Despite my two wheeled diversion I still managed to find time for workouts. I actually just finished up Week 7 of the Couch to 10k iPhone application from Felt Tip. It’s been a fun and well designed little application so far and it’s helped us to keep on track and following a controlled regiment for our race in the fall. The program is 13 weeks in duration with 3 days per week of running. It’s essentially an interval application that starts with 30 second running and 4 minute 30 seconds walking 7 times in week 1 and ends with you running for the entire duration of a 10k race when your done in week 13. We’re about to start running for 5 minutes and walking for 1 minute for about 70 minutes total in week 8, wish me luck.

Do you have supportive crabs?

In my random snippets of train time, when I wasn’t reading cycling blogs, I’ve been listening to a good health & fitness book on audiobook (more at a later date on which one) and they had a great analogy that really hit home with me the past few weeks.

Working out and getting healthy is a lot like crabs in a bucket.

People around you tell you what you can’t achieve, they often times tell you your wasting your time to try to lose weight or get healthy. They make fun of what your eating and are always making excuses as to why they can’t do it or better yet they want something for nothing. When you do succeed, they resent your success and don’t want you to get any further. They’re dragging you down like crabs in a bucket, each one pulling down anyone that manages to get above them.

What’s weird (and regrettable) is that often times the people closest to you pull you down and are the worst offenders of all … Poor choices are easier to justify when others around you are making the same poor choices.

Be responsible for all of your results, positive or negative, and realize that the choices of those around you influence your success so surround yourself with healthy positive people, not emotional vampires.

Do you accept responsibility for your positive or negative state? Are you responding to or excusing your current state?

Anyhow, on to the weigh-in … I’m going to do a summary up to last week, last week, and this week all in one swoop.

Previous Weight — 280.4 lbs (on 6/9)
Last Weeks Weight — 278.6 lbs
Current Weight — 276.8 lbs
Change In Weight — -3.6 lbs in 4 weeks

Not what I’d call inspirational but at least I’m down right? Progress, not perfection!

In order to own up to the last month and to see if I can’t improve on my losses, here are some things I’ve been doing differently that I think have led to poor losses this month and what I’m going to try to do to squelch them.

• Less Circuit Training — I’ve been running more, usually 3 days per week, and I’ve still tried to get weight training in for one day which leaves 2 days of workouts. For those I’ve either been cycling or doing the elliptical trainer at the gym. The fact of the matter is my body loves circuit training and I feel amazing when I do it. I’m going to get back to 2-3 days of circuits and 3 of running (till after the race) and double up on a circuit day doing traditional weight training. This isn’t so bad as I can do a quick 20 minute circuit routine after a heavier weight session. My rides are going to have to be seen as above and beyond more than replacing a workout.
• Bad Summer Food Choices — The heat and our laziness has led to far to many meals out. No, not every night or even close, it’s mostly just the weekend, but my body doesn’t react well to hardly any food from restaurants in their buttery high salt goodness. We need to squelch the multiple weekend meals out and stay on track. A free meal and maybe a healthy meal are about all I can handle before my body rebels.
• It’s Hot & Sticky — I’m just lazy at night in the heat and don’t want to cook. About all I can do here short of wearing a backpack air conditioner is get unlazy and push through it. We’ve been swimming a few times with the kids which has been fun and helps to cool off. The side effect of swimming though is a stop on the way home for some ice cream (part of those bad summer food choices) … hey, swimming and ice cream go hand in hand! I know … I know … less ice cream stops.

I’ll keep you posted in the coming weeks to see if I can pull these changes off. I think the food change is the largest contributor to my poor month to be honest. I haven’t been missing workouts, just changing the types of workouts I’ve been doing.

Goal Adjustment

As you may have noticed I missed my goal of 275 pounds by the end of June. I was 3.6 pounds from the goal. I knew it was going to be challenging but thought I could do it. I was certainly on track at the beginning of June but four weeks of poor performance will trip anyone up.

Due to missing this past goal and because it was so critical to my birthday goal (end of August) I’m going to need to tweak my next goals to make them actually attainable. Rather than shooting for 250 by 8/28 I’m going to shoot for 260 lbs. That’s still 16.8 lbs in the next 7.5 weeks which I think is quite challenging especially given the past four weeks and the fact that the summer is only going to get hotter.

I’m hoping for some big weeks but I don’t want my goals to be based on hope, I want them to be based on hard work and to actually be attainable.

What do you think, doable? Crazy? How are your summer goals going thus far?

Anyhow, I thought I’d share a nice laundry list of what I ended up with on this sweet bike.

• 2010 Lynskey Cooper Titanium Frame Size ML in Satin Finish
• Alpha Q Carbon Fork
• Cane Creek 110
• SRAM Force Front and Rear Dérailleurs
• SRAM Force Cranks (39 / 53 x 172.5)
• SRAM Force Brake Set (Front & Rear)
• SRAM Force Double Tap Levers
• SRAM Force Cassette (11 x 26)
• SRAM PC1070 Chain
• FSA Wing Pro 31.8 Handlebar
• FSA OS190 Stem
• Michelin Pro 3 Race Tires 700×23
• Mavic Ksyrium Elite Wheelset
• FSA SLK 31.6 x 350mm Seatpost
• Selle Italia SL Carbonio Flow Black Saddle
• Cinelli Cork Black Bar Tape
• Speedplay Zero Chromoly Pedals
• Sidi Dominator Mega Shoes

And here are a few quick pictures (aka bike porn) of the bike itself.

As you can see there’s quite a number of cool components to oogle over. For the short distance I’ve ridden it I can already say it’s amazing. My average speed is noticeably higher, I can stand and attack and not feel like my bottom bracket or frame is going to explode, and I feel like there is a crazy amount to learn and strive for with this bike. So far I couldn’t be happier and really think this is going to help my fitness greatly.

I had my first embarassing biking incident last evening. This is my first bike with clip in shoes so I’m a 100% novice at using them. They feel great while riding but I’ve only had to stop and clip out while riding a few times. Last night when I was coming home after a short ride I clipped out on my right foot and proceeded to tilt and fall left, hard onto my hip. I scuffed up my new seat, got freaked out that I broke my bike, bruised my ars and my ego as well as my neighbor was sitting there watching me.

Needless to say I’ll be clipping out both feet all the time upon arrival from now on.

I’m happy to report, though a bit hesitantly, that I will have more time to post on the blog because my bike researching is complete. No, I’m not skipping buying a bike and nothing bad happened to me. I did however encounter a really really good deal on a road bike that was one of those right place right time kind of finds. I know it’s accelerating my goal gift a few months but my wife is on board and thinks it’ll help keep my workouts on track and keep me motivated this year. What do you think?

