Weight loss update

Long post tonight, this way I can get all my health craze stuff out of my system in one big ass post. If you can't tell by now, I've been working very hard at losing weight lately. I've tried not to overload my blog with weight loss/fitness type posts mainly because it's a more personal thing for me. But every once and awhile, it feels good to share.


The weight just seems to keep dropping off at a consistent rate of 10 pounds a month. At this rate, I'll be around 240 by the end of the year! That would be amazing if I'm able to reach that, but I'm prepared to see it start slowing down. Obviously the fast weight loss is motivating, but I can't let it get to my head and get discouraged once it starts to slow down. (which it will)

If I had to say what my specific goals are, it is to get in the absolute highest range of the "normal" scale on the BMI chart. That would be a 24.9 BMI, which for my height would be a weight of 189. Now, considering the fact that the one time I felt like I was the healthiest I've ever been in my entire life I was at 195, I'm seeing 189 as a damn hard goal. I started out this summer with a 40 BMI score, which is extremely obese. I'll be excited to just get into the overweight scores, which would be a weight of 227. Maybe I'll throw a party or something. "Congratulations Shawn! You're now officially just Overweight!"

But seriously, I'm still surprised at how simple weight loss really is. Breaking it down to basic math helped me a lot. More calories out then calories in equals weight loss. The other main thing was completely cutting out fast food, aside from the occasional 6 inch turkey sub from subway. (with no cheese or mayo!) I have decided Fast Food is Hell on Earth. I spent some time browsing various nutritional information for a lot of chains and was stunned at what I found. I would add up a typical fast food meal I'd eat and find it to be anywhere from 1200 to 1700+ calories. That's more calories then I'm eating in an entire day now! Just crazy...

Speaking of fast food, there is something else I've been wanting to post about. Obviously, as part of this weight loss I've completely changed my eating habits, and reading a lot of information about eating healthy. One thing a lot of these books say is that after changing your habits you "retrain" your body to crave healthy foods and that you find yourself looking for fruits and veggies when you get hungry and want a snack. I would just like to state for the record, that is complete and total bullshit. Every single lunch hour at work, I see someone with greasy pizza or tacos or a nice juicy cheeseburger with fries. And you bet your ass I want some. I bike past a long strip of fast food restaurants and the smell alone is enough to make me crave the stuff. Sometimes I wonder if the only reason I don't stop and buy some food right then and there is because I don't bring cash with me on my bike rides.

I'm 99% sure I will always crave unhealthy foods. You know why? BECAUSE THEY TASTE GOOD. And if you try to tell me otherwise, you are lying to yourself. Pizza tastes good. Sandwiches with mayo taste better, potatoes smothered in cheese and sour cream taste better. Deep fried anything... just tastes BETTER! Therein lies the power of choice. Now lets just hope I can continue with the choices I'm making for the long term.

And don't try to pull some "enjoy unhealthy foods in moderation" crap on me, because it won't work. Not for my all or nothing personality, it just doesn't fly. I don't do things in moderation and so in order to eat healthy, those are the choices I have to make. I can just hope that after making the same choices over and over enough, they will get easier and easier.

Madden's 2006

No, I'm not referring to the latest football video game. We headed up to Madden's on Friday - the trip up sucked. There was some kind of accident involving a semi truck on the north part of 94, the traffic was horrible.

What sucked even more, the accident didn't even look that bad. There were more cop cars then accident vehicles blocking most of the road. Anyway, we made it in time for dinner so I guess I shouldn't complain. Our room view was awesome once again, and the weather was perfect all weekend.

Saturday was my big bike ride, the main thing I was looking forward to for the whole weekend. It was just awesome, take a look at these pictures. The trail was so smooth and straight, the weather was perfect. I will definitely be going back to this trail in the future - maybe not this year, but at some point. I did 32 miles in 2 hours of biking!! That's raw time, the cyclometer only measures time actually spent biking. The trip probably took closer to 2 and half hours with breaks for taking pictures and the longer 5-10 minute break I took at the half way point.

The rest of Saturday was okay, a nice dinner and comedian / magician. After that was a casino theme night that was pretty generous with the payouts. I turned $5000 into $200,000 in just under 2 hours, heh. Then you could buy raffle tickets for $10,000 a piece for prizes. I didn't win anything, which was lame. Some people won multiple times, because no one setup any rules or said anything like only 1 prize per person. Oh well - not everything is perfect.

This weekend is the big Anderson Labor Day get together, so we will be busy getting ready for that. I'm going to try and find some more time to post again later this week.

I like reality. It tastes of bread.

Don't expect much in the way of interesting posts this week. Added to my already busy schedule, I went and bought Dungeon Siege 2 on Monday. Just a little time killer video game that I'll probably play obsessively three times back to back in order to unlock all the difficulty levels. Can you say 100+ hours of gaming?

