Guess How Much I Weigh Contest - Week 55

The contest must go on!

Guess away.

If the weigh-in does not get posted tomorrow, it will get posted on Monday.

Have a happy holiday weekend everybody!

Step right up, step right up.
Guess how much I weigh and win a fabulous prize.

To Recap:
Every Thursday I give you my stats for the week and you guess what you think the scale will say on Friday morning. The winner is the first person who guesses my weight / weight loss for the week without going over or the person who is closest without going over. Go ahead and click on comments at the bottom of this post and leave your guess.


I will post the winner when I post my weight on Fri. morning. If we get ten or more guesses I will have a prize for the winner.


Let the guessing begin. Good Luck!

Tony
07/03 216.8 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.8 lbs. to go

Write Off

This week is quickly becoming a write off week. I compounded a day with no exercise yesterday by eating like a mad man. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I went to bed last night with a horrible upset stomach.

My body is no longer able to eat like that. It wasn't even that horrible, compared to the days of Old. Chipotle for lunch and a big dinner and a few snacks. But it was enough to most likely post another gain this week... well, combined with some heavy eating at the company party on Friday...You know what, lets just chalk this week up to a holiday week and recommit ourselves to the goal starting next Monday.


Actually, with the Triathlon looming, I can't afford to write off the rest of the week. So let's do it this way. Let's consider this past weekend and the early part of this week the Holiday weekend and then I can spend the Holiday weekend working hard and playing hard.

That should work.

I hope to get in some runs, bikes and swimming over the long weekend. Probably not all back to back.

Contest and weigh-in will happen as scheduled...although the weigh -in post may have to wait until Monday...unless someone brings a computer to the cabin.

Tony
07/02 216.8 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.8 lbs. to go

Celebration Time

"What are we celebrating", you might ask?

"Good question", I might reply.

Then again you might not ask, so how 'bout I just tell you.

Two big milestones, that is what we are celebrating.

Milestone Number 1:

My tri buddy Teresa, (Remember Teresa? She's the reason we are doing this crazy Triathlon in the first place) called on Saturday night to see if I wanted to squeeze in a workout on Sunday morning and my lovely wife was kind enough to give up our quiet Sunday at home. So first thing Sunday I hopped on my bike and headed over to Teresa's. Including my 4.5 mile bike ride to Teresa's, I did a 15 mile bike ride and then we hopped of the bikes and went for a 2.7 Mile run.

That's right. I finally got my Triathlon length back-to-back out of the way... plus a few miles.

So now we know I can finish the race. Thanks Teresa and Judy for the great workout.

Milestone Number 2:
This afternoon I stretched my run to 4.07 Miles in 37:30! That is my farthest run so far.

I'm feeling pretty good...pretty sore...but pretty good too!

Hope you all had as amazing a weekend as we did.

Tony
06/30 216.8 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.8 lbs. to go

THe Weigh-In Week 54

216.8! That is what it said on the scale this morning. A loss of .8!

Not bad considering the BBQ last night. In the end I was a lot more worried about the wine I drank last night , then the food I ate. I filled up on fruit instead of chips...it helped that there was a pretty limited supply of bad food. We were at a priests house after all.

Our winner this week would have been Teresa, had there been 10 guesses.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Tony
06/27 216.8 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.8 lbs. to go

Guess How Much I Weigh Contest - Week 54

If I were to post my weight today I would be posting a nice loss for the week... unfortunately I have to wait until tomorrow to post my weight, which puts everything up in the air.

I have a B.B.Q Potluck tonight and as we all know Potlucks are one of the members of the Food Axis of Evils. I will do my best to control myself, but late night eating and a big meal are not always conducive to a good weigh-in.

Plus, I am a little worried that this mornings low weigh-in was partially due to all the water weight I lost during my workout yesterday.

Holy cow was that hot. I am sad to report I didn't make my full work out. Well, I did make the full workout but I had to stop and walk for 3 minutes half way through the run...and I only did 2 miles, not 2.5... but the 2.5 is something I am working up to.

Did I mention it was really freakin' hot?

