Week on, week off

Been awhile since I posted (less time than my usual though) and things have been going great. Last time I ran was last Wednesday (walked on thursday and didn't do anything on Friday) and it felt great. That night, we went to the gym (oh, we bought gym memberships Tuesday evening) and had our first of two free sessions with a personal trainer (or was it only one free one? I don't remember). I was paranoid and scared it was going to be super grueling and I was going to hate myself and almost die, but it turned out to be a mix of not even close to that and almost that.

The session was essentially Chris and I getting there a few minutes early, then having to wait for 20 minutes until the trainer was ready for us (scheduled at 7:30, didn't start until almost 8). We talked a bit about what it entailed and how things would work, then we signed a form "in case he kills us", then went onto tho floor to do workouts. Pushups and squats was all we did, and I have to say, three days later, my arms still fucking hurt like a bitch. Then again, I've never worked my muscles to failure before, but it's my goal - find the correct weight to lift, and lift until they fail - then stop. No idea if this is the right way to do it, but it's what I'm going to do without actually hurting myself.

Tomorrow I was going to go to the gym with Chris, but I feel that I should probably go to see aerospace camp people again (tomorrow is setup for the first week of day camp). I might end up being an overnight counselor, maybe not. It would be great for my gas that week, but we'll see.

Diet is going great, I'm almost under 200 pounds. Weighted myself earlier today after a shower and I weighed 201-ish. Almost there, maybe another week of work and I'll be under 200 for the first time is as long as I can remember. The sedentary nature of my work enables me to control my eating during the day, I spread out my eating - instead of lunch all at once, I eat parts at 9, 11, 1, 3, and 5...then dinner around 7 (comprising of as little carbs as possible).

Speaking of work, I love hosting.com. I also hope that my work this week impressed my boss, and that I can continue to do so into the future. The only thing I don't like about it is the hours. Working until 6 means that I have precious little time for me during the week. That being said, it makes me appreciate my weekends and time off even more. And the running in the morning makes me feel like I'm doing something good for myself all day.

And a day off

I'm convincing Chris to only run on weekdays, so we can use the weekend for resting, and I'm glad we did. I was super tired and slept until 1 p.m., subsequently wasting my day. I'm not doing that tomorrow, blah. Food was better today, though, as we went to BJ's and spent damn near $200 on food, including boca burgers, yogurt, and V8. Then we had a cookout.

It's going to be hard to eat tomorrow, as I'm going out to lunch with Sarah's family, and finding something that fits my diet and doesn't break the bank at a restaurant is going to be damn near impossible. We'll see how it all works out.

Still super nervous about work on Monday, here's to hoping that by the end of Monday, I can post something happy and joyful.

Today is better than yesterday

For yesterday I felt very very tired all day. So tired that I thought something was wrong with me. I got around 6 hours of sleep last night and feel better, but still tired, so I'm thinking the tired feeling is a combination of not eating enough, not sleeping enough, not drinking enough water, or detox. I'm hoping it's detox.

Went to the range last night, realized that I can in fact get a large box of ammo for my .45, 500 rounds for $200. Or if there's sales tax, $216. So the next time I head over there after I get paid I very well may buy a membership and a box of rounds so I can get them cheap and not be hurting every time I go shooting.

But back to the diet plan. 5 days of running in and I can say that it's getting easier. Not much easier from day to day, but certainly feeling easier overall. I feel healthier already, despite my fatigue and strong desire to not have to get up at fucking 6:30 every morning. But such is life I suppose. If it's what I must do then it is what I will do.

Next Sunday comes the second picture I'll take of myself, here's to hoping that each week I see a notable change in my physique. Once the fat gets down to an attractive level, I'll step up the weight training because by that point I'll be in better shape endurance-wise and will actually be able to see the results.

Good times

Today was a great day, it's day 3 of the diet and for the first time in a long time, I've gotten myself up early enough to run at the beginning of the day. Yesterday was far worse than today, in terms of my fatigue during my run, though I have a feeling that my body is regaining the energy it had when I ran for the whole summer as I feel great.

I'm having an issue undereating, so I'm trying to snack more during the day, just had a granola bar and coffee, and in half an hour or so I'm going to have cider and fruit, then maybe some rice after a bit more. I hope, after all of this, that I end up with a better outlook on food and can remain healthy for the rest of my life.

Oh, and I got a job. :) As a developer at Hosting.com. I start Monday, and I can't wait.