While I was researching my bike options including components, frames, saddles, proper bike fit etc. a bike showed up in the Lynskey Loft that was steeply discounted. The loft is where they place slightly used and new bikes discounted to clear their onsite bikes usually due to cancelations, bikes they used for photo shoots, or demos. Anyhow a new Lynskey Cooper with an SRAM Force build showed up with a steep enough discount that it fired off my early purchase alarm. The bike had only been used for photo shoots and had never been ridden plus it was a 2010 bike. To own a titanium bike now would be amazing!

Yes, as you’ve already guessed I pulled the trigger on the bike … actually it should be here some time tomorrow. I’ll post pictures when it arrives … it really is an amazing bike with amazing components. Now I just have to keep doing awesome over the next few months and I won’t feel guilty for pulling the trigger early.

I know you may be wondering how bike researching stopped me from blogging. First, you have to realize how detail oriented I am as well as how anal I am about researching all options for everything I do. Second my schedule for free time is fairly tight, I have several hours per night on a typical night but that includes time to workout and assumes that our kids go to bed without trouble. Something had to give and it wasn’t going to be my workouts, unfortunately it was my blogging.

Anyhow, enough explaining … I’m geeked about the bike and plan on seriously augmenting my workouts with some nice early morning rides every week. Details and ride information to be posted in the near future.

Weigh-In Update

It’s been a few weeks since I last weighed in due to some scheduling and laziness on my part. Combine that with bad Sunday food choices, like on fathers day, and I didn’t want to stress myself with a bad weigh-in. I instead wanted to focus on workouts, nailing our running schedule, and not falling off plan which I’ve done well.

I’m still planning on weighing in next week for my end of June goal of 275 pounds. I think I’m a bit off from the mark but I’m planning on kicking some butt between now and then.

How have you been doing? It’s been a while since we’ve talked.

I was pleasantly surprised when I started riding this season that not only was I able to go a long way, even on the first ride, but I was able to do it without a sore behind. Heck, I was even able to tackle the hills with some tenacity and came out wanting more. These are things that were much harder last year when I was 60+ pounds heavier. My bike also seemed to be less stressed this season with my lower weight and I was having a ton of fun.

Are You A Clydesdale or Athena?

I’m sure your asking … ummm, a what? Yea I was at first as well … most people dont take to kindly to being called a massive horse. Cycling is normally a sport of 140-160 pound riders on sub 17 pound bikes and a few of the high end bikes can’t even be ridden if your over 190 pounds. If you’re over that racer weight you’re kinda an outcast or in this whole new Cyldesdale category of cyclist.

A male is referred to as a Clydesdale and a female as an Athena (nicer than a horse I guess) and your in these categories if your over 200 pounds. I’m sure your thinking like I am, that’s most of America now days isn’t it? It seems like it to me at least but maybe I’m a bit jaded being in a community of people working on losing weight and getting healthy.

Carbon Fiber or Titanium

Given my special weight constraints while cycling I’ve been trying to research bike components and frames that can handle the stress I will put it under without folding the frame or requiring a lot of maintenance (aka $). I’m sure your thinking I can just drop into any local store and grab a bike and I’ll be just fine right? No, that’s not how I really roll nor would I recommend anyone do that.

I really like to have high quality components with solid craftsmanship and I’m going to be putting upwards of a 100 miles in a good week onto this bike. Try doing that with a Walmart special at any decent cadence or speed and come out alive. The difference in shifting, braking, accelerating, road shock, noise, or a million of other things is very noticeable with higher quality components. As the adage goes, you get what you pay for.

Right now I’m trying to narrow down the frame material. I’d like to graduate out of Aluminum (my current mountain bike) and into something stronger, stiffer, and lighter. I’m not at all concerned about the weight to be honest, the options just happen to be lighter and I should be the one losing the weight before the frame needs to. I’ve been looking closely at Carbon Fiber (CF) and Titanium (Ti) as options for the frame.

My biggest problem right now is weeding out the opinion from the reality when it comes to CF. I really love what the manufacturers are doing with CF, check out the frame on the Trek Madone 4.5 and the Look 566, a few of the CF bikes I’ve been checking out. Pretty sweet ahe? I’m just concerned about the things people claim about CF like:

• It’s fragile and cracks easily — Drop it on the ground or against something, sliding in a crash, hitting anything small and you can easily render the frame unsafe.
• It fails fast — When it does fail it fails catastrophically and very quickly at that. There are a lot of horror stories online about CF frames collapsing seemingly out of nowhere.
• It’s hard to get warranty claims fulfilled — Because of the fragile nature of CF number of manufactures seem to deny claims unless you do tons of fighting.

Some of these have merit and some not so much, it’s just hard figuring out the reality from the opinion. If you happen to know some details I’d love to hear from you.

I know people online tend to vent a lot but the mere presence of these stories cautions me. I’m not overly harsh on my bikes, actually the bike mechanic said he was impressed with how clean my bike and frame were given that they were 10 years old. Despite that though I have dropped it a few times and I’ve actually crashed trail riding at least 3 times. It’s hard for me to imagine that my expensive frame could be toast after a small crash or fall against a flagpole or something.

This is what’s led me to look at Titanium (Ti) as a frame material. I’ve specifically been looking at the Lynskey Cooper and Litespeed Xicon frames. They’re the only two frames remotely in my price range as Ti is pretty darn expensive. Fortunitly for me there’s a glut of Ti on the market and the economy is depressed thus manufacturers have responsed with cheaper frames.

It’s still very light (not as light as CF), extremely strong, and nearly impervious to scratching or other small damage especially if you go with the natural frame and not painted. The weakest point in a Ti frame actually is the weld which is much easier to inspect visually than every square inch of the frame like in CF. About the only things people can say bad about Ti is the price and the fact that the frames can’t be shaped as creatively as CF.

Bike Test Riding

I’m hoping to ride all of the bikes (or close cousins) before dropping the coin on one. I started this past weekend trying out a Lynskey R330 frame, it was the only Lynskey the LBS had but they could order me a Cooper. Unfortunately it was also tricked out with SRAM Red components, their top of the line group set. It can only get worse from here and while I was primarily interested in testing out the feel of the Ti frame it was nice to try out the SRAM shifting technology (more on that in a later post).

I was able to accelerate quickly on the Lynskey with little to no flex in the frame, very much the opposite of my aluminum mountain bike. The road noise wasn’t really noticeable or jarring but I wasn’t able to ride it very far either. It was certainly a completely different ride than my mountain bike, that’s for sure. I tried accelerating, stopping, fast turns, slow turns, hitting bumps on purpose, and some quick road obstacles and the frame was very stiff and responsive. Nothing in my limited skill set seemed to cause any concern while riding it.

I was mostly concerned about accelerating and how flexible the Bottom Bracket (BB) felt. Since it did so well I’m very excited to see if I can find an actual Lynskey Cooper or Litespeed Xicon to try out, easier said than done but I’m determined to find them as I have high hopes for these affordable Ti frames. I’m also planning on test riding the Trek Madone 4.5 or a low end 5 series as well as the Look 566. I’ll keep everyone posted when I do.

