Happy Anniversary!

One year ago today I posted for the first time here on “dougshealth.” It’s been an interesting journey over the last 12 months. I started this journey having become fed up with the guy I saw in the mirror. I wrote down some goals, tried to mark out some realistic intermediate waypoints, and asked for accountability along the way. The path has been filled both with hard times when I’ve wanted to give up and great times when I reached some milestones. I am very happy to announce that one year after throwing caution to the wind and putting my weight out there for all to see, I have now dropped 36 pounds!

Tonight at the gym I weighed in at 180 pounds, down from 216 a year ago! I am somewhat shocked at the change in my shape, my energy, and my state of mind. And at 180 pounds, I weigh exactly what I did at this time 10 years ago, which was the beginning of the winter quarter of my senior year in college! Not bad, especially given that I’ve been able to increase my muscle mass since then.

My original hope when I started this blog was to lose 40 pounds in 40 weeks, and while I have not accomplished that, 36 pounds in one year makes me feel quite fulfilled and accomplished. While I still won’t be mistaken as a model, the image in my mirror certainly looks much more like the image I’d have in my head of how I want to look. I’m still hoping to lose another 10 pounds or so, but will sit back tonight and celebrate a year of hard work, better eating habits, and the changing of my life!

Thanks for all the encouragement along the way…please keep it up…and let me know if I can help you in any life changes you want to make!

-Doug

ps. I’ll try to update pics this weekend!

update for the week…

I was able to weigh in on Tuesday night, and I hit…actually…I surpassed my goal for the week! I weighed in at 182 pounds, and my goal had been 183! I’m on my way down to 170!

My bodyfat, as recorded by a very non-technical measurement at the gym, has dropped down to 14%. This puts me still in the “Fitness” arena, but I’m just 1% away from the “Athlete” level!

Doing the math, and adjusting for the fact I always weigh in while wearing my workout clothes/shoes, my lean body mass is approximately 155 pounds, so I am still carrying about 25 pounds of fat on my body.

And when I get to my goal of 170 pounds, I’ll be right under 10% bodyfat…not bad!

Goal for next week is now 180!

New Goals…

While this should not surprise anyone, it seems to me to be much easier to lose weight when you have goals along the way. I set a goal to be under 190 by Jan 1, and I hit that! Now I’ll set up some new intermediate goals, but my new goal, which I view as both ambitious and realistic, is to be at 170 by March 31! I’m already at 185, so that’s just 15 pounds to go!

My intermediate goals are to lose 2 pounds per week for the next 3…then 1 1/2 pounds per week for 2 weeks…then 1 pound per week for 6 weeks.

Broken down for visual effect

Jan 11 weight = 185

goals per week…

1/19/2010	183
1/26/2010	181
2/2/2010	179
2/9/2010	177.5
2/16/2010	176
2/23/2010	175
3/2/2010	174
3/9/2010	173
3/16/2010	172
3/23/2010	171
3/30/2010	170

And the winner is…

Thanks again for all the support as I’ve been working to lose weight. Just a reminder…just because I reached ONE goal for the end of the year doesn’t mean I’m at the end of this journey! I have outlined some new goals for myself and still have more pounds to lose, but I’ll save those for another post later this week. So, feel free to keep encouraging me even if there are no Colts tickets as the proverbial carrot to entice you.

Without further ado…I will be taking with me to a Colts playoff game…Sir Andrew H. Well, he doesn’t hold the title of Sir, but you get the idea…and I know people don’t always want their full names up on the internet for all to see, so I’ll leave it as Mr. H. It also turns out Andrew is a gambling man. I offered him the option of attending the first playoff game (guaranteed) or foregoing the ticket with the option of attending the AFC championship game should the Colts advance. He chose the latter…so here’s hoping we get to go to a game!

