Please, Not Again

I fear I am getting sick again. It's strange, I haven't been majorly sick while continuously working out, which is good. But I started feeling the symptoms yesterday, and have still kept them today. Although I'd like to point out that after a run and a few miles of both riding my bike and walking, I do feel better than this morning/early afternoon. I hope that staying active is my key to both preventing sickness, as well as reducing how bad the sickness is on my body. If it doesn't get any worse, I can't imagine seeing anything bad come from it, no missed classes or missed workouts due to it, but if it does, my body will just become crippled, just like every other cold I get. But the fact that I'm still surviving on Saturday night, when I felt the symptoms Friday morning, is astonishing to say the least. Let's hope for the best.

I apologize for once again being a day late with this blog post, I just kind of forgot last night, after Nick was hanging out here for a while in the evening, and then wanting to get to bed, hoping to make it to Dixon this morning, on top of a run. I ended up feeling pretty crummy this morning, and decided of the planned run, trip to Dixon, and basketball game, I'd have to prioritize, and I decided to keep my scheduled run instead of the other two things. It was a good choice; I slept in and went out for a run. I'm on the second week now, which means that it's 2.5 minutes of jogging, and 2.5 minutes of walking, 5 intervals (instead of the previous 4), and of course a 5 minute warm up walk with a 5 minute cool down walk at the end. I can definitely tell the difference between last week and this week, and with the possibility of being sick right now (hard to breathe during the jogging portion) and then of course my ankle (I'll explain shortly), it's been a bit tough. But I'm up to 2.7 miles on the entire run (12.5 minutes jogging, 20 minutes total walking), and it's nice to be increasing my mileage, even if I'm still walking a lot of it.

Ah right, my ankle. So last I had talked about being home, well the next morning, I noticed a decent pain in my right ankle. I carried on, had a good interview at the Oregon Zoo, ate at the Killer Burger in Sellwood that just opened (at which the cashier recognized me from eating the Marine Burger on Youtube - will post the video just below this paragraph. Also talked with the owner, Mark, and had a nice chat), but my ankle still bugged me. I drove back to Corvallis and it just got worse. The next day, Malika ended up going on her Week 2 Day 1 run, even though I figured we would have a 2 day break between weeks. But I decided to try out my run nonetheless (I'd prefer it every other day anyways, rather than 3 days a week; gets in 7 runs every 2 weeks instead of 6), and it was a bit tough. I wrapped up my ankle, but 3/5 of the way through, I had to take a 5 minute break to get off my foot, and also to rewrap it, as it was a bit too tight on me. With the increase of energy, due to taking that break, I decided to push myself and run a bit more than the podcast told me to do, to make up for that break. Yet somehow, I managed to travel an extra 0.1 mile today than I did Thursday, even though I felt sick and didn't stop at all. Interesting. By the way, I use an app called Runkeeper, on top of my podcast, which uses the GPS in the iPhone to keep track of your mileage and route, as well as time and pace, etc.

I still haven't finished up my last 2 workouts of P90X, but that's due to my ankle, and I decided that continuing my running schedule was a bit more important, and I didn't want to kill my ankle with too much work on it. By the way, I thought it was sprained due to the pain and location, but as of today, it's been doing much better. So we'll see how it is tomorrow and if I have to wrap it up at all while walking. I might actually want to wrap up my left ankle (the other one) due to compensating for the lack of strength of my right ankle. I noticed it was bugging me a bit today.

I really want to make it to Dixon tomorrow, so fingers crossed, and if I'm feeling better, hopefully I'll make it. Get on a spinning bike for a bit of intense cardio, maybe do intervals instead of just a constant pace, and also shoot some hoops. I don't see any real need to lift weights at the moment, considering that I can do a lot of exercises here at my apartment on my own time.

It's time to start heading to bed, if I plan on getting to Dixon tomorrow morning, as I'll want as much rest as possible before hand. Stay fancy.

Oh Dear Me; One Day Late

Oh woe is me, woe is me. I forgot to post on my blog last night. Whatever shall I do?! Meh, whatever. I was pretty tired so I called it a night early-ish. So here's my blog, a day late, but not a big problem.

