How about we try this again?

Oh hey, I forgot, I have a blog. Well, I am not going to make excuses for not updating my blog for such a long time. I just was not interested in doing so. However, I would like to start back up with a weekly blog entry, partly about my life, but also, I want to write about health and fitness related topics. I see so many people that lead their life towards healthiness with a lot of misinformation, myths, and misconceptions. Sometimes it can just be innocence with not having done proper research and sometimes it can be the allure of social media postings. Nonetheless, I will try to give my honest opinions about certain things that are health/fitness related, as well as trying to provide the most accurate information possible.

Since this is my first blog post in quite a while, today's topic will be solely about me; an update on my life as well as what I am doing nowadays regarding my progress towards a healthy lifestyle.

The majority of my blog history has been about my weight loss (and weight gain...), so let me cover the change in my weight over the years. It is lengthy, but shows that I have successfully lost weight, and also gained it all back. When I first started this blog, I was able to lose about 50-60 pounds to get down to 200 lbs, the lowest I had been since early high school. This happened from the end of 2011 to the summer of 2012. I then slacked over the summer and fall after a very successful spring, and gained back 20-30 pounds. At this point, it's the beginning of 2013. My knees had always been a problem over the past few years, but they kept getting worse. With the help of a physical therapist, my knees began to recover, and with a very successful diet, I was able to drop all of my gained weight and reached 194 pounds, right around February/March of 2013. I was amazed at my progress, and I was not even running anymore, due to my knees causing me too much discomfort. This is my lowest weight of my adult life (even now).



At this point, I began working Zoo Snooze at the Oregon Zoo, and in turn, ended up travelling a lot between Corvallis and Portland. This meant less shopping for healthy food and more shopping for convenient food. On top of this, I ate a lot of pizza, so I started to gain back some weight. Probably 210-215 lbs by the beginning of summer. Bummer. Then, I worked with 6th graders at the zoo, which includes an overnight, and more pizza and other meals given to us. Less control of my food means weight gain. It's inevitable for me, as I cannot resist temptation very well when it comes to free unhealthy food. Over the course of rest of 2013 and beginning of 2014, my weight would fluctuate around 240 pounds. Very unfortunate. I would periodically try to lose some weight, and would just give up eventually. It never took long to give into temptation. Binge eating is my worst enemy, and even to this day, is hard for me to deal with. However, there was some light at the end of the tunnel. I worked an internship at the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest during the summer of 2014 on a stream ecology project. This meant that I spent most of my days hiking to and from, in and around streams during the hot summer days. I burned so many calories during the work day as well as sweating a lot in waders that even while eating and drinking literally whatever I wanted and however much I wanted, I managed to get down to 220 pounds by September 2014. But rather than continuing my weight loss trend, I kept my unhealthy habit of eating and drinking, plus the football season ruined any chance for a diet, and I quickly got back to 240.

At this point, 2015 comes around and I periodically lose a bit of weight, then gain it back. Same old thing. But to make it worse, I manage to get up to about 250 before summer starts. Wonderful. I have not weighed this much in a few years. I end up working at the Oregon Zoo again during the summer and manage to maintain my weight for once! Sweet deal, but promptly after the summer, I manage to put on a bit more weight, getting me up to 260 pounds. September of 2015, I decided enough is enough, and I need to motivate myself to not only start losing weight, but keep losing weight. I start using a website called DietBet, which makes you bet money on your weight loss. If you lose enough weight over a specific period of time (1 month or 6 months), then you win and not only get your money back, but will earn extra money. If you do not lose enough, then say goodbye to that money you bet. Simple enough. Well, over the last 3 months, I have lost 17 pounds, bringing me to 243 at the moment. Not tons of weight, but I have continually lost weight, and am still doing so. It does not need to be a super fast loss of weight, but as long as I continue a trend of weight loss, then I will be happy.

Okay, that is out of the way. Oh, and an update on my knees - they still suck and hurt when I am overly active. I still cannot run consistently. Not being able to run is certainly not the reason why I have gained weight back, but it is a partial reason why it has been difficult for me to be successful with weight loss. Running was what helped me lose so much weight, so quickly, back in 2012.


Not my knee, but same brand and style of the knee brace I often wear. Maybe one day I will not have to wear it. Maybe.

