Frost and Flame

Weight: 247lbs
- 195 days to go
- 47lbs to go
- I didn’t lose anything this week, but I was actually expecting to gain a little. My parents were in town, and we weren’t eating like I usually do.

Running: 11 minutes
- Week 3 of Phase III
- yesterday’s run was a six minute stretch with a five minute
- running plan called for 10 minutes total
- next run is 12/18. Going to try for three five minute runs instead.

Pushups: Still about 70
- I’m having a lot of trouble advancing on this program now
- going to continue doing the current week of the program until it’s a little easier for me
- I may be pausing too long between sets. I’ll fix that on the next workout.

Diet: Still around 2000 calories per day.
- I’m trying to keep it slightly under this figure
- this week was bad - lots of junk food

Overall, I’m feeling better and better each week. My leg muscles are coming in very nicely, and the running is getting much easier on my lungs. I want to add in some other calisthenic exercises next week - probably crunches at this point.

Weight: 247lbs
- 202 days to goal date
- 47 lbs to goal weight
- still sitting at about 1.6lbs per week that I need to lose to meet the goal

Running: 9 minutes
- week 2 of Phase III
- last run was a 5-minute go with a 4-minute go
- 1 minute was extra over the running plan’s requirements
- next run is supposed to be 10 minutes with 20 walking, will likely do two 5-minute intervals

Push-ups: Approximately 70
- stalled out, re-doing previous week
- increase between weeks is too much for me at this point
- will continue the program if able next week

Diet: Approximately 2000 calories daily
- always have a protein shake and an omelette after a workout
- keeping accurate count of all food intake through fitday.com

I’m now a proud father!

My daughter, Éowyn Catherine Rozon-Williamson, was born at 2:38am on August 15th.

She’s healthy and absolutely gorgeous. She weighed in at 7lbs 5oz.

Her mamaa is doing great as well. She tore a little bit and needed some stitches, but she’s on the mend and is very happy to be a mother.

She has met some of her family already. Some more are coming for a visit in a week or so.

That’s Nana Cat.

There’s Uncle Dan and Baba Méo.

Baby and Mamaa are both at home now and doing great. I’ll write more when I have more time.

Weight: 248lbs
- 209 days to goal date
- 48 lbs to goal weight
- this works out to 1.6lbs per week… probably doable still

Running: 7.5 minutes
- week 1 of Phase III
- last run was two 3-minute increments with a 1.5 minute increment added in
- the 1.5 was extra over the running plan’s requirements
- next run is supposed to be 8 minutes with 22 walking, will likely do three 3-minute intervals instead

Push-ups: Approximately 70
- next workout is week 4, day 3
- biggest set so far is 20
- very, very difficult, but feels very good afterwards
- missed a day last week, so I’ll pick it up tomorrow

Diet: Approximately 2500 calories
- started journaling meals today through fitday.com
- starved myself a bit when I was in the hospital… see next post for details!
- will keep very accurate counts of calorie intake from here on out

It’s high time I started using this blog for something, so I’ve decided to start posting a weekly update on my efforts to get into shape.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been unathletic and generally out of shape. At my worst, I was over 310lbs and entirely sedentary. Not exactly a healthy state of affairs! In the last few years I’ve made an effort to get myself into better physical condition, but it has been slow going. I currently weigh in at a still-beefy 251lbs, but I’m steadily making progress towards a healthier plateau.

I know that my biggest stumbling block is currently my cardiovascular fitness. I simply can’t do anything very intense for very long because after a short while my lungs feel like they’re going to explode. My big step towards improving this has been to start running three times a week. I actually haul myself out of bed at 5am, put on some shorts and a t-shirt, strap on my cheap-ass running shoes and just hit the trails.

I’m following a program known as the “Conservative Couch to 5k“. The gist of the program is to get a mostly sedentary person to first start walking regularly, and then slowly introduce running into their walks, gradually increasing the amount of running until the full 30 minute workout is at a run. I’m in Phase II, Week 4 as of tomorrow morning, which will see me running for 6 out of 30 minutes, with the balance being a walk.