Many others gave great encouragement, from Ode’s to poems to emails to texts, but the one who took the cake…well…figuratively speaking…was Cari R. I’m pretty sure she hired a PI, because we were in different places when she texted me to “Put down the cookie!” at the exact moment I had just picked one up. Kudos to you, Cari, and you get to ride along to the first game!

Thanks again, everyone, and if I can encourage you in your goals, feel free to let me know!

Welcome to 2010!

I hope you are all having a great start to 2010! Last week I received an impromptu invitation to join some people on a trip to Snowshoe, WV. As such, my workout schedule was thrown off a bit, but I packed a few sets of workout clothes to hopefully use at whatever workout facility would be available where we stayed.

Unfortunately I had committed the cardinal sin of assuming a facility would be available. Alas, my workout clothes remained in my bag the entire time, as there was no equipment to be found.

Despite these obstacles, I can tell that my metabolism has definitely gotten much better due to my increased muscle and decreased fat. I went to the gym tonight for a good workout (and wow did it feel good to be back at the gym!), and I weighed in at 186. I am now officially down 30 pounds from my start weight of 216 on January 25, 2009!

Now that I reached my first goal, I’ll update in a few days with a new goal as well as reveal the results of the Colts tickets!

Thanks for all your continued support!

Oh those Christmas cookies!

Dear Christmas cookies:

I love you…and I hate you. You are beautiful…and ugly. You are delicious…and disgusting. You make me happy…temporarily. Christmas is supposed to be such a wonderful season, and yet you remind me that with every good thing…the option to choose evil still exists.

So, Christmas cookies…I went to the gym yesterday to rid myself of your residue. Before the workout, I stepped up to my accountability partner, unsure of what the scale would reveal.

188

Christmas cookies…you did not win this year.

Sincerely,

Doug

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Start date: January 25, 2009

Start weight: 216

current weight: 188

loss: 28 pounds!

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Mission…accomplished!

I made it to the gym tonight and weighed in at 189!

So I have done what I originally set out to do…weigh 190 (or less) by Jan 1. Now I just need to keep it off through all the rest of the eating that is about to happen during Christmas and New Year’s!

still going…

I’ve had a pretty good week of workouts, although this weekend with some parties and good food all over the place were not so good for me!

I’ll probably weigh in one more time this week before the big weigh-in on January 1!

Thanks for the encouragement, and keep it up! It’s helping!

Almost there!

I went to the gym last night for an aerobic night and also to weigh in. Well, I may have to adjust my January 1 goal, because I hit 191 last night! So, without too much stress I should be able to hit 190 next week, well before January 1!

So, I’m throwing out a new goal for myself for January 1: 186 pounds. This is 4 pounds lower than my first goal, and 5 pounds from where I was last night. I still think it’s ambitious, but I’m going to go for it!

I am also down to about a 16% body-fat…although this measurement is far from scientific. If I do my calculations correctly, my eventual goal of 175 will put me at just under 10% body fat. Awesome!

And…the Colts won on Sunday, clinching home-field and at least one playoff game to attend. Woohoo! Go Colts!

Driver’s license…hello!

No, I didn’t lose my license. But what had gone awry was the weight listed thereon! I renewed my license back in March of 2008 and had to update my weight. You see, while it was the second time I’d renewed my license in Indiana, the first time the lady across the counter conveniently forgot to ask my weight, and left me at a svelte 160 pounds, which was a legitimate weight for me when I moved to Indiana and registered back in 2000. So, this time I knew I needed to update the weight to more accurately reflect my current…umm…shape.  “195″ I told the worker at the DMV. I think it was pretty close to accurate at the time. I may have been a few pounds over, but there’s room for rounding, right?

So I weighed in last night at the gym, and now the driver’s license is inaccurate again. Because I’m under it!

194 pounds!

Looks like I’m on my way to 190 by Jan 1 as I hoped!

Keep that encouragement coming, friends!

(quick tip, don’t forget that at least in Indiana you can renew your license well ahead of the due date…mine wasn’t set to expire until Oct 2008! One less thing to do around your birthday!)