So let's see, Saturday morning I went to Dixon (the gym/rec center on campus) to shoot hoops again with Nick, and let me say, I had a wonderful time. I bet you're wondering why it was wonderful. Well I weighed myself on a scale there, and found out something magnificient. First off, my scale at home is 5-10 pounds off (10 pounds as of checking today, but that was with a bit of food in my stomach, and when at Dixon, I had been shooting hoops for an hour, so possbily a bit of water loss). But I weighed in at 240 pounds, and the last time I weighed myself at home I was 255-260 (knowing the scale was a bit high), and now it tells me 250. BUT NONETHELESS, I now weigh 240 pounds as of Saturday at noon. Wonderful news that I actually weigh less than I thought, but I've already lost at least 5 pounds in the last two and a half weeks, and possibly up to 10 pounds (hard to tell, since I've weighed myself at different times on two different days). I'm making some great progress so far, and it's definitely exciting to notice the changes.

On Sunday, I went to the Civil War basketball game that was in Corvallis, and it was one of the best basketball games I've seen. Unfortunately, my Beavs lost by 1 point, but it was sure as hell fun to watch. I also went for my second run in early afternoon and it went really well. Same thing as I did for my first run (2 minute jog, 3 minute walk) and I took a similar route as well (included a hill, but I ended up walking up it this time, coincidently) - I ended up traveling 2.09 miles, which was an increase of 0.25 miles, which is nice. I actually ended up with an increase of energy on my very last jog, so I legitimately ran the last 2 minutes, which was awesome, really challenging myself; I was incredibly winded aftewards though. And on the topic of running, I then did my third run this morning, and it was tougher this time. But then again, it was raining the whole time, was quite chilly, and the second half of it (while heading South), I experienced a really strong head wind that really exhausted me. But I'm excited for Friday when I start up my second week.

I've been postponing a few of my P90X workouts, due to being busy or just too tired. I only have two more workouts to do, and I would have done one tonight, except that I came back home for the night, which I'll explain why in a second. I'll do them over the next two days, and then I'm free! I'm going to still be doing weights, but on my own schedule. I'll be doing a schedule similar to:

Day 1: Run
Day 2: Chest/Back or Chest/Shoulders/Triceps
Day 3: Run
Day 4: Shoulders/Arms or Back/Biceps
Day 5: Run
Day 6 + 7: Rest, however I might throw in yoga or stretching depending on the week and how I'm feeling.

I will also be visiting Dixon more often, to shoot hoops, but also to throw in some cardio on the bikes or other miscellanious exercise to change things up. If I run into a day with horrible weather and I can't make it out for a run, I might postpone the run, but throw in something 'cardio-esque' from the P90X workouts like Kenpo for instance. Or go to Dixon, as I mentioned before. And then once I'm done with my podcast series, I'll start doing my own runs on my own time, and probably more often. I also hope in the future to start some HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), but that's a long ways away. Possibly a summer kind of thing.

Oh, and as I mentioned before, I came home for the night, and will be here until tomorrow afternoon. I have my interview at the Oregon Zoo in the morning, and wanted to be home the night prior, just so I didn't have to drive straight from Corvallis to the Zoo. While here, my dad and I tried Senor Taco in Lake Oswego (just up the hill from the Lake along Hwy 43) and it turned out to be AMAZING. And of course, cheap, to make it even better. I highly recommend it if you happen to be in Lake Oswego and want a quick, cheap, Mexican meal. Well anyways, I ought to be heading to bed so that I can be up, bright and early.

I'll make sure to be fancy tomorrow for my interview, I hope you keep it that way as well.

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

Just watched Gladiator last night. Had to.

Whew, where to start?! Alright, I'll quickly cover the stuff that I missed in my last post due to being in a hurry. My knee started bugging me when I was doing my legs workout, however, it's better now. I'm glad I won't really be doing anymore leg workouts for a while, due to running. Also, something I'm adding a lot of into my diet is green tea. Last I had heard, it was filled wih antioxidants to help prevent cancer. I read more information the other day, and firstly found out it helps keep you satisfied, which will one, fill me up a bit more than the usual water, and two, help make my stomach realize that I'm not all that hungry. Also, I forget the name of it, but something in the green tea also boosts your metabolism. So it's great to have in the morning, as well as times when you're a little hungry, and need something to tide you over. But being more satisfied to prevent snacking, and raising my metabolism, from the tea that I prefer over other kinds? Sign me up.