Ultimately, my goals are:

1) Get to a healthier body-weight. 200lbs by my next birthday was my previous goal, but I think that might be unreasonable now. For the time being, I’m just going to focus on eating well and exercising, and we’ll see where I end up.

2) Enter a triathlon in 2010. There is a triathlon here in Whitehorse every June. I might possibly be ready for this next year, but I’m going to play it safe and say the year after. Once it gets too cold to run outside here in the morning (which will probably happen next month), I’m going to start going to the Canada Games Center here in town. They have an indoor pool and running track, as well as various fitness machines. I’ll be able to incorporate swimming and biking into my exercise routine that way. If I decide next June that I’m ready to enter right then, I’ll go for it. I don’t need to win or even place well, I just want to finish.

3) Bench press my own weight. This is a very modest goal, but it is made problematic by my lack of equipment. We’ll see if the gear at the Canada Games Center can help me towards this goal. In the meantime, I’ve been doing a push-up program that is definitely helping my arm strength.

My current status:

Weight: 251lbs
- 215 days to goal date
- 51 lbs to goal weight

Running: 6 minutes
- week 4 of Phase II
- last run was three 2-minute increments
- going to try two 3-minute increments on the next run
- recovery time is approximately 90 seconds between sustained runs
- it’s getting easier!

Push-ups: Approximately 70
- next workout is week 4, day 1
- biggest set so far is 20
- very, very difficult, but feels very good afterwards

Diet: Approximately 2500 calories
- going to start journaling my meals again tomorrow
- will keep very accurate counts of calorie intake

Here’s a link to my current running route:

O hai!

It has been a good gods-damned long time since I’ve posted here, and I figured I should probably get on it! I’m paying for hosting, I should be using it. I finally upgraded my wordpress installation and decided it’d be best if I gave it a spin!

Truth-be-told, the last few months I’ve been kind of coasting. I do that from time to time, and it’s not very productive. I love to write, but when I’m in “coast mode”, it just doesn’t happen. I was playing a lot of World of Warcraft and not really getting much else done. I don’t blame the game for my stasis, but it’s certainly a convenient excuse to do nothing! Now that summer is here and I’m getting active, the urge to coast has completely evaporated, so it’s back to posting and being generally productive!

One of the things I’ve been doing to get myself out of that funk is exercising. This is really the first time I’ve been actively exercising in almost two years, and it feels really good. I’ve even started running! That’s something that I only tried very briefly in GP, and gave up almost immediately when it felt like my lungs might explode. I’ve been at it for a bit over two months now, and so far no pulmonary explosions. I’m actually following a program this time around, which is probably the best thing I could do. I thrive on structure, if you hadn’t guessed. I’ve also started doing push-ups as part of my exercise routine (again, according to a program), since I have absolutely no room for a weight bench in the apartment, especially not with a baby on the way.

Speaking of baby… it’s almost time! We’re only thirteen days away from the official due date. There’s a full moon coming up the weekend before as well, and if you believe the urban legends (in this case, I tend to agree with them from anecdotal experience), the baby is more likely to be born then. That’s only a week and change!

We had a second ultrasound a while back, and here’s our pretty girl posing for the “camera”.

Ultrasound Image of Éowyn

You can already see her chubby cheeks and robin lips. I can’t wait to meet her! It doesn’t always show, but I’m more excited about this kid’s arrival than I ever have been about anything else in my entire life.

I’m taking the first month of her life off of work to just hang out and be a dad. I think giving this little girl the best possible start in the world is the most important thing I could possibly do. I think the world would be a better place if more parents were able/willing to do this!

I’ve been getting up at more or less 4am for the last three weeks. I’ve slept in once or twice in that time, but generally, I’m up and at them hours before I really “need” to be. I woke up hacking and coughing twice last night. I don’t know if I just happened to breathe in a cat hair or what, but I was coughing pretty hard. I feel fine this morning though, and I still got up at the ungodly hour I have been. That’s probably a good sign that I’m in the habit already.