Step right up, step right up.
Guess how much I weigh and win a fabulous prize.

To Recap:
Every Thursday I give you my stats for the week and you guess what you think the scale will say on Friday morning. The winner is the first person who guesses my weight / weight loss for the week without going over or the person who is closest without going over. Go ahead and click on comments at the bottom of this post and leave your guess.


I will post the winner when I post my weight on Fri. morning. If we get ten or more guesses I will have a prize for the winner.


Let the guessing begin. Good Luck!

Tony
06/26 217.6 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
9.6 lbs. to go


p.s. Don't forget you can subscribe to the e-mail edition of Guess How Much I Weigh . Simply enter your e-mail address in the space to the right.

Mixed Bag

This has been a mixed week so far...as far as healthy living goes. Without really thinking about it I have been eating horribly this week, but I have been so active that the exercise seems to be offsetting the eating...so far.

Today is going to be another challenge. I am doing my second brick (bike and run back-to-back) over lunch today. Checking the weather this morning I noticed it is supposed to be 87 today.

Not that I am complaining. After whining for so long about not having summer I would never complain about an 87 degree day... but it is going to make todays workout challenging.

Just have to remember to hydrate.

Tony
06/25 217.6 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
9.6 lbs. to go

P.S.
Ellie got her stitches out yesterday and her cut looks great. I think it is going to heal up real nice.

Awesome Weekend

What a great weekend. The second one in a row by my calculations.

The weather was perfect all weekend long. We played in the water, got behind the boat and had the chance to catch up with some old high school friends. Just what a real summer weekend should be.

I spent a good part of the weekend water skiing. I now I have said it before, but I love being able to water ski again. I felt this weekend that I was really getting back into the grove behind the boat. I was able to go for some nice long sets and I even tried a few one handed turns. They may not have been pretty, but they were one handed.

It's funny how your standards change when your passion is reignited. The water was kind of choppy this weekend. A few years ago I probably would have passed and waited for calmer water, but this weekend I hopped in without a seconds hesitation and had the best runs of the summer.

I also went for a swim in the lake with my Dad and my brother-in-law in training for the triathlon. The good news is I will be able to make the distance on the day of the race. The bad news is, it's going to take me a lot longer than I thought.

Everyone has told me that swimming in a lake is way different than swimming in a pool, and I was prepared for the waves and the wind and the cold. What I wasn't prepared for was the claustrophobia. When you put your face in the water you cant see a thing and that freaked me out a little bit. I swam the first 5 minutes of our 15 minutes swim with my face out of the water the whole time.

Hopefully I'll have a few more practice swims in the lake before race day.

Tony
06/23 217.6 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
9.6 lbs. to go

THe Weigh-In Week 53

217.6. That's what it said on the scale this morning. A gain of 1.2 pound.

Not bad, considering. Honestly I thought it would be much worse.

Now something much more up beat.

Ellie is doing great. She hardly even acknowledges her scar, so it must not be hurting much. I see Maggie looking at it every once and awhile, but she never says anything about it so I guess she's fine with it too.

We will get the stitches out early next week and hopefully by next Friday it will be a distant memory.

Here's the fun news from the week. OK, maybe not so much fun as grueling physical endurance news. I noticed yesterday that the triathlon was only 1 month and 1 day away, That makes today the month mark.

With only 1 month to go the tri seems suddenly real. So, yesterday I decide to try something new in my training. I did what they call in the triathlon world a "brick". I assume they call it that because that is how your legs feel when you are done.

A brick is two legs of the triathlon done back to back. Yesterday I biked 9 miles then hoped off the bike and ran for 1.8 miles. A little short of the 2.5 I will need for the race, but I am very proud of it for my first back to back attempt. Even better, when I got back and calculated my time, I managed to keep a pace of 8:30 minute miles as I was running. I almost never run that fast. I still can't believe that I did it after getting off a bike!

I think I will be making bricks a regular part of my work outs for these last few weeks leading up to the tri.

It's supposed to be sunny and 80 all weekend. Finally summer has officially arrived!!!!!

No winner this week. Everyone voted for a loss...as you should have. Your continued optimism gives me something to strive for next week.