Wednesday night, I went with Ryan and Nick to Dixon (Rec. center/gym at OSU) to shoot some hoops. It was too busy when we arrived, so we went out to the near field and played around with a soccer ball and football. After an hour, went in to shoot hoops for ~45 minutes. However, my ankles took a pretty hard beating, and my shins as well, due to the small amount of running I did, but also the kicking. It's been YEARS since I've played soccer, so it was doing something very different with my muscles. But it was all fun, and due to a very sore right ankle, I've been icing it a bit and stretching it. Much better now, that, or I'm just used to it by now.

Alright, I'm never going to get to this, since I always have plenty to talk about. So I need to go over what happened during the 2 months that I wasn't posting. Nothing big or exciting. Let's see, winter break, I did... Nothing. So that was fun. And then I got sick around January 8th and was pretty inactive until the beginning of February. However, I got some cool new gadgets from Christmas. The most exciting to me and relevant to the blog is my pedometer, which I love. I always have it on me, walking/biking (although I've only ridden my bike once since the start of the term), when I work out, always (okay, not when I sleep or shower). Also got an armband for my iPhone, which is great. I use it sometimes when I work out, but it'll mainly be for running. Then there's a bunch of irrelevant things like movies, ornaments, a boomerang, and the list goes on. But, I also got a book, The Hunger Games. At first I thought, alright, cool, another book to read, and luckily, it's in the genre that I prefer. I read the first 1/3 in a couple days, casually. However, then I went on a rampage and finished it by staying up until 7 AM one night. About 7 hours to read it all. And I LOVED it. Can't wait for the movie. So then, naturally, I read the second and third (from the library though) books in the series pretty damn quickly as well. And now I can't stop reading! I then got The Hobbit/LotR in a PDF file and read The Hobbit, which I finished a couple weeks ago, and last week I finished Redwall, and currently reading the prequel (but published after Redwall) called Mossflower. I bought a set of The Hobbit and LotR, as I prefer to read the books, rather than text on my phone or computer, so I will be starting The Fellowship of the Ring after I finish Mossflower. Books - who would have thought I'd like books.

Alright, almost done. This will be slightly longer due to me writing the previous paragraph. Well, today... I WENT RUNNING. YEAH, I KNOW! I ACTUALLY DID. As I had previously mentioned, I was going to get started as soon as P90X was finished, which is next Tuesday, but a few things happened. Firstly, everyone started talking to me about running. Hannah and Jourdan decided to start running together, and they went today (not sure how that ended up going), as well as Malika who started up using the same podcast as me today. Before I continue on, I got the podcast called 5k101, and you can read a bit about it on http://runningmatemedia.com/5k-101/ and it's pretty nice, encouraging, and has some decent music to go along with it. So that was my first bit of inspiration to start running today (Nick is an honorable mention, but he's been working on running for a little while now), but I had one more big piece, which would be thanks to Malika. iRun for kids is the site for more information. But I'm going to be participating in the 5k (still need to register, but will do that soon, possibly this weekend) on March 17th. I won't be racing it or anything, but I just want to go for fun, hang out with Malika, and run/walk it to see where I'm at currently. It'll be nice to compare the 5k in March, to the 5k that I want to race/run (I say that because I'll be running, but have no idea where I'll be at by then) and see how far I've come by that point. But anyways, I decided that if I were to wait until after P90X, that means I wouldn't get started until at least February 29th, and more likely, I'd procrastinate a bit and wait a bit until my body had completely recovered from P90X, which could be anywhere from 1-7 days after that point. And then that'd leave me with what, 2 weeks of running to get me going for this 5k? So I decided with everyone else starting today, I'd start as well. Also, since Malika is using the same schedule as me, I decided starting the same day as her would be better, that way we can motivate each other a bit more to make sure we keep going with it.

Oh, I was about to sign off, and then realized I didn't even talk about my run. So the beginning week of this podcast has us jogging 2 minutes and walking 3 minutes, and doing 4 total cycles (20 minutes, plus about 10 minutes of warm up and cool down). I ended up doing about 1.84 miles (I actually didn't make it out the door of my apartment until the warm up was basically over, so I did lose some ground there) which isn't a bad start, considering I haven't run in years. It was great though, albeit a tough beating on my ankles, due to being overweight and the fact that you're pounding your feet against the cement. But yes, I loved it, and can't wait for Sunday (hopefully decent weather, since it's pretty crappy outside right now). I also ended up running up this really steep hill on my third jog of the podcast, and it was a bad decision at the time, as I lost my breath pretty quickly, but I felt by the end, it was a good enough challenge to add in there. I only went up the hill because it was a part of the city I had never been to, so I thought I'd take a quick look around. But now, I'm just glad I got my first run in, and will be glad to be going out there again soon. And an update on this matter, my last blog post, I was at 3-4 notches on my belt (I could only do 4 on a good day for at most a couple of hours before it got too uncomfortable), and now I can go the whole day on 4 notches, meaning in just a few days, I lost just enough on my waist to get to the 4th notch. A good feeling.

