Block a few shots

It has been a long journey that is far from over but I have hit a pretty big milestone that I want to share with you all. I have lost 50 LBS since beginning to change my life for the better. 

Story time! (short version, which is still pretty long)

In 2010 I was the heaviest I have ever been, 280lbs. I was ashamed of it. I never stepped on the scale because I knew it wouldn't be good. I had a wife and a 1 year old son at home and I knew I needed to change before it got any worse. In January of 2011, I joined the Bonnyville Boxing Club. It was my first step to getting my weight, health, and life back in control. I lasted a month. It was tough. I lost a little bit of weight, but like so many people the thought of going through the pain and effort deterred me.

In May, my wife Leigh-Anne and good friend Ryan Bailey were geared up to run in the Calgary Marathon. Leigh-Anne, the 5K and Ryan, the 10K. I went along to show my support, even though I always thought there is no reason to run unless there is a football in play, or someone is trying to get you! What I didn't expect was how inspired I would become. Being there surrounded by 11,000+ runners (of ALL shapes and sizes) and 1000's of supporters made it click for me. I needed to run. So I set a goal, I registered for a 5K in Edmonton in September and started training. I ran the race under my set goal of 40 minutes but didn't really put in the effort. By this time I was about 265lbs. I suffered through plantar fasciitis and shin splints, due to my size, and planned for the Calgary Marathon 10K in May 2011 and the Las Vegas Half Marathon in December of 2012.

Then I sat on my ass all winter.

I got on the treadmill a few times here and there but didn't even come close to being ready for Calgary. My 10K came and I knew I wasn't prepared so set the bar low and wanted to finish in less than 90 minutes. I finished in 82 minutes so that was nice. I was still well over 260lbs. I then went on a vacation to Taiwan in June. It was awesome and I'm doing it again, hopefully sooner than later. When we got home and the pictures started showing up on FB I realized that I really haven't done anything to try and get control. I didn’t like the pictures of me.

In August, still hovering around 265lbs, is when I found the secret magic solution that everybody is so desperately seeking to losing weight.

Calories in vs Calories out! And because I am the referee in this battle, I make sure that Calories out win!

I started training hard and monitoring my calories in, no matter what. With my ipod and blackberry I started using "my fitness pal". It was and is easy. I enter everything I eat and am able to stay around my daily recommended calorie intake (1740 calories/day as of today)

Now the weight started coming off and my training got more intense. I ran another 10k in Saskatoon in September and crushed my old time finishing in 65 minutes. 17 minutes faster 17lbs lighter than Calgary.

Now I'm really excited about what I can do and amp up the training even more.

Today I weighed in at 230lbs and with just 10 days until I run my Half Marathon (21.1KM) in Vegas I feel I am about as ready as I will be. My goal for Las Vegas is 150 minutes and I fully expect to beat that.

I still have a long ways to go but wanted to tell my story so far. It is a journey that will never end. My life has completely changed. I look at exercise and food differently now. It’s a battle. In vs out. And now I have complete control over the game. There have been ups and downs and I totally expect there to be more peaks and valleys as I aim for my goal weight, but know that my perseverance will prevail.

By the way, I still don’t love running. But to use a hockey analogy, not a single player in their right mind likes blocking shots, but it’s just something you have to do to get to where you want to be.

Bad idea

Made a horrible mistake in judgement tonight. I decided to change up my training for my half marathon and go for a run outside tonight. I've been running in my living room on a treadmill and was getting bored with it. What a mistake. As most people know (and I should seeing as I was born and raised in Kindersley) it's harvest. The dust is so thick it's like fog out there. My lungs and throat we're killing me 10 minutes in and I only lasted 1.25 miles before calling it a night.

I'm Back

I think I'm going to start giving the old blog a try.  Just need to change a few things since I am no longer employed by a radio station. Freelance is the way to go.

Stay tuned

Good Bye

So some of you may already know this, and some may have no idea. I am leaving Kool 101.3. This will be my last week on air with my last show being Thursday March 31st. It was a very tough choice as I am leaving radio as well. I will be working for an Oilfield company that I have had experience with in the past. We are moving back to our home town of Kindersley Saskatchewan. The Lakeland will always have a very special place in my heart and I have loved being up here. I will always be a Pontiacs fan and plan on visiting as much as possible. For all those who have listened and enjoyed what I have done over the last 2+years I thank you. And for all those who haven't enjoyed what I have done for the last 2+ years, I'm sorry about your lack of humour. That's it that's all

Spring time

So I know it has been a month since my last blog entry. I am always being told that if I have a blog, I need to care about it and make sure its up to date. If I don't care about it, then the listener isn't going to care to read it. But to be honest, on this side of the mic in my personal life, it has been a month from hell. I'm not going to get into whats going on but I just haven't had the motivation to blog for a while.

