A pact with the gym

There is this supposedly great program out there called Gympact that allows you to set up a punishment for missing trips to the gym, monetary punishments.
I have a friend who has used it and likes it and thought i'd give it a try.

The way the program works is you tell it how many days you are going to workout during the week (can change every week) and how much money you are willing to risk per workout if you don't live up to your end of the bargain.
Minimum of 3 workouts and $5 per workout.  You have to "check in" at the gym (a verified gym only) when you start your workout and check out when you leave and must stay there for at least 30 minutes.

Today I "checked in" when I arrived at the gym and when I went to check out almost 50 minutes later the app said that I failed because I left the gym too soon.  So somewhere between check in and check out the app lost it's WiFi or GPS signal to prove that I was there and decided that I left before I finished 30 minutes.

I'll probably give this another couple of tries for the rest of the week and see if I can figure out where I went wrong or if the app maybe just sucks on my phone or at my gym, then after 3-5 more try's I'll determine if I'm going to use the app or not.
The payouts (per week I think) are very minimal, estimated at maybe 40 cents per workout (while losing $5 or more per workout missed can add up quickly) so it's not really about making money but just trying to find that extra little incentive to get my fat ass to the gym on the days when I'm lacking the motivation.
Is $5 enough to make me get a workout in?  Who knows, we'll see.


Last July I posted some pics of myself when I was around 270.
Today I decided to take those same pics again (well, not all of them) and see if I could actually notice any results based on this one particular outfit.

April 2013

July 2012

April 2013

July 2012

The photo's were taken at two different locations and different distances from the mirror so we're not talking ideal conditions here but whatever.
I would have expected for the difference to be more dramatic dropping from 270 to 235 which is why I had set my weight goal to be 220.  However, after looking at these pics and seeing where I'm at I realize that I still have a good way to go still and think 200 is much more reasonable.

Today at the gym I warmed up on the treadmill for 10 minutes or so, then when an elliptical opened up I jumped on that and set my time for 30 minutes.
I was going to just do an easy 30 minutes and not push myself too hard but once I started I noticed that I was keeping a pretty good pace.  After a couple of minutes I decided to see how quickly I could do the first mile and pushed myself to hit it in nearly 8 minutes.
From there I slowed down for a mile and reached mile #2 at about the 18 minute mark.  Mile 3 fell at 27:30 give or take and I finished my workout by hitting Mile #4 at 36 minutes exactly.

Day Negative One

Tomorrow is Day Zero which is the official first weigh in before actually beginning this Journey!
The other day I wrote about how I have been slowly making some changes to my food intake in order to be healthier and maybe have a weight loss side effect and much to Josie's dismay I have shed a good chunk of pounds in the past two months (and Josie - it's not all from cutting out non diet soda which I rarely drank at that point anyway :)

I'm not going to over do these posts but I'm going to at least try to do them once a week to update my progress and how much I am struggling to meet my goals.

Last night, as my last "crappy" dinner before starting my actual challenge I went out and had a nice huge plate of Chicken Chow Mein semi-spicy.  It was bloody tasty and while it wasn't as bad as something like a rack of ribs it still hit the spot quite well.  I'll be planning on doing a bad meal or day at least once a month depending on how everything else is going.

That being said - my current packed lunch fits almost perfectly in with my daily point allowance which is nice.  I'm not looking forward to lowering my points because that means I'm going to have to cut some things out or actually make healthier choices.  I guess that's one of the drawbacks of NOT being so far.

Other than some random weight loss my main (current) goal is to be able to fit into my hockey jersey again (by the time the season starts up).
While I still technically fit into it, I'm snug as a bug in a rug and that, as the Spanish speakers say, is no bueno.

Every Smart Man

...Builds a shed over his most important Tool.  Yes, this is the battle cry of fatty's everywhere.  I had always told myself that when I couldn't look down and see little Beavis any longer that's when I'd make sure to lose some weight - but a combination of me having a small tally-whacker and me lying to myself it never happened.

