I don't know about suffering and pain. I live it every morning having to watch Tim the Toolman Taylor. 
I must be insecure because I've adjusted my schedule by 10 minutes so that I get there after Cfit has started.  I realize I shouldn't feel this way but in a way and I need to swallow my pride, but I feel like I've let down my friends by not finishing what I had set out to do.  So for now, I kind of set my time so I don't have to keep explaining to them why I'm no longer in class. I'm guessing that nobody really cares but it's still a little uncomfortable being caught in the weight room instead of with my old homies.
One thing that I do find is interesting is that several people in the weight room, that I don't even know, come up and ask why I'm not doing Crossfit anymore.  These are seriously people that I don't know that I've never really seen before.  So apparently, the regular crowd is aware of the Crossfit crowd even if I wasn't aware of them. I kind of get the impression that they want me to tell them give them some type of horror story about how it's bad or causes injury or something.  They are almost disappointed when it's done a lot of good for me and that I'm making it a goal to afford it again. Then they go back to checking themselves in the mirror again. They don't really talk a whole lot to me yet but give me another week and a gallon of Axe body spray and I'll start to fit right in.  My goal is that soon, they'll be calling me Brobi Wan Kenobi. 
(On a more serious note, I am starting to stiffen back up I'm starting to get more inflammation in my back.  I don't think it's because I've changed exercise routine as much as it's the weather affecting my arthritis or because I've added more foods back into my diet. But I will have to monitor that because I really don't want to be headed back down that road again.)

Progress

Welcome back to the worst blog in the world! Remember when it was my goal to update this regularly so that I could keep tabs on my progress?  Those sure were some great intentions that I had. 

I wanted to make this blog to show that it would not be easy but that getting into shape could be accomplished.  I figured I would have a couple setbacks (I could have done without the almost losing a leg part. I have come to another bump in the road. My beautiful 8 year old, non-verbal, autistic son has hit a couple of milestones of his own. We are spending more on his learning tools and health care. (Also, most people also don’t have 8 year olds in diapers). Well, he has gotten bigger than the toddler diapers and so we are moving into specialty diapers and that will cost us twice as much. We have looked at our budget and the easiest way to cover that is to put Crossfit on hold for a while.  I just look at it as another slight set back but I hope with the skills and habits that I’ve learned; I’ll be able to keep up on the progress that I’ve made.

Although I’m not where I thought I would be after this much time, I have definitely made progress.  When I started this in the spring it was very difficult for me to walk from the parking lot to the back of the gym because of the pain.  Over the months I have been able to transfer the pain of walking in, to the pain of working out.  I still have a long way to go but I have hit some important milestones. Here is some of the progress that I have made:

April                                                                November
Weight/ 278                                                    Weight / 235 (Need another 20 at least)
Waist 42                                                          Waist 38 (Yeah, I'm still big)
No walking or jogging during WODs             Still hate running but I can jog for the warm ups
26 lb Kettle bells                                             53 lbs Kettle Bells
Hang clean 75 lbs                                            Hang Clean 135 lbs
Push Press 95 lbs                                             Push Press 155 lbs
Bench Press     275 lbs                                     Bench Press 295 lbs
135 lb raised dead lifts                                   225 lb raised dead lifts
-What’s a raised dead lift you ask? Something Lindsay made up for me. I still can’t lift if from the ground so I have to put it on 8 inch boxes to start. I am pretty sure that you are supposed to be able to dead lift a lot more than bench press but I guess I will always be weak in some areas.

Burpees down to a 20 inch box                      Burpees down to an 8 inch box
-Still some room for improvement on the burpees although I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do them all the way to the ground.

Jumping Pull Ups one at a time                      I can now do 10 pull ups in a row
Toes to bar (No way)                                      Toes to bar (pretty ugly but I can do them)
40 lb sand bag carries                                      80 lb sand bag carries.
So although I don’t think I would be winning any contest very soon, I have seen some great improvement.  My weight loss has slowed a lot but it’s still going down. My road to being semi fit, has taken a lot longer than I had hoped.  Those infomercials about 30 day abs or P90X are a bunch of crap.  Those results were from people who were already in shape or something because I don’t think you can be completely transformed in 3 months.  It took me a long time to get that out of shape, it will take a lot longer to get back into shape.
I think the biggest change between then/now; when I started Crossfit, I knew two people in the class. My friend Darce is the one that talked me into trying it and my friend Maurizio is the one that I made take the class with me. Since that time, I have met so many great, awesome people that have been a great support to me and who have become great friends. (They probably don't think the same about me, but I still feel very lucky to have met them.)
I don’t know what I am going to do with this blog yet.  It’s already pretty awful but I will probably keep it and just track my efforts to continue to eat good and get regular exercise. Maybe I can just use it to complain about people cause I’m a crotchety old man?  It’s not all bad news though. I’ll finally be able to catch back up on the Saved By the Bell reruns that are on every morning.  You never know what kind of crazy hijinks those zany kids are going get themselves into.  

278 lbs

235 lbs