Happy New Year and Status

2012 is upon us and unfortunately I have not managed to follow the very good flow I was in back in September. I have not been exercising much and the diet has gone down the drain both of which has resulted i a gain of 9.5 kg since September and it stopped at 135.2 kg.

It was terrible seeing this on the bathroom scale and to be honest I did feel embarrassed. But moreover I got very angry with myself because I know how much hard work was behind those 10 kg.

So what to do? Well the only thing I can do is to roll up my sleeves and get started again and in doing so I should at least take what was positive the last year.

• I lost 11kg
• I got in much better shape
• I finished my first bike ride Bergen - Voss (165km)

Before starting back up again for 2012 I have tried to understand why I did not manage to keep on the track with my training and diet once the fall set in. I think the answer is very simple. I really enjoy exercising on my bike and I have going to the gym, so once it got to cold and wet to go out on the bike everything fall apart. Once I did not exercise as much anymore the diet plan also started to get harder and harder to follow. 

So for Christmas my beautiful wife surprised me with a Christmas present that I hope is part of a solution to get me going again, through the winter. She got me a TacX Flow ergotrainer that I can use with my ordinary road racer bike :). I now have it set up and ready to use and I will come back with a review of my first experience with the TacX Flow ergotrainer. You can read about the TacX flow on the TacX web page here:

http://www.tacxflow.com/en_home.html

So, hopefully the shock over what was displayed on the bathroom weight and the vitamin boost from the present from my wife will get me back on track for 2012. I will also make sure I become more active on the blog again, which I  also stopped updating. When I used it, it worked exactly as I hoped it would as it was a way of "forcing" me to do well as everyone knew how I was doing. I think if I had started to write on the blog that I was not doing well with my diet and I was not  exercising as much I would have picked myself up much earlier. 

Hopefully people will start follow me and be an inspiration to me in 2012. 

Happy New Year

September 1st - Summary

That's it, August gone and way too quickly. I had a high goal, again, for my exercise this month but I did not reach it. I did 15 out of 30 hours. However, I have been doing a lot of construction work for the last 2 weeks combined with mowing to a new office location which involved a lot of heavy lifting and carrying up and down stairs. This has certainly giving me extra exercise that has not been counted up in any way. But for certain it accounts for my missing 15 hours :)

For my "diet", things have been going perfectly and it is getting easier and easier each week where it has gotten to the point where I do not have to think about it anymore. It helps that my wife is following the same diet, so that we do not have to make two dinners for example.

So for the interesting part, did I meet my goal for this month? Loosing 5 kg and a total of 10 cm at my measurement points? YES I did. I dropped 5.2 kg and 19 cm in total :). This puts my total weight loss at 22.2kg since January 1st. (see the stats at the bottom of this post)

After finishing Bergen - Voss I had a goal of managing to loose a total of 30kg before we leave for the Canary Islands in November. Deep inside I did not really think I would manage to reach this goal but I like to have something to stretch for and push myself towards. Now, two months away, I have less then 8kg to go so now the goal seems within reach and gives me extra boost to work hard for the next two coming months :) and hopefully I will get there :).

I have also got a new couple of jeans and a new sweater today. I am now a size 40 in jeans (Norwegian size) and the sweater was size XL. Cool to wear a sweater where the size does not contain numbers like, 2XL, 3XL, 4XL and so on :). Also cool to simply pick up a pair of jeans without having to ask them to look at the storage room for a bigger size :)

Weight
	August 1st	September 1st	Difference
Weight:	129.9 kg	124.7 kg	-5.2 kg
Measurements
	August 1st	September 1st	Difference
Neck:	42 cm	41 cm	-1 cm
Overarm:	44 cm	44 cm	0 cm
Breast:	121 cm	120 cm	-1 cm
Stomach:	129 cm	122 cm	-7 cm
Waist:	128 cm	122 cm	-6 cm
Thigh:	80 cm	77 cm	-3 cm
Calf:	47 cm	46 cm	-1 cm
Total:	591 cm	572 cm	-19 cm

20 kg gone :)

Today the scale stopped at 126.8 kg. This means I have lost 20.1 kg since January first :) and is a great milestone to reach :). This gives and average weight loss of just above 0.6 kg a week which I think is a sensible weekly weight loss considering that I want to be able to keep the new weight when I am down to where I want to be.

The success factors so far is a change in my diet. I am eating low carb food but I do not take it to the extreme. Basically I have cut out bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, cakes, and sweets and I am eating much more salads and vegetables.

