Week 19 results

Time’s whizzing right by these days, and I’m trying my best to hang on. Things are great and I’m making progress, but the convergence of several things in my life at the moment are creating a perfect storm of sorts:

• Phase 1 of my 20/20 Lifestyles program is set to end next week, and I find myself wanting to squeeze in as much as I can in terms of diet and exercise into this phase, just for the sake of seeing how close I can get to my phase 2 goal in phase 1.
• I’m starting to sense Autumn in the air (which means the rain will start falling soon and won’t be stopping until Spring), and a certain little voice is telling me to get out and enjoy the remaining days of Summer while I can. That voice is calling me a leaker for not running Green Lake completely yet, and reminding me that I’m going to regret spending these final dry and (relatively) warm nights inside.
• The clothes are getting a bit silly, in terms of fit. I don’t think I’m going to be able to stick to the original plan of waiting until December before buying new clothes. I’m still losing weight and my overall body shape is still transforming, which makes it hard to commit to new clothes, since I don’t know what size I’ll end up at. Oh, and I’m so close to my weight goal, that I sometimes need to remember where I put the motivation that’s gotten me this far. I did pick up two new pairs of pants (36×32, not 42×30) and a new shirt (L, not XXL) for Deanna and Brian’s birthday dinner last weekend and took some pictures that I’ll post here one of these days. We were passing the camera around the table and taking pictures, and honestly, I did not recognize myself in these photos. Very weird in a Twilight Zone kind of way, but I digress.
• Work has been a bit hectic the past few weeks, due to various deadlines and commitments. The temptation to skip the gym and focus on the job at hand is a strong one, a familiar and well-travelled road for me.
• The Microsoft annual review is done now (and I did just fine, thanks for asking). The product I’ve been working on is shipping very soon. I’m now running Vista RC1 on my primary computer and my laptop is a MacBook also running Windows XP Professional via Parallels. I’ve been reorged into a different team. Change, change, change and more change tend to make we wonder if it isn’t time for a change? Move? Change jobs? Try pizza tonight? (Oops, I did that one, I confess) Trade in the iPod for a Zune? Oh, I don’t know… lose 75 pounds? Then what?
• I’m heading to London on Friday for about a week of meeting with some of the MSN International folks, and that’s going to be a big change to my routine.
• I told myself I’d give up tobacco by the end of phase 1. I’ve had time back off of it slowly, but of course, I didn’t take it. So instead, I’m going to take an extreme measure: I’m leaving for London on Friday, and usually, I’d stock up on tobacco before leaving, since the stuff I use is simply not available in London that I’ve found. Believe me, I’ve looked. The first week will be the hardest, and quitting it in London is a forcing function to me — I’ll have no choice but to quit. A little time away from it will hopefully reduce the urge to pick it back up again when I return to Seattle. Posting it here will hopefully help as well :)
• Lastly, it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blog. I’ve been making changes to a local copy of my site all this time, but as I write this now, the last published entry on my live site is for my week 14 results. I’ve been doing a bit of a redesign, reorganization and other assorted danboe.net-ish projects locally on my Mac here at home, and the more I did, the more involved it was to get everything updated live. In the end, I decided to just do what I wanted to do locally, and then publish everything. You’re reading this post, which means I’ve finally done that. My site is always a work in progress, but some of the work has a tendency to progress slowly (and behind the scenes). I’ve also taken some time each night since starting 20/20 to post a lot more information here (mostly from recipes and handouts I get in my 20/20 meetings). There’s a lot of great information I get, but having it all on paper at home isn’t useful to me, and the pace of the program is making it hard for me to absorb everything permanently. So, I figured I’d post it here, so next time I’m in a restaurant, grocery shopping, or really doing anything away from those handouts I can simply bring up my site on my phone and find what I need.

I guess what I’m rambling on about is that the 20/20 Lifestyles program is one of several things that are occupying my time and thoughts lately. When I started writing about this journey I’m taking here, I said I’d be upfront and honest and write about what it’s like to go through the program. Well, for me, today starting week 20, it’s a bit overwhelming. The results are remarkable and I feel incredible, but life shifts and turns or something shiny catches my eye for a moment and suddenly I wake up one day…

and I realize that I haven’t been meal-tracking for 3 weeks now. There, I said it. I’m still true to 95% of my diet 95% of the time, but I don’t know exact daily calorie totals because I haven’t been writing everything down. I haven’t been doing 5-6 days of exercise per week for the last two weeks — I’ve been doing 3-4. And I haven’t been writing down my weight every morning. I’m still weighing myself, I just haven’t been writing it down. Oh, and I’m behind in my blog.

Of course, this means that my results should be bad this week, which will illustrate the relationship between cause and effect and motivate me to readjust the cause and thereby correct the effect, right?

Results

Oh, the irony. As of my weigh-in last night, I’m at 201.4 pounds, down 3.4 pounds from my last weigh-in 2 weeks ago (I had to cancel last week’s appointment, so I don’t have official numbers for week 18). This brings my total lost so far to 63.6 pounds. Less than 12 pounds to go, and 13 weeks to get there.

I just love it when cause and effect get all playful like this, don’t you?. Of course, this isn’t cause and effect — the message isn’t do less and still lose weight — no, Virginia, not even close. I’m glad this is happening now, while I still have the support and structure of my 20/20 Lifestyles team around me. That’s a big part of the thinking behind phase 2.

At the annual Microsoft Company Meeting today, Steve Ballmer made some comments about setting and working towards goals that stuck with me as I’ve been writing this tonight. I don’t recall his exact words, but the idea was pretty simple. Let’s say there’s a goal to get over a wall. Now some folks are going to get really charged up and try to get over that wall tomorrow. Others are going to step back and say um, that wall is just too high — we can’t get over that wall. Then there are those that say I don’t know exactly when yet, and I don’t know precisely how yet, but I am absolutely certain that I am going over that wall, and here’s what I know so far.

I’m beginning to get a newfound understanding of why phase 2 is going to be just as hard as phase 1 is, and why phase 3 is going to be harder still.

The plan for London

Here’s what my dietitian advised me on staying healthy while travelling:

• Try to weigh yourself everyday, but note that you’ll weigh heavier 24 hours after flying.
• Prepare. I’ve got 20/20 shake powder and a portable blender that I’m bringing along, and having stayed at the Park Lane hotel in London before, I’m familiar with the area. I hope to be able to run every day in Hyde Park (weather permitting, it’s right across the street), and plan to have a breakfast shake each day. I’m pretty sure I can get milk, all-natural peanut butter and fresh berries at a market near to the hotel.
• Snacks are often the hardest thing to control, so some good ideas are protein bars (I bought 2 boxes of 15 last night, though I haven’t tried them before). Other ideas are jerky, soy nuts, fruit, yogurt, string cheese and individual-servings of peanut butter.

Here are some things I hope to do while there, outside of work, if possible. I’ve got an entire Sunday and Saturday free at the moment:

• Visit Legoland Windsor. Don’t worry Scott, if I post pictures of that I’ll post other pictures too.
• Check out a European market — I’ve heard there are really big and fun open air markets to check out and I’ve always wanted to go to one. I seem to recall something called Camden Market, though I may be wrong on the name.
• Walk around a lot, see the sites, and take a lot of pictures.
• Bring back some Tetley Tea for Martina.
• Bring back some dark chocolate for Allison.
• Find a neat souvenir or maybe do a little bit of clothes shopping.

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