Weight loss 2k10

So about a week ago, one of my new roommates and I decided that we would work out, run, and diet this summer because we both are fat, lazy, and really out of shape. I should have posted yesterday, because today is technically day 2. The diet started last night after Chipotle, and is going to consist of something like flexitarian - that is, mainly vegetarian but with some very lean meat occasionally, because we love chicken and fish (both lean and healthy).

It's going to take me awhile to get into the desire for more exercise than what we've done so far, which is just a run followed by a healthy breakfast. Two days of running in and I have to say - when you run in the morning it makes the whole day feel awesome. And though I'm a night person, I'll put up with it for the summer because I need to lose weight and get into zombie shape.

Counting calories starts today, a number that I KNOW will be way over 3000 if I ate what I normally would eat. My goal, with how sedentary I am most of the day (computer guys rarely move), is around 2000 or less. I'll be taking pictures of myself to document my change, and for a way to berate myself if I go a month and there's no obvious change.

No fast food, no red meat, and actually measuring and portioning my food is going to be a challenge. But it's going to be really worth it in the end. My girlfriend and one roommate think it's stupid: "why be a vegetarian when you can just eat healthier?" - spoken by my girlfriend who is known to eat TV dinners as lunch at work because it's "easier", and my other roomate who just laughs and eats delicious and crappy food just to be a jerk, and says that he "knows what it is to eat healthy and chooses not to". My hope is that after 3 months of my new diet (if I can keep it up that long), those jests will cease.

We'll see.

Glitch in the Matrix

Something strange happened to me today, something that can be easily seen as a cool coincidence, but I see patterns where there are none. Check this out. Over the past four years, I saw unsweetened tea in Trabant maybe once or twice - and that was near the time they started selling the Gold Peak tea in general. Soon, though, they stopped selling the unsweetened tea and you couldn't find it anywhere. Fastforward to yesterday. I was eating with a friend when I commented verbally that I wished they sold unsweetened tea, but alas - it was not the case.

Now today, I go to buy lunch, and what do I see? Unsweetened tea just sitting happily in it's row in the refridgerator. Spooky. Why spooky? Because it just is. And I find patterns where there probably aren't any, so my mind is thinking "whoa you're psychic", or "holy shit man the government is listening to you!" Both of which don't really make any sense. Nevertheless, I'm happy I managed to find unsweetened tea, and hope it shows up more.

Why unsweetened? In a nutshell, I can drink it like water, and drink it guilt free. No sugar = no calories = awesome.

Also awesome is me picking up an additional 5 hours a week at my job, which equates to around $95 more dollars every paycheck. Can't go wrong there.

Excited for classes to start

Sitting here about to go out to dinner, I find myself excited that classes are about to start. Granted, they officially started last week, but I don't have class on Friday and we had three snow days - so classes haven't really started for me yet. But of my four classes, I have had one meeting of two of them - Automata Theory and Written Communication in Business. The former seems easy, given that I've taken 2-3 classes that require it and gotten a B or better. The latter is, I expect, going to be a lot of pointless work that I'm really going to be able to summarize the entirety of the class in a few pages and a couple templates. But such is many of the classes you take (and it's a discussion/rant for another day) The people in the class seem interesting, and the two that I met (oddly all three Comp Sci students sat together without provocation) will make the class enjoyable given that I'll be able to work with them. I forget their names, but I'm epically terrible with remembering anything.

The other two classes, Software Engineering and Advanced Web Technology (I think that's what the other class is called, it's something like that), are what I've been waiting for - a return to programming. True, I have had the chance to program this whole time, but I like it better when I have a deadline. I don't usually work very actively unless I have a deadline, I'm a lazy SOB like that. The only reason (and this is a bit of a tangent) that I finished as much of my Zombie game that I did was due to the fact that I turned the game into an art project for my ART307 class last semester. In doing so, I made a deadline for myself and finished the site to it's almost-current state (I've added more to it since) in a given time period. That's not to say I'm detrimentally lazy - I get done what I need to get done. And Zombies will eventually get finished, just right now there's so much to do I need to make a to-do list and take it slow, etc. etc. I'll post again about that issue whenever I get the motivation to.

But classes. Well one more thing, that I'm particularly interested in. In the Web Technology class, I have a slight feeling that one piece of the class will be Android Application Development. If this is the case, then hell yes! I have an Android phone, and if the class will be formally teaching us to write Android apps, then I will be able to extrapolate and write apps for submission to the Android Market. What does that mean? Easy money for me when I am jobless in a few months, because let's face it - I ain't getting a job. As an American trying to find a programming job in America, I'm SOL. Though I am trying. Very hard.