I've been heavy most of my life and I've always been cool with it, but the older I get the more I realize that maybe I should be less heavy for the health of it.  For the past 6 years I've weighed in right around 280 pounds give or take, but just within the past few months I jumped on a scale and saw that I was really close to 300 and that kind of scared me a bit so I decided I really needed to make a change.

So, since that point I have been slowly making some changes and of course violently falling off of the wagon only to crawl back on it and start again.  For simplicity sake I'm just going to say that I noticed my weight at the beginning of April (Oh Ms O'Neil how I do adore thee).

My biggest weakness is potato chips. It's just too easy to pick up a bag or three and chow through them. It's also easy to just finish a bag without realizing it.  So, when I have chips I try to make it the little snack size bags to control my portions, however there have been a few times when I'll just randomly grab a big bag while at the store and next thing I know I've eaten like half the bag and finish it off the next day.  Control issues - Hand Raised.

Things that I have done:
I am at about 98% diet Dew.  Now I don't need to hear anyone's babbling brook of bullshit telling me how diet soda is just as bad as regular soda an whatever the fuck else people want to point to.  Fact of the matter is by switching to diet Dew I've cut out a lot of sugar.  A lot -A-Fucking-Lot!  Seriously.  In one 12 oz can of Regular Mt Dew there is 47 grams of sugar.  Even though I have cut back on the amount of Dew I have drank over the years I still go through a minimum of 4 cans of Dew every single day.  I crack one when I wake up, I have two at work and I have one (sometimes more) when I'm chilling in the evening.  I've been adding water into my diet and cutting out some of the Dew, but I still drink a lot of that shit.  So, lets just round down to 4 cans of Dew every day and you are looking at 188 grams of sugar in a day.  That is an awful lot of sugar to cut out of my fat-and-ever-increasing-ass per day.  So, if you want to tell me that Diet is just as bad for me, Fuck You until you can prove your case (and then I'll just switch back to regular biznatch).

I have cut out on eating out (I'm single so I had no choice *rim shot*) to 2-4 times per month.  I pack my lunch for work every day so that I am not tempted to go to buy any of the junk that I was consistently filling my body with.  No more Sam's Club Pizza.  No more Burgers from wherever.  No more Panda Express.  Not even Jared's favorite Subway meals.  No, Now I strictly control what I put in my body during the work day.

I have also cut back on my portion sizes during dinner.  I used to load my plate up and just eat like a pig.  now I carefully dictate how much I am going to eat by trying to stick kinda sorta stick to the recommended serving sizes.

So, those three changes have led me to drop from 300 pounds to 282 pounds (back to where I'm used to being) in about 2 months.

Now, on to part two of my plan which was just conceived like 2 days ago.  I've got a friend who is also trying to lose weight and has used Weight Watchers with some success in the past.  However, upon going back to normal eating habits she has gained her weight back (well, some of it) and asked me if I could help to keep her motivated in losing weight again and trying to keep it off.  Shit yeah - I'm all for a buddy system (because my motivation is pretty close to zero on my own).  So, I'm now in the process of turning my daily food (I pretty much eat the same exact thing every bloody day) into what-the-fuck-ever their point system is so that I can do the play-along-at-home game.  I also bought a bathroom scale so that I can actually weigh myself with some regularity and I can see how my changes are affecting me.  I'm hoping to gain a bit more motivation and maybe add in some exercise (which I keep telling myself and you guys that I'm going to do) in order to help improve the results.

End result, I'm going to look sleek and sexy and all you mofo's are gonna want my body (just the ladies, the guys will just want to be like me).

So - today is Day Negative 3 as I'm officially starting on Monday.  I'm going to have one outrageous meal this weekend before beginning and I'm actually kind of looking forward to it.

And now I leave you with this:

April O'Neil Coz Play? OoOoO-La-La!