Previous Weight — 285.8 lbs
Current Weight — 280.4 lbs
Change In Weight — -5.4 lbs

That was way more than I expected. I was down a bit a few days after last weeks weigh-in but this is crazy. I have to admit I feel it this week, thinner that is. I’ve ventured into a new smaller bet loop but it’s not quite comfy yet. My pants and shirts that I just bought are all feeling big already and the other shirts I kept out of the box are downright ginormous on me.

I’m a bit more confident now in hitting this months goal weight of 275 pounds as that’s only 5.4 pounds away now. Last week it was a bit more insurmountable at 10.8 pounds. What a difference a week can make!

My goal for this new week is more of this last week, lots of focus and determination. It also helps a ton that my wife is firing on all cylinders now as well, two motivated people are always more powerful than one.

Do you have a significant other helping you along the way?

It’s Friday, I’m going to start on Monday.
I can’t start today, I’ve already eaten bad, tomorrow I’ll do it.
I’ll start on the first, I’m to busy right now.
I’ve already eaten bad this weekend so what’s a few more days.
I just wanna relax, it’s been a crazy week.
I don’t want to waste this food I’ve already bought, once it’s gone I’m all in.

The list goes on an on. Every time I wanted to start I could think of a million reasons why waiting a bit longer just made more sense. Convincing ones self that tomorrow is “close enough” is much easier than realizing that today is yesterdays tomorrow.

Stop The Insanity

Get off the couch, put down the snickers bar, and just start changing your life. Stop making excuses or future broken promises and do your self a solid instead.

Start now, heck start yesterday! You know what you’ve eaten the past 24-48 hours. Write it down and start from there. Waiting till tomorrow will get you nowhere quickly, there’s always another tomorrow waiting to take it’s place.

I’ve dealt with being sick, having sick kids, hurt backs, sore muscles, bum ankles, a pregnant wife, holidays, vacations, and a host of other obstacles and yet I still stopped the insane tomorrow promises and decided to live in today. I still found time to workout and eat right.

Yea, you might have to watch less TV, there’s a shocker. You might even have to get up early (or stay up late) to do your workouts. The key is to just do it and keep doing it however it works for you. Get creative, get crazy, just get moving.

You can do the same thing I’m doing … if I can do it I’m certain that everyone who really want it can as well.

Life Happens, Get Over It

You will fail at something along the way, yes I said you will fail … deal with it. Just don’t be afraid of it and don’t expect it not to happen to you because it will and if you think otherwise you won’t be getting on track for a long while.

What you have to do instead is plan for it to happen. No, I’m not telling you to sabotage yourself and go buy a chocolate cake and I’m not giving you carte blanch to eat bad whenever you want. Instead I’m tell you to prepare for failure by resolving to not give up and to not let that failure cascade till it gets out of hand.

If you have a bad meal or miss a workout no biggie. Don’t stress on making it up by working out more or skipping meals, that just leads to a host of other problems. Instead, just don’t eat another bad meal and make sure you don’t miss your next workout. It’s a simple solution to a problem that can seem overwhelming and riddled with guilt.

The key is to get going and once your going don’t let life stop you from living. You can still enjoy a nice meal out, a BBQ with friends, an ice cream splurge here and there and all without guilt … just don’t make it every meal and know when to stop.

Life will throw you curveballs in the form of food and obstacles to working out. Your challenge is finding creative ways to roll with the punches and keep being that healthy new you and to NOT give up and restart tomorrow. You and I both know how easy those tomorrows become days, weeks, and years.

The weekend wasn’t perfect but we did really well overall considering it was a lazy holiday weekend. We had two meal out when we ate bad but other than that we ate really well and even managed to barbecue a bunch of food on Monday. Are we as perfect as I’d like, no, but we’re doing the best we can while still pushing to be healthy.

Enough banter, now on with this weeks weight-in:

Previous Weight — 288.4 lbs
Current Weight — 285.8 lbs
Change In Weight — -2.6 lbs

After being up last week I’ll take this loss and run with it. Like I said, being sick it’s been hard to workout but I’ve still managed to get something in, maybe not as long as I’d like, but still a workout. No, I’m not crazy and working out with a fever, that part is gone and I didn’t work out then … I slept. This is the aftermath of the sneezing and coughing collateral damage. Nothing a little motivation and determination can’t cure!

Running Update

As you might remember, my wife and I are training for a 5.7 mile race in October. To get us on a plan and an organized schedule we started using a couch to 10k application on our iPhones. It’s a lot like the couch to 5k version except that it’s obviously designed for a longer race. A 10k is a tad over 5.7 miles so we figured it made more sense to use this application while training instead of the the 5k one.

Anyhow, we’ve completed the first three days of the program, actually did day three yesterday. So far so good … the intervals are really easy right now, only 30s of running and 5 min of walking for about an hour. It works up pretty quickly though so I’m not complaining.

After having not run for a few months my feet are still getting used to running on real cement and not a treadmill. I’ve been weight and cardio training for about 6 month now in my Vibram Five Fingers (VFF) but running is still hard on my feet.

After day three yesterday the bottoms of the balls of my feet are bruised again. I think my form is a bit off, maybe I’m coming down too much on my forefoot and not enough on my midfoot. Also, walking fast for me is actually harder than running in the VFF, call me weird. I actually had to switch into my regular shoes yesterday to walk home after we finished running my feet hurt so bad.

We have a few rest days now and then we’ll be back at it doing longer intervals. I’ll keep everyone posted how it goes.

Goals Update

I wanted to writeup a quick blurb on how my short and long term goals are faring. Entering into June I have a goal at the end of the month to be at 275 pounds. Obviously that’s a little over 10 pounds away which will mean that I’m going to need to drop 2.5 pounds per week over the next 4 weeks. Totally doable but certainly a significant challenge. I’m obviously going to keep the goal since I know I can do it but I’m going to have to be spot on this month.

I’m a little behind on my birthday goal of reaching 250 pounds. Nothing to cause me to cancel it but having a few weeks of slow to no losses if putting the goal seriously at jeopardy. Depending on now the June goal goes I may adjust my birthday goal.

How are your goals going for the summer?

Anyhow, when I look at the old photos as they scroll by I’m struck with just how big I was. I look in the mirror or windows of passing buildings now and almost always do a double take because I look so different. I’m actually thin … well maybe not thin but I’m certainly a lot thinner than before. Unfortunately as I was reminded the other day I’m actually still quite fat.

It was one of those moments that instantly tears down your self image. I was riding my bike from my house to the local bike shop (LBS). It was about to start raining and my wife was meeting me there as I was dropping my bike off for the annual tuning (I have some unreachable high gears and no skills to fix it myself). We were planning on walking the kids and bike but the rain threw a kink in our plans.

