Two months since my last posting? Can I say I've been busy? No? Aw, crap.

Anyway, today marks the beginning of another 6-week weight loss cycle for me. I'm still at 175, the last 6 weeks I lost a paltry 2 pounds. But that doesn't bother me too much, since the trend is still an overall downward slope.

Now for the interesting part. Wednesday will be exactly one year to the date that I started Lean For Life. It's a good time to look back.

6-28-05
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Height: 5' 6.5"
Weight: 227 pounds
Waist: 41" approx. (40" pants were too tight, 42" too big)
Shirt Size: XL/XXL (XL could be pushing it depending on the brand)

Exercise is an interesting thing, I was a tad stubborn out the door. I didn't even begin for another month, on 7-25-06. My goal was to do 10,000 steps a day; walking one mile on 7-25, I had only reached 5500 steps. So the next day I increased it to two miles at lunch, which took me 49 minutes.

6-26-06
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Height: 5' 6.5" (hey I didn't grow or shrink)
Weight: 175 pounds
Waist: 32"
Shirt Size: M

Exercise: haven't done it yet today, but weekdays I jog 30 minutes on the treadmill with 5 minutes cooldown. After the 30, I've jogged 2.5 miles at 5mph, according to the treadmill. Lately I've started lifting weights, although without any real guidance. That's going to change shortly, but for the time being I'm doing 3 sets of 10 reps, 3 different exercises, on the machine here at work. That averages 10 to 15 minutes.

That's it for now. Thanks for caring. ;)

It's been over a month since my last blog entry! Sorry about that, moving really threw me for a loop.

Yes, we've moved to Olivehurst. Yay! It's not too bad a place, and it's finally becoming ours.

Oh, I've hit 50 pounds lost now. Now for the fun part: I went to my church's Men's Retreat this past weekend.

Now, normally this in itself wouldn't be post-worthy, but they had a lot of activities. These particular ones I hadn't planned on doing, it just sort of happened. I can tell you this: there is no way on earth I would have even tried this a year ago.

You've seen these before, I'm sure. Usually they're used as team-building exercises. This one is the "leap of faith".


This is the ropes course.


Finally, the zipline.


Please ignore the flab that got exposed on the way down. :P

I finally figured out how to use the Lifecycle today. Is there a reason they can't have the instructions be a little more specific?

After doing the 5/5 thing on the treadmill for 35 minutes, I did 10 on the bike. I would have done more, except my butt keeps slipping off the seat. I tried lowering it, but I still have the same problem. Not sure how to avoid that from happening.

If I continue to have the same problem, I'll just have to do the treadmill longer. It seems to be getting a bit easier with the jog, so maybe extending it 10 minutes or so is in order.

Also, while jogging it seems like I'm not going all that fast. I'm doing what I physically can, I don't want to overdo it, but looking at myself in the mirror it still seems like a fat guy shuffling around. Not really, but that's my internal perception.

At least I was able to watch an entire DS9 episode today. :)

The 2006 Explore Yuba Sutter Visitor's Guide has finally been published. Last year's was published in November 2004. I sent my final images to them in August of last year, but they didn't publish until a few weeks ago.

At any rate, here's how it turned out. Last year, I had one picture published; this year, three. I had hoped I would be on the cover, but they chose someone else's motocross picture over mine. No big deal, this is great exposure.

So here's the cover. It's not my image.


Here's the first page with my image, page 28. Ducks alongside Ellis Lake in Marysville.


Page 29. I drove to Spenceville specifically to shoot people outdoors for the Visitor's Guide, when I ran into two people riding horses. They were gracious enough to let me photograph them, and I told them if they got into the guide, I would send them a copy. They were, and I will.


Finally, page 34. From the 2005 Bok Kai parade.


I'm pretty satisfied with the way it turned out, but I probably would have picked different images. But I'm not the editor!

If you'd like to view the pictures in their context with full-size pages, you can. I scanned all 4 pages to PDF format, which can be downloaded here.