Mission (#1) Accomplished

At the risk of sounding like our wonderful President, I hereby declare that Mission #1 has been Accomplished. I set out last August to lose 55 pounds, and much to my surprise, I've actually done it. I started out a fabulously rotund 255...



...and dropped to a much slimmer 200 as of Tuesday, July 15, 2008:



That picture was taken last night after a brutal 20-mile bike ride from home to Mesa Community College and back (I'm taking night classes in an attempt to finish my degree). I biked the 10 miles one-way only to discover that the instructor was absent due to car trouble, and the exam I was supposed to take was now a take-home test. That's all well and good, but I was expecting to get a nice 90-minute break (not to mention 90 minutes to allow the Arizona sun to set) between the two legs of my bike trip. Oh, well - I made it home in one piece. But I digress....

I lost about 20 pounds last year, just by cutting out soda, trying to limit my portions a bit, and going to the gym twice a week or so, but by November I had fallen completely off the bandwagon. I remained somewhere between 235 and 240 lbs until a friend/co-worker turned me on to The Daily Plate (thanks Ryan!). I started tracking my food intake and exercise on April 8th, aiming to lose two pounds per week, and lo and behold, the remaining 36 pounds I had to lose are officially gone 14 weeks later (2.57 pounds per week).

It turns out all I needed was a little accountability; having to enter everything I ate into a diary really changed my behavior. Yes, I still eat plenty of ice cream and donuts, but on the days I do I'll eat smaller meals or work out longer. I have also discovered the wonders of the banana and the apple, both very filling but lacking in calories. Of course, changing my eating habits was only half of the equation; I also spend a lot of time and energy at the gym, lifting weights, riding a bike, swimming, and playing basketball. It has been an incredibly positive change for me - I feel better, look better, and have had to buy an entirely new wardrobe. :)

Acknowledgments
I could never have done this without: my lovely wife (for encouraging me), my friend Ryan (for turning me on to The Daily Plate; he's down 45 pounds himself), the author of this article, Krispy Kreme and Dairy Queen (for keeping me sane), LA Fitness, Mike at Mike's Bike Chalet, the folks at Kashi (for their excellent granola bars, my breakfast every day for the last couple months), my dad (for inspiration), Jacob Moffat (likewise), and my fellow Elders (for Tuesday night basketball at the church). I'm sure I'm forgetting plenty of people, places, and things - my apologies.

Onward and, well, downward
So where to go from here? Much to my surprise and dismay, I'm still rocking a nice gut, albeit a substantially smaller one than I am used to. I have set a second goal of 185 pounds, which will put my Body Mass Index in the normal range (I'm still in the overweight group). I've adjusted my weight loss goal on TDP to 1.5 pounds per week (allowing me around 1900 calories a day - 1600 was getting pretty old there for a while), so hopefully I'll hit 185 sometime in September/October. Wish me luck!

No, I suppose I'm not a girly girl.

My lovely wife talked me into determining which Disney princess I am and posting the results on my blog.



Strong and spirited. You're no one's girly girl; actually you are very determined person with a strong sense of self. Never let go of that! The only thing that equals your sense of self is your family, but the traditions of society can always be bent to protect something or someone you love.

That description is actually fairly accurate, especially the part about my not being anyone's girly girl. :)

Now, you go take it, and embarrass yourself on your own blog.

Just me and Dev

Ah, nothing like a lovely 110+ degree Saturday afternoon to get some work done in the garage. In fixing up my trusty M3 for the resumption of daily driving, I had to install new oxygen sensors, do a front brake job, perform an oil change, and install a new performance exhaust system. Well, I suppose I didn't have to do that last bit. :)

It took quite a while and it was miserably hot, but I sure had fun hanging out in the garage with my fellow grease monkey, my son Devlin. He is getting to be old enough to actually help, which is really fun for both of us. He fetched me tools, learned how to use the impact wrench and air compressor, put the new oil filter on, held the funnel while I poured oil, and he even used his enormous muscles to raise the car a little bit with the floor jack ... before giving up and having me do the rest.