Anyhow, I was flying along and coming up on an intersection with a 2-way stop but my direction had no stop and was clearly right of way. Some guy flys up to the stop from the mother direction, breaks, clearly sees me and then jerks forward, breaks again, and then guns it causing me to have to slam on the breaks else I crash into him. I was flabbergasted … he obviously saw me otherwise he wouldn’t have paused but why the heck did he gun it?

Anyhow, I holler “Nice Breaking!” at which point he flicks me off. Really? This was somehow my fault that he doesn’t know how to drive or follow the rules of the road? We then exchange some loud choice words (all while I’m still moving away) at which point he yells “Keep peddling tubby“.

Now I know this was all in anger but it shows people true perception of me as still being fat. I never thought of myself a being thin, more being thinner than I was. I’ve had a lot of people tell me I look great but this is the first time in a year and a half someone has called me a fat name.

It made me feel about two inches tall and very angry. Had he stopped his car I’m certain there would have been an altercation. More because of my bruised self ego than it being worth the trouble. In hindsight I know he was dumb and his insult was him acknowledging his mistake and grasping for something to insult me over.

I know I should have just moved on instead of yelling but all of the hindsight in the world doesn’t make me feel any better at someone still viewing me with a FAT label. I see that I’m not thin but I’ve come so far … I’m not quitting or anything and I didn’t binge but I still feel crappy and angry and self conscious again about myself in the mirror.

The first thing I did as I pulled up in front of the LBS was look in the window at my reflection. Was I that fat still? When will I have this damn fat stigma and label removed? It’s so frustrating and blows my mind, the whole situation and his reactions during it.

I’m just ranting now … sorry.

Have you had a similar thing happen to you on your journey? How did you handle it?

Previous Weight — 287.8 lbs
Current Weight — 288.4 lbs
Change In Weight — +0.6 lbs

That’s a gain of a little over half a pound … I’ll take it and move on. I wasn’t expecting a loss this week, especially given that I took 9 days off from tracking or watching like a hawk what I ate. I knew it was mostly a water weight gain but it was still a gain. It’s certainly a testament to circuit training that I was able to drop 3.4 lbs of water weight in 2 x 20 min circuit training workouts and 1 x 40 min weight training workout. I would have done more but I’ve been kinda time constrained lately.

My goals for this coming week is a really clean food week with lots of exercise. At least one workout session per day and if I can fit two then even better. Usually when I do two it means a long walk with the family or maybe a bike ride with my daughter in the trailer. I also want to make sure that the holiday weekend doesn’t blow up into anything more than a nice opportunity for some healthy BBQ’ing.

Do you have some holiday weekend goals?

My First Interview

If you’ve been reading me for a while you know I’ve posted a few times on my use of Lose It to track my food and exercise. Heck I even wrote up a detailed review that was picked up on twitter and the Lose It facebook page.

It turns out that the creator of the awesome Lose It iPhone application recently signed a book deal to turn Lose It into a book. I know it sounds weird but Lose It is about the tracking and usage of the dietary and exercise information combined with the creating of the community more than it’s about the application itself.

Anyhow, as a result of my success with their application and because they saw my review they asked it I’d be interested in an interview to possibly be included in the book. You can guess what I said … YES!

This was my first interview by anyone about my weight-loss so I was very excited. It was about an hour long and was the first with maybe more to come in the future. I pretty much just told them my story from start to finish focusing on the last 18 months using Lose It and how I lost the weight. We discussed details of what I ate, how I worked out, when, and other things like motivation and community support. It was a lot of fun to talk about and I can only hope I didn’t blabber on or mumble too much (I tend to mumble when I talk fast and get excited about something).

Wish me luck, I hope they include my story. Have you ever had an interview about your successes or journey in health & fitness?

I had initially planned to workout hardcore and eat perfectly last week. Unfortunately I didn’t do either, at least to the degree I’d initially planned. No, I didn’t fall off the wagon completely … instead I took the week off to relax and unwind with the family. This translated into eating well for most of the day excluding usually dinner and maybe a snack. I also managed to get a workout in almost every day including a trip to the gym, a few 1 hour bike rides, and a few runs with our new running stroller.

All in all I felt pretty good with the weeks decisions. I did overindulge a few times but it certainly didn’t explode into all out food overdose. I was up ~4 pounds of water to 292 and this morning I was down to 289 after some killer circuit training and clean eating. Most of that gain can be attributed to two bad meals over the break (yes, I still weighed in daily) so overall I feel like I balanced things fairly well.

I don’t know if I’m going to weigh-in this week but I will track my weight to ensure I’m back on track and moving in the right direction. I guess I should weigh-in to be honest … though it’s not like I’m trying to hide my gain or anything. A data point is a data point so I might as well I guess. Flip flopped in the same paragraph … lol.

Thanks for all of my Lost It friends that sent me messages asking if I was ok. It always feels good knowing there are people out there watching my back. I probably should have posted something more on my blog but I didn’t, sorry about that.

Healthy Living Summit

I don’t know if it was fate or pure luck but I happened to check twitter last week about 30 minutes after the tickets for the Healthy Living Summit (HLS) went on sale. The site was reporting that they had already sold out but after tweeting back and forth a bit with some folks I just tried a few more times and was able to get a ticket. So lucky me will be attending the HLS in August in my local Chicago.

I’m particularly stoked about HLS because it’s so close to my goal weight date of my birthday at the end of August. I think it’d be awesome to meet a ton of the bloggers whom I read regularly and who provide so much daily inspiration and motivation. Reaching my huge goal combined with meeting everyone would just be a ton of fun and very exciting.

About the only thing I’m a bit nervous about is that apparently there are only going to be like half a dozen males in attendance at HLS. That’s like 4% of the attendees, yikes … talk about minority. I knew that health and lifestyle blogging was female dominated but I guess I figured more males would signup for a conference in Chicago. I was wrong … I’ll just have to represent my peeps well <insert-male-gang-sign/>

How was your weekend?

Of course it was sitting on the porch awaiting our return after a long walk with the kids, bummer. No biggie though, we took it out for it’s inaugural run bright and early this morning with the kids. Here was the path we took:

We did some simple intervals and started getting our feet ready for some dedicated running. For me it was also time spent getting my feet used to running in my Vibram Five Fingers again. My feet felt pretty good and I might have been able to go a bit further but I was starting to feel it in the ball of my foot. I tried to stay focused on form, landing, and tempo which really helped.

Here’s a fun shot of me and the kids with the new stroller. As you can see we opted for the red stroller instead of the blue one. The blue stroller was like a two month wait and to be honest the red/orange one is much safer in the early morning light and will be cooler on hot days.

Overall we really like the new stroller a lot. The unpacking was really easy and other than unfolding it all we had to do is attach the three wheels which took all of 2 minutes … easy peazy!

It moves like butter and almost didn’t feel like it was even present when we were running. Since we didn’t run that fast we didn’t need to lock the front wheel but I can tell that once we get our pace up it’ll be nice having the locking wheel to control direction.

