Weekly weight loss check in and progress report.

Like all of you, I am still on New Years resolution track. Unlike most of you (I assume) I am going to hold myself accountable to a bunch of people I have never met.

Join the weight loss crew at LIVESTRONG.COM

So there it is. I still have a way to go, but I am showing forward progress. What did I do last week to achieve such incredible results? I rode my bicycle to work three days and spent my first hour on the trainer, for starters. To be honest, I am not riding the entire route in to the office, instead I am taking the train the entire way in the morning and most of the way home in the evening. I say most of the way in the evening, but I do get off early and ride about 7 miles of the route home. The Bloggipede is a super fun bike for bombing around on, especially for a few path miles in the evening.

On the training front, I have downloaded a training video from epicPLANET and watched a big part of it, but not on the trainer. The video is an hour and a half long, and man, that is a LOT of trainer time. I will do it, but I am working up to it. So far I have managed to watch Rain of Madness (highly recommended) for one session and two episodes of Pawn Stars for the other session. My plan was to maintain an average speed of 16mph and an average cadence of 85 during my session. I just about managed it too.

Livestrong screenshot. 

On the food front, I am using the Livestrong app on my iPhone to track my calories. I am allowed a little over 1700 calories a day in order to lose 2lbs a month. I stayed under my total every day, and it's actually kind of fun to track once I get in the groove. I have used calorie counting for weight loss for a long time, and I certainly expect to be successful.

I have also added vitamins into the regimen, taking a bunch of pills (like Judy!) to make the weight loss process go quicker. Theoretically. I am not using any diet pills, only vitamin (and one fiber) supplements.

The first time I took one of these pictures of the scale, I held the phone too high. Hawt. 

So far my weight loss has been going well altogether. I am feeling pretty good, and am on track to be really thin AND fit for the first time in quite a while. I expect things to pick up (or drop off) a little more quickly as the month goes on - I tend to pick up steam as I go along.

In the "coming soon" category for the blog, I will be doing a Plano article this week, as well as a couple of review articles - both USA made items again.

On one final note, if you are interested in checking out some of the Moto-optix lenses I wrote about last week, Shawn has sent me an email letting me know that they are offering free shipping through this weekend - I am a guy that loves "free", so I highly endorse this deal. $39.95 flat puts a set of these on your helmet. Very worthwhile, in my opinion. Be sure and use the code austinblog to get your free shipping.