Play My Cards Right

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.

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Working from 1AM to 10:30 AM all week, but thanks for asking!

<–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.

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Despite the occasional sugary setback, I have hit 20lbs lost.

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So I’ve decided to try and train my ear to recognize different pitches.  I’m not entirely certain why I’m doing this but mostly it is because I continue to live by the strange notion that I play music.

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.

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I’ve been accepted to the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs Master of Public Administration program. 48 more credits, part time.

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