Day 31 - End of Month 1

Well, I'd say it's been a pretty good month.  I made a resolution, set a goal, and I'm well on my way.  In order to get to my goal weight by the time of the Triple Bypass ride, I would need to lose about 2 lbs/week, every week.  Throughout the month of January, I averaged about 5 lbs/week.  I don't have any illusions that I can keep up this pace for 6 months, but I'm happy with my progress for now.  I'll do my best to keep it up as best I can.

In the last few months of 2012, I basically did nothing.  I had been training all year for a big September bike ride, but once I completed that ride, I basically stopped.  I don't want that to happen again.  I've made a number of changes for the better, and plan to keep these going, and truly change my lifestyle.

I have gotten into a regular pattern of exercise, including running, biking and swimming.  And with our family membership to Lifetime Fitness, getting the exercise I need becomes even easier, and we've made trips to the gym part of our regular routine.  My wife is in a 6-month, 3-day-a-week training program, and the kids are going to be taking swimming lessons and doing all kinds of other activities.  The amount and quality of activities available at Lifetime is pretty amazing, and I really look forward to every trip there.

As a family, we've started eating much better.  We've gone from bagels for breakfast every day to fruit and protein smoothies.  Instead of going to lunch on weekends, we're making chicken or turkey wraps, fruit and protein bars.  And we've been focusing on healthy dinners.  Props to my wonderful wife, who pores over new cookbooks and magazines every week, finding healthy and delicious options for dinner.  We've added a lot of great new dinner options to our repertoire.

I've put a little bit of money into my biking, but mostly just on the Garmin Edge 500 computer.  I'll write more about this some other time, but I really love it, and truly believe it helps my training.  Being able to track all my fitness data on the bike just makes training much more effective.  Between the Garmin computer, and the Spinervals videos, I'm really getting in some good training to improve my performance over last year's peak so I should be more than ready to conquer the Triple Bypass in July.

So, here's to a great first month, and many more to come.

Food:

• Breakfast:  Fruit/protein smoothie
• Lunch:  Protein bar
• Dinner:  Not sure what it was called.  But it was gnocchi, marinara, ricotta and parmesan cheese.  It was definitely lacking in any kind of protein, so we added some diced chicken.  Mix it all up, and stick it under the broiler for a few minutes.  Quick, easy and delicious.

Exercise:

• My usual morning routine
• 20 minute walk at lunch
• 80 minute ride on the trainer, with Spinervals 16.0 - Aero Base Builders 1.  I'm trying to focus mostly on aerobic workouts right now, with only the occasional anaerobic workout.  Here's my Strava report for this ride.  Overall, I rode 313 miles in the month of January.  If my bike hadn't been out of commission for a few days here and there, I could have increased that quite a bit.  I plan to improve on that quite a bit during February.

Today's weigh-in:  204.8

And to finish off the month, here is a chart of my weight loss for the entire month.  This makes a total weight loss of 21.2 lbs in the month of January.  Woo hoo!