Losing 20 lbs... one day at a time

I need to lose some weight. Not a lot, but I need to start shedding a few pounds this year if I'm going to have a long term healthy lifestyle. My BMI is a not so fantastic 26.4, which puts me pretty comfortably in the "overweight" category for a male of my height and age. I was exactly 200 lbs the day I wrote up my resolutions.

I have traditionally been a pretty skinny guy. In high school I tipped the scales at a massive 130 pounds and I didn't break 150 until after I started college. The majority of my weight gain came after I returned from my trip to China in the summer of 2009. I lost a lot of weight that summer due to sickness/food poisoning and went from around 160 to about 135 in one summer. When I got back home I started gaining weight and I haven't really stopped since then. Maybe my metabolism finally decided to level off. Maybe I've been less physically active. Who knows. Either way, I'm aiming to hit 180 pounds by the end of the year. That's about 1.7 lbs per month, which seems like a pretty reasonable goal to me.

I haven't made any large changes to my lifestyle yet, but I'm beginning to implement two strategies as of this week. First, I'm going to stop cleaning my plate and going back for seconds at meals. I think that portion control is an area that I've been doing pretty badly in these last couple of years, so that's at the top of my list. Second, I'm going to start running again. Today my wife and I went to the gym in our complex for the first time this year and running on the treadmill for 30 minutes felt great. It should be pretty easy to put three or four short workouts per week into my schedule this year. I used to run 3 miles per day in high school and I'd love to be back at that point by this time next year.

The final strategy I'm going to try involves using Runkeeper. Runkeeper is an up and coming health startup that is supposed to be pretty awesome. It lets you log activity and track tons of different stats. The engineer in me will hopefully be compelled to keep building data sets to analyze and track as the months go by. Only time will tell, but this should be pretty interesting.

2012

Is 964 days a long time to wait between blog posts?

Yes?

Ok.

I'm back on blogger and ready to start a new season of life. 2012 is the first time that I have made any serious new years resolutions. I'm doing this for a couple of reasons. First, I read this article and thought it sounded like a good idea. Second, in 2011 I accomplished a lot, but I only had a few set goals (like getting into this and this) for the year so most of the things I did just felt like they sort of happened without any real planning or direction. I'm determined to avoid that this year, so I've set a number of goals for myself that I plan on documenting here. I don't expect anyone to read this, but it should be a good place to record what happens in my life this next year.

I've broken my goals into categories as suggested by Dave Ramsey in his book Entreleadership. In no order, they are: Career, Financial, Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Family, and Social. Here's what I have managed to come up with so far.

Career:

Oso Simple Tech: Close funding round. Sell 1st set of final units. Figure out a viable exit strategy.

UIUC: Publish a paper. Attend a conference.

General: Network with someone new each month. Write a 5 year career plan.

Financial:

Complete baby steps 2 and 3.

Spiritual:

30 minute quiet time each day.

Read through the bible in one year.

Physical:

Run a 5k.

Lose 20 lbs.

Intellectual:

Learn how to program in Objective C.

Complete 1 personal electronics project each quarter.

Read 3 books per month.

Maintain a 3.6 GPA in grad school.

Family:

Go on one date per week with my wife.

Attend younger brother's graduation in May.

Bring my younger sister to Illinois for a visit.

Social:

Call or email at least one long distance friend each week.

Don't eat lunch alone.

I obviously plan on doing more than just these things this year, but I thought this was a good starting point. Most of the posts in this blog will deal with one of the things on this list in some way or another.

Until next time..