So far I haven’t been putting that early morning time to much productive use. Once March rolls around I’ll be pickier about how I use that time, but for the moment I’m happy just to keep building the habit and getting used to the schedule shift.

I’ve been thinking a fair bit lately about what is really important to me in the grander scheme of things. I’ve read that most people have between four and six Big-Vee Values that direct their lives (or should!). Putting it that way, my Values are:

Family: I’m not the kind of person who makes friends easily, and I don’t relish social interaction. Nevertheless, the people who are close to me are extremely important to me. I believe very strongly that a family needs to look out for its own. I don’t really understand how families are torn apart as easily as they are in our society, but I never want that to happen to me and mine. My own first child is on the way now, and that only redoubles my emphasis on this.

Growth: I think that learning, improving and growing are extremely important things to strive towards. Be it improving your physical fitness, learning a new skill or language, or just improving your proficiency with something you already know, I think that ultimately one of the best things we do in life is growing as people, and encouraging others to do so.

Simplicity: Cutting clutter, streamlining processes and generally making things run smoothly and simply are all very important things to me. Sites like Zen Habits are a great source of inspiration along those lines. One of the reasons that I’m really interested in computers is that they provide a means to really cut down on a lot of crap. They make things physically small, easily shared and much easier to manage.

Liberty: I am, at my core, a Libertarian. I understand, though, that most people are not and never will be of the same mind. Never the less, I believe that preserving and exercising our freedoms and fighting tooth and nail against any effort to infringe upon them is very important. I believe that a lifestyle that promotes as little government interference in one’s life as possible is important as well.

Creativity: Very important to me. I’d go so far as to say that it is a quintessential human practice. Whether it’s art, music, literature, computer programming or carpentry, I believe that putting your abilities to use in creating something is vital. Myself, I write — both code and prose.

Independence: This partially plays from my Libertarian stance as well, but I believe very strongly that a person should be as self-sufficient as possible. Mostly I think this is common sense — depending upon others too much is asking to be let down, as cynical as that may sound. Striving to remove dependence on other people, organizations and objects frees one to act in a a purer way, which I feel is very important.

So far, so good. I’ve been waking up at 5am or earlier every day. I like being up this early. It’s so quiet, and I feel like I really make good use of my time. I get lots of little things done. Today, I got up at 4am. That was a personal goal of mine, and I’m glad I managed it. I don’t feel like I slept very well last night, but at least that will encourage me to get to bed early tonight.

One of the things I really want to start doing with these early mornings is getting into a regular exercise routine. Three days a week, for at least a half hour each day is what I think would be ideal. With the coldsnap we’ve experienced here (it has been hovering at -40*C for the last week), I’ve become somewhat more sedentary. As a result, I’ve put on a little bit of weight — I”m about 5 lbs heavier than I was at the end of summer. Not a huge deal, but I can feel it and I don’t like it. It doesn’t really help much that I’m now fighting off my second cold of the season. Regardless, I intend to start the workout routine tomorrow morning.

I’m slowly edging myself towards waking up much earlier than normal. Over the past week, I’ve moved from my usual lazy habit of waking up at 7am, which is the very latest I can get up and still be ready in time for work, to waking at 5am. It has actually been much easier than I expected, thanks in part to some advice I read several months back ad only thought about again a short while ago.

One of the blogs that I read religiously is Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits. An all-around great blog, and he has written regarding the benefits of waking up early and how to do it. I’m following a lot of the advice he has put into that article myself, and find it very helpful.

My goal is to get into the habit of waking up at 4am every single day. That seems a little extreme, but it will give me a huge amount of time to read, study and write. I’ve started another University course just recently, and the time will go a long way to helping me complete the course quickly. I’m not finding myself being tired at work so far, and I don’t completely crash out at the end of the day either. I do find that those first couple of hours are extremely productive for me though, much more so than staying up a few hours later in the evening would be.

I’m going to keep myself at 5am for the rest of the week, but I’ll start edging back again on Monday. Once I hit 4am, that’ll give me three and a half hours of quiet, productive time every single day.