Greg Fitness Update: 60 pounds

Starting weight: 314
Today's weight: 254

The image to the left is of Thumbelina, the world's smallest horse.  She weighs 60 pounds.  That's how much I've lost since last year.  An entire really small horse!

This most recent 10 pounds has been difficult to reach.  Mainly because it occurred over the Thanksgiving through New Years holidays.  Many meals were eaten and many desserts were not avoided.  I probably ended up losing over 20 pounds in total these past two months, but that's only because of having to fight off the extra holiday weight at the same time.

There were a number of other difficulties in achieving weight loss over the past while besides the holidays.  The first is the temperature change.  It's getting more and more difficult to find good weather to go outside and continue my running.  You can still get great weather in Texas in December, but it can get really cold too.  It changes regularly, so you never know what you are gonna get, and when a good day suddenly shows up, you have to take advantage of it.  There was a really fair day last week during my Christmas break where I ran my longest time and distance ever, 5.11 miles in 73 minutes.  If it's too cold, I will stay inside and use my treadmill instead, but I much prefer running outside when possible.  I even got me some cold weather running gear to assist on those slightly colder days.

Another issue I had recently was that our elliptical machine started squeaking like crazy.  The point of the elliptical machine was to have something I could do to exercise while watching TV.  When the machine is making more noise than the TV, that sort of makes things difficult to watch.  Plus, the noise was filtering into the boys' bedroom which was keeping them awake at night while I was exercising. As a result we sold it on Craigslist, but being so close to Christmas, we didn't have any extra budget money to replace it.  So one of my main exercise choices was taken away over the past month.  Luckily a nice family from church contacted us that they were getting rid of their elliptical and offered it to us and allowed us to pay them back after Christmas.  So I'm now getting my muscles used to a new machine.

60 lb bag of concrete mix.

As for physical differences between now and a couple months ago, I am now down to size 40 pants from originally being about to outgrow a size 46.  I'm hoping to shrink back into the 30s soon.  I replaced the belt I was wearing last year with a new belt that barely made it an inch past the buckle, now it's another four inches past that.  I've noticed a lot less body jiggling when I'm working out--especially to some of the hoppier moments on our exercise videos.  I'm gradually running faster with less of a load I have to carry with me.  I've been sleeping much more comfortably now than I ever was a year ago plus I have more comfortable resting positions with less of a belly in the way.

I'm still moving towards my goal of 100 pounds total weight loss and it seems more and more possible every day.