I tried to get back on track, but I was sliding off the rails.

The day started okay and in the afternoon I went to practice my squash game. The other day I 'd watched some squash tips videos and discovered that 99% of my technique is wrong. There is a lot more science to it than I previously thought. The great news is that most of my opponents don't know it either. If I can break down my game and work on the individual parts, I might be able to start winning more than losing (I win about 25-33% of the games I play).

I taught myself a "reset" technique to bring myself back to start, and two completely new serves. I practiced each one over and over until I could nail it five times in a row, and then I did five times in a row a couple more times for each to lock in the muscle memory. I wrote down the steps and took a picture of the start position. 

Later in the night I had some popcorn. I bought the Smart Pop stuff which isn't too bad. Then I added some melted margarine. Then I dumped salt on it.

FACT: eating certain foods pushes me into a binge frenzy.

I had the right idea when I bought the popcorn by getting the healthier option. But I learned a lesson here. I couldn't just eat the popcorn the way it came out of the bag. That popcorn smell got into my nostrils and pushed all sense out of my mind. After I was done the popcorn I ate a bunch of other shit. 

LESSON: stay away from certain "ok" foods.

Below picture: these bad boys are Burger Rings. They are popular in Australia and NZ. One of my managers is back home this month and she was nice enough to mail me this treat.

Another work lunch, this one at Earls for a coworker's farewell. I had the chicken caesar salad in lieu of a burger. 

WTF, is all I can say.

I went to The Keg for a work lunch to treat four of our top sellers. All four of them ordered juicy steaks. Me, wanting to take a healthier approach, ordered a salad. I watched their eyes grow round like saucers when the steaks arrived. I munched on my salad while they slathered salt and pepper on their choice cuts of beef. Not that my salad wasn't good, it was actually quite tasty. But I am a steak guy and I thought I was taking the health high road.

So then I gets back to my office and open MFP and put in the salad. What the frig:

Oh. Hell. No.

I would have been better off with the steak:

I have learned the evils of the salad, and to get the dressing on the side. But I sort of know that having greens without much dressing isn't gonna work too well. Maybe I should bring my own dressing and slip it in when no one is looking!?

Writing this a few days later, I cant remember much about this day.
Thanks to My Fitness Pal, I can see the day was going pretty good until I decided to have pizza for supper. I remember standing in the frozen entree isle of Safeway for what seemed like forever, looking at the nutritional facts of each kind of pizza. None of them were good, but I really wanted pizza, and was determined to have the best, most healthy one... or should I say the least worst one. Eventually I decided if I was going to eat it at all to stop fooling myself and decided on Delissio thin crust Canadian toppings. 

I hadn't planned on taking the day off from exercise, it just sort of happened. I got home from work after 8 pm, and then had to make supper. I still could have gone to the gym, but I was notified of a condo inspection tomorrow, and my place required a couple hours of cleaning. So with those excuses along with knowing I will play better squash tomorrow after a day off,  I decided not to worry too much and get things done around the house.


Today for dinner I had a lean steak.... I couldn't survive as a vegetarian, that's for sure. I BBQ'd the beef with garlic, basil and dill spices. I broke my no-salt rule and added a quick sprinkle. I felt guilty. Damn if it wasn't good though. Then I ate a pickle.

Here's a picture of my homemade pickles:

Okay 14 days are in the books, another 2 weeks and a bit to go. Although Im not stopping when this challenge is over.

Today I started off the day by making sure I brought my 3 favorite beverages to the meeting: 

Water, Shaleolgy & Caffè Americano. Yummy!

And a pen. To write stuff down. Yup.

I am semi famous in the office for making these gigantic salads in the lunch room. They usually include lettuce, tomato  cucumber, avocado, green onion, boiled egg, chicken breast, and sometimes almonds and other treats. The famous part is because I prep it all at the lunch table and everyone gets to enjoy watching the salad take shape. It would get so big I would need to get the punch bowl off of the top shelf. Here's an example (it looks small but remember that's a large punch bowl):

I said all that to say this - today's salad sucked. The lettuce was bitter, the cucumber seemed off, the avocado wasn't ripe enough and the salad dressing was not the flavor I enjoy. A total epic fail.

What's the deal with avocado, anyway?! I guess on the one hand I respect them for being all like, "I'm gonna be ripe for 5 minutes" and shit, because that takes courage in a world with no shortage of fruit variety in the friendly local supermarket. I mean there's all kinds of exotic fruits, melons with spikes (what's up with that) and fancy little bananas. Yet the brave avocado says "Ya I know I'm all that, and you want me," and we continue to put up with their 5 second ripe phase. Pretty bad-ass. Frankly, I'm not even sure if the avocado is a fruit because where I shop it's in the vegetable isle. I'd Google it if I wasn't so damn lazy. 

Enough about quasi-fruit. Today is one year since myself along with 4 others started a boot camp style training program with a personal coach. That was the first time in my life Id been part of any sort of fitness program, if you don't include "Participation" back in school (really, I get a badge just for participating, that's awesome!)  --ahem, I was saying, that one year has passed. I am still amazed when I think of all I learned in that 12 week program. Our coach, Pete of Lifeworks (aka bad-ass kickboxer) taught us about our bodies and nutrition. I learned that "bread is bread" and "fat is fat." Inside jokes aside, those Mondays spent weighing in, chatting about our progress before getting our asses kicked with weird and wonderful (sarcasm) exercises and painful yoga positions provided the building blocks for anything I will ever do with my personal fitness. 

