Goals & the end of week 4

              Good morning!  I’m 27 days into the keto diet and wanted to report my progress along with some thoughts.    Good news! I’ve lost 20lbs.  I know that might be too much but have been eating plenty. My energy level is more constant.  I didn’t realize I wasn’t sleeping enough but that has changed also and is becoming better.

              Some things have happened in the last 4 weeks.  I decided at the end of week one if I didn’t have goals I was never going to get there.  That’s right, goal”S”.  I’m tackling this thing on two fronts regarding goals.  I’m focused on my weight goal of but also want to focus on my athletic performance.  I did a little math and realized it would probably take me 78 weeks to achieve my goal weight and goal performance.  I developed the plan to rotate exercise types and diets along the way, to keep it fresh but she’s written out and ready to be followed.   Skip to the bottom for my goals…

              Tracking is key!  On the Keto diet, it is super important to track everything that I eat.  This, along with the fact that my work started a walking challenge the week after I started this journey it almost goes with our saying that I track all parts of my life.  At the end of week 3, I decided that I was running to many apps and consolidated everything down to the Under Armor Health box.  This allows me to track my weight, body fat, sleep patterns, heart rate while exercising, steps, length of walks and rides and it seamlessly meshes with my food tracking app. 

              I sit here the last day of week 4 of this journey excited about the future.  It’s only 10am and today alone I’ve already taken the dog on a 2.5 mile walk, eat an amazing breakfast with a great friend, completed two blog post, and still have a full day ahead of me.    

My Goals:

Weight 175-190lbs end of 2018.

Performance:

·       Run 5k By end of 2017, 

·       Run half-marathon Summer of 2018

·       Bike 100 miles September 2018

·       Complete Marathon 1^st week of 2019

A New Start

Howdy there!  I’m not sure who I’m writing this to or if this is more of a journal about the Journey but I wanted to capture my latest adventure.  Well, I don’t know if it’s a true adventure but there are defentily going to be UPs, downs, struggles and victories.  Hopefully at the end is the victory of better health.  Honestly, I don’t know what that means but I’m going to find out. 

Let’s get a little back story.  You see, I’ve always been a bigger guy and never really saw this as a problem.  Ever since I can remember I had to buy bigger clothes and that is just how I grew up and took as normal.  Most of my family was the same way and so this was normal.  It was probably 3 months ago at this point that I went to the Doctor for my yearly physical.  He did his thing and looked at me and said the same thing the three previous years… “Well Shane, your healthy except your weight” and then followed up with a lengthy plea that I’ll paraphrase.  “I’m going to send you for blood work and we will see if there are any concerns but let me blunt.  You need to make a change before your weight catches you.  It will be easier to make a change while healthy then later when your unhealthy and trying to deal with some illness/disease caused by your weight.” Fast forwarding a couple of weeks when I received my blood work in the mail… The doctor wrote on the print out, and not paraphrasing.  “Healthy as a horse, no reason to not get healthier and lose some weight. Reach out if you have any questions”

              Man!  Did those words rattle around in my head… no reason to not get healthier…? I just couldn’t shake it.  That weekend I rode my bike for the first time of distance in a long time with my friend Jeff and all I can remember was this had been easier in the past.  Oh, that’s right, last year I weighed 310 lbs, now your coming in at 330lbs some days.  That’s right folks, at 330lbs my doctor told me that I’m healthy because everything we measure medically was in the normal for age.  I realized in that week that a change was due, and one of tangible results with victories and accomplishments to achieve.

              I started researching diet plans, diet plans, and more diet plans… They were all so strict.  I wouldn’t be allowed to eat anything I normally eat… Did I really need to change?  Eventually I landed on the Keto Diet and started reading, and reading, and reading more.  It seemed legit and might be something I could manage but I wasn’t quite ready to start.  That brings me to early July and a conversation I was having with my good friend and the difficulty of change.  We discussed that the only real reason any one changes, is because the pain of not changing is more painful than changing.  I thought about that… Thought about taking on a diet… and continued my life…

              Then it happed, I woke up Saturday July 15 and all the food I had in the fridge was Keto friendly.  So, I made myself a sausage omelet, a cup of coffee and started my day.  I can’t remember what I did that day but at the end of the day I was eating dinner with some longtime friends and the conversation came up about the Keto diet.  I realized that if I got the steak and spinach that my whole day would have been eating a keto-ish diet.  I got that steak and spinach dinner, excuse me, I enjoyed that steak and spinach meal.  It was good!  Also, one of my friends said to me that night at dinner “that’s a healthy dinner shane”.  It stuck with me, I went home and decided I was going to go full blown Keto for a month, along with walking every day and see where I stood a month later.  I officially started the diet Monday morning July 17^th and weighed in at 321lbs.  Here we go! 

This post was written August 13th 2017 to capture my state of mind that infamous weekend in the middle of July.