This week started out great since I decided to take a vacation day Monday. That night, I did a 25 mile bike ride with Steve. The cool news is that Steve signed up for the St. Paul Bike classic, so we will being doing that together! Should be fun and more enjoyable to have someone along for the ride. My brother also started his classes yesterday, which means I will see him pretty much never. At least we get to chat online while he is in class - his school has wireless internet and he brings his lap top with him.

My bro said something to me yesterday that I thought was interesting:

"You are the most zen person I know."

I took it as a complement. He is of course referring to the fact that I hardly get angry about anything. Sure, I get pissed off when someone cuts me off in traffic, just ask Andrea. But even she has said to me before, "How come you never seem to get angry?" Honestly, I'm not sure. In some ways, I feel like anger is the most useless of human emotions. I can't think of a single time in my life where anger served a useful or productive purpose. In fact, the few things I remember doing while extremely mad, are usually things I regret. Like punching a hole in a wall, for example. (which I was able to hide from my Mom for years) I can only hope my lack of anger will help me in fatherhood when I find an Xbox game disk broken because my daughter thought it should fit into the Gamecube....

Maybe I just don't like anger, because anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering - and that is the path to the Dark Side!

Who needs soft water?

Warning:The following paragraph will make very little sense to those not familiar with AD&D and/or roleplaying.

Dungeons and Dragons went a little long this Friday night. We started around 10pm and didn't finish until 5am. The last hour however, was a long discussion about the role of the GM, the players, and overall expectations. It was a bit heated, but some really constructive ideas came from it. I'm just a newbie GM so honestly, I need more work on things like being creative with situations the players encounter and coming up with interesting story ideas where I don't have to force the players into one single path. It's an interesting challenge, something I've never really worked hard at before. Hopefully our next session won't be for a few weeks, and I can use that extra time to refine my GMing skills!

Shirt says Congrats Shawn & Andi, SO CUTE!

Saturday was our first Baby shower. It was great fun even if not a lot of people were able to attend. You know us 30 somethings, our lives are so hectic! I didn't particularly enjoy the baby food tasting contest, but damn did that give me a new respect for what I might be feeding my baby some day! After the shower I hit up a decent bike ride and then played some Magic: The Gathering with my bro that night. Scott is trying to jam as much fun stuff as he can into this last weekend before he starts classes.

Today while grocery shopping I finally broke down and bought some rock salt for our water softener. I have been so bad at keeping the water softer filled with salt. I think since we've lived here, which was exactly one year this month, I've filled the water softener 2 times? I'll have to get better with that. :-)

This coming week should go pretty fast. Monday will be a long (24 mile?) bike ride with Steve. Tuesday night, Andrea and I are going to check out the birthing centers that we have decided to have our baby at. This is a change of venue due to some circumstances that have happened recently. I think it will be a good change, as we weren't to impressed with the tour of where we had originally planned on delivering. Wed night is our birthing class on breast feeding, and then this weekend we head up to Madden's Golf Resort for our company retreat. (and hopefully my first every 30 mile bike ride!)

Week in Review

No updates this week, I've been slacking. Seems like it's been a really busy week but at the same time not busy at all. Anyway, here is a week in review. As I mentioned, Andrea came back early from her conference. She had fun as she expected she would, even though at times it "gets really intense". She made it over to the Iowa State fair, but didn't get to spend much time there. She also proceeded to teach me a song she learned called The Button Factory (seriously, click on that link and listen to it). That about sums up why I can't go to these things. I can sit around and have philosophical discussion about life, death, religion what have you. But as soon as they break out in song, I'm out.

Wednesday night Andrea and I went to birthing class again. There are 2 more classes left, both focusing on breast feeding. Those are really important to us, so we are looking forward to them. But weds class just sucked. We ditched out only after an hour into the class because after the break they were just going to do relaxation stuff and watch a video.

Andrea's parents are coming up today to spend the afternoon with her, and then we will be going out to dinner tonight. My brother and his crew informed me they want to play Dungeons & Dragons tonight after that. I swear, it's like crack. You give them a little D&D and all of a sudden they can't get enough! Too bad my brother starts college classes again next week, so I'm sure that will put an end to weekly sessions and end up more like monthly sessions if we are lucky.

Biking Update:
Monday: 5.5 mile test run of the cyclometer. Seemed to work great!
Tuesday: 24.5 mile longest ride so far. The plan was to meet up with Steve for this ride. If it went well, he was thinking of joining me for the St. Paul Bike Classic. However, he ran into bike problems just as we got started, you can read about what happened on his blog.
Thursday: 19.25 mile ride

The plan is to do another long ride this weekend, and then next weekend do my first 30 mile ride up north on the Paul Bunyan Trail!