Speaking of Lifeworks. I've come to take it for granted that I'm training alongside Olympic athletes. But today I thought about it, really thought about it. I am sharing space and equipment with people who have and will achieve Olympic greatness in various cross country and downhill skiing events. That's crazy cool. The least I can do is give it my all, leave nothing behind for another day, go hard and give respect to our winter heroes. So, today I (continuing 3+2) ran for 16 minutes, walked fast for 24 and cycled fast and hard for 15. I know I give it all when sweat is dripping off of my arms, and not because of gravity.

After my workout the sauna was toasty:

60 degrees Celsius! That's warm. My goal is to get acclimated to super heat & humidity, for the trip to the Dominican in May. Traditionally I do not do heat well, and sweat a lot. I'm hitting the sauna almost every day so I don't melt down into a carbon-based puddle and have people step in me, exclaiming: "Ewe, what's this gross puddle!"

That's right, I just made up a quote. I'm bad-ass like that. It's true though, after 2 weeks I am settling into more of a routine. Let's call it one week, because that first week was all over the map. But now, I'm used to again having that hour of the day set aside for the gym, and snacking regularly. It feels good. 

Running doesn't feel good yet, but that will come as I drop the pounds. Last time when I was down to 285 I started feeling a lot lighter on my feet.

My buddy Lee dropped 100 pounds since we started working out one year ago. He was the success story of our group of 4. Today he was watching me run on the treadmill, and seemed to think I could do better. When I explained that I weigh more than two of him, he had an eye opening look on his face.

I'll get there!

Same workout with 3+2 for 25 minutes and 20 on two different bikes.

Now that I'm back in this fitness thing routine, I freaking love Saturdays! Get up when I want to, chill out around the house for a couple hours, relax with a nice cup of coffee, and whip up an omelette. Saturdays are for omelettes! 

Saturdays are also for going to the gym in the afternoon. No need to rush to or from. Just a nice stroll over to the gym, bum around there, take my time, do my workout and have a nice long sauna after. I was so pumped today that I didn't even mind too much that there was another guy in the sauna (it's small and I usually avoid that).

Here's me after my workout & before the sauna:

It's Movember. 

So much energy today. I had a busy day and went out for dinner and after that for some pool and Foosball  and a couple drinks, and I still feel like I could go out and party until 4 am. More energy than I'm used to. Shakeology again??

Today I walked fast for 3, ran for 2, for a total of 10 running and 15 walking, and 20 on the cycles. HR didn't go over 165 or so, which is great.

Almost halfway through the challenge and I am still going. I've had a few setbacks but it's 2 steps forward, 1 step back... that will still get me to the finish line, maybe not as quickly as I'd like, but I will get there. My promise to myself is to not allow myself to think of setbacks as being okay, or part of the process. I need to isolate them as being bad, and not to be repeated. Ha, I have to use a lot of  psychology and trickery on myself.

More eggs, more Shakeology, more balance bars, more almonds, more tuna.

After work I went to play squash with 2 coworkers, and kicked it up a couple notches and left everything on the court. I'm smashing into the walls (and scaring the sh-- out of the sports desk attendants), and losing my cool, bashing my racket into walls and throwing it and yelling. Ya I was a bit wound up. That said, I usually prefer to keep my emotions in check and some of the theatrics are part of the game within a game of getting into my adversary's heads. I am feeling myself get quicker and smarter and more confident. 

Confidence. Yesterday my boss told me that he saw I had a great week, and that I was very confident. That was nice to hear. I know that working out and losing weight and eating healthier is making me much more confident. 

Smarts. I feel slightly smarter. I am not sure if it's because working out is reducing stress which clouds my thinking, or if it's because of Shakeology. I read somewhere in Beachbody's literature that Shakeology makes you smarter (maybe not in those words). Could it be true?  

I had a little thing and a fav thing yesterday and the day before, but I forgot. I need to write that sh-- down as it occurs to me.

This is me in my head:

With some of this:

Day 11 was not great because I didn't workout and I went to all you can eat sushi. If I'm going to do this I need to find a way to be social with friends without what often comes with it, eating out. When I go to a restaurant I cant get away from the feeling I have to get my money's worth. So I get big platters of food instead of healthy(er) alternatives like a salad or fish or something. Often the price isn't too different so my brain says I need to have what I want, not what is good for me. I know I need to train myself to like more what's good for me...

On the plus side because I've eaten way less for 10 days I got full a lot quicker than before this challenge. I think I ate about 2/3 what I would have in the past. 

Salt salt salt. I am trying to not add salt to anything I eat. It's tough because two of the things I like to eat, eggs and chicken, are probably the two things I most like to add salt to. I bought a cheap pre-filled spice rack from Walmart and am enjoying adding spices instead of salt.

My coach made me a menu, but I find in my rushing around that I am eating the same things everyday. Is this a bad thing? Does my body need a variety? Eggs eggs eggs. As for eggs I read eggs are worse than smoking, and then I read that's bs and eggs are the best thing ever. It's way too hard to the straight answer on these questions.