Back in Action

I keep telling myself that I'll update my blog more frequently. The problem as of recently is that I haven't had much to talk about. I haven't been as active as I'd like due to my knee, and I've found myself making occasional mistakes with my snacking habits which set me back a bit. In reality, I haven't done much to lose weight - it's been primarily to maintain my weight. Luckily, that has been the case, and my weight has been fluctuating between 205 and 209 pounds, which is fine by me. But, I'd like to change that.

The last week or two, I have found myself making it to Dixon more often - the only times that I ended up flaking out on going, was just because I decided to rest my knee rather than putting stress on it. I've been spending a lot of time on the ellipticals, because really, it's the only thing that I can do without making my knee uncomfortable. I can ride a bike, but for a maximum of 20 minutes, maybe 30 if I'm taking it easy. I shot hoops one day for 20 minutes and the jumping really got to my knee and I had a lot of knee pain for an hour or so. And of course, running is out of the question at the moment. Even more than 30 minutes on an elliptical can be stressful on my knee. But usually it's just uncomfortable during the exercise, and doesn't really affect me by the time I'm back home from the gym.

So, I'm trying to be more proactive about making it to the gym, even for half an hour. I need to be more active, and one problem is when I rest, I end up doing nothing during the day. Just getting to the gym for a bit will really improve my activity. But I'm also working on eating a bit better.

I've had a problem with snacking. One example is buying a bag of chips, and eating nearly all of it in one sitting. It's disgusting, but I've just been getting cravings lately. Because of that, I'm focusing on redirecting my attention towards healthy snacks, that I can just continuously chew on, that way, I'm not ingesting tons of calories. Part of my snacking is late at night, I just want to eat, even if I'm not hungry. So finding healthy and low calorie alternatives will be a good move for me. That will be a big focus for me, is just watching what I snack on, and making better choices.

Since I've been just maintaining my weight, and not really losing any, I've decided I need to set another goal. My goal last year, to hit 200 (which of course I'm now just barely above) by my birthday, really motivated me to work harder, especially when I saw the number on the scale dropping every week. Because of that, I figured it would be a smart decision to start up another numerical goal for my weight. And for that, I've decided to set a goal to weigh 183, by my birthday again. That would put my BMI at 24.8, or just in the range of Normal Weight according to BMI standards. Easy, right? I'm keeping this goal much simpler, for two big reasons. One, I weigh less than I did a year ago, and as I lose more and more weight, it obviously becomes harder to lose a pound. Second, I'm not running anymore. That was the ignition behind my massive weight loss last spring, was just running. It helped so much, motivation to become a better runner, and also that it was giving me amazing results. But that's not a viable option for now, and I've found that I lose weight slower when I'm working out at the gym, instead of running. 25 pounds is still a lot of weight, especially at my current weight and height, and it will still be a tough challenge. I am also creating an optimistic goal to weigh 175 by my birthday. Similar to last year, I had both a realistic goal, and an optimistic goal. One I knew I could reach as long as I kept up the effort, and another that I was hoping I'd reach, but knew it'd be tough to accomplish. 175 seems like a nice number for me, and I would be pleasantly happy weighing that much for the rest of my life. I also chose my birthday for my goal mainly because I have no idea how long this will take me.

So there you have it. Trying to crack down on my snacking habits, and still making it to the gym a little bit more frequently. And also having another numerical goal for my weight - 183 to be considered Normal Weight by BMI standards, and 175 as an optimistic goal, by my birthday in June.

I plan to post more often, I just need to make sure I have something to talk about. Until then, stay fancy.

Better Off Than I Thought

A week and a half later, I've been resting my knee quite a bit. Since I last posted, I think I didn't do any sort of strenuous exercise - the closest thing has been biking to and from campus - until yesterday. Finally, I made it to Dixon, and I really didn't do much there, but I needed to start. I wanted to stick to a bike, mainly because I shouldn't be doing any running, and the elipticals (which would probably be the best on my knee) were full. So I hopped on a bike, started at a fairly hard pace for 10 minutes, slowed down just a bit for another 10 minutes, and finished with a very intense 5 minutes (my maximum heart beat was just over 200 BPM at the end, which is the highest I've seen while on a cardio machine), and of course a 5 minute cool down. The whole purpose of it was to test out my knee on some strenuous exercise and see how it would handle. I iced it afterwards, and I really didn't notice much of a problem, so I know that as long as I'm not biking too much or too hard, I should be fine. I was thinking of going back to Dixon today, but I tweaked my other knee (left) and it was difficult to walk on. It's better now, so I'll probably be going back tomorrow after classes.

So regarding my knee, I will not be running unless I can't make it to the gym, in which case I'll be very careful about it. Nonetheless, I'll be turning most of my attention towards the gym, to keep to low impact exercises. I've been reading about what could be the problem, and some solutions to help. So far it just looks like icing regularly, taking things such as ibuprofen to help with any inflammation when it's acting up, and also exercising the muscles around my knee. But that last part can be tough considering that my knee hurts whenever I do things such as lunges and squats. So instead, I need to modify exercises, and work on things like 1/2 squats and such. After a little while working on some cardio, I'll probably transition into some leg exercises to strengthen those muscles a bit.

Oh, the reason behind the title? I weighed myself while at Dixon, and I weighed in at 205, which means that I'm only 5 pounds behind my absolute lightest. So with just a little bit of work, I'll be back at the point soon enough, and should continue to drop. I've been eating pretty well, not perfectly, but a lot better than when I'm back home in Lake Oswego. Mainly because of the control that I have over what I eat. And when I do end up eating a lot, I try to stick to healthier, or lower calories foods so I'm not over-endulging. I thoroughly look forward to weighing under 200 pounds.

I think that's all I will say for now, this post has taken me about two hours now, just because I've been distracted from the television in front of me. I don't have much else to say, so I'll end it. Until next time, stay fancy.