Tech Toys

After a quick 12-mile ride this morning I took my bike in to the place I bought it for a 90 day tune up. They basically just check your breaks and all the gears and give it a little cleaning. I also bought some new pedals because I didn't like the pedals that came with the bike. I think they were called "clipless" pedals that have some kind of locking mechanism for special shoes. Because of this, I could only use one side of the pedal. The other side of the pedal had these bumps on them that made it so I couldn't use that side to pedal. I was constantly looking down and/or taking my feet of the pedals to adjust the side, etc. It finally got annoying enough that I decided to replace them with some normal pedals. However, that wasn't the coolest new thing I bought....

I finally bought a cyclometer for my bike!! It will be awesome to finally know more accurate distances, ride times, average speeds, top speeds, the works! Hopefully it helps motivate me to keep pushing myself harder as well, which is a definite bonus.

Well, Andrea just called me a few hours ago to tell me she decided to come home early, so she will be home tonight. I was going to make some fancy chicken and rice dinner, but in the end I opted for the easier route: frozen lasagna and garlic bread!

I'm attacking the Darkness!

Last night we played some Dungeons and Dragons! This is my second attempt to get a campaign started as a Dungeon Master. In my first attempt, Scott and I tried to include our wives in on the gaming fun. That experiment failed miserably so I decided to just stick to the pure gamers this time around.

Trying to explain what D&D is and why it is fun to those that don't get it, is damn near impossible. I enjoy it simply as a creative outlet. Seriously, how often during our day to day lives do we really get a chance to BE creative? I know I sure don't. I get up in the morning, go through my routine, and head to work. Once there, I go through the motions, the procedures, what have you. Sure, maybe every now and then I get to use some problem solving skills, but that's not quite the same. You remember how when you were a kid you played make believe? (If you don't, then I'm really sorry) But if you do, then you understand D&D at the most basic level. It's just a way for grown ups to play make believe. What's so wrong with that?

Biking Update: This morning the weather was perfect. The plan was set, I had mapped it out earlier this week. With high 60's weather all morning I did my first 20 mile trek! I was able to finish in 2 hours, which included a 10 minute break around the midway point to rest and refill my water. As I came up to the last hard hill, all I could think was "this is going to suck, this is going to suck, oh man this is going to suck..." Before I could stop repeating that over and over in my head, I had reached the top. Wow. I finished strong and felt great. I'm definitely going out again tomorrow morning, the weather is just to nice not to.

After my ride I talked with Andrea on the phone for a few minutes, she will be back Monday. I then headed out to see Dukes of Hazzard all by my lonesome. I came home and did clean up from last nights gaming. Mt. Dew & chips everywhere!!

Midweek update

Sorry, couldn't think of a better title... Andrea is gone this week, at a Unitarian Universalist conference in Boone, IA. Actually, it's two conferences joined into one: Opus and Concentric. I miss her, but I'm glad she is having fun. She has really enjoyed past conferences. My brother and his wife are in the process of moving out - I know they don't think it, but I am going to miss them a ton. It was a fun summer even if we didn't get to see each other a whole hell of a lot. It was nice to just have once a week where we would all sit down for dinner and chat, even if it ended in me and Scott arguing about some random topic.

So all of a sudden, I'm home alone and it's really weird. I mean, not in a bad way. I'm used to being at home alone, seeing as how Andrea has been working nights for well over the past 4 years. But it's still a little strange experiencing it again. I had flashbacks of Idaho when Andrea was still in college and I was REALLY alone. Then of course I started thinking about how I should probably enjoy this week of solitude, seeing as how I probably won't have many quiet nights alone for a LONG time soon enough. :-)

Biking update: Last night I biked 18 miles - 4 miles over to Steve's place, and then we did a 14 mile loop together. (one of the routes he does) Tonight I did 15.5 miles and it felt great! I feel more and more confident about the 30 mile bike ride coming up next month. I just hope the weather continues to cooperate this week so I can get some more biking in.

Come Friday, I'm going to try and start some Dungeons & Dragons with my brother, and some friends of his. I've invested a bunch of money on books over the last few months for some odd reason, so we will see how that goes.

Would you look at that

After getting back from my weekend trip, I headed out for a quick bike ride even though it was kind of warm today. I wanted to visit my Mom and wish her happy birthday, and also I promised I'd tell her the name Andrea and I have picked out for the baby. (no, I won't tell you) On the way home, I felt like extending my ride out a little bit and ended up doing 13.5 miles. It felt great! After arriving home, I was met with a surprise.