Have a great weekend everybody.

Tony
06/20 217.6 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
9.6 lbs. to go

Guess How Much I Weigh Contest - Week 53

What started out as set up for a great week of weight loss has kind of falling into a bit of chaos.

My lovely wife and I had dinner out at one of the best steak houses in the city on Tues. to celebrate our 8-year anniversary. It was an amazing meal!!!! But, not exactly the kind of meal you eat when you are looking for a nice week of weight loss.

The meal wouldn't have been a problem...but then we had an interesting day on Wed.

When I was a little kid I was kind of accident prone.. At least that's how I look at it. My parents would more likely say that I was a little hellion who had the ability to find every dangerous thing in the world to climb on , jump off or run through. Need less to say, I spent my fair share of time in hospitals when I was a kid....by not fault of my excellent and highly qualified parents.

Turns out my daughter Ellie is doing a great job of following in her Dads footprints.

She fell and hit her head on our patio yesterday afternoon, requiring a trip to the emergency room and two layers of stitches to close up the extremely deep gash in her forehead.

To her credit little Ellie was amazing at the hospital, she didn't cry or scream while they stitched her up. In fact she spent most of the time entertaining the ER docs with her eclectic song stylings.

To her moms credit, Laura also did not scream or cry or faint or throw up.

Anyway, our sumptuous anniversary meal was followed by a day of stress eating and very little exercise.

Fortunately Ellie will be just fine. She will most likely end up with a small scar on her forehead, but considering how things could have gone we'll take a scar and count our blessings.

And that will be my excuse if I end up posting a gain this week.

It's also my excuse for not logging food this week.

I'll start again next week.

Step right up, step right up.
Guess how much I weigh and win a fabulous prize.

To Recap:
Every Thursday I give you my stats for the week and you guess what you think the scale will say on Friday morning. The winner is the first person who guesses my weight / weight loss for the week without going over or the person who is closest without going over. Go ahead and click on comments at the bottom of this post and leave your guess.


I will post the winner when I post my weight on Fri. morning. If we get ten or more guesses I will have a prize for the winner.


Let the guessing begin. Good Luck!

Tony
06/19 216.4 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.4 lbs. to go


p.s. Don't forget you can subscribe to the e-mail edition of Guess How Much I Weigh . Simply enter your e-mail address in the space to the right.

Biking To Work

I biked into work this morning, What a great way to start the day.

I live in the suburbs and work in the city and even now that I am "slim, trim and in shape", biking to work has always seemed like such a daunting task.

"There is now way I can bike that far, it will take me hours."

Turns out it's only 10 miles and it only took me 40 minutes. I guess there is just something mental about the feeling that the 'burbs are so far away from the city.

So now I am one of those guys who can bike to work. How cool is that?

And man did I pick the perfect morning for my first ride to work. It was gorgeous and sunny with just a slight breeze.

Now I am full of vim and vigor end ready to get things done.

Tony
06/18 216.4 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.4 lbs. to go

P.S. I don't really know what Vim and Vigor mean and I am too busy to look it up, but it's sounds like the kind of thing people who bike to work would say so I am sticking with it.

Best Weekend Ever!

What a great weekend.

I spent fathers day weekend being a good father. Laura and I spent the whole weekend finishing the girls play set.

Ta-Dah!



It was a royal pain in the hiney getting this thing built....but watching those girls rushing to get back up to that slide one more time, seeing the pure joy in their eyes when we told them it was finally ready, that made all the hassle worth it.

The hard work paid off in another way too.

This is the first weekend in months were I am ending the weekend weighing less then when I started the weekend. Only .2 pounds less, but still, it's a good starting point for a nice loss this week. Fingers crossed.

Hope you all had as great a weekend as we did.

Tony
06/16 216.4 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.4 lbs. to go

The 1 Year Anniversary Weigh-In (Week 52)

216.4! That is what it said on the scale this morning. A loss of 3.6 pounds!

I'd say that is a good way to end a great year.

Once again our big winner is my Dad! Way to go Dad. Good guessing.