After we run more I’ll post more information but I was very excited about sharing our impression the first weekend.

It’s Finally Official

To round out the great weekend running news we officially signed up for our first race. We’re running the 5.7 mile Mackinac Island Great Turtle Run on October 23. I know I’ve mentioned it before but the registration was closed for a while due to trail usage disputes (according to the organizer). I checked again tonight though and saw it was open so we jumped in and registered. Now on to the training!

Did you have any fitness fun this weekend?

First and foremost I want to say up front that I’m not a Beachbody (BB) coach though I did almost sign up to be one. I almost got caught up in the hype and I hadn’t even bought anything yet. It’s kinda like Amway in it’s addicting potential.

All you have to do is make all of your friends & family ridiculously uncomfortable guilting them into buying your wares and then transform your blog into an infomercial device to sell the BB products. Top that off with an endless back-patting verbal splattering on Twitter and other social networks like Facebook and you’d be rich in weeks … right?

Well maybe you don’t have to do all of those things but it certainly felt like that was what a number of the coaches were prescribing. I had no less than 7 of them telling me my website was already perfect to sell the products and all I had to do was add links to my store and it would fly off the e-shelves. When I’d ask them any minor details about my site or me they knew nothing. When I asked them details about the BB workout programs they were selling few knew anything other than how awesome they were. When I asked them about the shakes and how they compared to Myoplex or FullStrength I got nothing.

How can someone possibly think they’d know what I should use my blog for if they don’t even know where I’ve been and how I got there? Why would I suggest a workout program, or a shake for that matter, if I haven’t used them for some extended time period myself and actually seen a benefit above what I already do? It’s just crazy to me their perspective and approach to selling all things BB.

The last thing I want to do on my blog is endlessly pitch or sell something to all my users, especially if I’ve never used it. Do I have links to Amazon for things I use like DVD’s or equipment, yes of course. It’s one thing to suggest things that I 100% know have worked well for me and quite another to turn my site into a BB marketing war zone for something I’ve never even tried.

My site is about my journey to a fitter and healthier me. It’s about what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, what’s working, what isn’t, the challenges, joys, and sorrows of my journey. It’s not a commercial, it’s just me communicating via the written word my turbulent journey.

If I were to try a BB program, which I am planning to do as I want to try P90X because I love circuit training and it does look solid, I would post about my personal usage of it from the perspective of a heavy guy trying to keep up and get healthy. I’d post what worked, what didn’t, and anything that might help other overweight people be better prepared for it if they chose to try it. You might have already seen similar informative postings from Tyson and Amy Mac. Like them, I won’t convert into a commercial to drive sales and create followers to grow the BB pyramid bigger. Instead I’d do it to share whether the program worked for me, not because I wanted to sell more programs for BB.

To all of the BB coaches who spam Twitter or the web or maybe think I’m just wrong, if you really want to make a difference (and not just sales) I challenge you. I challenge you to actually add to the community, create something new and interesting and then share it. Don’t just tweet about a sale, a new diamond tier follower, a free shake, the latest marketing promotion, or tag lines to get new people in your pyramid. Actually add to the fitness conversation and create something new and original.

Maybe you share your journey to becoming fit and healthy? Maybe you actually post something critical and informative about the lessons you’ve learned with the programs your selling. You have actually used them all right? I don’t care what you do just be original and add value instead of noise.

In an already confusing health and fitness market the last thing we need is more marketing hype and people shoving the wrong solution down peoples throat as a one size fits all answer. If your not a part of the community solution then you are the problem.

Definition of community — a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists

Have you or others you know had similar experiences with Beachbody or other fitness programs / trainers?

Here it is … I’m an anomaly when it comes to careers, there I said it. Now your probably wondering what that means. Well that’s all I’m saying … just kidding. On to the long drawn out story, sorry it’s how I roll … grab a coffee and take a peek into my weird thought processes.

Job != Dissatisfaction

I grew up in a household where we were reminded almost daily how much our parents hated their jobs. Every single day, in one form or another, we were reminded of this. Sighs, yelling, anger, or just the statement “I hate my *%#@ job” were normal communications and gestures of hello.

When your young you wonder why they’re doing it if they hate it so much? Why not change jobs? As you get older your realize it’s hard to pick a job, keep a good family balance, pay bills, find security, etc so you want to make sure you pick the right major early and find the job that fits because you never want to have your kids see you dreading every single day.

Why would you want to hate your job? Why would anyone want their kids to be reminded of that hate every day?

It’s because of this that I vowed to never hate my job and if I ever did I’d change it. Whether that change was working to improve it, transferring internally, or finding a new job I will always strive for job satisfaction and balance. No I’m not crazy and yes I realize that all jobs have their moments of pain and anguish, it is a job after all. There is a difference though between hate and short term pain.

What I want from a career

For me a career (not a job) is about working with smart people, being challenged, challenging others, and feeling like my knowledge and expertise are appreciated and supported. Finding a job that has all those things can be maddening and for me I’ve changed jobs 8 times including working for myself twice in my 12 years since graduation.

Here’s an interesting thing I’ve noticed about my career timeline, you can almost exactly correlate my ups and downs in weight to my job changes and associated amounts of stress that said jobs introduced. It never fails that historically some kind of external stimuli / stressor caused something in my already fragile lifestyle change to fall apart and I’d resort to not working out or eating right. As you might imagine a good work / life balance is on my list of career must haves now.

On with the news

So with all of that out of the way what is my news? As you’ve likely already deduced I’m changing jobs, hopefully for the last time. I’ve been consulting the past 6 months and while it’s paid work I don’t find it rewarding nor is it what I’d call stable. I’ve been looking for the right job for a while now and it had to have all of my prerequisites especially the work / life balance. There’s no way I can succeed at this new lifestyle if I’m constantly fighting a battle of stress and balance at work.

Well I think I’ve found that company and I’m starting there in two weeks. I’m taking a week in between jobs to relax with the family before jumping right back in but I’m excited and really hopeful for the opportunities that have been presented to me there. The people, the environment, the challenges, and the balance all appear to be present. Wish me luck!

Do you love or hate your job? Does it hurt or help your healthy lifestyle?

Previous Weight — 289.0 lbs
Current Weight — 287.8 lbs
Change In Weight — -1.2 lbs

Wow, like I said on Monday I’ll take any loss this week and run with it. The funny thing though about the loss is my historic trend which is now -1.2, -1.2, -3.8, -1.2. Does anyone else find this weird?

My goals for this next week are to eat clean all week and weekend excluding my standard free meal. I want to see if I can’t jumpstart the next few weeks now.

No More Excuses

These past few weeks have been far from stellar in terms of random meals out and giving in to food cravings. It never fails that at the exact same time every year, usually around April or May, I relax a bit and everything falls apart. I let a few indiscretions creep in here and there, what harm could it do right? Wrong! As can be seen from my weight-loss timeline it’s always resulted in destruction, chaos, and failure.

