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

I really do think that I'm a fairly easy going person (don't ask my wife) and that I can get along with most people. One of the great things about Crossfit is the friendships that I have made with a lot of different people. Even with those friendships and my easy going personality, there are 8 people that go to Crossfit that I just can't stand. Some are guys some are girls. I know I shouldn't feel like that. I'm not going to name any names because they may not know that I dislike them, and some of them I don't even know their names. (Ok maybe I am a shallow person).

As I said, I'm not going to name any names but I think a lot of other people don't like them very much either. Just because I won't name any names doesn't mean that I won't give you a clue. Here it is:

I HATE THE EIGHT OTHER PEOPLE THAT FREAKIN FINISHED AHEAD OF ME BUT WERE TOO TIRED TO FILL THE BACK ROW SLOT!!! Ok, so maybe I only hate 7 of you because one of the first bars would have been a corner slot but seriously, are you all really so tired that you couldn't put your bar away in the back middle slot.  I mean, I realize it does take a little bit of extra effort to have to put it back there but it takes a whole lot more effort when I have to put my bar away around these other ones. 
So here's a couple of slogans for a few of my Crossfit "Friends".
-Crossfit: Your warmup is our workout, but our cool down.....meh.
-Crossfit: Giving it 110%.....but just during the WOD
-Crossfit:  Really cool people except for 7 or 8 chumps, probably the same ones that do Steroids.

(Ok, so that last one was a stretch)

Anyway, thank you for letting me make fun of some select people.  I'm excited to say that I have been making some improvements on several exercises so I'll go back to reporting on that cools stuff next time.

I think that to stay healthy in Crossfit, you definitely need to take advantage of the rest days.  Not even the regular rest days every week, but I occasionally, your body just needs a break.  For some reason, between the normal WODs and some that I've had to modify, I had to do hang cleans last Friday and Saturday and then we did them again on Monday and the back of my neck and shoulders were pretty beat up.  I finally decided to not even look at Tuesdays WOD and just take a day off.
I thought I'd be able to not even think about it but the Facebook community wouldn't let me go without thinking about it.  People started posting how horrible Tuesdays WOD was and how they had wished they had stayed home and how they barely even finished the WOD.  An average person would read these comments and be happy that they had missed out but because I'm crazy, I was actually a little envious that they had all got to go through this terrible torture together and that I wasn't there to partake in this painful experience.  I've apparently become a masochist maybe? I do see people that don't take rest days and I've even been tempted at times to skip the rest days.  I mean, when you feel good, keep it going right?  This along with skipping the warmups/cool downs has made Crossfit the best thing to ever happen to Physical Therapists and Orthopedic Surgeons.
Maybe I just need to stay off of Facebook on my days off too. Crossfit Facebookers are straight up crazy but I could fill up a whole other page going off on that.

So my goal for when I started this blog was to lose the 40 lbs that I had gained since I got injured last year.  The good news is I'm finally down 40 lbs from when I started this blog! The bad news is that I'm still obese so I apparently thought I was more in shape than I really was back then.  But that's a good milestone to hit and I'm happy with it even if it took longer than I had planned.  We are still sticking to Paleo most of the time although we allow ourselves one cheat meal a weak and we probably go overboard.  For instance, on Sunday we had Costco mac and cheese with french bread and butter and pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.  We did throw in some cut up fruit just to pretend like it was semi healthy but that meal was about as unpaleo as you could get.  It was the Bizzaro Paleo meal.  Although that fits because sometimes I'm pretty sure that I'm the Bizarro version of me and somewhere out there is the regular version of me that's fit and can do box jumps and is nice to people (My exact opposite).

