What an ugly day of eating yesterday - a break-room donut I couldn't say no to, a decent lunch from TJ's, a frosted sugar cookie that I also couldn't make myself not eat, and half a Qdoba burrito for dinner. My only consolation is that I would have eaten like that 3-4 days/week a few months ago.

63 here today, so M.Bro and I are running outside again this afternoon. Back to mid-30s by this weekend, but now I know it's just a temporary lull until Spring really comes back.

Ahh - warm, but now wet and extreeeemely muddy. This is an ugly time of the year in Wisconsin, even though it's so beautiful.

My diet has been pretty good - I'm getting off on denying myself things, which is leaving my with a nice verging-on-hungry feeling most of the day. "What's that, Mr. Maple Nut scone? Oh no, I don't think I will be eating you!"

Running outside took some readjustment, what with the hills and the wind and the spots of ice leftover from people that didn't clear their sidewalks. My long run got cut short by TAing duties, but our floor hockey team capped the season with a hard-fought win. And not just any win - we won 8-0 and the refs ended the game early by the mercy-rule.

Crap - my scale is broken. I thought a new battery would fix it, so after (quite) a few days of forgetting, I tried that. It failed.

On a happier note, today was the first day in three months that it was warm enough for me to ride to school. That's an extra 40 minutes/day of hilly, fixed-gear exercizationing!

16 miles, but it was broken up into a morning and an evening session, so it's not like I was Mr. Runner Dude.

I don't know why my weight doesn't track like my diet and workouts do, but it makes it look like I lose a huuuuge amount of weight last week, when I actually only went from 176.4 to 176.2. That's pretty frustrating, since I ate well and worked my ass off at the gym (especially this weekend). I know I'm doing all the right things, though, and I recognize that I'm not overweight enough to see huge, immediate results, so I'll just keep plugging away. Squats and Deadlifts tonight, followed by a four-mile easy recovery run.

OK, Captain Motivator - high diet scores it is!

And, ramen - eew. I did accidentally buy salted almonds instead of raw ones to snack on, but I don't think that's enough sodium to make a difference.

Soooo, I don't seem to be losing any weight, huh? I have a electro-impedence body-fat scale, though, and my hydration level has gone from the high-50s to the mid-to-high 60s in the last few weeks. I'm not sure why I'm retaining so much water, but I'm sure it's the cause of the weight plateau. I was barely up after a terrible, terrible weekend of eating, though, so I'm hitting nutrition diet hard this week, plugging away at the treadmill, and not weighing myself again until next Monday.

Man, Saturday was a disaster of overeating - too much breakfast, too much lunch, too much dinner - ugh. Today wasn't great diet-wise, but I shoveled wet, heavy snow for almost two hours and ran nine miles. Weighing in tomorrow after staying off the scale for a few days. I get discouraged when I see if fluctuate, even though I know it's just a couple pounds of water weight.

"Duuude - I totally blasted my delts. Someone get me a metrex protein shake for my traps" - stereotype or not, that's what I imagine the weightlifter dudes at my gym are saying to each other. I may be the scrawniest guy lifting free weights, but I'm also one of the only ones doing compound lifts like squats and deadlifts.

Monday nights are weight nights, and yesterday I lifted over my body weight for both of those for the first time! It was the middle set of five (I do 5x5 rep sets), and I did 185 for both. It was awesome and I was so shaky I could barely walk up the stairs to leave the gym. Two months ago, weight night would have been two hours of low-weight/high-rep circuits on every machine I knew how to work. I wasted so many trips to the gym with inefficient, unproductive lifts.

I seem to have strained an oblique playing floor hockey tonight, so the last six of my fifteen miles, which I was planning to run after the game, turned into a two-mile walk. I'm having trouble bending and twisting, but I have my fingers crossed (which I can do without pain) that I can sleep it away and lift weights like planned tomorrow.

Man, great run tonight (which will get logged tomorrow morning)! The gym was dead, which usually ruins my motivation (everybody else is at home what am I doing here?), but I floated through a two mile warmup on the track and pounded out six more on the treadmill. Fifteen flockey tomorrow - yar.

Hey, traineo - what happened to my weight history?

8 miles at a 9:00/mi pace today, then 15 at a 10:00/mi pace tomorrow, followed by another bout of floor hockey. After completely missing two days and going really light on a third this week, I expect it to all be very painful and slow.

I realized this morning that I had been entering my weight every couple days, but apparently not hitting the button to actually add it to my log. It's not like the giant green button was even hard to find or anything.

What do you call the muscles/tendons that go from the top of your foot, over the top of your ankle, and up the front of your shin? I can barely move mine, whatever they're called. Stupid floor hockey game on Sunday night and stupid delayed-onset muscle soreness. My wife reminded me that I couldn't walk for two days after my first game last season too. Apparently sprinting and pivoting is only superficially like distance running. My legs have voted, and they're very, very different sports.

I'm supposed to run 5 miles tonight, but instead, I'm going to sit on the floor and silently scream while I try to stretch my whatevers. Ow ow ow.

I don't get too much credit for the squatting - it's a change from 105 to 145 lbs, not like 475 to 515 or something.

Look I posted a thread about weightlifting in the forums!

Thanks, stranger with the same last name as me!

I'm noticing changes at the gym, which is encouraging. I'v noticed (by touch sight as well as by reps) that my obliques and upper abs are getting more defined, I can squat butt-to-heels with about 40 pounds more than I could a few weeks ago, and when I stretch I can reach the ball of my foot without bending my knee. Not that I don't appreciate lots of comments on my page, but I think visible progress is the best movitator!

I know about the 3600 cal/lb thing, but what's all this hullabaloo (a word I've never typed [or said{I think}] before) about glycogen?

My weight dropped to something starting with a 175 today! But probably only because I'm really dehydrated after yesterday's 13-mile run one hour intense floor hockey match.

Thanks, Sophist! It was never really a conscious, I-Need-To-Lose-Fifty-Pounds effort, but more like 5 lbs here and there for various events or races and staying active enough to never gain it back. I was a lazy pig in college, but my body distributes fat in a pleasing way and I carried the extra pounds reasonable well. Well enough that there isn't much difference in pictures where I'm wearing clothes from then until now. With my body frame and level of muscularness (muscularity? muscularitation? I don't know the word for that), I think 165 is as low as I can get without losing muscle mass.

Best weekend in a long time - training was good diet was decent (which is as good as good, considering what a derail superbowl dinner could have been). Success breeds success, and I'm stoked for another week with my nose to the fitness grindstone.