I talked last week about how the super cold weather led to me choosing to essentially hibernate instead of staying active with my exercise goals. Guess what? The temperatures in Columbus fell even further this week and this wasn’t the turnaround week I had hoped it would be.
Fortunately I did manage to get into the gym on Friday and Saturday so that is something. Plus the temperatures in Columbus are forecasted for a big turnaround today and will be near 50. I am going to celebrate the glimpse of warmth with an outside run. I just have to avoid the melting snow, slush and remaining ice and stay safe.
While I didn’t have many meaningful fitness updates this week I did have a couple of interesting experiences this week.
I Look Good!
Throughout this journey people have told me that I look good and have frequently given me compliments – no that is not a #HumbleBrag. But there has never been a time where I thought “yeah, I am looking good” because that is just not how my brain works. In fact I don’t believe there has ever been I time when I looked in the mirror and thought that.
On Friday I caught a glimpse of myself in a full-length mirror and everything was just working. I was wearing good fitting jeans, a slim fit shirt and a nice sweater. It all just came together and I really liked what I saw.
I looked good!
So I tried to get a good picture of myself to share and I just couldn’t replicate the lighting and perspective I had. I even tried taking a picture in a restaurant bathroom where the lighting was good and had an embarrassing moment when somebody walked in. But the following pic is the best I came up with from all of my tries.
Don’t I look good? You don’t need to answer that because I know the answer!
Before & After & After
During the last week of January a year ago my wife and I worked to create some good before & after pictures from my journey. I was really starting to show physical changes from my weight loss and I thought it would be a good time to show some side-by-side photos. You know, like ya do in a journey like this.
In my weekly blog on 1/28/2018 (Week 32: I am killing it!) I included the following side-by-side / before & after picture. This was taken at Barcelona Restaurant before I started my journey and then 32 weeks into it.
This week was exactly one year later and we happened to be sitting in the same seats – creatures of habit I guess. So I thought it would be a good time to share an updated version.
One year can make a big difference and I couldn’t be happier with my progress.
Some added fun in this pic is the progress of my posture. I think it looks like those evolution of man photos that show the progress from caveman to modern man. Or is that just the way my broken brain works?
Book Progress
Finally I am pretty excited because I made lots of progress with my book this week. I have fixed some layout things and created at least a working draft of my cover art. I added some additional visual elements in the book and have the eBook version close to ready for a launch. I just need to figure out a solution for how to prepare the print version too.
Stay tuned as I expect some big news here soon!
Thanks for reading!
Last week’s stats (1/21-1/27):
Maintain avg. weight of 189-199 pounds: 197.7 lbs average
Run 10+ miles per week: 3 miles
Total walk/run miles: 23.6 miles (one of my lowest ever!)
Weight training 2-3 times per week: 1 workout
Yoga 1+ times per week: class cancelled due to weather
One race per month: January complete, no February race scheduled
Continue to track & manage calories: 851 calories under budget