I did have a setback last Monday.  As I've discussed, the muscles in my legs are always "flexed" at all times.  In the regular human, when one side of a muscle is flexed, the other side is relaxed.  In my legs, both sides of the muscle are flexed at all times. It's why I suck at doing box jumps and double unders (That and I'm apparently still obese.) A couple of times a year the pressure on my back will just "give up" and I'll feel a pop and it's bad news.  I know that when it happens, I have about a half hour before it's swells up so badly that it's pinching the nerves up and down my spine so that I basically can't move for a few days and even after that, I'm walking with a cane for another week.  I mean, I am always complaining on here about a sore back but during these episodes, I literally can't roll over. Well this time, it happened while I was in Crossfit.  I have seen several people injure themselves there because they don't warm up properly or they don't do an movement like they were taught.  I don't think I warmed up as I should have but I don't actually know if it was Crossfit that caused my back to pop. (The last time it happened, I was just bending over to make our bed.) So I can't really say if it would have happened or not because this happens to me a couple of times a year.  What I can say is that I hurt it on Monday and I was able to stand again by Tuesday with the help of a cane. By Thursday I was able to walk without the cane and by Friday I was back at Crossfit. So I was pretty happy about that.  Unfortunately, I'm in for a lifetime of pain but I can definitely say that I healed a lot faster from this episode, than I have done in the past and I truly believe it is because of workouts that we do that is helping to strengthen my core.  I imagine eating better has helped keep the inflammation down too.  A couple of sports rehab guys tell me that there business is better than ever because of injured Crossfitters.  I believe that to be true but I think a major reason for that is as I stated, they don't warm up properly. They show up late and go straight into the workout. Or they sacrifice good form for heavier weight. 

So although I had the setback, I am very sure that I healed faster and am still better off because of the eating plan and workouts that have been set up at Crossfit The Club. (Although, I think I'm better off, I still reserve the right to complain and hate being there every morning.)

10-8-12 Down 40 lbs but still obese.

The beginning April 11

Hello?  Is this blog still even a working blog?  I haven't given up on my quest to be healthy, it just hasn't quite gone as well as I had hoped.  When I first made the decision to try to get back in to shape, I figured I would be down 60lbs in after 6 months.  Well, it's been almost 6 months and I'm down 30lbs. Obviously there was a couple of setbacks, like almost losing a leg and such, but the journey has been too boring for me to record every day. 

People keep asking me if I feel a lot better because I'm down 30 lbs but sadly, I don't.  My whole goal was to not be in a wheelchair anytime soon. Unfortunately, we've kind of gotten to the realization that the pain is here to stay and now it's constant, even when I'm sitting down. So now my goal is to try to do whatever I can to at least lessen the pain and postpone being in a wheelchair. So that's what I'm striving to do now. 
(These are my beginning and halfway point pictures. Apparently I'm so much more healthy now that even the whole room looks brighter)

April 11

Sep 24

Sep 24

I am still trying to show up to Crossfit at least 3 times a week and try to do the WODs even if I have to modify parts of the workout.  The problem is, it seems like I am starting to modify more and more of the WOD. About the only thing I can do correctly is bench press but that's not in very many WODs. I did find a really cool/painful sports massage that helped to stretch the fibers that surround the muscles so that the muscles in my legs and back could lengthen out to where they should be.  That worked great and I was actually able to stand up straight afterwards. That was great but by morning everything had constricted back into the tight knots that I'm used to.  Yeah, it worked great but they want almost $200 bucks a month to keep doing it.  (I'm trying to see if I can get a job as a school-bus monitor and get video'd being bullied.  That lady made almost $900K from people sending her donations after that happened to her.  If I can get video'd and rake in money like that, I'll definitely go back and do more massage sessions). Until then, I'll keep with my stretching routines and see what else I can do. 

I don't want this whole thing to sound like I'm complaining or making excuses, I'm not.  I still have goals to meet and I will.  We are still eating Paleo most of the week although we allow ourselves one cheat meal a week because I'd go crazy if I didn't.  We did find a cool trick to making your own paleo mayonnaise.  One of the biggest problems with the paleo diet that I had seen was making mayo was a pain because you had to mix everything in the blender while pouring in the oil a little at a time.  If you did it wrong, it all clumped up it was too runny.  Well, we learned a little trick that if you put all of the ingredients, with the oil on the top,  and then use a hand/wand mixer it works perfectly.  You basically, put the wand at the bottom of the cup and turn it on and pull it to the top. Repeat once or twice more and it's the same consistency of store bought mayo.  It's awesome.  It seriously takes less than a minute. It's basically made our lives a lot easier because now we can make sandwiches, or broccoli slaw, etc and not be a big pain in the backside. I even made a video of it but then I decided that it was probably the most boring video ever made so I decided not to post it. 

So anyway, my new goal is to still lose another 30 lbs before Christmas if I stay out of the hospital for any unforeseen crazy leg infections, etc.  My other goal is to try to report on here more than once a month.  Trust me, you don't want me to post everyday because it would be so boring that you would feel that you were getting bullied.