A quick recap on the year.

I started this journey on June 10th 2007. On that day I weighed 280. 1 year later I have lost 63.6 pounds.

My heaviest weight ever was 288. From that I have lost 71.6 pounds.

I am only 3.6 pounds above my lowest weight of 213.

In the past year I have started running.
For the first time in my life I can run more than three miles.
I completed a 5k race in under 27 minutes.
I swam a mile.
I have taken up biking.
I have started strength training.
I have developed muscles.
The clothes in my closet have shrunk from XXL to L.
I can waterski again.
My back no longer hurts.
I have stopped snoring.
I have stopped wheezing when I walk up stairs.

And...I have made some amazing friends.

I am really proud of the things I have been able to accomplish this year. Like I have said all along, I could have never done it with out the support and encouragement of my friends and family. You guys have been the support that I needed, the courage I never had and the conscience I have been searching for.

From the bottom of my heart, Thank YOU!

This journey is far from over. I still have a lot of goals I want to accomplish before I rest.
The triathlon is coming up.
I am still trying to get to 208.
I want to take my running to the next level.
I want to work on toning my body.

So please stick around, because really, this is just the beginning.

Here is the treat I promised you yesterday. At least I think it's a treat. Click on the pic to see every weigh-in photo from this year, all in one image.


1 year down, 70 more to go!


Tony
06/12: 216.4 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
8.4 lbs. to go

Guess How Much I Weigh Contest - Week 52

This is it! The big one year anniversary edition of the Guess How Much I Weigh Contest.

This has been a good week. Despite eating a little too much in Duluth over the weekend and a few questionable choices during the week, it's looking like I should have a good loss this week. I have been working out like a mad man. I managed to get in a good ride and a good run over the weekend and I am finally starting to stretch my runs past 3.1 miles. On Monday I almost made it 4 miles in 36 minutes.

A year ago, if someone had told me I would be running almost 4 miles by now, I would have wet my pants laughing. It has been an amazing year full of some amazing accomplishments.

No matter what the scale says tomorrow, I will be celebrating a year that I am very, very proud of.

Over the weekend my Brother-in- Law and His Wife gave me a belated birthday present, work out clothes. Which is the same thing my wife gave me for my birthday. As I was putting away laundry this morning I realized that I now have more workout clothes than any other type of clothes in my closet, with the exception of t-shirts. That in itself is a pretty major accomplishment.

I can finally stop wearing the 3XL sleeveless t-shirts that have been the staple of my workout wear.

I am hoping to have a fun little year end wrap up tomorrow.

Step right up, step right up.
Guess how much I weigh and win a fabulous prize.

To Recap:
Every Thursday I give you my stats for the week and you guess what you think the scale will say on Friday morning. The winner is the first person who guesses my weight / weight loss for the week without going over or the person who is closest without going over. Go ahead and click on comments at the bottom of this post and leave your guess.

I will post the winner when I post my weight on Fri. morning. If we get ten or more guesses I will have a prize for the winner.

Stats for the week of June 9th.

Calories Consumed: From Monday morning through Wed. night I have consumed aprox. 16836 calories.

Calories Burned: From Monday morning through Wed. night I have burned aprox. 22698 calories.

37% of my calories were from Fat
13% of those were from Saturated Fat
45% of my calories were from Carbs
16% of my calories were from Protein

Let the guessing begin. Good Luck!

Tony
06/12: 220 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
12 lbs. to go

p.s. Don't forget you can subscribe to the e-mail edition of Guess How Much I Weigh . Simply enter your e-mail address in the space to the right.

Continuing The Journey

Let's continue our little trip down memory lane.

These pictures start in October of '07 and end with a picture from last weekend.








April 2007 Side By Side with June 2008.


If you ask me, it's been a darn good year.

Tony
06/11: 220 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
12 lbs. to go

Welcome To The One Year Anniversary Celebration

Let's start with a little trip down memory lane. These pictures start in April of 2007 and go through September of 2007.

Tomorrow we'll take a look at the end of '07 and the beginning of '08.

The Wife Weighs In...Week 31

Happy Friday, all!