(Feet covered with socks just for you Mike)

Just when I thought it would start to get a little harder to keep losing weight, I end up dropping another 10 lbs. One part of me feels like, "Why the hell didn't you start sooner! Keep it up!" And another part of me is just a little worried I'm losing weight too fast, and maybe it's not good for me. I'm not sure, I figure that when you have as much to lose as I do, it's probably normal. Even though 20 lbs seems like a lot, it's really not enough for people to notice. Well, except for my Mom. (Thanks Mom!) Fortunately, people noticing has never been on my list of motivational factors.

The truth is, I'm a bit afraid to admit my true motivation. Why? I don't know really, I guess it's simply because I've always believed that if you want to be healthy, you should do it for yourself. You shouldn't try to get healthy because someone else says you should or for some special event where you want to look better, or as I mentioned above, simply so people will notice. I'm sure you can guess the source of this new motivation, my pending fatherhood.

It's really a combination of everything I guess. From my desire to teach my daughter how to be healthy by example to simply wanting to be alive long enough to experience all I can about fatherhood. Do I wish I had been able to come to the simple realization that healthy = better on my own? Sure. But I've always been the type of person that doesn't seem to find change in my life until it is forced on me by some external event/force/experience/etc. (thus my alignment with Existentialism) I suppose it would make since then, that possibly the biggest event in my life is finally the motivation I needed. For now, I just hope I can keep it up and see where it takes me. Because tonight, I decided to cheat and enjoy a little Davanni's! (wheat bread, turkey sandwich with extra lettuce!) Although one book I read said you should stop using food as a reward, maybe I can get away doing it after every 10 lbs lost. :-)

Duluth Weekend

It's been awhile since I've had time to write anything, mainly because after Tuesday my week nights were super busy. Wed night was our weekly birth class and Thursday night I had to get ready for my weekend trip, which I'm going to post about first!

It was a super weekend for a trip up to the north shore, having been invited to spend some time with old college friends at a lake cabin. The weather was perfect, the company was great, and it was awesome to reconnect with old friends. It seems hard to think it's been 7 years since I graduated college. It sure doesn't seem like that.

Friday we settled in and caught up. We ended the night with some Mario Kart for gamecube and some Mario Party. Mario Kart was basically how me and my college roommates got through college. (original SNES Mario Kart and N64 Kart) Pretty much every weekend contained some amount of Mario Kart and Alcohol. Of course, we all thought our skills improved as our blood alcohol content went up.

Saturday we headed up the north shore to Splitrock Lighthouse. It was a lot cooler (temperature) right near the lake which was nice. We did some hiking and of course, throwing rocks into Lake Superior! If you've never done it, I can't really explain the addictive quality of it, but trust me, its just fun to stand out there and throw rocks for awhile.

We headed back to unwind with a nice dinner of northern trout on the grill and some relaxing trivial pursuit. And for the record, the NCAA tournament has 65 teams (not 64) because of something that happened back in 1999 involving a new conference. So HA! I then forced my friends to watch Napoleon Dynamite since none of them had seen it. It was met with mixed reviews, but I have spread the love of Ligers, YESSSSSS!

I've limited the amount of pictures on the front page, but there are a bunch more. Click here to see the rest of the pictures from this weekend.

Shooting in AV

Just when you think you live in a safe neighborhood, you wake up the harsh realities. Less then 2 miles from my house, a spot that barely 4 hours earlier, I had biked past 3 times doing multiple loops, a convenience store clerk was found shot in the head. Will they catch whoever did this? Will they ever discover a motive? Who knows... but regardless, violence this close to home is scary. About 2 years ago, at our former apartment in Boise, Idaho, the same thing happened. I had stopped at a Taco Bell about 3 blocks from our apartment at 9:30pm to grab some food. 10:00pm that same night, a man shot and killed his girlfriend in the Taco Bell parking lot.

As Andrea was leaving for work this afternoon at 1:30pm, apparently a channel 5 news van was in our culdesac. They approached Andrea asking her questions about our neighbors, who they tracked down through a license plate or something. They said it was in relation to the shooting. This seemed very odd, especially since our neighbors moved out about 2 weeks ago, and there doesn't seem to be any connection.

It's days like today I have serious doubts about my choice to bring a child into this world. When I hear about violence at Apple Valley High School, I wonder, "What is it going to be like in 14 years when my daughter would be going there?" Is private school the only answer to providing an education in a safe environment? (and along those lines, are the wealthy the only ones that deserve to live in safe, violence free neighborhoods?) I thought that AVHS was a pretty nice, safe, school - but that was 11 years ago. What will the school be like 25 years later? Is that the same as comparing an inner city school of 1980, to how it is today in 2005?

As much as I want to shield my daughter from these harsh realities of the world, I realize it would just do more harm then good. But how do you teach your kids independence at the same time wanting to protect them from all the bad things in life? Thankfully I have time to figure that out, but it seems like a very hard thing to come to grips with.