Not this time, not again, I’ve worked to hard this year to see it fall apart again.

I won’t make excuses any longer
I won’t accept failure
I won’t have a bad snack because I’ve “earned it”
I won’t over consume because it’s a holiday, moderation works best
I won’t let my food pleasures or free meal cascade

I’m so close to my goal weight and while it may seem like I’m being hard on myself I have to prevent this pattern of action from propagating further. I’m at a critical stage where I need to stay focused and on track. I know what works and what doesn’t, I know what’s right and wrong, I just fail sometimes to make the right decision after I’ve seen success for a while.

Not any more, I’m making no more excuses from this point forward. It’s back to basics baby!

Running Duallie Style

In an attempt to get my running groove on and get some quality cardio in with my wife we’ve been shopping around for a quality dual running stroller. If you can’t work around the rug-rats schedule then just include them in your workout right? Anyhow, if you know of a good one please drop a comment. We’re leaning toward the one on the right, it’s a BOB Revolution Duallie Stroller and has some great reviews. We’re going to check it out tonight at REI and see if it’s all everyone says it is.

One thing we did notice while testing out the different ranges in strollers last night, it’s night and day difference the more money your willing to spend. The lower end $240 stroller is not even close to the $650 stroller. The smoothness of the roll, the built in brake, the front wheel locks, the quality of the seating, the storage, and more … like most things you get what you pay for. I’m hoping to find something middle of the road like the one from BOB. Whatever we do decide to purchase you can be sure I’ll post my thoughts on it.

On Friday morning rather than have a free dinner we decided to do a nice free breakfast since it’s been a while and we wanted some yummy pancakes. So after that I went to work and ate soundly until the evening when I fell out and had ice cream again. Strike two …

On Saturday I had a great first half of the day but then we ate out for dinner and had Stir Crazy. That isn’t itself as bad as it could have been but not controlling all that starch they put on those dishes (what else do they spray in there) and not really knowing the exact calories always makes me feel like I failed. Strike three …

Finally for dinner last night we had everyone over for a simple Mothers Day dinner and everyone wanted pizza and sundaes. I didn’t go absolutely nuts but I won’t lie and say I didn’t partake either. I regret it some but I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. Strike four …

Battles are not Wars

The salvos were fired, they were all direct hits, and I lost the weekend battle over food. I did have some small victories in my workouts in that I did them, both of them, and burned a ton of calories on the ARC trainer (see below). I also had some small victories in all of the other meals throughout each day, it’s not like I ate complete garbage all weekend, just select meals each day.

While the battle was lost the war will be won by the other days I eat and live well. I’m on track today, my motivation has not waned, and I’m working hard to see a loss on Wednesday if at all possible. I’ll take anything this week and be thankful for it.

Traditionally after a free meal I’m up ~ 3 lbs of water the following morning. After several bad meals in a weekend I can be up 5, 6, 7+ lbs of water which is crazy. I was fortunate this morning though that I was only up ~3.5 lbs of water … it could have easily been worse. I think if I kick it when I kick it over the next three days I can turn that gain into a small loss.

Weekly Workouts Recap

Here’s a recap of my workouts for this past week.

Monday, Morning (20 min)

2 min warmup, 18 min circuit training using 30 Day Shred by Jillian Michaels. I did Level 1, not because I’m on level 1 but because I like to change it up. I was also short on time this evening with the kids being rough.

Tuesday, Evening (20 min)

More shred, mostly due to time constraints. Rather than miss a workout I’d rather get 20 minutes in of something.

Wednesday, Morning (45 min)

Another circuit training DVD from Jillian, No More Trouble Zones. I love sweating during these DVD’s, circuits really kick my butt and make my body feel like its growing in so many ways.

Thursday, Day Off

Today was an off day.

Friday, Workout Failure

Nothing today either … it took forever to put my daughter down and she was up late. I hate when I fall asleep putting her to sleep but it happens. We decided to party hard and went to bed really early as well so we got some much needed sleep. I know, excuses excuses.

Saturday, Morning (60 min)

I went to the gym and got a really solid workout in on the ARC trainer. I set it at 35-40% resistance and went for an hour even. The machine said 1500+ calories, not to shabby.

Sunday, Morning (50 min)

More ARC training fun … I’m trying to burn off a lot of the calories I’m eating this weekend. Figured I’d optimize the burn with a machine that burns a lot.

This Weeks Battles

My goal this week is to work out every day, no off days, no excuses. I’d also like to get 2-3 workouts in with my wife. Now that she’s back on program and ramping up her workouts it’d be nice to get that extra boost of motivation that we always give each other with a good workout.

Finally I’d like to get the bike (and maybe running shoes) out again this coming weekend. I’ve got 73+ mile still in my May workout goals and I’ve got the itch for some high cadence riding.

Did you win your battles this weekend?

I know your asking yourself why would I get excited about such a call? That answer is actually quite easy, because this time I had a huge box of items I’ve been dying to get rid of. No, it wasn’t full of sapranoesque body parts … it was my fat clothes!

You might remember my posting on the boxing of the clothes? Well they’ve now left the building for good! Gone are all of my 48 – 56 inch pants, 4 & 5 XL shirts, and other random parcels just as large. I hope they’ll help someone but I certainly hope that person absorbs some of the focus and motivation I may have oozed onto them these past months.

I was also thinking that I wish I could have written a little message to accompany them that someone could read when they bought the clothes. I’d imagine it would read something like this:

Dear Future Owner,

I hope you wear these clothes with comfort and satisfaction. I wore them for many months and they served me well but decided to donate them because they no longer fit me.

No, I didn’t grow into larger clothes. Instead, after many many years of wearing similar clothes and being overweight I decided it was time. It was time for a change in perspective, a time for some self control and motivation. You want to know the funniest part? Like most people I failed repeatedly but what I never did was quit trying to be healthy and fit.

Should you ever decide to do the same I can also tell you this, it will not be easy and it will not be short. I know this because I wore these clothes and have an idea what your going through searching for them. No, I have no idea how you got to where you are or what your life story is but I do know what it’s like to be your size. I know it’s not easy and there are many things you can’t do in life.

What you should know though is that when you decide to change you’ll feel amazing, you’ll have a new found love for life, and you won’t stop smiling. It’s very rewarding and empowering but all I can do is suggest that you try and guarantee that the new you will be very thankful later.

Sean

A bit corney I know but to the point and from the heart. Have you ever had a message that you wish could be passed on like this?

Previous Weight — 292.8 lbs
Current Weight — 289.0 lbs
Change In Weight — -3.8 lbs

Wow, now that’s what I’ve been looking for. It’s been 3 weeks since I last saw numbers that weren’t -1.2 so I’m ecstatic with these losses. That brings my rough total for April to -10.4 lbs. It also means I’ve reached another one of my goals to lose 100 lbs (since 1/1/2009). So I’ve got a triple win … I broke the trend from the last few weeks, I’m in the 280’s now, and I’ve lost 101 pounds since last January.