So now that that's off my chest a few things that have been bugging me.

The NHL.
When are they going to start realizing that trying to grow the game and gain new fans is also pushing away the people who love the sport. Why is there empty rinks in Phoenix? Because people there don't care about hockey. There are 2 cities (WPG, QUE) in the greatest hockey nation on earth that are begging for NHL and for reasons I cannot understand the NHL says no we need to lose millions in PHX every year.

Rules. it is beginning to be impossible to figure out what is "clean" and what is "illegal" in the NHL. hitting a guy away from the puck into the boards is worth 10 games but pile driving a guy into the turnbuckle isn't even a fine. When a government is broken, there is an election and new people are brought in to run the country. The NHL brass has been broken for years and I think its time some new people were brought in to get it back to how it is. Rod Pedersen always says hockey is broken and I'm starting to agree with him.

I'm convinced when my 2 year starts playing at the Junior level, the game will be un-enjoyable to watch. I guess I will have to start teaching him a nasty changeup this spring.

Thats it thats all

Super Bowl XLV

OK I know, I'm a week and a half late on a blog post regarding the Super Bowl, but hey, its OK. I don't mind.

This is my family on Super Bowl Sunday in Cancun

For the first time in my life I was able to watch the Superbowl with people who cared who won. We were in Cancun and the Collage (lobby bar) held a party. In front of us were Steelers fans. Like hardcore Steelers fans. All decked out in yellow and had terrible towels and the whole nine yards. (get it? 9 yards, short of a 1st down like the Steelers were all night).

So, seeing as I have no team I cheered for Green Bay. I had a guy swear at me because I cheered for a touchdown. Then he walked up to me. And this guy was a dweeb. Shorter than me, narrow shoulders, dweeb hair cut, socks and shorts on. Just a loser. So when he was walking up to me I figured it was on like donkey kong and I had to slap him silly. When he reached me he apologized for being a poor sport and didn't mean it. Oh well, maybe next Cancun Super Bowl Party I can slap him around.

So being a Packers fan for the night, my brother and I participated in a beer chugging contest against other Steelers fans. 2 Canadians, and 6 Yankees. We showed them what we were all about and downed the beers in about 2 seconds each. Darn Yankee doodles on our teams sipped and it literally took the guy 1 minute to drink his and we lost. But did we really? NOPE! Any time you are in a beer chugging contest, you are a winner!

Anyways, we ended up taking shots of Tequila for every touchdown scored in the game and the rest of the night is a bit fuzzy.

That's it that's all

Chicken Fights part 2

So as a few of you who read this more often know, before leaving for Mexico, my brother asked about seeing some "chicken fights". But not girls wrestling on shoulders, he meant cock fights. I giggled. I also said hell no, way to sketchy to go see cock fights.

Well he does his own thing and ended up involved in a "chicken fight".

As you can see when it was all said and done, they made and even added each other as facebook friends.

That's it, that's all.

Debriefing

So I am back and into the swing of things from my Mexican holiday.

The entire week I was gone I vowed to stay away from Facebook, twitter, email, texting, and anything else to keep up to date on what was going on. It was absolutely amazing. It made me have real conversations with people. I wasn't looking down at my phone at all and i loved it. Plus I watched very little tv and I cant even begin to tell you how recharged that can make a person. I swam in the ocean everyday but 2 (jellyfish one day, and thunderstorms one day), I mini golfed, snorkeled, and realized in the sun.

The resort we stayed at was called Crown Paradise. In my opinion it was fanfrickentastic, but I'm not hard to please. It was very much a kid friendly resort and that's why we choose it. Seth had a daycare. Now people were telling us before we went that there is no way in hell they would let their kids stay in a Mexican day care, but only 4 kids went missing the entire week we were there so I would say it was pretty well ran. (that was sarcasm, there is no way a resort would be able to operate a day care if there were ANY kinds of issues. It was no different than staying in a day care in Canada)

I would also highly recommend Cancun. Great place with alot to do. It is very commercialized so if a 3rd world country hot holiday isn't something you would like, go to Cancun. You can hit up Wal-Mart, Mcdonalds, Dominos, and basically every chain restaurant and store here in Canada.

So now I have a Caribbean travel bug, if anyone wants to take me on a trip to the tropics, feel free to let me know.

Ok that's it that's all.