2011 Birdwatcher's Fat Man Challenge

Cutter's Log - Stardate 1102.20.10

There is a message board that I frequent that has a weight-loss challenge every year, going on for the past seven. I think I briefly was in it one of the first years.

But this time it's serious. All that rambling I was doing a couple of posts ago is about this.

My scale read 318.6 last night. I've only been going up until about two years ago when I was at 338. Then I got down to 297 this past March before working life swept me up.

As far as a goal is concerned, I'm going to go for a series of short-term goals. For example, I would like to get down to 290-300 by the end of January. Then another 10 in February, and so on until at I'm at least 200. I know there'll be struggles here and there, but I would really like to be at 200 no later than January 2 of 2012. This factors in Holiday pounds and the push to not eat as much in crunch time.

I grew up pretty sedentary, with the exception of a few years of little league baseball, and being able to ride my bicycle some far distances. That all ended with getting a car. There was one long bicycle ride I took to go see some friends at a softball game in Geneseo, as a surprise. I'd like to be able to do the same 10 years from that date (5/8/12), just to say I did it again. Anyway, this is someone who blew off the last three years of the mile-run in gym, has traveled many places for sports events and thus eating on the road a lot, and someone that really can't be figured out psychologically.

The cutbacks in portions and the increases in moving around better are going to come gradually, but only after cutting back on the intake a good chunk. Just saying I'll do away with this and do more of that isn't easy for me. I have to excel in HOW I do these things, and these things are a process. The Nike slogan just doesn't do it.

What shouldn't I be doing that is hurting me? - There are two or three nights that I am coming home from covering a game at some far away place. I usually get a quick bite to eat just before leaving the town I'm covering a game in, or leaving the nearest town with a drive-thru. The more farther away the game is from home, the most likely I'll eat on the road.

Just saying "stop it" isn't as easy as you think, because the one bump in the road can be fatal. What I am doing to curb this is to cover games closer to home (closer to home = less likely to stop). This kills two birds with one stone, as it should help website traffic from nearby Sterling/RF improve. By the time I do have to go somewhere far away, the desire to eat shouldn't be as great as it used to be.

Also, it has been hard for me, but I would like to trade in bottled pop at the concession stand for bottled water. I should probably consider the football pork chops as dinner, and the basketball pizza as dinner when necessary.

So the short version of this is: not eating as much on the road as I have been.

What do I need to do more of? - When I was in Chicago for New Years, I walked all over creation it seemed like looking for something to do. It turns out, after thinking about it for a while, that walking around a lot is actually a good thing to do. My little brother does it every day it seems like. I'm not ready to run yet, doing so throws my mind off-balance.

I've already started parking far away and walking quite a ways. That's a tiny start. I just have to get in the habit of doing it when I'm covering games. It seems like I try to find the closest space when I'm writing. That means getting to the place of the game EARLY.

I live in Sterling, and there are two high schools in Sterling. Getting back to birds and stones, heck I used to walk to and from the high school (3/4 mile) when I was a freshman. Newman is just another half-mile west. Rock Falls HS is about a 1.5 mile walk. I've dodged worse weather in walking to and from school. I shouldn't let the cold deter me. However, if I have errands to run at many different places, then I have no choice other than the car.

When I was on the Metra, I was thinking of the time spent walking. I was thinking briefly, if there's some good game pitting an NISB-area team at a school not too far from a Metra stop, just park in Elburn or Aurora or Elgin.

Aside from walking, our family got a Nintendo Wii for Christmas. Video games were a habit of mine (Marios 1, 2, 3, Lost Levels and SM World, as well as Sonic 1 and 2). I'm finding myself wanting to play more on the Wii than on the N64, Playstation and Xbox - three devices that I could never understand with all of the 3D involved. There's a Mario game on there that involves work with the arms, and there's a Wii Sports game where I can move around the living room.

How am I going to do all of this? - Change how I sleep.

The first thing I have to do is re-prioritize what I do during the day. On consecutive nights off of work I tend to sleep for 10-12 hours. I need to start getting seven hours of sleep every day.

When it comes to work, I need an hour to get ready (two hours if there are errands to be run). So it should work like this: Time of work [minus] one or two hours [equals] bed time.

I return to work on Monday morning at 11 a.m. If I were to get up at 10 a.m., I would need to go to sleep at 2:00 a.m.

I work nights again on Wednesday, at 5:00 p.m. If I were to get up at 4:00 p.m., I would need to go to sleep at 10:00 a.m. Sure this seems weird, but there can still be time to do walking and Wii'ing.

Ultimately, a goal is to be awake during more daytime hours than nighttime hours. That's going to be extremely hard. I used to tell myself that if I work up and then worked, I would perform much better than staying up and then working.

What's going to make changing the sleep pattern happen? Remembering to set the alarms, and then getting up after shutting the alarms off. Another factor in the sleep process are the dreams I am having. Yes, controlling my dreams. If there's not much in the dreams, I won't fall back into them after waking up. They say the dreams loosely tie things that happened in the past couple of days.

I think my fingers have gotten a good workout with this post. I think I'll see if the TV is open for the Wii.