Nearing 1/3 desired loss...

As I near 40 lbs down (39 down as of this morning) I can't help but think about what I'll start doing when I hit my body fat reduction goal, and how I'll transition from the mentality of "I'm fat" to "Hey, I'm in pretty good shape." Dropping 120 lbs of fat is a big deal. Being 312 lbs made me feel like I would never do anything I wanted to do because I was to busy being exhausted dragging myself around.

1/3 of the way through my fat loss, I'm already feeling much less like I'm dragging myself around, but I still have that feeling every once in a while that I'm just not good enough to do the things I want to do. Most of my brain very much knows that I'm able to do just about anything I put my mind to at this point, but there is still that part that has been telling me for years "Just sit at home, don't do anything useful, because anything you do is just going to fail anyway." And well, yes, many of the things I attempt will ultimately fail. Everyone has to deal with this. Lack of interest, lack of preparation, and lack of knowledge will almost always guarantee a failure in something that you feel needs to be done to move further in a certain field. But I have to keep reminding myself that failure isn't the end of moving forward. There are other ways to go around the failure, and even pave it over, by changing tactics, building a better interest, and preparing better for the next attempt.

For college, it's going to be taking time to find a link in Calculus that helps me more easily learn the concepts, while finding sources of funding to make it through the next 4 years. In my fat loss, it's taking time to learn how to properly use vegetables in my cooking to optimize my energy levels and learn when and how much I can 'cheat' and not sabotage my overall goal of not just being healthy, but fit. In my personal projects, it's how to maximize the enjoyment of creating while limiting the cost and time spent turning those projects into something marketable, thus further funding more creations and giving myself more time to work on new concepts.

Working on all of those things will make me a better of person overall. Despite all this talk of the 99% lately, I can not ask government to give me any more than I already unjustly receive. I will instead ask it to get out of the way and stop reducing what my cut of the pie is worth, while finding ways to grab a larger share without threat of force, personal or governmental. I must find a way to not only support myself in daily matters, but to reduce my need for government assistance in traditional education. And unfortunately, my desired field of work (Electrical Engineering) requires a traditional education to become certified. I still ultimately save money by becoming a certified Engineer, because learning these things by myself and then having to employ someone to certify that my designs meet safety standards and guidelines is a lot more expensive in the long run. Hopefully that doesn't change before I graduate.

Androids and Weight loss

Alright, first things first. As of this morning, I am 37 lbs down. WOOHOO! 275 lbs and dropping.

Also, I think I'm being a bit too low carb recently. I'm starting to get nagging cravings for a little sugar. I usually solve that with a little fruit, but none in the apartment. Guess I need to pick some up.

Also, saturday I started work on a fairly large android program. I think I bit into a bit more than I could swallow all at once, but I'm chewing on the problem a lot faster than I expected. I'm pretty sure I can have a working prototype up and running by the weekend, and may even be able to finish the most time consuming part of the full version over the weekend.

Where did I get this drive? Switching the diet couldn't have been all it was... was it?

Sickness, College, Creating some dots

Sadly, there is no weight loss to report. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between 28 and 32 pounds lost in the last couple of weeks. I start losing weight, and then I get sick.

Either it’s the cooler weather or I’m just getting used to it, but my walking isn’t doing nearly as much for energy burn either. My legs have gotten much stronger, and all I’m not getting that worn out feeling nearly at all recently. Probably time to up the distance. I’m thinking about getting a bike to ride back and forth between my apartment and class. It’s about 4 miles and mostly sidewalk, so I’m pretty sure I can do it. Heh, I haven’t rode a bike in over 4 years. Last time I did, I spent an hour feeling like I was going to die.

As for life in general, I recently realized I’ve already failed my calculus class. For those of you who don’t know, I’m an Electrical Engineering student, and the math classes seem to be set up to restrict who is considered high enough level to take advancing engineering classes. This means I may or may not be at western an extra semester. I might have been anyway just because I came back to Western in the spring, but I digress. The real big deal is that when I start doing badly in class, any class, I normally check out and spend the rest of the semester miserable and failing all the rest of my classes. This time I didn’t. I didn’t even feel sad. I dumped the class, picked up a bi-term to fill the hrs slot and now the worst thing on my transcript for the semester will be a W, which is harmless to my GPA. Done. The only reason I even mention it is that I’m honestly surprised that I felt HAPPY to be rid of the class and do something else.

Really, I’m feeling pretty hard that college is a joke. Take a class here, pay to take a test there, all to be given a piece of paper that says you are supposedly knowledgeable in that specific field or that at least you could BS your way through another 4-5 years worth of classes after High School. I’d much rather have an idea that revolutionizes an industry to hard that I drop out and go straight to developing the idea. But, I’ve got $40k in student loans now and I’d spend too much of that time keeping loan companies off my ass long enough to actually have time to develop the idea.

So I continue classes, nearly double that debt, but pay it off in just a few years rather than have it hang its ugly head over me every time I try to do something that needs more than a few hundred dollars capital to move forward. There is also the option of using the extra money from work while in college to put into an idea as well. And honestly, it might be the best idea to do that…

Fasting

So, Sunday I tried a fast. I'd tried one before, but my blood sugar always bottomed out between 6 and 8 hrs. Sunday, I went 24 hours and could have gone longer. The hunger pains disappeared around 14 hrs in, I starting feeling more energetic at 16 hrs in, and I was bouncing off the walls by the time I got off from work.

My weight when I got home? 283. My weight the next morning after having a huge supper? 282.

For a grand total of 30 lbs down since I started.

That's right, my body burned 4+ pounds in a 36 hour period because I didn't give it anything for 24. I'm still dropping, but my food choices, almond flour sausage balls for example, made a situation that is showing a stable weight. Sometimes the scale can't be trusted. :P

So, I'm going to add a once a month fast to my plan. That's about how often I plateau anyway.

The first 25... GONE!

Why 2 posts so close together? Because I've officially lost over 25 lbs! As of this morning I hit 286 for a total of 26 lbs lost. Another week or two and I will be the lightest I've been in 3 years. This is a glorious occasion to celebrate going beyond into new territory. So I had steak... yes, I know, I have steak almost every day, but I had a 24 hr fast before I had the steak. That was the most delicious steak I've ever tasted. I'm considering fasting again just to have something else taste that awesome!

Just wanted to toss that out there!