I know that was long, but I had to talk about my time away from this blog, even just for a bit. They'll be a bit shorter in the future now. Well, I guess it's that time again, to stay fancy.

Let's Get Down to Business

To defeat the huns!

Sorry, little Mulan moment. Best song ever, by the way. So the title? Well it's time to buckle down. After writing up my blog post 3 days ago, I decided I am really dedicated to losing weight now. I think it has to do with me putting down an actual number goal for my weight - it makes me more motivated. So since then, I've restarted my food log (kind of got bored with it and forgot haha) and I'm counting calories. I'm usually pretty accurate with it, but if I'm not sure of a number, then I will overestimate. Now, I calculated how many calories my body burns each day (without working out) and it came out to be 3,100 currently at my weight. So as long as I eat less than that, I lose weight. But at the same time, I don't want to get in the habit of always eating just under 3,000 every day. I want to be used to eating less, for when I do lose the weight, I don't gain it back. So instead I'm aiming for 2,000-2,400 calories per day. 2,400 calories is what my body would burn at my goal weight, so I should aim to get used to 2,400 a day. Realistically I aim for 2,000, because I'm gauranteed to throw in a few extra calories from random tidbits (say I grab a small handful of peanuts on my way out the door and don't write it down, for example). It also accounts for if I end up underestimating calories. I'd rather go a few less than a few over.

Now currently, I'm eating less than 2,000 calories a day (over the last 3 days), more around the numbers of 1,500 on average. Although I should really eat more than that, I also want to stop tempting myself of big portions and bad snacking habits. So I'm trying to train my stomach to be comfortable with feeling satisfied, rather than completely full as I've always been used to. If I get used to being satisfied for a couple hours before I eat again, that's better than eating until I'm stuffed, and feeling that way for hours and hours. However, if I ever end up feeling as if I haven't had enough food and am lacking serious energy, then I will make sure to eat some extra food. It can be very risky eating so few calories with such a high metabolic rate (due to sex/height/weight), so I want to be cautious. But so far, everything has been fine. The first day I was hungrier than I wanted to, but I survived. Today I had a problem, and that was that I didn't have enough calories in me prior to my workout, specifically little to no protein and not too many complex carbs either, so because of that, halfway through my workout I actually had to stop due to fatigue. So I took a short break and actually ate a little sandwich, about 175 calories worth. And that did the trick. So now I need to make sure I have some food in me prior to my workouts. I have some low fat granola with raisins (decent in fiber and protein as well), and add in some vanilla greek yogurt and some berries. That'll help get me some servings of fruit in my diet, as well as get me some protein and carbs which is what I need.

I'm going to keep this post shorter, due to having some other plans that I want to deal with here, so I want to wrap things up. In my next post I'll talk about my 2 months between my blog posting, and if I haven't talked too much in it, I can go over my plan for after next week (I start my 13th and final week of P90X on Thursday). But I've decided I will update my blog every 3 days, and I'll try hard to keep it to that. I might go 4 days on ocasion if nothing has gone on, but I want to make sure that I'm consistantly writing, even about nothing. It'll help with my writing in general for school and what not, so that's always a good thing, even if it is just a blog. Oh and before I sign out, when I started this blog, I was on my first notch of my belt, and sometimes on my second (a little uncomfortable, but it worked), and now I'm using my third and fourth notches. Always a nice sign. Definitely means if I've only lost ~5 pounds since this blog started, that I've gained a lot of muscle, due to losing at least 2 inches on my waist (you know, since muscle weighs more than fat).

That's all for now, I'm sure I missed something. I'll try to write down things in between blog postings so that I don't forget. Well I guess until next time, you ought to stay fancy.

Two Months Later...

