Catch up time....

Things have been going extremely well for my diet an exercise, however, I have more than a touch of the pessimist in me and I am waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.  I have reached an all time low as an adult for my weight.  I have hit 233, which I have not seen since I was 13 years old and was gaining weight from a broken leg from 220 up to 290.  I worry at time this will be hard to maintain, but I think I can do it and I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Been a long time....

It has been quite some time since I have posted anything.  So many changes to keep on, but mostly I came back to look at this blog for my picture.

I have had some success lately and I have a weigh in the morning.  Perhaps I should wait until the morning, but I worked so damn hard getting back into my account after so much time!

Here we go....

I have been making an effort to get back on track.  Since I posted last I have moved back to Minnesota and am living with family as I prepare our new house to move in to.  I just thought I would jot a few recent thoughts down...

Well... one thought.

Last week or so there was a little construction going on in the house I am staying in.  The way the house is built, there is a lip of cement around the outside and there is a gap between that and the earth.  A pile of muddy soil was moved from one part of the farm over to the house to fill it in.  A serious effort was made to ensure that none of the half wild farm cats that roam that area were anywhere near it, or at the least had been evicted.

This last week has been cold and wet and rainy and wet and rainy.  I doubled up on the words on purpose.  No one was out walking around to hear anything or see anything until today.

Our oldest daughter was frantic.  She heard a cat where there shouldn't be one.  We searched and came up with theories.  We opened up the dryer vent.  No cat.  Looked into the window wells.  No cat.  The last theory was that somehow a cat got under when the dirt was being moved.  A half hour of digging wet, clay-mud and I could see the cat.  It crawled out, and ran its ungrateful and undernourished self away as fast it could.

Part of me felt that it was stupid to do all this for some cat.  Part of me thought that maybe that this is what the difference is between people.  How much worth is a life?  Did the fact that this cat would rather kill me in my sleep than do... most any other thing to me matter in the end?

Also, I wonder where all the dirt goes.  That hole that took a half hour of digging to make tooke 5 minutes to fill, but it wasn't as filled as it was before.  Weird.

Let us be honest

I didn't post pictures.  I most likely won't post pictures.  I am not a young single guy and my training is not to look better but to be better.

I have always wondered why I always seemed to fall short and would sabotage myself into not following through.  Not long after my last post I found out that I have a diagnosis of depression.  People who know me, like, really know me, wouldn't think this as some grand revolution.  Same as finding out I am a control freak with a type A personality.  But both of these things were a revolution to me. 

So.  What now.  Now, I do what I can.  I train when I can, as hard as I am able.  I make lists and try and follow them.  I look at it as treatment.  I let others do things and I get myself moving.  It is good for me.

This last week I met a goal of mine that I had been thinking about for a while.  I lifted 10,00 pounds in one day.  I have started running just to run.  And now my body is fighting back against bad foods and not letting me eat them.

I want to see where this will take me.

Back on the wagon....

So I have been back to training the last few weeks.  It has helped that my wife has become motivated.  We kind of help each other eat well and work out.  So far I went from 300 pounds to 281.  I took some pictures this morning to add to the blog to compare with last time.  I hope that they show improvement.

So what have I been doing, you say?  There is the Biggest Loser Challenge on the Wii that we have been using which is nice, but sometimes it can piss a guy off.  That with running 2 to 3 times a week and doing kettlebells in my office throughout the day have paid off with our new diet of healthy eating.  Plus, it helps being broke and not being able to afford gas station foods.

I will post picture later today...

Really, I have resolutions...

For the first time in a long time, I have New Year Resolutions!  Actually, it is a list of things that I will do to stave off depression...  WHICH IS THE SAME THING!

Here is my list, in no particular order:

1. Shower, Daily:  This might not seem like a big deal, but when you are depressed, it is. 
2. Shave:  It makes difference in how you feel if you are clean shaven, I feel.
3. Work out, Daily:  Again, nothing new here.
4. Sleep more:  There are many out there that might look at this and be like, REALLY?!  Yes, really.  For really-really.  I am a chronic under-sleeper.  I usually go on about 4 to 6 hours a night.  Not healthy.
5. Clean:  Yeah, I know.  I already clean a lot.  But it is only surface stuff.  Things get piled about like they do when you have 3 kids and a job and a half.
6. Make lists and DO THEM!:  Check!  No really.  To get stuff done, do lists.  That is is the way of the world.
7. Get caught up with gym paperwork:  Bane of my existence but only because I let it.

There it is.  My get out of depression list.  Wish me luck!

ok, ok

So I was off.  I was actually starting Week 9 and had finished Week 8 prior to the life and death crisis.  I have finally started up again and am on the Week 9, and yet there is another life and death crisis, only this time with my dog.

Stewie has been with us through a lot of things.  Through the death of Charlie, all of our adoptions, through two runs to the hospital on emergency flights, and through one that was a routine but scary operation on our child.  He has so much love for everyone and it seems so unfair that he is reaped so soon.  He is barely 7 and has a hemangiosarcoma on his big heart.

You might think it could be worse, and you are right, it could be.  I will not even tempt fate by making a list, but I will say that this sucks.  I have always hoped that our dogs would pass of old age making the death talk to my children so much easier if they were nearer to double digits.  And I would think that having a long life would make that stage of pain and grief that much further away easier to palate.  What it has done is mellowed me.  I feel a lot when I do feel and I am struggling with the guilt almost the most.  I have not always treated Stewie with as much kindness as he deserves.  He loves so much and it can be hard to handle.  He is impulsive and wrecks so much around him.  But he loves so unabashedly, it shames me.

I am not one to hold on to too much regret.  I am a firm believer that what we have done in our past leads to where we are and a change in that past would not lead us to who we are now.  I do regret treating him so poorly.  My heart aches for you, my friend.  I wish I could change it for you.  And I know you will still love me in my failure, much to my shame.