Oh my gosh... today is day 30!!
That means I will have to take my weight and other measurements tomorrow. I don't think I lost as much as I'd hoped, who knows, maybe some of the other stats have changed in a good way. Anyway, I'm not going to stop now.

Looking back over the past 30 days, the one thing that sticks out is I rarely went more than 2 great days in a row. By great I mean I ate well AND worked out. Typically I would do 2 days and then have some excuse to not eat well or work out by the 3rd. I believe I may have had one good week where I went 5 days in a row, but I wasn't as consistent as I wanted to be.

Currently I am on a 2 day run. Yesterday was an amazing day. I played squash for 90 minutes and ate well. I avoided the urge to eat crap after squash which I have succumbed to so many times before. Today was also good. Ate decent and and had a decent workout at the gym. My work outs are a bit repetitive so I wont go into the details. 

Confession: I HATE GOING TO THE GYM. I really, really, really don't like it. However, once I get to the gym I am happy as a pig in sh-- well, you get the picture. It would be nice to have some equipment at home, but I don't have the space. And it's expensive.

Yesterday after squash (lost 4 games to 3. Was down 3 games to 1 and pushed the 7th game to tiebreaker.... close), while I was cooling off I watched a couple of older guys playing. By older, one of them looked to be in the mid 50's and the other was likely pushing 70. And as I watched them, a realization dawned on me. I suck. Not for lack of effort, because I will run all over the place, and rarely give up on a shot. Yet in regard to the mechanics of the game, the preferred motions of the racket swing and footwork - I'm like a Viking would be at Buckingham Palace: ill-mannered, brutish, brash and generally socially unacceptable. Yeah, I got heart, but I need to refine my game. I have more opportunities to play squash in a week than I can take advantage of, so I cant really practice on my own. My plan is to practice in-game. I will have to forget about winning, forget about making the most amazing (but technically unsound) shots, forget about the competition. Yikes, now that I say that, eeesh. I may have to think about this more haha. As for the game I watched, the mid 50's dude was one of the best players I've seen. There seems to be no shortage of awesome players where I go. A girl I watch sometimes was (or is) on the Provincial (or National) team. She's amazing. Hmmm, maybe that's the ticket - watch more people play, visualize myself making some of the same moves and shots, and bring it into my game. 
50's guy also has a few cute tricks to pickup the ball I've never seen before. Might work good for the game within a game: mind games.

I have a new heart rate monitor which has a few more features than the old one... now to figure out what they are. It was a gift from a friend :) 

Lastly, FRUIT. Is too much fruit a bad thing? I know fruit has sugar, but I read about how it's GOOD sugar. Does that mean I can eat 3 oranges, 2 bananas and 5 apples in a day? I really don't know. Yeah sure I Googled it but I find the results may vary.

Okay, that's enough for today. Tomorrow should be a good day as I am back on the courts. TTYL.

This will be a short post because there is not much to say. I haven't exercised since Thursday. Not happy about that.

At 6:50 pm my kid asked for money for McDonald's and I was instantly overcome with an insatiable desire to place a bacon double cheeseburger into my mouth, chew, pause, chew again, savour, chew... and it goes on like that for a minute. Whoa, I have a real problem with food. 

On the one hand I had just purchased dinner, two 6 inch subs from Subway. On the other, I was in my car, a mere 2 blocks from McDonalds, armed with enough local currency to seal the deal. In other words, locked and loaded.

I needed help. It suddenly occurred to me that I was like someone in AA. I needed to pick up the phone and reach out to my sponsor. But who? That was easy. I resisted the evil part of my brain that tried to stop me, pulled out my phone... and hammered out a text to my hoped savior.  Would she be there in my moment of extreme need? Thankfully, she was!

In the end I didn't go to McDonald's. I went home and ate my subs. No lettuce on them either.

Little thing: When I got home I ran up the stairs, and noticed I was less out of breath than a few days prior. 

In other news, guess who just signed up for Mud Hero? Me! And this time I'm really going to do it! (I signed up last year, went, but didn't run it. I babysat my goddaughter instead. Although that was fun, I felt horrible inside, as I had let myself down. I have the t-shirt but it's a hollow reminder of what I didn't accomplish. So silly, because I could have walked and ran. Oh well)

I was making an Amazon order for a book, and to get the free shipping I added a bathroom scale. It's something I've avoided for a year. Why? Because I don't want to be hooked on weighing myself every five minutes. I have a friend who weighs himself every time he is in the bathroom (yes, before and after). I am scared.  Also excited, because the scale at the gym is crap.

I have a confession. Last night at 11:00 pm I suddenly and without warning ate the rest of the chips and dip. Then I slammed about 8 pickles and 200 grams of cheese and 2 boiled eggs. 

Unequivocally, the chip idea was an enormousness, hippopotamus-sized bucket slathered with FAIL. I woke up today very disappointed in myself. Working out everyday isn't fun, and there is no point to do it if I am going to not get something out of it. 

I forgot the brush-your-teeth rule to reduce the urge to eat.