Oh wow, just wow. So it's been two entire months since I last updated my blog. Now to be fair, I haven't had much to talk about until a few weeks ago, and then the procrastination sunk in. Just never got around to it. So now that I've remembered, it's time to write.

Where did I leave off...

Ah yes, that's right, my father's birthday, a week before Christmas, about to start Zoo Camp, and just relaxing during my break. Well, that's exactly what my break was like, relaxing. So relaxing, in fact, that I never worked out after the first week. I just needed a rest, and it was good. I feel as if my knee is doing better now (I believe I've mentinoed this, but not sure - my right knee has some sort of joint problems, and it's uncomfortable when working on my legs), thanks to my long break from working out, which is great. It still has problems when I first start to do squats and lunges, but I don't experience discomfort outside of my workouts (and after a few minutes it warms up pretty nicely and doesn't have many problems). But then...

Then I got sick. And not just the common cold, mind you... Well, except that it was the common cold; but this wasn't ANY common cold, this shit lasted for a month. Probably the longest cold I've ever had, it got to a point where I could go on living life again, but it lingered forever. Well, because of that, I could never start working out, because I just didn't have the lung capacity, nor the energy to handle an intense workout (even if I did half of a workout, it'd be difficult). However, I finally started back up on February 1st, after 7 weeks of inactivity (inactive as in working out wise - even then, still quite inactive due to being sick and on break). My last workout in December was a Yoga day, which was the 4th day of Week 10. I decided to start back up from the beginning of Week 10. I had made a lot of progress over the first 9.5 weeks that I was working out during, but I lost a lot of my strength unfortunately. Now, that's expected; my first workout with weights, I had to drop 5 pounds on all my exercises to be able to do the same amount of reps, and even then, it was hard to keep up with my previous workouts. But now, 2 and a half weeks later, I can tell I'm just about where I left off in December, which is fantastic news for me.

Further more, I do still have a bit more work to do to get to where I was previously, but I'm very close, and I can tell I've slimmed down on my waist just a bit more than before, so I've at least made that progress. My weight is still around the same, but I'm hoping by Spring Break to finally have made a dent in it. I never lost much due to a lot of muscle gain, and then over break I stayed about the same, losing a tad bit of muscle and gaining a bit of fat again (winter weather plus being back at home is really bad for my health). But, I'm finishing up Week 12 of P90X in the next 3 days, and then I have my last and final week of the program (yeah, with a 7 week break, but I don't care about that - just lost a bit of momentum). After that, I begin to run. Oh this should be fun. I need to get some new running shoes, but I figure I'll probably do that during Spring Break once I've started a bit and make sure that I actually get into it (don't want to waste money on shoes I won't use!); until then, I have some cross training shoes that are a bit uncomfortable for long distances or running (great for exercise, but the fit is slightly off for me), but they'll do fine for now.

Just a little bit more to write for now - I'll write up something in a couple days to go on about what else has been happening.

So I'm going to finally put down in writing, goals of mine to accomplish by my birthday (which is what I recognize as the beginning of Summer), June 15th. My biggest goal, is to lose 30-35 pounds (my weight fluctuates a lot, especially since I found out my scale at home isn't calibrated correctly! One moment it'll rest at 4 pounds (nothing on the scale) and the next it'll be 1 pound). To be more specific, my average weight (since it fluctuates as I mentioned) is between 250-255 depending on the day/week, and I want to weigh 220 pounds by my birthday. That's a big goal, 30+ pounds. But, at my weight, it can also be easy to accomplish at the same time (30 pounds of 250 is a 12% reduction, which would be the equivalent of losing 18 pounds at 150... Okay that seems like a lot still) due to the fact that I already weigh quite a bit. I really need to buckle down with my eating - my main problems are snacking, and portion size (moreso snacking). I need to work on eating less and resisting temptation; as time goes on, my stomach will shrink a bit and I'll be used to eating less. But until then, it's rough. My other goals are - running a 5k race in July (and actually "racing," by which I mean running without stopping, and actually going for a decent time, personally), and to be able to do 50 consecutive push ups. Yup, that goal I just started up.

