The Life and Times of the Watters Family

Bellingham Bay Half Marathon

Here’s a few photos from Cam’s half Marathon today (I didn’t get great pictures, my battery was really low on my camera). We are so proud of Cam!! Way to go babe!

“[Dave Adamson] would not say if he will reimburse those who paid in advance.” Isn’t that called fraud?

Fitness Update — Day 29

O.K., so I’ve changed a couple of things.

First, I didn’t update Friday or over the weekend. I’ve got a new way of handling the food and exercise, and I’ll post more info in the next couple of days.

Second, I’ve “fixed” it so these on the front page, instead of just on the “fitness” page as before.

As for an actual update, the scale reads 244 lbs. That’s the conservative reading, because, as I’ve written before, I don’t have a digital scale, and the needle wiggles a little. Last week, I mentioned that the scale read 244, but that was after a 5 mile run, which is deceiving as I tend to drop measurable weight when I run distances greater than 3 miles. All of that weight dropped is, of course, water.

I’m quite pleased. Although I didn’t start recording my weight here until January 16th, I weighed 256 lbs on January 2nd, which was when I started eating differently and seriously working out. Since then, I’ve lost 12 pounds. I’m also only 19 pounds away from my initial goal weight now, which is great. If I keep losing weight at this pace (I know I’ll plateau at some point), I’ll meet my goal on April 10th. If I get there, I may increase my calorie intake a bit, but I’ll probably try to keep losing weight until at least May 28th. I’ll stop then no matter what my weight, as I’ll need to focus on training for the 2006 Portland Marathon. I may still lose some weight, but I won’t be actively trying to do so. Just eating a normal amount of calories and exercising.

Anyway, I’ll update more in the coming days…

Fitness Update — Day 25

When I woke up this morning, the scale reported 244. I don’t expect that to maintain throughout the weekend, but regardless — it’s my lowest weight in 4 years.

Food:

• Breakfast
• GoLean Crunch w/ .5 cup 2% milk
• one egg, scrambled
• Snack
• beef jerkey
• bagel (gotta stop eating these)
• Lunch
• blackened rockfish tacos
• sourdough bread
• a few corn chips
• Snack
• beef jerkey
• Dinner
• chili
• berry crisp w/ ice cream
• banana
• granola bar

Exercise:

• Run 5 miles [46:34]

Fitness Update — Day 24

Food:

• Breakfast
• GoLean Crunch w/ .5 cup 2% milk
• one egg, scrambled
• Snack
• Fruit Leather
• granola bar
• Lunch
• chili
• bagel w/ a miniscule amount of cream cheese
• raisins
• Snack
• yogurt
• beef jerkey
• Dinner
• baked chicken
• boiled yukon gold potatoes
• green salad
• apple/berry crisp w/ vanilla ice cream

Exercise:

• Run 5 miles [skipped]

Fitness Update — Day 23

Food:

• Breakfast
• GoLean Crunch w/ .5 cup 2% milk
• one egg, scrambled
• Snack
• Fruit Leather
• granola bar
• Lunch
• Broccoli beef w/ rice
• Snack
• yogurt
• beef jerky
• Dinner
• taco salad

Exercise:

• Strength #4 (3×12)

Fitness Update — Day 22

Yet another Monday. Joy.

Well, I’m happy to report that I’ve dropped (conservatively) another two pounds since last week, for a new weight of (no more than) 247 pounds.

Monday seems to be the day of the week to weigh myself. For whatever reason, throughout the week, I carry between two and three pounds of extra weight, which I think must be water. So, Tuesday through Saturday mornings, I’ll weight 249-250 in the morning this week. Last week it was 250-251 throughout the week.

Last week was my best, most consistent week since committing fully to my food and excercize plan. I didn’t skip one planned session of exercise and I didn’t gorge myself on anything too bad (Friday nights oatmeal cookie mini-binge notwithstanding).

Food:

• Breakfast
• GoLean Crunch w/ milk
• Snack
• an apple
• Lunch
• chili
• Snack
• a banana
• yogurt
• Dinner
• Tacos (Ground turkey, refried beans, lettuce, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, tortillas)

Exercise:

• 3.07 mile run [26:45]

Fitness Update — Day 21

Food:

• Breakfast
• a granola bar
• a banana
• Lunch
• (4) pancakes & (2) eggs
• fruit juice
• Dinner
• chili
• yogurt
• GoLean crunch w/ milk
• .875 oz dark chocolate

Fitness Update — Day 20

Food:

• Breakfast
• Frosted Mini-Wheats
• an egg
• Lunch
• a ham & cheese sandwich
• cucumber slices
• apple slices
• Snack
• yogurt
• banana
• Dinner
• broccoli beef stir-fry w/ rice
• a few Life Savers candies

Exercise:

• 6 mile run [55:17 (7:43 final mile)]