So now, with the motivation of using DietBet to keep me accountable, as well as being careful about my diet (and if I binge eat, like I still do, that I at least recover from it and get back on track), I have been successful with losing some weight. I have a rowing machine so that I can do cardio without ruining my knees, and just this week, I purchased a weightlifting set. Last week on Amazon, a 300 pound olympic weight set went on sale from $260 down to $170, and the weightlifting bench I was interested in went from $160 to $90. Both were a steal in my opinion, and I jumped on that purchase. After receiving the heavy-ass packages the other day and putting together the bench, I now can lift weights in my garage. There's just enough room in there with summer deck furniture, as well as many items and boxes that belong to my brother and I that are being stored in there. But yesterday, Hannah and I started StrongLifts 5x5 and completed our first workout. SL 5x5 is a beginner weightlifting program that utilizes squats, deadlifts, bench press, overhead press, and rows. 5x5 simply means 5 sets of 5 repetitions, and you do 3 of the lifts per workout, with alternating workouts. Workouts are every other day. If you're interested, you can check out their website, StrongLifts.





Yes, I know, the garage is messy. Tough. Just be glad you don't see the rest of it.

To wrap things up, I am currently losing weight through simple dieting and starting to lift weights again with my own weight set. Although I will periodically update my blog with posts about myself and my current progress, I want to transition my blog into weekly posts about my take on health and fitness. If I can help one person besides myself with this blog, then it's a success.

Until next time, stay fancy.

Day 9 - Surveys Galore

I went out today with one of the two Emilys to work on conducting habitat and forest surveys on one of our streams. After some confusion with Matt and Dana changing the reaches on the stream, as well as doing a little bit of unnecessary work (due to the confusion), we finally got a rhythm going and finished up the habitat survey. We left at about 9:15 in the morning and didn't finish the habitat survey until around 1:00. Doing the survey with only two people was a big burden on us and took up a lot of our time. But oh well, got the habitat surveys done with that entire site. Definitely a good thing. After our lunch break, we needed to get started on some forest surveys. We needed to do 4 plots for either the old growth or second growth section, so we decided to work on the old growth (so much prettier, plus we had been working for 3 hours in the second growth; we needed a change in environment). We ended up with some nice plots and some huge ass trees. Managed to finish the four plots in about 2 and a half hours (would have been quicker if the terrain was better on the last plot), and was quite fun. We ended up with this gigantic douglas fir in one of our plots. One of the largest trees I've ever seen. It was far more relaxing than the rest of the work we were doing prior to the forest surveys. Our last plot ended up having a hill in it that was a 60 degree incline. Damn that was tough to ascend and descend, but I got the job done. We called it a day and got back to the HJA headquarters around 5:00.

The rest of my evening has consisted of a little bit of cooking and food preperation for tomorrow, eating, and relaxing. Although the forest surveys were more relaxing, it was definitely an exhausting day. I also managed to drink through all 3 liters of water that I brought with me and I was still extremely dehydrated by the time I got back to HJA. It's intense how much sweat I lose when I'm hiking up and down these streams, but I should hopefully be losing some weight this summer which will be good.

Tomorrow will consist of lots of forest surveys at two different sites and deploying fluorescein into one of our furthest streams. That means that in a perfect world, I'll be at our first site for three hours or a bit less (so done around noon), and then will go back out around 2:30 to do more forest surveys and then deploy fluorescein by 6. That would put me completely done for the day around 7:30, with a 2-3 hour break midday. Doable, but I'll still be exhausted (like always).

Stay fancy.

Day 8 - Ever Have the Feeling that You Didn't Actually Accomplish Anything?

Come Monday morning, I woke up and went out into the field with Matt and Kate. Our goal was to scout out sites because Matt needs one more stream which has a section of both old growth and second growth surrounding it. This consisted of hiking to and through streams, looking for both old growth and second growth, and specifically a dark second growth (just for contrast to other streams), as well as fish. We found some potential streams, but never found the right combination of everything. So we ended up empty handed after hours of work. We made our way out to place called Mack Stream, and we were going to measure out our reaches and lay out tiles, but we ran into more problems and weren't able to measure out the reaches. We literally wasted an entire day. Bummer.

Dana came back up to HJA for the evening to hang out with us all and to get an early start to the morning on Tuesday. Matt had caught a chinook salmon on Sunday morning so we decided to grill up fresh salmon, veggies, and had some roasted potatoes and watermelon. Plus beer. Can't forget the beer. We had a fantastic dinner, which concluded with some cookies made by Hannah. The highlight of the evening was a crew shotgun. Basically, every single one of us each shotgunned a beer together. Definitely a good bonding moment for all of us. This was of course a bad idea since we had just finished a huge dinner; we all survived. Afterwards, we ended up playing some Beer Frisbee. Brian and I versus Matt and Dana. Damn, Dana has a great throw. Was not expecting that. Brian and I ended up losing, but only 19-22, so it was a close game. We finished the night by just hanging out at a picnic table and drinking beer. A fantastic evening.

Stay fancy.

