Motivation!

[Dirty n Evil]

I have good news on the "losing weight" resolution. Late at night on the previous Friday, I bought an electronic scale and weighed myself in at 245.5 pounds. This morning, a week and perhaps twelve hours later, I am at 235.3 pounds. I have lost a tad over 10 pounds in one week.



That's... amazing. One third of the way to my goal in just a week's time? AWESOME!!! I think to a large extent this is rather telling as to the effects of soda. (And just how much sugar I was putting into my coffee every day...)

[midgetshrimp]

Nice! And yes, that's soda for you

[JVDifferent]

Woooo DnE,

Had my third swim today. It was pretty good. It's already getting easier to keep the smooth technique I used to have.

[Dirty n Evil]

So, another step towards my resolutions was achieved last night. I got my father to agree to help me learn to play guitar, and I'm going to buy a cheapy junk acoustic guitar today on my way home from work. I guess it never hurts to learn from a guy who used to do session work professionally when he was young, huh? It was strange, because I wasn't sure how he'd feel about my request... I was kind of worried he'd have the "ugh, I don't want to get involved in this mess". Instead, once he asked a question or two, he started to sound enthusiastic about it. Heck, even my older brother started to sound upbeat about the idea of helping me learn guitar.

Now, originally I was on the fence about either learning to play piano (I do type exceptionally fast, and my step-mother plays and actually teaches people how to play) or guitar. But I wanted to give my Dad a chance to see if he was willing to teach me, because I saw it as a good bonding experience between us. And I think it will be. So I'll get to learn a musical instrument, like I resolved to do, and maybe form a better relationship with both my father and older brother. I think that counts as three birds with one stone, right?

[Otaku201]

Four, chicks dig guitar players.

[Asaryu]

I like to put stickers on things. Like...I really enjoy stickers. I always have.

So. Anyway. I've made a little calendar. Every time I go to the gym, I put a little sticker on the day I went. So far there are 5 stickered days this year. 2 last week and 3 this week. I'm aiming for 3, but I won't be satisfied if I've done less than 2 per week.

This month it's sparkly smiley faces. This should be a very happy month.

[midgetshrimp]

Good to see you posting again, O Mistress of Morals. Stickers are like the XBox achievement notices of real life. "Sticker unlocked! Gym Gladiator, 10 points!"

[Asaryu]

It's true. Speaking of which...GYM TIME!

EDIT: I think I should get 2 stickers for tonight. I was that hardcore.

[MerchManDan]

I'm meeting my personal trainer* for the first time on Monday. My co-workers have met him already; apparently he's quite the powerhouse. Good guy, but....a powerhouse. Compared to myself, who is more of a...cooling tower? I dunno, whatever the opposite of powerhouse is.
Nervous.

*seriously can't believe I just typed that

[yiraheerai]

Make sure to listen to your body more than him. I once tried a judo class and had to quit after a week because my arm was KILLING me and he kept pushing me to do stuff. Apparently, it's "fine" as long as it's not a joint problem.

[MerchManDan]

Well, that wasn't so bad at all. The only part that I needed to stress over was the fitness evaluation, which at least didn't provide too many surprises (besides my water level being...too low? I guess that means I'm dehydrated? ). Best of all, he wasn't judgemental about my habits or current physical shape; that's what was really making me crazy. I'm actually looking forward to continuing this, and may take a cue from Asaryu: Get a calendar & a bunch of stickers, and go from there.

[Dirty n Evil]

So, I normally do my workouts on M-W-F mornings, but this morning I was entirely too sore to work out... so I decided to push it off one day and instead work out on Th-Sa for just this week. But to make sure I didn't get complacent, I weighed myself to keep myself motivated... and I've lost 14 pounds in 19 days. Woot! I'm now almost halfway to my target weight loss goal of 30 pounds.

That's not to say I'm going to be happy with just 30 pounds of weight loss. I'm looking at this as a journey, not a destination. 30 pounds was just a mile marker I placed for myself to set a pace. I'm just making better time getting there than I'd personally hoped.

As for the tattoo and learning to play guitar, my biggest hurdles are the usual hurdles... money. I'm going to need about a hundred dollars for the guitar (unless I want to buy a toy that barely founds like a musical instrument) and I'm going to guess probably $250 for the tattoo. I also have a rough idea for an image for the tattoo, but I just need to do a bit more research before I settle on it.

[midgetshrimp]

My friend and I are going to try to start learning German (relearn in my case, I took a few years of it up until college) and once he starts doing that regularly, that'll be good. We've been designing a potential tattoo as well. And today I got my clarinet out and started playing again. I cleaned it last week, but I needed reeds for it. I should start doing some sort of exercise too in my ample spare time.

[Fen]

Dne, since you're from a fairly big city you could look up freecycle and similar sites. People give away their old guitars or sell them for scrap quite often. Especially since you're a beginner the differences won't really be felt.

(maybe I should give mine away... *sigh*.)

[Dirty n Evil]

Week 4, and I'm down by 17.5 pounds. Woot! I did notice that this week my weight loss slowed a bit more than previously, to which I blame a co-worker who cooked me a super rich super sugary cupcake in saying "thanks" for being a good friend. A co-worker that knew about my resolutions. How was I supposed to turn it down? However, I'm also noticing that I'm starting to put on some muscle mass from working out, which might also account for the slowed weight loss this week. I'm going to start working out twice a day, three days a week now in hopes of ramping things up a bit. I'm quite happy with the way I'm slimming down. Not only is the weight loss evident in my face, but my stomach is definitely decreasing in size. Even if my weight loss is slowing down, I'm doing a lot of things healthier. I'm getting to the point where I think I could only eat one meal a day if I wanted to in order to loss weight faster, but that wouldn't be healthy. And I'm not loosing site of that aspect of things.

... plus now, I might have a good reason to try and get into better physical shape. ;)