Fitness Update — Day 19

Food:1

• Breakfast
• a bowl of GoLean Crunch (1 cup cereal, .75 cup 2% organic milk)
• an egg, scrambled
• A.M. Snack(s)
• an apple
• Lunch
• 3 bean chili w/ ground turkey
• P.M. Snack(s)
• fat-free yogurt
• carrots
• Dinner, etc.
• Spaghetti w/ meat sauce (turkey), green salad and french bread
• a nerd rope
• oatmeal cookies

Exercise:

• strength training #4, (3×12)
• run 3 miles

Fitness Update — Day 18

Food:

• a bowl of GoLean Crunch (1 cup cereal, .75 cup 2% organic milk)
• an egg, scrambled
• fruit leather
• green tea
• a banana
• chili (pinto beans, kidney beans, black beans, tomato sauce & tomatoes)
• carrots
• a ham sandwich (ham, mustard, lettuce, cheese, a tiny bit of mayo on organic sprouted whole-grain bread)
• yogurt (6oz)
• a granola bar
• sprouted, whole-grain toast w/ peanut butter
• .875 oz dark chocolate

Exercise:

• strength training #4, (3×12) [postponed until tomorrow a.m.]

Fitness Update — Day 17

Had a good run last night. Ran at about an 8:34/mi pace, my best pace ever for a distance greater than one mile. I felt good immediately afterwords and wasn’t overly sore. I’m still without pain today, so that’s good. Running faster was actually easier on my legs, I think, but I’ll need to keep pushing myself so that I’m not quite so out of breath.

Food:

• a bowl of GoLean Crunch (1 cup cereal, .75 cup 2% organic milk)
• an egg, scrambled
• green tea
• chili
• carrots
• Costco pizza (1 slice)
• 1.5 oz dark chocolate

Exercise:

• run 5 miles [49:29]

Fitness Update — Day 16

Good morning!

Last night’s workout was great. I tried something I’d read about earlier in the day. I tried to rest as little as possible between exercises in my circuit. It definitely led to more fatigue throughout the workout, and I felt like it was more effective.

I’ll keep updating the food diary throughout the day.

Food:

• a bowl of GoLean Crunch (1 cup cereal, .75 cup 2% organic milk)
• an egg, scrambled
• an apple
• some carrots
• a tuna salad sandwich (tuna, mustard, light mayo, sweet relish, lettuce & bread)
• a few chocolate chips
• BBQ chicken w/ boiled potatoes & green salad
• a small bit of peanut butter

Exercise:

• ran 3.1 miles [26:33]

Fitness Update — Day 15

Happy Monday!

I have a little better news to report. In the last 3 days, according to the scale, I’ve dropped a little over four pounds. Now, I realize that much of that is water. And that’s fine with me, as it suggests that I was probably retaining water despite having lost some fat. The fat is what I’m really after.

Anyway, I thought I might start trying to keep an online food exercise diary to track my behaviors in order to establish a record of what works for my body and what doesn’t.

So, here we go.

Food:

• a bowl of GoLean Crunch (1 cup cereal, .75 cup 2% organic milk)
• an apple
• sweet and sour chicken (chicken breast, red pepper, pineapple & sauce) with a tiny bit of brown rice
• green tea
• tuna salad (canned tuna, mustard, light mayo, sweet relish) w/ toast & lettuce
• vanilla latte
• Starbucks chocolate & peanut butter bar
• (2) homemade chocolate chip cookies

Exercise:

• strength/resistance training #4 (3×12)

Fitness Update — Baseline

As of January 16, 2006:

• Resting Heart Rate: 64 bpm
• Weight: 249 lbs1

Fitness Update — Day 11

Clearly, I’m not doing something right. I mean, I’ve been pretty good about following my workout, but I’m just not losing any weight. I may be losing fat, as my workout includes strength training, but I don’t have a good way to measure that accurately.

Dietarily, I’ve also cut out nearly all “bad” foods — particularly the copious amounts of junk food that I previously consumed. I think I’m going to have do something drastic and start monitoring my calories more closely again. That sucked, but it may be what it takes.

Granted, I’ve only been at this a little over a week, and maybe I should relax. I had hoped, however, to have lost at least a couple of pounds by now.

Maybe I’ll start taking and posting photos of myself weekly or something to keep track of my progress (if any). Maybe when I post them, I’ll post a baseline measurement of some of the other fitness indicators, such as my resting heart-rate and anything else I can find.

A New Regimen For A New Year

Beginning this week (starting Monday, January 2nd), I started a new training program and diet.1 You can check out the workout I’ve put together here.

The short-term goal is pretty simple. Lose fat. I’ll be running the Portland Marathon again this year (2006). I’d like to improve, dramatically if possible, on my time of 5:17:34. One way I can do that is by reducing the amount of fat that I have to haul down the road. In 2005, my race weight was 254 lbs. I’d like to be down to about 225 lbs (or lower!!) for the 2006 race. I weighed in at just a hair above 255 lbs this morning, so that’s about 30 lbs to go. I’d like to lose as much of the weight as possible (if not all of it) before May 29th. That’s when I’ll start training specifically for the marathon again and I’d like to be able to focus solely on my training and simply worry about maintaining my weight. That leaves me just about 20 weeks, so I’ll have to average about 1.5 lbs/wk over that stretch. Again, the goal is to lose fat, so I’ll be doing some strength training in order to maintain/improve muscle mass.