Day 5 through 7 - July 4th and Back in Corvallis

I decided to surprise Hannah so I came back to Corvallis for the weekend. So no time spent at HJA. Had a good weekend; watched fireworks at the waterfront, ate lots of pie and cookies, and just relaxed.

Sunday, I went back to HJA and got there around 4. Made a simple dinner, hung out with the people here for a bit, and just continued to relax. Nothing much to write about, but I want a post that includes every day.

Stay fancy.

Day 4 - Back in the Field

Dana Warren, the PI for the project, made it to HJA to help out with some of our work on Thursday. We made it out to the farthest sites to do some forest surveys, as well as measuring out a couple reaches in two streams and marking them (putting a flag every 10 meters), and laying out tiles. The tiles are going to sit in the streams for 6 weeks to grow algae, which will show the amount of primary production that takes place at those locations. The forest surveys consist of creating a 15x15 meter plot and measuring the DBH, or Diameter Breast Height, meaning the diameter of the tree at breast height, or roughly 1.3 meters up on the trunk. This also includes identifying all the trees. Fairly easy, but a long day, and there were a lot of changes in marking out the reaches with Dana around, which resulted in measuring it out, then realizing we wanted to do something else instead, and having to remeasure. Honestly, I don't remember anything else from this day; I was pretty tired. However, we got Friday off for the 4th, so it was nice to come back to HJA and relax, knowing I didn't have to wake up early to work.

Stay fancy.

Day 3 - Lab Work

Almost a week late on this one, just never got around to it.

Spent the entire day working in the lab. Emily and I just analyzed fluorescein samples for 3 or 4 hours, which includes pouring some liquid from a vial into another type of vial (blanking on the name of it...), which we then put into a machine... A fluorometer? Something along those lines. It measures the concentration of the fluorescein to determine how much photodegradation occurred. Then we just input the data into the computer. Simple stuff, just took a while. The rest of the day consisted of making up more fluorescein and filling vials with it. Simple, but tedious.

Since it ended up being a short day, I decided to try out fishing at the lake. Well, I definitely caught some fish! I had never caught anything before, and I managed to catch a total of 7 rainbow trout in 3 hours. One even bit literally the second the hook hit the water; incredible. I don't have any pictures ready at the moment, but I took a picture of my first fish. All were pretty small, and one was small enough that I had to release it, but I ended up keeping 4 of them. Had a nice dinner that night. I ended up saving the other two to bring back to Corvallis for the 4th of July. Definitely a nice relaxing day.

Stay fancy.

Day 2 - Back in the Field and Feeling Better

I woke up this morning feeling much better than last night. An early start had me well awake by the time we needed to gather. We got a late start hopping into the cars, but Brian (the crew leader helping Matt), both Emilys (one is doing her own undergraduate research, the other is an intern just like me), and I ventured out to one of the streams. We did a full habitat survey, which ended up taking close to 3 hours over the course of 140 meters. This included measuring the bankfull and wetted lengths of the stream (I explained those terms in the previous post) every 10 meters, measuring the width, length, max depth of every pool plus the depth of the outflow (self explanatory, where the water flows out of the pool), estimating the substrate every 10 meters (the % of different types of rock sizes basically, using terms such as fine/pebble/gravel/boulder) using a quadrat, as well as measuring/estimating the dense wood (defined as wood that has a 10 cm diameter or greater) within and over the stream. I measured the bankfull/wetted/pools which I thoroughly enjoyed. I basically got to spend a lot of my day just walking in a stream and measuring the water, which was refreshing to stick my hands in. After that, we didn't have enough time to do any other serious work, so we decided to head back and take a break. We got back to HJ at 3:30.

Then at 5:30 we headed back out, with the addition of Matt, to collect all the fluorescein from the streams. Much cooler than the afternoon (it got up to 94 degrees here) and very peaceful. I was alone going up and down the stream, so it was a nice 30 minutes or so to myself in the forest next to a stream. In total, it took us 2 hours 15 minutes to get back, and probably close to an hour of that was spent driving to the spots. That will definitely be a burden this summer, just the travel time to get to the sites. But with this collected fluorescein, we will be analyzing it in the lab tomorrow all day. Although, apparently, a couple people will go out into the field tomorrow. So who knows what I'll be doing. I hope to stay in the lab.

Other than that, nothing else happened today. Played a little bit of Beer Friz and have just been relaxing this evening. I'm hoping to go fishing tomorrow after work; it's all I've been waiting for since I got here on Sunday.

Oh, and today I saw two frogs (not 100% on the species, but they were different - I can't quite remember their patterns), a few fish in the streams, as well as a deer (and maybe another just a few hundred meters away, although it was difficult to tell as we were driving by). A good day for all of us!

Stay fancy.