The weight loss will come with time, eating less, starting to run, etc. I'll be focusing more on cardio, but still put in resistance training and anaerobic exercise so I'm not only doing one thing, and that will really help with my weight loss. One big reason is that I won't be working as much on muscle gain. My resistance training will be for three reasons - mixing it up by cross training, maintaining my muscular strength, and increasing muscular endurance (so being able to do more reps). On top of that, I have this new 50 consecutive push up goal. Now, I came across a site just last night about a planned schedule to get you up to anywhere from 50-100 consecutive push ups, in 6 weeks. Well, I realized I've never been good at push ups, NEVER. I can do 15 on a good day, and I struggle with it a lot. I usually do knee push ups actually. But I want to reach at least 50. It's a great chest workout, and I've always been envious of people who can do so many in comparison to me. So with some weight loss and working on push ups 6 out of 7 days in the week (might decrease how many days per week - for now while I'm doing fewer reps, I'm doing it every day besides my rest day), I figure it should be a pretty easy goal to accomplish, especially by Summer. I could probably push it to 100, but I really only care about 50 for now. So today I started out easy - 4 sets of 3 push ups (no knee, as I want the real deal) and then for my last set, maximum, which was 10 today. Doing that every day, and slowly increasing, should do me just fine.

(that's the site that I came across, onehundredpushups.com)

Alright, I've talked enough - this has taken me pretty long to write up as well. I still have more to discuss, but that will come in a couple of days. Until then, I'd prefer it if you stayed fancy.

After Care? More like AFTER FUN!

Okay, reading that title, makes me realize that someone might be lead to believe that whatever occasion we're discussing, is taking place after the fun occurs. Well that, my friends, is certainly not what I mean! To anyone reading that doesn't quite know what after care is, it allows campers in Zoo Camp to be picked up later than the end of camp, so that parents who work later than 4 PM can pick them up at a more convenient time. During that time, the campers get to do a various number of activities. Anyways, I'll be involved with that over the course of Winter Camp this break, and I'm going to put the FUN in AFTER FUN.

Well crap, I had meant to update this when I got home from Corvallis, but alas, it just didn't happen. No worries though, not much has been happening, but hopefully I'll post once a week.

Unfortunately, I haven't been working out much lately. I think it's just the aspect of being back home for the holidays that have made me increasingly lazy. But luckily, I've gone out for a couple of walks and have been doing a few workouts. I'm hoping to get more into a rhythm of doing my workouts this next week. Now on top of that, I need to start working on a better sleeping pattern, for realz. I'm hoping that having to wake up early today (7:30) will help me get started. I'm going to be going to bed shortly after typing this up, as I'm writing this up and watching a bit of SNL, but I don't need to stay up until 1 to finish it. I just have to face that going to bed at 4 and waking up anywhere from 8-12 hours later is just not the way to get through life; I really want to be on a semi-regular sleeping pattern, and so it begins.

That's really all I have for now. Pretty tired and not really in a creative mood at the moment to keep writing. Christmas coming up in 8 days (or 7 I guess, since it's after midnight now), today is my dad's birthday, Zoo Camp starting tomorrow, and I still have 3 more weeks of break. Ah, it's the sweet life.

So I guess it's the time, to stay fancy.

Procrastination at its finest

Bah. I haven't updated my blog in quite a while now. Everyday I think to myself, alright, tonight, right before bed, just sit down and write it out. I really do enjoy writing up these things, but it's been a combination of forgetting and just procrastinating, thinking I'll do it first thing the next day or something along those lines. but oh well, who cares? Because I'm updating it right now, and that's all that matters.

So let's see, where did I leave off? Whew, 16 days ago, crap. So I finally made it to Thanksgiving weekend, which was a blast. Firstly, Thanksgiving was great, I thoroughly enjoyed company of family, as well as being able to eat a bit more than usual, and I allowed myself a little bit of sweets. Piece of pie, some small muffins for breakfast, and a couple cookies. It was pretty basic, but glad that I didn't go overboard. I did have quite a bit of sparkling... Mango spritzer? I forget what flavor it was, as well as sparkling apple cider, which I have no idea how much sugar those things have in them, since it's not labeled, but I'm hoping it wasn't too bad. Nonetheless, I finished up the month, and I'm very proud of myself. In about 2 months, I've lost ~10 pounds, which isn't too bad, since I've put on a lot of muscle as well. I can tell, because after doing a workout today, I was able to increase my reps by about 30-50% depending on the exercise. I definitely feel better overall, but I still need to take it up a notch. I also did enjoy some Du's Grill and Blast Burger (great burger place in Lake Oswego that opened up recently), but did not make it to Killer Burger. Oh well, Winter Break for that.