In addition I have been exercising much more then usual. I am averaging to 6 hours a week and it is difficult to put in more then that being a working father of two small beauties:) Since I am aiming for finishing Bergen - Voss with a much better time next June most of my exercise now is on the bike and I am as usual following the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred routine (now at level 2). However when October hits I need to find something other then bike riding for the winter months.

Anyway, tonight I am celebrating with my wife's home mead chocolate (low-carb) and nuts treat with a hint of chilli :)

Two rides today

Today I had two short rides of 45 minutes, one in the morning and one in the evening. This was a great way to start the day and I will use the new short ride on days where I take a morning ride. The route contains on big hill and I will but up a profile of the this route together with the other routes I am using next week.

I am getting a new HTC phone next week and I can install an app that will use the built in GPS to log my bike rides and then I can get the elevation data out to plot the profile :). I am looking forward to log my rides better using the app on the new phone.

Wet ride

Today I was quite busy but at some point I just had to get away for a short while so I went out on a short ride. However today we had terrible weather with wind and rain so it ended up being a though ride, but although I had a lot of head wind slowing me down especially in the easy parts of the route I still did it in 50:30 which is just 1:30 behind my personal best. I am certain on a nice weather day I can now set a new personal best :).

Goals for August

Exercise:
My goal for August is again to get in 30 hours of exercise. This month I will focus on interval training in a steep hill close by to improve my performance when climbing hills on the bike. This is definitively where I have most to gain. The small hill I am using is quite steep and at full pace I could get from the bottom to the top in about 5 minutes. However at that speed I am not able to get all the way up yet before my legs gets to stiff. So I am currently doing 3 minutes intervals and will slowly increase the length of each interval until I can go at full pace to the top of the hill. The goal is to be able to do 4 intervals of 4-5 minutes to the top by the end of August. This might not be achievable but I will work hard to get there (and if the goal is to easy to get to I will not push myself hard enough)

We will also be doing the Jillian Michaels 30 day shred routine Level 2 this month :)

Weight loss:

As for July my goal is to loose another 5kg during August. This will put me down below 125kg. If I manage that it also means I will have lost more then 20kg since January 1st :)

For my measurements it is difficult to set a goal other then to achieve the same as I did during July.

Long therm weight loss:

Fora  bit more long-therm goal we are going to the Canary Islands for two weeks starting November 4th. Which is now 3 months away. My goal is to by then be below 115kg which might be to ambitious, but again I want a goal to stretch against and to keep me pushing myself. I will set up a chart here on the blog where I will add my weight every Sunday morning to keep track of my progress.

30 Days gone - Status and measurements

So, 30 days have gone and time to look at what I achieved during July.

I managed to do 23 hours of exercise out of my goal of 30. I am slightly disappointing in that even though it included 5 days where the whole family was away on vacation. However my weight went down with 5.9 kg and I am now officially below 130 kg for the first time in, well I do not remember the last time the scale showed less then 130 kg. This is a BIG boost for me and I am very happy with the weight loss during July.

I also did my measurements on July first and I have just redone them. As the table at the bottom of the post shows I lost a total of 10 cm during July. Initially I was a bit disappointing in that but thinking about it I do not really have a realistic impression as to how much I can expect to change in a month, so based on my weight loss I have decided to be happy with the measurements changes :)

Yesterday, Sunday, I went through my closet and got rid of all clothes that no longer fit. That was an extremely positive exercise and again gave me quite a boost to keep the good work going. However, it left me with a much smaller wardrobe, in more then on way :). I can now finally wear some clothes that have not fitted me before but that I have bought for this moment :).

I could also go out on my bike on Sunday and use a proper bike jersey that my wife bought me. Up until now there was no way I could squeeze myself into the biggest sizes I could buy at the local sport shops. But now I do fit nicely. I know, sounds silly but it truly was a great feeling taking the first bike ride finally dressed properly :)

Weight
	July 1st	August 1st	Difference
Weight:	135.8 kg	129.9 kg	-5.9 kg
Measurements
	July 1st	August 1st	Difference
Neck:	43 cm	42 cm	-1 cm
Overarm:	45 cm	44 cm	-1 cm
Breast:	123 cm	121 cm	-2 cm
Stomach:	131 cm	129 cm	-2 cm
Waist:	129 cm	128 cm	-1 cm
Thigh:	83 cm	80 cm	-3 cm
Calf:	47 cm	47 cm	0 cm
Total:	601 cm	591 cm	-10 cm