Quick update for me (very quick). Another crazy week! I'm feeling a little more in control of my schedule, but the week disappeared before I'd even had the chance to realize it had started. No gym again this week. Yuck!

Small loss (very small)...but with no workouts and hormonal water weight, I'm not doing too badly.

I think my darling husband and I may be brainstorming revitalization strategies on our car trip to Duluth this weekend.

'Til next week!





My update:
5/30/08: 185.0
6/06/08: 184.8 (a loss of 0.2 pounds this week)

Total loss of 43.6 pounds, 1.6 pounds over low of 183.2, 2.8 pounds from next mini-goal of 182.0

THe Weigh-In Week 51

220!!!! That is what it said on the scale this morning.

Embarrassed
Disappointed
Dishaeratened
Furious

By sadly not surprised.

I made a lot of bad choices this week, compounded by a horrible day of eating yesterday. No need to dwell. I must do better this week. I for real will start tracking my calories today...and I will be tracking through the weekend for once.

No way am I going into the 1 year anniversary week like this!

Tony
06/6: 220 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
12 lbs. to go

Guess How Much I Weigh Contest - Week 51

Somewhere this week things took a turn for the worse. I got crazy busy again and stopped counting calories. I also worked like a mad man hauling dirt and rock and building and digging. I think this translated to my mind and / or stomach as free reign to eat whatever I wanted. With all that exercise I must be able to eat more calories right? Wrong!

Long story short I think I am going to have a little gain. Which I was fine with until I realized that next week is the one year anniversary of this journey. So now I am a little ticked at myself for losing track this week. In honor of next weeks anniversary, I am going to spend the next week being on my best behavior. And I am back to calorie counting starting today.

I have an early morning meeting tomorrow so results may be posted a little late.

Step right up, step right up.
Guess how much I weigh and win a fabulous prize.

To Recap:
Every Thursday I give you my stats for the week and you guess what you think the scale will say on Friday morning. The winner is the first person who guesses my weight / weight loss for the week without going over or the person who is closest without going over. Go ahead and click on comments at the bottom of this post and leave your guess.

You can check out my food journal for the last few days here.

I will post the winner when I post my weight on Fri. morning. If we get ten or more guesses I will have a prize for the winner.


Let the guessing begin. Good Luck!

Tony
06/5: 215 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
7 lbs. to go

p.s. Don't forget you can subscribe to the e-mail edition of Guess How Much I Weigh . Simply enter your e-mail address in the space to the right.

Checking In

Busy. Busy. Busy. This seems to be my mantra lately. Swamped at work and swamped at home. But we are getting closer to having the play set done. Once that is finished I hope to have a little breathing room.

Here is a quick revival of Recipe Wednesday.


Over at Hungry Girl (my newest obsession) they have posted a low calorie replacement for a Dairy Queen Mud Pie Blizzard. I can not wait to try this.

Check out the recipe here.

And here is one I can testify to. I made these Yum Yum Brownie Muffins on Monday for our softball BBQ and they were a big hit.

Catch the recipe here.


Tony
06/4: 215 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
7 lbs. to go

What Did You Do This Weekend?

I survived this:


And built this:


With a lot of help from my father-in-law and my parents.


Late Saturday afternoon, we were hit with a major hail storm. It was like a torrential down pour with no rain, just hail. It was insane. Two weeks in a row I have lived through two of the wildest hail events I have ever seen

The storm destroyed all of your garden areas, but didn't really do any other damage. Which is very lucky. It sounds like a lot of people in the area are going to need some serious repair work... and the hail caused a ton of car accidents.

The rest of the weekend was spent building a place for the girls play set. In other words it was spent digging and hauling and hammering and then digging and hauling some more. I am exhausted today. .. and I can barely lift my arms. Good exercise, right?

Despite all the hard work, it was a fun project and I think it turned out great. And we had our first gorgeous summer weekend so I didn't mind spending it outside working. Just a few more truck loads of rock and mulch and the area will be done.

Here's a few more storm pics.



Tony
05/30: 215 lbs
NEW GOAL: 208
7 lbs. to go