So far things have gone pretty well. I wasn’t able to run as long as I would’ve hoped on Monday, but I was able to go for a walk with the family, so at least I got some activity in.

Tuesday’s strength training went almost according to plan, except that I had to workout in my bedroom instead of the office, where I would normally workout, because there was (is) a bunch of stuff on the floor of the office. I watched the tail end of a great Orange Bowl between Penn State and Florida State.

This morning (Wednesday) I ran three miles. If I had been paying close attention, I would’ve noticed that my schedule actually called for me to run 4 miles today. I just changed it so that I’ll run the four miles tomorrow instead.

Fitness Diary — Day Zero

So, I’m starting this diary to allow me, primarily, to keep a record of my progress. I want this record to be available to me for editing and reviewing anytime, anywhere, so I’m keeping it here on my website.

Now, I’m not exactly thrilled with the prospect of having all the posts appear on the front page of the site, so I’ve created what I’d like to call my little “fitness ghetto” on the site. I’ll probably link to it from the front page, but I’ve excluded posts in the “fitness” category from showing up on the front page and the date archives.

Entries will likely consist of personal reports on my progress, succeed or fail, with my efforts to improve my physical health. That inlcudes things like exercise, diet, and anything else I deem relevant. I may include recipes for food. I’ll probably discuss my vital statistics, etc.

Jingle Bell Run/Walk 2005

Jingle Bell Walk/Run for Arthritis

This holiday season, our family is taking on a challenge to make a difference in the lives of people with arthritis. We are participating in the Arthritis Foundation’s annual Jingle Bell Run/Walk for Arthritis where thousands of participants nationwide will run or walk while raising funds on behalf of the 66 million Americans affected by arthritis or chronic joint symptoms. Please take a step by helping us reach our fund-raising goal!

Check out our fundraising website.

Resuming Exercise After The Race

Since finishing the marathon, I’ve realized that I need to keep exercising. Often. I think for now, I’ll definitely continue running, but I’ll focus on maintaining a manageable number of miles per week, probably in the neighborhood of 20-30 miles per week. At least until I have to start training for next year’s Portland Marathon, which will probably begin around the end of May.

I’ve also been looking into cycling. It’s a little less hard on the joints, which is probably a good thing considering I’m a pretty big guy at 6′ 2″, 250 lbs. The Cascade Bicycle Club has an annual ride from Seattle to Portland that looks interesting. Recently, one of my coworkers, a cycling enthusiast, showed me around the cycling equipment world at a nearby local bike shop for which he used to work.

All told, a basic setup is probably going to cost between $1750 - $2000 for a decent bike, pedals, shoes, bike rack, a new helmet and other assorted equipment and apparel.

I think I may even be able to find a few people around town to train and ride with.

Preliminary Training - Stage 6 - Day 2

Today was rough. I wasn’t motivated AT ALL this morning. Stayed up a little too late last night and I’ve just been having a crappy week. My left knee is in a brace already and now my right shin hurts right around an old injury from when I was a kid.

When I was about eight years old I was walking (running?) my dog down the street and a friend was sitting on his bicycle. Being the genius that I was, I thought it might be a good idea to hurdle (or attempt to anyway) the back tire of his bike while running at top speed. Unfortunately, for my shin anyway, I overestimated my leaping ability by a bit and ended up catching my shin on the improvised foot pegs that he’d made. Now, when I say “improvised foot pegs” what I really mean is a bolt that stuck out about 3 or 4 inches on either side of the rear axle. And when I say “caught my shin” I mean that this bolt actually penetrated my shin, cut through the muscle and took a chunk out of the bone. Now, for whatever reason, I never received any medical attention for this wound. Oh sure, my mom or dad put some kind of bandage on it for the 4 or 5 weeks it took for it to heal, but no stitches or anything like that. And now, when I run, it hurts terribly.

Anyway, needless to say, today wasn’t much fun. I kept my spirits up by making up cadences (which I will not repeat here) and ended up finishing pretty strong and in decent spirits despite the pain in my shin. I will say one thing for all of this training. It sure makes time fly. Seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I was just walking my route, but it’s really only been about a month. One down, a little over five to go.

Weak In the Knee

So far, my knee troubles have put me two weeks behind. Fortunately, I had about 4 weeks of extra time.

After about a week of issues, I started reading up on different conditions online. The condition that is most consistent with my symptoms is called chondromalacia patellae, or patellofemoral syndrome. Much of what I read suggested a program of stretching and strengthening the hamstrings and quads. I thought I’d give it a shot. Wish I’d done it sooner. After stretching my left hamstring for about 5 minutes (slowly of course), most of the pain was gone. To be on the safe side, I made an appointment with the doctor just in case. He confirmed my self-diagnosis and also recommended a knee brace. With the brace, I can now walk and jog pain free.

We’ll see how it goes tomorrow as I restart stage 5 of the preliminary training — five minutes jogging and then five minutes of walking, repeat twice.