As a small aside, I’m still on track with my goal of 275 by June 30th but it’s going to be close, I can’t have too many bad or unproductive weeks.

My goals for May are:

• Lose 10 lbs
• Bicycle 100 miles
• Start running again
• Sign up for a 5k and the 5.7 miler in the fall (if registration opens)
• Setup a WordCamp fitness blogger meet up

All doable and yet still challenging. I’m most excited about the biking, it’s been a blast lately getting out for my early morning weekend rides.

Have you set your goals for May yet?

One of the most instrumental and detailed applications I’ve used on the iPhone and iPod Touch that has helped me a ton in the past 16 months has been LoseIt. It’s currently available free on the iTunes AppStore and also has a website component. Yes, free as in me wearing my old size 56 pants free. Sorry, bad imagery there.

Just to get it out of the way, I was neither compensated nor asked to do this review by anyone. I am doing it purely because I love this application and have found it hugely helpful to lose almost 100 pounds (only about 2 pounds to go). Besides it’s free so if you don’t believe me it costs you nothing to check it out and see for yourself.

This review is quite long and thorough. If you looking for a small writeup, this isn’t it. If you want an idea of all of the features available and whether I find them useful then this is your place. Sit back with a snack and read on if your interested in learning about LoseIt.

Setup & Goals

I haven’t relaunched the application from scratch in a very long time. I’m going to tell you what I remember of my first setup experience. I remember it as being fast and to the point. It asked about your goals, gender, height, and other information like email (optional but used for backup and other things). In the end you get asked questions to fill in your program information that you see in the screenshot on the right.

You can go back at any time and change your information which is nice. Their stock goals range from maintaining to losing 2 pounds per week in half pound increments. As you choose your goal you get a visual indication in the form of a date that tells you how long it will take you to reach this goal. This is very convenient and helpful because it reinforces immediately that it’s not a race and that you need to know practically how long this is going to take.

If your a glutton for punishment and want to lose more weight, or maybe you want to gain weight, you can further customize your journey by adding or subtracting more calories from their recommendation. Personally I setup my LoseIt to lose 3 pounds per week by selecting 2 pounds from their standard view and customizing it to remove an additional 500 calories per day (remember 3500 calories are in a pound). I only yesterday removed those 500 calories because I was having trouble hitting it and I’ve already lost almost 100 pounds using LoseIt.

Your Day At A Glance

This is the first screen you usually see when launching the application. It gives you a rundown of your budget, calories consumed, calories burned, and net calories remaining for the day. As you can see my day was pretty solid on Wednesday as I burned a ton of calories exercising (circuit training and a long evening walk) and even after eating I was still 700+ calories in the green.

You can quickly change into the week view by selecting it from the segmented control on the top. You are then presented with a nice overview of how your doing for the week with a prominent budget bar so you can visually see where your targeting. You also see a summary for the previous 4 weeks with indicators showing if you were above or below your weekly totals.

My one complaint about this view is that you can’t control anywhere in the application what day of the week you start on. Personally I’d choose the day after my weigh-in day. For them it’s always Monday which seems odd to me. It would also be nice to quickly touch the week indicators to jump to that week instead of having to use the arrow buttons, but that’s a nitpick.

The final view on your day at a glance is your nutrients. This is where you get to see the meat and potatoes of your program and how far you are off your nutrient goals. I wasn’t to far off on the day in the screenshot since I shoot for a 33/33/33 split for my Fat, Carbs, and Protein. You can see for the week overall I was a bit closer than on this day in particular.

One thing I’d like to see made available are goals for nutrients. Whether those goals are percentages or total grams I’d like to set my goals and see visually where I am in relation to them. Again, I know where I want to be so it’s a nice to have.

Entering Foods

Lets talk a bit about entering foods into LoseIt. This is where the application shines but also has some work to make it easier. As you can see from this shot I’ve entered all of my food for the day. Along the top you see your budgeted calories, calories from food, calories burned from exercise, your net calories (budgeted – food + exercise), and finally how far your under (or over) your calories for the day.

This is where people get confused, especially if they don’t see calories burned from exercise as increasing the calories they can eat. I think it would behoove LoseIt to make this configurable to let the user decide how they want it displayed. In the end I try to make sure my food calories are less than my budget but at the same time if I burned a ton of calories exercising I make sure I’m overall just under.

You can add food from your day at a glance view or from the Log view. From here it takes a minimum of 4 touches to enter an item, which is best case and assuming you don’t have to search. It’s kind of annoying having to touch so much but you get used to the workflow and get fairly proficient at it. I really wish the developers would learn something from the Groceries app how to optimize entering many items at the same time.

As you can see you can select what meal your adding the food to and what source of foods you want to choose from. The built in database of foods is available offline which is nice and convenient when your out and about. It also has quite a bit of depth to it, just don’t expect any regional or local odd foods within the app, you have to enter those yourself.

I find that I select from my previous meals quite a bit, especially since I repeat the same breakfasts and lunches. There are a few weeks of previous meals available in this list.

One cool feature in the foods that you might not notice at first is that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of unique icons for the foods. I swear the icon designer was either bored or very dedicated because I’m always surprised at how many unique fruits, veggies, meats, drinks, nuts, etc have icons. Kudos to them for this attention to detail, it really adds to the user experience.

That actually reminds me of another annoyance (aka feature request) I have for LoseIt. I don’t just eat Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and Snack. I eat 6 meals per day and hate that I have to group all even numbered meals into snacks. Please please let me specify the number and name of my meals. This would be the biggest feature ever for me.

Finally actually searching for food … It’s pretty much self explanatory. You type what you want and it searches for it. If your in the My Foods section it’s an active search that adds and reduces as you type but if your typing in the Search Foods section it doesn’t search until your done.

As you can see the search results from the Search Foods section is segmented based on where the food is from. There are categories like None (for foods you have at home), Supermarket Foods, and Restaurant Foods. The databases for the supermarket and restaurant foods is quite nice and pretty accurate. I have however seen discrepancies in calories and other nutrition data but to be honest a few here and there isn’t a biggie, it’s not an exact science it’s just an estimate. Besides all companies reformulate and tweak serving sizes etc so I don’t expect perfection here. I would however like the ability to edit existing food entries from their database or at least clone them but they don’t yet have this feature.

Entering Exercise

Adding exercises is just as simple as adding food. You can quickly choose from your previous exercises that it remembers as you do them or choose from a huge list with bazillions of exercises like archery, broom ball, hunting, kickball, table tennis, yard work and everything (literally) in between. Most of the exercises have you enter a distance and/or duration and some even require that you select an intensity level.

