First Weigh in Day

So in my never ending quest to reduce weight I decided that I would weigh myself and record all my dimensions on the first of every month. So the baseline was established on January 1. So today I hopped on the scale and discovered that I had lost 5 pounds this month. A reasonable total, and since I have quite Diet Coke for a bit now, I can assume it will get better/faster or something like that.

My dimensions have not changed much, in fact hardly at all, the waist is down about half an inch, although my measurements are quite subjective as to location and methodology.

On January 1 I did take a picture of myself front and side view with just a pair of shorts on for a long range before and after. These pictures by the way are locked in a password protected vault in a zip file that is also password protected as well. Needless to say they are eyes only!

Defeating the Dark Lord

For those of you who have been around me for any length of time know that I love my Diet Coke. So this morning I drank my last Diet Coke and or anything caffeine related. This is a big step, since I love the dark lord from Atlanta!

I have read all the literature on the evils of caffeine, and while I know it, its very hard to put into practice.

UPDATE: One month later, still clean, the only side effect I felt was sleepiness, rather then 7 hours a night it was nearly 9-10 hours for about a week, which has gone away.

UPDATE #2: Still ticking although I unthinkingly ordered one at a McDonalds and had two sips of it before I realized what I was doing, talk about a habit. Sorry to the Libertyville sewers since I poured the offending liquid right out the window in a dramatic gesture worthy of an Oscar.

Weight Issues

The primary reason I decided to try running with a goal attached is to lose weight. After having lost about 80 pounds back in 2005-06 on the Atkins Diet, I had but about 35 of it back on since then. So candidly my clothes were not fitting as well as I might have liked, and I am not getting any younger!

Rather then diet this time I decided to focus on fitness, since I referee HS soccer and club soccer I need to get into a certain level of shape, but that was generally easy to meet the minimum standard for fitness. A hard varsity game is maybe 3-4 miles over a 2 hour period, with lots of pauses, so the effort was not supreme.

I have tried periodically to diet but with out much success since the Atkins success in 05, however I do like my pasta, bread and sauces!