Today was cool. I cooked up some more SCO (steel cut oats) so I had a nice breakfast. Yum. Then I had the big salad for lunch with chicken and egg and peppers and mushrooms and lettuce-- 

Lettuce. My whole life I have adored salad, but very recently I have not enjoyed it as much, and I think it's the lettuce. I may have fallen out of love with lettuce. Is that even possible? I don't have any other examples in my life. There are certainly foods I've grown bored of... but never developed a dislike for something. Weird. 

After work it was to the squash court! We only had an hour but we played some tight sets. My new serves "served" me well, and I nailed a few points off of them. I won the best of 5 match 3-2. The practice paid off. :)

It's 7:30 and I've eaten all my calories for the day. This is earlier than usual, so I will have to use steel cut iron willpower to not bad-snack tonight. I got this. 

OMG. Meat, cheese and crackers (crackers not shown because they were eaten). These 3 things are up there in my top 10 favorite snacks.
We're getting into that time of year where there are nonstop goodies coming into the office. These things are much different than my snack update from yesterday. These things, I very much WOULD like to bite into. Yum. Yum. FML.

That bag of leftover salt & vinegar chips. Yeah, I'm going to leave that in my room. Seeing it and resisting is better than letting my subconscious run wild while I am not paying attention. 

Some people who quit smoking have done the same thing. Rather than throw away, give away, or flush the extra smokes down the toilet on Quit Day, they leave the pack somewhere very accessible and they don't touch it. I remember the first time someone told me they did that, and I thought it was an impossible idea. I didn't get the power of it. But I love it - I'm not going to go and buy chips at the store when I have them in my room.  I hope I'm not fooling myself.

For dinner we had chicken fajitas. Unfortunately they don't have a healthier version of the fajita kit here in Canmore, so I only put half of the powder in and went easy on the sauce. That should help with the sodium.

Not the best picture as it was steaming something fierce.

In a few minutes I will go to the gym. Tonight I ate before the gym, and I heard it's good to wait an hour after eating before working out. Last night I ate after the gym and that pushed dinner to 9 pm. I don't like eating that late, and more so I don't like to be rushed at the gym. I like to take my time. Yes, I am that guy that wanders around. I try not to be the guy always looking at himself in the mirror, but there are a lot of mirrors! 

Work out music. I get bored of music really quickly. And I haven't really figured out what sort of music I enjoy the most at the gym... it changes day by day. Sometimes I like Adele and other times it's Atreyu. Tonight I'm going to try a workout house mix I downloaded on my Zune pass. What music do you enjoy listening too while working out? 

After weeks of wall to wall meetings, I finally have a few days in the office. It is so much easier to remember to eat snacks. Snacking is hard work for me.

I'll forgive you for thinking that I must snack all the time, after all, I am a big guy. The truth is, I am rarely hungry before mid afternoon and have to really put my mind to remembering to snack. Until about 5 years ago I never ate anything until AFTER work. Ever. I would put all of my day's meals into a 6 hour window and that's where I got into the binge habbit. I wasnt binge-ing really, I was eating.

Then a few years back (after quitting smoking) I started to take lunches. Not as much because I was hungry, but for the social part of eating with friends.

These days I am hungry by lunchtime, but my body still doesnt need or even want snacks.

Today began much like last week ended. I had fruit, Beachbody shake... and another work lunch. Seriously, these things are gonna kill me.

This time I said F the salad, and ordered a tuna wrap thing. It sounded much healthier on the menu that it looked in person. Still, I managed to get a green salad and balsamic instead of fries or a caesar salad. 

During lunch, after the business at hand was done, two people started to talk about riding. My boss has started Computrainer indoor racing at Ascent. Recently I've heard him talk about it several times, and I've always been interested. Then the person we were meeting with was talking about riding his bike on the Legacy Trail in the winter. And I was like "say whaaaat?" Yeah, being an avid rider I guess he spikes his tires and doesn't stop when the snow blankets the frozen ground. Freaking awesome.

I realized this talk of cycling was making me excited, and then I remembered I have goals for next year, including riding in a mountain bike race. I cant do that unless I train and seriously reduce my body mass.

I realize that 3 weeks into this challenge, I'd completely lost sight of why I was doing it. I was going through the motions, and not even well. Tonight I weighed myself and I've put on 4 lbs. My goals weren't focused enough. I am going to start a page and write them down as I think of them.

Tonight I am proud to say I am back on track. I had a great workout at the gym, where I focused more on cycling (I LOVE IT) and less on running (I HATE IT). I taught myself to relax my body while I'm riding and not be so stiff. 

I had a healthy dinner and no bad snacks. There are some chips leftover from last night but the thought of them makes me wanna puke. 

Well.... it's day 22. Only a week left. Here's to a new beginning today.

The plan was to work out in the morning before going to Calgary to watch the Grey Cup. I knew I'd be having beers and eating bar food. A nice 45 minute workout in the morning and I'd at least balance out the day.

Nope. The binge from the night before had pushed me completely off track. The part of me that wants to be fit and healthy was no longer communicating with the part of me that walks and looks and orders and grabs and eats and repeats. 

I had a bacon cheeseburger and fries. A bloody caesar and 2 beers. Although I resisted the offer to share a plate of cheese-slathered nachos while at the bar, when I got home I bought a big bag of salt & vinegar chips and french onion dip, and ate them in bed until I felt ill.

This blog should be renamed: I Tried To Fight Food. FAIL!