If you can’t find an exercise that’s no problem, create your own by giving it a name, duration, and number of calories burned. You can then reuse it in the future and it will attempt to calculate your calories based on the time you choose next time. Nothing fancy but it certainly works well.

Friends

This is one of the newest features for LoseIt, the ability to add friends and watch & support each other along your journey. You can quickly and easily add a friend if you have their email and they have LoseIt. Obviously they have to approve you as a friend (within the app) but once that technicality is out of the way you can view each others weekly progress, weight loss to date, date they’ll hit their goal, calories per day, exercise totals for the week, recent activities or their recent indiscretions.

There is a fun little breakdown view that shows all of your friends recent activities kinda sorted by time. You can quickly tap the envelope icon to send them an email of support or to reprimand them for that calorie overage yesterday.

I really do like this friend feature within the application. It’s added a whole new dimension to losing weight that often times you only get through a full website (which they have as well). About the only thing I’d like to see is the ability, just like in my personal day glance, to view the last 4 weeks worth of my friends data. I currently can only see their active week and as soon as it rolls into Monday I can no longer see last weeks info which is kinda lame,

Goals

You can flip over to goals to see a nice chart or where you started and where you are currently at in relationship to your goal. As you can see from mine I had my dip and then rise at the end of last year followed by a great year this year. It offers a clean view of your goal weight, plan summary, calorie budget and controls to quickly edit your plan (see edit screenshot up top) or to record your weight today.

You unfortunately can’t do anything with the graph … no zooming, no landscape or week/month/year view (like WeightBot) … no nothing. Yawn … seems like a few things you’d like to do here but nada.

More

There are a number of other features hidden in the more section. You can quickly edit any of your custom food or exercises, turn on or off certain nutrient tracking, enable/disable a password lock, or configure motivators. There’s a lot hidden in here … including something nice but weirdly implemented … motivators.

As the name implies it’s a feature that you use to motivate yourself to use LoseIt. Essentially you choose it and it quickly kicks you out of LoseIt into Safari (can we say in app browser). You are then presented with the ability to turn on/off:

• Emailed reports — these are summaries of your usage including workouts, food, etc from LoseIt (see above screenshot of email). You also get a spreadsheet (here’s a sample) with intimate details of everything you ate and every exercise … pretty nice ahe?
• Twitter — sharing of your progress and exercises via Twitter. I don’t use this feature since I already have enough spam in my twitter log so I figure my friends don’t need to see this.
• Facebook — the same as the Twitter feature just on Facebook.
• Reminders — for me the best motivator. You can enale push notification reminders to your phone (at configurable times) to remind you to enter your Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner information. This feature has saved me on more than one occasion from forgetting to enter information. I think their defaults are way to tight in terms of time so I’ve bumped mine to give some slack time to enter.

Last But Not Least, A Website

I don’t have any more room in this entry to post about the website with the screenshots and the whole 9’s. It a newish website that’s directly tied into the application on your device. You can run more reports including graphs of your data, edit your motivator settings, view friends data, and participate in their online forums.

The site and forums are pretty active considering it’s just users of the application (and some lurkers). This is because you cannot edit nor enter any food or exercise information on the site. When it comes to your LoseIt data it is a purely read only site except for the forums.

I’m hoping the decision to not allow use of the site to enter information was a short term technology decision to get the release out sooner and not a long term approach to LoseIt. If not then I think they need to make every single feature of the site available from within the application, otherwise your confusing your audience and actually doing them a disservice. If your asking the user to constantly change their mode of interaction from application to web browser and back again your breaking the interaction paradigm and not only making it hard to get anything done but your losing mind share.

My other complaint about the site is their authentication always seems to be flakey. No, it doesn’t fail but I constantly have to relogin despite having just been on the site seconds before. This again makes me not want to use it despite some great people on the forums. I’ve noticed it mostly seems to happen when I enter into the site from their root domain and not the subsections.

In Conclusion

The LoseIt Application is a very easy and dare I say fun to use application for entering your nutrition and exercise information on the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s attention to detail and solid performance (hasn’t crashed in 16 months for me) make this application a must try for anyone owning an iPhone. There are of course a few things that could be done to make this application even better but the same can be said for all software. I’m certain the LoseIt developers have plenty in store for their millions of users (I don’t have any inside details).

Go check it out and let me know what you think.

1. Bike 30 miles or 110 minutes — I actually biked 26.71 miles in 117 minutes and took care of my A Merry Workout Pledge. I rode to the arboretum around the small loop once, medium once, the large loop three times, and then finally back home. I would have liked my pace to be a bit faster but the hills kinda cooked me. I don’t remember them being as plentiful a few weeks ago when I was here. Part of it also could be that I didn’t bring water and I usually workout on an empty stomach and two hours of bicycling is a bit much on an empty stomach. I used the Run Keeper Pro iPhone application to map this ride if your interested. Here’s the map embedded in my site:
   
   

2. Swim for 30 minutes — I woke up early on Sunday and went to the gym and did 20 minutes of HIIT followed by 30 minutes of swimming laps. I did random styles during the time like breaststroke, sidestroke, backstroke, etc. Mostly because I get tired doing one stroke but also because I forgot to shave. I know weird right … all I can say is try doing the breaststroke when your right shoulder hits your face every other stroke and that face is covered in sandpaper … yeowch! I had fun though and that’s all that matters. If I have any hopes of doing a tri next year I’m going to need to work on my swimming form though. While I’m not a newbie I’m far from ideal in my stroke.
3. Cook something new — I did not have time this weekend to do this and I don’t know how I thought I would. Between our anniversary dinner on Sunday and the birthday party on Saturday I didn’t really have any time to make something new so I’m removing this goal without penalty.
4. Eat clean — I ate really well all weekend and even with the planned anniversary dinner everything I ate was on plan and on target. There was one meal out that we didn’t plan on Saturday but I had worked out so much it didn’t really matter how bad I ate. No worries though, I didn’t stray to badly.

All in all I think it was a fantastic weekend. I had a killer bike ride and really enjoyed getting back into the pool for some laps. Heck I even got out for two 3+ mile walks with my wife and kids this weekend as well. We were locked and loaded for a killer warrior weekend … even William Wallace would’ve been proud.

Other Warriors

Here’s some of the other weekend warriors that took the recent challenge. Go check out how they faired:

• Lauren from Less Lauren
• Frank from Male Weight Loss Now
• SeattleRunnerGirl
• Carla from The Right Fit
• Tara from 263 and Counting
• Scott from Minus 5 Times 10
• jord from A Journey of 26.2 Miles Begins with a Blog
• Gluten Free Pumpkins
• Brandon from so long, fat ass!
• Amy from Living and Loving Life
• Craig from My Life, Take Eight
• Jamie from I Can Heal My Self!
• Mac from Get Fit Slowly
• Josie from 35 and Shrinking
• Erin from Erin Takes Control
• Shelli from Shelli Belly
• 146 Pounds
• Jess from Half of Jess