Getting fit completely reorganized my schedule, and I think it also forced me to refocus my mental energy.  I go to bed early and get up early- usually 5am.  I exercise for an hour or two then its off to work.  After work we usually make dinner and then do nothing until its time for bed- around 10PM if not earlier.  I would like to be more productive in this five hour window but the truth is I’m  exhausted.    I could probably cut back on working out, but the truth is I really enjoy it, and I’m terrified of reverting back to the pre-fit era me.

2.  Podcast Addiction

I got really accustomed to listening to podcasts during my workouts and while riding the bus.  In doing so, I think I’ve slowly edged out a lot of my critical thinking time in favor of listening to people talk about stuff.  Thus I have less to say.

3.  Life

Even without the baby on the way, it seems that life has just accelerated in some way lately.  We always have something to do and not enough time to do it.  How did I go to grad school and work simultaneously for four years!?

4.  Gaming

While I usually limit my game time to an hour before workouts, and sometimes in the evening, it cuts into any writing I might do purely by keeping me from tending to it.  Oh well.

So with all that said, I hope to return to blogging.  The format of this blog may change, as will the look.  Hopefully writing this will be the first step.

before, originally uploaded by hetty_bembler.

]]> http://avec.teamforce.org/photo-video/before-2/feed/ 0 http://avec.teamforce.org/food/notes-on-extreme-weight-loss/ http://avec.teamforce.org/food/notes-on-extreme-weight-loss/#comments Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:23:41 +0000 Luke http://avec.teamforce.org/eating/notes-on-extreme-weight-loss/ I have passed 50 pounds lost since January of this year. I now weigh less than I did at the end of 12th grade.

Observations:

• This has been incredibly hard and at the same time incredibly easy.
• By training myself to look forward to the leftovers I create by not eating traditional portions, I have drastically reduced the amount I eat, and the amount we spend on food.
• In general, I feel better than I have in a long time. This is psychological as much as it is physical- I love watching the fat melt off.
• Discipline is everything. This is the first time in my life, outside of when I was playing sports and competing for a spot on a team, that I have been able to routinize my working out and eating so effectively. I feel that if I stop I will quickly drop into bad habits, and this has become somewhat stressful
• I allow myself nights where my eating goes way over the top- candy, ice cream etc.
• Related to that, I do not deny myself any food; I simply minimize the amount of it I eat. A pint of Ben And Jerry’s consumed over two weeks is a treat every night and surprisingly easy to do with my weight loss goals in mind.
• While these changes have been easy/hard, thinking about eating takes up a considerable amount of my daily thought. I have not been as productive this season and I’m not sure how I feel about it.  Perhaps weight loss should be my only goal right now anyway.

I’m going to post some before/after images soon. I have about 20 more pounds to go. Things have slowed considerably since the beginning of March. A chronicle of every single thing I have eaten since January can be found at my PBT Spreadsheet.

<–you can see the current state of affairs at my flickr account.

In other news I have been extremely unproductive lately, and I can’t really put my finger on why.  It might be the weather.  We did get DirecTV again so Dawn can watch hockey and I must say, unblurry television is quite nice, though I find that almost everything I need from the tv is completely replaced by my xbox media center.  Hacking it for wi-fi (again) has been quite fun however.

Taxes are done.  Time to start looking for a house to buy.

Finally, I have lost 35.5 lbs.   Would you believe that despite this loss I am still only reaching my freshman 15 weight.  Still, I haven’t been this weight since 1994, so not bad.  Honestly I don’t think I *look* like I’ve lost that much, but the scale says I have so I’ll take it.

Training consists of the following:

• Record each note individually using my keyboard (5 octaves only) at about 3 second intervals.
• Record me singing the name of the note after each is played.  
• Split the wav into individual tracks- each representing a single note.
• Convert split wavs into MP3.
• Dump into itunes
• Create playlist.
• Copy playlist to iPod. 
• Shuffle Playlist.
• Listen to shuffled pitch files when walking around and at work.

The question now is “Will this work?”  We shall see.

Here’s how- just copy this text and paste it into your template:
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