So here's a shout out to my favorite little (grease) monkey - love you Dev!

Geeks revolutionized baseball ... now politics?

If you're a baseball fan and haven't read Michael Lewis's Moneyball, shame on you. It's a great, quick read, and will change the way you look at the game forever. It follows the story of Oakland A's GM Billy Beane and his meteoric rise from a failure as a major league player to one of the top GMs in the game, all because he relied on complex statistical analysis rather than doing things the way they had always been done.

One of the coolest new websites in the political arena is fivethirtyeight.com (538 being the number of electors at stake in our wonderful country's horrifically goofy Electoral College). The genius behind the blog is Nate Silver, an economist and statistician that works for Baseball Prospectus. In the tradition of Bill James, he created an algorithm for predicting the success of baseball teams and players based on past performance. You can read about him in this Newsweek article.

With regards to politics, he did a phenomenal job of predicting the results of the Democratic primary contests by relying on demographic and census data, and weighting polls based on their historical accuracy. Anyway, if you have a close eye on the 2008 elections like I do, fivethirtyeight.com is a great site to keep bookmarked as we near Election Day. And bonus, Mr. Silver is an Obama guy like me. :)

If you tend to struggle like I do...

...then by all means read The Ultimate Weight Loss Guide. Twice. And maybe a third time just for good measure.

The article is relatively comprehensive and very informative, especially if you haven't done much research on weight loss, or keep getting suckered into fad diets. I actually found this article just today, but unknowingly I have been living most of it for a couple months now based on information I had pieced together from sources various and sundry. And as a result I'm down over 20 pounds since April 8th (the first day I started with The Daily Plate), and over 40 pounds total since roughly last August.

If you tend to struggle like I do, hopefully with the help of this guide and a few simple tools, you'll have the same success I have had. And hopefully I can continue to as well. :)

Teh Coolest Website EVAR!1!11!!

No, really - I promise I can spell. I just got a little carried away there with regards to my new favorite website, The Daily Plate. It's a great little Web 2.0 concoction that allows the user to track the foods they eat and the physical activity they perform, with the goal of helping each user make more informed nutrition decisions.

Back in August of last year, I ventured back to the gym and started to shed some of the 255 pounds I had amassed (emphasis on mass) to that point. I lost a good 20 pounds or so over five months, but I lost motivation and started to gain it back. My friend and co-worker Ryan Logsdon turned me on to TDP, and I started tracking my food and exercise on April 8th. With the help of Ryan and my new best friend of a website, as of today I have dropped a solid 10 lbs in 3 weeks and 2 days. According to the CDC, I am officially no longer obese, just grossly overweight - yeehaw! :)

Follow my progress here, if you dare. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!

39 years and counting...

The Phoenix Suns joined the NBA as an expansion team for 1968-69 season, and since that time own the fourth highest winning percentage in the league. They have been very good on balance for a very long time, but they have never been able to bring home a championship. Even with two NBA Finals appearances (1975 and 1993), they couldn't quite win the big enchilada.

So in what some (including me) would call a desperate move, they went out and got their own big enchilada, Shaquille O'Neal. Trading the versatile Shawn Marion and the useless Marcus Banks, they landed a 4-time NBA Champion, who has taken every NBA team he has played with to the Finals.

For the first time this season, I'm really excited about this team. There was just something wrong, be it the well-chronicled spats between Marion and Amare Stoudemire, the lack of hustle for whatever reason, or all of the close games they have lost to good Western Conference teams. If Shaq is truly as motivated and determined to succeed as he says he is, the Suns have a legitimately good shot at a title. And Steve Nash seems to really like the move - he says he was "pumped up" after speaking with Shaq on the phone yesterday.

Motivated Shaq + pumped up Nash - whiny Marion - Amare having to guard centers = a happy fan, and hopefully one (more) big enchilada.