I got a little behind in workouts, as I wasn't feeling all that great over Thanksgiving break, and am not feeling all that well right now actually, speaking of it. It hasn't gotten awful like I have gotten in the past, but I'm still not 100% healthy at the moment. But yes, I did get a bit behind due to a lack of energy during my break, however, I was able to start up my third phase (last 5 weeks of the 90 days) today, the first of December. Well I guess it's the second now, but whatever, I'm still awake. Which I need to work on going to bed earlier... Ugh. Oh, and on top of the 10 pounds, I've also lost about an inch on my waistline so far, which is always nice; just remembered that.

I'm excited for these 90 days to be over, because I'm going to really take my workouts to a new level during Winter Term, as I'm going to start more cardio on top of my workouts. So I'll be starting to run, oooo ahhh. I'm going to start it off very easy, as I don't have much experience running, so half walking, half jogging to begin with basically, and I'm hoping to be able to run 3-4 miles without stopping by Spring Break. SPEAKING OF SPRING BREAK, my family might be going to Hawaii for the week! Not guaranteed yet, but it's a possibility that we're looking into. I loved going to Hawaii 2 years ago. Was fantastic that my roommate at the time, Nick, lives there (when not at school obviously), so I got to hang out with his family there. Anyways, yes, one of my main goals is to be able to and to start running on a more regular basis by summer, so what better way to do it than, to start running?! I hope it'll go well. But I'm planning on just doing up to about 30 minutes of walking/running 3 times per week (probably same days I do weights), and obviously increasing my duration of running each week until I can run 3-4 miles. I'd love to be able to do a ten mile run by the end of summer, even if it's slow as hell, just to say that I can do it. But that'll happens when it happens; I need to take baby steps.

I think I'm going to wind this down now, as I really ought to be going to sleep now. But, I finished my month of little to no sweets, and limited sugar, but what to do for December? Well, it won't be a challenge, however, it still has to do with food. I have two big eating habits; I eat big portions (and sometimes lots of portions), as well as I snack a lot. So I want to work on my snacking habits. And there are three reasons why I snack a lot. One - I sometimes don't eat complete meals, or eat meals at irregular hours and times, so I end up snacking to make up for meals, sometimes healthy food, usually, not so much. Two - I snack because I still feel hungry, due to not having enough time to digest and not feeling full yet; this leads to eating more than I should and feeling too full later on, meaning I ate more than I should have. Three - I snack because I'm bore; I hate that one. Luckily, I don't do the last one that often, but it will happen, I'm bored, and just get the munchies and eat a bunch of random food around the house/apartment. So the best way to combat this is to write down what I eat. I'm not going calorie counting, I hate that. But I want to be conscious of what I eat, and when. So firstly, don't eat because I'm bored, drink some water instead, or get un-bored. Secondly, after I've eaten something, snack-wise, or even a meal, make sure I wait before consuming more food, to make sure I'm really hungry or not. If I'm not sure yet, drink some water in the meantime, maybe it'll go away. And finally, make sure I eat enough meals, and don't eat all my food as snacks. Actually make or have something that isn't snacking, and actually meal-worthy. So like I said, I'll be writing down what I eat and when, just so I can think to myself, do I really need to eat that? Or could I at least wait? I also want to get in the habit of drinking more water, plus it could end up filling me up, to prevent me from snacking.

On top of that, I want to watch how much fat/cholesterol/dairy I consume. I've been eating a lot of greek yogurt recently, and I just realized HOW much I'm eating. That, plus about 1 cup of milk a day, can really stack up. I'm also drinking protein shakes (about 1-1.5 cups after a workout as a recovery drink, as well as to get a little extra protein in my diet, but without adding in a bunch of simple carbs (sugar), such as chocolate milk does. One problem with the shake is that 1 scoop of the powder gives 65 mg of cholesterol, and if I drink 1.5 scoops worth, then that's a lot of my daily cholesterol right there. Plus if I add in greek yogurt to either my meals/snacks or to my shake (I tried that the other day), that's adding in another 15-25 mg of cholesterol, coming in at around 40% of my daily recommended cholesterol (or at least that's what the back of the carton says! Either way, I don't want to go overboard on cholesterol). Anyways, I need to watch those catagories of my diet.

Alright, that's all for now I guess. 'til next time, stay fancy.